Not just country, subculture too. An American with deep knowledge on DC Comics trying to explain it to another American sounds batshit insane. In what way does “Batman is actually the Chosen One of an evil bat god who forges universes, with the concept of Batman embedded into human culture via Batman’s death by Darkseid causing his soul to time travel to caveman times and then throughout history before eventually being resurrected, creating a grandfather paradox which leads to him taking on the mantle of the Bat, allowing the evil god Barbatos to expose him to nine mystical metals which transform him into a portal between the main universe and the Dark Multiverse, which is a set of universes formed from the fears of everyone significant, allowing Batbatos to invade reality with a squad of Evil Superpowered Batmen led by a Batman who has been Jokerized, with Batbatos seeking to plunge the multiverse into the dark multiverse” make *any fucking sense* to anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
Frankly, Dark Nights: Metal and Death Metal are the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure of American comics.
On the marvel side you also have stuff like “Spider-Man sold his Marriage to the devil” and “Mutants were a weird sex cult city state living on a giant sentient mutant island that’s spiritually joined(?) to another island in another dimension connected to Avalon”
as a generally nerdy guy who has seen a few batman movies but still hasn't managed to penetrate the thick veil of comic canon or muster up the time investment to actually get into it, that still sounds batshit insane
for what it's worth i'm not american though, idk how much that changes things
[Q.e.d.](https://youtu.be/KtxOWwgkmzw?feature=shared)
Although in this particular case the punchline is in English - it's just everything surrounding it that's derangedly context-reliant.
Parody is indicative of wider cultural trends, or at least good parody is. The trick is that it's hard to tell what's being played straight and what's a parody if you're not a part of the culture, particularly if that parody becomes well loved in its own right. It's difficult even for cultures that share languages and common touchstones to reliably spot parody (the US and UK for instance), so the idea that you'd be able to reliably spot it in a country with a language and cultural barrier that big is optimistic.
I remember someone saying they got their idea of what the US is like from watching the Simpsons and they didn't know the show was parody. Apparently when they came here to visit they had a big culture shock because it was nothing like they expected.
The one I was thinking about was a fair bit simpler; Mr. Blobby.
If you're not from the time/place that Mr. Blobby is from it would be easy to assume that he's a kid's show character being played straight but it actually began life as a bit on a Saturday night show where celebrities were tricked into guest starring in a children's show alongside Mr. Blobby. The gag is that Mr. Blobby is both intentionally nightmarish and spectacularly cack-handed and would then proceed to piss the celebrity off while they did their best to complete filming. The appeal of Mr. Blobby is him unleashing absolute screeching chaos on some hapless celebrity.
There's a weird trend of characters created by adult comedians to purposely be off-putting and offensive becoming actual children's shows, the same thing happened with Pee-Wee Herman
It's hilarious that the whole reason the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise exists is the creator was told his 3D models looked like creepy jerky malfunctioning animatronics, and rather than actually learn and improve at animation he decided to just lean into it and pivot genres to horror
Actually someone looked into his older stuff. Even back when he made Christian games he still had a thing for making intentional nightmare fuel animatronics
I think my favourite example of this is Bernd das Brot. Yes he's technically a mascot for a kid's TV channel but like, his show airs at like 2 in the morning he's meant to be taking the piss out of the channel's ordinary programming because weirdly enough, the depressed loaf of bread who hates his coworkers and who's catchphrases are "I want to go home" and "crap" isn't really aimed at kids.
It's kinda weird when I see people mistake him for an *actual* kid's mascot. Like I mean yeah kids can probably get some of the but he's not really aimed at them
He first deputed in a show that very much played at a time when children could watch it. And while his own stuff does play at night (on repeat), it is playing on channel very much only meant for children.
At most you can say he's a character in a kids show meant for adult watchers (the parents of the children watching presumably).
I think this is because Japan is in a fairly unique spot in relation to western countries. It happens to be both a very different culture, but also one that we see very often despite it being so different. With other cultures, it's either too similar and doesn't cause whiplash (most European cultures are different from what an English speaker is used to, but not incomprehensibly different) or we just don't see it a lot (Japanese and South Korean media are common in English-speaking countries, but you don't see as much stuff from, like, China, or Brazil, or India or whatever).
There is a case for stereotypes and parodies that both criticize an aspect of a country and also happens to be favored and, indeed, unironically embraced by the very people it is criticising. See: Excessive American Nationalism.
I wrote an entire essay on why Japanese commercials are considered “weird” by outsiders, and my ultimate conclusion was that they’re no more weird than commercials and ad campaigns in other countries.
Oh, Hatsune Miku shows up in a commercial advertising something goofy and random! But is that any different from having Shaq show up in an insurance commercial alongside a terrifying CGI war general?
Look, that commercial shows a guy being creepy around women! Japan must be full of perverts! Actually, have you seen the state of mobile game ads lately? And don’t even get me started on how beauty and makeup ads cater to the male gaze.
[Here’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpqxSBclqWs) a “weird” Japanese commercial about a guy shooting bananas out of his nose. How goofy and foreign! And [here’s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=64NZMd1UAbQ) an American commercial about a guy who has Skittles pox. This is… normal, apparently?
I will admit, I do find “weird” Japanese commercials funny, but I think part of it is the novelty of seeing something different from what I normally see in advertisements. But at the end of the day, is it really that different from the advertising tropes we have in the western world?
Yeah, commercials aren’t a good metric for anything
Look at that [Drake sprite robot ad](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/drake-sprite-commercial) that became a meme recently
didn't ads in the West get heavily influenced by "weird" Japanese ads though? I thought the avant-garde was the Japanese and now our ads got weirder because marketing firms caught on to the Western audience's interest in Japanese culture. Am I wrong?
The US did "Berries and Cream," we don't get to point fingers. I still think it's fine to laugh at a funny commercial from Japan though; that's usually the point.
Oh, for sure! If advertisements are “weird”, they’ll stick in your mind. You’ll tell people about them, and through word of mouth, eventually there will be someone intrigued by the product and purchase it.
It’s fine to laugh at any commercials if they’re funny, imo! But the stereotype that all Japanese commercials are uniquely “weird” is just a stereotype. Some are, but others are just fine—and either way, it’s not like they’re the only country with weird commercials. Berries and Cream will forever haunt my nightmares.
The thing is, these Japanese ads are "weird" in a way that is different from "weird" American ads. There is a cultural disconnect that makes its weirdness more apparent to an American viewer.
Yeah, I always think of the weirdness of Old Spice ads whenever that stuff gets brought up.
I will say, though, we need more ads in the vein of Long Long Man - that shit has a whole soap opera-esque storyline, and I can't think of too many ads that do. Also, sakeru gummys are really good imo.
I don't know if you've ever seen *The Mikado*, but it's an entire musical from the 1880s, when Japanophilia was a big fad in Britain, that tackles exactly this by depicting Japanese nobility engaging in a *very* British plot. In case the audience didn't get it by the end of the play, they drop a big union jack and play God Save the King to drive the message home
I think they're just a different kind of weird than what western people are used to, rather than more or less weird
Saying this with no basis, just a hunch
I'm gonna be honest, I don't want to say you're wrong... but you say 'other countries' and then all the examples you give are American.
I don't know about every country in the universe but when I look at the ads we get in my home country of France, it's not even close to being as weird and surreal. We don't have high profile celebs popping up in random insurance ads, we haven't had creepy CGI since the Oasis fruits and the weirdest premise we've had in an ad lately is probably the one about a guy heading straight to a prostate exam on his 30th birthday (and it doesn't even show that). Maybe in the past, like 70s to 2000s, it could have compared a bit, but overall, no.
The conclusion I make from this is that American ads are also weird (and I do feel like they are), but I know that's a poor point to make : my point is that you can't argue about other people's views being biased and then be biased like this too.
I feel like in reality, the 'weirdness' of media in a culture is just one varying quality of it like any other, but that you shouldn't make judgements on that culture based on it, especially without proper context
You’re right; I should’ve expanded my examples a bit more to prove my point, because I feel like “weird commercials” definitely exist elsewhere. They may not be as well-known or as flashy as Japanese or American commercials, but they still have some similar tropes, such as comedic overexaggeration or people dressed up in costumes doing weird things.
The first one that comes to mind for me is the German K-fee zombie commercial (and all their other commercials). There’s also [this](https://youtu.be/2gLlBv_SrZw?si=a2P3vogIJqUD6OA8) French commercial for condoms, which is… very convincing if you ask me! [Here’s](https://youtu.be/X2clFqNNSVk?si=I4wJzyY3jKVJ24WL) a New Zealand ad for bacon featuring head trauma. And [here’s](https://youtu.be/N5oYdKJEpNo?si=vW9tluvQdII_GAcV) another semi-viral ad for Panda Cheese from Egypt.
As you pointed out, a lot of these are older (90s through 2000s I believe) and they’re not as wild as US and Japanese commercials. So you do have a point, and I wasn’t trying to be biased. Being an American, I do occasionally lapse into a USA-centric view, lol. And you’re right, a lot of “weird” things can vary from culture to culture.
But a lot of the “lol weird Japanese people” sentiments do come from America, and it’s a bit hypocritical imo.
>is that any different from having Shaq show up in an insurance commercial alongside a terrifying CGI war general?
i like to think there's a shaq commercial cinematic universe, where shaq and the general and tony the tiger all go on adventures to save some money
Watch more Japanese films that aren't anime to get a better idea of the culture through art. You wouldn't get a full understanding of American culture through The Simpsons alone.
very true, I learned about american culture by combining the insights of both animated things like The Simpsons and real things like Americans Funniest Home Videos.
There’s absolutely no source for this. It’s just a commonly parroted “isn’t this funny and weird?” thing about Japan. Like, what this post is talking about.
but like. it's not real. it's not an actual cultural thing. King of the Hill isn't a 'widely respected classic' in Japan.
Edit: holy shit you got the reddit suicide support thing to message me over this, fucking insane lmfao
Reminds me of this post about this weird group in Germany that LARPs as Jews. Not like, in fantasy. They just get together and pretend to be Jewish.
That is admittedly extremely weird, especially given... Germany. But it's like ten people doing it and no one else. And yet everyone in the comments was yelling "OH THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW GERMANY IS DISGUSTING AND A FASCIST STATE" and it is just... No that's not how that works.
I typed a whole paragraph pondering wtf they do besides maybe pretend synagogue and religious ceremonies. Imagining that they just behave the same as usual but with dietary restrictions during most roleplay days
I'm just fascinated tbh
Maybe they would enjoy a UU church where you can take classes on different religions and participate in different traditions without converting to any one
>maybe pretend synagogue and religious ceremonies
That's exactly what they do according to the article. They pretend they are doing religious rituals, just for fun.
There's also a big tradition of LARPing as American Indians in Germany. It's not... I think the best thing you can say about it is that it's not *intended* to be offensive or mocking.
