Xard wrote:More pointedly and alarmingly there's Angel Cop OVA from early 90s by Ichiro Itano, Anno's friend and mentor, which has at the heart of the conspiracies and plottings a worldview where USA is afraid of rising Japan and now the meek Japanese politicians have "sold out" Japan to JEWS controlling America (and now JEWS are controlling Japan too) who plan on turning Japan into a nuclear waste dumb of the world. LOL
You really didn't think that Eva was about a group of monsters with Hebrew names attacking Japan was some kind of coincidence did you?
Maybe a more recent example of otaku nationalism is Summer Wars where the traditional values of the Japanese family together with the ingenuity of Japanese technology (never underestimate it - there's Angel Cop again) can overcome the hurdle of their treacherous son selling them out to the US, almost killing them in the process. And to come back to Murakami, the net itself in Summer Wars has become one large superflat exhibition celebrating a now universal Japanese aesthetic. It's all so very soft and cozy compared to the 80s stuff though. I know someone wrote a blog post about this but I forgot where.
In great synchronicity with this thread getting bumped some guy has started to write an analysis Gunbuster's imperialist back-story.
http://animekritik.wordpress.com/2011/1 ... roduction/
http://animekritik.wordpress.com/2011/1 ... isode-one/
I think this type of biographical/authorship approach is problematic, especially since things like the role of Okinawa etc where likely developed long before Anno was on board the project but it's well worth reading. I left a comment for the second one under the more socially respectable name "km".
edit:
I think I just did this?
And Anno might have shown some self doubt when talking to a foreign journalist but he was probably a bit more honest when he put that Strike Witches DVD box on his work desk haha (as reported on Kazuhiro Takamura's blog)