Crows: The Myth of Rebellion in a Conformist Age

Modern popular culture has an extraordinary capacity to simulate rebellion while draining it of content. The Japanese “Crows” film series is a perfect case in point. At first glance, it promises a narrative of insurgency—youth in revolt, gangs fighting against authority. Yet what we are watching is not a challenge to the order of things, but a ritual that reaffirms them.

Historically, genuine rebellion arises from a clash between established power and those excluded from it—peasants against landlords, workers against capital, colonised against empire. The rebellion in Crows has no such anchor. There is no ruling power to overthrow, no social injustice to confront, not even an aspiration to change the conditions of existence. The gangs fight not for emancipation, but for succession. One leader replaces another, just as kings and emperors once did, while the structure itself remains untouched.

This is a distinctly late-capitalist vision of "revolt": violence, stripped of political content, becomes a spectacle. Like the commodification of counterculture in the 20th century—think of how rock music or punk fashion, born in defiance, were swiftly absorbed by the very markets they opposed—Crows reduces rebellion to a style, something to be consumed.

We must also note the series’ masculine ideal—a world of young men who achieve authority through physical strength and charisma, without questioning why such hierarchies exist in the first place. In that sense, Crows is a story of initiation, not liberation. The fighters are merely passing through a liminal phase, a sort of gladiatorial adolescence, before inevitably joining the structures of power and respectability. They are rebels only in form; in substance, they are future patriarchs, future enforcers of the very status quo they appear to defy.

This pattern is not new. Across history, ruling classes have often tolerated a certain space for "ritualised rebellion"—festivals, carnivals, and spectacles where the normal order is inverted for a brief time, only to return reinforced. Crows belongs to this tradition. Its characters may look like outlaws, but they are ultimately disciples of hierarchy, and the audience’s admiration is carefully channeled toward those who succeed in becoming the new "boss."

The danger of such narratives is not that they glorify violence, but that they normalize the absence of real alternatives. In a society where young people are taught that "to rebel" means nothing more than to fight harder, win bigger, and dominate others, the very possibility of collective change is erased.

In the end, Crows tells us nothing about rebellion. It tells us about how capitalist modernity has mastered the art of selling defiance while ensuring its harmlessness. It is less a story of revolt than of order, repackaged as chaos, and therein lies its historical significance.