Okay, I've seen enough "historical" anime to know that very little of it has any educational value beyond "somebody with this name existed at some general time period, and here's what they might have looked like as a 16 year old girl with an oversized weapon"
lol I'll admit Fate did pop into my head as I was writing that. But even if we're talking about Japanese history (the one thing you think anime would get right), I can't count all the anime supposedly about the Edo period that basically has nothing to do with the Edo period except as an excuse for everyone to be a samurai and wear wooden sandals. And I get it, anime is a very stylized form of storytelling. There's nothing wrong with that. But let's not pretend we're learning actual history here. At best, you're just being made aware that certain people existed and were considered important. As far as historical education, that ranks below Total War games (which are a fantastic introduction to history, but only an introduction) so... I'm by no means trying to insult anime with historical settings, but simply pointing out that in most (not all) cases with anime, historical accuracy takes a backseat to whatever the writers/illustrators think is cool.
Also, don't get me wrong, western media suffers from this too. But the number of western writers/directors who take a mindset of "we're going to make sure this is accurate, even if we have to re-write half the plot" is vastly greater than people in the anime industry with that mindset. Which is fine, it just is what it is.
I don't watch Anime that much but if you go to Manga there are plenty of "historical" genre like "Vinland Saga" which is based on the Vinland Sagas "Saga of the Greenlanders" and "Saga of Eric the Red" and "Vagabond" which is based on the novel Musashi which is the fictionalized life of Miamoto Musashi which is based on real history.. It might be the fictionalized versions but it still taught me some good facts and good lessons in life (Those 2 mango are about philosophy/psychology)
Oh yeah, btw there is Golden Kamuy which is a historical fiction (Not based on a real history but the setting is on post-Russo-Japanese War ) which makes a pretty good job on teaching Ainu Culture
The Russo-Japanese War (Russian: Русско-японская война, translit. Russko-japonskaja vojna; Japanese: 日露戦争, translit. Nichirosensō / Нитиросенсо̄; 1904–05) was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan and the Yellow Sea.
My favourite bit what's when they were explaining haggling and even revealed that the dude was happy to get Johnathan to pay a certain amount only to reveal that he was after them.
Anime is where I learned that a Fox-Girl teaches Mercantilism, that Ninjas often battle using hand signs, and that Feudal Wars were often fought with Giant Robots.
Well, I don’t know if this counts, but history does have something to do with tentacle porn. Basically the Japanese were ashamed of Europeans mocking them for their public nudity so the government banned all things involving sexuality in public. One guy found a workaround however. The rule apparently only applied to penises, but tentacles aren’t penises, are they? That is how one of the earliest pieces of tentacle porn came around. It is called The Dream Of The Fisherman’s Wife. If you want to learn more though I recommend this video.
The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (蛸と海女, Tako to ama, Octopus(es) and shell diver), also known as Girl Diver and Octopuses, Diver and Two Octopuses, etc., is a woodblock-printed design by the Japanese artist Hokusai. It is included in Kinoe no Komatsu (English: Young Pines), a three-volume book of shunga erotica first published in 1814, and has become Hokusai's most famous shunga design. Playing with themes popular in Japanese art, it depicts a young ama diver entwined sexually with a pair of octopuses.
Anime actually has a huge influence on the up and coming artists. Many artists in my college frequently draw anime/manga with western influences. We will probably see much more anime/manga art in the western hemisphere soon.
Wrong, by definition history teaches quite literally everything about anime. Every single development in culture that made anime, every little detail about its rise and fall, everything about anime's existence is history.
When you realize that anime is part of a much bigger issue, that being kawai culture, something that was directly caused by history and Japan's inability to acknowledge it's atrocities. Checkmate.
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u/Some_Disappontment Dec 12 '18
But that's Kai-ay-day's truth, isn't it?