mainline anime imports to the west that I saw on late night cable TV in the late 80s and early 90s were about mecha and tanks and sociopolitical and even environmental crises and the horniness was reserved for visibly adult characters.
That’s factually true… for the most part. The 90s and 2000s still had a lot of quality anime, but the de-politicization only increased. If there’s politics now, it’s rarely leftist in even the liberal sense of the word.
Oh, political messages never left (how could they? It’s just about impossible to tell a story without a political perspective of some kind), but the messages became more blatantly nationalistic, patriarchal, misogynistic, and reactionary over time, sometimes just outright genocidal. Sometimes the politics absolutely reek like they do in Gate, Shield Hero, Goblin Slayer, and Attack on Titan.
That’s factually true… for the most part. The 90s and 2000s still had a lot of quality anime, but the de-politicization only increased. If there’s politics now, it’s rarely leftist in even the liberal sense of the word.
Oh, political messages never left (how could they? It’s just about impossible to tell a story without a political perspective of some kind), but the messages became more blatantly nationalistic, patriarchal, misogynistic, and reactionary over time, sometimes just outright genocidal. Sometimes the politics absolutely reek like they do in Gate, Shield Hero, Goblin Slayer, and Attack on Titan.