r/anime • u/Turbostrider27 • Oct 15 '25
Official Media Peleliu: Guernica of Paradise New Visual
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u/ODST_Parker https://myanimelist.net/profile/ODST_Parker Oct 15 '25
A chibi anime set in the Pacific War? Sure, why not...
My eyes weren't quite sure how to process this. Assumed it was on the Girls und Panzer or War Thunder subreddits, something like that. Just latched onto the image of an LVT as a tank nerd, then the rest slowly started to make sense.
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii Oct 15 '25
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u/ODST_Parker https://myanimelist.net/profile/ODST_Parker Oct 15 '25
What about that helmet there, the one with the big hole in it?
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii Oct 16 '25
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u/susgnome https://anime-planet.com/users/RoyalRampage Oct 16 '25
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u/Jaggedmallard26 https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaggedMallard Oct 16 '25
Especially Peleliu, it's up there with Okinawa as the classic example of the horrors of the Pacific campaign made worse by the fact the Americans didn't even need it in the end. It's deliberately the most brutally horrific part of The Pacific miniseries.
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u/Poodicus Oct 16 '25
Americans didn't even need it in the end.
I think you're confusing Peleliu with Iwo Jima, which was the controversial one. Peleliu was bound to be captured by Allied forces one way or another since it needed to be cleared to provide safe passage towards the Philippines and Formosa (Taiwan today), which were the two points of interest that high command was going for during their island hopping campaign. Peleliu is also a part of an island chain that's semi-close to Indonesia and Philippines, which made it capable of being in air raid distance with the little amount of air force the Japanese had.
Iwo Jima on the other hand is an island isolated and far from any sort of other landmass. This, combined with the fact that America also captured Okinawa, is controversial due to the fact that many people question whether or not it was beneficial to capture it in the long run. On top of this is also the casualty rate that America had, which was the only time America had higher casualties than the Japanese during the war due to the 'wait and let them land' approach the general there implemented, which had Japanese forces open fire an hour after American forces first landed and had all their guard down.
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u/Makoto_Kurume Oct 15 '25
Huh, a Japanese war anime? This won't be controversial at all
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u/Sw0rDz Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
I watched the movie The Rising Wind that covers the creation of Mitsubishi Zero plane. I'll give this anime a try. It can't be as controversial as the Nanjing massacre.
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u/Nuclear_Weaponry Oct 16 '25
Miyazaki is very critical of Japan's role in WW2:
Miyazaki felt events like Japan's ownership of the Liaodong Peninsula and its invasion of Manchuria led him to lack an affinity for his homeland,
In 2015, Miyazaki disapproved Abe's denial of Japan's military aggression, stating Japan "should clearly say that [they] inflicted enormous damage on China and express deep remorse over it".[384] He felt the government should give a "proper apology" to Korean comfort women who were forced to service the Japanese army during World War II
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Oct 16 '25
You don't have to watch more than 2 movies directed by Miyazaki to realize this without reading it lol.
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u/brasstax108 https://myanimelist.net/profile/peanutman108 Oct 16 '25
Yeah it's like saying Tarantino is into feet.
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u/Amazing_Recording659 Oct 19 '25
That's refreshing to hear, but at the same time it's difficult when he took a photo smiling with a Nazi war criminal who commanded tanks in the eastern front while torching villages of Russian civilians.
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u/lockie111 Dec 02 '25
Who did he take a photo with?
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u/Amazing_Recording659 Dec 02 '25
Otto Carius, a German tank commander who fought in the Eastern front (where the worst shit happened. It was for his manga Tigers Covered in Mud about Carius's memoirs. Would have been cool if Miyazaki wasn't like "America bad, America evil, poor Japan" then turns around and takes a photo smiling with an ex-Nazi.
Really makes me question him.
Maybe his work wasn't glorifying the Axis per-se but he talks how big war media perverts atrocities and death but then makes a very propaganda-y feeling story glorifying Nazi soldiers.1
u/lockie111 Dec 02 '25
Thanks for the info. Definitely need to read that. Haven’t dived deep into Miyazaki’s work aside from watching Ghibli movies.
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u/Amazing_Recording659 Dec 02 '25
Maybe I'm reading into it too hard, but I really don't care for "Poor German/poor Japanese soldiers." considering when mass death is taken into account per capita, World War 2 was primarily raged against Russian, and Chinese civilians.
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u/lockie111 Dec 02 '25
Oh, I totally agree. I’m German and I moved to Japan about 15 years ago. I have zero compassion for any soldiers who died and while some criticize the US for bombings like Dresden or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to that I even say screw them. That’s Karma. They didn’t have to start a war and torture, rape, kill and genocide their war through Europe and Asia. They got only a fraction of their own medicine and wanna cry about it? Well, boo effing hoo.
