Dragon Ball and Centrism disguised as "A Desire for works to stop being political"

[Koitsukai]

I think I get DBIreland's point, if you don't read that interview, you'd never know Freeza was based off land sharks.

So it definitely influenced his Freeza's portrayal, you can't dispute that, but there isn't much of that on the pages to back it up.
Toriyama didn't do much with it, Freeza's goal on Namek isn't to buy and sell it but to become immortal with their magical orbs, not even trying to make a profit out of it.

It's more like a half-ass political message, to me. Unlike, say The Zone of Interest with its critique of the Gaza occupation, the director went out of his way to say what he was thinking about and the movie itself backs it up perfectly. With Freeza I don't think you can say the same.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Exactly, Toriyama was inspired by the landsharks but he wasn't writing with the intention of young boys learning about them, he was an entertainer first and foremost.

[Tian]

...and -- in this specific case of Battle of Gods and him rekajiggering the entire setup and plot of that film -- he can make that same decision because of real-life events and the lens of how its direct, primary audience would be viewing it:

But Toriyama-sensei seemed to to feel strongly that, since the [2011 Tohoku] earthquake, he wanted it to be, not a tragic story, but a positive, forward-looking story, of friendship and camaraderie, and the story took shape like that. It was like, “This truly is Dragon Ball.” What was I doing? (laughs)

That's a nice thought and I personally found it a better example of politics than the one shown in the original post.

[Majin Buu]

Yeah, how Toriyama chooses to draw characters or locations is more of a logistical and economical choice than a political one, he said something similar about Cell but that was more of a retrospective realization the finished design he wasn't satisfied with was too time consuming to draw because of all his spots.

Hmm, haven't read this interview. Interesting to hear him say Cell came out as a not fully thought out idea, that's probably the result of him having to suddenly change up the main villains so many times (and probably also explains Cell's blander characterization compared to Freeza and Buu).

[Hellspawn28]

The Namek saga always felt like a message about colonization with the Nameks being killed off by Freeza. They only arrive to the Planet for Dragon Balls.

[Kunzait_83]

It's probably helpful to mention that the real point of contention for most when they speak about stuff like this is whether or not there's shoehorned propaganda of any kind in any era (like most US media tends to be, honestly), not necessarily whether it has anything to do with "politics" or not.

Shoehorned propaganda in itself is a valid complaint. The problem though is that so many people deem ANY sort of political content or commentary of ANY sort as being this. There's a dramatic difference between a work having a political message or political viewpoint (and really, ALL works do to some degree) and having blatant propaganda awkwardly hammered into it: and the problem here is that so many of the kinds of people we're discussing here cannot seem to distinguish between the two.

Manga and entertainment should stay away as far from politics as they can. We don't want another situation like the Death Note, which featured a sudden appearance by President Trump.

1) Curious why Manga in particular gets singled out here, especially given the ENORMOUS WEALTH of Manga out there that is rich in political content and commentary. Just out of a hat off the cuff, Sanctuary, Eden, Shamo, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Barefoot Gen, Me and the Devil Blues, Ultra Heaven, Message to Adolf, Silent Service, the Gundam franchise, The First President of Japan... manga and anime are as buried up to the eyeballs in political content as any other form of media you'd care to name.

Fuck, god help me, even One Piece can't avoid it! I can't imagine what kind of manga or anime you're consuming that you think is completely free of political content: there isn't much out there that qualifies.

2) As I said in an earlier thread recently, ALL media has political content in it because politics is literally woven into the fabric of society and is impossible to avoid. Indeed, I'd go further to add that desiring or wanting to avoid any and all politics is not only impossible, its rather stupid to boot. Avoiding politics is like trying to avoid breathing oxygen: you're never going to do it, nor really would there be any value in doing so.

3) U.S. Presidents have always appeared in fiction since time immemorial. They always have and they always will. Is there something inherently special about Trump or Death Note in particular that makes them an exception somehow?

Or to use an example that might actually connect with some of you folks here:



OH NO!! POLITICS!! ON A CHILDREN'S CARTOON SHOW!!

4) I'm gonna go out on a limb here and also say that its a testament to how inexperienced a lot of folks in communities like this tend to have with non-children's media/movies/TV shows/books/etc. that anyone can get the idea in their head that most media/entertainment in any way avoids being political. Movies, TV, and literature have been STEEPED in political content for as long as they've existed, and it is the height of ignorance to think otherwise.

Just for some RECENT examples, TV shows like 24, The Wire, The Sopranos, Jack Ryan, The Newsroom, The Shield, Law & Order, and movies like Judas and the Black Messiah, Get Out, Oppenheimer, Inglourious Basterds, Detroit, Selma, The Holdovers, Poor Things, Everything Everywhere All at Once, fuck even The Batman or The Dark Knight, or Star Wars (ALL of them, even the originals), and even the MCU/Iron Man/Captain America, or the X-Men franchise...

