Regardless of your feelings about the current President of the United States, many in the anime and manga industry have not been shy about depicting Donald Trump in various unflattering ways.
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The latest to do so is a major financial magazine in Japan, and since it’s full of their predictions for 2018, the fact that Donald Trump graces their cover is not the most promising endeavor. Financial magazine Weekly Toyo Keizai commissioned the 70 year old character designer for Mobile Suit Gundam, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, to draw their cover for their 2018 financial forecast issue.
The cover depicts President of the United States Donald Trump partying for the new year with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The most damning, however, is the depiction of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, who sits on top of a nuclear missile in-between all of them.
The cover is also a reflection of rising tensions in Japan as rising anxiety over their neighbor North Korea have been eating away at its citizens. Japan’s representative Kanji for 2018 is “North,” to further emphasize the underlying tension. But this magazine isn’t the first instance of Japan’s anime and manga industry taking shots at Donald Trump either.
The most recent instance was during the final episode of Hiroya Oka’s Inuyashiki: Last Hero. During the eleventh episode, the characters find out a meteorite is heading toward the Earth and mankind will soon be destroyed. Depicting Trump as the President reacting to the news he says, “In three days, a giant asteroid will crash into the Earth. I’ve lived long enough. I even became President, of this great land. I have no regrets. The rest of you losers can go do whatever the hell you want.”
The original manga version of this event was even more cutting with, “I’ve lived long enough. I’ve done everything I wanted to do. I get to go out on top as President. There’s nothing left for me to prove. So all bets are off now. Steal, rape, kill, do your worst, you fucking scumbags! As of this moment, murder is now legal!”
Japan’s Weekly Tokyo Keizai has reported on the financial world of Japan since 1895, and Mobile Suit Gundam has often been a series full of the same kind of complex political themes even in its fantastical setting.
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