by: division-ten
for: Japanese Visual Culture
when: December, 2009
length: 4,443 words
topic: Space Battleship Yamato and Disgaea (yes, really)
notes: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT! Both Disgaea and the first season of Yamato will be spoiled for you if you haven't completed them!
Space Battleship Yamato and Disgaea: Hour of Darkness are two vastly different pop media from Japan, the former a 1970’s nationalistic space opera on film, the latter an early 2000’s isometric anime-style strategy RPG for the early days of the PS2. However, their plots bear much more than simply a passing resemblance to one another. Starting from the ninth chapter of Disgaea, the main characters encounter a Space Battleship attacking their home planet of acid, caverns, and fire, just as the Space Battleship Yamato attacked the Gamilon home planet. Space Battleship Yamato uses this story of attack, journey, and retaliation for the purpose of expressing Japanese nationalism in the 1970’s. The video game Disgaea, through not only using the plot but also deliberately going contrary to some plot points of Space Battleship Yamato, calls into question a number of different key themes: the treatment of women, the visible consequences of one’s own actions, and, most importantly, the treatment (or mistreatment) of the Earth. Disgaea’s use of these topics and Space Battleship Yamato’s plot as a whole are used to explain the realities of the time it was created, including changing roles of women and an understanding of the fragility of the environment. Both mediums are ultimately using the same story to express vastly different concerns stemming from the eras in which they were made, and through looking at the different areas of emphasis in each separate medium, one can see a shift in important Japanese values between the thirty years of each work’s creation.
In order to understand the themes and values both Space Battleship Yamato and Disgaea exemplify, one first needs to understand the basic plot they both share. First and foremost, one must remember that Space Battleship Yamato is not simply a movie, but a whole franchise that is spread out over a number of years, with a long and intricate storyline and plot over multiple mediums like animated television, animated film, live action film, and video games. The movie was chosen specifically for this project because it follows a single storyline, known as the Iscandar arc, from the first season of the television show, compressed down to its vital scenes. This arc from the show, and by extension, the film, contains the plot that the video game Disgaea uses and parodies, not the entire Space Battleship Yamato franchise that spans two decades.
One must also keep in mind that, like Space Battleship Yamato, Disgaea is also a fairly lengthy franchise, with comics, an anime, books, and multiple video games whose characters interact with each other over the different mediums but have very different plots. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness, the PlayStation 2 game (and its subsequent ports to two different handheld gaming consoles, the Sony PSP and the Nintendo DS) that was released in Japan in January of 2003, is the only one that has a plot similar to Space Battleship Yamato’s Iscandar arc, and, therefore, can be compared to it.
The plot of the Iscandar arc is fairly straightforward. Earth has become uninhabitable on its surface, due to constant biological warfare by an alien race bent on colonizing Earth, called the Gamilons. Earth’s remaining habitants are forced underground, but the toxicity of the planet will soon kill the last of the humans. Just as all hope is about to be lost, a signal, sent from a distant planet called Iscandar, tells the population of Earth how to build a kind of warp drive and directions to the planet. If they succeed in arriving, the citizens of Iscandar will give the humans a device to remove pollution from Earth’s atmosphere, sending the Gamilons away. A special squad of starship soldiers, with the retrofitted Yamato battleship that was sunk in World War 2, set off to Iscandar to retrieve the device. Many battles ensued with the Gamilons, each ending in a narrow victory for the Yamato. Eventually, they arrive at the solar system containing Iscandar, only to find that the Gamilons’ home planet is its sister planet. To get to Iscandar, they annihilate the Gamilon planet, acquire the device, and return home, with the hopes of fixing Earth.
The main overarching theme of the Space Battleship Yamato film is one of Japanese nationalism, especially reconciliation for the failure of the Japanese military in World War 2. The fact that it is the Yamato, Japan’s last great battleship of World War 2, that is raised, poses an interesting nationalist concept. They could have made a new spaceship, or used any other existing craft they had. But not only did they puck the Yamato, they went to great lengths to show the ship when it had sunk in World War 2 in the first place, providing a historical exposition from World War 2 in a story that otherwise takes place in the very distant future.
