Ye Olde Staging Point

The basic premise of NT,HT is a conglomerate of sci-fi themes with which most viewers will be familiar. The main character, Shu (an abbreviation of a much longer Japanese name), is a likeable, nondescript young man with a cheerful outlook and a world experience that does not extend beyond the borders of his small hometown in Japan. After meeting a mysterious and taciturn girl on the way home from martial arts classes (in which he has again been humiliated), he has a run-in with strange robot creatures and is transported into an alien world--an alternate, far-future Earth, perhaps. The girl he meets has the mysterious ability to create and control water--a skill that makes her an immensely valuable pawn in the battle to control this future Earth, which is nothing but a parched and desolate wasteland.

Upon their arrival in this strange world, Shu and the girl are immediately captured by the forces of King Hamdo, who needs water to fuel his armies and technology in his quest to conquer the planet. Hamdo is also quite insane, and the NT, HT follows the adventures of Shu and the characters he encounters as he struggles to survive imprisonment, makes his escape, and ultimately plays a pivotal role in the final battle for the planet.

The story, told progressively throughout a dozen 25-minute episodes, kept my interest and managed to throw several unexpected twists into a fairly straightforward tale of heroism and sacrifice. About half a dozen characters rise to the forefront of the story, and all are vibrant and sympathetic in their own ways--even the villains. King Hamdo's descent into madness is well-portrayed; we feel the resentment of Lady Abelia, his assistant, as she carries out Hamdo's orders even when they fly against common sense and morality; and we can empathize with Nabuca, a tormented soldier forced into service in Hamdo's army, who knows the atrocities he is ordered to commit are wrong but who commits them anyway in the hopes of being one day freed. We see the pain in the eyes of rebels who hate Hamdo for his crimes, but who don't realize that their bloody acts of vengeance make them Hamdo's moral equivalents. And most importantly, we grow fond of simple Shu, who sees right and wrong for what they are and in whose eyes no crime is too great for forgiveness and redemption.

If NT, HT were just a collection of interesting characters, a fun sci-fi setting, and the usual heroics, it would work just fine. But what elevates it above the crowd is the way that it incorporates difficult moral issues into an otherwise fairly straightforward plot. In particular, NT, HT unflinchingly gazes into the horrors of World War 2 Japan and at terrible wartime crimes which we are no closer to comprehending even 50 years after the fact.

Among the World War 2-esque issues the series addresses is one of the most disturbing questions that has arisen in the aftermath of that conflict: how does such a thing happen? How do perfectly rational, sensible people come to commit nightmarish atrocities in the service of a tyrant? Hamdo's insanity is clear to all, in the way that Hitler's insanity and the madness of the Japanese war ministry's policies were painfully clear to anyone with eyes to see by final year of the war. Yet Hamdo's troops--whose uniforms bear a striking resemblance to Japanese WW2 army uniforms--follow his orders without question, willfully deceiving themselves with delusions that following orders, no matter how awful, is the quickest way to end the war and return the world to the way it was. Hamdo uses words to manipulate those closest to him, twisting concepts like loyalty and love into hideous caricatures of their true meanings, convincing his followers that his vision must take precedence over petty and passing concerns of morality.

Among the more harrowing scenes in NT, HT is a chilling extended sequence in which Hamdo's armies raid a local village to kidnap and forcibly recruit soldiers to bolster their dwindling ranks. We see children torn away from sobbing parents and we watch as the troops methodically and mechanically obliterate the village and its inhabitants once they have met their recruitment quota. Shu's disbelief that people are actually doing such horrible things to other people is a disbelief that parallels our own inability to comprehend how Axis doctors could experiment on living prisoners or how Nazi guards--normal people--could watch as human beings were herded like animals into death chambers.

A second and more specific issue addressed in NT, HT is that of sexual slavery. As the story of women forced by the Japanese military into sexual slavery comes slowly to light, NT, HT shines a spotlight on the issue by forcing us to watch as one of the main characters, Sara, is captured and forced into the "service" of Hamdo's troops. We watch uncomfortably as Sara, driven nearly insane by this torturous treatment, brutally kills a would-be rapist and escapes (easily the most excruciating scene in the series)--only to be haunted by her mistreatment through the remainder of the story. [BEGIN SPOILER] There is no easy healing for her, and when she finds out late in the series that she is pregnant as a result of being raped by Hamdo's soldiers, she attempts to kill herself in a fit of despair; and even afterwards struggles with feelings of hatred for the unwanted but innocent baby growing inside her. It is Shu's insistence that life--both Sara's and her unborn baby's--has intrinsic and immeasurable value that wins out; he cannot solve Sara's problems, but he can lend her the strength and encouragement to carry on even under life's unasked-for burdens. [END SPOILER]

In its careful but honest look at these issues, NT, HT rises well above the level of "standard sci-fi" and into the realm of contemporary parable. Despite the occasional horror of its subject matter, the series shows quite commendable restraint: the violence depicted is strong but only used when the point could not be made without it; and the darker sexual issues are treated as tastefully as possible (there is no onscreen sex or nudity) without compomising the effectiveness of the message. And what is even more amazing is that despite the bleak undercurrents of torture, imprisonment, and brutality, NT, HT manages to emerge an immensely positive story. It is a celebration of bravery and sacrifice, and a powerful story of good triumphing over evil--even when the victory requires tremendous sacrifice.

NT, HT is anime, and it is sci-fi, but the story it tells is greater than the sum of those parts. Highly recommended.