Against Evil, the Justicialist Colossus! The Significance of Mecha Genre and Manganime Science Fiction in Juan Ruocco’s Novel

Abstract

This article analyzes Juan Ruocco’s novel El coloso justicialista (2021) from the perspective of cultural studies and comparative literature, with particular attention to the dialogue it establishes with science fiction manganime and the mecha subgenre. The analysis focuses on the ways in which the novel articulates the imaginary of early Peronism with motifs, narrative structures, and conventions drawn from the Japanese tradition of giant robots, thus producing a singular form of cultural hybridization. The aim of this study is to examine how Ruocco appropriates and resignifies elements of manganime such as the figure of the pilot, the technified city, the human–machine relationship, and futuristic warlike epic to rewrite historical conflicts and political tensions in Argentina through a science-fictional lens. The guiding hypothesis of this article is that El coloso justicialista does not merely incorporate aesthetic or thematic references from manganime, but rather uses them as a narrative matrix to elaborate a Peronist utopia that simultaneously reveals its internal fractures and its authoritarian drift. In this way, the novel can be situated within what we have termed “otaku writings” and constitutes a paradigmatic case of hybridization between Japanese popular culture and local political imaginaries.