Spreading meaningless love in an age without a world.
This piece was originally written as an answer to a question, hence its conversational style.
To think that Legal High is discussing justice is extremely superficial. It is simply an illusion born of unfamiliarity with Japanese culture itself. Just like mistaking the sign-like construction of manga characters for so-called depth. Quite the opposite: the very premise of Legal High is that justice cannot be discussed. More precisely, a justice shared across society, one everyone can acknowledge, no longer exists.
So we have Komikado’s justice, Mayuzumi’s justice, Komikado’s dad’s justice, Hanyu’s justice. The whole series is nothing but a struggle among these justices. Ultimately, each is merely “one person’s opinion.” Even victory cannot make that justice something society as a whole shares. Of course, this is also why Komikado never intended society to share his justice in the first place. The collapse of “Justice with a capital J” is the premise of the entire series; the ensuing struggle among its many “little justices” unfolds with that premise already accepted.
No wonder just about every episode depicts the unreliability of someone who represents “grand Justice”—abusive police officers, corrupt officials, a nationally celebrated composer who is a fraud. On the one hand, they really are not bad in the extreme; on the other, they really cannot be relied on. This is another typical instance of capitalist cynicism: because they are not bad enough, there is no need to reject them outright; on the other hand, because they cannot be relied on, I can trust only myself. Not changing society, but changing how I see society. (This is precisely the change in Mayuzumi’s attitude toward politics in the shogun episode.)
So the point of the series is not that Komikado’s justice is justified, but that everyone else’s is unjustified (relative). A typical instance of the logic of negative theology: I cannot tell you what justice is, but I can tell you what it is not.
Since little justices are fundamentally nothing but groundless tautologies, it is hardly surprising that the logic of “the winner is right” emerges. There is little point in focusing on the content of Komikado’s arguments, because he will argue that the exact opposite is right whenever winning requires it. The content means nothing to Komikado; he cares only about winning. So agreeing with Komikado because of what he argues—arguments that are often disastrously childish and stupid—is stupid. The only real reason to agree with Komikado is this: I agree with Komikado because Komikado is Komikado. This is also Komikado’s own attitude toward himself. From beginning to end, he remains basically unchanged. Komikado is a typical manga-style flat character. His makeup as a character is fixed from the start: you either accept it or you don’t.
So the story advances not through changes in Komikado, but through changes in how he is seen, as “glimmers” of his humanity are discovered. It is as if a slave-owner/capitalist who profits by exploiting everyone and causes the deaths of thousands upon thousands of families suddenly became “human” because, in private, he likes a cat.
On the basis of this political reading, we need to look at the relationship between Mayuzumi, Komikado and Hanyu. In the first season, Miki and Komikado still have a fair amount in common. Hanyu and Komikado, by contrast, are complete opposites. Hanyu’s little justice is undoubtedly a politically correct position of the “white left” variety—you could say he represents mainstream American ideology.1 Hanyu instantly transforms the figure of a dysfunctional Japanese woman (a bureaucratic “office lady” = a woman oppressed by Japanese patriarchy) into a beaming American hippie. (The lesson this girl eventually learns is that Japan’s capital-J Justice is no good, and neither is America’s.) He turns the wooden Isogai, who later calls himself a “nice guy,” into a comic figure who tries to Americanize himself but always fails.
Hanyu likes speaking English: open his mouth and out come “win-win” and “yes, we can.” An American “white left” politician through and through. If the first season is more concerned with finding “glimmers of humanity” in Komikado, the second is more concerned with exposing Hanyu’s “moral blemishes.” Someone who wants to make everyone happy turns out not to be so good after all. But notice that the same logic still applies: not so good, but not so bad either. Why has this neither-good-nor-bad logic become so pervasive? For the reason I gave above: the grand Justice by which good and bad could be measured has disappeared.
Between Hanyu and Komikado stands Mayuzumi. Mayuzumi provides a “relatively neutral” viewpoint. At first she identifies with Hanyu; later, she discovers what is bad about him and becomes more sympathetic to Komikado, but she cannot fully identify with Komikado either. What is being demonstrated here is not who is right and who is wrong, but that the standard for deciding who is right and who is wrong no longer works. Mayuzumi’s ultimate change is undoubtedly the relativization of this viewpoint. Why is her personality unappealing? Mayuzumi’s naïveté lies in believing that capital-J Justice still exists; she evolves by ceasing to believe this. It is something even a casual viewer should be able to grasp. (The frenzied worship of Komikado that once filled the scrolling on-screen comments and the comments section is a crude suspension of thought: viewers think they are worshipping his worldview and values, when all they are enjoying is the halo that comes with being the lead.)
One of the most overtly political episodes involving Komikado and Hanyu concerns Japanese traditional culture. Komikado’s position is that he does not believe in the capital-J Justice of “tradition = political correctness.” He praises the practical usefulness of factories (nothing more than parroting Sakaguchi Ango’s ideas).2 Of course, Hanyu loses in the end, exposing the fact that he too has become fanatical in pursuit of “grand Justice.” This also establishes the formula: grand Justice itself is fanatical.
Right. Because Hanyu represents American political correctness, he is a representative of capital-J Justice, so he has to lose. More importantly, he has to show his ugly side, so that capital-J Justice can be demoted to lowercase justice and all justice relativized. None of the little justices is justified, but capital-J Justice is absolutely unjustified. (This is one of the mainstream ideologies of Japan after the 1970s, once it had become a consumer society.)
Then there is the relationship between manga and this series. The frequent references to manga are no accident. Legal High clearly has a manga-like way of thinking, one that permeates the series from form to content. (Most obviously, its Gin Tama-style otaku wisecracks.)
I will forgo a fuller explanation here. Put simply: the manga and anime world is acutely sensitive to this disappearance of grand Justice. And the characters in Legal High have a strongly sign-like quality. Great emphasis is placed on their makeup as characters. Explaining all this in detail really is too much trouble, so just imagine it this way: Hattori is a maid with a big-sister persona, Mayuzumi is the bespectacled class rep, the ninja lad is a delinquent big-sister type, and Hanyu is a magical girl trying to make the whole world happy with magic. And the title is The Troubles of a Boy Genius Lawyer: I Have Too Many Girls at Home—What Am I Supposed to Do? (What Komikado needs is this kind of recognition—recognition of his makeup as a character. It is no coincidence that he regresses into a child when he loses in the series. He needs motherly care because, fundamentally, he has never grown up, because the grand Justice that could guarantee everyone would grow up—into a mature figure—has disappeared.)
Editor’s note: This piece was the author’s response to a question.