China's army posted a Ghibli-style AI cartoon attacking Japan. Of 952 comments, 54 percent of the vote went to the government and the army — and 0.6 percent to the Chinese people
The thread was appalled, 91 to 9. But what appalled it was the government and the army, not "the Chinese." The loudest comment said the people in China would wince at it too.
How the votes fell
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1 5976 ∕ 52 how can you post an animation like this without any shame. The content is the usual propaganda of the Chinese government and the People's Liberation Army and there is no helping it, but the girl at the end is Setsuko from Grave of the Fireflies, full stop. The people in China who see this will probably wince too. Studio Ghibli should complain about the infringement of its intellectual property
- 2 1627 ∕ 54 a "right not to be used as AI training data" is not being discussed in Japan at all. If the country wants to be a soft-power heavyweight it has to deal with this properly. A new party ought to be raising it, but they are far too relaxed
- 3 1508 ∕ 28 AI shows the character of the person using it. Now that you can produce something without effort or expertise, the essentials — what you choose, and with what intent — are exposed directly. Some people make beautiful paper-cuts with the scissors they are handed and others use them to hurt people. This time the lack of morals and of respect came straight through
- 4 1004 ∕ 21 there is rice and grilled fish on the same plate. Japanese people do not eat like that. Rice goes in a bowl, fish on its own plate. If you are going to make an anti-Japan cartoon in the Ghibli style, at least research Japanese habits properly. And if you have money for cartoons like this, spend it on levees so your floods stop happening
- 5 503 ∕ 2 right now it is still traceable and obvious, but the sequence is clear. Soon the AI mixes this material with other material until nobody can tell, and then they start insisting it is original. Ten years from now the words inspired-by and homage will have been forgotten
I read all 952 top-level comments. They drew 16,015 presses of "I relate" and 1,572 of "hmm" — 91 to 9. Only 70 comments, 7 percent, had more "hmm" than "I relate." The top ten comments hold 76 percent of the agreement, the top twenty 86 percent, and 424 of the 952 — 45 percent — never received a single press. The loudest comment drew 5,976 presses by itself, 37 percent of the whole vote. It opens with "how can you post an animation like this without any shame," calls the film propaganda from the Chinese government and the People's Liberation Army, and then separates the people from the government: "the people in China who see this will probably wince too." I counted who each comment was addressing. Comments naming the Chinese government, army, Communist Party or state: 297, 8,649 presses, 54 percent of the vote. Comments about the character or "level" of the Chinese as a people: 38, 97 presses, 0.6 percent. Not one comment talked about Chinese people in numbers. The content stood on three legs. Copying, copyright and intellectual property: 300 comments, 9,163 presses, 57 percent. The word propaganda: 69 comments, 6,523 presses, 41 percent. Embarrassing, absurd, you can only laugh: 183 comments, 7,117 presses, 44 percent. Comments about how AI is used: 107, 4,980 presses, 31 percent, centred on the third-placed "AI shows the character of the person using it" with 1,508. Comments using the words morals or ethics: 23, 1,895 presses, 12 percent, and 1,508 of those belong to that same third-placed comment. China ignoring its own build-up while lecturing Japan: 60 comments, 1,087 presses, 7 percent. The Nagasaki torii or nuclear weapons: 19 comments, 288 presses, 2 percent. The prime minister or the constitution: 15 comments, 323 presses, 2 percent. Comments turning to look at Japan's own side: 16, 161 presses, 1 percent. Then my own view, checked against the count. "There are no morals here" — 12 percent nodded, but the largest of those, 1,508 presses, said the morals missing were those of whoever used the AI, that is, the army's publicity office. "It is communism, not the Chinese people" — the thread and I agreed on where to point, at a system rather than a people, and 54 percent of the vote went to the government, army, party and state. But the word communism itself appeared in 13 comments with 384 presses, 2 percent, and 366 of those belong to the one comment I shared. "One or two hundred million is not a minority" — zero comments. This thread did not count Chinese people. It looked at the government and the army.
First, what happened.
