We have been doing some presentations for the East Historical Society, and we could choose any historical period and decide the issue to present. We may want to focus on essential individuals that are less recognised, and we may also show history about countries that we tend to focus less on, such as Myanmar. One group chose to do the historical accuracy of the film Wonder Woman.

What my group choose to do is the historical aspect of anime series, such as the grave of fireflies. The film took place after the second world war and showed the struggling of Japanese people after the war. What we tried to do is to link the historical context of the film to the actual history, as the film shows little about the political aspect of the war. We want to argue that the how war is responsible for the suffering of individuals in the society, and how the film is useful to depict that the war is impactful in a micro point of view. However, we also investigate the biases in the movie, as most Japanese films tend to depict themselves as innocent while in reality, Japanese played a very cruel part inside this war. Some other anime also masks the justification of chauvinism and jingoism under its surface, thus it is really crucial to explore these issues too.

This links to Learning Outcome 3 because this CAS experience is self-initiated, and we strived to make it a thought-provoking presentation. This also relates to Learning Outcome 6, as the topic of war is on a global significance, and everyone should be aware of the after-effects of war, so we would minimise conflict and solve things diplomatically.

Here is an example of our presentation.