So what's with all the child soldiers?

[cmdr_zoom]

I find myself wondering about the preponderance in anime and manga of teens and even actual children who are forced to take up arms, risk their lives, and be subjected to strange and often experimental procedures which may shorten their already brief existence, whether it's piloting a soul-powered giant robot or fighting demonic entities from other dimensions (and sometimes both). What's behind this?

Is it a generational echo of "total war" preparations during WWII, which still lingers in Japanese culture like the Boomer dominance over our own? A dramatic metaphor for the more mundane trials and stresses and changes and expectations of ordinary civilian adolescence? Or simply the natural result of combining the kind of protagonists the intended audience likes (people their own age) with the kind of action they like (things blowing up, getting cut in half, etc)?

Maybe I'm wrong, and it's something else entirely. Anyone care to speculate?

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

The prevailing wisdom is that young people relate better to protagonists they can envision themselves being (for good or ill), and the numbers generally appear to back up that theory. It isn't just a Japanese phenomenon, either: Witness the wild success of Captain Marvel in the Golden Age of Comics. For quite a while there, the Big Red Cheese was more popular - a lot more popular - than Superman. It's one of the main reasons National Publications bought Fawcett. Hell, it's why Lex Luthor is bald. And why? Certainly not because Cap's powers were any more amazing, or his foes any more colorful. I submit that it was because he was really a young boy, a member of the very same demographic the book was aimed at.

It's also why the Legion of Super-Heroes has had such a strong niche for such a long time. They've never set the comics world on fire, perhaps, but they never fade away like so many other second-rank super teams, either (in the process surviving regrettable editorial decision after regrettable editorial decision) - because every kid reading the book has the option of believing that, except for lacking superpowers and not living in the 31st century, he (or she) could be a Legionnaire too.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Right, that was my last hypothesis - or half of it, anyway. But why are these young sympathetic characters then thrown into the meat grinder of modern (or future) war? (Okay, so it's not usually THAT bad in magical girl shows...) Should we simply blame Tomino, Anno, et al for setting the examples that everyone else emulates?

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

(shrug) Dying a war hero beats working yourself to death to get into the right college.

[twoflower.livejournal.com]

Postulating on the moral and ethical nature of warfare is a meaty subject for any TV series to tackle, one which easily gives rise to action-packed fight scenes and vehicular combat action. You get both sides of the textual coin in one go; the surface spectacle AND the philosophical underpinnings.

Also, this is especially important in a censorship guided broadcast spectrum, which demands no actual bloody violence with knives and guns -- so your fighting is done in giant mecha, or by proxy with cute monsters and cards, or in spaceships. Even if someone dies it's one step removed, IE you evaporate in a big 'ol fireball as opposed to being eviscerated or shot fulla holes. Alternatively fighting is done hand to hand but against a safe proxy enemy, like a demon or robot that can be dispatched without human gore.

Combine that with Gryphon's point about viewer connectivity, how kids like to watch kids, and you've got kids saving the world and taking on superheroic responsibilities and dangers (through various safe filters).

What you don't see very often, unless it's noteworthy for it, is kids in TRUE modern warfare; IE, with machine guns and flak jackets and taking cover and fire-in-the-hole and all that. Without the proxies of robots or spaceships or martial arts weapons it becomes less entertainment and more a sad, sick commentary on the horror of war, particularly echoing child conscripts in various world conflicts. (And thus the basis of Foxtrot Company's entire schtick, albeit one with one foot in the silly comic world of COX.)

[mephron]

What you don't see very often, unless it's noteworthy for it, is kids in TRUE modern warfare; IE, with machine guns and flak jackets and taking cover and fire-in-the-hole and all that.

And when you do see it, it's usually very depressing. That series with the girl who's a superweapon whose title I can't remember right now, for example - there's an entire episode when characters we see at the beginning as happy kids are then shown as soldiers fighting on the front lines.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

Might that be She ~ the Ultimate Weapon (http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=113)? Yeah, that was depressing. Not an especially great or especially bad series, but not a happy one at all.

Of course, for depressing and "realistic" you can't beat Grave of the Fireflies.

[caluche.livejournal.com]

I think it's a side effect of the medium becoming more cartoony and less adult-oriented. As everyone else has said, the audience needs to relate to the characters and I think for the most part Japanese anime such as Evangelion is aimed at Japanese 14-year olds. For whatever reason, it completely misses it's target audience when it reaches the US (anyone else cringe when they see a 20-something american buying sailor moon videos?).

Japanese total war was such a long time ago from the point of view of most of the manga and anime producers that I don't seriously think it plays any major role in their story development. I'd read a statistic that mentioned that some significant fraction of Japanese high-school students were unaware that the US and Japan had even fought a war.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

er, stuff like Death Note and Gunslinger Girls is "more cartoony"? or all the post-Eva mecha shows where the kid pilots (the only ones who possess the Special Mojo needed to operate the machines, in a continuing subversion of the old Super Robot convention) are subjected to bonding procedures that may keep them from ever having normal lives if they DO live through the current danger to civilization, and are then subjected to trauma after trauma as their comrades die around them?

I realize I may be getting a disproportionate sample, but that's what I'm seeing, and commenting on.

[caluche.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen either of them, unfortunately. Reading the wikipedia though, Gunslinger Girls takes place in Italy. It's not clear if the combatants themselves are Italian nationals but it's interesting in the context of the original comment in that Italy hasn't really been in total war since the time of the Caesars.

It could be that the adult oriented anime characters (given certain stereotypes about the japanese culture) are intended to appeal to japanese men as sex objects, much the way certain american films denote a female protagonist in perfect physical condition, wearing a bikini and packing a SCAR. A woman who can take care of herself, yet at *just the right moment* needs a man to help her out of whatever problem she's gotten herself into, after which of course they sleep with each other.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader why japanese anime have 13 year old schoolgirls with sidearms as the principle characters.

However, an other comment from above is worth note - very few of these anime take place in true front-line warfare situations, and you rarely hear tactically relevant conversation from these anime characters. Too frequently the characters are some kind of superbeing - the only one that can do whatever it is that they do and never likely to be a rank-and-file soldier trying to survive in a desperate situation (which you would expect if WWII were one of the defining influences of the art).

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

unpaid edit/addendum:

I mean, I get why Tomino does it in Gundam - he was there. (See also Haldeman, the Vietnam vet, and The Forever War.) But as you say, that was a generation ago. Yet others are still doing it today. Why? That's what I want to know.

(also, to clarify: I cited Death Note as a counter-example to "kid stuff", not as an example of the sort of shows I'm discussing in my main thread.)

[caluche.livejournal.com]

It could also just be a "this formula appears to work" factor and there's no real reason for it all above copycatism.