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Originally Posted by DonQuigleone
Recently I've noticed that in a lot of Anime you see situations where the main characters are "working for the enemy", ie where the show has some kind of militaristic or even fascistic government that the hero starts out working for, and over the course of the show, they either destroy or set out to reform that state. Some examples :
*Full Metal Alchemist, the Elric brothers start out working for Amestris, which is highly militaristic, if not fascistic.
*Psychopass, where the cast are basically thought police in a totalitarian state
*Gundam, in most iterations, the pilots start out serving a state which is only a marginally less villainous then their opponents
In the west, I think the default would be for the heroes to serve the "rebellion" rather then "the empire". I have a few theories on this:
1. WW2,many of these states have some resemblance to either pre ww2 Germany or Japan, is this a way to try to examine their own wartime history? As losers, they can't look at the war in the triumphalist way Americans might.
2. Japanese conformist mindset, in the west I think we more easily empathise with the rebel or vigilante, perhaps in Japan they more easily empathise with figures who prefer to "fit in" rather then "stand out",at least starting out.
3. Literary antecedents, if you look at Chinese classics like romance of the three kingdoms, which I would say Anime is heavily influenced by, the heroes are fighting to preserve the empire, not destroy it! Despite the fact that the empire they're trying to preserve has long since rotted.
Am I off base? There are rebels in Japanese stuff of course (for instance every final fantasy ever), and in the west you get heroes serving tyrannies (say starship troopers) but I feel in the west the default is rebellion, and in Japan it's more "conformity" thoughts? Is Japanese entertainment more "conservative" then western entertainment?
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This is an interesting topic. I honestly never really paid attention to this phenomenon. But now that I think about it, you're right.
Entertainment as a medium, always reflects the views of the time period that it was created. That's why you might find a period drama made today that would reflect the views of today, more than the actual time period that it's supposed to represent.
As many have already explained, this goes more back to the history of both the US and Japan. We as Americans tend to have a very high sense of justice. Since we grew up studying the American Revolution and seeing comic books, we tend to prefer taking things into our own hands and having the good guy always win.
Japan seems to have a more "shoganai" mentality. A translation of that is "it can't be helped." From what I've gathered, Japan tends to favor accepting things as they are and making the most out of what you have. That explains the difference in story themes.