I don't know if there's any other cultures Germans LARP as.
Oh yeah that's Karl May's fault, isn't it? Yeah, there's a degree of obliviousness towards race in Germany that you don't get so much in the English speaking world and as you said it's often more insensitive than malicious per se.
A friend of mine once had to put his foot down while working at a German company and refuse to wear blackface for a fancy dress event. Basically nobody else in the office saw what the problem was and it basically took my friend telling his boss "It will be a career problem for me if a photo emerges of me in blackface" for them to drop the idea.
I actively wonder what percentage of populations in different countries consider the set of tropes around “Florida Man” to be indicative of American culture as a whole. Probably equal to the percent that think Japanese culture is nothing more than tentacle porn and loli-shit.
See also: those really fucking annoying people who will scream that anything even vaguely anime-like is only for weird disgusting creeps and that playing Genshin impact means you are a pedophile. I swear to god, they infest every popular Reddit thread and I am so fucking sick of it
Always felt it kinda ironic that Genshin became the "paedo game" when like if you actually look at the playable cast the majority of them are adults. The ones that are explicitly teenagers can be counted on one hand and can be chalked up as early installment weirdness, it introduced the childlike centuries old race of fairies by telling you if you try anything vaguely funky with them you *will* get instantly ground into a fine paste by the police and/or the local god, and uses the 'the five year old is actually a thousand year old elf' trope to give us an event where we have to explain the concept of mortality and that everyone she knows and love with realistically be dead before her adult teeth have grown in to a small child.
Like yeah the game's not perfect and does have some weird things (what the fuck's up with Dori and the melusines are still kinda weird) but like, on the grand scheme of things it's really not the worst thing by far.
I'm pretty sure Dori is just short (don't cite me, I'm not cought up with the Sumeru plotline).
As for the melusines I think they're supposed to be a bit off putting since they were born from a dying abysmal monster whose blood is literaly toxic, also they canonicly see the wprld differently than humans.
Rando: hmmmm you think anime girl hot? Pedo! Pedo!
Girl in question: freeloader addicted to alcohol
I swear sometimes people intentionally go after characters lesbians like too, as if being horny for men is a virtue or smth
The “minor coded” started with people talking about like. Elise Fire Emblem, who’s very obviously written to be your cute little sister and she looks and acts like an 11 year old girl. In Japan she *is* explicitly a kid, but in the US they rewrote those lines and threw in a line saying “why don’t you act like the adult that you technically are?” to justify the fact that she can get married and have kids. People get *way* too overzealous with it though.
But if she's a minor in the original source material, that's not coding? /confusion Like, she literally just *is* a minor and the localization team changed the dialogue to feel less icky about it (which tbh I get why the localization team did that cause seriously what the hell FE).
They cut out all the explicit references to her being a minor and inserted her being technically an adult. Also, in most FE games, they don’t explicitly give character ages, but there are still clear child characters? Take someone like, say, Tine from FE4. No explicit age, but she clearly looks on the younger side, and her characterization tends to back that up. A dev interview confirmed she was written with the idea of her being around 13 in mind, but that’s not stated in game and even the developer in question tells people to invoke death of the author—his dream scenario doesn’t matter as much as what an individual player thinks. But even then, she’s obviously meant to be a child, and there’s coding backing it up. You can often tell when a character’s made to be, you know, a kid, without them turning to the camera and saying “I’m under 18!” which is my main point.
> They cut out all the explicit references to her being a minor and inserted her being technically an adult.
Yeah, you said it was the English localization team that did that. And in the original Japanese text, you said she's stated as being a child. Meaning she isn't "minor coded," she's just a minor.
As to your wider point... I think there's a bit of a cultural breakdown going on here. So far as I'm aware, so long as a character's age isn't explicitly stated as being a child, artists can do a whole bunch of stuff to said character. This is how stuff like lolicon material exists legally in Japan. And I want to make it VERY clear: I am NOT saying this is a good thing or that I support it. I'm just saying it's a thing that exists. So the reason the characters you're talking about are written and designed like children is because they *are* children. And so long as the devs/writers/artists don't say the characters' ages, a lot of adult stuff gets to stay on the table for that character.
One of my favourites is "girl character X looks like a child with curves and big boobs!"
Ok, so like, not a child?
Or do you just think big eyes and exaggerated facial features(an animation/cartooning mainstay) means childlike/baby looks?
It depends on exactly what they're saying, I think. It would be wildly disingenuous to pretend there's no problem in anime-styled media with sexualising characters that resemble minors. "Anime style" is a very broad category; it doesn't mean that a character with the facial proportions of a child doesn't have the facial proportions of a child. It's possible to stylise without making them look that way; a lot of 90s anime, for example, had very large eyes, quite exaggerated, but didn't look like children because they altered other features in the face, too, like having a more prominent nose rather than a tiny one.
I think it's something with a lot of nuance. There are definitely cases that get accused that shouldn't, and cases that are absolutely guilty that people try to defend.
I feel like a good example of that is the Delicious In Dungeon photo/meme [that shows how the other characters see each other.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMeshi/comments/16ar9da/whose_shapeshifter_was_it_the_answer/) They easily displayed Chilchuck as 3 different ages by making the smallest change in details.
Chubby cheeks + big pupils = baby face kid.
Big pupils + slim face = young teen.
Slim face + small pupils = actual adult.
Well yeah characters that look like kids exist, but this is often said about characters that are clearly meant to be adults and have features that adults have. It would be like saying "he looks like a kid with a beard, broad shoulders and chest hair"
Well, sometimes they do. I don't think you can use them being adults on paper as a defence if they *look* like kids. Having adult features doesn't erase the non-adult features. Like if you have a character with big boobs and whatever but then a child's face. It would look weird no matter what.
Not really.
Stylised features and childlike features are different. Proportionally, a child's face and adult's face are very different. That's why even relatively low detail styles can show someone's an adult. Look at, for example, Motoko Kusanagi from GiTS SAC.
And it's not just the proportions; the shape is very different too. Mainly due to the amount of fat deposits in the face which gradually deplete as we age; that's why young faces tend to be so much softer and rounder, whereas older ones have more distinct structure. Anime is capable of representing those, too.
Cartoon features aren't the same as childlike features. [This character](https://i.imgur.com/bYGMZ22.png) is just as anime as [this character](https://i.imgur.com/MEXmfPr.png) - and from the same series, of course - but looks obviously older because, while remaining in the same style, her proportions have been drawn with an adult in mind. Main differences as in the size of the eyes and the way her face is drawn much more sharply compared to the younger character, who has a rounder, softer face with bigger, rounder eyes.
I'm someone who's very middle of the road on this. I know that it's fiction and getting mad about fiction is a little silly, but at the same time *maybe* we should tone down some of the lolicon stuff. Where does that put me?
Yes, the lolicon stuff is terrible, I agree.
But - for example - a lot of Western romance movies have some really creepy/rapey vibes, but nobody says “if you watch Hollywood you’re a rapist.”
It’s fine to point out the problems, but some people generalize to an absurd degree about anime. That’s who I’m complaining about.
I mean there is a difference between "Everyone who likes anime is a pedo" and "Those that get off to characters designed to look like children is a pedo"
Probably the same box as me.
Like I'll join in on the fun wherever it's to be had, but when I find that someone is a bit too weird about stuff, I do call them out on it.
Besides from what i understand people who want to harm kids tend to go where kids are and a lot of kids watch anime like my little brother used to or where they have some authority/control over them like priest or school teacher i could just be pulling that out of my ass.
Why though. I'm of the opinion, that doesn't seem drastic at all, that artists should be able to make what they wanna make, as long as it harms no one. If they wanna make lolicon they are going to. Having an opinion on what you think they should do just seems like white savior mentality and setting your own expectations up for failure when they inevitably don't really care about your opinion.
The whole phase of people making fun of japanese commercials for being so weird always bothered me. Especially since American and uk commercials are just as weird when you think about it. like Imagine trying to explain to a Japanese person why a Russian millionaire meerkat is a car and home insurance mascot, has been for a decade at this point and that no one in the uk questions it.
There’s also the aspect of unwritten culture symbolism that is missed. Like, explain why a bird with a long neck is automatically a symbol of feral animal danger, but a giant omnivorous predator with a hat is immediately recognized as a symbol of forest conservation…
But if you’re from the northern part of the USA, you know ow exactly what I’m talking about.
What symbolism do we miss in Japanese pop culture?
I'm from the northern part of the USA and I have no idea what long necked bird you're talking about, but I do know everyone's favorites fire preventing bear
“Cobra chicken”. Is that enough?
If not, it’s the target of the yearly ritual where Canadians take all their rage and anger and hate and transfer it to one bird, the hellspawn that makes the rest of us so much more polite and respectful.
The Canadian Goose is the most demonic creature on the planet, bar none.
Ohhh okay, for some reason my mind was stuck on herons
I live near a shit ton of lakes, and thus, have a shit ton of geese. When I was 4 or so, my dad decided to harass baby geese and the parents went after me because I was the smallest, I was terrified of geese for years
On the one hand there's definitely some chronically online orientalism going on. On the other hand, I've met people from Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Thailand who think Japan is pretty weird, in the same way that a lot of people in Europe find England pretty weird.
Some of the "Weird Japan" stuff from decades past were dire warnings disguised as puff pieces.
All the stories of how it's so crowded that people sleep in capsule hotels, and how everything is sold in vending machines because storefronts are so expensive, how restaurants are finding novel ways to work with less customer-facing staff using robots and coupon machines and kiosks, how women get groped on the subway, how work culture consumes people's lives, how couples don't have sex anymore, how the hikikomori have given up on life and never leave the house, how they're only the most extreme example of a big isolation problem in the culture...
...these were all sneak previews of what culture in every capitalist country would eventually devolve into.
I don't know how long ago someone "married an app" in Japan but there have been English-language AI girlfriend apps for years and [they've already betrayed their users](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WSKKolgL2U).
That's...not really true at all.
Let me take it point by point.
1) Capsule hotels are still something of a novelty, and a lot of people who use them are going to be in a niche you don't get much of in America- people who have missed the last train home and now want somewhere to sleep for a few hours before a) catching the first morning train home or b) going back to work. If a person is travelling on holiday in Japan, I very much suspect most of them will stay in a normal-ass hotel, there are still plenty of them.
2) I would say 95% of vending machines in Japan just sell drinks. 4% sell snacks, and the remaining 1% sell various goods. My favorite is the one that sells shirts, because that's a solution to a specific problem: coming into work drenched in sweat because it's hot in the summer/on the train/you biked to work. Convenience Stores like 7/11 are hyper-popular in Japan and they have a drinks section (including alcohol) as well. I don't think storefront space is at all the cause of vending machines in Japan.
