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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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Iranian Regime Uses HispanTV to Spread Antisemitic Propaganda Across Latin America, ADL Warns
Iranians attend an anti-Israel rally in Tehran, Iran, April 19, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
As the Iranian regime escalates its campaign of disinformation against Israel, Tehran is now flooding Latin America with antisemitic propaganda and pro-terrorist messaging, using outlets such as HispanTV to reach millions of Spanish-speaking audiences and reshape public perceptions in the region.
On Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released a new report detailing a dramatic rise over the past two years in antisemitic and anti-Israel content on HispanTV, the Spanish-language network run by the Iranian regime as part of its coordinated disinformation campaign across Latin America.
With the capacity to reach nearly 600 million Spanish speakers through satellite, cable, livestreaming, and social media, ADL characterizes HispanTV, which launched in 2012, as “the world’s leading platform for peddling antisemitic hate and disseminating anti-Israel prejudice and incitement across Latin America and the wider Spanish-speaking world.”
According to the report, HispanTV consistently disseminates content that reinforces long-standing antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish influence, spreads conspiracy theories, fuels the demonization of Israel, and glorifies Iranian-backed terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
The study notes that the network’s hateful content has escalated sharply over the past two years, especially in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“HispanTV consistently frames Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks as legitimate and praiseworthy acts of resistance worthy of celebration,” the report says. “This reframing is essential to the channel’s ideological project, converting mass violence into a foundational myth of liberation.”
Across its broadcasts, HispanTV portrays Jews and Zionism as “an omnipresent, evil force” manipulating governments through a coordinated malicious scheme, reinforcing deeply entrenched antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish influence and power.
The report also finds that another central theme in the network’s coverage is the glorification of terrorist groups, depicting them as “extraordinary examples of heroism and bravery,” celebrating attacks that killed civilians, and vowing continued violence until the “complete annihilation of the occupants” — an apparent reference to Israel.
“The Iranian regime’s media outlet is spreading classic antisemitic conspiracy theories and anti-Israel propaganda to potentially millions of people across Latin America and beyond, making the Islamic Republic a destabilizing force not only in the Middle East, but across the Spanish-speaking world,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.
“With antisemitism already at historic levels globally, Tehran is funding a massive media propaganda operation that is priming the pump for spreading antisemitism and hate against Israel and Jews the world over,” he continued.
While systematically undermining Israel’s right to exist — depicting the Jewish state as a “colonial,” “genocidal,” and “terrorist” project — HispanTV presents the Iranian regime as a principled alternative to Western democracies and positions Tehran as the leader of the “Axis of Resistance,” according to the ADL’s newly released report.
The Iranian network also depicts Jews and Israelis as “operating a highly organized global disinformation apparatus designed to deceive the world and justify genocide,” minimizing or outright denying the reality of antisemitism.
The ADL argues that the lack of decisive action by governments, international bodies, and corporations has allowed the Islamic regime to leverage HispanTV to disseminate its hateful conspiracies around the globe.
“If this threat is not seriously addressed, the result will likely be the radicalization of Spanish-speaking audiences across Latin America and beyond,” the report says.
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US Justice Department Launches Investigation Into Antisemitism at Lincoln Memorial University Medical School
US Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon at the Justice Department in Washington, DC, US, Aug. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The US Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) in Tennessee for allegedly having “engaged in discrimination against its Jewish students” over several years, the agency announced last week.
The investigation, which will receive support from the US Department of Health and Human Services, was prompted by complaints that high-level officials at the LMU DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine “intentionally” prevented Jewish students from finishing final exams — an action that could lead to academic failure as well as squandering tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees.
According to WBIR-TV, a local news outlet based in the city of Knoxville, LMU enacted a new policy which proscribed granting students exam exemptions based on their observing religious holidays. Two Orthodox Jewish students studying medicine are known to have been disproportionately impacted by the dictate, and, according to Rabbi Yossi Wilhelm of Chabad of Knoxville, their qualifications for becoming doctors were allegedly called into doubt by a college official who implied that religious observance is disqualifying.
“This Department of Justice is fiercely committed to shutting down the concerning outbreak of antisemitism that has been spreading on college campuses since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general of the civil rights division of the Justice Department, said on Friday when the investigation was announced. “When colleges and universities single Jewish students out for adverse treatment, they are in clear violation of our civil rights laws and of this nation’s promise of equal opportunity for all Americans.”
Paula Stannard, director of the civil rights office of the Department of Health and Human Services, added, “All students should be free to learn and train in environments free from discrimination. Antisemitism has no place in our nation’s educational or medical training institutions, and OCR [the Office of Civil Rights] will work to ensure that federal civil rights laws are fully enforced.”
