Anime:
Hayao Miyazaki is a marxist, and almost all his works have some marxist undertone. Castle in the Sky (1986) is probably the best one. Its central theme is workers’ struggle. Miyazaki stated that it was inspired by the coal miner strikes in UK at the time.
The Leader (2019) is a Chinese anime depicting Karl Marx’s life. Pretty good!
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009-2010): Every storyline basically boils down to how capitalism tries to hypocritically justify itself to wash away the horrific consequences of greed. This is the original story, redone to remove fillers and be closer to the manga. Generally considered the superior version to the 2003-2004 series.
Non-anime cartoons and animations:
A Bug’s Life (1998): Ants resisting imperialism from outside and the oppressing upper classes from inside.
The Mystery Of The Third Planet (1981): Considered to be one of the best animated films of all time. Produced in the Soviet Union. Has a lot of positive themes about accepting others, respecting nature, working together. Not explicitly marxist in nature, but will leave you feeling warm. Has a kick-ass soundtrack. Try to find the original Russian version.
Chicken Run (2000): Chickens organizing an escape from their farm. While it tries to spoof The Great Escape, it can also act as a tale of revolution of the workers against the bourgeois.
Live-action:
Snow-Piercer: both the movie and series are meant to depict a worker revolt.
Parasite (2019): same creator as snow-piercer. I won’t say anything about it, except that it’s excellent.
The Young Karl Marx (2017): the early life of Karl Marx leading up to the writing of the communist manifesto.
Andor (2022): It’s a Disney Star Wars series, but it’s actually quite excellent. Its an antifascist masterpiece to the core.
Starship Troopers (1997): based on the fascist-loving book by Heinlein, director Neuemeier turns it into a satirizing exposition of fascism. Its main theme is how the regime will fill you with ideal notions about its greatness, take you in to serve it, then spit you out when it has sucked the life out of you.
The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Depressing, but watching this will fire up the revolutionary in you.
I’d also add The Platform, I personally liked it a lot better than Snow-Piercer
The Platform is honestly one of the best short-form (single movie), non-theory (at all) and honestly one of the most “right in your face” fictional depictions of wealth inequality I’ve seen so far. I will second that, shit actually sort of disturbed me.
Indeed, it’s incredibly well done.
I know that… it might have been bilibili or something that did a literal “Marx” anime. I downloaded it but gonna look it up… here it is (The Leader)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Not anime but the Berlin comic book is pretty great
Do you have the link?
I bought a physical copy on that evil website that used to only sell books. Yau can also get an electronic version if you use comixology and read on an ipad or whatever. Here’s a quick synopsis
hysteria is probably full of landmines because of when it was made but they got away with this banger segment on the russian revolution so maybe it’s not super libbed out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZbho6AsBOc
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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I watched Deep Space Nine while I was quite young. It helped prime my brain for looking “critically” into official narratives and governance and understanding colonization at an early age for what it truly is.
I like DS9 and TNG equally, but TNG (and TOS) are more communist-ey that DS9.
In DS9 we find that the Federation is not all that great, and in fact it’s another imperialist power (arming the rebels in the Cardassian neutral zone, Section 13, etc.) DS9 often focuses on the individual, while in TOS and TNG it is always a team effort and practically nobody does anything alone. DS9 is great and I have seen it as many times as TNG if not more, their depiction of Ferengi is a great parody of modern libertarians/ancaps. There’s also an episode that deals with unionising which is great.
DS9, to me, is more about reconciling and learning to work with enemies. This is why there’s a lot of focus on armed conflict/“terrorism”. Cardassian-Bajoran situation is like Israel-Palestine. There’s the neutral zone with Cardassian and Federation settlers living in a precarious peace with both sides secretly arming them, giving rise to the Maquis (“are they freedom fighters or terrorists?”). Then there’s the interplay of religion and state. Federation is secular but with freedom of religion, Cardassia only has worship of the state as the only religion, Bajorans are very much led by their religion and spiritual leaders, Dominion worships the Founders who actually have “superpowers” and seem like “higher beings” (although mortal just the same, but harder to kill) so their gods are physical. DS9 deals with modern ethical issues: Jem’Hadar are genetically modified to worship the Founders and obey Dominion, cloning, forced drug dependency, taking sides in wars, etc.
In TNG, on the other hand, Federation has solved all of its problems, it has cured pretty much all diseases, it has achieved post-scarcity when it comes to human necessities (materials to make ships, engine fuel, knowledge, these are still scarce) and now it’s mission is basically to be the UN, but the ideal version of it. It finds a harsh, bitter and unwelcoming universe and it has to use diplomacy and cooperation, rational thinking and good will to make friends with these other civilisations, but it also has a powerful military just in case.
