Anime activism

Global protest movements are relying on imagery from Japan. Here's why.

The Straw Hat Pirates’ flag in Nepal, 2025 (Sunil Pradhan, Getty Images)

You might have read that activists in Nepal and Indonesia are using the pirate flag from the anime ONE PIECE to protest their respective governments. The flag has also shown up in protests in support of Palestine in London, and the “Block Everything” campaign in Paris. Demonstrators are using this cute and colorful flag to rally their troops, challenge their authorities, and in Nepal’s case, successfully topple a regime. The sight of all this anime in the midst of protest and revolution seems to have shocked mainstream journalists. CNN has run two stories on the topic, and for a month, I’ve been fielding interview requests from the likes of the BBC, New Lines Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Almost all of them ask variations on the same incredulous question: why on Earth would political activists rally around an anime character?

But a better question is: why wouldn’t they?

The legendary Osamu Tezuka coined the word “anime” to distinguish his pioneering 1963 television show Tetsuwan Atomu (literally “Mighty Atom,” a.k.a. Astro Boy) from imported cartoons. It represented Japan’s first domestically-produced full-length animated TV series; until its debut, Japanese children had to make do with translations of foreign hits like Popeye and The Flintstones. Although Tezuka intended Astro Boy for children, the very first episode in fact ended with a demonstration in the streets, as robots hoisted signs demanding equal rights. Protest is baked into the creative DNA of Japanese anime, and always has been.

“Human rights for robots!” From the first episode of Tetsuwan Atom.

This makes sense. A great deal of the most popular anime, then and now, is based on manga, and those comic books played a key role in the postwar protest movements of Japan. By the late Sixties, as I wrote in the book that gives this newsletter its name, student radicals devoured hard-boiled titles such as spy-assassin Golgo 13 and sports manga like Star of the Giants and Tomorrow’s Joe. Back then, manga were seen purely as kids’ stuff, so reading them publicly was partly just a fun way to stick it to the squares. But the content was often revolutionary, too. Manga became so entwined with the student protest movement that in 1971, a terrorist group took credit for hijacking a jet with the phrase “we are Tomorrow’s Joe.”

Anime has almost as long of a history in protest. In 1978, Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos banned Japanese giant robot shows altogether in an attempt to blunt the influence of the series Voltes V on young crusaders. In 1981, some twenty thousand Japanese youth rallied in Shinjuku to deliver the Anime New Century Declaration to the adults of Japan. In 2019, Chilean protestors used Japanese characters in their “social outburst” equality movement, while in 2020, the Thailand democracy movement used the ubercute Hamtaro to energize young protestors. And in 2021, Hong Kong democracy advocates employed imagery from ONE PIECE, along with characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion and others, on their signboards.

Even against this historical backdrop, ONE PIECE in particular seems to have grabbed an outsized piece of mindshare among protestors. What is it about the series that speaks so deeply to those who feel a need to protest? I think there are multiple factors at play. The first and arguably biggest reason is Japan’s general political inscrutability. I’ve written about this at length before, but Japan’s propensity for staying out of the headlines means fans can consume its products without fear of making some kind of inadvertent political statement. Japan has, in effect, cancel-proofed itself. And as a result anime has emerged as one of the few things, perhaps the only thing, that everyone on the planet seems to be able to agree on.

The ubiquity of the series plays another big role. ONE PIECE debuted in 1997 in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump (the same magazine, incidentally, I wrote a feature on for The New Yorker last month.) It has been going strong ever since. There are as of this writing 112 collected volumes – that’s well over 20,000 pages – and more than a thousand episodes of anime, plus a well-received live-action series produced by Netflix in 2023. This is the kind of sprawling fantasy world one can lose themselves in, and a great many have, and continue to do so.

This leads to another reason why ONE PIECE plays such a central role in modern protest movements. Anime is the de-facto fantasy escape for many young people around the world; in many ways, it has come to occupy the role that rebellious American rock and roll and hip-hop did for earlier generations. Like them, ONE PIECE deals in adolescent power-fantasies. The protagonist, Luffy D. Monkey, is a buccaneer with arms of rubber and a heart of gold, searching for comrades in a world that seems designed to crush the dreams of young people. His merry band of Straw Hat Pirates fight for freedom and justice, rebelling against the “World Government,” an oligarchy of aristocrats who rule with absolute authority. This message undoubtedly resonates with young folks raised amid situations that politically resemble it – whether in Asia or the West. And what better way to express that shared frustration than “flying” the instantly-recognizable pirate flag?

And that flag’s design is another key as to why it has become such a symbol of global protests. It is based upon a Jolly Roger, of course, that stereotypical symbol from the age of piracy in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. But unlike those banners, it is designed to look as un-threatening as possible. The style is classic kawaii, the Japanese aesthetic exemplified by subtly simplified and softly rounded designs, often with a Western flair (Hello Kitty hails from London, in Sanrio’s lore.) This softness gives those who might use the Straw Hat Pirates’ flag a bit of cushion and even comfort, on the dangerous path that they’re treading. Its cuteness also gives wiggle room, acting like a sly wink to those in the know. It lets one telegraph their dissent without embracing the aggression and lawlessness that a traditional Jolly Roger represents.

But come to think of it, there’s an even bigger reason why the mass media might be fixating on anime activism all of a sudden. Democracy seems to be hanging by a thread in many Western nations. The United States feels particularly precarious at the moment. It is led by a bully who empowers other bullies at home and abroad, who believes himself above the law, has publicly suggested terminating the Constitution, and seems less interested in governance or diplomacy than lining his own pockets. None of this is doing America’s image any favors.

It can be hard to remember today, but for many years after World War II, America set global standards for fun and freedom. Our films and foods, our policies and protest movements, our competence in comparison to undemocratic regimes — all of it and more made America more than just a place. We were an idea, an ideal, a beacon for the world. Today American soft power is at an ebb, our founding ideals in tatters, the unseriousness of our leaders on display for all the world to see. And so those in search of hope must cast their sights elsewhere for inspiration. They are seeking out the fantasies of other nations to nourish their imaginations, and the protest movements of other people to give them courage. It’s a state of affairs that is both fascinating and sad. And it’s also the real reason anime activism is captivating the rebels of the world.