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Originally Posted by SeijiSensei
How about Seikai no Monshu ("Crest of the Stars" and its sequels)? The female half of the main couple is an imperial princess. I haven't watched this show for some time, though its Wiki entry observes that their primary opponent is an "alliance of the democratic nations of the United Mankind, the Federation of Hania, the Republic of Greater Alcont, and the People's Sovereign Union of Planets." I never got very far into Legend of the Galactic Heroes because I was always turned off by the Prussian culture it portrays. Does that story have a "revolutionary" component to it later on?
Another possibility might be Hyouge Mono, a story set in the Sengoku period. The main character, Furuta Sasuke, starts off as one of Nobunaga Oda's vassals. After Nobunaga is assassinated, Sasuke schemes and manuevers to align himself with the winners like Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. His actions seem like a wry commentary on the pressures to conformity in Japanese society.
Shows set in classical faux-Asian empires like Junni Kokki and Saiunkoku Monogatari often portray noble, benevolent rulers trying to maintain order and prosperity against an array of brigands and usurpers. In Seirei no Moribito the emperor is trying to protect his people against a possible threat from the spirit world and is even willing to assassinate his son whom the emperor believes is the carrier of the threat. |
I haven't seen Crest of the stars, Hyouge Mono and Saiunkoku monogatari so I can't talk about those but:
In Juuni Kokki, the world is divided between 12 kingdoms, not empires. So this doesn't contradict my point.
In LoGH the universe is initially divided between a decidedly evil empire and a very corrupt democratic federation of planets. Neither of them are really depicted in a good light.
The story however does seem to portray in a good light the kind of government that Reinhard creates through his conquests, which is a sort of autocratic system based on meritocracy opposed to aristocracy and blood rights.
So to sum it up LoGH is a kind of story where one of the MC works for the evil empire, however the empire is evil and he planned to overthrow it since the very beginning, so the theme of rebellion is there from start. On the other side Yang Wenli serves a corrupt democracy that descends from rebels of the empire and are still considered rebels by it centuries later.
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Originally Posted by DonQuigleone
Could this go back to differences in religious beliefs? In Asia, they don't believe in "Sin" the way we do...
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Perhaps this is true for the rest of Asia but in my opinion the concept of "sin" (tsumi) in Japan isn't really much different from how "sin" is viewed in the west. The only relevant difference is that the west considers "sin" something that defies a supreme God while in Japan it's more about universal laws from Buddhist traditions.
What is truly relevant that differentiates the classical stories of western traditions and Japanese traditions is the theme of "compassion" which apparently is a lot stronger in the latter even though Christ stressed out the importance of mercy and forgiveness.
The way the west perceived evil throughout its history was more influenced by Manichean and Zoroastrian philosophies than the gospel itself.