Abstract
This paper analyzes how war memories are often romanticized and/or popularized through representations of shōjo (girls) in anime. In Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova and Kantai Collection, submarines and battleships are personified as girls in World War II scenarios. These contents have been disseminated across multiple media platforms, and fans of the contents visit war-related sites, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) bases, museums, and events produced in cooperation with MSDF. War-related tourism and popular culture are often associated with death and tragedy, but such war-related contents tourism becomes light entertainment, while darker values and meanings are displaced and/or invalidated. This paper examines how war-related contents tourism serves to rewrite war memories, to popularize Japanese militarization and hence displace its meanings and values. Fans treat war-related contents as fashionable by commodifying the Self-Defense Force (SDF) through the images of shōjo, and they relate the SDF to themselves through the popularization and familiarization achieved through anime.
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