Hinomaru Gaisen Otome
The Girls Trying to Bring About National Pride

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7/10 (6.5 to 7, it's fine)
Hi no Maru Gaisen Otome has a bad reptutaion. Why? Because, at least for politically charged westerners, this obscure manga decides to go a different path from 90% of the other manga, and for such people, who have not read it, that is an unforgivable sin.

Hi no Maru Gaisen Otome is just another absurd and maybe even conspiranoic manga about nationalistic japanese people, but mainly, a girl who finds herself involved in such group, leading to different situations. There are "worse" stuff out there, specially in more underground manga, yet the one bombarded by a loud group of people, ... is this one. I believe that each reader should form their own opinion if they manage to get their hands on the work, because this is manga, there's more to it than the superficial political message, which is not that rare in manga to begin with, it's just covered in comedy or expressed by a villain.

The art in this work is good, and if your inerest in manga also revolves around the art, characters and plot, then you could give this one a try.

I liked this manga because it's daring, to begin with. You know what you're getting into when you're making something like this. I also liked the characters and the fact that the events in this work are based on real life japanese events, as well as real life political protestants.

Hinomaru Gaisen Otome is a manga about denying japanese war crimes, making the japanese (and especially the far-right) the good guys and the others the bad guys.

To realize how much this manga is stupid, the main character follows the nationalist movement only because the leader is a pretty woman she follows on social media.

Using a high-school girl to attract otakus is a lame way.

I will not review the art or the character design, because they are dull and not interesting at all.

Try to make believe that a population the victim of a global injustice is one step to fascism.

Don't read it. And if you ... do want to read it, don't buy it.

Iris Chang was an author best known for writing the 1997 Nonfiction novel "The Rape Of Nanking". It is a through documentation of various war crimes committed by the Japanese imperial army prior to the second world war, which include the aforementioned Rape of Nanking and the Nanjing Massacre. Naturally, this was not met with warm praise by Right-Wing Japanese audiences. Following the book's publishing, Chang was lambasted by many ultranationalist groups, who had sent her many death threats and even left threatening note on her car. This had a profoundly negative impact on her mental health, ultimately leading to her tragically committing suicide on ... November 9th, 2004.

And now here I am, nearly 20 years later, honoring her legacy by writing a negative review of this garbage propaganda manga on an anime reviewing website (the word honoring is doing quite a bit of legwork here).

This manga sucks. The message essentially boils down to "Japanese nationalists good, Everyone else bad" by attempting to categorize the latter in the most cartoonishly negative lights possible. Specifically, the counter protestors are portrayed as terrible, horrible, no good, very bad people who will stop at nothing to flip the middle finger and peddles the conspiracy that the Koreans and Chinese are attempting to steal Japan and genocide the people. The brazen denial war crimes also occurs, claiming that the comfort women are a "made up tragedy", while also saying that those who are called out for these actions are the real victims. Honestly, all of this would be hilarious if the implications of it all weren't so tragic.

Iris Chang did not die for this.