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This paper analyzes how war memories are often romanticized and/or popularized through representations of shōjo (girls) in anime. In Arpeggio of Blue Steel: Ars Nova and Kantai Collection, submarines and battleships are personified as girls in World War II scenarios. These contents have been disseminated across multiple media platforms, and fans of the contents visit war-related sites, Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) bases, museums, and events produced in cooperation with MSDF. War-related tourism and popular culture are often associated with death and tragedy, but such war-related contents tourism becomes light entertainment, while darker values and meanings are displaced and/or invalidated. This paper examines how war-related contents tourism serves to rewrite war memories, to popularize Japanese militarization and hence displace its meanings and values. Fans treat war-related contents as fashionable by commodifying the Self-Defense Force (SDF) through the images of shōjo, and they relate the SDF to themselves through the popularization and familiarization achieved through anime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents examples of collaboration between anime producers and the Japan Self-Defense Force. By situating the transitions within the context of the broader trends in collaboration between anime producers and locations (namely, the development of contents tourism), the key turning point in anime producer — JSDF collaboration is be identified and explained. Then, the reasons why in recent years JSDF has been actively collaborating with the production of pop culture contents in the realms of fantasy and fiction with an anime fanbase will be discussed. What is happening in Japan today is a fantasization (= contentsization) and consumption of the military, rather than a 'drift to the right' or resurgence of militarism. The pressures to produce military or 'moe military' anime are driven by the market rather than the military. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]