Imagine if you will an anime set in the immediate aftermath of World War 2 about a man called Mr. Stonewell, a former soldier from Unit 731 who has returned to Japan and is having difficulty fitting in. He bears a terrible secret about the involvement of senior military figures in the murder of many of his comrades to cover up a heinous crime. The crime in question was a major antiquities theft ring, which was operating in occupied China and smuggling ancient Chinese artifacts to collectors in Japan and other parts of South East Asia. Now the war is over, and Mr. Stonewell has lost his family and many of his friends as a consequence of his superiors’ efforts to cover up the smuggling ring. Fortunately Mr. Stonewell is a master of biological warfare, and has killed off everyone involved in the cover-up and subsequent murder of his family and friends, though he has never seen the people involved brought to justice, and the crimes have been buried, hidden from history. In this show, called the Avenger, we encounter Mr. Stonewell as he attempts to fit into ordinary society after his demobilization. He and his former comrades feel misunderstood and abandoned, nobody understands the things they had to do, or how much they suffered, they are on the fringes of society, abandoned and rejected. We see Mr. Stonewell lurking at a support group for ex-soldiers, we see his flashbacks to the terrible things he had to do and we understand how he suffers under the burden of the tasks he undertook for the freedom of his country. Meanwhile some of the loose threads of his military past are being tugged, and we discover that perhaps that heinous crime – the murder of soldiers to cover up a corrupt trade in antiquities – hasn’t been fully buried. We can expect in later episodes of this show to see Mr. Stonewell using his chemical and biological warfare skills to kill a sequence of bad military leaders in inventive and disturbing ways, it’s going to be great. In episode 3, with this groundwork laid, the anime takes us on an extended flashback so we can see exactly what terrible deeds Mr. Stonewell had to do in defense of his country. We see the briefing at the formation of his new unit, where one of his fellow soldiers makes an off-the-cuff comment about how their work isn’t exactly going to abide by the hypocratic oath; then we see him vivisecting American soldiers, conducting horrific experiments on them to develop better weapons so that his army can win this terrible war against this implacable foe. We understand he didn’t want to do these awful things but he had to, because it was a war and he was told to. We come to appreciate his moral struggle, but we accept that he is a good man because he is Japanese, and all Japanese soldiers are by necessity good people. This is why the murders of his comrades to cover up mere smuggling are such a heinous crime.

Do you think that this show would be popular in America, and non-controversial? Do you think it’s an acceptable moral frame for your hero? Because in episode 3 of Marvel’s The Punisher we see its putative hero, Frank Castle, shoot a suspected Iraqi terrorist captive in the head, killing him in cold blood in direct contravention of the laws of war, but we move on to discuss the more important issue of how this was wrong because Castle was inadvertently doing it to cover up a heroin smuggling ring. The fact that he just committed a crime for which, in America, he should receive the death sentence, is just irrelevant to the story. This happens in the context of his and his friends’ struggle to deal with the terrible things they had to do for the war effort, and after one of them makes an off-the-cuff reference to Operation Phoenix, so they know they’re doing things against the law of war but they, the directors of this shitshow, and we are meant to not care about that. Castle’s moral struggle and flashbacks have nothing to do with that, although sure he didn’t like killing people. Castle’s real problems are all to do with the real crime at the centre of this show, the heroin smuggling ring which he bravely – and morally – lost everything to break.

Frank Castle is a war criminal, and this terrible tv show is a paean to war criminals. There’s a heirarchy of moral ills in this show, with killing your own soldiers to cover up a crime right at the top, and murdering a captive in cold blood right at the bottom. Even the special agent trying to find out about the crimes Castle committed isn’t interested because there was a clear and extensive violation of the laws of war – she’s interested because one of the victims was a friend of hers, and he was innocent. The implication here is obvious – that these wouldn’t be considered crimes at all if the people who suffered them had all been guilty. Here we see the insidious effect of 15 years of wars of aggression, extra-judicial killings and egregious violations of the Geneva convention on the mentality of ordinary American producers of culture – they have lost their understanding of what a war crime is, and of how Americans can be guilty of … well, of anything at all really. And so it is that Castle sails through this show bearing the scars of everything wrong that was done to him, and blissfully free of any guilt, trauma or even recognition of all the things he has done to people.

