ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a group of independent films made during the Heisei era (1989–2019) in the genres of fiction, documentary, and anime and examines how some of the major contemporary issues are pursued. Mori Tatsuya's documentaries A (1998) and A2 (2001) examined the mass media's stereotypes regarding the terrorism of the Aum Shinrikyō religious cult, and various documentaries and fiction films questioned the national solidarity facing the disasters caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe. Katabuchi Sunao's anime, Kono sekai no katasumi ni (2016), focused on the quotidian experience and suffering of ordinary citizens in a local city during WWII. Tsukamoto Shinya in his graphically vivid adaptation of classic war novel Nobi (2015) portrayed the horror of individual Japanese soldiers fighting in the Filipino war zones becoming aggressors. These films function as a social critique exposing what mainstream media and commercial films ignored in portraying these topics and presenting alternative views rooted in everyday human experience that challenge pervasive media narratives and cultural mythologies. They also interrogate easy categorizations between hero and enemy or victims and aggressors, presenting confusing ambiguity rather than familiar answers, making their social critique uneasy.
