Just watched this last night and found it quite enjoyable. It made me think about the changing image of Japan here in the US when the Tokyo Olympics took place. I was about Yuuko's age in 1964 and shared her and her brother's sense of expanding opportunities in a new world order. Sadly the father is too caricatured for me to take seriously. For those who haven't seen it, the second episode of
Bartender portrays a much more persuasive dramatization of the conflict between generations over family businesses in the postwar period. (It's one of my favorite single anime episodes of all time.)
I grew up with kids whose fathers had been on ships attacked by kamikaze pilots. I'd seen our soliders, sailors, and marines fight their way across the Pacific against crazed Japanese opponents in reruns of movies like
Bataan and
Guadacanal Diary. I well remember when "Made in Japan" meant shoddy quality; by 1971 I was driving a Japanese car. The quotation Simon posts from Gordon's history makes considerable sense to me -- the Olympics symbolically represented Japan's return to the world community.
I do have to point to one glaring error in the translation. At the beginning of the show we hear a television announcer recounting the important events of the preceding year, 1963. He clearly mentions the
Kennedy assassination; I rewatched the scene a couple of times to make sure. I chalk this up to the fact that few of our fansubbers were even born when JFK was shot, while I was just coming-of-age and lived through that tumultuous decade of the sixties.