Ling Feng Zhe

When I first saw it, I couldn't believe there actually existed an anime that focused only on Karl Marx's life & biography. Then I watched it, and the fact that it was Chinese made sense. It made me a little upset - after all, it was a kind of propaganda. Also, as seen in the anime, Marx-kun didn't like many compliments, and you know what? This anime is basically it!

With my first comment said - this "piece of art" is 147 hours of praises and compliments, telling us that Marx-kun was the BEST PHILOSOPHER EVER and stuff (honestly I disagree with that but it's a ... Chinese anime btw, probably the budget was all covered by the Communist Party), I'll tell you guys the truth about "The Leader".

The animation is poor sometimes. Yeah, only sometimes. Actually, many times. When it's not focused on Marx-kun or Engels-kun, it is CG-based and pretty weird. I mean, Jenny's hair didn't move naturally most part of the anime. There were scenes that really made me think I was watching some MMD animation. For real. Unfocused people at the background sometimes were just weird, with a real bad animation, even for normal anime standards. Let me give you an example: in Kill la Kill, people at the background often were just copies of the same individual, right? In The Leader, they aren't. That sounds good, right? Yeah, but actually some of them - a policeman, a chief, a NORMAL PERSON, their faces were just... wrong.

My ears couldn't believe what they were listening sometimes. The voice acting is horrible, emotionless at core moments. I mean, some emotions were just forced. Unnatural. Guess the budget was pretty low and the studio must have hired bad or novice actors, I dunno.

This is the time where you ask me, "but Sputnik, if this anime is so awful, why did you rate it with a 6?" Well, it's probably because the story is pretty good. Maybe. Okay, it's not so good. But there was something in it that made me cry when some characters die or just let me go on and finish the anime in some hours. If it were so horrible, sure I would have dropped it. It's not the kind of anime you watch for fun, actually. It's not entertaining at all, no drama involved - only a few, and well, those scenes aren't worth watching - and surely it will make you question why did you ever thought about watching it. Before you do, listen to me: only do if you are truly interested in Karl Marx or Communism. Many philosophical quotes are poorly explained - Bakunin-kun and Proudhon-kun are an example. It was only enjoyable for me because I already knew those guys, and even I was confused sometimes. That's it, farewell.

State capitalism in china is very successful. so successful that the government is facing a paradox: how can it keep calling itself the communist party when the youth is so focused on making money and showing their elevated consumer status ?

This anime is the answer:
1. make the leader a cool and trendy philosopher (clothing, music), keep the grit, drop the science.
2. draw the leader as an exotic individual, attractive but not chinese: the chinese cannot be universal, they shall be specific
3. don't dive into the study, do not explain. criticism shall stay manageable by emerging only from the gifted few
3. insist on social status, virtue ... and membership
4. kowtow to the new leaders who ditch the internationale and administer special treatment to the special people

a recipe to raise communism from the dead: all fashionable and brainless

this thematic was mostly treated with CGI and a few scenes were hand drawn. the animation is cheap, the colors are good.
knowing the science of the capital, i could appreciate that anime as a refresher on the chronology.

episode 3 features aerith's theme from final fantasy VII, so there's that.

I enjoyed this show but I could not honestly recommend it to anyone, even as a fan of Karl Marx and his ideas, this show was disappointing, firstly, it is unavoidable how technically poor this show looks, the 2d and 3d art clashing an unbelievable amount, with every scene seeming to have at least one switch between the two, and the animation in the latter is stiff and robotic, meaning you have a lot of trouble seeing any of these characters as people, especially in the first four episodes.

For me episodes 1-4 were somewhat bland and uninspired, but inoffensive, some of the discussion of philosophy ... was so poorly placed that it was embarrassing to watch, and the pacing was noticeably pretty bad, alongside the fact that Marx himself didn't change visually at all for the three episodes, over what was something like 20? years in real life, it just felt lazy and cheap showing an adult man with two children as looking identical to his teenage self graduating from high school.

Episode 5 is the only part of this show I feel I could call wholly good, not fantastic by any means, the pacing and animation issues are still there, but it felt more human than the previous episodes, and the framing device of Marx explaining worker exploitation to a child was a good way to bring in some of the more dramatized elements of Marxism, such as the comparison between Vampires and Capitalists that Marx was so fond of, as well as the episode actually containing one or two emotional scenes that hit quite well, and I liked the motif of Marx reading a story to people, but it seemed to only look good in comparison to the other episodes, there was still a lot of awkwardness in the writing and execution.

Episode 6 was pretty bad, I was kind of taken aback by how much the creators showed their hand here, there seems to be much less of an effort to hide the propagandistic nature of the show in this episode, with Marx's disagreement with anarchists being used as a way to justify the current dictatorship in china, which many Marxist academics thoroughly disagree with, such as Richard Wolff, who describes China as state capitalist, not socialist, and the subplot of Tom at the Paris commune are in somewhat poor taste, the show seems to be trying to say that the pairs commune being massacred was a good thing because it gave people the chance to fight and die for socialism, and not a bad thing because it was an example of an oppressive state destroying a society largely made up of civilians.

Episode 7 was better than 6 but not as good as 5, the focus was mostly on Marx's relationship with his wife, Jenny, and it felt sincere and honest, but still somewhat stiff, but the section at the end where the narrator describes how good and call china is was just, ugh.

Overall, this show is fine, it has bad parts and some good parts, but those parts would ultimately be better appreciated in a better show. Marx is made into a sort of superhero, or even a sort of messiah, something Marx himself made very clear he would have hated, even in a work as shallow as the communist manifesto, he made sure to emphasize that movements should not idolize their leaders and the presentation of Marx as a pure, handsome superman just felt kind of shit, the man was a drunk journalist who slept until noon and got all of his money from his factory owning sugar daddy, I would have loved to see the sides of Marx that were less "Perfect genius" and more "Lovable Bastard", and the influence of the Chinese government really shows in this text. I expected better from the show in and of itself, but I'm not sure why.

If you want to understand Marx or see something about his life, I'd give this show a pass and recommend Marx for beginners by Ruis, the play "Young Marx", and the film "The Young Karl Marx", not only are these works better in a technical capacity, they are also not associated with any governments, so show an ideologically driven picture of the man, but still something coming from the heart.
More generally if you want to see the man's ideas outside of the context of 19th century England then I'd recommend "Sorry to bother you", "Billy Elliot the musical" and "Night In the Woods", works that, to varying extents, explore these ideas without the handicap of being state-produced propaganda or pinned down to the life of one well read but drunk German Man who died nearly 150 years ago.