S-Cry-Ed: Anime as potential propaganda

For those interested in the use of propaganda in children's media, S-Cry-Ed would be a worth object of study.  S-Cry-Ed is an “anime”, or Japanese animated show.  While anime can be geared towards any demographic, this particular show is aimed towards a child audience.  The story begins 22 years after a powerful event called “The Great Uprising”, in which a part of Japan is shattered.  “Uprising” can be taken on more than one level.  In one way, it is a description of how the land was completely destroyed be the, apparently, natural event.  The word is also a description of how society has been completely transformed by the devastation that resulted.  While The Great Uprising is not discussed in detail, it is clear that this is the flash-point from which all other events develop.

The creation of The Lost Ground, the new name for the section of Japan that has been devastated,  mirrors the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Although occurring as a seismic event the destruction is no less severe, scarring the geography, destroying cities, and ruining both lives and society.  The social structure radically mutates into two groups: those that sacrifice stability by resisting outside help or influence, and those that crave stability and embrace outside forces as a result.  Within the world of S-Cry-Ed, this is portrayed as the conflict between the independent spirit and the need to compromise or given for survival.  Those determined to maintain independence live in a lawless land with minimal resources to develop and maintain society.  They have freedom, but also chaos.  Those who accept outside influence live in luxury and safety, but with increasingly little control over their own destinies as the show progresses.

The order-vs-chaos and obedience-vs-independence memes are enforced and developed by the characters and how they deal with the seemingly omnipresent forces of The Mainland and it's enforcement militia, HOLY and HOLD.  As with Japan after World War II, The Lost Ground is practically devoid of a home-grown enforcement agency.  Instead, control and order is provided through The Mainland, a general name for the vague and undefined forces outside The Lost Ground's boundaries.  The Mainland provides control and order via HOLD, a militia that provides policing and order throughout the controlled areas of The Lost Ground.  As the show progresses, HOLD begins to expand into the more chaotic areas of The Lost Ground as well.

Of particular interest to The Mainland and HOLD are the Alters.  Following The Great Uprising, and the creation of The Lost Ground, less than 1% of the population began to exhibit “Alter power”, or the ability to rearrange matter into specific forms or functions.  Alters are literally able to recreate reality, metaphorically reformatting their own destiny.  To control this new demographic, HOLD forms a subdivision called HOLY, comprised of young Alter users who pledge allegience to HOLD and act as enforcers against non-allied Alter users (who are considered lawless rogues).  It is within this context that much of the show takes place.

The competing ideologies become more concrete through the two main characters of the show, Ryoho and Kazuma.  Ryoho is an alter in the service of HOLY and Kazuma, a rogue later living outside any organized control.  The conflict between the two is psychological, physical, even cultural.  Ryoho was born to a wealthy family, still in power after The Great Uprising.  Although Ryoho's memories of his past are vague, the audience learns that his family was killed by a being composed of pure alter power, drawn to the physical plane by the destruction recently caused.  Although anthropomorphic, the creature is largely morally neutral, and more or less a force of nature rather than an actual being with motives and ideas.  Throughout the show it appears, sometimes with benefit to the main characters, and sometimes not.  In this particular case, Ryoho is traumatized by the creature's arrival, and eventually becomes a member of HOLY, developing into one of their premier enforcers.  Although his chosen allegience turns out to be malign, Ryoho is not one of the “bad guys”.  His experiences have taught him the need for stability in order to protect the people around him, and establish a foundation for progress.  He is led to believe that working for The Mainland accomplishes this goal.  Within the views of the Japanese Neo-conservative movement, he has made the error of submitting to outsiders (The Mainland), giving up certain innate freedoms for the chance at peace and stability.

For his part, Kazuma is exactly the opposite.  Born in the territories beyond Mainland-controlled areas, Kazume displays a fierce independent sprit, and is unwilling to submet to any authority beyond his own personal sense of ethic and morality.  Kazuma's mentality represents the unquenchable fighting spirit that the show supports, displaying repeated resistance to control by virtually anyone outside of himself.    Much of his philosophies and ideas can be found in one particular episode where he describes a younger version of himself, desperate for work and money.  He sneaks into an area controlled by The Mainland, hoping to find work, money, or food.  Given the chance to observe people who live under the aegis of The Mainland, Kazuma develops an instant disgust with them and leaves.  In his view, the people who live under Mainland control are cowardly sheep, and have forfeited freedom for safety, leading, in his view, weak and ignorant lives.  