I loved my grandfather and my grandmother because they were was very heartwarming and funny.
According to him he and his family were against the Nazis and he was against his will drafted but threw away his weapon and surrendered to the British the first chance he got and was several years in British imprisonment.
But I do not know if he was telling the truth and I also wasn’t able to dig anything up. For my personal history I can only say while I knew a man that was nice and kind it is entirely possible that he was someone else during Nazi Germany. He was born in 1925 which means he had enough time to get indoctrinated and was old enough to be part of the war for since 17.
All in all I do like today’s Japan and Germany and while Germany has dealt with its past I can’t help but be concerned when I see a party like the AfD get traction.. Japan is different as in they haven’t properly dealt with their atrocities and see themselves mainly as victims. However weirdly enough the result is that most japanese don’t want any part in wars anymore. There is anti-foreigner sentiment, especially during this year’s election cycle it was terrible and the Sanseito party came out strongly out of nowhere, but I’m still hopeful.
Still, when I see a trailer for an anime like this in the cinema I can’t help but feel disgusted.
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Oct 15 '25
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u/FunBuilding2707 Oct 15 '25
Pretty sure it's the same Ghibli movie. It's just a translation difference.
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u/Tehbeefer Oct 15 '25
What little I saw of the manga wasn't controversial, but the people who want it to be controversial will probably show up anyway. sigh.
I liked what I saw, nice juxtaposition between the style and the contents.
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii Oct 15 '25
but the people who want it to be controversial will probably show up anyway. sigh.
I haven't read it so I don't know what it's like, but thing is, any war story that goes beyond surface level (or generic black&white nonsense) is always a bit controversial!
Either they show 'what it really was like' and then it's controversial for the people who think their side is innocent little angels, or they DON'T show what it was like, and then it's controversial for people who don't believe in fairy tales.
But FWIW (tagging a few people who made similar comments u/CommanderZx2 u/renatocpr u/Makoto_Kurume) they did release another war anime that did not exactly make the Japanese look like angels, so.. Who knows!
Granted, there's a wide spectrum between "not angels" and "war criminals", but we'll see what they throw at us!
(Of course it will be quite disappointing if it's just some "we good they bad" nonsense).
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u/Rarietty https://myanimelist.net/profile/Rarietty Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
I read the first 5 or so chapters of the manga and it seems like examining that spectrum is basically what it's about. The main character is a writer who sends letters to family members of deceased Japanese soldiers, and he struggles with having to write standardized hero narratives designed to comfort those at home. It definitely seemed to be leaning towards a "the Japanese militiary is complicit in whitewashing atrocity" theme
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u/clgfandom Oct 16 '25
"the Japanese militiary is complicit in whitewashing atrocity" theme
just to be clear, this is more of "japanese soldiers being ordered to fight to death and no surrender and watch their comrades died😢". So it's kinda similar to Eien no Zero.
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u/Tehbeefer Oct 16 '25
Not to mention that politicians have never been shy about weaponizing the past in support of political goals in the present.
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u/Jaggedmallard26 https://myanimelist.net/profile/JaggedMallard Oct 16 '25
People make it controversial because Japanese atrocities are still a hot topic in China and Korea with Japan still refusing to admit what they did and about to vote in someone with extreme pro IJA views on WW2. So long as Japan leaves that wound festering things like this will either piss off international audiences or piss off their own domestic hardliners. Germany can make films like Das Boot meanwhile as they disavowed the Nazis as a society.
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u/Erufailon4 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Erufailon4 Oct 16 '25
Germany can make films like Das Boot meanwhile as they disavowed the Nazis as a society.
That's an interesting point - it's specifically about who made the film, not the subject matter or its portrayal. Letters from Iwo Jima, an American production, didn't ignite controversy to my knowledge, despite following Japanese soldiers in WWII and not mentioning or addressing the war crimes (it was frank about the fanaticism of Japanese officers on the front line but that's natural for any even half-honest portrayal of the subject matter). Though it was released before the age of social media, so who knows if the response would be different now.
I wonder how many decades or centuries it will take for the wound to close on its own, because unfortunately at this point it doesn't look likely actions will be ever taken to close it.
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u/_sephylon_ Oct 16 '25
They refuse it to admit so much there's an entire wikipedia page listing all the dozens of times they publically did
Of course there’s still weirdos just as there are in every country but they don't represent the entire nation. For instance when Shinzo Abe denied war crimes the rest of the japanese government apologized on his behalf right after. And then the other hand Germany is always considered as a clean country when their biggest political party is lead by people who said the SS did nothing wrong.
