Is Anime Woke?

Woke has become a buzzword throughout US media. People use the word to label all sorts of people and ideas: woke companies, woke video games, woke chicken nuggets. Beyond being bad English grammar, “I am woke” (grammatically it should be “I woke up” or “I have awakened” or even “I’m awake.” Woke is the past tense form of wake. ) carries the weight of identity for many people. The term also works as as slur. So, before I can answer the question “Is anime woke?” I will first attempt to define what woke means as a slang term.

Woke is a slang term that points toward awakening to social injustice. This use of the word goes back to the 1950s and 1960s within the American Black community where the term used to “figuratively refer to being ‘aware’ or ‘well informed’ in a political or culture sense” (Saad, 2023). William Melvin Kelley, in his 1962 New York Times article, links the term woke with the slang term dig, which was used to mean “to understand.” Woke associated with people that were cool, hip, smart, and worthy of being a role model during the 1950s-1960s (Simama, 2023). The term reappeared during after several police-related incidents against the Black community around 2015. While these incidents were not, sadly, anything new, widespread media and Internet coverage brought these incidents to people’s attention. Woke became a badge of honor among Democrats and became a term encompassing what needed to be stopped from the Republican perspective (Jacques, 2023). It soon became a term used among conservatives as a placeholder for everything they disliked about Democrats and the political left. Teaching about Black history with references to Critical Race Theory, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI for short), and environmental, social and governance policies by companies (ESG for short) and anything dealing with LGBTQ+ fall under the label “woke” (Baumgartner, 2024). In other words, “being out of touch with reality.” Critical Race Theory is the idea that racism is systemic in society and is baked into how institutions, laws, and policies function.

Zach Goldberg, a self-proclaimed “wokeness studies scholar” at the Manhattan Institute, says “woke” means more than just left-wing radicalism. He says the essence of woke is “the belief that outcome disparities between groups – be they races, sexes, or ‘genders,’ etc. – are largely if not entirely the product of oppressive social forces and structures.” (Jacques, 2023)

Jabari Simama (2023) argues that this is a distortion of woke’s original meaning. During the 1960s, the word associated with freedom and justice for oppressed people:

“Growing up using the term, I can say without fear of honest contradiction that it never meant teaching young people that America was systematically racist (although there are many historians and political scientists who believe that it is).”

Erykah Badu, a singer songwriter, believes woke no longer belongs to those who seek social justice. Rather, the term has used by conservatives as a stand in for “Black” or “thug.” (Saad, 2023). Woke is defined in Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster as (definition 1) being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” and (definition 2) “politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme.”

So Is Anime Woke?

To answer this question, I will use the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster first definition of woke because it aligns with the historical use of the term. Wokeness extends to general awareness of facts and problems a society faces. Each society and social group will have its own definition of wokeness. Republicans, for example, are woke about the problems wokeness can pose when it becomes militant. They are woke about the decline of organized religion and of community. Democrats are woke about climate change and continuing race issues. Neither party is woke about the plight of Native Americans. By the way, I am “woke” to the painful grammar of these sentences! But then, slang usually has painful grammar. I find “to rizz up” equally painful because it means “to charisma up” someone. Again, nothing new. The slang of “my day” was equally bad, but I’m digressing.

And when we break down the question “Is anime woke?”, we have to ask “what anime?” Anime spans a a wide range of genres and changes across the decades. Anime is a medium like “American movies” or “French literature”are mediums. Anime is too broad a term to be labeled with a single word like “woke.” Some genres of anime may be more “woke” than others and in different areas. Mecha, for example, might be considered more “woke” about the power dynamics of governments and societies while not being “woke” about social issues at a grassroots level. “Slice-of-life”, on the other hand, might be more aware of grassroots problems. But I will keep to the generalization of the question now that we have the caveat in mind. Otherwise, I will have to address–and generalize–each of anime’s different genres and periods and examine how “woke” applies. I doubt anyone would want to read that long and essay, nor do I, if I’m honest, want to write something that long.

So, using this definition of woke and this caveat about anime, anime is indeed woke about many problems Japanese society faces. Some stories are woke to the problems developed societies at large face, such as the mental health problems men face and the misogyny women continue to face. Anime is woke about the challenges different-sexed people face: usually illustrating this with demons, animal people, or half-breeds like half-elves. Anime is not woke about American issues. Because anime addresses problems within Japanese society, many narratives can appear as quite conservative to Americans, such as stories about men trying to protect women or climb to the top of their sport. Japan is socially different from the United States. Japan faces entirely different problems which makes stories which address those problems simultaneously woke for Japan and not woke for the United States.

The Problems with Woke

And that brings me to my problems with the modern use of the term, for all the more my opinion is worth. First, the term belongs to the American Black community and links with their struggle for equal rights. Woke links with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists. It’s not appropriate to apply such a term to anime or chicken nuggets or to all the other ridiculous things it sits in front of now. Second, wokeness is relative to society. What makes a person woke in the US would make them not woke in the UK or Japan. As I attempted to point out, Republicans are woke about certain topics; Democrats are woke about others. Both are also blind to issues. A person can be woke about some issues and not woke about others at the same time. Third, making wokeness a personal identity label or a personal smear is nonsense because of this mixed awareness. Cramming the complexity that most issues have and the complexity of the human identity into a single word is intellectual laziness. It allows people to be dismissive of real problems and to dehumanize people. Woke has become an ideological label which makes it easier to other people. And such othering can lead to violence and tribalism. At the least, it prevents people from understanding the nuance issues and people have. Identifying yourself with a label and slapping a label on others dehumanizes, and dehumanization is a step away from genocide as history, even modern history, continually points out. Wokeness is dangerous not because of what it represents, but because it has become yet another wedge people use to separate into disparate tribes. It stops discussion on both sides and stops people from realizing that there are no sides in the first place. Defining yourself in opposition to another is childish.

Is anime woke? is the wrong question to ask because the answer is both yes and no. Anime points out problems in Japanese society and the larger human condition. All good stories point to problems within their home societies and the human condition. It’s not appropriate to apply a politicized American term to another culture’s narratives. The label doesn’t fit anime because it has a different context and history. Applying such a label shows you aren’t woke! You are misappropriating an already misappropriated term to a different cultural output. Ironic isn’t it? And that shows just how problematic the tossing around of the term can be. A better question is to ask “how well does anime explore the human condition?” And the answer to that question too depends.

References

Baumgartner Vaughan, Dawn (2024) Republicans vow to fight the ‘woke agenda’ in election ads. What does that even mean? McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Jacques, Ingrid (2023) Conservatives need to better define ‘woke.’ USA Today. 3/13/2023.

Kelley, William Melvin. (1962) If You’re Woke You Dig It; No mickey mouse can be expected to follow today’s Negro idiom without a hip assist. If You’re Woke You Dig It. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1962/05/20/archives/if-youre-woke-you-dig-it-no-mickey-mouse-can-be-expected-to-follow.html.

Saad, Nardine. (2023) What does ‘woke’ mean now? Erykah Badu, who popularized it, clarifies original definition. Los Angeles Times.

Simama, Jabari (2023) In Defense of ‘Woke’. Governing. 4/7/2023.