Kazuma's view is, at its heart, a dramatic re-telling of the Japanese nationalist view of America's occupation and influence of Japan (as well as undue outside influences from world powers in general today).  This is to say that the nationalist viewpoint is that Japan has too long allowed outside countries to have a hand in its affairs, and should freely reject such influence to pursue its own destiny, regardless of how such actions are perceived by the world at large.  This perspective has influenced even the upper echelons of Japanese government as shown by the repeated visits of various Prime Ministers to the infamous Yasukuni Shrine, and perhaps most notably in Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishikawa, who authored “The Japan That Can Say No”, calling upon the Japanese population to collectively resist the influence of the United States.  The idea that the show supports these views seems to have weight when considering The Mainland's enforcement agencies are named HOLY and HOLD.  HOLY in particular is relevant due to it's reflection of assertions made in Ishikawa's book that the introduction of Christianity in Japanese society is little more than a form of cultural imperialism.

Of all the characters that exist through the series, the third and final characters of thematic importance is Kyoji Mujo.  Where Ryoho is the archetypical misguided loyalist, and where Kazuma is the archetypical freedom fighter, Mujo is the both a traitor to his people and the ultimate representation of The Mainland and it's desire to dominate The Lost Ground.  Through the Neo-Conservative social and political lens, Kyoji Mujo can be described as the continued efforts of the outside world to destroy the value of the native land and its autonomy.  By Mujo's own account, he was born destitute and weak.  Jealous of the luxury provided to people by The Mainland, Mujo turned his back on his homeland and submitted himself to The Mainland for study and experimentation.  In this sense, Kyoji Mujo not only becomes the archetypical sellout, forsaking his homeland and heritage for personal gain, but he is also transformed into the very personification of The Mainland itself.  He essentially represents all malevolent outside forces trying to destroy or control The Lost Ground.

The personalities and thematic purpose of each of the characters form the nature of their individual Alter powers.  Kazuma's and Ryoho's alter powers operate in a similar, specific manner – nearby matter (almost always inanimate objects) is disintegrated and reformatted into armor, weapons, or other objects.  In essence, this is an act of transforming the old into the new, taking something that was just sitting there and turning it into something new that can be used for a desired purpose.  Kyoji Mujo's Alter power is quite different.  He literally devours the powers of others.  This means that, thematically, he takes but does not give back.  He is a type of vampire, draining the indigenous value of The Lost Ground, and leaving nothing of value in his wake, save for the suffering of an abused people.  

A rough correlation can be drawn between Mujo's characterization and the Japanese Neo-Conservative views on the Yasukuni Shrine.  Built in 1864 as a war memorial, the shrine is ore well-known today for housing the remains of Japanese soldiers who died in World War II.  In particular, the shrine houses a number of recognized war criminals who were found guilty by a war crimes tribunal.  This is relevant because the shrine publishes a pamphlet that states the war criminals were “cruelly and unjustly tried” by a “sham-like” court.  In addition, displays at the shrine indicate that Japan was not an aggressor in World War II, but mere trying to defend itself against malevolent outside forces.  This meme is not restricted to the shrine itself.  It is also the center of the Japanese school textbook controversy in which schoolchildren are taught that Japan was unjustly attacked, and as such was a victim of the war rather than an aggressor and perpetuator of it.  Within this context, Kyoji Mujo's thematic purpose is clear – he is the malevolent outside force invading an innocent homeland (The Lost Ground), with the sole purpose of aggression against a largely defenseless people.  It is up to the defenders of that land to find their national pride and rise up to defend against an unjust invasion.  As a show with nationalist overtones, this is, of course, the point of the series.

As Mujo develops more power by devouring the powers of others, he begins to warp the land in a grotesque manner, reflecting his own twisted vision.  Ryoho, seeing the carnage, realizes his foolishness in aligning himself with The Mainland, and joins forces with Kazuma.  The two are able to finally turn away the invasion, killing both Mujo and an incoming Mainland navy in the process.  The last episode's final moments are, in fact, portrayals of an older Kazuma and Ryoho declaring that no outside force will ever hold sway over The Lost Ground, and the only result of any attempt will be destruction.  This demonstration implies a support for the opinion of Neo-Conservatives that Japan be allowed to form it's own military force.  Due to Japan's role in World War II, post-war Japan was stripped of it's military power, and in fact had its constitution written to guarantee that Japan could not and would not develop it's own military power.  This forced Japan to rely on the United States for military support.  There are many Japanese that feel this section of Japan's constitution should be repealed, a notion that has caused some discomfort in other asian countries, many of whom still have memories of Japan's aggressive military nature during the last World War.

