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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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US, Israel strike Iran: Trump, Netanyahu call for regime change in Tehran as Israelis take shelter
(JTA) — This is a developing story and will be updated.
The United States and Israel jointly launched what U.S. President Donald Trump called “a major military operation” in Iran on Saturday morning, ending weeks of speculation.
Iran immediately retaliated by launching missiles toward Israel and U.S. positions in the Middle East, sending Israelis across the country to bomb shelters for the first time since last June.
Both President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated in video addresses that their goal was to topple the Islamic Republic regime that has been in place for nearly 50 years.
“Our joint operation will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their fate into their own hands,” Netanyahu said.
“To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere,” Trump said. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take this will be probably your only chance for generations.”
Trump cited the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas as one in a series of attacks staged or supported by Iran over decades justifying the campaign, in which he warned U.S. service members could die.
One person was reported injured in a first wave of retaliatory attacks in Israel. Most missiles appeared to have been shot down, with the sounds of explosions resounding in parts of the country. A second wave was reported to be on its way several hours later.
Last year, nearly 30 people in Israel were killed by Iranian missiles during a 12-day war that included a U.S. strike on Iranian targets. Trump said again during his address that the attack had “obliterated the regime’s nuclear program” but said the country “rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions” since.
U.S. and Iranian negotiators most recently met on Thursday in Geneva. On Friday, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told embassy staff that they could leave Israel, urging them to do so “TODAY” if they chose to depart, signaling that the massive troop buildup in the Middle East could soon be deployed against Iran.
In Israel, Ben Gurion Airport has closed; hospitals relocated essential operations underground; and synagogues that had been hosting Shabbat services reconvened in parking decks. The country is set to celebrate Purim, a holiday celebrating the defeat of a Persian ruler who had tried to kill the Jews, starting Monday night.
The post US, Israel strike Iran: Trump, Netanyahu call for regime change in Tehran as Israelis take shelter appeared first on The Forward.
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In a viral social media showdown, a glimpse of the real Israel
In amateur video footage circulated across Israeli social media in recent weeks, a disturbing scene unfolds. A young man in his mid-twenties, wearing a military-style jacket, looms over a silver car in the heart of Tel Aviv. Inside the vehicle sits an 89-year-old man, mouth agape, expression frozen.
“Dictator! Khamenei!” the young man shouts, his voice sharp, emotional and aggressive.
The young man was Mordechai David, a provocateur who has been documented in a series of confrontations with public figures, journalists and protesters, adopting a style built on creating moments designed for virality. The elderly passenger was former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak — the man whom Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s propaganda machine has painted as a demon, blamed for building, during his tenure in the 1990s, an allegedly over-independent judiciary that supposedly obstructs “governance” by a government eager for unrestrained power.
David, raised in Bnei Brak as the son of a convert to religious life, has become something of a celebrity. His past includes multiple criminal highlights. Blocking Barak’s car may have marked his peak. In a subsequent social-media video, David “apologized” for not blocking Barak’s vehicle “more.”
Two different visions of Israel
David’s stunt is one of several intertwined recent stories in Israel that, between them, outline the contours of a deeper struggle over the character of its society. It is a clash between two fundamentally different visions for the country. And Israel’s fate hangs in the balance.
David’s is a political culture where perpetual confrontation and boundary-breaking increasingly define public behavior. On the other side sits Lucy Aharish, a 44-year-old journalist who grew up in Dimona.
Aharish studied political science at the Hebrew University, and over the years has worked at a variety of radio and TV stations in Israel, including I24News in English, a channel on which I also frequently appear. Today, she hosts a current affairs program. The mother of a little boy, she is also a fierce opponent of Netanyahu and his circle.
That has attracted the ire of the Netanyahu machine’s street rabble. This week, Mordechai David arrived at her doorstep with a megaphone. According to reports, David and one of his followers managed to enter her building — and at the entrance, a tense confrontation unfolded.
This requires the introduction of another character: Tsahi Halevi, 50, an artist of unusual charisma. He is a singer and highly accomplished actor who portrayed Naor in the internationally acclaimed series Fauda, a character admired for intelligence, composure and moral clarity.
