With Corona-chan making a hikikomori out of many of us, we all probably have some more time to kill than usual. And in my completely objective and correct opinion, the best way to spend that time is to follow a few new anime series. I mean, what else are you gonna do? Be productive? Pffft. Without further ado, let’s take a look at what the Fall 2020 anime season has to offer!

Drifting upon autumn’s chilly winds comes a new batch of anime to sprinkle each week with some 2D spice. Among the falling leaves, we find several continuations that I’m sure will appease the DanMachi and Haikyuu fandoms, as well as a remake for Higurashi.

Yellow leaves fly by, heralding another season of Golden Kamuy, a historical anime set at the time of the Hokkaido gold rush with a large emphasis on the culture of the indigenous Ainu people of Japan. Balancing bursts of grisly, high-stakes action with educational segments celebrating Ainu culture, it’s a great watch if you’re interested in late Meiji era Japan—or borrow the manga from our library’s manga collection.

As students shuffle back to school, the familiar face from six years ago makes a dramatic reappearance—it’s Tatsuya Shiba, bringing with him a new season of The Irregular at Magic Highschool. While the story is indeed more or less a power fantasy and thus suffers from a lack of tension, it has interesting and intricate worldbuilding. In particular, its approach to magic is scientific, treating it like a programming language with influence over reality, rather than a fantastical phenomenon.

But enough about the old stuff—let’s take a look at the fresh harvest. As usual, no anime season would be complete without a line-up of isekai, because not even a pandemic can stop those weeds from infesting the anime scene.

I’m Standing on a Million Lives is our quintessential isekai show of the season. The genre has been so saturated at this point that it manages to get away with practically no set-up whatsoever, simply throwing our generic black-haired protagonist Yotsuya into a video game-esque world. The story starts out at an incredibly rushed rate, taking barely any time to develop its characters or build the world. The series, however, does seem to be looking to tackle themes of feeling lost in life, bullying, and friendship. If it picks up the slack on its character writing, it could show us something meaningful.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, the other isekai show of the season, takes a lighter approach. There’s not much to say about this one—a girl is transported to another world in a bear costume that gives her the ultimate ability to Mary Sue her way through life. It’s pretty cute though, and will provide you a brief escape from reality in these harsh times.

Some of you may now be thinking, “This line-up sounds rather mediocre so far.” But don’t give up on this anime season just yet, because Maeda Jun, the father of Angel Beats! and Charlotte is coming out with yet another original anime: The Day I Became a God. It follows Youta, a boy preparing to enter university, who meets a girl named Hina with god-like powers of prophecy. She tells him the world will end in thirty days—and thus begins Youta’s final summer. It’s a premise that fits a Maeda Jun original perfectly: just a light-hearted slice-of-life with fantasy elements on the surface, but in the shadowed periphery, the Truck-kun of feels awaits the perfect moment to smash your heart into puny, insignificant bits. And after that, you can cry yourself to sleep.

While we’re on the topic of anime original series, Studio Pierrot is coming out with Akudama Drive, a sci-fi action series centering around a group of criminals—Akudama—vying for control over Kansai. While I will never forgive Pierrot for butchering Tokyo Ghoul:re worse than Netflix butchers it’s live-action adaptations, Akudama Drive is definitely one to look out for this season.

As Halloween draws near, so too do cursed monsters appear—and in the shounen series Jujutsu Kaisen, it’s up to Yuji to take them out. After eating an old, gnarly finger (a questionable decision), Yuji absorbs the soul of the demon Sukuna. With his newfound demonic powers, Yuji sets out to exorcise monsters born from the negative emotions of collective humanity. While its basic premise is very similar to other battle shounen stories out there (particularly Bleach), it is actually a very cleverly written story that manages to subvert the shounen genre in spectacular ways. Jujutsu Kaisen is unafraid of depicting darker, more grotesque scenes and eager to confront its characters with moral gray—all the while making subtle jabs at the naiveté of other battle shounen series. Just the first ten chapters of Jujutsu Kaisen were able to bring back that innocent shounen excitement that I haven't felt ever since I became an elitist. So I have great hopes for this anime.