With regards to the show, the themes of fighting and independence favor Kazuma over Ryoho.  While both are acknowledged by the end of the show as the most powerful of their kind, Kazuma receives the focus of the show.  The audience witnesses his rise from a relatively low-powered Alter user to an unrivaled force only approached in power by Ryoho himself.  That the show focuses on Kazuma reveals the show's preference for fierce independence, undertones of nationalism, and a strong desire to expel or destroy outside authority.  Ryoho, initially much stronger of the two, is shown to have his power almost as a matter of course, rather than having to fight for it.  Born into wealth with nearly unbeatable abilities, he exudes privilege, and shows it through a haughty, even cold demeanor.  It is only when he comes to reject The Mainland, and is force to live in the territories outside its control, that he begins to change.  He witnesses the hand-to-mouth existence of those who do not have The Mainland's support, and he sees the destruction caused by HOLY and HOLD's attempt to expand The Mainland's control.  It is only then he comes around to Kazuma's point of view and organizes with him to re-take The Lost Ground.  In the final episode, Ryoho and Kazuma decide to settle their remaining differences in one last fight with each other.  Although the battle is fierce, it is Kazuma who wins, symbolizing the superiority of those who fight from the start rather than those who prefer safety.

These overtones of nationalism make S-Cry-Ed an interesting show to study.  In the wake of the textbook controversy, Yasukuni Shrine, and other attempts at revisionism, including film, it's not hard to see the show as an attempt to instill or reinforce feelings of unfair pressure from an outside world.  It is possible this was not a deliberate choice by the show's creators, but regardless the show indicates a national feeling of discontent with Japan's place in the world, especially in this time of economic crisis.  Of particular interest is whether or not S-Cry-Ed is an anomaly, or part of a larger trend towards nationalist indoctrination.  That, however, is beyond the scope of this essay.

The Adventures Of Travis And Verio

It should be noted that, while the events below did actually occur, the name of "Travis T." is not real. The actual name was changed to Travis so that Travis wouldn't receive any potential backlash.

    In July 2007, Travis T. was hired as a production artist to a niche graphics and design company.  Travis filled the generic stereotype of a graphic designer quite well.  He was young, still working his way through school, and versed not just in print design, but software development as well.  He knew PHP, HTML, CSS, and whatever other acronyms were necessary to the development of modern-day websites.  Like most graphic designers, he wanted projects he could sink his teeth into, and like many designers at the beginning of their careers, he didn't know when to politely decline a creative challenge from his employers.

 

    For their part, Travis' employers had caught the MySpace bug.  They couldn't speak intelligently on social networking, or even the Internet in particular, but one of them had just learned that MySpace was the place all the cool kids were going to, and his company had to be represented.  Naturally, Travis went to work on a MySpace profile with gusto.  Creating an attractive MySpace profile is not easy.  Creating one that looks good requires creativity, ingenuity, and a willingness to bash one's head against a wall.  Travis had these in spades.  He was able to introduce a brand new layout with custom colors, precisely placed images, custom fonts, and even a slideshow of the more popular products.  His employers loved it.  It only took a few days to acquire a sizable number of friends, and that was without interacting with the community.  In fact, there was no intention of interacting with the community.  It was lost on Travis' employers that regular community involvement was essential to succeed on MySpace.  They had their MySpace “business card”, and that was all they wanted.  Travis went from a lowly production artist to a valuable asset within the span of a few weeks.

 

     With the MySpace issue out of the way, attention returned to the company website.  His company had signed up for a hosting account with a company called Verio sometime in 2000.  Verio was founded in 1996, incorporated through the efforts and resources of private investors, and partial funding through Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, the largest telecommunications company in Japan.  Verio's business model involved buying out local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that had already made a name for themselves in a local market.  This allowed Verio to develop a large national presence without having to develop the talent and resources the purchased ISPs already had.  This was very lucrative for Verio, and by 2000, just four years later, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone was ready to stop being an investor and start being an owner.  In the fall of 2000, NTT bought Verio for somewhere around five billion dollars.  After this, Verio abandoned the consumer ISP market, and began focusing on providing service to small-to-medium businesses.

 

     No one could remember who made the decision to go with Verio, but neither did anyone care.  For the executives of the company, websites were like business cards.  Companies need at least one, and no one cared much beyond that.  Travis' MySpace success had, however, brought about renewed interest in the site, and it was decided that the website could use a makeover.  Travis was promptly given the information he needed and took a look.  The website was woefully out of date and lacking in quality.  Not only did it not comply with today's production standards, it didn't comply with the standards of when it was created.  Travis realized a complete change was needed.  He also saw that the website only displayed samples of the company's products; clients had to order a catalog to know the full range.  That meant a true online gallery was the first order of business. After that, an online ordering system, and then a modern, standards-compliant design.

