Of course, for the most serious topic I’ve covered thus far, I get a giggly response to being nervous. *sigh* If I sound like I’m being silly, I’m sorry, and I mean no disrespect. Oh, and to be clear, the “argument” I mentioned near the end was the debate of “was it justified to drop the atomic bombs?”
On a totally different note, I was very interested to talk about Godzilla. Yeah, I know, he’s not really anime, but I’ve always loved the Godzilla concept. If you’ve looked at Japanese cinema (not necessarily animation), you can see the importance of “place” as a storytelling technique. Western cinema kinda does this, like if there’s a sad moment, it will be raining, but Japanese cinema takes it to a whole other level. Scenery is almost like a character in the movie, especially nature and traditional home scenery (as opposed to modern cities). So, pair that with the notion that Godzilla is a force of nature. If you think of science as the manipulation of nature, and warfare as the corruption of science, then Godzilla’s origin has a profound poetic meaning. There’s a fun topic: what does Godzilla mean to you?
Anime, Brains, and Culture 