Read on Twitter
I'm going to look this up, but I'd love to hear some anecdotal thoughts and responses: why were robots, cyborgs, Transformers, Astro Boy, etc such a big hit in Japan? Akira, Ghost In The Shell – these are legendary now, but what were their origins? Post-war Industrialization?
Anecdotally: Post-War Japan, after having atomic bombs dropped on them, rapidly modernized – making leapfrog developments in infrastructure and hardware. In the 80s they seemed like they could be the next global superpower (comments from /r/cyberpunk)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle
"While Astro Boy wasn't a giant robot, 1956's Tetsujin-28 was. The manga was inspired by the U.S. firebombing of Kobe and the notion of top secret super weapons." https://kotaku.com/5834287/why-big-badass-robots-and-mecha-rule-japan
Life-sized Gundam models are really something to behold. A monument to human imagination and contemporary storytelling.
"What is humanity? [...] To over-simplify slightly, Akira is about losing humanity and Ghost in the Shell is about finding it; Akira explores its themes externally while Ghost in the Shell is all about looking inward." https://nerdist.com/akira-ghost-in-the-shell-and-the-humanity-of-cyberpunk/
Akira's director Katsuhiro Otomo's answer to "what book had the greatest impact on you": HG Wells' War Of The Worlds (1887) – which was about a Martian invasion on Victorian England, and often considered to be a commentary on British Imperialism
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/story-behind-film-akira/
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/story-behind-film-akira/
''Japanese don't make a distinction between man, the superior creature, and the world about him. Everything is fused together [...]. We have none of the doubting attitude toward robots, as pseudohumans, that you find in the West.” https://www.wired.com/story/ideas-joi-ito-robot-overlords/
A collision between flesh and metal, the sub-genre is an explosion of sex, violence, concrete and machinery [...] post-human nightmares and teratological fetishes, powered by a boundaryless sense of invasiveness and violation."
http://www.midnighteye.com/features/post-human-nightmares-the-world-of-japanese-cyberpunk-cinema/
![A collision between flesh and metal, the sub-genre is an explosion of sex, violence, concrete and machinery [...] post-human nightmares and teratological fetishes, powered by a boundaryless sense of invasiveness and violation." http://www.midnighteye.com/features/post-human-nightmares-the-world-of-japanese-cyberpunk-cinema/](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUi0Ii1UYAEh6t9.png "A collision between flesh and metal, the sub-genre is an explosion of sex, violence, concrete and machinery [...] post-human nightmares and teratological fetishes, powered by a boundaryless sense of invasiveness and violation.\" http://www.midnighteye.com/features/post-human-nightmares-the-world-of-japanese-cyberpunk-cinema/")
http://www.midnighteye.com/features/post-human-nightmares-the-world-of-japanese-cyberpunk-cinema/