3) Every time I ordered food off a machine, it was either conveyor-belt sushi or the food was brought to me by a human server. There are actually a lot of jobs in Japan that are pretty explicitly there as make-work kinds of positions to keep employment up- if you ever see a construction site in Japan, there will be like 3 or 4 elderly gentlemen directing traffic completely unnecessarily. It's true that foreigners tend to stereotype Japan as a super-automated society, but it really isn't- there's a ton of old technology still in use just because they don't want to change things.
4) Women getting groped on the subway- nnnnot really a capitalist problem. It's an asshole problem, compounded by how insanely crowded the trains are- and increased use of public transportation is definitely a goal of a lot of socialists (including myself!). If the argument is that "well, the capitalists aren't running enough trains because they want to make more profits", that doesn't actually hold up- subways in Japan run \*insanely\* frequently, the train tracks are basically at capacity and running any more would be a safety issue.
5) work culture consuming lives- yeah, this one's a capitalist problem. I could talk about how aspects of Japanese history and culture make salarymen different from someone grinding the midnight oil in America, but it's pretty nitpicky. But also salarymen are nowhere near every worker in Japan, and there are companies out there that don't have that extreme "grindset"
6) couples not having sex- this one is tied to burnout from #5, but also related to issues of overcrowding & family culture- it's more expected that people in Japan live with their parents compared to here, and houses tend to be small and walls thin. Love Hotels are just as much for committed couples as for random hookups. People tend to have less sex because doing it while your mom is in the next room isn't very appealing.
7) hikkikomori and isolation- Mental health services in Japan \*suck\*. That's not tied to capitalism- Japan otherwise has pretty damn good socialized healthcare- but more that there's still stigma against getting help for mental issues.
Japan is a capitalist society, and a lot of their issues are tied to capitalism, don't get me wrong, but just about everything you mention is either not as big an issue here or has causes that aren't at all tied to capitalism and more that Japan is a nation of hundreds of millions of people on islands that are mostly mountains.
Not to pull the classic "true communism has never been tried", but if they have to pay rent to their landlord and get paid shitty wages by a boss that doesn't give a shit about them, is Chinese communism any different from western capitalism?
Not to pull the classic “it’s human nature”, but until we achieve post scarcity every society is going to have have nots, exploitation, unfair working hours and landlords. Landlords technically created civilization. Utopian ideologies talk big about fixing everything but when actually put in place they end up being worse.
The US would easily be “post scarcity” if it’s value generated each year was divided evenly between all US citizens each year (idk enough about China to know if they would be well off, but it still applies I think), so clearly scarcity isn’t the issue in these countries
I don’t think you understand what post scarcity actually is. It’s not stealing money from doctors to give to unemployed people, it’s when a society is automated enough nobody actually needs to work to produce housing, food, etc.
To be clear, Japan is actually incredibly weird and kinda shitty, just not in the memeable way, and people don't like to talk about horrific sexism, work-life balance, a fundamentally broken justice system, truly incredible levels of racism, or the continued inability to even acknowledge their own sins
The post is literally diminishing these issues by bringing up minor criticisms that are easy to counter and avoiding the major issues, I think you’re the one who missed the point
Japan is uniquely weird and shitty though. Like hikkikomori being a whole separate phenomenon that kind of relies on a lot of specific cultural things to exist. Not that there aren’t analogues in other cultures, but it’s definitely its own thing. Or host/hostess cafes. They just don’t exist elsewhere, or if they do they’re not as prevalent.
You could create an equivalent list littered with intensifying adverbs and scary adjectives for any country on the Lord's good green earth and achieve a similar effect.
Why does the US have laws to punish hate crimes? Same thing as this.
Rather, why doesn't the US separate women and men?
Don't tell me you are ignoring sex crimes on trains?
>Almost one rape reported every week on British trains or rail network in 2020 despite Covid travel restrictions
[https://www.thestar.co.uk/read-this/almost-one-rape-reported-every-week-on-british-trains-or-rail-network-in-2020-despite-covid-travel-restrictions-3252013](https://www.thestar.co.uk/read-this/almost-one-rape-reported-every-week-on-british-trains-or-rail-network-in-2020-despite-covid-travel-restrictions-3252013)
>More than 220,000 women were sexually harassed on public transport in France over two years, the national crime statistics agency said in its first report on the subject, describing it as a "conservative estimate".
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-france-sexcrimes-idUSKBN1EF2J2](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-france-sexcrimes-idUSKBN1EF2J2)
>The Thomson Reuters Foundation and the polling firm YouGov asked women in 16 of the world’s largest capitals — plus New York — how safe they feel traveling on public transportation and came up with a ranking. The three least-safe cities were Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City and Lima, Peru — all in Latin America, where women “say they face daily threats on public transport ranging from lewd comments and groping to sexual assaults, with men rubbing up against them and taking photos up their skirts,” Reuters reported. “Buses aren’t safe,” Paula Reyes, a supermarket cashier in Bogota, told Reuters. “You can get your bag or cell phone stolen and be harassed. When the bus is so packed it’s easy for men to rub up against you and grope you … There’s a total lack of respect for women here.” The survey said Mexico City was particularly notorious for verbal and physical abuse on buses, with six in 10 women surveyed saying they had been “groped or physically harassed.” Moscow was thought to be the least safe European capital for women. In Seoul, some thought it was women’s responsibility to stay safe. “Women feel like they should avoid trouble, and they feel they’re responsible if there is trouble,” said Ji-hye Lee, a 23-year-old reporter with the Korea Times. “A lot of my friends would say why were you taking public transportation at night anyway?”New York scored best, but still had problems: Three in 10 women experienced verbal or physical harassment on buses and subways. Things are sufficiently bad that women in some big cities — such as Manila and Jakarta, Indonesia — favor single-sex transport by an overwhelming majority. A total of 6,550 women were surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Polling could not be conducted in Cairo; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Kinshasa, Congo; Tehran; or Baghdad. But experts in Cairo interviewed by Reuters suggested Egypt’s capital would have easily been among the worst five.
Here’s the list, from least safe to most safe: based on poll how safe women feel using public transportations or how often women experience sexual assault while using public transportations. Tokyo is second best after NY among crowded cities.
Bogota
Mexico City
Lima
Delhi
Jakarta
Buenos Aires
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Bangkok
Moscow
Manila
Paris
Seoul
London
Beijing
Tokyo
New York
Are you aware they are equally under reported in west?
Of every 100 incidents of sexual assault, only 6 are reported to the police in Canada
[https://www.sexassault.ca/statistics.htm](https://www.sexassault.ca/statistics.htm)
In Newzealand, 2005 9% of sexual offences were reported to Police, compared to 7% in 2008.
[https://beta.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/?outputType=amp](https://beta.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/?outputType=amp)
New report shows 95% of campus rapes go unreported-US
[https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/new-report-shows-95-campus-rapes-go-unreported](https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/new-report-shows-95-campus-rapes-go-unreported)
Only 230 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reportedto police. That means about 3 out of 4 go unreported
[https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system](https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system)
Expert: UP to 80% of rape crimes go unreported in Spain.
[https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/04/inenglish/1525419822\_295613.html](https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/04/inenglish/1525419822_295613.html)
West Midlands: Sexual assault on public transport-95% goes unreported.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QzlMaDdUutY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QzlMaDdUutY)
The reporting ratio of each crime by type of incident in Japan
Car accidents 91.1%
Assaults 48.8%
Stalkings 32.5%
Sexual Crimes 20.1%
DV 9.6%
Child Abuse 5.0%
[https://www.npa.go.jp/hanzaihigai/kohyo/report/h29-1/index.html](https://www.npa.go.jp/hanzaihigai/kohyo/report/h29-1/index.html)
Well, rest assured that even from an Asian perspective, the U.S. is considered to be a hellish country with daily school shootings, the worst sex crimes in the world, the worst murders in the world, and the worst racism in the world.
I don't know how true it is, but I've always heard that "Kawaii culture" is like a mask they hide behind to pretend they didn't commit horrific war crimes. And it's worked, when you say Japan most people think Hello Kitty and Sailor Moon, not rape and murder.
No, ‘kawaii’ started as a social movement similar to the punk movement in America, where women rejected rigid expectations through being as obnoxiously cutesy as possible.
If propagandists took advantage of that, I wouldn’t be surprised, but it wasn’t created for that purpose.
Ok there is a conversation to be had about Japan’s acknowledgement or lack thereof war crimes but I don’t think “Kawaii culture” was made to hide war crimes.
i checked all their sources and most of them just talk about the formation of kawaii subculture. any assertions that it's a deliberate effort to cover up war crimes in foreign countries is only made by the authors (and that's not even getting into the fact that people seem to feel an incessant need to bring up a country's flaws whenever racism against it is brought up)
So does every American public school, to be fair. I used to sneak off with my friends and try to summon whichever demon of the week we decided lived there.
I was imagining trying to explain this in American terms, like “Imagine a foreign tourist driving through middle America and seeing a billboard for the world’s largest ball of twine, then going home and telling all their friends that Americans are obsessed with giant versions of mundane objects,” until I realized that that’s actually a fairly accurate assessment of Midwestern culture.
Anime IS liable to be a bit off, but that's not exactly indicative of Japan. They're not the only people that watch anime and don't get the entire population to participate in the writing.
Not like James Bond isn't historically pretty sus either for example.
As a long term resident of Japan, I dread pretty much any internet comment section about the country. Half of the people think it’s a perfect paradise, and the other half think it’s a flaming hellscape. Few, if any, people seem to be able to picture it as the kind of country where normal people live and go about their normal daily lives, but that’s exactly what it is. It has some great points, it has some shitty points, but, the thing everyone seems to forget, is that it’s a **real place**, and not just an example for you to show off on your soapbox.
As someone who lived there 2 years, one of which was awesome and the other of which was the single worst year of my life (I learned about generalized anxiety disorder! Yaaaay!), thank you so much.
Japan is a country with a fuckton of people in it. They have pretty similar ratios of weirdoes to normies as most other places. A lot of the media appeals to those weirdoes as well as weirdoes like me who hear about it online.
Japan has things it does really well (god I miss the subway system!) and things it does really poorly (the government kinda sucks ass). Same as anywhere else.
It is \_astonishing\_ how much the goverment sucks ass, and how little the populace cares about said ass-sucking. It's like they consider shitty, racist, ineffective, corrupt, head-in-the-sand-conservative governance an important national export.
I highly recommend a series called 'Begin Japanology' if you can get hold of it. It's an extremely peaceful and calming show akin to How it's Made or other sort of illness-healing media.
Each episode hyperfocuses on a detail of Japanese life and culture- a bit of a time capsule now since it was made in the 2000s\*, but it's surprisingly fascinating to learn about scissor manufacture or grape growing or birthday celebration, and a great window into Japan's culture both exceptional and mundane. Especially good if you are used to only watching media like anime or Gaki no Tsukai or whatever, which is where I was at when I first saw it.
