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Does anime have a Nazi problem? Some Jewish fans think so.
TAIPEI (JTA) — When the Season 3 plot twist of “Attack on Titan” aired in 2019, viewers wasted no time in jumping online to discuss what they saw.
In the world of “Attack on Titan” — an extremely popular Japanese anime series now in its final season, which started in March and does not have a known end date — humanity has been trapped within a walled city on the island of Paradis, surrounded by Titans, grotesque giants who mindlessly eat any person who gets in their way.
In the third season, the Titans’ origins are revealed as a group called the Eldians, a group that made a deal with the devil to gain Titan powers with which they subjugated humanity for years. A group called the Marleyans later overthrew the Eldian empire and forced them into ghettoes, forcing them to wear armbands that identified their race with a symbol similar to the Star of David. Political prisoners were injected with a serum that turns them into the terrifying Titans.
The implications that a race meant to represent Jews had made “a deal with the devil” to achieve power were too much for some to bear. Fans debated the meaning on Twitter and Reddit as think pieces pointed to the show’s “fascist subtext” and possible antisemitism as ratings and viewership climbed. Some viewers defended the series as a condemnation of those ideas and a meditation on moral ambiguity, but others said the plot’s condemnation of fascism was too weak. The New Republic in 2020 called “Attack on Titan” “the alt-right’s favorite manga.”
Either way, in November 2021, the show’s production team announced it would cancel the sale of Eldian armbands — the ones Eldians were forced to wear in their ghettos — explaining that it was “an act without consideration to easily commercialize what was drawn as a symbol of racial discrimination and ethnic discrimination in the work.”
“Attack on Titan” is only the latest manga (a specific type of Japanese comic books or graphic novels) or anime (TV shows or movies animated in the manga style) series on the chopping block. As it continues to gain popularity outside of Japan’s borders, the Japanese animation medium as a whole has been hit with criticism for alleged glorification of antisemitism, fascism and militarism. The debate has been fueled by a stream of examples: the literal evil Jewish cabal in “Angel Cop,” (references to Jews were later removed in the English-language dubbed version), the Fuhrer villain in “Fullmetal Alchemist,” the Nazi occultism (in which Nazis channel the occult to carry out duties or crimes) in “Hellboy,” and the Nazi characters in “Hellsing” and “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” to name a few.
Western viewers are not the only ones taking issue. Fans of “Attack on Titan” in South Korea — which was subject to Japanese war atrocities during World War II that Japan continues to deny — have taken issue, too. Revelations from Hajime Isayama, the creator of the original “Attack on Titan” manga, that a character in the series was inspired by an Imperial Japanese army general who had committed war crimes against Koreans were met with heated discussion and later death threats from Korean fans online. Some also pointed to a private Twitter account believed to be run by Isayama that denies imperial Japan’s war atrocities.
“Ridiculous the lengths a fandom will go to downplay the blatant antisemitism in a series and protect and lie about the creator of said series,” wrote one Twitter user. “[Y]ou doing this and ignoring koreans and jewish people says a lot.”
These themes are so common in manga and anime that some independent researchers like Haru Mena (a pen name) have begun creating classifications for the many Nazi tropes that make regular appearances. Mena, a military researcher who lectures annually at the Anime Boston convention about World War II and Nazi imagery in anime and manga, says the phenomenon is a result of how Japan remembers its role in World War II — not as the aggressor, but as a victim of war.
“Japan does not want to be the bad guy. They love to have other people be the bad guy,” he said. “That’s why they’re using all these Nazi characters. We all agree Nazis are bad, war crimes are bad, no decent self-respecting nation would ever do [what they did].”
But many Jewish anime fans, like Reddit user Desiree (who did not offer her last name for privacy reasons), have taken issue with the way some anime and manga series portray Nazis while reducing the Holocaust to narrative devices.
“I think that most people who are telling these stories aren’t coming from an area where this would be as personally familiar,” she said. “There’s almost no resonance to it. Because they take away all these details they make it a big trope.”
hi
anime and manga have an antisemitism problem
good day
— Kay (he/they, she for friends only) (@Cayliana) February 19, 2022
East Asian interest in Nazi imagery has also bled over into the West in the form of news headlines in recent years — involving everything from Nazi-themed bars and parades to Nazi cosplay in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Korea.
But some experts say that repeated references to Nazi villains and World War II in manga and anime have more to do with Japanese history and culture than with antisemitism.
