NOTE: Trigger warning on images. NSFW.

Usually human life in anime is considered precious, as a general rule. The hero always attempts to save the lives of the other people in their group or village/etc. However, there has been a trend I’ve noticed in the past ten years or so that struck a chord with me (probably due to my age/generation) – the trend of the cheapness of human life.

Don’t get me wrong, I value my own skin and the lives of others as sacred. However, there has been a definite shift as of recent (two anime that come to mind immediately are Attack on Titan and Terraformars) for human life to be disregarded as meaningless. While some may argue that the message of these two shows, and others, is not the point of these anime, it still bothers me on some level that there is not only no main character immunity, but also an acceptance of human life being cheap.

The most recent example of this disregard for human life can be the (somehow) popular Terraformars. I’ll admit up front that I watched this show more because the premise seemed horribly, horribly stupid (and still believe it to be) and not because of the gore factor. However, when first brought over, the initial translators could not get 100% accurate footage – because Japanese television itself, even late-night, had to edit out/black out portions of the screen due to violence. An example might be in the first or second episode, when a young woman has her head completely taken off, and is held aloft by the cockroach (don’t even get me started) that beheaded her. If this were the only example, or drove the plot at ALL, I’d probably forgive it.

However, rather than this being an isolated incident, or used to further anything in the story, we are treated to later dismemberments, general evisceration, and a very up-close-and-personal viewpoint of the innards of many of the protagonists. At one point I was demonstrated what the inner charred organs of an electrically charged human looked like.

Attack on Titan is a -little- better in this regard. I say little only because the protagonists actually do react and have moments of sadness/drive because of people getting killed. However, the majority of the Survey Corp. is wiped out in about 5 minutes during a Titan attack, and no one bothers to even respond to these people they’d been training with for a year being slain.

Other current/semi current anime that come to mind with this issue: Elfen Lied (much as I love it, there are times when the show gives no point in having Lucy destroy a crowd save for shock value), Gantz (the anime, NOT the manga), and Hellsing Ultimate. Manga that are in this same vein that come to mind are “I am a Hero,” “Ajin,” and “Green Worldz.” Each of these series throws characters in your face, names them, and then has them killed off for shock value, rather than any sort of character development or point. Each has their own method -psychosis, outer space threat, etc.- but in the end, there is a range of gore and blood that doesn’t do much to actually drive the protagonist.

The reason for all this blood and gore? Probably a bit of a generational and psychological divide amongst the 15-40 crowd in Japan (and, rationally, worldwide). For those of you living under a rock, there was a recent global recession that hit in the latter half of 2008. Japan itself has been on a rather large economic downturn for several reasons, the largest of them being an aging baby boom population with a highly anti-immigrant policy. Because of this, many of the “millennials” of both Japan as well as worldwide have been forced into a very different economic view scape than their parents had – no longer is job security a thing, but now in Japan the difficulty of getting a position anywhere is even more difficult than it previously was (and trust me, their interviewing process is nuts).

What does this lead to? A generation of adults who feel disillusioned by the promises society made them, as well as the responsibilities of adulthood. A great deal of them actually end up becoming shut-ins (known as hikkomori) who literally have become so disillusioned and scared of the expectations of society that they lock themselves into their rooms and never leave. Others commit suicide, sadly also a very common occurrence in Japan. The people who are affected by this mindset see no hope in sight, no way out – and so works of this nature, in which human life is worthless and cheap, have become huge hits with them.

A large reason for this is psychological – as the reader, one can be a voyeur into these violent manga and witness characters being punished as others in society might without any repercussions. Another is the feeling of hopelessness that dwells within most of the younger Japanese (and most people who enjoy the violence for its own sake) because of the large divide between expectations handed to them in youth versus the reality of today. While fantasy is a healthy outlet, the truth of the matter is that a lot of people have clung to these series as not just a manner of escapism – they also identify with these series as metaphor. To them, the “lost ones,” they are the bodies of insignificant value that are cast away without a second thought.

What this leads to can be seen as a fetishizing of destruction as well as a disregard about the world at large. Numerous shootings or attacks (such as acid and public shaming in Japan) carried out by individuals who feel insignificant make things worse on everyone. To someone who already feels marginalized, seeing these kinds of attacks – without what they see as repercussions, as most of them commit suicide – paint the attacker as a ‘hero’ who has beaten the system. Fantasy such as these manga and anime also paint a portrait of horrible events going on without repercussions. Which then feeds into the same problem. Fantasizing is one thing, but when people become desensitized to mass death, the hopelessness only increases.

These manga should not be banned or censored – I don’t think that’s the answer. But I do think a trend of works like this should be paid attention to and discussed. If the world in a manga or anime in which human life is worthless is more preferable to the current reality of jobless and economic difficulty, then where are our priorities? Is there a way we can turn this around or use these works to discuss them, and perhaps find a solution instead?

As a side note, there are plenty of works in which the violence and death of humans does serve a purpose – and gives meaning to the texts that they are in. Devaluing life on a consistent basis, however, is something to be concerned about.