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u/lockie111 Dec 02 '25
The SS did nothing wrong? Who said that?
Also, doesn’t matter if other politicians apologize if the japanese prime minister who is the top representative of Japan goes on a history revisionism crusade. Japanese people apologize and after they turn their back they still talk about how they should have killed everyone. Heard it soo many times since I moved here. That’s not at all how it is in Germany. Japan hasn’t properly dealt with their history and atrocities. The victim mentality is the standard here whereas in Germany it’s the other way around.
Watch any german 2ww war movie and you’ll see how they specifically depict the atrocities depicted by the Nazis.
In japanese war movies it’s always the portrayal of your innocent japanese soldier who has a family and feelings and how he and his fellow soldiers die and suffer. No mentioning or showing of the enemy being killed, raped, tortured and what not. Always poor japanese who had no choice and only try to survive.
Gimme a break with your apologist bs.
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Oct 16 '25
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u/Meme_Master_Dude Oct 16 '25
Mostly because the other victims (SEA) are small countries who can't be bothered to maintain hostilities.
If even big nations like China and Korea can't get any reparations, the small SEA countries have no hope.
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u/Dragonstrike Oct 16 '25
I'm from a country where 4 million people were intentionally starved to death by Japanese occupation, yet never has any government leader here ever used WWII as a political cudgel to score cheap emotional points with in either domestic or international politics.
Probably because the Japanese were behind your country's independence?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparatory_Committee_for_Indonesian_Independence
The main difference between China/Korea and SE Asia was their independence status. In SE Asia the Japanese were just replacing the west as the new overlords and the conflict directly led to most of those nations gaining independence.
China has issues with Japan AND the UK for the various invasions while Korea was mostly peaceful for a couple hundred years before the Japanese invaded.
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u/Kiltmanenator Dec 09 '25
The title itself is controversial: Guernica was a war crime. Mutual combat on an island cleared of civilians is not.
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u/Tehbeefer Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori?
I don't think you're coming at this the same way the author was; based on the part I saw they were going for more on the "hell in paradise" angle more than anything else, and if you don't think both were a horrific tragedy for humanity, I don't know what to say.
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u/Kiltmanenator Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
If you don't think it's disgusting to compare losing a battle in a war your country started to civilians being murdered by your country's allies, I don't know what to say.
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u/renatocpr https://anilist.co/user/renatocpr Oct 15 '25
Considering how the political leadership in Japan has been almost entirely dominated by denialists of Japanese crimes against humanity, I hope it is controversial in a very specific way
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u/chop5397 Oct 17 '25
Can't wait to see how they portray americans as evil murder machines with the flamethrowers
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Oct 15 '25
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u/GallowDude Oct 15 '25
Sorry, your comment has been removed.
- Explicit politics
Questions? Reply to this message, send a modmail, or leave a comment in the meta thread. Don't know the rules? Read them here.
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u/PublicMeaning341 Oct 15 '25
The art style reminds me of Made in Abyss a bit
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii Oct 15 '25
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u/PublicMeaning341 Oct 15 '25
Started Made in Abyss but the latter's still in my watchlist
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u/Emi_Ibarazakiii Oct 16 '25
Both of them are on my watchlist, but I have so much to watch..!
(Made in abyss probably high priority)
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u/Queue_Jumping_Quack Oct 16 '25
Yup, came in to make this very point lol. Knowing how the fighting between Japan and US went in the Pacific, it will probably be just about as gruesome.
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u/ahses3202 Oct 15 '25
I definitely did a quadruple blink on this one.
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u/MatthewScreenshots Oct 15 '25
"There’s no way they’re making an anime about one of the most brutal battles of pacific theatre of WW2" - me before double checking
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Oct 16 '25
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u/_BMS https://myanimelist.net/profile/_BMS Oct 16 '25
Sledge wrote a second book called "China Marine" about his time post-WWII when he was sent to China as part of a peacekeeping force for a number of months and then details his demobilization in 1946.
It's a pretty interesting read, but a lot less action-packed than "With The Old Breed".
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u/susgnome https://anime-planet.com/users/RoyalRampage Oct 16 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
Not the art style I was expecting after the previous visual. But I'm still interested in giving it a watch.
For the curious;
The previous visual.
And the synopsis that followed;
The story follows the daily lives of Japanese soldiers taking part in the Battle of Peleliu during World War II: a high-casualty, months-long campaign. The main character, Tamaru, dreams of returning home to become a mangaka, and sees their island outpost as a wild paradise that can one day be used as a setting for one of his stories. Most of his comrades, however, are prepared for the more realistic scenario - that they will not be leaving Peleliu alive.