On 2 September the English-language official X account of China's People's Liberation Army posted a text beginning "China urges the Japanese authorities to break with militarism," and attached a two-minute-and-five-second animated short titled, in Japanese, "The Mask of Peace." A caption says the images were generated with the help of AI, and the logo of China's state broadcaster sits in the corner.
The drawing style is Studio Ghibli's, unmistakably. A man sets fire with a lighter to a book with the constitution written in it. A woman politician who resembles Japan's prime minister appears. Over something like a shamisen, a woman's voice sings in Japanese: "throwing off the mask of peace," "charging towards a nation of more and more arms." Near the end, a torii gate very like the one in Nagasaki that lost one of its two pillars to the atomic bomb stands in a ruined town. And the film closes on a girl with a bob haircut who looks exactly like Setsuko from Grave of the Fireflies, holding a vase of flowers and crying.
According to the article, the post had fewer than 300 likes by midday on 3 September. But in Japanese-language spaces the reaction — "that is a straight Ghibli rip-off" — was loud enough to become news.
Let me put my own view down first. I do not think China has morals. More precisely, it is not Chinese people who lack them but communism. People say, "with 1.4 billion people, of course some of them are like that." But if "some" means one or two hundred million, that is no longer some.
With that in mind, I went to count. The morning after the story ran, I read all 952 top-level comments (1,265 including replies) and counted the buttons.
91 to 9 — one-sided, but not the most one-sided
The "I relate" button was pressed 16,015 times, "hmm" 1,572 times. 91 to 9. Only 70 comments, 7 percent, had more "hmm" than "I relate."
I have counted 34 threads so far, and seven of them were more one-sided than this one — the NHK licence-fee thread at 46 to 1, the Shibuya honey-trap thread at 95 to 5, and so on. So the picture of "Japanese comment sections erupt as one whenever China comes up" does not come out of this number. It was a well-aligned thread, no more.
But an aligned thread is exactly the kind you have to count, to see where it aligned. This time, that is where the surprise was.
37 percent of the vote went to one comment
The loudest comment drew 5,976 presses. Thirty-seven percent of everything this thread gave away is sitting on this one comment.
How can you post an animation like this without any shame. The content is the usual propaganda of the Chinese government and the People's Liberation Army and there is no helping it, but the girl at the end is Setsuko from Grave of the Fireflies, full stop. The people in China who see this will probably wince too. Studio Ghibli should complain about the infringement of its intellectual property.
よくこんなアニメーションを恥ずかしげもなくアップしますね。
内容も中国政府と人民解放軍らしいプロパガンダに溢れたものでどうしようもないものですが、最後に出てくる少女など火垂るの墓の節子そのものですよ。恐らくこれを見た中国の皆さんもあららーと思うんじゃないですか。スタジオジブリは知的財産権の侵害で文句を言ったほうがいいでしょうね。This is the part I would like readers outside Japan to look at. The writer is appalled, but names the target as "the Chinese government and the People's Liberation Army." And about Chinese people, the comment says "the people in China who see this will probably wince too" — placing them on the writer's own side of the line.
That is the single most-pressed sentence in the thread.
I counted the addressees — 54 percent to the government and army, 0.6 percent to "the Chinese"
So I went through the whole thread and counted who each comment was talking to.
Comments that named the Chinese government, the army, the Communist Party or the state: 297 comments, 8,649 presses — 54 percent of the vote. Comments about the character or the "level" of the Chinese as a people — the "low civility," "that is their national character" kind: 38 comments, 97 presses — 0.6 percent.
Ninety-seven presses. Against 8,649.
I had thought "one or two hundred million out of 1.4 billion is not a minority." Not one of the 952 comments talked about Chinese people in numbers at all. This thread was not counting Chinese people. It was looking at the government and the army.
It is the same shape I found when I counted the thread about Russia protesting Japan's protest. There too, the thread faced a state and its government, not that country's people. When a neighbouring country does something, Japanese comment sections get angry at its government. They do not turn on its people much. At least, that is how the buttons get pressed.
