Here’s the important thing you first have to accept when you live peacefully in Duterte-Era Philippines: whether you like him or not, the president is popular, and all your energies are better off channeled into dealing with his fanatics more than the antics of the man himself. They’re a rowdy, noisy bunch, their voices amplified by the megaphone that is the internet and social media.
Even though they can get pretty toxic sometimes a lot of times, every now and then they’ll put out something completely bizarre. And in this unfolding epoch of our history, we’re pretty sure we’d rather take bizarre over downright toxic any day.
The Anime Club of Davao Nikkei Jin, a Japanese international school in the eponymous city, teamed up with a local Facebook community to produce what seems to be what an intro to a Duterte anime series called El Presidente would look like. (We need to bar people from using that title ever again, because it’s too lazy.) Well, of course, it’s an anime club, and of course it’s Davao. A bunch of people with a lot of time on their hands came up with this:
We’ll admit, it’s really impressive visually. It even has its own J-rock theme song, which goes to show you the amount of dedication that went into this loving tribute to Duterte that he would probably just chuckle at and dismiss once he sees it. But it would be even more impressive if it didn’t have a lot of potential to be used as a propaganda tool to make the president look even cooler than people already believe he is.
What—propaganda, you say? What ever gives you the idea that that could be a thing, Scout? Well, check out this totally-not-subtle-at-all frame of partisan pettiness right here:
Look at that! That monster with a yellow shawl sure looks familiar! And the “yellow” mainstream media even gets its own kaiju! With money in its hat, because fuck subtlety! People sure are mature about this.
In other related news, the president is asking for six more months’ extension on his promise to get rid of drugs and crime in the country, because he finally realized that it wasn’t easy. That’s not a bad thing per se and we’ll just call your bluff, but maybe next time, you shouldn’t make stupid, unrealistic promises that make you look like an idiot?