*Impression gathered from the games and animated movies, minus Resident Evil 7.
Plunging into the harem fuelled, sexually repressed world of Resident Evil is such a fun experience, because it gives us a window into how the rest of the world that isn’t the US, and that isn’t too connected to the US, sees the US. It’s especially refreshing when consider how much the US is demonised, not exactly, as one might expect, for dropping not one but two nuclear warhead on the country, but, for being the nation that had that kind of leverage in the first place, as opposed to Japan not being the ones with it; Japan is forever pissed off it was stopped on its own quest to manifest its horrific invasion-fulled destiny, and in the underground world of anime, refuge to so many pro-Imperial Japan sympathisers, the US is always portrayed as a bunch of assholes.
Not that the US isn’t a bunch of assholes, mind you. But it’s portrayed as such for the wrong reasons; it comes from the wrong place. It’s always the enemy camp that betrays friendship principles that are so fundamental to the anime and especially the shounen sub-genre world (which is really just what the anime world is about anyway, at the end of the day), it’s the big bad guys that the heroes, who are obviously on the Japanese side, must defeat, etc.
Very rarely do you see a perspective that looks at the US, and their military and various levels of governance, and thinks, “oh man, that is so cool.” And yet that’s exactly that Resident Evil, or Biohazard, thinks when it sees the United States government, “wow, so cool.”
You can see this incomplete, but dazzled perspective, in the number of different organisms and military branches the story comes up with. The S.T.A.R.S, as that special elite military group, Atmos Airlines, the H.C.F, etc.
This all screams US fanboy. Where the writers promptly daydream themselves as important and relevant to this kind of organisation, and imports a special protagonist in it who shines very brightly in that setting, Leon S. Kennedy. Obviously, I can’t wait to point out the most obvious, Leon’s last name, Kennedy. As a non-American, can you think of a more American name than Kennedy? I can’t. Honestly, my first thought when hearing of Leon’s last name was to wonder about his place in the governmental hierarchy in the game; I mean, was he descended from that Kennedy? My first thought was, is this government? And the even more obvious fact that his full name has a second name in it, to properly and further drive the point home (why is everyone’s name either Scott or Ashley in this country!!). That’s a full-blooded white American right there if you’ve ever seen one.
Aside from his annoying protagonist over-glorification plot armor tropes (more on that in the future), Leon S. Kennedy is basically the embodiment of what America and its government intertwined with its military looks like to an outsider who isn’t too familiar with the functioning of that most obnoxious of western nation. More precisely, I’d say this is the perspective that a non-Westerner as well has of America, because us Europeans don’t see the country that way either, because as westerners, we’re more familiar with its functioning than most even if it remains a foreign country to us—it’s still ultimately less foreign, and still has enough similarities to feel familiar to us.
This is the perspective of someone who is dazzled by the US, one of the main reasons being the entirely foreign nature of its internal functioning. How the military and the government operate is drastically different to Japan’s, even if you take into consideration the Meiji reform, because fundamentally, those are two different nations with vastly, drastically different morally evolutionary roots. The US are our (Europeans’) descendents, whereas Japan luckily never exported itself anywhere else, so it only descents from itself and knows mainly itself, and that last 70 years since WWII hasn’t exactly fundamentally changed that, and quite logically, it can’t (should it even? I personally see nothing exactly wrong with a country wanting to remain closed off on itself. Yes, it’s not evolved and it’s a stopper to evolution. But to each their own, who is the rest of the world to stick its nose in other people’s business).
Panemstan
I had a laugh when hearing this name because my first thought was, Panem? The Hunger Games? And was a bit dumbfounded at the culturally unrelated last part, Stan? A former Persian Empire descendent? Huh?
Turns out it’s Afghanistan. It’s just Afghanistan renamed.
Here’s another instance of the Middle East being mentioned in a Japanese production, in the same undefined, broad, “we have heard of it but it is foreign to us” kind of way (translation is in the comments).
The Umbrella Corporation
The Umbrella Corporation somehow remains the funniest to me, because this is what screams the most “massive American company with a huge market share” but a la Japanese. The Umbrella Corporation is what would happen if Japan tried to have a massive large scale omnipresent mega corporation the way the US do, that basically have soft-core invaded the whole world (think Apple or Facebook), but if it was done with fundamentally Japanese principles and ways of thinking.