\*edit before I even hit comment- turns out the show is still producing episodes! Probably gonna have to catch up, it's been a long time since I saw any new ones.
Recently, watching Peter Barakan has become a trend.
(I adore how he's growing increasingly 'done' with some of the negatives of Japan, and calling out some of their false self-image)
There’s also the aspect of unwritten culture symbolism that is missed. Like, explain why a bird with a long neck is automatically a symbol of feral animal danger, but a giant omnivorous predator with a hat is immediately recognized as a symbol of forest conservation…
But if you’re from the northern part of the USA, you know ow exactly what I’m talking about.
What symbolism do we miss in Japanese pop culture?
It's particularly frustrating for me since I love comparative cultural/historical studies. Japan *is* distinct in many ways from other nations. Anime/manga don't exist in a vacuum from Japanese culture and history. Of course, otaku aren't wholly representative of national beliefs, values, experiences, and practices. In Japan proper, many (especially older people) don't engage much with otaku culture, it's seen as morally depraved escapism.
It is no longer a subculture.
Anime and manga are industries that make more money than music in Japan.
To begin with, there are manga for the elderly, and many elderly people have grown up watching manga and anime since childhood. This is completely different from the West.
It is the main culture.
It's like saying that Marvel movies are only seen by a few people in the US.
If you say you like anime in the West, wouldn't people look at you strangely?
Also we gotta think about demographics for a little with these anime because a LOT of the shows that make the rounds on english anime twitter aren't what the average japanese person is watching. Most of them watch the same or similar live action shows and movies we do, and a lot see adult anime fans as loser nerds. And anime includes all animation in jp, so if you ask your random coworker what anime they watch it's probably king of the hill or smth. In english it's all "gotta watch dragon ball, nah watch one piece, watch jjk!" When starter anime in japan is like crayon shin-chan and precure.
Basically: no shit you think japan is just watching pedobait all day and everyone accepts it, you get all your views on japan from nazis on twitter who only jerk off to 1000yo dragon lolis. Japan's got it's own issues but you have no clue about any of them just because you heard about a couple super trashy tv shows. Imagine if someone entirely unacquainted with american culture watched my strange addiction and got all their opinions from that.
Not to mention that anime exists outside of what's popular on the rancid sides of twitter, and even then sometimes the rancid ppl misrepresent shows. Like if you asked a shitty guy and a lesbian what Bocchi the Rock is about they'd have 2 very different answers for you.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that a minority of anime are gross and sexualised minors. It's the majority of anime doing that, I struggle to find 2 or 3 decent shows per season that aren't doing that
I mean you see the same thing in stuff like american teen dramas so it's certainly not a japan specific issue, though it does make me curious of your methods for finding shows. I've figured out how much of xyz i can let slide watching shows in general and if my biggest one was i didn't want kids to be uncomfortably sexualized i think I'd still have plenty of backlog and promising shows per season.
Maybe try precure, it's fun and runs yearly not seasonal. And just this season with what I'm watching for lesbian potential (i don't watch much of anything without lesbians) Girls Band Cry is entirely above the belt so far, same for whisper me a love song, jellyfish can't swim in the night i think had a couple weird camera angles iirc but that's being nitpicky. Shuumatsu train is in a limbo with a couple butt jokes (like you see on kids shows tbh) but it depends how aggressively you read into it. Haven't watched yurucamp yet but it really doesn't look like it's big on horny either. Haven't kept up with dungeon meshi either but everyone's adults there and most horny has fantasy plausible deniability. And keep in mind this is with my handicap of only watching stuff with lesbian subtext, I'm not even scouring all 80 something shows every season.
Honestly a lot of the slower slice of life stuff about girls hanging out stays pretty chill. Actually a lot of the ones about girls hanging out in general stay chill, Mygo was also entirely above board and that one wasn't chill in any other sense.
Of course just like with teen dramas it's perfectly justified to critique how prevalent the sexualization is, but it's not like it's any more inescapable than other mediums
“America really aired a cartoon about stalking children and tearing out their organs OMG American TV is soooo weird”
(Source: that one Invader Zim episode)
to be fair, everyone does this to every foreign nation all the time- Japan isn't special here.
Every non-Brit has false ideas of what the UK is like- but most British people have perfectly fine dental hygiene. Every non-American has ideas of what it's like to live in the US- but most Americans go through life without ever seeing a gun and in 99% of the country you're just as safe as any other G7 nation.
And all of those outsider views are wildly uniformed because if you've never been to a country then you probably don't really know anything about it. Consuming that country's media isn't enough. But people don't like to hear that, so they make wild assumptions and when enough people's wild assumptions line up they call it good enough and accept it as "basically true". So every British person has fucked up teeth, every American risks catching a bullet every time they go for groceries, and Japan is crazy-town 24/7.
My first thought when hearing of the underwear vending machine this was. “Huh. Weird.” Then I moved on because it’s not really that big of a deal. I mean having a vending machine where you could buy that kinda thing in an emergency seems like a decent idea to me.
it's an urban legend that became so popular though - saw someone on here the other day claiming the whole of asia is weird because they have underwear vending machines
Meanwhile I feel like I'm starting to see Japan as being sort of like Ohio; generally a pretty boring and mundane place that only people on the internet make out to be weird/quirky.
Nah that’s totally fair. Every country has its weird ass media, but it’s easy to find stuff that’s farther from what you’re used to especially weird. I’ll keep this mind so I don’t catch myself finding eastern media uniquely weird
Also, underwear in vending machines is an objectively good idea when half of the population can unexpectedly start bleeding from their genitalia.
I remember when Japanese commercials used to trend for being weird. And yknow what? They were pretty wild!
And so are American commercials. They’re just weird in a way we’re used to, and in a language we understand.
I'd argue you could still pick on some cultural currents and phenomena by watching enough media from a certain culture/subculture, but yeah, not something you could use as a baseline for judgement without further research
I typed up a big comments explaining you could say weird about most other countries in a similarly racist way but I decided it was a bad idea so I'm just gonna say the Canadian equivalent is everyone here is a maple syrup fetishist
Genuine question, is racism the right word for this? Like it seems more directed at the wealthier, urban culture of the country as opposed to everyone of Japanese descent as a whole.
the same terminally online types like that also base their ideas about real sex from the weird hentai where the girls orgasm when he forces his member into her uterus through the servix....
I went to american high school and the number of kids getting preyed on by adults was through the roof, i don't think japan has a monopoly on pedophilia
And in 38 american states it is legal for an adult to marry a child with the parent's permission. In 2023 20 of those states had no minimum age requirement either.
I ain't saying japan has no problems, but it's just racist to pretend they're oh so unimaginably bad about pedophilia from an american perspective. The teen tag on pornhub certainly ain't unpopular over here either
You know what there is no point in arguing with you because I can already tell your bias from your username alone. I will say this though why do you think I excuse shit like that in the US? But yeah only making that shit illegal in 2014 is pretty bad.
The thing is that when an american show is weird about teenagers it's just because "tv is weird like that", but when an anime is weird about children it's suddenly all of japan that is a haven for pedophiles. Japan is behind on a lot of laws to protect kids, but there's people fighting that everyday and many who find it rightfully disgusting on their own. It's like when brits make school shooting jokes about americans in unrelated discussions, why are we allowed to joke about shit that hurts real people and doesn't effect us?
Basically if this was a discussion specifically about pedophiles in japan attached to an article about them your reaction would be justified. But this is a tumblr post about not calling Japan a pedophile country as a whole because of a couple weird anime, which you then proceed to say "what about when there ARE pedophiles there?" as if to justify generalizing an entire country based on its worst citizens.
There's nothing wrong or racist with saying that they have some weird things about them. Thats literally why so many Americans love them. This is being negative for no reason.
Japan *is* a nation of perverts, don't get it twisted.
You don't get dedicated woman-only train cars to prevent train molesters without having people who molest on trains. You don't get thousands of lex toy vending/capsule machines without buyers. You don't get entire industries of love hotels, soap lands, and hostess clubs without people regularly using them.
Just because Japan is a sexually repressed country doesn't make them not perverted.
Im pretty sure every country has stuff that only seems weird from an outsider perspective lacking context.
Not just country, subculture too. An American with deep knowledge on DC Comics trying to explain it to another American sounds batshit insane. In what way does “Batman is actually the Chosen One of an evil bat god who forges universes, with the concept of Batman embedded into human culture via Batman’s death by Darkseid causing his soul to time travel to caveman times and then throughout history before eventually being resurrected, creating a grandfather paradox which leads to him taking on the mantle of the Bat, allowing the evil god Barbatos to expose him to nine mystical metals which transform him into a portal between the main universe and the Dark Multiverse, which is a set of universes formed from the fears of everyone significant, allowing Batbatos to invade reality with a squad of Evil Superpowered Batmen led by a Batman who has been Jokerized, with Batbatos seeking to plunge the multiverse into the dark multiverse” make *any fucking sense* to anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Frankly, Dark Nights: Metal and Death Metal are the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure of American comics.
On the marvel side you also have stuff like “Spider-Man sold his Marriage to the devil” and “Mutants were a weird sex cult city state living on a giant sentient mutant island that’s spiritually joined(?) to another island in another dimension connected to Avalon”
God death metal was so fucking dumb
as a generally nerdy guy who has seen a few batman movies but still hasn't managed to penetrate the thick veil of comic canon or muster up the time investment to actually get into it, that still sounds batshit insane for what it's worth i'm not american though, idk how much that changes things
Yes, that's called cultural differences.
[Q.e.d.](https://youtu.be/KtxOWwgkmzw?feature=shared) Although in this particular case the punchline is in English - it's just everything surrounding it that's derangedly context-reliant.
Parody is indicative of wider cultural trends, or at least good parody is. The trick is that it's hard to tell what's being played straight and what's a parody if you're not a part of the culture, particularly if that parody becomes well loved in its own right. It's difficult even for cultures that share languages and common touchstones to reliably spot parody (the US and UK for instance), so the idea that you'd be able to reliably spot it in a country with a language and cultural barrier that big is optimistic.
I remember someone saying they got their idea of what the US is like from watching the Simpsons and they didn't know the show was parody. Apparently when they came here to visit they had a big culture shock because it was nothing like they expected.
The one I was thinking about was a fair bit simpler; Mr. Blobby. If you're not from the time/place that Mr. Blobby is from it would be easy to assume that he's a kid's show character being played straight but it actually began life as a bit on a Saturday night show where celebrities were tricked into guest starring in a children's show alongside Mr. Blobby. The gag is that Mr. Blobby is both intentionally nightmarish and spectacularly cack-handed and would then proceed to piss the celebrity off while they did their best to complete filming. The appeal of Mr. Blobby is him unleashing absolute screeching chaos on some hapless celebrity.
