War and déjà vu : Mamoru Oshii's Patlabor 2 and The sky crawlers

Abstract

Mamoru Oshii’s war centered oeuvre offers a unique, prophetic and radical way of thinking about the relationship between war and peace. This dissertation focuses on his two animation films Patlabor 2(1993) and The Sky Crawlers(2008), as their similarity and contrast can offer a critical entry for understanding his dynamic speculation of war. His works address the issues around electronics technology-aid warfare, media representation of war, video war game culture, religious ideology and so forth, which are of political urgencies in contemporary Japanese society and beyond. Central to the two films is the subject of war as a concurrent and fundamental reality as well as structure under the myth of peace or stability. These two films also serve as a critical reflection upon the theoretical issues arising from Michel Foucault’s genealogical writings on war and Jean Baudrillard’s account of simulation, symbolic exchange and death.