“There is a fascination with Nazism in Japan to some degree or another,” said Raz Greenberg, an Israel-based writer whose Ph.D. research examined Jewish influence on Japan’s “God of Comics,” Osamu Tezuka, an artist sometimes referred to as Japan’s equivalent to Walt Disney. In 1983, Tezuka released the first in a five-volume series called “Adolf,” a popular manga set in World War II-era Japan and Germany about three men with that name — a Japanese boy, a Jewish boy and Hitler.
“I think there’s something fascinating about Nazi aesthetic, certainly for countries that never actually participated in the war against the Nazis. But I don’t think it’s that different from, say, the way George Lucas made the Empire in the ‘Star Wars’ films very Nazi-like in its aesthetic,” Greenberg said.
As Greenberg notes, Western media is also full of Holocaust references — some more successful in its repudiation of Nazi ideology than others — like the numbered tattoos and recent use of a Lithuanian prison camp as a filming location in the Netflix hit show “Stranger Things.”
“What makes people angry is, people think when the Japanese approach it, they approach it without understanding. And it’s easier to think that they don’t understand it when you look at a show like ‘Attack on Titan,’” Greenberg said.
Liron Afriat, a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Asian Sphere program and the founder of the Anime and Manga Association of Israel, said while shows like “Attack on Titan” reference the Holocaust and use World War II-era imagery, it’s likely that Western viewers are misinterpreting its intended parallels to Japanese politics. … particularly Japan’s past of aggressive and corrupt militarism and late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s attempts to reinstate a non-defensive military.
“Western people are very eager to jump to conclusions when it comes to Asian media. This is something I see a lot in my work and it’s very frustrating,” she said. “There is a sense that because Japanese pop culture is so popular nowadays, it’s very easy to kind of dogpile on it and say it’s racist.”
In recent decades, anime series have been watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and the medium has gone from being seen in the West as a geeky niche genre to a mainstream phenomenon. Though show creators may be conscious about their references, some fans say the fascist and Jewish references, especially the more clear-cut ones — like the Jewish conspiracy in “Angel Cop” — have real-life consequences.
Many in the anime fan community today remember a 2010 incident at Anime Boston when a group of cosplayers dressed up as characters from “Hetalia: Axis Powers,” a series that anthropomorphized Axis and Ally countries, was photographed making Nazi salutes just around the corner from the city’s Holocaust memorial.
“It used to be like, I can go to an anime convention and they would be selling uniforms that were clearly meant to be Nazi uniforms, but sans the swastika,” Desiree said. “And then over time, I noticed conventions started banning that kind of thing.”
“JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” features a Nazi character named Rudol von Stroheim. (Screenshot from YouTube)
Noah Oskow is the managing editor of the digital magazine Unseen Japan and a Jew who has lived in Japan for seven years. He recalled similar experiences at U.S. anime conventions.
“I think that it is problematic to portray Nazis and the Holocaust in the very frivolous way that it’s often portrayed,” he said. “Even in a place that is so far removed from Japan, that aesthetic of Nazis from manga or anime was seeping into somebody’s choices in a far-removed anime and manga event.”
Oskow says recent portrayals of Nazis and fascism in anime and manga lack the depth necessary to confront an issue like the Holocaust, but that some subtext in shows like “Attack on Titan” is likely missed by Western viewers since it is created for a Japanese audience.
Still, he says, as a Jew, there is a discomfort with these depictions, and the problems with simplifying themes like fascism and genocide should not be ignored just because the product came from Japan — particularly as stereotypes about Jews as having outsize influence remain common. In Japan, as in other East Asian nations such as South Korea, China and Taiwan, books and classes on how to become as smart and wealthy as Jews — believed to be among the most powerful people in media and finance — are not uncommon.
“In my years of discussing Jews with Japanese people…they really think of Jews as an ancient historical people or the people who were killed in the Holocaust unless they have some sort of conspiratorial idea. But most people have no conception of Jewish people,” Oskow said. “So when they’re portraying Jews in manga or anime or any sort of media, and when readers or viewers are engaging with that media, I just don’t think there’s this thought of how a Jewish person would perceive how they’re being portrayed.”