In a twist that could only occur in Israel, Halevi also partly plays himself. The son of a Mossad officer, he, like Naor, served as an officer in an elite undercover unit. On Oct. 7, 2023, he volunteered for reserve duty and rushed to the scenes of devastation, where he helped save many lives.
Matan Gendelman, a survivor of the Kfar Aza massacre, recently recounted in Israeli media that Halevi helped rescue her trapped family members after being directed to the scene by his wife, who received the family’s location through social media.
His wife is Lucy Aharish. “Pure gold, the salt of the earth,” Gendelman said of the couple.
The likes of David would vehemently disagree.
Why? Because Aharish, in addition to being a Netanyahu critic, is a member of Israel’s Arab minority. And because Aharish and Halevi are a mixed couple, the hostility against them burns even more intensely.
Back at their house, there was a scent of violence in the air as the decorated officer and provocateur traded barbs.
“You come to my home?” Halevi challenged; “I feel like protesting against your wife!” David replied. “How far do you want this to go?” Halevi asked, menacingly, as police separated the two. The police dragged David away, but he ensured himself another viral success; his future may hold a respectable place on the Likud list for the Knesset.
‘The affliction of Israeli society’
Aharish chose to respond on television. “Bullying — this is the affliction of Israeli society,” she said. “It is escalating. We see it in the streets, on the roads, in public discourse — and now it has reached my own doorstep.”
Worse, she added, “The spirit of this government is a bad spirit that encourages bullies. I will not bow my head before these inciters.” She also addressed Netanyahu directly: “This is precisely your way, Mr. Prime Minister — not to see, not to hear, not to know what is happening under your nose. … One day, these bullies will reach your doorstep as well.”
In the vision of Israel embodied by Aharish and Halevi, with their impassioned but civil approach, even the most fierce political disagreement remains bounded by restraint. An important distinction is drawn between rival and enemy.
In that advanced by David, those boundaries erode. Confrontation becomes personal. Intimidation is standard.
The first vision leads to an Israel that strives for peace within itself and with its neighbors, and remains a prosperous liberal democracy grounded in basic rights and openness to the world. The second leads to an unstable, isolated and increasingly theocratic state, which will be in constant conflict with its neighbors, and from which the most productive citizens will steadily depart. In short order it will be unrecognizable, and nothing will be left of “Start-Up Nation.”
The 2026 elections, which must be held by October, will not merely determine a government. They may decide with finality which of these two Israels prevails. And after four years of trauma under Netanyahu’s far-right government, there is urgency in the air.
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Trump’s pick for surgeon general gets her ‘daily dose of inspiring Kabbalah wisdom’
Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general, preaches a broad, loosely-defined spirituality that blends ideas such as the “divine feminine,” meditation, and connection with nature. In her email newsletter, she has endorsed practices such as full moon rituals and talking to trees. And, though she was raised Roman Catholic, she has expressed interest in kabbalah, the ancient Jewish mystical tradition focused on esoteric interpretations of scripture and the nature of the soul, the cosmos, and the divine.
In May 2025, she wrote about drawing inspiration from Kabbalah teacher and influencer David Ghiyam to help deal with those who judge her for taking breaks from work to rest and recover during certain phases of the lunar cycle, which she views as essential to “feminine creativity.” She directed her readers to follow Ghiyam “for a daily dose of inspiring Kabbalah wisdom.”
Cathy Heller, a Jewish wellness influencer who preaches mindfulness and manifestation drawing on her studies of Jewish mysticism with rabbis in Israel, told the Forward in a phone interview that Means is a close friend — and often asks her to share wisdom about the Torah and kabbalah.
“She loves it,” Heller said. “She sees such beauty and wisdom in this body of work, and how universal it is and how applicable it is.”