Last but not least is Adachi and Shimamura, carried gently into view by the sweet and dewy autumn breeze. Based on a shoujo-ai light novel series, the story focuses on two friends, Adachi and Shimamura. Adachi descends into ever more confusion as she begins to desire more from their relationship. Shimamura, however, harbours only platonic feelings for Adachi. I can already say with confidence that this anime will be a breath of fresh air for the romance genre. Though it’s shaping up to be a bit of a slow burn, it takes ample time to really flesh out the characters and weave a genuine relationship between the girls—which is about everything I could ask of a romance story.

In the end, all of this is but my humble elitist opinion, so feel free to watch whatever strikes your fancy. There are a lot of other notable shows dropping this season that I wasn’t able to cover, but I hope I’ve piqued your interest in the shows I did choose to mention. Enjoy your Fall 2020 anime!

Note: this was written in early July, so some numbers may have changed. However, nothing detracts from the importance of understanding how war-torn countries are dealing with the pandemic.

Background on the War in Afghanistan

For the past few decades, Afghanistan has been in a state of constant war. During the Cold War era, the country saw clashes between Soviet soldiers who supported the communist government and the US-backed resistance known as the mujahideen. Following Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Taliban, an ultraconservative political-religious faction slowly rose to prominence in the country. They promised to improve security and weed out corruption, as many Afghanistan citizens were wary of the infighting between the mujahideen. However, once in power, they enforced an austere version of Islamic law and promoted brutal punishments such as public executions.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban government came under international scrutiny; they sheltered Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that was behind the tragedy. With the US and international forces, along with their allies in Afghanistan, the Taliban regime was toppled within two months. The US military presence continued to stay for what they defined as reconstruction efforts. In 2004, the US-backed government took control of Afghanistan and in 2014, NATO forces withdrew from the country with an Afghanistan government in place. Say that an Afghanistan government was in place. However, many Taliban fighters were still active and consolidated their power as they seized territories and attacked governments and civilians through bombs. In 2017, the BBC found active Taliban activity in 70% of Afghanistan.

The struggle between the Afghan government and the Taliban continues. Trillions of dollars have been lost in violent conflicts, but no price tag can be attached to the tens of thousands of lives lost. The Afghanistan Papers identified in late 2019 showed that high-ranking US officials knew the war was costly and unwinnable, yet deliberately lied to the public in a facade of optimism. The UN report in February 2019 estimates that more than 32,000 civilians have died. With Afghanistan’s precarious situation, it’s important to understand how the country will fare during the pandemic, as the citizens may be more vulnerable.

COVID-19 in Afghanistan

As the coronavirus disease spreads across the country, its healthcare system - already weakened by decades of war - is being stretched dangerously thin. Cities such as Kabul have shortages in hospital beds and resources, leaving ill patients at home to treat themselves. Oxygen supplies and masks are being depleted across the country, causing the price of cylinders to double by recent June, costing around £200. These shortages are exacerbated by crime and corruption. According to Pajhwok Afghan News, Afghanistan’s largest independent news network, 32 ventilators were stolen from the Health Ministry and smuggled to Pakistan; this case is currently undergoing official investigation. Furthermore, an employee was arrested for allegedly demanding an $80,000 bribe from a company producing hospital medical gears.

The public distrust in the state-run healthcare system is clear, according to an anonymous doctor working in the critical care unit of a major public hospital in Kabul. He says that patients often die because there aren’t enough workers to look after them, and as a result, there have been riots from the relatives resulting in windows being bashed. Unfortunately, the private healthcare system in Afghanistan also suffers from similar shortages of medical equipment. According to Dr. Pip Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization representative for Afghanistan states, this is especially worrying because the COVID-19 cases in Afghanistan may be way higher than what is officially reported due to a lack of testing gears, which are responsible for identifying COVID cases.

On top of the plethora of issues described, Afghanistan health facilities are also being actively attacked as a result of the violent conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan government. A UN study details the various acts of violence inflicted upon healthcare workers and the health system between March 11th and May 23rd. The documented incidents include the case of the abduction of 23 healthcare workers by the extremist group, and worst of all, an attack on a maternity ward in Kabul on April 21st which killed at least 24 people. Deliberate acts of violence against healthcare facilities are prohibited under international humanitarian law and count as war crimes. The UN publicly condemned the violent clashes in Afghanistan as of late June, calling for a global ceasefire. As Deborah Lyons, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and head of UNAMA says, “there is no excuse for such actions; the safety and well-being of the civilian population must be a priority.”

