Zipang
- Thread starter Adam
- Start date
Well, I watched the Anime yesterday, it's the part about Guadalcanal. I don't know but I think I prefer the manga version more. It's nice story though. Well thought, well storyline, thought a little bit off the reason sometimes.(I mean the atomic bomb thing) The writer is the guy that wrote the Silent Service which I like very much so, for me, that was enough for me to read it.
Deleted member 2186
Have the complete series now at my home and i began to think what a ship of 60 years from the future could change and what ripples would effect the war in the pacific unfuratly it stopped in the amine with episode 26 as I would love to now what happened after the entered the harbor.
general_tiu
Banned
And when the ISOT comes, the SDF guys not only had to worry about the US but their IJN buddies who called them as "Americanized traitors" or something.
Yes, I watched the anime in the Filipino dub. Really educating.
Yes, I watched the anime in the Filipino dub. Really educating.
Deleted member 2186
Yes its cool to watch two different Japanese timelines coming together only thing I found weird is why the guided missile destroyer Mirai the ship that was throw 60 years in the past is armed with Tomahawk missiles as the because Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution forbids offensive weapons of any kind being use but most likely because the wanted a cool weapon to sink a US carrier.
Anime and WW2 Alternate History
One of the things I find most interesting about Japanese WW2 alternate history anime is that to this day they don't seem to understand what "attrition" means and how that predetermined the outcome so long as they could not convince their enemies to surrender. I will point to two different anime for examples -- the recent ZIPANG and the 1990s KONPEKI NO KANTAI ("deep blue fleet")/ASAHI NO KANTAI ("rising sun fleet").
ZIPANG is essentially a Japanese version of the film THE FINAL COUNTDOWN except that this time it is a Japanese AEGIS AA destroyer ("MIRAI") going back to WW2 rather than a NIMITZ class aircraft carrier. Once there, the crew start agonizing over "changing the course of history", "winning WW2 for Japan", etc. without realizing just how feeble their single ship is. Their 30 kt ship is an improved KONGO class destroyer armed with the AEGIS long range radar/fire control system, a single 5" gun, 2 CIWS 20mm AA guns, 96 missiles (call it 8 harpoons, 8 tomahawks, 16 VLASROC ASW missiles, and 64 SM-2 or SeaSparrow AA missiles?), 6 ASW torpedoes, an SH-60 ASW helicopter, and a V-22 OSPREY tilt rotor utility airplane. By WW2 standards, it has no armor whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to any and all WW2 weapons so it's only real strategy would be to use its superior radar to stay out of people's effective weapons ranges and lob their handful of harpoons/tomahawks at them. Also, being from the future, it can neither repair major damage to itself nor replace any weapon that it fires. So, with this single destroyer -- let's "change history" [SPOILERS FOLLOW]. They go to the Battle of Midway where their small number of AA missiles could have actually turned the tide of the battle, but they decide not to intervene and let history take its course (the Japanese carriers are destroyed so Japanese defeat is just a matter of time due to America's war production). They are attacked by a US submarine whose torpedoes they dodge and then they "scare" the submarine by counterattacking with disarmed ASW torpedoes because they really don't want to hurt anybody. They then go to Guadalcanal, where the US is starting their island-by-island drive to bring down Japan and they decide to further the cause of "world peace" by convincing both the US and Japanese not fight over the island. (Uh, excuse me, since the US needs to conquer these islands to bring Japan to the peace table, isn't this intervention really aiding the Japanese war effort?). Later on they try to further "scare" the US and Japan into "peace" by demonstrating their futuristic weaponry -- they shoot a US bag of rice with a deactivated tomahawk missile from many miles away (?!), they shoot down Japanese 18.1" main gun rounds in flight with AA missiles fired at close range (?!!), and eventually they sink the USS WASP (CV-7) with Harpoon missiles. Suprisingly enough, both the US and Japanese consider these people to be nut-cases and plot to get rid of them. Eventually the MIRAI is attacked by 40 US carrier planes. Rather than just staying out of the planes visibility OR shooting down the planes at long range with their AA missiles, they agonize over whether it is ethical to use their "superior" weapons on them and thus allow themselves to get bombed by the "primitive" SBDs. They are then "stuck" in WW2 Japan with a half sunk, non-repairable ship with most(?) of their weapons expended with no idea as to what to do next. Wasn't changing history fun?
