Anime Column] 100 Anime to Watch by Keyword! 100 Anime to Watch No.4 "Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensetsu" (Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Fantasy)

Drinking parties among anime fans tend to be a game of association. Whenever someone says, "XXX has XXX scene," someone else replies, "Speaking of XXX scene, don't forget XXX. Anime and animation are connected by invisible threads like this. Let's follow the "anime to watch" using keywords as clues.

The second season of " Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Fantasy", " THE LAST SONG ", has begun. The story finally begins here. Where will the story of Jiro Hitoyoshi, who tries to protect superhumans away from the superhuman section that tries to manage them, really go?

As you know, "Concrete Revolutio" (hereafter referred to as "Con Revo") uses the former name "Jinka" (神化). The name "Jinka" was one of the candidates for the name of the new era after the Taisho era, which means that the world of "Con Revo" is a work that depicts another "postwar" era in which super-humans exist.

The "superhumans" in deification are beings with a variety of special abilities. Moreover, each "superhuman" is modeled after characters depicted in manga, anime, special effects, and other media around 1965.

The members of the Choujin Division include Teruko Hoshino as a "witch girl," Laughing Onino as a "monster," Futa as an "obake," and Hyoma Yoshimura as a "beastman" and "historical police" (a kind of time patrol). In addition to the superhuman section, there are also "aliens who have become one with humans," "robot detectives," and others.

Furthermore, "Conlevo" does not only refer to fictional characters. Incidents that took place in Japan in the 1960s, as well as the public mood and fashions of the time, are also incorporated into the work, with some of them rearranged in the Shenhua style. For example, the commotion in Shinjuku depicted in the climax of the 13th episode of the first season. This is thought to be the result of the "Conlevo" style of depicting the incident as it happened in October 1968, later called the "Shinjuku Disturbance," and incorporating it into the story.

In other words, the "deification" depicted in "Conlevo" is a world in which the "other side" and "this side" of the Showa-era "cathode-ray tube" have become one and the same. In other words, it is also "Showa history as seen (and received) by TV kids.

The word "justice" appears repeatedly as a key word in this film, and is denied or affirmed from different perspectives. In other words, it is a question of what kind of bridge can be built between "reality" and "the (imaginary) justice that TV heroes of the Showa era talked about.

Thus, the keyword this time is "another postwar" anime.

In 2004, "Tetsujin 28-go" was animated for the third time, and was set in the 1950s, even before the 1960s, the period that "Conlevo" took its title from. One of the goals of the remake seems to have been to give a sense of reality to the world of the work by setting it in the period when the original was serialized.

Some scenes in the work incorporate situations reminiscent of events that symbolized the postwar period, such as the wartime drugging at the zoo, the Teigin Incident (1948), and the Shimoyama Incident (1949). In addition, the climax of the series takes place at the Kurobe Dam (construction started in 1956 and completed in 1963), which is under construction. Given the combination of Tetsujin 28, a legacy of the war, and Shotaro, who is not bound by memories of the war, the story naturally tends to focus on the "negative legacy of the Pacific War," which is a characteristic of this work.

Speaking of the 1950s, we should not forget " Jin-Roh: The Wolf of War ". Although this story is not explained in detail in the film, it is set in Japan under German occupation, and the period in the film corresponds to the 37th year of the Showa period. It is said that World War II was fought between the Axis powers of Germany and Italy and the Japanese-British alliance (the U.S. did not participate due to the Monroe Doctrine). At the beginning of the film, we see a police helicopter with the word "Polizei" (police) written in German.

The film takes its time to depict the encounter between Kei Amamiya, a young anti-government guerrilla girl, and Kazutaka Fuse, a young man in the Metropolitan Police Special Forces.

And finally, " Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place. This is a story not of the 1950s or 40s, but of 1996. Japan in this world is set in a divided country, with Hokkaido occupied by the "Union. Hokkaido is now called "Emishi," and a very tall tower called "Union's Tower" has been built there.

Hiroki Fujisawa and Takuya Shirakawa, third-year junior high school students in Aomori, are friends who are trying to build their own small white airplane, and they dream of flying across the Tsugaru Straits, the border between the two countries, to the Tower of Union. One day, however, she disappears from their lives. In this work, the inclusion of "political barriers = a divided nation" has the effect of emphasizing the "spiritual distance to the tower.

The work dealing with "another postwar period" is like a mirror reflecting us today. What kind of image of "myself" is reflected in this mirror?


(Text by Ryota Fujitsu)