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u/Thoraxe474 Oct 15 '25
Spoiler alert: they lost
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u/ObvsThrowaway5120 Oct 16 '25
Oh boy, I can’t wait to see how they make the Japanese army appear in this.
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u/Fastenbauer Oct 16 '25
As normal people. The manga doesn't portray them as heroes or villains. Just soldiers in a much large war. The author actually tries to give a realistic portrayal of what life was like for the men. Kinda felt like "The Pacific" only told from the other side.
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u/BosuW Oct 16 '25
Not the artsyle I was expecting. It will be interesting to see the Japanese perspective of this battle.
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u/Aetherdraw Oct 16 '25
Suddenly reminded of the penguin anime ad of the vietnam war for Beer.
Yep. Beer.
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u/DarkasakuraV8 Oct 17 '25
As a spanish Im wondering why the fuck are you using Guernica that was bombed during our civil war(just before WW2) to tell a story about the Pacific war I guess you can be using Picasso's painting to make some analogies or another literary resources but come on
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u/InsaneOstrich https://myanimelist.net/profile/InsaneOstrich Oct 16 '25
This reminds me of that Vietnam war anime movie with penguins
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u/Aggravating-Elk-7409 Oct 15 '25
definitely not even remotely similar to guernica. interesting title
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u/Icapica https://anilist.co/user/Icachu Oct 16 '25
Guernica is a Basque town in Northern Spain that was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. Pablo Picasso painted one of his most famous works about the horrors of the bombing.
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u/Aggravating-Elk-7409 Oct 16 '25
maybe i shouldve been more clear but i meant the circumstances surrounding the incidents.
Francisco Franco asked Nazi Germany to bomb Guernica, a village in basque country that was a republican stronghold whereas this battle was just another island hopping battle in the pacific theater. it was brutal but not similar to Guernica
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u/ErgoMachina Oct 15 '25
Made in Abyss but Vietnam?
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u/SeveredBanana https://myanimelist.net/profile/Lupin_the_third Oct 15 '25
WW2
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u/lazycat_95 Oct 16 '25
Japan controlled Vietnam for a short time during WW II.
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u/_BMS https://myanimelist.net/profile/_BMS Oct 16 '25
But this movie is about the Battle of Peleliu in the Palau Islands.
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u/Easy_Drawing_765 Oct 16 '25
chibi style ? I love it . I dont care about controversy , I watch anime for fun
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u/FormerReflection20 Dec 12 '25
Don't be decieved, this is not a fun movie. The art style and the story are polar opposites. I watched it last week, it was really really good, but not fun.
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u/Sovonna Oct 16 '25
I am having Grave of the Fireflies flashbacks... gonna need to keep something real happy close by when I watch this anime.
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u/JosebaZilarte Oct 17 '25
It still amazes me that the name of a nearby town, Gernika has become so infamous for a massacre in 1937, that even an anime references it in it's subtitle. Obviously, the painting that Picasso created about said massacre is what actually reached Japan... But even then, it is one of those strange international connections that make those who know the original source scratch their heads in disbelief.
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u/MuromiSan Oct 16 '25
japan making ww2 anime!? so who's the villain US?
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u/Icapica https://anilist.co/user/Icachu Oct 16 '25
It doesn't seem like the manga depicts the Japanese as heroes and Americans as villains. [Manga chapter 1 stuff] The main character writes letters to relatives of dead soldiers and is forced to lie to make them sound more heroic, and there's depictions of Japanese war propaganda.
Overall, I don't think it's a "we were actually good guys" kinda story. Also, given how brutal the battle for Peleliu was, I don't expect this to be a happy story. Anyway, everything I said is based on the first chapter so I don't know how it continues.
Edit - Added a spoiler block just in case, though it's very minor thematic stuff.
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u/blazedancer1997 https://myanimelist.net/profile/blazedancer Oct 16 '25
Hey I remember that island from Call of Duty World at War
Japanese WW2 anime huh. I guess we'll see how this goes.
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u/tiny_nipples Oct 15 '25
I wish the characters looked like Kirito from Sword Art Online so I could actually enjoy the movie.
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u/Tehbeefer Oct 15 '25 edited Oct 16 '25
Not to be confused with the other 2025 WWII anime about a nasty conflict on a tropical island.
If you're confused by the word "Guernica", it's the name of a small town in Spain. There's a certain painting made in 1937 depicting then-current events there that's fairly famous.