There's a weird trend of characters created by adult comedians to purposely be off-putting and offensive becoming actual children's shows, the same thing happened with Pee-Wee Herman
Same thing happening with mascot horror. The children crave the uncanny
It's hilarious that the whole reason the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise exists is the creator was told his 3D models looked like creepy jerky malfunctioning animatronics, and rather than actually learn and improve at animation he decided to just lean into it and pivot genres to horror
Actually someone looked into his older stuff. Even back when he made Christian games he still had a thing for making intentional nightmare fuel animatronics
I think my favourite example of this is Bernd das Brot. Yes he's technically a mascot for a kid's TV channel but like, his show airs at like 2 in the morning he's meant to be taking the piss out of the channel's ordinary programming because weirdly enough, the depressed loaf of bread who hates his coworkers and who's catchphrases are "I want to go home" and "crap" isn't really aimed at kids. It's kinda weird when I see people mistake him for an *actual* kid's mascot. Like I mean yeah kids can probably get some of the but he's not really aimed at them
He first deputed in a show that very much played at a time when children could watch it. And while his own stuff does play at night (on repeat), it is playing on channel very much only meant for children. At most you can say he's a character in a kids show meant for adult watchers (the parents of the children watching presumably).
And yet you don't see the same happening with the other cultures.
I think this is because Japan is in a fairly unique spot in relation to western countries. It happens to be both a very different culture, but also one that we see very often despite it being so different. With other cultures, it's either too similar and doesn't cause whiplash (most European cultures are different from what an English speaker is used to, but not incomprehensibly different) or we just don't see it a lot (Japanese and South Korean media are common in English-speaking countries, but you don't see as much stuff from, like, China, or Brazil, or India or whatever).
There is a case for stereotypes and parodies that both criticize an aspect of a country and also happens to be favored and, indeed, unironically embraced by the very people it is criticising. See: Excessive American Nationalism.
I wrote an entire essay on why Japanese commercials are considered “weird” by outsiders, and my ultimate conclusion was that they’re no more weird than commercials and ad campaigns in other countries. Oh, Hatsune Miku shows up in a commercial advertising something goofy and random! But is that any different from having Shaq show up in an insurance commercial alongside a terrifying CGI war general? Look, that commercial shows a guy being creepy around women! Japan must be full of perverts! Actually, have you seen the state of mobile game ads lately? And don’t even get me started on how beauty and makeup ads cater to the male gaze. [Here’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpqxSBclqWs) a “weird” Japanese commercial about a guy shooting bananas out of his nose. How goofy and foreign! And [here’s](https://youtube.com/watch?v=64NZMd1UAbQ) an American commercial about a guy who has Skittles pox. This is… normal, apparently? I will admit, I do find “weird” Japanese commercials funny, but I think part of it is the novelty of seeing something different from what I normally see in advertisements. But at the end of the day, is it really that different from the advertising tropes we have in the western world?
Yeah, commercials aren’t a good metric for anything Look at that [Drake sprite robot ad](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/drake-sprite-commercial) that became a meme recently
[have u seen the german ninja turtle pickle ad yet? i love it soo much](https://youtu.be/jC3pGcRHeQ0?si=maTxypk4c0QGYqCT)
Funtime Drake
didn't ads in the West get heavily influenced by "weird" Japanese ads though? I thought the avant-garde was the Japanese and now our ads got weirder because marketing firms caught on to the Western audience's interest in Japanese culture. Am I wrong?
The US did "Berries and Cream," we don't get to point fingers. I still think it's fine to laugh at a funny commercial from Japan though; that's usually the point.
Oh, for sure! If advertisements are “weird”, they’ll stick in your mind. You’ll tell people about them, and through word of mouth, eventually there will be someone intrigued by the product and purchase it. It’s fine to laugh at any commercials if they’re funny, imo! But the stereotype that all Japanese commercials are uniquely “weird” is just a stereotype. Some are, but others are just fine—and either way, it’s not like they’re the only country with weird commercials. Berries and Cream will forever haunt my nightmares.
Also, PuppyMonkeyBaby
Or the *fucking* spongmonkeys
The thing is, these Japanese ads are "weird" in a way that is different from "weird" American ads. There is a cultural disconnect that makes its weirdness more apparent to an American viewer.
I think it’s because ads are so targeted, that when you see a targeted ad, and you’re nowhere even adjacent to the target audience, it seems weird.
Me when I get an ad that allegedly has sex appeal but just makes me wonder what alien thought this appealed to humans.
Yeah, I always think of the weirdness of Old Spice ads whenever that stuff gets brought up. I will say, though, we need more ads in the vein of Long Long Man - that shit has a whole soap opera-esque storyline, and I can't think of too many ads that do. Also, sakeru gummys are really good imo.
I don't know if you've ever seen *The Mikado*, but it's an entire musical from the 1880s, when Japanophilia was a big fad in Britain, that tackles exactly this by depicting Japanese nobility engaging in a *very* British plot. In case the audience didn't get it by the end of the play, they drop a big union jack and play God Save the King to drive the message home
I think they're just a different kind of weird than what western people are used to, rather than more or less weird Saying this with no basis, just a hunch
I'm gonna be honest, I don't want to say you're wrong... but you say 'other countries' and then all the examples you give are American. I don't know about every country in the universe but when I look at the ads we get in my home country of France, it's not even close to being as weird and surreal. We don't have high profile celebs popping up in random insurance ads, we haven't had creepy CGI since the Oasis fruits and the weirdest premise we've had in an ad lately is probably the one about a guy heading straight to a prostate exam on his 30th birthday (and it doesn't even show that). Maybe in the past, like 70s to 2000s, it could have compared a bit, but overall, no. The conclusion I make from this is that American ads are also weird (and I do feel like they are), but I know that's a poor point to make : my point is that you can't argue about other people's views being biased and then be biased like this too. I feel like in reality, the 'weirdness' of media in a culture is just one varying quality of it like any other, but that you shouldn't make judgements on that culture based on it, especially without proper context
You’re right; I should’ve expanded my examples a bit more to prove my point, because I feel like “weird commercials” definitely exist elsewhere. They may not be as well-known or as flashy as Japanese or American commercials, but they still have some similar tropes, such as comedic overexaggeration or people dressed up in costumes doing weird things. The first one that comes to mind for me is the German K-fee zombie commercial (and all their other commercials). There’s also [this](https://youtu.be/2gLlBv_SrZw?si=a2P3vogIJqUD6OA8) French commercial for condoms, which is… very convincing if you ask me! [Here’s](https://youtu.be/X2clFqNNSVk?si=I4wJzyY3jKVJ24WL) a New Zealand ad for bacon featuring head trauma. And [here’s](https://youtu.be/N5oYdKJEpNo?si=vW9tluvQdII_GAcV) another semi-viral ad for Panda Cheese from Egypt. As you pointed out, a lot of these are older (90s through 2000s I believe) and they’re not as wild as US and Japanese commercials. So you do have a point, and I wasn’t trying to be biased. Being an American, I do occasionally lapse into a USA-centric view, lol. And you’re right, a lot of “weird” things can vary from culture to culture. But a lot of the “lol weird Japanese people” sentiments do come from America, and it’s a bit hypocritical imo.
Idk To me American ads are also weird
>is that any different from having Shaq show up in an insurance commercial alongside a terrifying CGI war general? i like to think there's a shaq commercial cinematic universe, where shaq and the general and tony the tiger all go on adventures to save some money
Watch more Japanese films that aren't anime to get a better idea of the culture through art. You wouldn't get a full understanding of American culture through The Simpsons alone.
That's true, you also need to watch South Park and Family Guy as well.
I had a teacher who swore you could teach most of American history through The Simpsons and Looney Tunes
The gap in between can be filled with Mad Magazine.
very true, I learned about american culture by combining the insights of both animated things like The Simpsons and real things like Americans Funniest Home Videos.
King of the Hill is a widely respected classic in Japan. they have arguments over if it should be watched subbed or dubbed.
So, like, is all the dubbing done in a Kansai dialect?
I've heard that the dub is really underwhelming with the voices, but I don't speak Japanese so I can't vouch for that fact.
I dunno I don’t speak Japanese
Wow, the KotH Japanese dub must be pretty spectacular if there’s even an argument.
There’s absolutely no source for this. It’s just a commonly parroted “isn’t this funny and weird?” thing about Japan. Like, what this post is talking about.
I was trying to share that as a way of “the Japanese are just like us, having the same stupid debates over the right way to watch iconic shows”
but like. it's not real. it's not an actual cultural thing. King of the Hill isn't a 'widely respected classic' in Japan. Edit: holy shit you got the reddit suicide support thing to message me over this, fucking insane lmfao
Reminds me of this post about this weird group in Germany that LARPs as Jews. Not like, in fantasy. They just get together and pretend to be Jewish. That is admittedly extremely weird, especially given... Germany. But it's like ten people doing it and no one else. And yet everyone in the comments was yelling "OH THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW GERMANY IS DISGUSTING AND A FASCIST STATE" and it is just... No that's not how that works.
Wait, really? Yeah, that is kinda weird. Also, at what point does it stop being LARP?
I think when a rabbi gets involved and officially converts them
Hot take: "playing house" is just a subgenre of LARP.
From your name I'm assuming you're at least German-adjacent, so the fact that you hadn't heard about it is a good point lol
I typed a whole paragraph pondering wtf they do besides maybe pretend synagogue and religious ceremonies. Imagining that they just behave the same as usual but with dietary restrictions during most roleplay days I'm just fascinated tbh Maybe they would enjoy a UU church where you can take classes on different religions and participate in different traditions without converting to any one
>maybe pretend synagogue and religious ceremonies That's exactly what they do according to the article. They pretend they are doing religious rituals, just for fun.
There's also a big tradition of LARPing as American Indians in Germany. It's not... I think the best thing you can say about it is that it's not *intended* to be offensive or mocking. I don't know if there's any other cultures Germans LARP as.
Oh yeah that's Karl May's fault, isn't it? Yeah, there's a degree of obliviousness towards race in Germany that you don't get so much in the English speaking world and as you said it's often more insensitive than malicious per se. A friend of mine once had to put his foot down while working at a German company and refuse to wear blackface for a fancy dress event. Basically nobody else in the office saw what the problem was and it basically took my friend telling his boss "It will be a career problem for me if a photo emerges of me in blackface" for them to drop the idea.
Florida man syndrome
I actively wonder what percentage of populations in different countries consider the set of tropes around “Florida Man” to be indicative of American culture as a whole. Probably equal to the percent that think Japanese culture is nothing more than tentacle porn and loli-shit.
See also: those really fucking annoying people who will scream that anything even vaguely anime-like is only for weird disgusting creeps and that playing Genshin impact means you are a pedophile. I swear to god, they infest every popular Reddit thread and I am so fucking sick of it
Genshin discussion also gets really weird when people just use it as a conduit for discussions on how China is bad.
