ABSTRACT
The exposure of children to the traumas of war (death, violence, loss, and pain and injury) undermine the very ideal of a happy childhood and memories unburdened by sadness. But while the depiction of war traumas has been at the centre of discussion around adult films and popular visual culture for decades, the discourse of “children at war” has shifted into the transnational focus of mass-cultural fictions for young adults only in recent years. With a critical reading of Daisuke Ashihara’s animated television series World Trigger (2013- ongoing), this chapter suggests that popular fictions for children such as Japanese anime/animated children’s series are a valuable yet understudied resource for an understanding of war and its impact on and consumption by today’s globalised entertainment culture. According to popular culture studies and childhood scholar Vicky Lebeau, for instance, the intersection of the child as a symbol, image, and myth in war narratives reveals patterns of cultural roles in relation to a society’s concept of actually suffered and imagined pain as well as their fraught relation. Thus the argument of this analysis holds that the body of the child forms a discursive space through which can be expressed an alternative language to communicate the experience of war traumas in modern societies for an audience not exposed to them in day-to-day living. The employment of aesthetics specific to the market of young adult fictions will complement the analysis as well, hinting at a shift in the contemporary conscience of mass cultural audiences.
