The American Presidency: Anime Style
Today is President’s Day, a holiday for honoring all of America’s Presidents, even if they don’t deserve to be honored. That’s right, I’m talking about you, Warren G. Harding. So it seems appropriate to look at how the American presidency has been represented in Japanese media. In general, the American president is represented as one of two things:
The American president is frequently portrayed in anime and Japanese video games as unsavory in some way. It could be that they’re bungling or incompetent, like George W. Bush on a Segway in The Legend of Koizumi. It could be that they’re vaguely evil, like the president in Gate. Or it could be that they’re totally evil, like President Winters in Vanquish. Either way, they’re someone you wouldn’t want in the most powerful position in the free world.
No seriously, Japan had a fascination with the 44th President. Numerous series had Obama, or an obvious proxy, make an appearance. In Osomatsu-san, Obama asks the characters for help with the American economy. In the Yo-Kai Watch anime, the characters have to prevent an attempt to assassinate Obama with a bomb hidden inside an ice cream cone. In the Air Gear manga, president-elect “Jon Omaha” swaps bodies with a Japanese teenage girl. This fascination is fairly appropriate. Obama was the President who officially thanked Japan for giving the world manga and anime.
That said, there is the rare depiction of the American presidency that doesn’t fall into those two categories, mainly in Japanese video games. The game Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. features Abraham Lincoln as the President of the United States and leader of a steampunk anti-alien military strike team. There’s even a level where he fights a giant alien by piloting a steampunk mecha-Lincoln named A.B.E. But all of these depictions cower before the greatest President in history:
Michael Wilson from Metal Wolf Chaos.
In Metal Wolf Chaos, you play as the President of the United States. The game literally begins with you escaping a military coup led by your treasonous Vice President by exploding out of the front of the White House and blasting your way to Air Force One in an experimental, armored, heavily armed battlemech. From that point, you use that mech to fight and defeat the coup forces and the threats to American freedom, like the Alcatraz Cannon, or the giant mechanical spider terrorizing Manhattan, all while the President bellows about how he can overcome any foe because HE IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE GREAT UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Also you can wield a shark gun, which is a gun that fires sharks. It’s exactly as amazing as it sounds.
Finally, let us not forget that Japan also gave us this depiction of the Presidency:
What’s your favorite depiction of the American presidency in Japanese media? And why is it Michael Wilson in Metal Wolf Chaos? Leave a comment in the notes.
- Andrew, AB Staff Blogger