Paper short abstract:

Asai Inio's manga Dead Dead Demons creates an alternate world where a UFO over Tokyo sends out waves of "invaders." However, associations between the alien invaders and WWII-era Japan hint that the invasion to be feared the most is that of lingering ideology from Japan's colonial past.

Paper long abstract:

Asai Inio, of Oyasumi Punpun fame, is known for experimental and off-beat manga. In his current serialization Deddo Deddo Dēmonzu De De De De Desutorakushon (Dead Dead Demons De De De De Destruction), he moves to a more realistic visual style, but the story remains experimental and off-beat. The manga creates an alternate-present world where a UFO hovers over Tokyo (after a disastrous failed invasion that killed tens of thousands) and sends out waves of "invaders." However, this ongoing invasion and the military response to it have already become routinized, mere background noise to the lives of the characters. I argue that this text metaphorically summons many present-day anxieties: the 3-11 triple disasters, conservative politics and remilitarization, immigration and anti-immigration sentiment, the dehumanizing effects of technology and social media, the increasing power and reach of large corporations, etc. However, the metaphors are not one-dimensional and straightforward, and the text mixes them for interesting effects. Most importantly, it pointedly creates associations between the alien "invaders" and WWII-era Japan and the Japanese imperial project. It therefore summons anxieties about immigration, but uses those anxieties to propose that the invasion to be feared the most is the invasive persistence of unexamined or lingering ideology from Japan's colonial past in peaceful present-day Japan. Ironically, since this past is unexamined, in reacting against it Japan risks sliding back into the very militarism and xenophobia that characterized it.