 

    Verio already supplied a third-party package for this purpose called, somewhat ironically, “Gallery”.  It was server-side application, which meant that the software was executed before the web browser received the web page.  Gallery itself generated the web page in question and the server delivered it to the browser.  To maintain information on the product images, things like name, product number, descriptions, and so forth, Gallery had to access a database.  Verio also supplied a database called MySQL for clients to use.  The problem was accessing information on either software package.  Or the website itself for that matter.

 

    Modern websites, especially those for businesses, come with an administration page.  In this case, an administration page refers to a special web page that is not available to the general web visitor.  Someone in charge of maintaining the website will use this administration page to create or delete email accounts, check what services are being provided to the website, who has visited the site, how often, and so forth.  The problem was that while the main website itself displayed pages at a reasonable speed, the administrative page didn't.  Travis at one point timed the page taking a full ten minutes to load.  In the high speed age of the Internet, this was unacceptable.  It wasn't just the administrative page, either.  It appeared as if anything other than a basic HTML page ran extremely slow.  So slow in fact that Travis installed a copy of Gallery and MySQL on his workstation just so that he could get some basic work done.

 

    Phone calls to Verio were not helpful.  Customer support technicians kept reading to him from  a script with pre-written answers.  It's possible, however, that there was little incentive to discover or fix the issue.  As it turned out, the company account had become obsolete.  What's more, the computer Verio was using to host the website used an operating system called Irix.  Irix was obsolete due to the fact that the creator of the operating system, Silicon Graphics, had declared the product line was discontinued.  In addition, Silicon Graphics made software for high-end 3D graphics, and Irix reflected that interest.  This made it an odd choice, especially in light of freely available operating systems like FreeBSD, which is one of the most common choices for web server operating systems today.

 

    Travis saw it was time to move the website to something more modern.  He compiled a list of companies to should look at for a new hosting plan.  Included in this list was Verio's “Hosting 3000” plan.  Travis included it merely as a nod to Verio, but it was not his recommended pick.  Unfortunately, Travis had no decision-making authority, and while he had laid down his arguments as best he could, his employers decided to go back to Verio.  Verio was a familiar name to them, and therefore more trustworthy.  Although it wasn't his first choice, Travis  contacted Verio to set up a second web-hosting account.  The plan was to slowly move web pages and data over to ensure smooth transition from the old account to the new one.  The Verio support rep made clear that the last act of the transition, the DNS changeover, would have to be done by Travis himself.  It was company policy.  Travis had also received emails to this effect.  Despite this, however, someone at Verio made the decision to change the DNS entries anyway, without Travis' knowledge or consent.

 

    Verio's behavior notwithstanding, it is important to understand why changing the DNS entries was such a big issue.  DNS is an acronym for “Domain Name System”.  On networks, computers generally locate each other using a set of numbers such as “196.255.45.1”.  This is somewhat unwieldy for a human to remember, so domain names are assigned to each numeric address, and are usually in the form of domain names names like “www.verio.com”.  It's like the difference between saying “4485 Somewhere Ave” all the time, or saying “Frank's place”.  The reason only Travis was supposed to change the DNS was because the company's domain name still pointed to the old website account.  When Verio changed the  DNS entry, the web name now directed web browsers to the new website account, which already had some pages in place, but nothing else.  The company's email service, which also depended on the DNS system went down without warning, preventing the sales department from sending  or receiving vital email.  In addition, many salespeople did not store the email on their workstations.  Because of the habit of clients to attach sample art to their emails, many salespeople left the messages on the web server to save space.  Those messages were now gone.

 

    Because he had no idea what Verio had done, Travis worked frantically to both find the cause and find a workaround for the sales people until the situation was brought back to normal.  To get information on the email settings, he tried to access the website administration page.  He quickly discovered he could not do this.  Because of the DNS switch, the website administration page that appeared was for the new website account, not the old one.  It had no information on the email issue and was thus useless.  It took three or four phone calls before Travis could find a customer service rep who was willing to do more than deliver stock answers.  When it was discovered that Verio had changed the DNS, Travis ordered the rep to give him the numeric address of the old site, and to copy  the email data from the old site to the new one so that the sales department could access their email.  Everything  was restored to order by the end of the day, but for Travis the damage had been done.  Most at the company were not computer savvy.  For them, the simplest answer was the best, and the simplest answer was that Travis had recommended the upgrade, so therefore Travis was at fault.  Travis' star was falling, and he knew it.  Travis redoubled his efforts on the website, sure that the improvements he was developing would show his value to his employers.  Unfortunately, Verio once again changed something without telling him.  And once again, the sales department became aware of it before he did.  Verio had instituted a size limit on email attachments.