Takeaways

COVID-19 is more than a public health emergency. Especially in countries like Afghanistan, where the health-care system is fragile and there’s constant war, people live in constant fear for their lives. According to an updated report by the US Embassy in Afghanistan on July 6th, the country had a total of 33,190 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 898 deaths. At this time of crisis, the greatest objective should be to ensure this country has access to healthcare services and disturbances such as violence, crime, and corruption are at a minimum.

The Chinese government is expanding detention camps in an effort to suppress the 11 million approximate Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang, China. Xinjiang has been under control of China since it was annexed in 1949, but many Uighurs still identify their homeland by its previous name, East Turkestan. The land sits on a designated special economic zone due to its rich oil and mineral supplies. Xinjiang is China’s largest producer of natural gas and is a key part of the country’s Belt and Road Initiative - the most expensive infrastructure project in history with Chinese companies constructing roads, pipelines, and railroads across the globe. The province has received huge state investments in recent years for industrial and energy projects. But Many Uighurs have complained that Han Chinese are taking their jobs, and that their farmland has been confiscated for redevelopment. Mass immigration of Han Chinese to Xinjian has made Uigurs a minority in the province.

The Chinese government long denied that the camps existed, but afterimages of camp construction with watch towers and barbed wire fences emerged, the government acknowledged what they call “re-education centers'' for Uighurs. China has blamed Xinjiang separatists for attacks outside the region, including an incident in October 2013 in which a car was driven into a crowd in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Members of the Muslin minority said they were detained, interrogated, and beaten because of their religion. Many say it is clear that they were interned and not “re-educated.” At least 1 million Uighurs have been interned since 2017 in more than 85 identified camps within Xinjiang - an autonomous region in Northwest China, according to Western reports.

There’s growing international criticism of China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims. The conflict between respecting national sovereignty and protecting human rights will surely find itself to be fundamental to international politics for years to come. The international community is now faced with the choice to submit to the fear of China’s economic and political retaliation or to follow the example of the United States in asserting an aggressive, substantive stance against the human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Whether you’re a UTS student or staff, there are non-monetary actions you can take to help the Uighurs during a time of cultural genocide.

1. You endorse the “Global Campaign for Fashion Brands” to end complicity in Uighur forced labour. → https://enduyghurforcedlabour.org/

2. You can read Rahima Mahmut’s story → https://www.freedomunited.org/speak-free/what-is-happening-in-my-homeland-is-cultural-genocide/ and stand with Rahima by adding your name to the petition → https://www.freedomunited.org/advocate/free-uyghurs/

3. You can sign the petition for where either the government respects Uighur rights and close the camps or lose the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics → https://www.norightsnogames.org/petition/

4. Sign the petition to release Uighur’s beloved folklore professor Rahile Dawut → https://www.change.org/p/xi-jinping-petition-for-the-immediate-release-of-professor-rahile-dawut-and-other-uyghur-scholars

5. Tell the Norwegian Oil Fund to divest from the Chinese tech companies that abet Beijing’s crackdown on Uyghurs → https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/uyghurs_norway_divestment/

In Ontario, the pandemic experience has been defined by the utter devastation of nursing homes and long-term care homes. Residents and healthcare workers in these homes make up one in four COVID-19 cases across the province and over 65% of total deaths. The lack of care during the first wave was so widespread that members of the Canadian Armed Forces were deployed to five private nursing homes in Toronto’s inner and outer suburbs (four were for-profit). When their report written by the Armed Forces was leaked, it was revealed that they found cockroaches, rotten food, and frequent contamination of supposedly coronavirus-free wards.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The horrifying failure of nursing homes in Ontario is the direct result of several deliberate choices.

It started with the so-called Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris, which brought a wave of tax cuts and privatizations to the provincial government. For-profit nursing homes dramatically proliferated following Harris’ cuts to public long-term care and loosening of regulations such as mandated staff-to-resident ratios. We now have a system where public nursing homes are chronically overcrowded and underfunded, while private nursing homes have no guarantee of adequate care due to lack of mechanisms for accountability.

