The Atomic Boom of Japanese Animation Sci-Fi
What makes Japanese animation so special, second to its imaginative and creative visuals, is its ability to predict the future of science fiction while also grounded by Japan’s 20th century history. When creating some of the most beloved anime of all time, creators Katsuhiro Otomo, Hayao Miyazaki and Osamu Tezuka drew upon the bleak cultural impact of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in World War II and the consciousness of Japanese people post-WWII. The work of Osamu Tezuka, who grew up during the economic and technological depression of post-WWII Japan, closely examined the cultural and physical devastation of the bomb: many of his films and manga detailed a beautiful natural world polluted by man’s desire to conquer it.
Otomo’s Akira (1988) paints a politically driven dystopian sci-fi epic set in the post-apocalyptic remains of Tokyo decades after an atomic bomb. Otomo’s Neo Tokyo is a haunting image of one of the darkest chapters in scientific discovery, and the degrading side-effects of the Japanese government’s experiment on the mute orphan Tetsuo and various symbolisms — such as anti-mutation medicine being a call-back to vitamins used to aid diseased victims of the A-bomb — mirror a terrifying future that repeats the absolute horror witnessed by Japan. From this, Miyazaki’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988), which recounts the last few days of World War II from the perspective of two young Japanese boys from Kobe, is still an example of science fiction despite being set in World War II, as it retells the scientific disaster that left a mark on Japanese history, and the consequences of science.
Since the 1950s with Godzilla franchise, Japanese pop culture has been obsessed with the historical trauma, memory and fantasy of nuclear energy and atomic testing. Irregular to George Mann’s definition of science fiction as foreshadowing scientific discovery, there is an innate relationship between the history of our scientific discoveries and science fiction. While earlier Japanese animation is a product of the effects of atomic warfare, more modern Anime classics, such as Paprika and Ghost in the Shell, use ideas of technology and the mind, and the power of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, in beautifully animate and artistic visuals. It is this ever-changing nature and imaginative fantasy of Anime that makes the genre so special, creating the common association of Japan as a “futuristic city”.