KONPEKI NO KANTAI, however, is painted on a much broader canvas [SPOILERS FOLLOW]. In this anime, in 1940, Admiral Yamamato forsees his own pointless death in 1943 (or is reincarnated, depending upon your point-of-view) and decides to take over the Japanese government and REALLY prepare to fight the US. FDR, it turns out, is a closet racist who wants to annihilate the Japanese people, so "what's a mother to do" but try to strike first. After getting rid of the "Army meddlers", Yamamato convinces Japanese scientists and industrialists to invent every Japanese and German not-jet, non-nuclear weapon actually made up to 1946 "early" so that Japan can use them in its war on the US. This unfortunately doesn't help much as these weapons (Shinden pusher fighters, German radars, German wire-guided AA and AS missiles, submarine-launched float planes(!), Chi-Nu tanks, etc), while "sexy", were often little better or even worse than what the US (there are no "Allies" -- everyone except the US and Nazi Germany are pro-Japan in this film -- including the Asiatics that the Japanese were historically killing and raping at the time) produced in WW2, so in a few areas (like nuclear submarines, passive sonar, CIWS AA guns, and wire-guided torpedoes), the handful of Japanese scientists are forced to invent US and Soviet weapons from the 1950s-1990s as well, prior to their December 8, 1941 attack. The 1946 Japanese with their 1970s nuclear submarines (the "deep blue fleet" from the title) then attack Pearl Harbor, the Panama Canal, Midway, Los Alamos, New Mexico (the NEW YORK TIMES tells Japanese agents where US A-bombs are being produced because they are anti-FDR) and generally make a nuisance out of themselves for a few years. Which brings me back to my original point -- the Japanese have numerically very few of these "super weapons" -- after all, they only had a year and a half to invent them all. What will happen when the US counterattacks with astronomical numbers of their own, only marginally less effective, WW2 weapons (B36Bs, P51s, P80 jets, B29s, ESSEX carriers, NEW JERSEY battleships, GATO submarines, Sherman tanks, radar-controller everything, etc), and attrits all of the "super weapons" (just like the 40 WW2 carrier aicraft attacking the MIRAI in ZIPANG). And the answer is -- NOTHING. Japanese military tradition has always said that one soldier who "really believes" is unstopable by any number of modern weapons or warriors. That was what WW2 was all about. Just like in the SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO movies, a million enemies attack and only the YAMATO comes out -- usually without a scratch. The non-Japanese are not "allowed" to hit anything Japanese when they fire at them while the Japanese "always" hit at least one non-Japanese target when they fire -- God prevents the Japanese from being attrited by altering the laws of probability. But don't the Japanese ever run out of ammo or just get bored with this -- after all, it must take FOREVER to defeat a numerically superior enemy one tank/ plane/ ship/ soldier at a time? No problem -- just like on old Westerns, the Japanese have a magic shotgun (magic naval guns in this film) that they can fire straight up into the air and make all of their enemies within an unspecified distance, die, simultaneously, no foolin'. But even with ALL THIS, won't numbers still tell in the end and the world crush tiny Japan? No, it turns out that FDR (and, in the sequel ASAHI NO KANTAI, Hitler) are really the only Japan-haters on the planet in WW2 so when they have heart attacks (FDR) or are blown up (Hitler), their Japan-loving populations immediately sue for peace on Japan's terms, and Japan wins the war.
One of the things I find most interesting about Japanese WW2 alternate history anime is that to this day they don't seem to understand what "attrition" means and how that predetermined the outcome so long as they could not convince their enemies to surrender. I will point to two different anime for examples -- the recent ZIPANG and the 1990s KONPEKI NO KANTAI ("deep blue fleet")/ASAHI NO KANTAI ("rising sun fleet").