The problems that TNG deals with are universal. In TNG the Federation has a stance that all cultures/civilisations are equal and have an equal right to existence. If a civilisation is violent now or can’t be worked with that’s ok, perhaps in 10, 20, 200, 500 years they will be, what they must have is self-determination and the opportunity to develop unobstructed. If they attack, the Federation will defend itself, but it will never seek total annihilation of the other side in that fight. Episode that is talked about a lot is I, Borg, when Picard gets a chance to kill all Borg. But because he has to use a changed Borg to do it, he sees that there is possiblity of change even within Borg, so who is he to decide to wipe out a race from existence?
The episode Measure of a Man, is not about whether AI/androids are or can be human, it is the univeral question of “what makes us human?” and the moral (at least to me) is not that androids are human cause they do human things but that personhood (i.e. agency and ability to decide your own destiny) is not something we can take away from those who demand it.
And on the face of it, this may seem like an individualistic message, however in the context of TNG it is not. There’s often talk about duty to your fellow crewmembers, Federation as a whole, the human race and finally all life in the Universe (last one exemplified in the Prime Directive). In the episode Lower Decks it was done a bit clumsily cause it seems like Picard and Worf kinda bully-shame Ensign Sito into volounteering for the dangerous mission, but overall the TNG message is that you have free will and choice as an individual, but then you also have the opportunity to choose to make yourself part of something bigger and do your part to see that something persevere, improve, advance, etc.
Damn, long post, but I love Star Trek so much and I could talk about it for hours lol
Because you said fun stuff, I’ll give a mention to something that’s non-Marxist, but seems relatively harmless in terms of ideology influence: comedy sketch channel Chris and Jack on Youtube. Mostly they seem to inhabit that nebulous area of comedy where it’s hard to pin it to any sort of specific ideological goals and is more just goofing around with various premises. Of course, everything has some kind of ideology behind it, conscious or otherwise, but point being, I find it relatively easy to enjoy their stuff without worrying too much about it being a backwards influence.
I gotta recommend One Piece, my all time favorite. It’s about goofy ‘pirates’ who sail from island to island liberating them from fascists or stopping attempted coups, or fighting the CIA. The biggest problem in the one piece world is that everything was built to support a ruling class of disgusting inbred billionaires who do things like take slaves. There is a literal revolutionary army named “the revolutionaries” lead by a guy based on Che (he looks like che, his boat was named after che’s boat) who’s main goal is to destroy that billionaire ruling class.
The beginning of the show (like first 4 arcs) are more about introducing characters, but every arc after is about the above. The tone is like if Tom & Jerry had a plot. Despite how it might appear it’s not like a typical power scaling battle shonen, the fights are not the main point, though later on they do end up emphasizing fights a lot (in the anime, the manga is better at keeping fights secondary).
The show isn’t without issue though. It portrays trans, gender fluid, and queer people in a very mean way. They’re all still part of the ‘good guys’ but a lot will be drawn as like hairy men wearing dresses. There are better portrayals like one inspired by tim curry or one inspired by Jim carry (with the best voice actor ever if you watch it subbed). This issue gets a lot better later on though. This story has been going for 25 years, in the last 5 years or so it’s gotten much much better.
Another issue is it’s portrayal of women. Almost every prominent woman looks the same. They have the same-ish face and exact same body. They’re frequently scantily clad. No matter how important they are to the story, no matter how well fleshed out their characters are or how heartbreaking their story is, the author will still find a way to make them dress in underwear or something. I realize a lot of this was because of his editors. It doesn’t become a problem till later on when he gets editor after editor pushing him to draw them as scantily clad as possible. The author has warned other authors that the publisher is full of perverts. The anime makes things more gratuitous than the manga.
I do recommend reading it over watching it due to pacing and artwork though. They are remaking the anime right now even though the anime is still ongoing. The remake is supposed to address the pacing and art.
I just got caught up in the anime haha. The reason why I am asking for recommendations is due to the 6 month hiatus en the anime. I haven’t read the manga though. I just don’t want to spoil myself the anime.
if you need fun stuff, that doesn’t need to be marxist in content (just keep out of overtly fascist content) …don’t try to isolate of good fun by being a purist
Adventure time
edit; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBHouBDjqsc&t=1s&ab_channel=BenKraus