What the thread actually talked about — copying, 57 percent
If the addressee was the government and the army, the subject was copying. Comments about copying, copyright or intellectual property came to 300 of the 952, 9,163 presses, 57 percent of the vote. The Japanese word that carried most of it is pakuri — a casual, slightly contemptuous word for lifting someone else's work. The article's own headline uses it: "that is a straight Ghibli pakuri."
The thread was not naive about the law, either. A comment with 328 presses noted that imitating a drawing style alone is not, by itself, an infringement of intellectual property, and concluded that the law needs work rather than that Ghibli has an easy case. The loudest comment says Ghibli should complain; the eighth says the complaint might not stand. Both drew agreement. That is the shape of this thread: appalled, and at the same time checking its own footing.
One more number for the shape. Of the 952 comments, 424 — 45 percent — never received a single press of any button. The thread was not a chorus. It was a very large crowd standing around a very small number of loud sentences, and the loudest of them was about the government, the army, Setsuko and Ghibli, in that order.
Third place was about whoever used the AI
AI shows the character of the person using it. Now that the bar for producing something without effort or expertise has dropped, the essentials — what you choose, and with what intent — are exposed directly. Some people make beautiful paper-cuts with the scissors they are handed; others try to hurt people with them. This time the lack of morals and of respect came straight through.
AIは使用者の人間性が出ますね。
手間や専門知識がなくても形にできるハードルが下がった分、「何をチョイスするか」「どんな意図でそれを使うか」という本質がダイレクトに露出します。
手にしたハサミで美しい切り絵を作る人もいれば、他者を傷つけようとする人がいるように。
今回はモラルやリスペクトのなさがモロに出てしまいましたね。1,508 presses. Comments using the words morals or ethics: 23, 1,895 presses, 12 percent of the vote — and 1,508 of those are this one comment.
I wrote "there are no morals here," and this writer wrote "the lack of morals and of respect." But what the comment is saying is that AI is a tool, and the tool showed the character of its user. The character exposed belongs to whoever made the film — the army's publicity office. The comment is not talking about Chinese people at all.
Comments about how AI is used came to 107, 4,980 presses, 31 percent. Second place, with 1,627, was "a right not to be used as AI training data is not being discussed in Japan at all." While the thread was appalled at China, it was also counting Japan's own unfinished homework.
Fourth place was about a plate
This is the comment I would most like readers outside Japan to take home.
There is rice and grilled fish on the same plate. Japanese people do not eat in that style. Rice goes in a bowl and fish on its own plate — they are kept apart. If you want to make an anti-Japan cartoon in the Ghibli style, you should research Japanese habits properly first.
一つの皿にご飯と焼き魚を乗せています。 日本人はこの様なスタイルで食事はしません。 ご飯は茶碗へ魚は皿にと分けて食べますよ。 日本へ批判アニメをジブリ風にしたければ、日本人の習慣もちゃんと調べて作るべきですね。1,004 presses. Rice and grilled fish on one plate — in a Japanese home, rice comes in its own bowl and fish on its own dish, always separate. Looking at the dinner table inside the cartoon, this writer snagged on that.
Faced with military propaganda, the thread gave 1,004 presses not to the constitution or the arms build-up but to a plate. When Japanese comment sections are handed a big argument, they find the smallest mistake in it and laugh at that. Comments calling the film embarrassing, absurd or something you can only laugh at: 183, 7,117 presses, 44 percent of the vote. This was not an angry thread. It was an appalled one, in the sense of shaking its head.
The comment I shared came sixth
This is the comment I shared on X.
At this point all you can do is laugh. Shelving their own hyper-militarism while interfering this heavily in Japan's internal affairs... The Chinese government's position, apparently, is that Japan must not be allowed any more defensive capability than it has. [...] In the end, however fine the words, what finally drags the world into war is a dictatorship built on socialism and communism.
もう、ここまで来ると、笑うしかありませんね！
「自分等の超軍国主義の棚上げ」と「日本への
極度な内政干渉」……。
とうやら中国政府は、「日本がこれ以上の守備力を
持ってもらっては困る」…のだと思います。
［…］結局、どんなに綺麗事を言っていても、最終的に
世界を戦乱に引きずり込むのは、社会主義・共産主義
主体の独裁国家なんですよね！366 presses, sixth in the thread. Comments saying China was ignoring its own build-up while lecturing Japan: 60, 1,087 presses, 7 percent.