ZIPANG is essentially a Japanese version of the film THE FINAL COUNTDOWN except that this time it is a Japanese AEGIS AA destroyer ("MIRAI") going back to WW2 rather than a NIMITZ class aircraft carrier. Once there, the crew start agonizing over "changing the course of history", "winning WW2 for Japan", etc. without realizing just how feeble their single ship is. Their 30 kt ship is an improved KONGO class destroyer armed with the AEGIS long range radar/fire control system, a single 5" gun, 2 CIWS 20mm AA guns, 96 missiles (call it 8 harpoons, 8 tomahawks, 16 VLASROC ASW missiles, and 64 SM-2 or SeaSparrow AA missiles?), 6 ASW torpedoes, an SH-60 ASW helicopter, and a V-22 OSPREY tilt rotor utility airplane. By WW2 standards, it has no armor whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to any and all WW2 weapons so it's only real strategy would be to use its superior radar to stay out of people's effective weapons ranges and lob their handful of harpoons/tomahawks at them. Also, being from the future, it can neither repair major damage to itself nor replace any weapon that it fires. So, with this single destroyer -- let's "change history" [SPOILERS FOLLOW]. They go to the Battle of Midway where their small number of AA missiles could have actually turned the tide of the battle, but they decide not to intervene and let history take its course (the Japanese carriers are destroyed so Japanese defeat is just a matter of time due to America's war production). They are attacked by a US submarine whose torpedoes they dodge and then they "scare" the submarine by counterattacking with disarmed ASW torpedoes because they really don't want to hurt anybody. They then go to Guadalcanal, where the US is starting their island-by-island drive to bring down Japan and they decide to further the cause of "world peace" by convincing both the US and Japanese not fight over the island. (Uh, excuse me, since the US needs to conquer these islands to bring Japan to the peace table, isn't this intervention really aiding the Japanese war effort?). Later on they try to further "scare" the US and Japan into "peace" by demonstrating their futuristic weaponry -- they shoot a US bag of rice with a deactivated tomahawk missile from many miles away (?!), they shoot down Japanese 18.1" main gun rounds in flight with AA missiles fired at close range (?!!), and eventually they sink the USS WASP (CV-7) with Harpoon missiles. Suprisingly enough, both the US and Japanese consider these people to be nut-cases and plot to get rid of them. Eventually the MIRAI is attacked by 40 US carrier planes. Rather than just staying out of the planes visibility OR shooting down the planes at long range with their AA missiles, they agonize over whether it is ethical to use their "superior" weapons on them and thus allow themselves to get bombed by the "primitive" SBDs. They are then "stuck" in WW2 Japan with a half sunk, non-repairable ship with most(?) of their weapons expended with no idea as to what to do next. Wasn't changing history fun?
KONPEKI NO KANTAI, however, is painted on a much broader canvas [SPOILERS FOLLOW]. In this anime, in 1940, Admiral Yamamato forsees his own pointless death in 1943 (or is reincarnated, depending upon your point-of-view) and decides to take over the Japanese government and REALLY prepare to fight the US. FDR, it turns out, is a closet racist who wants to annihilate the Japanese people, so "what's a mother to do" but try to strike first. After getting rid of the "Army meddlers", Yamamato convinces Japanese scientists and industrialists to invent every Japanese and German not-jet, non-nuclear weapon actually made up to 1946 "early" so that Japan can use them in its war on the US. This unfortunately doesn't help much as these weapons (Shinden pusher fighters, German radars, German wire-guided AA and AS missiles, submarine-launched float planes(!), Chi-Nu tanks, etc), while "sexy", were often little better or even worse than what the US (there are no "Allies" -- everyone except the US and Nazi Germany are pro-Japan in this film -- including the Asiatics that the Japanese were historically killing and raping at the time) produced in WW2, so in a few areas (like nuclear submarines, passive sonar, CIWS AA guns, and wire-guided torpedoes), the handful of Japanese scientists are forced to invent US and Soviet weapons from the 1950s-1990s as well, prior to their December 8, 1941 attack. The 1946 Japanese with their 1970s nuclear submarines (the "deep blue fleet" from the title) then attack Pearl Harbor, the Panama Canal, Midway, Los Alamos, New Mexico (the NEW YORK TIMES tells Japanese agents where US A-bombs are being produced because they are anti-FDR) and generally make a nuisance out of themselves for a few years. Which brings me back to my original point -- the Japanese have numerically very few of these "super weapons" -- after all, they