In a statement to The Algemeiner, Lincoln Memorial University denied discriminating against anyone, citing its “belief that every single person, regardless of race, situation, or background, deserves the right to a quality educational experience.”
It continued, “We would never intentionally discriminate against any member of our community, and we do not believe we did so as has been alleged in the concerns under investigation by the Department of Justice. Educating our future leaders is why we exist. Any decision that is made is always with the goal of providing the best education for each and every student.”
Antisemitism in academic medical centers located on college campuses is fostering noxious environments which deprive Jewish health-care professionals of their civil right to work in spaces free from discrimination and hate, according to a study by the StandWithUs Data & Analytics Department in May.
“Academia today is increasingly cultivating an environment which is hostile to Jews, as well as members of other religious and ethnic groups,” StandWithUs director of data and analytics and study co-author, Alexandra Fishman, said in a statement at the time. “Academic institutions should be upholding the integrity of scholarship, prioritizing civil discourse, rather than allowing bias or personal agendas to guide academic culture.”
Titled “Antisemitism in American Healthcare: The Role of Workplace Environment,” the study includes survey data showing that 62.8 percent of Jewish health-care professionals employed by campus-based medical centers reported experiencing antisemitism, a far higher rate than those working in private practice and community hospitals. Fueling the rise in hate, it added, were repeated failures of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives to educate workers about antisemitism, increasing, the report said, the likelihood of antisemitic activity.
The study is not StandWithUs’s first contribution to the study of antisemitism in medicine. In December 2024, the Data & Analytics Department published a study which found that nearly 40 percent of Jewish American health-care professionals have encountered antisemitism in the workplace, either as witnesses or victims.
The study included a survey of 645 Jewish health workers, a substantial number of whom said they were subject to “social and professional isolation.” The problem left over one quarter of the survey cohort, 26.4 percent, “feeling unsafe or threatened.”
The issue is currently being investigated by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, with a focus on the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine, the University of Illinois’ College of Medicine, and the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine.
“This investigation will aid the committee in considering whether potential legislative changes, including legislation to specifically address antisemitism discrimination, are needed,” education committee chairman Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) wrote in a letter to Steven Dubinett, dean of UCLA’s Geffen School. “The committee has become aware that Jewish students and faculty have experienced hostility and fear at the hands of peers, colleagues, and administrators at UCLA Med, and it has not been demonstrated that the university has meaningfully responded to address and mitigate this problem.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Captain of Israeli Olympic Bobsled Team Responds to Swiss Commentator’s Claims He ‘Supports Genocide in Gaza’
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 2-man Heat 2 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 16, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel and Menachem Chen of Israel react after their run. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
The captain of Israel’s bobsled team competing in the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics in Italy has responded to remarks made by a commentator on the Swiss network Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) who claimed the athlete should have been banned from the Olympics because of his “support of the genocide in Gaza.”
Commentator Stefan Renna made the remarks as Adam Edelman, an American-Israeli, and his teammate Menachem Chen performed their two-man bobsleigh run on Monday, in which they finished in last place. Renna said on air that Edelman is a “self-defined ‘Zionist to the core’” who had posted “several messages on social media in support of the genocide in Gaza.” The commentator also claimed Edelman had poked fun at a “Free Palestine” demonstration.
Renna further commented that Edelman had “said the Israeli military intervention was, I quote, ‘the most morally justified war in history.’” He also said Edelman should have been barred from the Milan-Cortina Games just like the International Olympic Committee banned Russian athletes if they made comments in support of the war that started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “This just goes to show that sport is obviously eminently political,” Renna told viewers.
A clip featuring the commentary was removed from the RTS website on Monday night because it was not “appropriate” for a sports broadcast, a spokesperson for the network told Deadline.
Edelman took to social media to respond to the RTS clip and the comments made about him.
“I am aware of the diatribe the commentator directed towards the Israeli bobsled team on the Swiss Olympic broadcast today,” he wrote on Monday. “I can’t help but notice the contrast: Shul Runnings [the team’s nickname] is a team of 6 proud Israelis who’ve made it to the Olympic stage. No coach with us. No big program. Just a dream, grit, and unyielding pride in who we represent. Working together towards such an incredible goal and crushing it. Because that’s what Israelis do. I don’t think it’s possible to witness that and give credence to this commentary.”
Edelman also reposted a comment from US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who said the RTS broadcast was “beyond disgusting” and that the “Jew-hating” Swiss commentator “spewed bigotry and bile” as the Israeli team competed.
The Israeli bobsled team is competing in the final two-man run on Tuesday and the four-man run later this week.