Jessica, a 29-year-old Jewish and Chinese anime fan from Vancouver who also requested her last name be left out of this article, said she deliberately chooses not to watch shows such as “Attack on Titan” and “Hetalia” because she finds the discussions about them among fans to be unproductive and frustrating. Desiree echoed Jessica’s experience of being ignored when raising the topic of antisemitism within the medium or within the fan community on platforms such as Reddit.
“I saw the reactions of other Jewish fans and, more importantly, saw the reaction of the goyish fans — the way ‘Hetalia’ fans did the sieg heil in front of a Holocaust memorial, the way that [‘Attack on Titan’] fans would swarm concerned Jewish fans in droves to tell them that they should perish in an oven, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with anime that attracted that sort of fanbase,” Desiree said.
“Attack on Titan” returned to streaming services on March 4 with the first part of its final season. In the first episode, the protagonist Eren, whom audiences have followed for a decade, begins carrying out a global genocide known as “the rumbling” with the end goal of destroying all Titans for good and bringing peace. The end result is a wipeout of 80% of humanity, an act that Eren believes was the only path to freedom. He thinks humans must all suffer as a consequence of being born into the world — a nihilistic philosophy that can be found among the manifestos of school shooters and incels.
In the original manga series, Eren’s supporters on the island militarize in order to defend Eren’s violent act, chanting a slogan: “If you can fight you win, if you cannot fight you lose! Fight, fight!” The ending was seen as morally ambiguous and was not popular with fans, who mostly refuted it due to poor writing. Many hope that the anime series will go a different route in its final episodes, which have not yet been released or given future release dates.
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‘Marty Supreme’ is an outstanding celebration — and indictment — of chutzpah
Marty Mouser will have the beef Wellington and caviar, as they are the most expensive items on the menu.
The 23-year-old table tennis phenom, heralded as “the chosen one,” is dining at the Ritz in London. Seated opposite him, his recent opponent, Bela Kletzki. The two are friends, but this didn’t stop Mouser from telling a gaggle of reporters before their match of his plans to “do to Kletzski what Auschwitz couldn’t.” He can say that, he assured them — he’s a Jew.
This, like Mouser’s remark that he is the “ultimate product of Hitler’s defeat,” is all bluster. (He’s really a lowly Lower East Side shoe clerk who stole money from his shop to fly to the tournament.) But we soon see what Auschwitz meant for his survivor companion: defusing bombs on the camp outskirts and once managing to sneak honey from a beehive onto his person, which his fellow prisoners licked off him for nourishment.
We get a flashback of Kletzki. It’s lensed like a Renaissance painting, with honey glistening off of the hairy chest of actor Géza Röhrig, (Hungarian star of the Sonderkommando drama Son of Saul).
You may wonder what exactly this moment is doing in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, a walloping period piece that follows Mouser’s picaresque ploys to become a global icon by hustling, stealing and lying his way into a tournament in Japan. But there’s rarely a moment in the frenetic picture, set over eight months in 1952, where only one thing is happening. While Kletzki tells his haunting honey story, to pen magnate and potential patron Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful, indeed), Marty makes eyes at Rockwell’s wife from across the room, another sort of honeypot in mind. The contrast is the point.
Unlike Kletzki, Marty — very loosely based on ping-pong champ Marty Reisman — is an American, New York-born, and believes in the Augie March doctrine of first knocked, first admitted. To get his foot in the door so he can stare down from his rightful place on a Wheaties box, he will shove anyone and everyone out of the way. He refuses to demean himself by playing Harlem Globetrotter halftime shows with Kletzki, or throwing a match for Rockwell — but his principles are malleable when the straits are dire.
Mouser feels entitled to everything: the money in his uncle’s safe at the shoe shop; a suite at the Ritz; other men’s wives; a chunk of the pyramids, which he presents to his manipulative mother (Fran Drescher) with the words, “We built that.”
We know from how he speaks about this hunk of Egyptian rock — and about Kletzki, the Holocaust and Hitler — his entitlement comes in part from a legacy of immiseration and violence he never suffered personally. But Mouser, this New Jew coming of age after the Shoah, claims redemption as his birthright while also striving to float above his people’s history of oppression and retail drudgery, concocting a mythology of self-invention and radical individualism. (Meanwhile, Kletzki, a world champ before the war, is all too happy to be treated kindly and paid decently for hitting balls with skillets for the Globetrotters.)