only had a year and a half to invent them all. What will happen when the US counterattacks with astronomical numbers of their own, only marginally less effective, WW2 weapons (B36Bs, P51s, P80 jets, B29s, ESSEX carriers, NEW JERSEY battleships, GATO submarines, Sherman tanks, radar-controller everything, etc), and attrits all of the "super weapons" (just like the 40 WW2 carrier aicraft attacking the MIRAI in ZIPANG). And the answer is -- NOTHING. Japanese military tradition has always said that one soldier who "really believes" is unstopable by any number of modern weapons or warriors. That was what WW2 was all about. Just like in the SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO movies, a million enemies attack and only the YAMATO comes out -- usually without a scratch. The non-Japanese are not "allowed" to hit anything Japanese when they fire at them while the Japanese "always" hit at least one non-Japanese target when they fire -- God prevents the Japanese from being attrited by altering the laws of probability. But don't the Japanese ever run out of ammo or just get bored with this -- after all, it must take FOREVER to defeat a numerically superior enemy one tank/ plane/ ship/ soldier at a time? No problem -- just like on old Westerns, the Japanese have a magic shotgun (magic naval guns in this film) that they can fire straight up into the air and make all of their enemies within an unspecified distance, die, simultaneously, no foolin'. But even with ALL THIS, won't numbers still tell in the end and the world crush tiny Japan? No, it turns out that FDR (and, in the sequel ASAHI NO KANTAI, Hitler) are really the only Japan-haters on the planet in WW2 so when they have heart attacks (FDR) or are blown up (Hitler), their Japan-loving populations immediately sue for peace on Japan's terms, and Japan wins the war.
Neroon
Banned
A Final Countdown / Zipang version i'd like to see or read (hint! hint!) is one where the time-travelling soldiers and sailors are from a country that wouldn't want to change history for the Axis or simply help the Allies do better, but want to make sure the Allies win again, only with different post-war borders. One or several warships from South Korea, Taiwan or Poland for example.
They'd want a changed post-war world and with only a few modern weapons to play with that wouldn't be that easy to achieve.
They'd want a changed post-war world and with only a few modern weapons to play with that wouldn't be that easy to achieve.
Deleted member 2186
I would like to have a story of which the Dutch navy HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën is transported in the midst of the Battle of the Java Sea and manages to prevent the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) naval force from being destroyed but then again I am a Dutch personal and would love to she Admiral Karel Doorman survive and use the modern 21 century ship to battle the Japanese.
The biggest problem with FINAL COUNTDOWN/ZIPANG-like plots is that of damage-taking and ammo resupply (since you and your weapons are irreplaceable, your mission must be sufficiently limited so that you can accomplish it with only the ammo you bring with you and without dying). Thus you could have a plot with a limited mission like LORDROEL's -- "I'm going back into the past to change the result of a specific battle and then return" -- realizing that this may/may not have an lasting impact on history. Alternatively, like NEROON, your specific mission could be to simply prevent someone else from changing history and so you would go back into the past armed accordingly -- kind of like the TIMECOPS films.
I suspect a Ticonderago (sp?) or even an Arleigh Burke would do the trick. But their weapon outloads would probably depend on the mission at hand, and the current geopolitical conditions (say, if Cold War nearing Hot etc.)
Neroon
Banned
In a FINAL COUNTDOWN/ZIPANG like scenario the most important thing the travellers bring would be their knowledge of future events and future technological developements. In Zipang for example, the Imperial Officer they fish out of the water reads about the big oilfield in Manchuria.
Well, that certainly is an…interesting interpretation of the Japanese role in World War II. I know every nation is guilty of inflating their role in the conflict, but this is something different entirely. I have to ask, though: is this just an isolated eccentricity, or is this actually a respectable school of thought in modern Japanese society? If it’s the latter, then should we be worried?
I did it, and found it pretty good and watching as well. Point of fact it was one of the significant inspirations for that one story I wrote a while back.
Well, if we're going with the Tom Clancy route, read Debt of Honor to soothe your fears. Now if we're going with the OGRE road, then we should be very very worried indeed...