Furthermore, according to Walter Amos, writer for Mangazine, there are audio and stylistic cues that show the viewer Yamato’s nationalist themes. For example, the exact same music played when the Yamato was sunk by American craft is the song played during multiple Gamilon attacks upon the battleship as it moves through space. Even more explicit, “the large squadrons of fighters dive and attack in precisely the same manner as do the Gamilon space fighters. …Perhaps Gamilon is actually a metaphor for the United States? …The end of the war, concluded with the American dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan just as Gamilon is dropping thousands of radioactive Planet Bombs over the whole Earth, such inference is further reinforced” (Amos). Incidentally, when Space Battleship Yamato first was brought over from Japan to the US, the entire scene involving the sinking of the historical Yamato was cut, most likely due to a fear of backlash at the very strong nationalist ideas (Amos).
Susan Napier agrees with, and expands, the strong nationalist reading of the Yamato battleship itself that Amos had initially put forth in his work. In addition to the sinking of the Yamato “as [a] ship [that] bore the final hopes of warding off… invading Americans”, the fact that that both the historical and the space battleship bear the name ‘Yamato’ bears a particular meaning. Napier mentions that, “‘Yamato’ was the ancient name for Japan and warriors were urged to have Yamatodamashii”, and the Yamato, and, by extension, Japan, sunk (Napier), making the later raising of the retrofitted ship that much more symbolic. Although it was the entire planet under attack by the Gamilon meteor bombs, it was Japan alone who emerged from the wreckage to save the planet, to survive. The Yamato ship, like its historical counterpart, went up against insurmountable odds against the much better equipped and larger Gamilon (American?) fleet, but unlike the real Yamato, survived and succeeded in destroying both fleet and planet of the Gamilons.
Disgaea, however, makes some noticeable differences to the Space Battleship Yamato story, and with it, the nationalism so present in Yamato is deliberately lost. Earth is almost completely uninhabitable from pollution here as well, but it is due to the human’s own wasteful ways of disposing of their trash and polluting the air and water. A member of an alien race called the Celestians contacts Earth, suggesting that they find a new planet to colonize, especially since the Overlord of the Netherworld was planning on invading their planet and colonizing it first. A crack team of space explorers set out in a Space Battleship, hoping to pre-emptively strike the Netherworld before their own planet is invaded. Three of the battleships’ crew, the Defender of Earth, Gordon, the only female from the ship, Jennifer, and the ship’s robotic analyzer, crash into the Netherworld first, defecting and joining the local population to fend off the battleship, after discovering that the Overlord had no intentions of attacking Earth at all. As the player is playing from the point of view of the leader of the Netherworld, and not someone from Earth, they then have the choice of destroying the Space Battleship, followed by Earth or the Space Battleship, then Celestia, leaving Earth alone to colonize another planet or figure out its own ecological problems.
The similarities to Space Battleship Yamato are most striking when looking at some of the details of Disgaea. The analyzer robots in both look identical, and even have the same voice. The Netherworld’s layout of caverns and poison rivers is similar to that of the Gamilon planet. The design of the Space Battleship is similar, and it answers to the EDF, just as Yamato did in Yamato. Like the Gamilons’ leader, the player has the option to kill off senate members, or subordinates who misbehave or are not strong enough, although this is not required or necessary to complete the game. And, if the right conditions are met, one of the self-reflexive endings of Disgaea involves the defecting trio from the Space Battleship going back to Earth to produce a movie, and several of the Overlord’s vassals want plastic models of the Space Battleship (Disgaea, 13.0).
The Disgaea game, however, focuses on three particular themes in using a Space Battleship Yamato-style plot, and different themes than the nationalism emphasized by its source material. The most noticeable one is that Disgaea has a very strong ecological agenda. Instead of the denizens of the Netherworld (the Gamilons-analogue) destroying Earth’s ecosystems and polluting the planet, in Disgaea, it is the humans who are ruining the planet themselves. Not only that, but the denizens of the Netherworld, despite their questionable morals, find that Earth is too polluted for their interests. Laharl, the Netherworld’s Overlord, in response to Jennifer’s query on why he has no desire to invade Earth, bluntly states, “Earth is that rotten planet where humans foolishly pollute their own environment, correct? Why would I be interested in that?” (Disgaea, 9.4).
The humans, to save their own planet, believe that capturing another unpolluted planet is the best course of action to save humanity, despite the fact that they ruined Earth themselves. General Carter, the highest-ranking officer on the Space Battleship Gargantua, said to Laharl, “As you know, the earth is confronting a serious crisis. The room in population… the shortage of natural resources... The human race can't survive much longer” (Disgaea, 13.3). In Laharl’s curt response, he offers Carter a bold suggestion on the alternative, “But there wouldn't be a crisis in the first place if you humans weren't so stupid. As the Overlord of the Netherworld, let me say just one thing... clean up your own damn mess!!” (Disgaea, 13.3). As Laharl repeatedly presses his sentiment onto others, it is clear that the player, who is playing the character of Laharl, is supposed to take notice.
