I guess my problem with the whole idea that "the faux-WW2 pretense is a purposeful show" is that... it seems awfully pointless and a huge waste of energy to go down
that path to keep everyone "entertained". It just seems rather clumsy and inefficient (although admittedly I'd be hard-pressed to explain
why exactly) Wouldn't it be easier to use actual entertainment (and not the repetitive nature of war, which leads to desensitizing) and retain the threat of invasion/war to manipulate the population when you really need to?
And it just seems to downplay the role of actual people when it comes to life and their government (even between two major superpowers and when advanced technology is presumably available - perhaps not to the public in those two countries, but I would think the nature of technology is that it eventually trickles/leaks out to the public, at least in other countries)
Of course, I have hardly ever studied the habits of societies and political control through history, and I'm probably just blinkered by my experience of the modern world as it's turned out so this might actually be very plausible, but to me it didn't feel that way. Yet (at least via the visuals) I got this impression that they were attempting
some form of realism, which resulted in a sort of dissonance I suppose. Might as well have used some utterly made-up country, why not?
But well, in the long run I'd rather just enjoy it as it is. I'm still convinced it could be much shorter, though. I don't see why it had to be made into an animated feature-length film, disregarding the theory that it was a self-deprecating criticism against the anime industry. A pointless criticism considered it's been
made so get over it, but I'm just not convinced the medium was really made use of that well.
I doubt I'd ever put it among my favourites, is all. I think I enjoyed it more than the person who asked me to watch it, though
