About four years ago, I discovered a manga called Apocalypse Meow. Think Maus meets Full Metal Jacket. If that doesn't sound crazy to you, you don't understand the situation.
When originally published in Japan, the story was called Cat Shit One, a pun itself on "dog shit one," a nickname for lower classmen at West Point.
The name is back in a full-on anime due in 2010. Here's the just-released trailer:
To me, the Japanese have always been fantastic kit bashers, slapping themes and motifs together, no mater how seemingly disparate. I love the feeling of new neural pathways forming as I figure out what's happening.
But sometimes they lose something in the mashup. Here, it looks like they've shifted the setting from Vietnam to the middle east, which perhaps makes it more topical, but less of a gritty 'Nam story.
Vietnam has a certain meaning and impact for Americans. It was an awakening for many civilians, that we weren't always the good guys, and that war is as horrific as the soldiers had always told us it was. The idea of cute, fluffy animals perpetrating the horror and senselessness is jarring and poignant, underlining our loss of innocence.
Our Gulf wars and military actions in the last couple of decades mean different things to us. Putting the same cute anthropomorphic critters there is still jarring, but less poignant. These wars are less about a loss of innocence, and more about attempts to reset the definition about what we are willing to fight for.
A quibble at best. I'll still watch it when it gets translated into English, because I love this crazy stuff!
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