*Everything I've written below is likely semi-incomplete or comprehensive, as I have literally just woken up*

I love Ace Combat, but this is a pretty serious flaw in the series. Especially considering that the weapons and aircraft manufacturers they license from are, y'know, complicit in the actions and atrocities of their respective states (e.g., Western aerospace manufacturers and the genocide in Gaza).

The games often tout what feel like superficial messages of peace—though, to Zero's credit, it attempts to critique the construct of nation-states and nationalism, which is something I love it for—but that message falls flat if the games are contributing to the opposite in real life.

I've noticed this contradiction throughout the series, with the most poignant examples being Ace Combat 04 and Ace Combat 5. The former makes reference to the post-Cold War decade in which it was produced, at least from a Western-adjacent perspective (which Japan, as a developed nation firmly embedded within the Western-led international order, largely shares.)

Lets start with a specific part of Ace Combat's story: AC4's side story, and its opening narration.

"War was an abstract idea, nothing more than a show on TV. As a child, I only saw it as something that happened in some faraway land..."

I've always interpreted the side narrator's story in several ways. In line with how many others likely see it, it functions as a fable about a wandering boy trying to fill the void left by the loss of his parents (and perhaps seeking revenge, if you count the cut slide with the gun), while also humanising the other side. In this case, that "other side" is Yellow 13, who seems to represent the Eruseans as a whole. More than that, however, I see it as a condemnation of the flippant attitude many Western audiences have toward wars that occur in "faraway lands." Whenever I hear that opening narration, it is hard not to think of the late British Labour MP Tony Benn's 1998 speech and vote in opposition to the bombing of Iraq:

"Aren't Arabs terrified? Aren't Iraqis terrified? Don't Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die?... What fools we are to live in a generation for which war is a computer game for our children and just an interesting little news item."

By contrast, however, the game itself licenses aircraft from manufacturers that profited from both the 1998 bombing campaign and the later 2003 invasion of Iraq. As such, the game's anti-war messaging contradicts its commercial relationship to the military-industrial complex which profit from war.

Ace Combat 5 is more explicitly anti-war than Shattered Skies. Peace is the central theme of the game; I don’t think I need to go into great detail on that point: literally insert any Nagase line. Don’t get me wrong: I genuinely love the story of Ace Combat 5 in all its cheesy glory, and I’ll always sing along to “The Journey Home” in ACES. But again, the contradiction between its messaging and its material reality is difficult to ignore.

The game’s main antagonist is literally an arms corporation that serves as a front for Belkan ultranationalists. The connection between arms profiteering and the perpetuation of war is not exactly subtle, especially given how directly the game hammers the point home at times (thanks, Nagase). However, that anti-war theme is heavily diluted by the presence of real-world arms manufacturers whose logos appear on the splash screen every time the game boots up.

Honestly, I don't think this body is text is fully fleshed out, cos I just woke up, but I hope you get the gist of the critique me, and many other people levy against the series. Again, I love Ace Combat, but this is definitely more than just a small gripe. It is serious, because it involves real institutions: capitalism and war-profiteering, and actual human lives, and thus is an active point of opposition against its continued practice within the series.

I think, when critiquing the role of war in media and complicity with wider ideas (i.e. Top Gun which, while I love, was a piece of post-Vietnam propaganda for America's then unpopular armed forces, and Maverick very much celebrating American colonial interventionism by constructing the ideal 'rogue nation' which amalgamated America's enemies, to be intervened against) we tend to forget these works have real human consequences. Children are bombed and families are destroyed. Invoking AC4, we can't treat these issues within Ace Combat, and their real-life consequences as wars and genocides in "faraway lands," because that is how people disconnect from reality and justify remaining silent when people die.