Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade

What would have happened if Japan had lost WWII to Germany rather than the Allies? That question seems to lie at the heart of this somber anime, written by GHOST IN THE SHELL's Mamoru Oshii and directed by his GHOST collaborator Hiroyuki Okiura. The film proposes an alternate history á la Robert Harris's Fatherland or Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, and like them, it's set in the early '60s. But the social ramifications of Germany's victory are mostly evident (at least to the Western eye) in the film's details — everyone drives a Volkswagen — while the story is driven by the fairy-tale image of the big bad wolf. Rocked...