Anime is the dominant medium of pop-culture expression in modern Japan, lending itself readily to genres such as romance and comedy, as well as advanced concepts of social and political discourse. At the same time, the rise of modern anime, especially science fiction anime coincided with the coming to the forefront of the issue of immigration. This article attempts to understand how the two phenomena may be intertwined in the dialectical process of analysing and re-analysing national identity and belonging, through a critical interpretation of the anime series Ergo Proxy, released in 2006. The ideas outlined below are relevant both to critical discourse studies and for prospective solutions in the field of immigration policy. With Japan's economy going into a tailspin due to the explosion of the housing bubble in the 1990s, coupled with the detrimental effects of negative population growth, more and more industries found themselves reliant on immigrant labour for their survival, even as national political winds blew decisively against opening the country to immigrants, due to unforeseen effects on "the Japanese way of life." As Japan entered the second decade of its persistent recessionary state, and the government remained impassive to calls issued from several quarters of society to liberalise immigration policy, even though many of these workers were urgently required in such important sectors as construction and healthcare, clinging instead to outdated racist notions of "pure Japaneseness," a trickle of foreign workers continued to enter Japan, becoming subject to abuse and human rights violations as their existence continues to be systematically erased. The cultural intelligentsia of IJAPS, Vol. 13, No. 2, 73–91, 2017 We are the World Itself 74 Japan did not long remain unaware of this fact, however, and has remained active in depicting the plight of immigrants in various genres of creative production.

中文翻译：

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“我们就是世界本身”：Ergo Proxy中的“良好”公民身份的建构及其背离

动漫是现代日本流行文化表达的主要媒介，很容易将其引入浪漫史，喜剧以及社会和政治话语等高级概念。同时，现代动漫特别是科幻动漫的兴起与移民问题的出现相吻合。本文试图通过对2006年发行的动漫系列《 Ergo Proxy》的批判性解释，来理解这两种现象如何在分析和重新分析国家认同和归属的辩证过程中交织在一起。批判性话语研究以及移民政策领域的前瞻性解决方案。由于1990年代房地产泡沫的爆发，日本经济陷入困境，再加上人口负增长的不利影响，越来越多的行业发现自己依赖移民劳工来生存，即使由于“日本生活方式”的不可预见的影响，全国性政治狂风果断地吹起了向外国人开放国家的大门。 ” 随着日本进入其持续衰退状态的第二个十年，日本政府仍然不愿接受社会各阶层人士发出的放宽移民政策的呼吁，尽管在建筑和医疗保健等重要领域迫切需要这些工人，反而紧贴到过时的种族主义观念“纯粹的日本性”，一小撮外国工人继续进入日本，由于其存在继续被有系统地消除，因此容易遭受虐待和侵犯人权。IJAPS的文化知识分子，第1卷。13，No. 2，73-91，2017，我们就是世界74然而，日本并没有长期意识到这一事实，并且一直活跃于描绘各种创意作品中的移民困境。