Another main theme of Disgaea is the portrayal of women in positive, commanding roles. The women of Disgaea are varied and incredibly diverse personalities holding roles of power. Three primary women are Etna, Flonne, and Jennifer, each with their own characteristics. Etna is possibly one of the most powerful attackers in the game, even more so than Laharl. Tasked by Laharl’s dead father, the former Overlord of the Netherworld, to watch over his son, Etna’s in-game weapons specialties are the axe or the spear, and she has higher physical status points than most of the men. Flonne was sent to assassinate the Overlord from Celestia, but believes that she should understand the people of the Netherworld rather than kill them simply because they are different than her own society, and, not only spares Laharl’s life, but asks to join him and learn Netherworld culture. Lastly, Jennifer is the genius daughter of the general of the Space Battleship, bearing a PhD and the creator of the analyzer robot and much of the technology used on the ship.
People who only view the female cast, however, may have a difficult time believing the claim that the women found in Disgaea are not stereotypes found in video games, particularly in relation to the clothes, or lack thereof, that they are wearing, especially Jennifer. However, this would undermine an important aesthetic of the game in general: all of the game’s playable characters, male or female, are wearing little to no clothing. Furthermore, most of them are depicted as children (that is, without muscles on the males or breasts on the females) or nonhuman creatures, even if they are intended to be much older. Laharl states that he is 1,313 years old, and yet he looks no older than eight, wearing nothing more than a scarf and a pair of shorts. Only one member of the entire playable party wears a shirt at all, and the rest of the cast of characters is in pants, shorts, bra tops or dresses, or completely naked monster characters. If one is to say that the lack of clothing or large breasts on the female characters rules out any sort of positive character traits, one must remember that all of the characters are in varying degrees of undress, and only one female in the party, Jennifer, has a chest at all. Also, if one is to see stereotypes in the clothing of characters, how could the wearing of dresses by an entire class of male characters be explained, as the male healing class is?
Interestingly enough, Jennifer, as the oldest-looking female in the party, has a number of social hurdles to go through, but the stereotypes of women being only eye-candy, subordinate, and generally useless are crushed as the story progresses. At the start of Chapter 9, Gordon, the Defender of Earth, does see Jennifer as his intelligent assistant, but also is caught by the crew’s analyzer robot looking at her thighs lustfully (Disgaea, 9.0). However, when they become more and more embroiled in the battle to protect the Netherworld from the Space Battleship Gargantua, Gordon progressively becomes more aware and respectful as just how powerful and capable Jennifer is as a comrade. He eventually apologizes to Jennifer for his bad behavior towards her, exclaiming, “Jennifer, you are no longer my assistant. Fight alongside me as an equal ...as a Defender of Earth!!” (Disgaea, 13.5).
Lastly, and what some may consider to be the nature of games instead of film in general, is the notion that one’s actions have direct and discernable repercussions. However, in Disgaea, this sort of action is exemplified in the use of multiple, sometimes widely different, diverging story paths. Depending on how the player plays Disgaea, one may not even get the Space Battleship storyline or meet characters like Jennifer. If the player is too ruthless and decides to kill many of his or her own vassals, or all of the player’s vassals are killed by enemies during certain battles, the storyline diverges sharply and other endings are presented to the player, like one of Laharl’s vassals seizing the throne and taking over as Queen. If, however, one is decent to their vassals but kills senators, yet another ending occurs with Flonne, the Celestian dying. Other actions warranting a different story are killing no allies, accidentally killing a few allies, and killing an “Item God”- a very powerful demon, or choosing to invade Earth. Should the player kill no allies, accidentally kill a few, or kill an Item God, then Laharl decides to join the Celestian Flonne in invading Celestia, for suggesting and aiding the humans in attacking the Netherworld.