East Slavic Republic
As someone who lives in Central Europe I had another laugh when I saw this, this massive umbrella (coughs) term for the ethnically slavic world of central and eastern Europe.
It’s visible that the creators of these ideas are incredibly far removed from these locations. That they have never seen these locations, and that, similarly to my former Japanese teacher who came to France to get dazzled by a culture so vastly different than his own, this is their first time doing this.
These are people who are not familiar with the outside world and who never had the opportunity to travel and broaden their horizon and expand their mind. This is totally, completely, entirely foreign to them.
As part of being now connected to the rest of the world, Japan ultimately keeps up with the fact that, things, happen, beyond their borders. But due to their geographic and mental isolation, these things ultimately remain shockingly foreign to them, the same way that hearing about a conflict in the Middle East while us 90’s kids were growing up, was known because of how omnipresent it was in the media at the time, but so foreign, because of how geographically removed it was from a non-involved civilian’s daily life.
Surely having done business with Europe in the past, Japan has heard that there’s such a continent somewhere in the world. And then looking beyond the now prominent and yet in slight decline West, it also must be mildly aware of different cultures beyond that.
But that’s a broad, general, and especially most importantly, undefined knowledge. It’s like me knowing that there’s a bunch of islands in the Pacific because I had a friend from the Marshall Islands, and then not knowing much else beyond what she told me, because of course school doesn’t care to educate us on these matters (full complaint about the school system coming on my main website soon, don’t forget to subscribe).
Japan, and the creators of Biohazard, have a broad, and general understanding of the layout of the world. But that’s what it really is, an undefined understanding of the world. Their knowledge of the world is completely undefined.
The US’ foreign policies
Yet what they do understand, is that the US is known for sticking its nose in other people’s business. Their foreign policies department, more precisely. And since this is what was most prominent and prevalent about the US back in the 80’s and 90’s, the times around which the conception of Biohazard would have happened, this is what’s reflected the most in the story.
The epitome of the American government and its military and its secret services, Leon S. Kennedy, travels all around the world to mingle in the locals’ politics, and this is where the horror filled a la very typically Japanese imagination of the author slips in and fills in the blanks. What would be a foreign conflict or situation which in the real world would be about resources, or some other interests of a political nature, becomes about what’s going on in the author’s mind; being a badass, kicking ass, and zombies.
First he travels to the very much known conflict in the Middle East orchestrated by the US that was present at the time, which instead of being called Afghanistan is dare I say politically, although I think this is more about the author sees it in his imagination, is renamed Panemstan, some other nation ending in -stan but acting very much as a placeholder for any of the Middle Eastern countries the US chose to have a beef with.
Then there is how Eastern Europe in all its post-communist glory was still, at the time, seen as a poor, underdeveloped region through the lens of the West. I know this because I originate from a Western European country and moved abroad to central Europe, and I can both tell you about the biased reality the West portrays in the media and at school, all because of Russian and communist influence, vs the reality of these Eastern European nations, which has precious little to do with the stigma the rest of the continent likes to put on us. I’m very offended in their name, to be frank.
Because this is a globally spread idea, this is the one general chunk of information that the undefined and broad understanding of the world that the author managed to pick up of the world will have of Eastern Europe. Which becomes “East Slavic Republic,” another area where the epitome of US foreign policies of involving itself in everything, Leon S. Kennedy, travels to, to, once again, be relevant in the middle of the conflict, and infuse his own interests into the story.
This is the imagination of a person who grew up watching the US and thought they were all incredibly cool, and the same way that we want to be relevant to forces that shove themselves in our line of sight and act as if they ought to be relevant to our own daily lives, we end up wanting to participate and have a place in their pantheon.
Since a video game developer is not going to become a secret service agent tasked to save the president’s daughter, a common plot in those kinds of stories (see: The Night Agent, where instead of the president’s kid it’s the vice president’s), instead he can daydream about and create a story about it!
This is what Resident Evil/Biohazard is. The United States of America, their government and military, and their foreign policies, as seen by the non-imperalist biased eye of a Japanese foreigner who just thinks the US government is cool, and wishes he could participate in everything that he sees, and bring in his own personality, and the content of his mind (all the harem stuff and horror stuff) along for the ride.
Thanks for reading, there’ll be heaps more on Resident Evil coming in the following weeks, among them, animated movies & Anderson’s movies comparisons, movies & games comparisons, general reviews + a bunch of essays on the harem thing because Ugh god I hate it. Stay tuned my lovelies <3.