Healthcare workers and independent auditors have been sounding an alarm on conditions in nursing homes for years, but nobody listened. In 2015, reports from the CUPE (a union that includes many workers in nursing homes) and the province’s auditor general brought attention to overcrowding and neglect in underfunded public and private nursing homes. An Ottawa Citizen investigation in 2018 revealed those practices continued in private homes throughout the city. A report by the Ontario Health Coalition in 2019 found “shocking and frankly unacceptable” conditions in nursing homes across the province.

In spite of these appalling reports, Doug Ford’s government scaled back inspections of nursing homes, with only nine out of 626 homes in Ontario receiving a full inspection.

With a pandemic that primarily targets the elderly hitting the province hard, we are seeing the flaws of this system exposed in the worst way imaginable. Mike Harris put it in place, and McGuinty, Wynne, and Ford simply didn’t care enough to fix it. Now 1,800 nursing home residents are dead at time of writing, still well over the majority of the province’s death count even as cases surge among kids and young adults. For-profit homes are recording four times as many deaths as public care homes, despite similar infection rates. And a pattern of abuse and negligence in for-profit nursing homes continues.

The choices made by Mike Harris and his successors have killed people, but those decision makers will be fine. They will not face any consequences for their mistakes. They will wait out the coronavirus in large homes and spacious backyards, and live out the rest of their lives in comfortable luxury once the pandemic is over. Harris will actually profit from his terrible decisions as a board member for Chartwell Retirement Residences, which runs 181 for-profit nursing homes across the country; 86 Ontarians have died from coronavirus in Chartwell homes.

What Harris did was part of an austerity program, where the government tries to reduce its budget deficit by cutting down spending and reducing government services to the bare minimum. Ontario nursing homes were not the first nor the most severe example.

After the 2008 recession hit Europe, European governments faced two choices. The first was to cut down interest rates, allowing the government to borrow money cheaply and spend that money investing in unemployment relief, social services, and infrastructure. This in turn would increase private spending and stimulate the economy (the most famous example of this would be the New Deal). The second option was cutting spending and avoiding deficits at all costs, even if it meant making their citizens and economies worse off. Most European countries pursued austerity policies based on flawed research that claimed austerity would increase investor confidence. They told the public that if they opted for stimulus, their country would face a debt crisis.

In the end, austerity backfired massively, permanently stunting the economy of every country that tried it. The lost economic activity was equivalent to the entire pre-recession Spanish economy. Poverty, unemployment, and income inequality skyrocketed.

The widespread immiseration at the hands of austerity had massive public health consequences. A Lancet study on the effects of austerity on health concluded that austerity caused a measurable increase in suicides and alcohol-related deaths. Self-reported health in countries such as Greece and Portugal deteriorated rapidly. The increase in unemployment and poverty caused a corresponding increase in food insecurity and homelessness. Cuts to healthcare reduced access for all but the most well-off. Only countries that rejected austerity and committed to stimulus policies avoided these consequences.

When people talk about deficits and tax cuts and balanced budgets, it sounds abstract. It sounds detached from “real life.” Next time you hear these terms, remember: this is what austerity looks like. It is killing real people with families, emotions, and hopes for the future. Don’t forget it once the pandemic is over.

What a year. 2020.

For a History project I was assigned at the end of S5, I had to choose what I believed was the most consequential year of the 20th century and explain why this was the case. I decided to go with the year 1968. 1968 has been immortalized as a time of unique chaos and global malaise, when authoritarian-leaning administrations around the world were ushered into power, from Nixon to Iraq’s Baath’ists. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination sparked racial riots across the United States, while a flu pandemic sweeped the world, killing 1-4 million people.

Sound familiar?

