"Zipang" (2004) TV series 2004-2005

User Rating:

8.7/10   

Director:

Kazuhiro Furuhashi

Writer:

Yuichiro Takeda (writer)

Release Date:

5 September 2006 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Drama | History | Sci-Fi | War

Plot:

The story of Zipang is basically the same as that of the movie The Final Countdown, only with a few twists...

Cast

Takanori Hoshino	...	Masayuki Kikuchi
Tetsu Inada	...	Yosuke Kadomatsu
Yoshiko Iseki	...	Momoi, Sachiko
Yûji Ueda	...	Kouhei Oguri
Yûsaku Yara	...	Umezu, Saburo

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Certification:

South Korea:15

Not your usual anime

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is an astonishing series. The Mirai, the latest AEGIS destroyer of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense force, en route to a joint exercise with the U.S. Navy at Hawaii encounters a weather anomaly near Midway Island. When it clears, the Mirai suddenly finds itself surrounded by the Imperial Japanese Navy's Combined Fleet just before the Battle of Midway.

Unlike other alternate World War II histories (such as the Final Countdown), the characters in Zipang face a far more ambiguous moral choice. Whereas Kirk Douglas' character in the Final Countdown has no qualms about joining the World War II US forces to change history (and is prevented from doing so by the temporal anomaly taking the ship back to its own time), the crew of Mirai doesn't consider it obvious that they should join the Japanese side. They are aware that it is a country run by militarists with a mindset very different from theirs. As the Japanese from the present era, they are not at war with the United States. They know that the present day Japan has been built on the defeat of the imperialistic Japan of World War II era. Yet, they are conflicted over their sentiment as Japanese, knowing that millions of their countrymen would die in course of the war. They also question their lack of direction, not knowing what their purpose is in an era long ago. Finally, they have to deal with the fact that they need supplies to keep themselves going, regardless of what they are to do.

The rescue of Lt. Commander Kusaka, a naval intelligence officer whose courier plane was shot down during the Battle of Midway complicates things. Kusaka is not a typical militarist--he thinks the Pacific War was a mistake and should be ended as soon as possible. However, he is also a Japanese of 1940s who thinks how the war actually ended is intolerable. Once he learns the events of the future while on board the Mirai, he immediately goes about with a plan to remake the future according to his vision--to bring about what he terms "Zipang," a new Japan that is neither the defeated Japan of Mirai's future or the military dictatorship of his present. However, it is no less of an empire--it would still rule over Japan's pre-War empire, especially Manchuria and its resources. Worse still, Kusaka is willing to ruthlessly sacrifice lives of thousands in order to achieve his vision. The crew of Mirai has to deal with not only the mundane task of survival, but also with the threat to their future posed by Kusaka.