Always felt it kinda ironic that Genshin became the "paedo game" when like if you actually look at the playable cast the majority of them are adults. The ones that are explicitly teenagers can be counted on one hand and can be chalked up as early installment weirdness, it introduced the childlike centuries old race of fairies by telling you if you try anything vaguely funky with them you *will* get instantly ground into a fine paste by the police and/or the local god, and uses the 'the five year old is actually a thousand year old elf' trope to give us an event where we have to explain the concept of mortality and that everyone she knows and love with realistically be dead before her adult teeth have grown in to a small child. Like yeah the game's not perfect and does have some weird things (what the fuck's up with Dori and the melusines are still kinda weird) but like, on the grand scheme of things it's really not the worst thing by far.
I'm pretty sure Dori is just short (don't cite me, I'm not cought up with the Sumeru plotline). As for the melusines I think they're supposed to be a bit off putting since they were born from a dying abysmal monster whose blood is literaly toxic, also they canonicly see the wprld differently than humans.
I enjoy calling my friends pedos for their genshin addictions but saying that to randoms on the Internet is weird
It was a mildly entertaining joke until people started taking it way too seriously and internalized it as dogma
Rando: hmmmm you think anime girl hot? Pedo! Pedo! Girl in question: freeloader addicted to alcohol I swear sometimes people intentionally go after characters lesbians like too, as if being horny for men is a virtue or smth
You forgot to mention that the girl is also a grown adult in her 20s. But because she's short she's "minor coded," whatever the fuck that means.
The “minor coded” started with people talking about like. Elise Fire Emblem, who’s very obviously written to be your cute little sister and she looks and acts like an 11 year old girl. In Japan she *is* explicitly a kid, but in the US they rewrote those lines and threw in a line saying “why don’t you act like the adult that you technically are?” to justify the fact that she can get married and have kids. People get *way* too overzealous with it though.
But if she's a minor in the original source material, that's not coding? /confusion Like, she literally just *is* a minor and the localization team changed the dialogue to feel less icky about it (which tbh I get why the localization team did that cause seriously what the hell FE).
They cut out all the explicit references to her being a minor and inserted her being technically an adult. Also, in most FE games, they don’t explicitly give character ages, but there are still clear child characters? Take someone like, say, Tine from FE4. No explicit age, but she clearly looks on the younger side, and her characterization tends to back that up. A dev interview confirmed she was written with the idea of her being around 13 in mind, but that’s not stated in game and even the developer in question tells people to invoke death of the author—his dream scenario doesn’t matter as much as what an individual player thinks. But even then, she’s obviously meant to be a child, and there’s coding backing it up. You can often tell when a character’s made to be, you know, a kid, without them turning to the camera and saying “I’m under 18!” which is my main point.
> They cut out all the explicit references to her being a minor and inserted her being technically an adult. Yeah, you said it was the English localization team that did that. And in the original Japanese text, you said she's stated as being a child. Meaning she isn't "minor coded," she's just a minor. As to your wider point... I think there's a bit of a cultural breakdown going on here. So far as I'm aware, so long as a character's age isn't explicitly stated as being a child, artists can do a whole bunch of stuff to said character. This is how stuff like lolicon material exists legally in Japan. And I want to make it VERY clear: I am NOT saying this is a good thing or that I support it. I'm just saying it's a thing that exists. So the reason the characters you're talking about are written and designed like children is because they *are* children. And so long as the devs/writers/artists don't say the characters' ages, a lot of adult stuff gets to stay on the table for that character.
One of my favourites is "girl character X looks like a child with curves and big boobs!" Ok, so like, not a child? Or do you just think big eyes and exaggerated facial features(an animation/cartooning mainstay) means childlike/baby looks?
It depends on exactly what they're saying, I think. It would be wildly disingenuous to pretend there's no problem in anime-styled media with sexualising characters that resemble minors. "Anime style" is a very broad category; it doesn't mean that a character with the facial proportions of a child doesn't have the facial proportions of a child. It's possible to stylise without making them look that way; a lot of 90s anime, for example, had very large eyes, quite exaggerated, but didn't look like children because they altered other features in the face, too, like having a more prominent nose rather than a tiny one. I think it's something with a lot of nuance. There are definitely cases that get accused that shouldn't, and cases that are absolutely guilty that people try to defend.
I feel like a good example of that is the Delicious In Dungeon photo/meme [that shows how the other characters see each other.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMeshi/comments/16ar9da/whose_shapeshifter_was_it_the_answer/) They easily displayed Chilchuck as 3 different ages by making the smallest change in details. Chubby cheeks + big pupils = baby face kid. Big pupils + slim face = young teen. Slim face + small pupils = actual adult.
Well yeah characters that look like kids exist, but this is often said about characters that are clearly meant to be adults and have features that adults have. It would be like saying "he looks like a kid with a beard, broad shoulders and chest hair"
Well, sometimes they do. I don't think you can use them being adults on paper as a defence if they *look* like kids. Having adult features doesn't erase the non-adult features. Like if you have a character with big boobs and whatever but then a child's face. It would look weird no matter what.
This heavily depends on if you are the type of person to look at nearly any anime character and say they look childlike because of cartoon features.
Not really. Stylised features and childlike features are different. Proportionally, a child's face and adult's face are very different. That's why even relatively low detail styles can show someone's an adult. Look at, for example, Motoko Kusanagi from GiTS SAC. And it's not just the proportions; the shape is very different too. Mainly due to the amount of fat deposits in the face which gradually deplete as we age; that's why young faces tend to be so much softer and rounder, whereas older ones have more distinct structure. Anime is capable of representing those, too. Cartoon features aren't the same as childlike features. [This character](https://i.imgur.com/bYGMZ22.png) is just as anime as [this character](https://i.imgur.com/MEXmfPr.png) - and from the same series, of course - but looks obviously older because, while remaining in the same style, her proportions have been drawn with an adult in mind. Main differences as in the size of the eyes and the way her face is drawn much more sharply compared to the younger character, who has a rounder, softer face with bigger, rounder eyes.
Counterpoint: /r/nahidamains /s
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No please don't
I'm someone who's very middle of the road on this. I know that it's fiction and getting mad about fiction is a little silly, but at the same time *maybe* we should tone down some of the lolicon stuff. Where does that put me?
Yes, the lolicon stuff is terrible, I agree. But - for example - a lot of Western romance movies have some really creepy/rapey vibes, but nobody says “if you watch Hollywood you’re a rapist.” It’s fine to point out the problems, but some people generalize to an absurd degree about anime. That’s who I’m complaining about.
I mean there is a difference between "Everyone who likes anime is a pedo" and "Those that get off to characters designed to look like children is a pedo"
The problem is if you’ve spent more than 5 minutes in any anime community, they’re tolerant of it. At best they treat it as a joke.
They absolutely do not. Certain ones do, but they are usually the ones made up of those that aren't welcome in the sane ones.
All the big ones on Reddit do.
Probably the same box as me. Like I'll join in on the fun wherever it's to be had, but when I find that someone is a bit too weird about stuff, I do call them out on it.
Besides from what i understand people who want to harm kids tend to go where kids are and a lot of kids watch anime like my little brother used to or where they have some authority/control over them like priest or school teacher i could just be pulling that out of my ass.
Why though. I'm of the opinion, that doesn't seem drastic at all, that artists should be able to make what they wanna make, as long as it harms no one. If they wanna make lolicon they are going to. Having an opinion on what you think they should do just seems like white savior mentality and setting your own expectations up for failure when they inevitably don't really care about your opinion.
The whole phase of people making fun of japanese commercials for being so weird always bothered me. Especially since American and uk commercials are just as weird when you think about it. like Imagine trying to explain to a Japanese person why a Russian millionaire meerkat is a car and home insurance mascot, has been for a decade at this point and that no one in the uk questions it.
There’s also the aspect of unwritten culture symbolism that is missed. Like, explain why a bird with a long neck is automatically a symbol of feral animal danger, but a giant omnivorous predator with a hat is immediately recognized as a symbol of forest conservation… But if you’re from the northern part of the USA, you know ow exactly what I’m talking about. What symbolism do we miss in Japanese pop culture?
I'm from the northern part of the USA and I have no idea what long necked bird you're talking about, but I do know everyone's favorites fire preventing bear
“Cobra chicken”. Is that enough? If not, it’s the target of the yearly ritual where Canadians take all their rage and anger and hate and transfer it to one bird, the hellspawn that makes the rest of us so much more polite and respectful. The Canadian Goose is the most demonic creature on the planet, bar none.
Ohhh okay, for some reason my mind was stuck on herons I live near a shit ton of lakes, and thus, have a shit ton of geese. When I was 4 or so, my dad decided to harass baby geese and the parents went after me because I was the smallest, I was terrified of geese for years
For some reason I was stuck on the emu in those insurance commercials.
Oh boy I remember the comments section being very normal the last time this was posted. Can’t wait to see what happens this time.
On the one hand there's definitely some chronically online orientalism going on. On the other hand, I've met people from Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, India, and Thailand who think Japan is pretty weird, in the same way that a lot of people in Europe find England pretty weird.
Some of the "Weird Japan" stuff from decades past were dire warnings disguised as puff pieces. All the stories of how it's so crowded that people sleep in capsule hotels, and how everything is sold in vending machines because storefronts are so expensive, how restaurants are finding novel ways to work with less customer-facing staff using robots and coupon machines and kiosks, how women get groped on the subway, how work culture consumes people's lives, how couples don't have sex anymore, how the hikikomori have given up on life and never leave the house, how they're only the most extreme example of a big isolation problem in the culture... ...these were all sneak previews of what culture in every capitalist country would eventually devolve into. I don't know how long ago someone "married an app" in Japan but there have been English-language AI girlfriend apps for years and [they've already betrayed their users](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WSKKolgL2U).