Means’ interest in mysticism expands well beyond kabbalah. In Good Energy, a book she co-wrote with her brother, Calley Means, who works as a senior advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., she quotes Rumi, an influential figure in Sufism — the mystical dimension of Islam — and encourages her readers to practice yoga, tai chi, or qigong, try aromatherapy, and consider taking psychedelics. She has also opposed bans on raw milk despite the risk of serious bacterial infections, said more research is needed on a possible link between vaccines and autism, and criticized hormonal contraception as reflecting a “disrespect of life.”
Means’ interest in Kabbalah seems to reflect less a desire to engage in Jewish religious observance than a core belief of the Make America Healthy Again movement: that physical ailments often have underlying spiritual causes, and that tapping into the mind-body connection has the power to heal. Her promotion of kabbalah also represents the further mainstreaming of an ancient practice once reserved for only the most learned of Jewish scholars — repackaged for non-Jewish audiences and finding its way into spaces as unlikely as the U.S. Public Health Service.
“The idea that it’s controversial that we should BOTH trust unbiased scientific information AND our divine intuition is a sign of darkness in our culture,” Means wrote in November 2024.
‘A manifester’
Heller met Means in 2024 through a mutual friend in Los Angeles who hosts sound baths and other wellness events. They now take long walks and hikes together, share meals, and have celebrated several Shabbat dinners.
On one hike in Los Angeles, they came across a rabbi, and Heller says she asked him to offer a teaching. He shared an explanation of why Jacob’s name derives from the Hebrew root for “heel,” saying that Jacob had the capacity to draw the highest consciousness down into the lowest places.
Means “was literally beaming from ear to ear. We both had tears in our eyes,” Heller recalled. “I said, ‘What’s your name?’ And he said, ‘Rabbi Heller,’ which is funny because that’s my last name. And Casey’s like, ‘You’re such a manifester, that’s crazy.’”
In November 2024, Means promoted Heller’s book, Abundant Ever After: Tools for Creating a Life of Prosperity and Ease on her blog.
“Cathy is a goddess friend and her message resonates with me profoundly about how to live a limitless and spiritual life. Abundant Ever After is a transformative guide blending Jewish mysticism, meditation, and practical tools,” Means wrote. “Manifestation is real. Why wouldn’t we want to learn?”
One month later, Means appeared on Heller’s podcast, “Everything is Energy with Cathy Heller,” where she said that meeting Heller felt like “divine timing” and that their relationship was helping her make sense of concepts from Good Energy, including her belief that everything is interconnected.
“This idea that we’re oneness and everything is connected, it’s not a metaphor. It’s not hippie,” Means said on the podcast. “It’s literally truth on the physical, chemical level. And it’s so absent from our paradigm of healing.”
MAHA and religion
Adrienne Krone, a professor at Allegheny University and author of Free-Range Religion: Alternative Food Movements and Religious Life in the United States, sees a direct connection between the MAHA movement and religious ways of thinking about food, health and the body.
She said that the internet has accelerated a broader shift in wellness culture and its relationship to spirituality. On social media, mystical teachings can often be mistranslated and blended together, she said, sometimes losing their original cultural context.
“Some of what’s going on is people are picking up other religious ideas, other secular ideas, scientific research, and they bring it all together,” Krone said. “That’s what forms their understanding of what they’re supposed to eat, how they’re supposed to treat their bodies, what kinds of extra exercise regimens they should be doing. And so it doesn’t surprise me that Casey Means has this kind of collection of ideas that are more accessible than they used to be.”
Still, Means’ spirituality seems to be an outlier among the traditional Christian conservative worldview touted by most of Trump’s other nominees. Her calls to “EMBRACE THE ‘WOO WOO’” and engage in various spiritual ceremonies have drawn the ire of some activists, including conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson, who critiqued Means as “a near Wiccan” who has “dabbled in occult practices that amount to witchcraft.”
Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have not yet committed to vote “yes” on Means’ confirmation, and pressed Means at her confirmation hearing about her stance on vaccines and past use of psychedelic mushrooms.
If confirmed as the nation’s top doctor, Means has signaled that spirituality will play a significant role in how she approaches the position.
“I do believe that Americans are ready to hear about spirituality when it pertains to medicine,” Means said at her confirmation hearing.
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