ALL of these things, and TONS more besides, are STEEPED to the gills in politics. Politics is humanity and humanity is politics. Life is politics. Existing in the world is politics. Everything you do every day is because of politics. The fact that you and I are talking to one another on a computer connected to the internet and running on electricity right now is 1000% because of politics. This forum's very existence is and always has been because of politics.

The statement "entertainment should stay as far away from politics as they can" is 1000% idiotic and ignorant. I'm sorry dude, but you're asking people to do the creative and intellectual equivalent of avoiding gravity or oxygen or water as much as possible. Its impossible to do, and it is a completely fucking stupid and pointless thing to even want or to ask for.

What you're REALLY asking for here is "don't make me have to think about anything or feel uncomfortable in any way". And, well... there's no nice way to put this but tough fucking shit my guy. This is life, and politics is an inherent, unavoidable, and intrinsic part of life, whether you like it or not. Avoiding it is completely impossible in itself, and anything that actually somehow DID hypothetically manage to do so would be completely alien and impossible for most people to empathize or connect with.

You're basically asking for art to avoid grappling with life (since politics and life are intractable and go hand in hand) here, and that's an unreasonable thing to ask, its COMPLETELY counterintuitive to the whole point of human creativity, and its an immature, childish thing to even want in the first place. "Don't make me have to think at all", "don't make me feel uncomfortable", and "don't discuss anything that has any connection to anything that people in the real world can connect with or relate to" is basically the message that you're conveying with this statement, whether you realize it or not.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be a dick here, I'm really not... but statements like this are just on their face ridiculous and there isn't any way to beat around the bush or be nice about it. "Entertainment should stay away as far from politics as they can" is as naive, ignorant, childish, and downright stupid a thing to say about creative works as anything I can think of.

There's just no way to sugarcoat this one: what you want here is impossible to begin with, is NOT how most entertainment has EVER worked to begin with (which makes one wonder what the hell it is you've been watching all this time in the first place), and if it WERE possible, it'd be mindless, brainless nothingness without any humanity behind it.

I'm also going to throw this out there, and I'm no longer speaking solely to Jord here with the following, but really to EVERYONE who shares the sentiment along the lines of "Why is entertainment so political all of a sudden? It never was political before, and it shouldn't be now!":

Every, and I do mean EVERY piece of media you've likely EVER consumed throughout your ENTIRE life has 1000% for certain had political content in it. And I mean just about damn near ALL of it. Movies, TV shows, cartoons, comic books, and anime and manga too (ESPECIALLY those).

You were likely too... there's no other word to use, you were likely too plain ignorant to notice it before. Just because you notice it NOW suddenly (WAY later in life than is in any way reasonable) does not mean it wasn't ALWAYS there to begin with. It was ALWAYS there in almost EVERYTHING you watched on TV. For longer than you or your parents and grandparents were alive. And it was ALWAYS obvious to literally EVERYONE else around you, except for you apparently.

There's nothing nefarious about it. Nobody's trying to pull a fast one on you: you simply didn't think about it before and didn't notice it before. But it was ALWAYS there, and MOST people in general have ALWAYS known about it. Always-always. You're the ONLY ones here who were out of the loop on this: draw your own conclusions as to what that says about you and your critical thinking skills.

By the way, to bring this back around to Jord specifically...

We don't want another situation like the Death Note, which featured a sudden appearance by President Trump.

Again, I'm sincerely, from the bottom of my fucking heart not trying to be an asshole. But... this statement is just SO embarrassing and sad to read.

Really dude? Death Note? I don't know how to tell you this, but Death Note? Both the anime and manga? HUGELY political. ALL of it. From the core premise, right on down to the finer details of its execution. Death Note is one of the most over the top blatantly political Shonen mega-franchises of the last 20 fucking years, easily.

Saying effectively "Why is Death Note political suddenly?" is just as equally embarrassing and cringe as people who say "Why is X-Men political suddenly?" Or "Why is Metal Gear political suddenly?"

Its DEATH NOTE dude. You know, the manga whose ENTIRE CORE CENTRAL PREMISE is centered around a morality play about the criminal justice system, vigilantism, and playing god outside of said system? One of the single most blatantly political things to grace the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump in the 21st century so far. A famous U.S. president appeared in one of the most politically charged children's manga of the last generation? Nooooooo!

If you're this shocked and offended to find out that Death Note was always political this whole entire time, you better get a fainting couch and some smelling salts ready when I tell you all about what Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Gundam were always actually about this whole entire time for all these years now.

