[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by wontaek

Someone mentioned capitalism as evil. This is something that also intrigues me in many level, and also something that gets much discussion within anime.

Clearly, I can't speak for all anime and J-drama programmes, but from the few that I've watched, I do detect a cultural bias against Big Bad Business.

To be sure, the same bias exists in American programmes such as 7th Heaven or Picket Fences (I betray my age, I know), which typically portray small-town life as being spiritually "purer" than big-city living.

However, in Japan's case, the bias takes on an elegaic flavour, because capitalism is often portrayed as a corrupt Western influence that destroys the country's work ethic, which seems to favour small-scale operations with lots of "heart". Witness the multiple anime and J-drama that praise professionals who devote their entire lives to a single company simply because "they believe in its values" — that's the kind of bias I'm talking about.

So, "capitalism" does appear to take on a different shade of evil in Japan, where we often find ourselves cheering on good ol' honest-to-the-dime mom-and-pop stores as they go toe-to-toe against mighty, souless corporations.

The biggest question of them all is when does "the need of the many outweigh the need of the few" must be crossed into "the need of the few outweigh the need of the many". In many Japanese anime, the one who answers never to the above question often is the evil-doer. This is something likely to be found in Western media as well, but I believe there exist a visible difference in the tipping point.

I'm not convinced that the difference, in this case, is so stark.

In Japan, extreme condition is needed to achieve the tipping point, and often the evil-enforcer of the good of many is given symphatetic treatment.

Interesting observation. That does seem to be a common trend not just in anime but also in Japanese video games. I'm reminded especially of Yasumi Matsuno's characters in Final Fantasy XII and Vagrant Story. In both games, there are instances when a patriarch explicitly orders the main antagonist to take on the sins of necessary evil, so as to keep one heir spiritually "pure".

A similar dichotomy occurs in Rurouni Kenshin: Tsuiokuhen, where the title character serves as a ruthless assassin in order to keep his master "pure" for national politics.

There is a certain nobility to such sacrifice, so it's no wonder that these tragic heroes are typically given sympathetic treatment. The implication here, once again, is that the Japanese appear to assume an equal potential for "good" or "evil" behind every action, so in order to maximise the "good", a sacrificial lamb must be made to shoulder maximum "evil".

It's ultimately a case of "means justifying the ends". However, it's precisely this pragmatic approach to ethics that attracts me to anime. It is, to me, a more sober — and sometimes abhorrent — reflection of real life.

I can't speak for Korean manhwa, but Chinese manhua such as The Storm Riders seem completely naive in comparison to Japanese manga.