But what I’m not here to tell you is that 2020 is a repeat of 1968. With all the gloomy headlines running around, I was reminded of an obscure theory about American history that I had read a few years ago, known as the ‘Fourth Turning’. Like most theories that seek to interpret history, it aims to find patterns in what has occurred in the past to predict the future. The authors, Neil Howe and William Strauss break apart American History since 1776 into 80 year chunks. These 80 year chunks are further divided into 4 categories, each lasting 20 years. The first period is called the ‘High’, marked by strong social trust, lack of individualism, stability, unity, conformity. The second is called the ‘Awakening’, where people grow tired of having to conform to society’s standards. The result is a greater emphasis on individualism and defiance against institutions that seek to restrict their freedom. It is an era defined by great artistic and creative achievement. The third is the ‘Unraveling’, where trust in institutions, both politically and socially continue to rapidly fade. And the final is the ‘Crisis’, or the Fourth Turning, where people completely lose faith in institutions as a result of major tragedy making the future more unpredictable. This tragedy usually ends up being war, but can also be plague or economic downturn as well. Fast forward 80 years after 1776, and you have the Civil War. Fast forward another 80 years later, and you have the Great Depression and World War 2.

And add another 80 years to 1945...and you are in the decade of the 2020s.

According to Howe and Strauss, the resolution of the ‘Crisis’ can end up going two ways. It can either break up the status quo entirely and fix the problems plaguing the nation, thus restarting the cycle, or the country is unable to meet the moment and is broken forever. He uses the period between the 1930s and the current day as an example. World War 2 and the Great Depression were the ‘Crisis’. After FDR’s strong leadership made America the victor of the war, the ‘High’ set in, where people identified strongly with the country, the economy was booming, and social norms were rarely violated. Think suburbs with well-manicured lawns. Then, in the ‘Awakening’, you have the counterculture of the 60s, a rebuke against the confining standards of the previous years. Howe identifies the ‘Unravelling’ as occurring during the 90s, when the fierce American culture wars began to rage and anger against elites became an effective rallying cry. So when did he say the ‘Crisis’ era would begin? In 1997, he predicted that this era would begin around 2005. Sure enough the Great Recession hit in 2008. He said in this time period “political and economic trust will implode...with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation, and empire”. He also said that before the date of 2025 “America will pass through a great gate in history” where “the very survival of the nation will feel at stake”. Enter 2020. More specifically, enter November 3rd, 2020, election day. With President Trump threatening to declare victory before all the ballots have been counted, it’s hard not to feel that all the anger the country has gathered through the year will be unleashed in a gruesome climax, anger that has only been inflamed with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But Howe recently warned that the ‘Crisis’ will be something that isn’t resolved until the end of this decade, meaning that he expects America to exist in a state of turmoil until then.

Now, count me among the skeptics when it comes to this theory. If you’ve ever heard of it before, it was probably in the context of Steve Bannon declaring his belief for it. My biggest issue is that it seems Howe and Strauss just cut out major historical events that don’t fit his narrative. For example, why isn’t World War 1 and the Spanish Flu considered a ‘Crisis’? Why is 9/11 seemingly glossed over and ignored? It isn’t a surprise that most of the academic world is heavily skeptical of this theory either. Many point out that to them it feels like pseudoscience. What is defined as an ‘Unravelling’ or ‘Awakening’ feels sufficiently vague enough that you classify almost any 20 year chunk as an example of these eras. But I do agree with the authors in that the upcoming decades will be especially tumultuous ones that will have more in common with the early 20th century than the relatively stable and prosperous early 21st century for not only America, but the entire Western world. It looks as if eradicating COVID-19 completely will take the work of at least 5 years. The economic damage may take just as long to recover. And with increased human-animal interaction due to deforestation, it’s likely there will be more pandemics in our lifetime. The damage from climate change will begin to push it’s away further into our daily lives. Economic inequality is well on it’s way to cleaving society into solely a well off upper class and an impoverished under class (Canada’s billionaires have gained $37 billion since the beginning of the pandemic). And as urban/rural political polarization continues to gain strength throughout the West, combined with this bleak economic situation, we in Canada will have more authoritarian, partisan, and angry leaders in power.

I don’t say this to be an alarmist and scare people. I do it for two reasons. The first is to remindis remind us all that we are likely to be living in a time of great upheaval that we or our parents have never seen before. We as a generation will be having front row seats to multiple, hugely consequential points in history, 2020 among them. As Lenin would say, “there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen”. The second is that it is during periods of change that the world is most malleable to the change you seek to make on it. Countries have always been the most open minded to new ideas in periods of hardship. For example, the Great Depression sparked middle-class oriented economic restructuring in both Canada and the United States that lasted for decades. And ultimately, it is these ideas that allow society to preserve itself for the generations to come.