[JulieYBM]

Dragon Ball out here making the incredibly controversial political point that genocide and colonization is bad, actually.

can't believe i had to learn something at school today

(I was going to point out non-shounen comics have tons of politics in them, but then I remembered that even other JUMP comics have blatant politics in them, too, like NARUTO)

[Koitsukai]

I wonder if those that ask for non-political commitment from authors and whatnot are aware that their own request is a bold political statement on itself. You are asking them to subscribe to the status quo, to keep quiet, to limit their expressions, thus continuing with the current political agenda/trend... you are asking them to do what you do not do in the first place.

So, it's not "keep politics outta here", it's actually "keep your politics, that do not match mine, outta here".

I also think people still to this day can't tell apart politics from partisanship.

[GhostEmperorX]

Shoehorned propaganda in itself is a valid complaint. The problem though is that so many people deem ANY sort of political content or commentary of ANY sort as being this. There's a dramatic difference between a work having a political message or political viewpoint (and really, ALL works do to some degree) and having blatant propaganda awkwardly hammered into it: and the problem here is that so many of the kinds of people we're discussing here cannot seem to distinguish between the two.

For sure, people do in fact tend to mistake the terms almost all the time, and not even realize that even older productions in the US had similar kinds of propaganda in it depending on the time and where you looked. Which brings me to...

OH NO!! POLITICS!! ON A CHILDREN'S CARTOON SHOW!!

In particular, one such example of this that I was thinking of was in the 1984 Transformers cartoon when it featured an episode with a fictional country named "Carbombya" which was literally a stand-in to Libya during that time when they were making the news as a "state sponsor of terrorism". Notably, Casey Kasem caught on to what they were doing and quit the show because of it.

And that was pre-Y2K.

1) Curious why Manga in particular gets singled out here, especially given the ENORMOUS WEALTH of Manga out there that is rich in political content and commentary. Just out of a hat off the cuff, Sanctuary, Eden, Shamo, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Barefoot Gen, Me and the Devil Blues, Ultra Heaven, Message to Adolf, Silent Service, the Gundam franchise, The First President of Japan... manga and anime are as buried up to the eyeballs in political content as any other form of media you'd care to name. Fuck, even god help me, One Piece can't avoid it! I can't imagine what kind of manga or anime you're consuming that you think is completely free of political content: there isn't much out there that qualifies.

Even a series like Naruto features attempts at nuanced politics, grey morality, etc... the main homeland of the protagonist even has what can only be called a CIA (or KGB/MI5/insert covert intelligence agency) equivalent (in addition to its Mount Rushmore knockoff). Sometimes I think that settting was literally the wrong one for its idealistic protagonist and all the influence he takes from Goku.

[MasenkoHA]

To be fair, the fact that Frieza is a genocidal maniac kind of overshadows the landshark thing.

Him conquering planets is a big part of his character, but it largely happens off screen. We actually see him killing innocent people regularly, and taking pleasure out if it.

We hope for his downfall primarily because he's a killer. Him profiting at the expense of others is secondary.

If anything Freeza being a genocidal warlord informs Toriyama's stance on landsharks

Like, of course the guy selling planets for profit is a smug psycho murderer.

[Kunzait_83]

In particular, one such example of this that I was thinking of was in the 1984 Transformers cartoon when it featured an episode with a fictional country named "Carbombya"

And you people wonder why exactly it is that I shit so much on children's cartoons?

[JulieYBM]

Holy fucking shit, 'Carbombya'? That is disgusting.

[Hellspawn28]

So, it's not "keep politics outta here", it's actually "keep your politics, that do not match mine, outta here".

Pretty much this. They are okay with right wing stuff because it's not too political to them. A movie about racism being bad towards black people is woke to them, but a movie about saving kids like Sound of Freedom is okay. These are the same people who think trans people are grooming kids, Muslims are bad, 13/90 black crime is real, and January 6th 2021 wasn't bad.

Holy fucking shit, 'Carbombya'? That is disgusting.

I forgot that episode was a thing. It was so bad that it made Casey Kasem to quite the show

[GhostEmperorX]

Meanwhile, by contrast, Japan has a considerable degree of mutual animosity with China and Korea... and yet you don't see them making jabs about those places all the time whenever they or their cultures are depicted in most anime/manga properties (including the one that this forum is built around, which has about the utmost respect for ancient Chinese culture when it's not making a joke out of some aspect of it like Toriyama was wont to do :p).
And of course, collaborations of different kinds between creatives in both regions.

And also, the anime/manga scene has always had varying depictions of several minority groups depending on who the author is, even as far back as the 70's. As most know, such depictions when being brought over to the US tended to be blotted out or otherwise sanitized. That area was never influenced by any trends as some seem to mistakenly think.

[Kunzait_83]

Holy fucking shit, 'Carbombya'? That is disgusting.

