The Leader: Karl Marx as an Anime Hotboy

Perhaps looking to corner the shoujo anime scene and compete with the likes of Meiji Tokyo Renka, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the creation of The Leader (领风者Lìng Fēng Zhě). The seven-episode series depicts the life and times of communist philosopher Karl Marx, focusing variously on his romance and marriage to Jenny von Westphalen, his friendship with The Communist Manifesto co-author Friedrich Engels, and his efforts to promote his ideology despite having no income and facing suppression by the authorities of the day. All while being strikingly handsome, even as a graying silver fox in the later episodes.

Generally speaking, Chinese animation is not very good. The institutions are not nearly as developed as in Japan or the West, there is a lack of talent as low wages in the industry (even compared to Japan’s dismal situation) send the best overseas. But at the same time, China has made great strides and studios like Haoliners Animation League have produced notable work, though often in close collaboration with major Japanese studios, or through their Japanese subsidiaries.

The Leader is no exception. The hand animated scenes look fine, and in fact, episode six “The First International” that depicts the conflicts surrounding the Paris Commune of 1871 is nearly entirely hand animated and looks almost like a quality anime product. But the overwhelming majority of the series was done using a horrific 3D animation technique, with awkwardly crafted models moving like Honda’s ASIMO around lovingly-drawn mid-19th-century sets.

Marx’s wife Jenny, in particular, is almost never hand drawn and throughout the entire series looks out of place with her big bright eyes that look like nothing else in the show. Tianjin-based studio Dong Man Tang did their best, I’m sure, but The Leader is a production directed by the Chinese government’s Office for the Research and Development of Marxist Theory. They weren’t hurting for resources, with the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and the Communist Youth League Central Propaganda Department backing them. If you’re going to make anime propaganda, at least do it right. Just look at Gate: Jietai Kano Chi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri. The Japanese Ministry of Defense made their propaganda look decent, and knew to throw in a bunny girl and an elf or two.

But the Chinese government is not very good at propaganda. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and paramount leader of the country since 2012, has made instilling communist values, particularly in young people, an important focus of his regime. This has been a change from previous administrations, which sought to focus more on Confucianism and Chinese nationalism in an effort to distract from China’s growing wealth inequality owing to the state capitalist economic system adopted during the Reform and Opening period of the 1980s, and a reversal from the Marxist and Maoist planned economy during the reign of Mao Zedong (1949-1976).

Chairman Xi may not have personally asked for the anime. Party mouthpiece The People’s Daily has yet to report on which Love Live! girl is most in line with Xi Jinping Thought. But China has been having a problem with young Marxists growing frustrated with how not-communist Communist China has turned out to be. Protests by Marxism clubs on university campuses in recent years may have been the inspiration for the last 90 seconds of The Leader’s final episode “Marx Forever,” in which a voiceover links Marx’s philosophy to the ruling party of China while a clip of modern Chinese accomplishments plays in the background. The voice explains how the Chinese Communist Party has adapted Marxism to suit the realities of modern China, explicitly defining Xi Jinping’s new era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. Everything’s fine. We’re still Marxists. We’ve just made it fit China.

I’m honestly not convinced. Most of the action in the show is Marx moving to a new city and founding a new socialist newspaper. Sometimes there is bad CG fencing. Sometimes there’s a bad CG speech. Do look up the closing sequence though. Don’t miss out on a Chinese rap about Karl Marx set to a theme of The Internationale. Still, the occasional scenes of sexual tension between hotboys Marx and Engels don’t even end with them kissing and I’m left wondering why I’m even watching if there’s no German philosopher yaoi.

Meiji Tokyo Renka has some real action with your historical hotboys, but that just goes to show you how far behind Chinese animation is.