The tension between the horror of the recent past, and the just-dawning promise of an America where antisemitism is unfashionable, plays through Marty’s vision of what’s to come. He dreams up orange-colored ping-pong balls, a hue only approved for use by the International Table Tennis Federation in 2019. The 1980s synth-pop needle drops remixed by composer Daniel Lopatin, lean into futurism. Our hero is ahead of his time, chafing at the present to which he’s tethered. He wants an unready world to acknowledge his greatness now. He has no patience for a rocky transition.
If the opening credits of Uncut Gems bespeak a past-one’s-prime ritual — a colonoscopy — Marty Supreme‘s titles are set to a burst of youthful virility. (Inventive, hilarious, if something I’ve seen before.)
Timothée Chalamet, outfitted with prosthetic acne scars and eye-shrinking contact lenses, is incandescent and somehow stays to the right side of insufferable as he wrecks the lives of all around him with his singular focus. Unlike Gems’ Howard Ratner, a sleaze with a gambling addiction and little else to offer, Mouser’s talent is undeniable, but like any Safdie protagonist, he takes his licks.
The film, co-written and co-edited with Safdie’s constant collaborator Ronald Bronstein, is a rich Jewish text that alternates between wish fulfillment and nightmare. Mouser competes for the WASPy Rockwell’s patronage while shtupping his icy blonde wife (Gwyneth Paltrow). On the other side of the ledger, his lover, Rachel (a pitch-perfect Odessa A’zion), is attacked near a Forverts delivery truck. Marty’s uncle Murray (music journalist Larry “Ratso” Sloman) calls a cop goyische kopf for ordering the roast beef over pastrami at the Garden Cafe. It’s no mistake that, at his lowest, Mouser faces a treyf humiliation orchestrated by Rockwell: lose and kiss a pig.
But Marty Supreme is too dense with plot points and people to insist on a solely Jewish gloss, even as critics for the non-Jewish press have been tempted to apply one.
Exploring the warrens of postwar New York — the wings of a Broadway theater, the back alley of a Chinatown restaurant, stockrooms, airshafts and fire escapes — all outstandingly revived by legendary production designer Jack Fisk, Safdie proves he’s not only ready for a solo effort away from brother, Benny, but ready to leap over space and time. He may not be ready to say goodbye to all that (New York stuff), the backdrop for all his features up to now, but he easily could.
In this epic of chutzpah, we have a mature work via a singularly immature avatar. Mouser may have never reached the recognition he felt he was owed, but coming into awards season, there’s little doubt that Safdie’s film is a cross-category contender.
Should the gentleman order the caviar, there’s no doubt he’s earned it.
The post ‘Marty Supreme’ is an outstanding celebration — and indictment — of chutzpah appeared first on The Forward.
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The Future of War: Israel Takes Global Lead on Military Innovation With New AI Division, Iron Beam Laser System
A part of Iron Beam laser anti-missile interception system, developed by Israel, is seen in this handout image obtained by Reuters on Sept. 17, 2025. Photo: Israel Defense Ministry/Handout via REUTERS
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced this week a revolutionary reorganization of the technology and artificial intelligence capabilities of the Jewish state’s military, unveiling new plans to prepare for future warfare with cutting-edge advancements.
Israel’s major defense overhaul, unveiled on Tuesday, comes in preparation for the deployment of the long-anticipated “Iron Beam” laser interceptor system, which will be delivered to the military at the end of the month.
Under the name “Bina” — Hebrew word “intelligence” — the IDF has chosen to shut down its Lotem Unit from the C41 Corps, replacing it with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Division and the Spectrum Division. The latter will focus on communications and electronic warfare with an emphasis on threats from Iran, China, and Russia.
The AI Division will grow through merging other sections within the IDF, including Mamram (the abbreviation for the Center of Computing and Information Systems) and software development units Shahar and Mitzpen. This consolidation of AI-development related divisions intends both to intensify security and avoid accidentally duplicating research efforts. The project will align with Israel’s Project Nimbus cloud computing program supplied by Amazon and Google.
The IDF also announced the ICT Division, which will focus on satellite warfare in outer space.
According to the military, about 50 percent of the new divisions are composed of women soldiers, with female officers comprising 40 percent of the senior command including two of the five top leadership positions.
Brig. Gen. Yael Grossman now heads ICT and the Cyber Defense Division, and Brig Gen. Racheli Dembinsky will head the Spectrum Division. Others in leadership positions include Chief Signals Officer Brig. Gen. Omer Cohen and Maj. Gen. Aviad Dagan.