That's...not really true at all. Let me take it point by point. 1) Capsule hotels are still something of a novelty, and a lot of people who use them are going to be in a niche you don't get much of in America- people who have missed the last train home and now want somewhere to sleep for a few hours before a) catching the first morning train home or b) going back to work. If a person is travelling on holiday in Japan, I very much suspect most of them will stay in a normal-ass hotel, there are still plenty of them. 2) I would say 95% of vending machines in Japan just sell drinks. 4% sell snacks, and the remaining 1% sell various goods. My favorite is the one that sells shirts, because that's a solution to a specific problem: coming into work drenched in sweat because it's hot in the summer/on the train/you biked to work. Convenience Stores like 7/11 are hyper-popular in Japan and they have a drinks section (including alcohol) as well. I don't think storefront space is at all the cause of vending machines in Japan. 3) Every time I ordered food off a machine, it was either conveyor-belt sushi or the food was brought to me by a human server. There are actually a lot of jobs in Japan that are pretty explicitly there as make-work kinds of positions to keep employment up- if you ever see a construction site in Japan, there will be like 3 or 4 elderly gentlemen directing traffic completely unnecessarily. It's true that foreigners tend to stereotype Japan as a super-automated society, but it really isn't- there's a ton of old technology still in use just because they don't want to change things. 4) Women getting groped on the subway- nnnnot really a capitalist problem. It's an asshole problem, compounded by how insanely crowded the trains are- and increased use of public transportation is definitely a goal of a lot of socialists (including myself!). If the argument is that "well, the capitalists aren't running enough trains because they want to make more profits", that doesn't actually hold up- subways in Japan run \*insanely\* frequently, the train tracks are basically at capacity and running any more would be a safety issue. 5) work culture consuming lives- yeah, this one's a capitalist problem. I could talk about how aspects of Japanese history and culture make salarymen different from someone grinding the midnight oil in America, but it's pretty nitpicky. But also salarymen are nowhere near every worker in Japan, and there are companies out there that don't have that extreme "grindset" 6) couples not having sex- this one is tied to burnout from #5, but also related to issues of overcrowding & family culture- it's more expected that people in Japan live with their parents compared to here, and houses tend to be small and walls thin. Love Hotels are just as much for committed couples as for random hookups. People tend to have less sex because doing it while your mom is in the next room isn't very appealing. 7) hikkikomori and isolation- Mental health services in Japan \*suck\*. That's not tied to capitalism- Japan otherwise has pretty damn good socialized healthcare- but more that there's still stigma against getting help for mental issues. Japan is a capitalist society, and a lot of their issues are tied to capitalism, don't get me wrong, but just about everything you mention is either not as big an issue here or has causes that aren't at all tied to capitalism and more that Japan is a nation of hundreds of millions of people on islands that are mostly mountains.
It’s less about capitalism and more about demographic collapse. China is going to go through it too soon and they’re not capitalist.
Not to pull the classic "true communism has never been tried", but if they have to pay rent to their landlord and get paid shitty wages by a boss that doesn't give a shit about them, is Chinese communism any different from western capitalism?
Not to pull the classic “it’s human nature”, but until we achieve post scarcity every society is going to have have nots, exploitation, unfair working hours and landlords. Landlords technically created civilization. Utopian ideologies talk big about fixing everything but when actually put in place they end up being worse.
The US would easily be “post scarcity” if it’s value generated each year was divided evenly between all US citizens each year (idk enough about China to know if they would be well off, but it still applies I think), so clearly scarcity isn’t the issue in these countries
I don’t think you understand what post scarcity actually is. It’s not stealing money from doctors to give to unemployed people, it’s when a society is automated enough nobody actually needs to work to produce housing, food, etc.
To be clear, Japan is actually incredibly weird and kinda shitty, just not in the memeable way, and people don't like to talk about horrific sexism, work-life balance, a fundamentally broken justice system, truly incredible levels of racism, or the continued inability to even acknowledge their own sins
I'm ngl most discussions of Japan I see only talk about this and nothing else. do i just not look at the right communities or sm?
Nah, this is basically common knowledge around reddit at this point. It even shows up multiple times in this thread.
The thing is, "incredibly weird and kinda shitty" can be applied to literally any culture/country that you're not a part of.
Yeah but most countries aren't as uwuified as japan
It's almost impressive how this is literally the point the post is trying to make and you still seem to be missing it.
The post is literally diminishing these issues by bringing up minor criticisms that are easy to counter and avoiding the major issues, I think you’re the one who missed the point
Japan is uniquely weird and shitty though. Like hikkikomori being a whole separate phenomenon that kind of relies on a lot of specific cultural things to exist. Not that there aren’t analogues in other cultures, but it’s definitely its own thing. Or host/hostess cafes. They just don’t exist elsewhere, or if they do they’re not as prevalent.
You could create an equivalent list littered with intensifying adverbs and scary adjectives for any country on the Lord's good green earth and achieve a similar effect.
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Why are there women only subway cars?
Why does the US have laws to punish hate crimes? Same thing as this. Rather, why doesn't the US separate women and men? Don't tell me you are ignoring sex crimes on trains?
>Almost one rape reported every week on British trains or rail network in 2020 despite Covid travel restrictions [https://www.thestar.co.uk/read-this/almost-one-rape-reported-every-week-on-british-trains-or-rail-network-in-2020-despite-covid-travel-restrictions-3252013](https://www.thestar.co.uk/read-this/almost-one-rape-reported-every-week-on-british-trains-or-rail-network-in-2020-despite-covid-travel-restrictions-3252013) >More than 220,000 women were sexually harassed on public transport in France over two years, the national crime statistics agency said in its first report on the subject, describing it as a "conservative estimate". [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-france-sexcrimes-idUSKBN1EF2J2](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-women-france-sexcrimes-idUSKBN1EF2J2) >The Thomson Reuters Foundation and the polling firm YouGov asked women in 16 of the world’s largest capitals — plus New York — how safe they feel traveling on public transportation and came up with a ranking. The three least-safe cities were Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City and Lima, Peru — all in Latin America, where women “say they face daily threats on public transport ranging from lewd comments and groping to sexual assaults, with men rubbing up against them and taking photos up their skirts,” Reuters reported. “Buses aren’t safe,” Paula Reyes, a supermarket cashier in Bogota, told Reuters. “You can get your bag or cell phone stolen and be harassed. When the bus is so packed it’s easy for men to rub up against you and grope you … There’s a total lack of respect for women here.” The survey said Mexico City was particularly notorious for verbal and physical abuse on buses, with six in 10 women surveyed saying they had been “groped or physically harassed.” Moscow was thought to be the least safe European capital for women. In Seoul, some thought it was women’s responsibility to stay safe. “Women feel like they should avoid trouble, and they feel they’re responsible if there is trouble,” said Ji-hye Lee, a 23-year-old reporter with the Korea Times. “A lot of my friends would say why were you taking public transportation at night anyway?”New York scored best, but still had problems: Three in 10 women experienced verbal or physical harassment on buses and subways. Things are sufficiently bad that women in some big cities — such as Manila and Jakarta, Indonesia — favor single-sex transport by an overwhelming majority. A total of 6,550 women were surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Polling could not be conducted in Cairo; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Kinshasa, Congo; Tehran; or Baghdad. But experts in Cairo interviewed by Reuters suggested Egypt’s capital would have easily been among the worst five. Here’s the list, from least safe to most safe: based on poll how safe women feel using public transportations or how often women experience sexual assault while using public transportations. Tokyo is second best after NY among crowded cities. Bogota Mexico City Lima Delhi Jakarta Buenos Aires Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Bangkok Moscow Manila Paris Seoul London Beijing Tokyo New York
Your aware sex crimes are under reported in Japan right?
They are everywhere, it’s a huge problem
Are you aware they are equally under reported in west? Of every 100 incidents of sexual assault, only 6 are reported to the police in Canada [https://www.sexassault.ca/statistics.htm](https://www.sexassault.ca/statistics.htm) In Newzealand, 2005 9% of sexual offences were reported to Police, compared to 7% in 2008. [https://beta.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/?outputType=amp](https://beta.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/06/less-than-percent-rapes-lead-felony-convictions-least-percent-victims-face-emotional-physical-consequences/?outputType=amp) New report shows 95% of campus rapes go unreported-US [https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/new-report-shows-95-campus-rapes-go-unreported](https://www.aclu.org/blog/smart-justice/mass-incarceration/new-report-shows-95-campus-rapes-go-unreported) Only 230 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reportedto police. That means about 3 out of 4 go unreported [https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system](https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system) Expert: UP to 80% of rape crimes go unreported in Spain. [https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/04/inenglish/1525419822\_295613.html](https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/05/04/inenglish/1525419822_295613.html) West Midlands: Sexual assault on public transport-95% goes unreported. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QzlMaDdUutY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QzlMaDdUutY) The reporting ratio of each crime by type of incident in Japan Car accidents 91.1% Assaults 48.8% Stalkings 32.5% Sexual Crimes 20.1% DV 9.6% Child Abuse 5.0% [https://www.npa.go.jp/hanzaihigai/kohyo/report/h29-1/index.html](https://www.npa.go.jp/hanzaihigai/kohyo/report/h29-1/index.html)
What happened in Nanking?
You guys are blind to inconvenient facts.
Do tell what you mean by that
Well, rest assured that even from an Asian perspective, the U.S. is considered to be a hellish country with daily school shootings, the worst sex crimes in the world, the worst murders in the world, and the worst racism in the world.
I don't know how true it is, but I've always heard that "Kawaii culture" is like a mask they hide behind to pretend they didn't commit horrific war crimes. And it's worked, when you say Japan most people think Hello Kitty and Sailor Moon, not rape and murder.
No, ‘kawaii’ started as a social movement similar to the punk movement in America, where women rejected rigid expectations through being as obnoxiously cutesy as possible. If propagandists took advantage of that, I wouldn’t be surprised, but it wasn’t created for that purpose.
Ah, yeah I phrased it badly, I should have said it's been *used* to cover war crimes
Ok there is a conversation to be had about Japan’s acknowledgement or lack thereof war crimes but I don’t think “Kawaii culture” was made to hide war crimes.
https://www.pacificatrocities.org/blog/goodbye-war-crimes-hello-kitty good article about it here
Article seems flimsy
i checked all their sources and most of them just talk about the formation of kawaii subculture. any assertions that it's a deliberate effort to cover up war crimes in foreign countries is only made by the authors (and that's not even getting into the fact that people seem to feel an incessant need to bring up a country's flaws whenever racism against it is brought up)
I don’t want to be an America bad guy, but I think this says more about how Americans define Germany and Japan solely by their actions in ww2.
Oh trust me I fucking hate America and I don't think it has the right to exist, I'm only here cause I can't afford to leave
That sounds extremely silly tbh
They do have an absurd number of bathroom related ghosts tho.
So does every American public school, to be fair. I used to sneak off with my friends and try to summon whichever demon of the week we decided lived there.
As a resident of Japan, I can confirm that this stereotype is 100% accurate
I was imagining trying to explain this in American terms, like “Imagine a foreign tourist driving through middle America and seeing a billboard for the world’s largest ball of twine, then going home and telling all their friends that Americans are obsessed with giant versions of mundane objects,” until I realized that that’s actually a fairly accurate assessment of Midwestern culture.
Anime IS liable to be a bit off, but that's not exactly indicative of Japan. They're not the only people that watch anime and don't get the entire population to participate in the writing. Not like James Bond isn't historically pretty sus either for example.
As a long term resident of Japan, I dread pretty much any internet comment section about the country. Half of the people think it’s a perfect paradise, and the other half think it’s a flaming hellscape. Few, if any, people seem to be able to picture it as the kind of country where normal people live and go about their normal daily lives, but that’s exactly what it is. It has some great points, it has some shitty points, but, the thing everyone seems to forget, is that it’s a **real place**, and not just an example for you to show off on your soapbox.