The most interesting point to note about the similar plot that Disgaea mimics from Space Battleship Yamato is that it does not begin to occur until the second half of the game. Earth, Celestia, and the Netherworld are initially presented as Earth, Heaven and Hell, making it unlikely that the player would think that these are planets at all, but separate planes of existence. Only when the Space Battleship arrives at the Netherworld does the player realize that all three locations are physical planets in the same plane of existence, meaning that the Celestians are not superior angelic beings, but just another alien species like the humans, or demons the character plays as. One of Laharl’s vassals remarks quite candidly on the matter, saying, “According to human belief, the Netherworld and Celestia both exist somewhere in space,” to which another vassal responds with the question, “then, do humans consider us aliens?” (Disgaea, chapter 9.0). The demons and angels in Disgaea then turn to allegory, as they are no longer spiritual or religious in nature as the game player is initially led to believe, but denizens of other planets.
These two plots, despite the different thematic emphases mentioned previously, are highly similar in nature. While it is possible that the creators of Disgaea had no experience with the Space Battleship Yamato movie at all, whether they did copy Yamato’s plot or not is irrelevant. One can use these two plots as points of comparison of what is most notably emphasized in Japanese culture during these two time periods, and see the shift in values from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. The shift from nationalism to social problems seems to show a shift from a glorified and ideal Japan to a more humble and realist one, for a number of reasons.
In the 1970’s and through the 1908’s, a large post-World War 2 campaign involving history textbooks was of great concern to many other Asian nations like China and Korea. Japan, after World War Two, was quick to erase comfort women in Korea and scale down atrocities in China to promote a domestic positive image, in other words, a nationalist agenda. “Although textbooks masquerade as teaching neutral and legitimate information, they are often used as ‘ideological tools to promote a certain belief system and legitimize an established political and social order.’” (Wang). Unfortunately, quite a bit of this textbook nationalism still persists today, and riots in China and Korea have occurred when Japan released a textbook they did not like (Wang).
Although Napier admits that “some Japanese criticized the film [Space Battleship Yamato] on its initially appearance as potentially reviving militarism”, much like the highly negative textbook edits, she posits that the use of Japanese nationalism in the film has a much more positive purpose, as a cathartic reworking of the failures in World War 2. She sees the raising of the Yamato as something of a second chance for the ship, and, by extension, Japan. Old war wounds had not quite healed, and “by offering the audience the chance to vicariously approach the moment of Yamato’s (Japan’s) annihilation and then successfully escape what seems like inevitable destruction, the films can be seen as a form of cultural therapy in which loss is revisited in a fundamentally reassuring manner” (Napier).
Regardless of whether or not the intent of the nationalism present in Space Battleship Yamato is good, all nationalist elements are completely removed in Disgaea. As a matter of fact, a strong sense of humility seems to surround the game. While the space battleship’s name changes from Space Battleship Yamato to Space Battleship Gargantua, shedding some of its significance to, and symbolism of, Japan, in order to get to the majority of the possible endings in Disgaea, the player must destroy the Gargantua. While the player has a choice on what to do with Earth and Celestia after the battleship is destroyed, the ship must blow up. The “Yamato” must sink again, defeated, in order for the story to progress. Furthermore, the humans are told by Laharl that instead of invading the Netherworld to solve its problems, it should fix them themselves. Likewise, in the ‘real world’ in 2002, the very first joint textbook for Asian history, The Modern and Contemporary History of Three East Asian Countries, written by nongovernmental Chinese Japanese, and Korean scholars, was started, and released in 2005 (Wang). Instead of hiding and omitting shadier parts of history, this project sought to explain the good and bad of the whole region, as a form of reconciliation. The fact that such a book could be jointly made, and later released and used, says something about Japan swallowing some of its pride for the sake of its neighbors.
The social themes of environmentalism, women, and moral ambiguity that take over to replace the nationalism of the Yamato script also have their roots in the time period in which Disgaea was made. As for environmental factors, Disgaea was created and released in the span of time between the creation of the Kyoto protocols and their anticipated implementation. While the Gamilons and their Netherworld counterparts can both be seen as exemplifications of an American stereotype, the former is causing ecological destruction, while the latter causes little and actually offers ways to stop it, to his mortal enemies, no less. Japan is actually one of the top five foul-emissions producers in the world, and although countries like China and America emit more, they are also much larger in size (Siddiqi). This problem was most pressing at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, primarily because Japan signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 and had to start implementing much of its emissions-reducing acts (Siddiqi). Just like the humans in Disgaea, there is a pressing belief on Earth that if something is not doe to help the environment, it could kill us.