It’s worth noting that there is a controversy attached to the Punisher, but this controversy is all about the timing of its release, and how its gun violence might be triggering for many Americans after the Las Vegas mass shooting. The valorization of a war criminal isn’t mentioned, and although some reviews dwell on the trauma he experienced, none seem to have noticed that he’s a war criminal. It’s remarkable that this central part of his background is completely missed in favour of the wrongs done to him. Have Americans managed to completely insulate themselves from the consequences of their own wars? Are they now completely morally impervious?

Another aspect of this show that is tired and boring and that I am completely over in American TV is the stereotype of the neglected and abandoned veteran. This is heavily present in the first three episodes, as we see Castle lurking around a support group for veterans, and hear their complaints about how they have been abandoned on their return, how the world doesn’t understand them and hasn’t made a place for them, they’re alone and lost in the world. This overdone stereotype is, frankly, complete bullshit. Returned veterans get access to a nationwide network of socialized medicine, they get discounts on student fees for retraining, they get two weeks of NFL games devoted to them, there is a transnational sports event for disabled veterans with very senior political figures as its patrons, and they get a plethora of TV shows about their struggles and issues. Where and how exactly are these people being abandoned and neglected? Like every other show that ever dwells on this issue, we hear lots of vets saying it’s an issue, but none of them actually tells us what was done to them, or what happened to them. This is particularly insulting in a show that is devoted to exploring the trauma issues of a returned vet, while ignoring the fact that he’s a criminal who should in be prison for life (at least). It’s right up there with right wing talk show hosts using their nationally syndicated tv show to complain about how the media is censoring them – a show about a vet’s trauma, complaining that vets don’t get enough attention to their trauma. Just drop it already. Or better still, make a TV show about a vet returning to America proud of his contribution to the army, counting the notches on his belt of the enemy he has killed, willing to defend his actions in a foreign war he didn’t choose. This story would be much closer to the truth of life for a returned vet, but for some reason we have to be subjected to its exact opposite, this boring trope of the vet who can’t get a break.

This show could have had other stories, that would have kept Castle’s background intact but given a more realistic and sensitive approach to the war. The detective pursuing him could be pursuing him for his war crimes, not because her friend was an innocent victim; he could be seeking redemption for his crimes instead of vengeance for his trauma. Someone, somewhere in all this mess could have just tried to at least talk about this aspect of his back story. We could see an arc which ends with him finding redemption for what he did, through extreme violence of everyone else who ever does anything like it. Or he could have refused to be part of that torture and murder network, and all the trauma visited on him could have been a consequence of his principled stand against war crimes. That would make his punisher stick way more believable and way more moral than this elaborate refrigeration of his entire family, with detailed and boring flashbacks, and no real explanation for why he is so uniquely traumatized compared to everyone else (those hammer scenes are really, really overdoing it). We could have been watching a show that once, just once, in the history of American TV since Rambo, actually tries to tell the truth about returned vets and makes some tiny effort to explore America’s war crimes. But probably that would have been even more controversial than the gun porn.

I really wanted to like this show. I like the actor playing Castle, I love vengeance as a theme and I enjoy watching bad guys get their comeuppance, as brutal as you can. So I was looking forward to a long arc of redemptive violence. But I can’t accept this redemptive violence for this reason, when really the first person who should be getting a dose of it is the guy who casually shot a prisoner in the head because he was told to – the Punisher, indeed. So much of everything that has gone wrong in the world for the past 30 years is the fault of America’s policy adventures, and so much of its current mistakes can be laid at the feet of its ordinary citizens and their foolish misguided self beliefs. A million people died in Iraq, and four million were displaced, because American politicians decided to launch an illegal war of aggression, but none of it would have been possible if people like Frank Castle had refused to break the laws of war. It’s an insult to those million dead to make a show about one of their murderers, to gloss over all the bad things he did, and then whine incessantly about how this man who signed up for an illegal war is the real victim. Obviously everyone has their breaking point, and this is mine. I’m not going to watch a show about a war criminal who doesn’t even have to redeem himself, simply because he’s an American. You can keep your war propaganda, and I think Marvel I can’t be bothered with you anymore.