And the word communism itself appeared in 13 of the 952 comments, 384 presses, 2 percent. 366 of those belong to this one comment. The comment closest to my own wording is the only one of its kind near the top of the thread; the other twelve total 18 presses between them.
Two comments where "hmm" won
Of the 70 comments where "hmm" beat "I relate," here are two that said anything at all in China's favour.
But the teams building excellent generative foundations like Ace-Step and MiniMax are Chinese, and I do not think it is right to sneer that the Chinese are nothing but copycats after all.
ただAce-StepやMiniMaxのような優れた生成基盤を作ってるのは中国チームであり、「中国人はやっぱりコピーばっかりじゃないか」と馬鹿にするのは違うと思いますよ。Thirteen "I relate," fifteen "hmm." Chinese companies are building some of the best generative-AI foundations, the writer says; sneering that the Chinese only copy is wrong.
Chinese literature has so many wonderful works that are fantastical and yet dig deep into human nature. I would love to see those classics as beautiful animation. [...] Surely that is what the world would welcome?
中国の文学には荒唐無稽でいながら人間の本質を掘り下げた素晴らしいものがたくさん有りますよね。そんな古典を美しい動画で見てみたいと思う。［…］世界が喜ぶのはそっちでは？Thirty-nine "I relate," 187 "hmm." China has magnificent classics, the writer says; make beautiful films of those instead.
I want to be honest here. Comments that praised Chinese people or Chinese culture got the "hmm" button in this thread. The fact that only 0.6 percent of the vote went to blaming Chinese people does not mean that praising them was welcome. The most accurate thing I can say is that this thread neither blamed nor praised Chinese people. It did not talk about them.
Checking my own view against the count
"There are no morals here" — 12 percent nodded. But the largest of those comments, 1,508 presses, framed it as "the character of whoever used the AI came through," and its target was the army's publicity office.
"It is communism, not the Chinese people" — on where to point, at a system rather than a people, the thread and I agreed. Fifty-four percent of the vote went to the government, the army, the party and the state. But the word communism itself appeared in only 13 comments, 2 percent, and 366 of those presses belong to the one comment I shared. The thread was appalled in plainer words, one step closer to hand: "the Chinese government," "the People's Liberation Army."
"Not a minority — one or two hundred million" — zero comments. Not one of the 952 talked about Chinese people in numbers. I built my reasoning on that spot, and the thread did not pass through it.
I looked at China as a whole country and got angry. The thread looked at China's government and army and shook its head. Anger and head-shaking are different things, and a country and its government are different things. Until I counted, I could not see the gap between them.
For readers outside Japan — Setsuko, and the torii with one pillar
Finally, a few things to take home.
Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 animated film directed by Isao Takahata. In Kobe at the very end of the war, a boy and his small sister Setsuko lose their parents and, with nobody to turn to, slowly starve. Most Japanese people saw it on television as children, and many say they cannot bear to watch it twice. A foreign army placed a girl modelled on that Setsuko at the end of a film attacking Japan — and that was the first thing Japanese people reacted to.
The torii with one pillar stands in Nagasaki. The atomic bomb of 1945 blew away one of its two legs, and the remaining one still stands. On this site I once counted a thread about the atomic bombings that split 1.5 to 1. This time, comments about the Nagasaki torii or nuclear weapons came to 19, 288 presses, 2 percent — the thread did not dwell there. It dwelt on Setsuko, on the copying, and on the plate.
And then the mood on Japan's side. This thread aligned at 91 to 9, but what it aligned on was "the Chinese government and the army." Votes aimed at "the Chinese" came to 0.6 percent; comments counting them came to zero. Japanese comment sections were cold to the neighbouring government and had almost nothing to say about the neighbouring people. Whether that is a good thing, I cannot tell you. That the buttons were pressed that way — that much, counting made clear.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.