THE DYSTOPIAN WORLDS OF ANIME

From the early works of Osamu Tezuka - the man behind the iconic Mighty Atom (known internationally as Astro Boy) - to the

eclectic works of Studio Ghibli, anime has pushed the boundaries of film since the early 20th century and consists of around

70% of the world’s total animated output. Stemming from the hand-drawn efforts of emakimono (illustrated handscrolls that

date back to the 8th century), the spread of shadow puppetry in the Edo period, and the monumental popularity of manga,

anime has since evolved to employ dynamic camera angles, complex characterization and a sea of diverse graphical styles.

Whether through the existentialist contemplations of Shinichirō Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop or the all-out action of Takeshi Koike’s Redline, anime has proven time and time again to be a medium that pulls no punches when it comes to visual tenacity and creativity. It is through this creative freedom that anime is able to explore worlds otherwise irreproducible in live-action, and realms of fiction to a greater extent. One of these realms is that of dystopian fiction: a genre that while definitively bleak, is the birthplace of some of the greatest anime of all time.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, for example, is the first of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ghibli masterpieces and the epitome of dystopian fiction to boot. Featuring a dying world left near-uninhabitable by an apocalyptic war, Nausicaä is a dystopian realisation of the effects of nuclear warfare and humanity’s growing maltreatment of the earth’s environments.

The tale screams hopelessness yet it offers its central hero, the so-called Nausicaä as a speck of hope in an otherwise desolate wasteland. As the voice of change in a world that considers its remaining forestry, and the inhabitants therein as villainous, Nausicaä sees the truth in their depiction. They are projections of the trauma brought upon the earth by humanity; there to exist in peace or to react violently to further destruction, as nature often does. The film offers a solution to the fictional dystopia while cautioning of the effects of deforestation, nuclear war and general environmental negligence. Through prophetic storytelling and empowered animation, Miyazaki’s dystopian parable provides a glimpse at a world without nature... and it is barren.

This sense of sterility is echoed throughout the world of dystopian anime. Whether through Miyazaki’s later works (Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castle in the Sky), Katsuhiro Otomo’s cyberpunk classics, Akira and Metropolis, or indeed even contemporary franchises such as Attack on Titan or Psycho-Pass share a tendency for the dystopic. The medium of anime, with its profuse innovation, assorted styles and endless potential, curates an entire subgenre of dystopian epics to inform the fragility of civilization. And perhaps no other film captures this more complex than that of Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg, an original video animation made 10 years before his magnum opus, Ghost in the Shell.

Set in a surrealist nightmare of broken-down Art Nouveau architecture amid a Neo-Gothic cityscape, Angel’s Egg is something of a masterclass in film symbolism. It follows an unnamed young girl who, while caring for a mysterious egg beneath her dress, is met by a boy whose past is left equally uncertain. The duo passes myriad symbols of a once booming civilization: derelict tanks, dilapidated buildings, a ghostly fish trade. As with Nausicaä, it seems the film is set thousands of years in the future, post-apocalyptic and dystopian, yet through its bygone symbolism, it could very well be set in the past.

Angel’s Egg is out of time and space, acting only to inform the viewer of the imperfect contractions of human nature; our constant carelessness for ecology, our doomed search for identity and meaning. And yet, the film is not devoid of hope. It is in this instance that the film, as with Nausicaä, offers a final aspiration: that, as long as humanity has the capacity to change, all is not lost.

Themes of dystopia in anime are as prolific as the form itself, and while each film and each series is unique in style and vision, they share a quality for change - for rebirth - amongst the deathbed of civilization. Even in the urban dystopias of Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Wicked City, Demon City Shinjuku), Yoshikazu Yasuhiko’s space-faring Venus Wars or the post- apocalyptic hellscape of Toyoo Ashida’s Fist of the North Star, humanity never loses hope in the midst of total desolation.

Seamlessly presenting aspects of dystopia with a cartoonish coat of paint, anime allows for audiences to absorb the dark and often brutal characteristics of the genre without wandering too far into the real. It provides the tools necessary to depict worlds upturned by apocalypse, societies dominated by systems of oppression, and environments made barren by humanity’s carelessness; visualising these themes through colour, sound and vision. Dystopia lends itself to the expansive nature of anime: it is a match made in heaven, or perhaps, more appropriately, a match made in hell.

Text: Adrian Bianco