Advances in the more equal role of women in both the business and political landscapes of Japan made leaps and bounds in the years just prior to Disgaea’s release, and these social changes are noticeable between the sole female on the Space Battleship Moriyuki, in Yamato, and her counterpart Jennifer in Disgaea. As it turns out, a number of important leaps in woman’s rights occurred between 1999 and 2003 in Japan, during Disgaea’s development and release. Some of these acts and laws are intended for more equal treatment of women in the workforce, like the amendment of the Equal Opportunity Act in 1999 after continued and successful lobbying by Japanese women, and the Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society created in 1999 (Fujita, 178). Meanwhile, a number of acts were created for more voice to women in political spheres, like the Gender Equality Basic Plan in 2000 (Fujita, 178). In addition, the Cabinet in 2003 decided to make initiatives to get 30% of its members to be women by 2010, and the Science Council decided in 2000 that by 2010 it wanted 10% of its members to be women (which was more than doubled in half the time) (Fujita, 178). While the Equal Opportunity act was amended from an earlier era (originally drafted in 1985), it is in the early 2000’s that such great lengths to create more equal opportunities started to flourish.
Lastly, the story of Disgaea could have taken the same route as many other role-playing games, providing the player with a single storyline and a single conclusion. Any action the player has in those kinds of games must fit the rigid framework of the story, with little or no deviation. However, Disgaea does not take this route, and provides the player with a number of story options and conclusions directly based upon the character’s actions. So, how can one explain why, despite the number of choices the player has within the game, the most likely gameplay path that a player would receive would be to invade Celestia. For, if Disgaea is a more modern rendition of the Iscandar arc of Yamato, then one would think that the people of Iscandar (Celestia) were trying to help the humans, and attacking Celestia would only continue such a cycle of fighting. Yet, more than half of the possible paths and endings revolve around invading Celestia and the aftermath of doing so, with different results.
Well, there is another way to read Starsha’s actions in Yamato that explain the Celestian actions in Disgaea; though sending the humans the warp drive device plans, she had them come to Iscandar, having to pass by Gamilon to do so. Having the humans destroy Gamilon for her may have been a possibility, as the large number of graves covering Iscandar’s surface, and the few, if any, other remaining people of Iscandar, reveal just how much the Gamilons have affected her own planet. Likewise, the Celestians goaded the humans into thinking that it was in their best interest to save humanity, which was about to die, to go invade the Netherworld to save themselves. In reality, while the viewer may not know if Starsha had intended for the humans to destroy Gamilon, the Celestians make it quite clear to Laharl and, eventually, to the humans, too, that he wished to rule over them all (Disgaea, 14.5).
So, by Laharl’s decision to invade Celestia, and the player’s in-game decisions providing the positive or negative outcome of the invasion, it is possible that Disgaea shifts the Yamato-style plot from ‘allowing others to make choices for you’ to ‘making the people who are truly responsible (the Celestians, not the humans) the ones who must acknowledge and fess up to their own wrongdoing. This theme encompasses the seeming lack of nationalism, and advances in ecological protection and women’s rights, both in the game and in the real world surrounding its production. Instead of sitting and waiting for the status quo, the game encourages players to notice that the game they are playing is on a system, hooked up to a television, which is using power. When Laharl screams to General Carter to clean up his own mess, he is also screaming at the player, too. The player can choose to stay inside and continue to play, or they can actually go out and fix some of the ecological and social problems that the game mentions.
Ultimately, whether or not Disgaea intended to mimic Space Battleship Yamato’s plot or elements thereof is of little consequence. The plots and story elements are similar enough to see a shift in values. What was emphasized most in Yamato, nationalism through the raising and use of the historical Yamato ship to be Earth’s last hope against destruction, is destroyed when, in Disgaea, the player must physically fight against the massive battleship, and can even go so far as to destroy the whole of Earth, too. Instead, Disgaea replaces these nationalist sentiments with more humble reflections on ecological worries, the role of women, and the repercussions of choice, even goading the player into taking matters into their won hands. Each version of the story’s emphasis underscores the era in history each was made in, and the shift from pride to humility is an interesting one to view. If the Iscandar arc was to be made again thirty years into the future, what might the reworked plot say about Japanese culture then?
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Disgaea: Hour of Darkness. Nippon Ichi Software, 2003. Computer software.
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Wang, Zheng. "Old wounds, new narratives: joint history textbook writing and peacebuilding in East Asia." History and Memory: Studies in Representation of the Past 21.1 (2009): 101+. Academic OneFile. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. <http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=AONE&userGroupName=udel_main>.
