I've been recently re-watching Phantom, and with the recent events of the Boston bombings -- at least as I'm writing this -- it got me thinking about the use of fear as a tool to control people. There are quite a list of anime that have this subject used to drive the story and development of characters, that it seem like a good topic to write about.
One of the easiest ways to get under someones skin, and past the reasoning part of the brain, is making them scared. Fear is one of those emotions that is inherently about survival. Because of that, it triggers the primal part of ones brain, guiding someone to what you want them to do is simplified greatly, because of that removal of ones reasoning.
And with it being very easy, a lot of people use this method -- aka scare tactics -- both in real life and of course anime.
Spread the Fear
Besides Phantom, the two most recent anime with this topic in them are Aku no Hana and Attack on Titan.
Both Phantom and Aku no Hana focus much more on individual people; like Zwei from Phantom wanting to survive, and in order to do so, he must follow the orders of Inferno and kill his targets. As for Takao, he doesn't want Sawa to tell his peers that he stolen Nanako's gym clothes, and all he can do to prevent that is follow Sawa's demands.
Attack on Titan is more on a societal scale, where people were drove into living in walled habitats, because they feared being eaten by the giants, that roamed the land freely.
And as I said previously, with this fear they began their journey into how the story unfolds, and some will overcome their fears.
Exploit Weakness
Weakness is another thing that connects these anime together -- besides just the initial fears. Preying on the weak seem to work wonders, if the hunter instills fear into its prey first, before actually going in for the kill. Basically making them think they have no other option, but to submit to what horrors will become of them -- which is one of the driving factors of one of my previous posts.
Weakness is not only limited to the powerless, some powerful people show their weak sides -- when they lose control of the grounding that made them think they were powerful -- but it isn't shown so easily. Quite an interesting juggle for power, trying to have power over the powerless, and at the same time, fearing everyday that they might rebel against you.
Failed Tactic
In the end, these kinds of psychological moments -- where peoples emotions get tested -- are my favorite types of anime. Always fun to obverse or even experience in some cases, the breaking point to human emotions. However, it needs to be done right, and not many anime capture the right feeling of a human-like response. I'm just glad I've got two anime to watch, with these psychological subjects front and center this season.