feature
Does Anime Have a
Nazi Problem?
Some Jewish
Fans Think So
Jordyn Haime | JTA.org
W hen the Season 3 plot twist of “Attack on
Titan” aired in 2019, viewers wasted no time
jumping online to discuss what they saw.

In the world of “Attack on Titan” — an extremely
popular Japanese anime series now in its final season,
which started in March and does not have a known
end date — humanity has been trapped within a walled
city on the island of Paradis, surrounded by Titans,
grotesque giants who mindlessly eat any person who
gets in their way.

In the third season, the Titans’ origins are revealed
as a group called the Eldians, a group that made a
deal with the devil to gain Titan powers with which
they subjugated humanity for years. A group called the
Marleyans later overthrew the Eldian empire and forced
them into ghettos, forcing them to wear armbands that
identified their race with a symbol similar to the Star of
David. Political prisoners were injected with a serum
that turns them into the terrifying Titans.

The implications that a race meant to represent Jews
had made “a deal with the devil” to achieve power
were too much for some to bear. Fans debated the
meaning on Twitter and Reddit as think pieces pointed
to the show’s “fascist subtext” and possible antisemi-
tism as ratings and viewership climbed. Some viewers
defended the series as a condemnation of those ideas
and a meditation on moral ambiguity, but others said
the plot’s condemnation of fascism was too weak. The
18 MAY 11, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
New Republic in 2020 called “Attack on Titan” “the
alt-right’s favorite manga.”
Either way, in November 2021, the show’s production
team announced it would cancel the sale of Eldian
armbands — the ones Eldians were forced to wear in
their ghettos — explaining that it was “an act without
consideration to easily commercialize what was drawn
as a symbol of racial discrimination and ethnic discrim-
ination in the work.”
“Attack on Titan” is only the latest manga (a specific
type of Japanese comic books or graphic novels) or
anime (TV shows or movies animated in the manga
style) series on the chopping block. As it continues
to gain popularity outside of Japan’s borders, the
Japanese animation medium as a whole has been hit
with criticism for alleged glorification of antisemitism,
fascism and militarism. The debate has been fueled by
a stream of examples: the literal evil Jewish cabal in
“Angel Cop,” (references to Jews were later removed in
the English-language dubbed version), the Fuhrer villain
in “Fullmetal Alchemist,” the Nazi occultism (in which
Nazis channel the occult to carry out duties or crimes)
in “Hellboy,” and the Nazi characters in “Hellsing” and
“Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure,” to name a few.

Western viewers are not the only ones taking issue.

Fans of “Attack on Titan” in South Korea — which was
subject to Japanese war atrocities during World War
II that Japan continues to deny — have taken issue,
too. Revelations from Hajime Isayama, the creator of
the original “Attack on Titan” manga, that a character
in the series was inspired by an Imperial Japanese
army general who had committed war crimes against
Koreans were met with heated discussion and later
death threats from Korean fans online. Some also
pointed to a private Twitter account believed to be run
by Isayama that denies imperial Japan’s war atrocities.

“Ridiculous the lengths a fandom will go to downplay
the blatant antisemitism in a series and protect and
lie about the creator of said series,” wrote one Twitter
user. “[Y]ou doing this and ignoring koreans and jewish
people says a lot.”
These themes are so common in manga and anime
that some independent researchers like Haru Mena
(a pen name) have begun creating classifications for
the many Nazi tropes that make regular appearances.

Mena, a military researcher who lectures annually at the
Anime Boston convention about World War II and Nazi
imagery in anime and manga, says the phenomenon is
a result of how Japan remembers its role in World War
II — not as the aggressor, but as a victim of war.

“​​Japan does not want to be the bad guy. They love to
have other people be the bad guy,” he said. “That’s why
they’re using all these Nazi characters. We all agree
Nazis are bad, war crimes are bad, no decent self-re-
specting nation would ever do [what they did].”
But many Jewish anime fans, like Reddit user Desiree
(who did not offer her last name for privacy reasons),
have taken issue with the way some anime and manga
series portray Nazis while reducing the Holocaust to
narrative devices.

“I think that most people who are telling these
stories aren’t coming from an area where this would
Screenshot from YouTube via JTA
Nazis are villains in the “Hellsing” series and many other anime shows.