Since the 19th century, students have been the engine and antagonists of capitalist modernization in Asia—as well as the agents of imperialism and their fierce opposition. In the episodic video-essay Student Bodies (2019), Ho Rui An furthers his ongoing interest in Asia’s economic development by tracing the many paradoxical roles played by educated youths. The work begins with a backdrop of the Kagoshima coast bombed by British warships in 1863, and the story of young men who were smuggled out of shogunate-era Japan to London to study the technology of the West. This generation would later return and become elite figures in the Meiji government, which ushered in Japan’s ambitions for military and commercial supremacy in the region.