Jun 10, 2022
I'm happy to be the first person on MAL to review one of the most controversial and hilariously awful manga of all time. Manga Kenkanryu or "Hating the Korean Wave" is a manga written by a hardcore ultranationalist from 2chan during the late 2000s. It sold over 1 million copies in Japan, although according to Japanese media from the time, there is serious doubt that most readers took it seriously. Many people bought it just to laugh at it.
A young boy's grandfather dies while recalling his service in WW2 and how much better the rest of Asia would be if it had stayed under Japanese
...
control. The MC has been taught by liberal teachers to apologize for Japan's past crimes, but upon meeting Koreans he discovers "The Truth". What follows is a series of strawman debates that our MC has against the lazy, stupid, incompetent Korean exchange students. The manga accuses Koreans of having no ability to create anything and merely copy Japanese greatness, yet the manga is itself a copy. The entire manga just directly steals arguments that white supremacists have made for 60 years to justify the colonization of Africa and applies this to South Korea. MC learns that Koreans are too stupid, lazy, and impulsive to build a civilization. According to this manga, Koreans were basically in the Stone Age until Japan colonized them and taught them the ways of civilization. All of Korea's important infrastructure was built by the Japanese and now South Korea is just collapsing back into squalor and savagery without the Japanese masters to tend to it.
The manga also goes on tangents to say stuff like Unit 731 never existed, all Japanese war crimes are fabricated, and also a chapter devoted to saying South Korea cheats as soccer and that's the only reason they perform better than Japan at international tournaments!
Far right media aimed at rabid nationalists doesn't have to be super well written to find an audience. However, it's supposed to at least try to be convincing. The reason the arguments of racist colonialists worked for decades in Europe and America (and some online assholes still believe them) is that many African kingdoms really weren't that advanced prior to colonization, and many modern African nations have struggled with civil war, corruption, poverty, and population growth outpacing GDP growth, so some actually get poorer every year. A lot of the African nations look really bad on paper, so any far-right clown can make some charts and graphs to say "These nations suck. It must be because these people suck." You know who doesn't look bad on paper? South Korea. The South Korean economy was already outpacing the Japanese economy when this was written and has continued to do so every year since. While Japan has a larger population and and this keeps Japan's total GDP larger, South Korea will soon surpass Japan in GDP per capita at the current rate. Meanwhile, South Korea's student test scores are as good as Japanese scores across nearly every category, better in some categories. South Korea builds new infrastructure all the time and has very nice airports, trains, etc. The manga stole an argument that was based entirely around country A looking way worse on paper than country B. Then it applies this argument to Country C that's statistically on par in every way with country D, so it just becomes laughable. I can't even be offended by this manga because it's so bad. A Japanese ex-pat actually reviewed this turd for the New York Times, chuckling about the fact the Japanese are all drawn with Nordic features, while only the Koreans look Asian. This is an entire manga of Nordic Chad Japanese looks in disgust at a South Korea that actually looks a lot more like Haiti or Liberia than it resembles South Korea. 1 million copies sold! This thing sold more copies than all of DC combined last year! LOL
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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