The Old School Otaku Lounge

Matsumoto does attend cons in Europe with some regularity, while never coming to the 'States. Of course, his works like Harlock were widely seen in Europe, thus the substantial audience to receive him there (we just got Star Blazers, which is part Nishizaki anyways, along with oddities like the KIKU Hawaii Harlock sub and that Harlock/QM splice job). Hell, the French even made Leiji a "Knight of Arts and Letters". These facts coupled with some lingering mistrust of Yankee Gamilons/Illumidians can explain his absence here. Still, Matsumoto seems a pretty universally minded person of late and has been pretty welcoming to Americans who've met him in Japan.

I would say Miyazaki is probably the person closest to Matsumoto's generation in anime with much more of a beef with America. From his opposition to the American military presence in Japan to events like his Oscar ceremony snub ("The reason I wasn't here for the Academy Award was because I didn't want to visit a country that was bombing Iraq"), I would venture that if Miyazaki wasn't too big for anime conventions he still would be an unlikely guest for these reasons. His appearance at Comic Con a few years back was even remarked upon as unusual as such: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/animatio ... ott-of-us/ I'm not sure if Miyazaki ever surfaced over here during the era before his mainstream "discovery'.

Leiji Matsumoto visiting America would be an event on the order of a rare once in a millennia planetary alignment (La Metal? )**, and it would be just amazing to meet the man himself. Hopefully, he'll live to at least 100 (Japanese longevity is on his side) though I'm sure he would turn down an immortal "machine body" should the "Singularity" arrive in his lifetime (Galaxy Express 999 has his thoughts on that).

** Actually, a mysterious new giant planet was recently inferred by scientists, confirming Leiji's vision in Queen Millennia. I'll thus take this as a sure portent of Matsumoto's impending American visit: https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-re ... anet-49523

I'm wondering about things like Matsumoto holding grudges. Though he stated at one time when he was very young and the U.S. Occupied Japan he had no love for the American soldiers there but then, why would he allow Tim Eldred and co. into his home 6 years ago? And Shigeru Mizuki didn't seem to hold a grudge and Matsumoto sincerely loved and respected him. But who really knows, unless you get to talk to him? Recent events may have clouded things but for many others, it's still business as usual...

_D_ wrote:I'm wondering about things like Matsumoto holding grudges. Though he stated at one time when he was very young and the U.S. Occupied Japan he had no love for the American soldiers there but then, why would he allow Tim Eldred and co. into his home 6 years ago? And Shigeru Mizuki didn't seem to hold a grudge and Matsumoto sincerely loved and respected him. But who really knows, unless you get to talk to him? Recent events may have clouded things but for many others, it's still business as usual...

Well, my observation has been that the Japanese are pretty damn good a compartmentalizing things. There is no contradiction, there is no conflict. America is a terrible place because Atomic Bomb yet at the same time it's super cool. Of course what the Nazis did was terrible, not to be tolerated but damn those boys sure could design the living crap out of (fill in blank)

Everything is in a little box. When something is over, it's OVER. Done. Little box.

It's why they get into trouble when every few years (or every fall in America when the new school semester starts) someone starts kicking around the "Japan hasn't apologized/taken responsibility for (insert any historical event here)!!!!" and usually the Japanese attitude tends to be "well, yeah, we did, back then" and go on with their lives. I mean, my opinion and it might not be seen as the 'correct' one, is that Japan made the ultimate apology. They lost the war. Their entire nation was devastated. Their Government was tossed up and revamped.

Does any of that 'make up' for Nanking or Comfort Women or medical experiments and so on? Of course not. NOTHING can 'make up' for events that happen during war. All the apologies in the world, day after day like a Shinto priest chanting in his temple, cannot change or fix or excuse what has happened. That goes for us here in the U.S. as well, and Germany.

Matsumoto likely loves those trips to France because France isn't America.