 

To understand why this was an important issue, one must understand that businesses in general have latched on to the concept of email in a way that no other product of the Internet has matched.  The ability to communicate at one's convenience was something salespeople and executives understood and embraced almost immediately.  The fact that email can contain attachments only added to the value.  For Travis' company, this was a particularly important point.  On the old account, there was no limit to the size of attachments that could be sent.  This allowed the sales department to deal regularly with clients who had sample art that they wanted for their order.  In addition, The Travis' company employed several artists who were also encouraged to send artwork via email.  This meant that, when it was discovered that email with attachments were not going through, it was a very big deal.  

 

    Travis called Verio.  He learned, much to his surprise, that Verio had a policy of an eight megabyte limit on email attachments.  This was, in effect, a downgrade of company's email service.  Frustrated, Travis began at first to insist a change be made based on the fact that he was never informed this would happen.  The representative responded that this was a matter of policy and that changing the size limit for one client meant changing it for all clients.  Travis demanded to speak to someone with more authority and expertise on the subject.  The representative agreed to do so, putting Travis on hold.  Travis stayed on hold for twenty minutes, and to this day believes that he was left on hold as an attempt to get him to hang up.  When the rep returned to the phone, Travis expected some kind of explanation or solution.  Instead, he was told that there was no way he could be helped.  The service rep insisted that he had put Travis on hold for so long because he had been trying to talk to his Verio's own IT department, but could not get a hold of them.  The rep suggested an upgrade to a dedicated private server, a machine over which Travis would have total control.

 

    Travis was getting angry.  He had already pushed for a new service once and wasn't about to do it again.  He demanded to speak to a supervisor immediately.  After a brief wait, a new voice came on the phone.  Travis laid out his complaints, starting with the administration page issues, the email, and finally, the wait time on hold.  He emphasized the changes Verio made without his permission, and that he considered the new email policy an unacceptable downgrade of service.  The supervisor told Travis bluntly that the service that had allowed the old account unlimited email size was being phased out.  This meant that Travis' company would have had to have switched over eventually, regardless of the email situation.  Further, the supervisor went on, Travis really had only two options left to him: upgrade to a dedicated server, or go to another hosting company.  Verio was not going to change how they do things just for him.  Travis was shocked by the audacity of the man's statements, but in the end all he could really do was hang up.

 

    In the aftermath of the Verio incident, Travis' position at his company has become more precarious than before.  Through innocent slips of the tongue and whispered coworker intelligence, Travis has learned that his employers secretly blamed him  for their online troubles.  After all, the reasoning goes, Travis was the one who championed the upgrade.  True, he was never in favor of returning to Verio for the new service, but these are details that are often ignored or forgotten in the heat of the moment.  Regardless of the ultimate fairness of it, however, Travis now finds himself in a weakened position.  He is able to deliver the results, but is also regarded with suspicion.

 

    It turns out, Travis' experience with Verio is far from unique.  Indeed, it may even be tame.  Postings to epinions.com have yielded such colorful statements as “cheap, but more expensive in terms of pain than you will ever want to pay”.  Another post is titled “An Obituary: The Death Of Service”.  Of the whole list, only a few reviewers dare to give the company more than three stars out of five, most giving only one or two.  In addition alienating their clientele, Verio also seems to occasionally engage in questionable practices.  In 2000, Joanna Glasman wrote an article for Wired Magazine in which Register.com filed a lawsuit against Verio for using its services to create “massive lists of new customers and deluged them with unsolicited marketing messages”.  In other words, spam.  This specter of spam was raised again in 2005 by yet another unsatisfied customer at Complaints.com.  In this post, she writes of how Verio's anti-spam methods didn't work, and Verio's customer support ignored her attempts at contact, allowing her business to be flooded with spam.  Travis was able to confirm a sudden increase of spam as well.  A Google search of “Verio complaints” only adds to the pile.

 

    It has been said that the Internet and the changes it has brought are akin to the Wild West.  That is, growth, innovation, and dynamic change at the cost of ethics, security and sometimes even basic trust.  For every web service that clients view as solid gold, there are a few that turn out to simply be fool's gold in disguise.  With nothing to go on but prices, features, and possibly planted reviews, the old adage “Buyer Beware” still applies.  A statement to which Travis would add, “...of Verio.”