Attack on Titan: An Imperialist Propaganda w/ Kazuma Hashimoto

This episode contains spoilers of the Attack on Titan series.

Kazuma Hashimoto returns to the show to discuss Attack on Titan, a popular manga and anime series created by Hajime Isayama.

This is the first installment of a mini-series on art and politics, where we will critically analyze the role of art in promoting Japanese imperialism and how we can revolutionize art in service of the people.

Kazuma is a media critic, translator, and journalist. He authored many articles including “Attack on Titan Couldn’t Escape Controversy in the End: Looking at the Legacy the Manga Leaves Behind” published by Polygon in 2021.

The Attack on Titan franchise received critical attention for tweets posted by a now private Twitter account that allegedly belonged to Isayama, which glorified Japanese imperialism and the colonization of Korea prior to the end of WWII. While Isayama’s association with the Twitter account is not empirically proven, he has expressed admiration for historical figures and events in his blog that indicates his conservative political leanings.

In this episode, however, rather than focusing on Isayama’s own political views, we focus primarily on the form and content of the franchise itself, and how they function as a conveyor of bourgeois ideology. 

We talk about how the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre reinforces the social anxiety caused by the crisis of capitalism and the role of music in the emotional appeal of the series. We dissect the reactionary narrative of the series, specifically its colonial and pro-war messaging, as well as a pessimistic view of humanity it puts forward. We discuss what it means to consume this content during Japan’s turn to re-militarization and complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and how film and arts can either reproduce the bourgeois ideology or challenge it by appropriating these art forms for the liberation of the working class and oppressed peoples.

We recorded this interview in December 2023 shortly after the conclusion of the anime series, but what this franchise represents and stands for remains relevant to this day and the franchise itself is not going away as the final episode is getting a theatrical release this November.

Intro: Cielo by Huma Huma

Outro: 歴史 history by Danny Jin (The video includes an English translation of the lyrics in the description)