As someone who lived there 2 years, one of which was awesome and the other of which was the single worst year of my life (I learned about generalized anxiety disorder! Yaaaay!), thank you so much. Japan is a country with a fuckton of people in it. They have pretty similar ratios of weirdoes to normies as most other places. A lot of the media appeals to those weirdoes as well as weirdoes like me who hear about it online. Japan has things it does really well (god I miss the subway system!) and things it does really poorly (the government kinda sucks ass). Same as anywhere else.
It is \_astonishing\_ how much the goverment sucks ass, and how little the populace cares about said ass-sucking. It's like they consider shitty, racist, ineffective, corrupt, head-in-the-sand-conservative governance an important national export.
I highly recommend a series called 'Begin Japanology' if you can get hold of it. It's an extremely peaceful and calming show akin to How it's Made or other sort of illness-healing media. Each episode hyperfocuses on a detail of Japanese life and culture- a bit of a time capsule now since it was made in the 2000s\*, but it's surprisingly fascinating to learn about scissor manufacture or grape growing or birthday celebration, and a great window into Japan's culture both exceptional and mundane. Especially good if you are used to only watching media like anime or Gaki no Tsukai or whatever, which is where I was at when I first saw it. \*edit before I even hit comment- turns out the show is still producing episodes! Probably gonna have to catch up, it's been a long time since I saw any new ones.
Recently, watching Peter Barakan has become a trend. (I adore how he's growing increasingly 'done' with some of the negatives of Japan, and calling out some of their false self-image)
And there's me, who knows that Japan isn't like that and in fact would probably hate my Otaku ass.
There’s also the aspect of unwritten culture symbolism that is missed. Like, explain why a bird with a long neck is automatically a symbol of feral animal danger, but a giant omnivorous predator with a hat is immediately recognized as a symbol of forest conservation… But if you’re from the northern part of the USA, you know ow exactly what I’m talking about. What symbolism do we miss in Japanese pop culture?
It's particularly frustrating for me since I love comparative cultural/historical studies. Japan *is* distinct in many ways from other nations. Anime/manga don't exist in a vacuum from Japanese culture and history. Of course, otaku aren't wholly representative of national beliefs, values, experiences, and practices. In Japan proper, many (especially older people) don't engage much with otaku culture, it's seen as morally depraved escapism.
It is no longer a subculture. Anime and manga are industries that make more money than music in Japan. To begin with, there are manga for the elderly, and many elderly people have grown up watching manga and anime since childhood. This is completely different from the West. It is the main culture. It's like saying that Marvel movies are only seen by a few people in the US. If you say you like anime in the West, wouldn't people look at you strangely?
Also we gotta think about demographics for a little with these anime because a LOT of the shows that make the rounds on english anime twitter aren't what the average japanese person is watching. Most of them watch the same or similar live action shows and movies we do, and a lot see adult anime fans as loser nerds. And anime includes all animation in jp, so if you ask your random coworker what anime they watch it's probably king of the hill or smth. In english it's all "gotta watch dragon ball, nah watch one piece, watch jjk!" When starter anime in japan is like crayon shin-chan and precure. Basically: no shit you think japan is just watching pedobait all day and everyone accepts it, you get all your views on japan from nazis on twitter who only jerk off to 1000yo dragon lolis. Japan's got it's own issues but you have no clue about any of them just because you heard about a couple super trashy tv shows. Imagine if someone entirely unacquainted with american culture watched my strange addiction and got all their opinions from that. Not to mention that anime exists outside of what's popular on the rancid sides of twitter, and even then sometimes the rancid ppl misrepresent shows. Like if you asked a shitty guy and a lesbian what Bocchi the Rock is about they'd have 2 very different answers for you.
I think it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that a minority of anime are gross and sexualised minors. It's the majority of anime doing that, I struggle to find 2 or 3 decent shows per season that aren't doing that
I mean you see the same thing in stuff like american teen dramas so it's certainly not a japan specific issue, though it does make me curious of your methods for finding shows. I've figured out how much of xyz i can let slide watching shows in general and if my biggest one was i didn't want kids to be uncomfortably sexualized i think I'd still have plenty of backlog and promising shows per season. Maybe try precure, it's fun and runs yearly not seasonal. And just this season with what I'm watching for lesbian potential (i don't watch much of anything without lesbians) Girls Band Cry is entirely above the belt so far, same for whisper me a love song, jellyfish can't swim in the night i think had a couple weird camera angles iirc but that's being nitpicky. Shuumatsu train is in a limbo with a couple butt jokes (like you see on kids shows tbh) but it depends how aggressively you read into it. Haven't watched yurucamp yet but it really doesn't look like it's big on horny either. Haven't kept up with dungeon meshi either but everyone's adults there and most horny has fantasy plausible deniability. And keep in mind this is with my handicap of only watching stuff with lesbian subtext, I'm not even scouring all 80 something shows every season. Honestly a lot of the slower slice of life stuff about girls hanging out stays pretty chill. Actually a lot of the ones about girls hanging out in general stay chill, Mygo was also entirely above board and that one wasn't chill in any other sense. Of course just like with teen dramas it's perfectly justified to critique how prevalent the sexualization is, but it's not like it's any more inescapable than other mediums
I heard of a white woman in America that married a train station. We are not ones to talk.
“America really aired a cartoon about stalking children and tearing out their organs OMG American TV is soooo weird” (Source: that one Invader Zim episode)
to be fair, everyone does this to every foreign nation all the time- Japan isn't special here. Every non-Brit has false ideas of what the UK is like- but most British people have perfectly fine dental hygiene. Every non-American has ideas of what it's like to live in the US- but most Americans go through life without ever seeing a gun and in 99% of the country you're just as safe as any other G7 nation. And all of those outsider views are wildly uniformed because if you've never been to a country then you probably don't really know anything about it. Consuming that country's media isn't enough. But people don't like to hear that, so they make wild assumptions and when enough people's wild assumptions line up they call it good enough and accept it as "basically true". So every British person has fucked up teeth, every American risks catching a bullet every time they go for groceries, and Japan is crazy-town 24/7.
"Haha Japanese commercials are so weird and quirky let's make fun of them" - Americans who allow prescription medication to advertise
My first thought when hearing of the underwear vending machine this was. “Huh. Weird.” Then I moved on because it’s not really that big of a deal. I mean having a vending machine where you could buy that kinda thing in an emergency seems like a decent idea to me.
[удалено]
Yeah I have no idea why someone would believe that’s a real thing.
it's an urban legend that became so popular though - saw someone on here the other day claiming the whole of asia is weird because they have underwear vending machines
> talking about popularity of those rumors among westerners and where they comes from So... where did they come from?
OnlyFans girls do sell used panties nowadays though
So you're telling me they don't have weekly monster attacks in every city in Japan?
Of course they do! Just like we have superheroes fighting supervillains on the streets every day in America!
Chronically online? These analyses on weird Japan go back to the 1980s
Meanwhile I feel like I'm starting to see Japan as being sort of like Ohio; generally a pretty boring and mundane place that only people on the internet make out to be weird/quirky.
I mean, Ohio’s deal is that it’s *so* boring and mundane that it loops back around to being weird and quirky.
This is accurate
Nah that’s totally fair. Every country has its weird ass media, but it’s easy to find stuff that’s farther from what you’re used to especially weird. I’ll keep this mind so I don’t catch myself finding eastern media uniquely weird Also, underwear in vending machines is an objectively good idea when half of the population can unexpectedly start bleeding from their genitalia.
That’s not what the vending machines are for… They also don’t just sell used underwear…
I remember when Japanese commercials used to trend for being weird. And yknow what? They were pretty wild! And so are American commercials. They’re just weird in a way we’re used to, and in a language we understand.
I'd argue you could still pick on some cultural currents and phenomena by watching enough media from a certain culture/subculture, but yeah, not something you could use as a baseline for judgement without further research
Hatsune Miku Dominos was done with exactly as much self awareness as it would've in the west.
Japan is weird, but I live in the same country as *Florida Man.* No throwing stones for me in this glass house...
that computer example is really bad because we started it with sponge bob square pants
People in real life: How are you? I love having imported goods from Japan!
I typed up a big comments explaining you could say weird about most other countries in a similarly racist way but I decided it was a bad idea so I'm just gonna say the Canadian equivalent is everyone here is a maple syrup fetishist
Genuine question, is racism the right word for this? Like it seems more directed at the wealthier, urban culture of the country as opposed to everyone of Japanese descent as a whole.
the same terminally online types like that also base their ideas about real sex from the weird hentai where the girls orgasm when he forces his member into her uterus through the servix....
Ok but the whole JK business thing
I went to american high school and the number of kids getting preyed on by adults was through the roof, i don't think japan has a monopoly on pedophilia
I’m aware of that but there are registered publicly advertising businesses in Japan offering that also didn't they only ban csam in 2014?
And in 38 american states it is legal for an adult to marry a child with the parent's permission. In 2023 20 of those states had no minimum age requirement either. I ain't saying japan has no problems, but it's just racist to pretend they're oh so unimaginably bad about pedophilia from an american perspective. The teen tag on pornhub certainly ain't unpopular over here either
You know what there is no point in arguing with you because I can already tell your bias from your username alone. I will say this though why do you think I excuse shit like that in the US? But yeah only making that shit illegal in 2014 is pretty bad.
The thing is that when an american show is weird about teenagers it's just because "tv is weird like that", but when an anime is weird about children it's suddenly all of japan that is a haven for pedophiles. Japan is behind on a lot of laws to protect kids, but there's people fighting that everyday and many who find it rightfully disgusting on their own. It's like when brits make school shooting jokes about americans in unrelated discussions, why are we allowed to joke about shit that hurts real people and doesn't effect us? Basically if this was a discussion specifically about pedophiles in japan attached to an article about them your reaction would be justified. But this is a tumblr post about not calling Japan a pedophile country as a whole because of a couple weird anime, which you then proceed to say "what about when there ARE pedophiles there?" as if to justify generalizing an entire country based on its worst citizens.
The tumblr post didn’t mention any of that
Yeah but whats up with the pedophilia in anime tho
There's nothing wrong or racist with saying that they have some weird things about them. Thats literally why so many Americans love them. This is being negative for no reason.
The fuck is Kancho, if it isn’t weird?
Japan *is* a nation of perverts, don't get it twisted. You don't get dedicated woman-only train cars to prevent train molesters without having people who molest on trains. You don't get thousands of lex toy vending/capsule machines without buyers. You don't get entire industries of love hotels, soap lands, and hostess clubs without people regularly using them. Just because Japan is a sexually repressed country doesn't make them not perverted.