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.




be as personally familiar,” she said. “There’s almost
no resonance to it. Because they take away all these
details, they make it a big trope.”
East Asian interest in Nazi imagery has also bled over
into the West in the form of news headlines in recent
years — involving everything from Nazi-themed bars
and parades to Nazi cosplay in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand
and Korea.

But some experts say that repeated references to
Nazi villains and World War II in manga and anime have
more to do with Japanese history and culture than with
antisemitism. “There is a fascination with Nazism in Japan to some
degree or another,” said Raz Greenberg, an Israel-
based writer whose Ph.D. research examined Jewish
influence on Japan’s “God of Comics,” Osamu Tezuka,
an artist sometimes referred to as Japan’s equivalent
to Walt Disney. In 1983, Tezuka released the first in a
five-volume series called “Adolf,” a popular manga set
in World War II-era Japan and Germany about three
men with that name — a Japanese boy, a Jewish boy
and Hitler.

“I think there’s something fascinating about Nazi
aesthetic, certainly for countries that never actually
participated in the war against the Nazis. But I don’t
think it’s that different from, say, the way George Lucas
made the Empire in the ‘Star Wars’ films very Nazi-like
in its aesthetic,” Greenberg said.

As Greenberg notes, Western media is also full of
Holocaust references — some more successful in its
repudiation of Nazi ideology than others — like the
numbered tattoos and recent use of a Lithuanian
prison camp as a filming location in the Netflix hit show
“Stranger Things.”
“What makes people angry is, people think when
the Japanese approach it, they approach it without
understanding. And it’s easier to think that they don’t
understand it when you look at a show like ‘Attack on
Titan,’” Greenberg said.

Liron Afriat, a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem’s Asian Sphere program and
the founder of the Anime and Manga Association of
Israel, said while shows like “Attack on Titan” refer-
ence the Holocaust and use World War II-era imagery,
it’s likely that Western viewers are misinterpreting its
intended parallels to Japanese politics … particularly
Japan’s past of aggressive and corrupt militarism and
late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempts to
reinstate a non-defensive military.

“Western people are very eager to jump to conclu-
sions when it comes to Asian media. This is something
I see a lot in my work and it’s very frustrating,” she said.

“There is a sense that because Japanese pop culture is
so popular nowadays, it’s very easy to kind of dogpile
on it and say it’s racist.”
In recent decades, anime series have been watched by
hundreds of millions of people around the world, and the
medium has gone from being seen in the West as a geeky
niche genre to a mainstream phenomenon. Though show
creators may be conscious about their references, some
fans say the fascist and Jewish references, especially
the more clear-cut ones — like the Jewish conspiracy in
“JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” features a Nazi character named Rudol von Stroheim.

“Angel Cop” — have real-life consequences.

Many in the anime fan community today remember
a 2010 incident at Anime Boston when a group of
cosplayers dressed up as characters from “Hetalia: Axis
Powers,” a series that anthropomorphized Axis and Ally
countries, was photographed making Nazi salutes just
around the corner from the city’s Holocaust memorial.

“It used to be like, I can go to an anime convention
and they would be selling uniforms that were clearly
meant to be Nazi uniforms, but sans the swastika,”
Desiree said. “And then over time, I noticed conven-
tions started banning that kind of thing.”
Noah Oskow is the managing editor of the digital
magazine Unseen Japan and a Jew who has lived in
Japan for seven years. He recalled similar experiences
at U.S. anime conventions.

“I think that it is problematic to portray Nazis and
the Holocaust in the very frivolous way that it’s often
portrayed,” he said. “Even in a place that is so far
removed from Japan, that aesthetic of Nazis from
manga or anime was seeping into somebody’s choices
in a far-removed anime and manga event.”
Oskow says recent portrayals of Nazis and fascism in
anime and manga lack the depth necessary to confront
an issue like the Holocaust, but that some subtext in
shows like “Attack on Titan” is likely missed by Western
viewers since it is created for a Japanese audience.

Still, he says, as a Jew, there is a discomfort with these
depictions, and the problems with simplifying themes
like fascism and genocide should not be ignored just
because the product came from Japan — particularly
as stereotypes about Jews as having outsize influ-
ence remain common. In Japan, as in other East Asian
nations such as South Korea, China and Taiwan, books
and classes on how to become as smart and wealthy
as Jews — believed to be among the most powerful
people in media and finance — are not uncommon.

“In my years of discussing Jews with Japanese
people … they really think of Jews as an ancient
historical people or the people who were killed in the
Holocaust unless they have some sort of conspiratorial
idea. But most people have no conception of Jewish
people,” Oskow said. “So when they’re portraying Jews
in manga or anime or any sort of media, and when
readers or viewers are engaging with that media, I just
don’t think there’s this thought of how a Jewish person
would perceive how they’re being portrayed.”
Jessica, a 29-year-old Jewish and Chinese anime fan
from Vancouver who also requested her last name be
left out of this article, said she deliberately chooses not
to watch shows such as “Attack on Titan” and “Hetalia”
because she finds the discussions about them among
fans to be unproductive and frustrating. Desiree echoed
Jessica’s experience of being ignored when raising the
topic of antisemitism within the medium or within the
fan community on platforms such as Reddit.

“I saw the reactions of other Jewish fans and, more
importantly, saw the reaction of the goyish fans —
the way ‘Hetalia’ fans did the 'Sieg Heil' in front of a
Holocaust memorial, the way that [‘Attack on Titan’]
fans would swarm concerned Jewish fans in droves
to tell them that they should perish in an oven, and I
decided I didn’t want anything to do with anime that
attracted that sort of fanbase,” Desiree said.

“Attack on Titan” returned to streaming services on
March 4 with the first part of its final season. In the first
episode, the protagonist Eren, whom audiences have
followed for a decade, begins carrying out a global
genocide known as “the rumbling” with the end goal of
destroying all Titans for good and bringing peace. The
end result is a wipeout of 80% of humanity, an act that
Eren believes was the only path to freedom. He thinks
humans must all suffer as a consequence of being born
into the world — a nihilistic philosophy that can be found
among the manifestos of school shooters and incels.

In the original manga series, Eren’s supporters on the
island militarize to defend Eren’s violent act, chanting
a slogan: “If you can fight you win, if you cannot fight
you lose! Fight, fight!” The ending was seen as morally
ambiguous and was not popular with fans, who mostly
refuted it due to poor writing. Many hope that the anime
series will go a different route in its final episodes,
which have not yet been released or given future
release dates. ■
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