“I have no doubt that the world is heading towards a space war, especially after the US and China defined space as a possible war arena,” Dr. Moshik Cohen, CEO for defense technology company AIPEX which focuses on missiles, told the Israeli publication Globes.
“Rival powers are already using it on the battlefield,” Cohen continued. “The Chinese have developed a way to detect stealth aircraft using satellites, and the Russians have jammed GPS signals from US satellites, which have dropped thousands of smart bombs on earth and blocked satellite communications for the Ukrainians. At the same time, the US is promoting Golden Dome, which will consist of a network of low-flying satellites able to perform military missions such as intercepting ballistic and hypersonic missiles and blocking enemy communications.”
Dagan said that the new divisions aspired to use technology to “turn one tank into 100 tanks, one soldier into 100 fighters.”
On Monday, meanwhile, Danny Gold, the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Defense Research and Development, revealed that the military would soon receive the “Iron Beam” laser interception system, a project a decade in development.
“With development complete and a comprehensive testing program that has validated the system’s capabilities, we are prepared to deliver initial operational capability to the IDF on Dec. 30, 2025,” Gold said. “The Iron Beam laser system is expected to fundamentally change the rules of engagement on the battlefield. Simultaneously, we are already advancing the next-generation systems.”
Created by Rafael Advanced Systems Ltd., the Iron Beam is intended to supplement rather than replace Israel’s Iron Dome and other air defense systems, focusing especially on smaller targets. As long as the weapon maintains a power source then it cannot run out of ammunition. However, the system does not function optimally in situations with clouds or low visibility.
The IDF chose to rename the laser weapon from Magen Or (Light Shield) to Or Eitan (Eitan’s Light) in honor of Cpt. Eitan Oster, a member of the Egoz Commando Unit killed in October 2024 while fighting the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon.
Brig. Gen. Benny Aminov also announced this week an Israeli breakthrough in countering enemy drone attacks.
“We are now working on interception solutions using drone-based systems that enable response to swarm scenarios while accelerating the development of new directed-energy weapons,” Aminov said. “The issue of low-altitude threats is an example of a challenge that requires our defense establishment to fundamentally change its operational approach, responding within compressed time frames, spiral development, accelerating testing during the development process, and bridging small defense-tech companies with major defense contractors.”
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‘Dancing With the Stars’ Airs Its First Dance Dedicated to Hanukkah During Holiday Special
Alan Bersten, Val Chmerkovskiy, Gleb Savchenko, Emma Slater, Onye Stevenson, and Hailey Bills dancing to “Miracle” by Matisyahu on “Dancing with the Stars” on Dec. 2, 2025, on ABC. Photo: Disney/Eric McCandless
“Dancing with the Stars” aired a holiday special on Wednesday night that included the show’s first celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which begins later this month.
The reality show and dancing competition aired its first full holiday special, titled “Dancing with the Holidays,” which highlighted the skills of its professional dancers without their celebrity partners. The dances mainly honored Christmas, but for the first time in the show’s 20-year history, there was a dance dedicated to Hanukkah.
Professional dancers Alan Bersten and Val Chmerkovskiy, who are both Jewish, along with four non-Jewish pros – Gleb Savchenko, Emma Slater, Onye Stevenson, and Hailey Bills – danced to “Miracle” by Matisyahu. Bersten choreographed the dance, which included the men linking their raised arms to form a menorah, a hora, a sit-spin as a nod to a spinning dreidel, and a take on some of the dances from the classic Jewish musical “Fiddler on the Roof.”
“We have a lot of work to do,” the Mirrorball champion told the dancers in rehearsal. “We need a miracle.”
In the intro package for the dance, Bersten, who is the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, talked about not seeing much Hanukkah representation around the holiday season when he was growing up. Bersten said he wanted to create something that Jewish kids today could identify with.
“Everyone celebrates holidays in a different way. Growing up Jewish, you don’t really see a lot of Hanukkah representation, so tonight we’re doing a special performance to celebrate Hanukkah,” he said. “Hopefully a Jewish kid’s watching this, and they feel seen, and they feel proud.”
Following the dance, DWTS co-host Alfonso Ribeiro reminded the audience and viewers at home “that the holiday season is for everyone.”
The “Dancing with the Stars” holiday special was released on Disney+ and Hulu.