Its not even clever! On top of being nauseatingly racist, nativist, etc. its just sheer fucking cringe-ass we're-not-even-trying-here lazy and moronic on its face! This is the kind of shit someone like Steven Crowder would use for a "bit": something that a particularly stupid, bratty 5 year old (raised by white nationalist parents) would come up with on a school playground, when he's not squinting his eyes and yelling "Ching Chong Ching Chong!" at all the Asian kids. That's the same exact level of raw hateful idiocy we're dealing with here. It can't even bother to even PRETEND to be witty or subtle.

[Hellspawn28]

Meanwhile, by contrast, Japan has a considerable degree of mutual animosity with China and Korea... and yet you don't see them making jabs about those places all the time whenever they

You have people point it out in the sub-text in different Japanese media like in Attack on Titan. I remember reading that the creator has unpopular views about South Korea and Imperial Japan. I'm not a fan of AOT, but some people have told me that they have found racist subtext in the series.

[GhostEmperorX]

You have people point it out in the sub-text in different Japanese media like in Attack on Titan. I remember reading that the creator has unpopular views about South Korea and Imperial Japan. I'm not a fan of AOT, but some people have told me that they have found racist subtext in the series.

I also saw something similar about Ranking of Kings with its depiction of a certain rural group.
Which brings us to the fact of how it varies by author over there.

One thing in particular about the manga/anime/game scene in JP is that it's at least officially a separate thing from news media, not being owned by many of the same companies as is the case in the US (noticing that Cartoon Network and Cable News Network were owned by the same Time Warner company as a child didn't mean so much at the time since I thought both were good channels, but now it hits hard just how significant stuff like that is, especially when it's the same deal with multiple other big media networks in the country.)

Suppose I shouldn't say any more though, it would be off-topic as per site rules (not that there's even that much that can be said about the thread in itself to relate it to DB that hasn't been said elsewhere before).

[Cure Dragon 255]

Meanwhile, by contrast, Japan has a considerable degree of mutual animosity with China and Korea... and yet you don't see them making jabs about those places all the time whenever they or their cultures are depicted in most anime/manga properties (including the one that this forum is built around, which has about the utmost respect for ancient Chinese culture when it's not making a joke out of some aspect of it like Toriyama was wont to do :p).
And of course, collaborations of different kinds between creatives in both regions.

And also, the anime/manga scene has always had varying depictions of several minority groups depending on who the author is, even as far back as the 70's. As most know, such depictions when being brought over to the US tended to be blotted out or otherwise sanitized. That area was never influenced by any trends as some seem to mistakenly think.

Sorry to break it to you but they DO do that. Sgt Frog mocks the Chinese with a slur, and a Korea character got banned from the anime on Axis Powers Hetalia.

[GhostEmperorX]

Sorry to break it to you but they DO do that. Sgt Frog mocks the Chinese with a slur, and a Korea character got banned from the anime on Axis Powers Hetalia.

Well, yes, just because I may not have seen it doesn't mean it's nonexistent. Which is why I specified "all the time" in "most" of their series (and I've seen quite a few).
But there's a lot of straight depictions in different media of said subjects there that don't (games for one), and the ones that are actual propaganda aren't due to some committee or government-influenced mandate, or an overarching current events issue (most times they're mainly on the author, director, or scriptwriter so it's their responsibility).

[BootyCheeksJohnson]

Even something as simple as the hair color of Super Saiyans was a product of the external politics of creating a weekly manga. Toriyama claimed he made it golden blonde to save time that he or his assistant would have to spend inking the hair black so they could have a more efficient work schedule. Like you said it impacts every aspect of someone's work whether it's within the text itself or not.

This is so disrespectful, immature, and flat out stupid. You literally are given an explanation for why something in Dragon Ball is the way it is, but instead of accepting that, you have to construe it as meaning something else because.... why? That Dragon Ball has to be political? That it has to be "deep"? You're trying to squeeze out the meaning of words of something that's already been explained. And what makes it genuinely disrespectful is that you're trying to psychoanalyze an author who is now dead and can no longer expand on what he's said or speak for himself.

Let Toriyama, his work, and what he's said about his work, rest in peace.

Your argument is in bad faith. I'm the person who's been quoted throughout this forum. This is another example of people not understanding that politics don't just have to be subtext in order to effect the story.
No it's not particularly deep, but Super Saiyan hair color and Toriyama preferring to draw battles in wastelands to ease his workload is an example of external politics affecting the art. Manga deadlines weighing on his decision making/time management/work balance is the external politics of his business impacting his art. No it's not deep, but that doesn't mean it isn't there just because it isn't presenting a message in the text itself.
I'll admit that a better example would probably be VegettoEX's example of Toriyama re-writing Battle of Gods to be a more heartfelt story because he felt Japan needed more positivity brought into it after the events of the earthquakes.
It's not being "disrespectful", "immature", or "downright stupid".