I was about to say that It’s the only one, but then I remembered Alice in Borderlands was great too. The anime was just a 3 episode OVA that I heard wasn’t great so dunno if it counts.
Still, it’s extremely rare that a live action adaptation is even watchable let alone good.
I also enjoyed the Rourouni Kenshin movies, but the animated OVAs were objectively better.
I just saw a preview for a Yu Yu Hakusho live action adaptation, and it’s been so long since I watched the anime that I probably won’t mind if it isn’t super faithful.
I couldn’t get through Death Note, and while I watched all of Cowboy Bebop, I was very upset about it.
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in retaliation for US’s oil embargo. The Oil Embargo was due to Japan invading mainland Asia. Japan invaded mainland Asia due to… fascism. Imported from Germany.
But let’s clear something up. Pearl Harbor was an attack on military assets, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes meant to crush opposition.
US dropped the a-bomb on Japan to crush any remaining resistance from Japan, and as a threat to the wider world (namely the USSR). There was no prior warning given so no civilians were able to evacuate. Between 110,000‐210,000 civilians were murdered by the dropping of those two bombs.
I don’t want to be rude but the sentiments expressed here present a double standard that excuses Japanese war crimes.
Point by point:
“Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in retaliation for US’s oil embargo.” This is a somewhat correct statement but omits context vital to the decision making. The Imperial Japanese armed forces had formulated 2 plans for imperial expansion, one into the south and one into the north. The “retaliation for oil embargo” argument is a fabrication of the Japanese military class, a justification for the shifting of focus to the south in search of rubber, tin and of course oil. British and American forces dominated the south pacific and knowing that there would be an inevitable attack based on their expansion the Japanese executed a timed attack on numerous military strong points notably pearl harbour but perhaps more strategically relevant the Philippines. The “retaliation to embargo” argument is straight from the mouths of Japanese military propagandists, the USA in particular had bent over backwards to supply Japan in an effort to slake their expanding resource demands till this point.
“Fascism… imported from Germany”: I’m not entirely sure why this was added as it is quite apparent to anyone studying Japanese military and political history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that the Japanese empire had minted its own unique brand of extremist imperialism, you can term it fascism with the modern definition of the word but to insist that Japanese militarism in government is a result of European fascism is utterly ridiculous. In any case the foundations of this system date back to Meji era policies that significantly predate fascism in Europe as a practiced ideology.
“Attack on military assests”, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes”
While both these statements can be considered to be true it implies that there is some kind of defecit in morality between these two cherry picked events. I needn’t go into detail on the extent of Japanese war crimes mere days after and indeed on the same day if you would consider actions in mainland Asia. You’ve created a fallacy of what-aboutism that doesn’t fit the realities of the war and the extreme inhumanity of Japanese expansionism both before and after their attacks on the US. The atomic bombs while singularly destructive did not meaningfully exceed the levels of destruction wrought through conventional warfare. There is much to be said about if the bombs were in a sense “cost effective” in terms of loss of life needed to achieve peace but once the military losses are accounted for, various plans to fight till extermination, the political climate, etc. It becomes apparent that the bombs precipitated a political coup that would not have been possible otherwise. All things considered the bombs seem to have bought peace rather cheaply.
“crush any remaining resistance from Japan”
Other comments seem to cover this rather well but what alternative is there? When considering the potential loss of life of an invasion not just in enemy personnel or even civilians but your own soldiery it seems to be an easy choice. Arguments can be made about the scale, morality and civil cost of the bombs but it comes down to a philosophical argument on the ethics of the matter. Can such a scale of destruction ever be justified? Absolutely not. Given all the evidence available were the atomic bombs the least costly scenario in terms of the least amount of destruction in every conceivable metric? Absolutely yes. Any other assessment amounts to historical revision.
Any other assessment amounts to historical revision.
Your assessment builds on the (unprovable and undisprovable) assumption that an invasion would have otherwise happened. But we can’t know what would have happened if different decisions were made. l Wikipedia says that at the time the top brass was split on this decision, and not just for moral reasons.
Also I’d like to mention that whether something is a war crime or not, is, at the end of the day, just a legal question. Back then it wasn’t, but by today’s treaties killing any civillian under any circumstance is indeed a war crime.
I may be remembering this video essay from Shaun a little inaccurately, but I recall that Japan was preparing a surrender anyway, and was in talks with the USA, but the argument was whether the surrender would be unconditional or conditional (Japan wanted to keep the Emporer in power). The US was worried about an impending Soviet invasion of Japan because they didn’t want the Soviet Union to have influence in post-war negotiaions (i.e. landgrabs). The US didn’t want to send in troops for a land invasion, so they decided to hasten Japan’s surrender with the atomic bombings of major cities (terrorism tactics, in my opinion, just like the much deadlier firebombings).
Americans (including me) are commonly taught that the bombs were the only choice in order to prevent lost lives of American troops, but the impression I remember getting from the video is that (my opinion) there was never a risk of an American ground troop invasion, and not a risk of another Japanese attack. Japan would have either surrendered or been invaded by the Soviets.
The kicker is that Japan surrendered unconditionally to the US, but in the end, the US decided that the emporer should stay in power anyway, so those civilian deaths to the atomic bombs were always unnecessary.
Japan didn’t import fascism, they were always a very authoritarian society based around a singular leader using cult of personality. Shoguns ran things locally while there was an emperor for nominal governance. The military ruled for so long that Japanese culture has been shaped by it for hundreds of years. A caste system works similar to fascism, with the samurai being the favored “in” group with all others subservient to them under the auspices of “protection”.
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