I saw this before Ace posted it but had the same thought: This may very well be the closest we get to a movie about American good guys fighting jihadi bad guys. According to Wikipedia, the original concept dealt with Vietnam but the setting’s been updated to the Iranian hostage crisis. Sure looks like Iraq or Afghanistan to me, but maybe even the Japanese need a bit of narrative distance to make it politically “safe” for audiences. Move the timeline back 30 years, make the characters rats and bunnies instead of people, and suddenly it’s safe to wage war on terrorists.

Some canny American distributor’s going to buy the rights, overdub it, and make a small fortune on DVD sales. Exit question: Are the cutesy-poo animals a fatal flaw? It worked for “Maus.”