Author: Murderous Ink

This is Part 4 of the series. Part 1, 2 and 3. There is a vital difference between the empty streets of ULTRAMAN or EVANGELION and the empty streets in Fukushima. In fiction, these empty streets demand you to kill your imagination. Don’t think about them. They act as bits of the propaganda, which coerce you not to contemplate. But, the empty streets in Fukushima demand us to imagine the absence of the society – lives destroyed, families torn apart, businesses crumbled, promises crashed, smiles forgotten, and hopes demolished. Parhaps we should remember, – as Hiroaki Koide pointed out – …

This is Part 3 of the series. Part 1 and 2. “MAZINGER Z“, the first and the most influential Robot/Mecha Anime was aired in 1972. It was the time of consumerism, aftermath of turbulent sixties, the entrance to the highway of economic boom, Japanese technology revolution. In MAZINGER Z, the question of “perfect” only applied to the perfectness of the machines. The viewers of the program were kids born in sixties, the generation too far removed from the days of the Imperial military. The archenemies in MAZINGER Z are the worst kind of worst ex-Nazis, who are grotesque, sadistic and …

This is Part 2 of the series. Part 1 is here. As we learned about the true extent of Fukushima accident and nuclear fallout, our feeling toward the government, the energy industries and the media shifted from distress to distrust, then to disgust. Many people, from independent journalists to political activists, from artists to housewives, used the term “the Great HQ Announcement” to describe this failure of major media to deliver vital information and critical view of the Fukushima incident.