In Japanese culture, for some odd reason, there seems to be a tiny bit of anti-nuclear weapons sentiment. This seems to carry over pretty well into anime, where using nukes seems to be considered horrific at worst, and pointless and ineffective at best.* (The latter, granted, isn’t completely restricted to Japanese fiction—there are a number of western movies, especially sci-fi, where the monsters demonstrate their badassness by shrugging off a nuke. But I digress…)
So, I’m just wondering…are there any anime works out there where setting off an A-Bomb isn’t roundly condemned as an act of insane barbarism? Or where, good gosh, it actually helps make things better in the end?
*This seems to apply even if the enemy is some horrible, world-crushing abomination that’s about to crush the world in some horrific, abominable way.
Well, the N2 bombs in Evangelion aren’t technically nukes, but have similar explosive power, but without the nasty radioactive side effects. They are used to mildly good effect, to slow down various angels thoughout the series, though they don’t actually kill the giant invaders.
At the end of Nadia (if I recall correctly) Captain Nemo sets off a nuclear blast to destroy Red Noah. Can’t recall why, but it needed to be done for certain.
Generally speaking, I’ve always observed an inverse corrolation in Japanese entertainment media between the damage one should supposedly be able to do with something and the actual results.
Just about any anime you can name (Kenshin, Macross, Ghost in the Shell to some extent, etc) holds true to an inverse law of firepower; swords beat rifles, hand-to-hand combat trumps machine guns, and so forth, making a nuke the ultimate in wet firecrackers.
Just thinking a bit, my guess is the idea is that skill, training and determination are what are meant to determine winner and loser, and it’s hard to show that off if you’re just pushing a button. Much better to have the hero be outclassed and have to fight his way to victory, rather than solve all his problems with his pinky.
I am unfamiliar with the Wave Motion Gun, but from what I read about it, it seems like it might just be a brightly coloured Deus ex Machina so the animators can end the plot arc.
Interestingly, N2 simply stands for “non-nuclear.” Come to think of it, the only time nuclear power becomes a consideration is when that robotic Eva is sabotaged by NERV.
Not technically a nuke, but at the end of the most recent episode of Samurai Champloo A meteor crash lands on/near everyone. A child far away sees the blast and says, “Look! A mushroom!” Cut to stock footage of a post-nuclear blast mushroom cloud. That was one weird-ass episode what with the wasabi zombies and all.
I watched NGE recently, and I always thought the N2 mines were largely a bad thing–they didn’t really do anything with regards to stopping the angels (I don’t think they even slowed them down–they were only being used because the people in charge didn’t know what else to do) and they were powerful enough to cause a lot of collateral damage.
In the 9th episode, Shinji and Asuka get their butt kicked by the angel that split into two parts - then Nerv drops an N2 bomb on the Angel, and it takes it out for a couple days, giving Asuka & Shinji enough time train and synchronize their fighting, leading to one of the single best fight scenes in any anime.
Come to think of it, the cop chief in Tank Police wants to use tactical nukes as anti-crime devices, but to my knowledge the killjoy mayor doesn’t actually let him have any.
