Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Westerners Make Assumptions About Japan Because of Anime?
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Codeanime93
Posts: 599 |
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I'm sure if you were late enough and desperate enough you would run with a piece of toast in your mouth if you were late to school or work. Honestly that might apply to any culture or country. Then again I mean Rei isn't technically a normal human being either, considering late revelations about her character, spoiler[I mean Gendo Ikari cloned her from his dead wife after all.] Last edited by Codeanime93 on Thu Oct 19, 2017 9:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13620 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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As I recall someone from my high school say, "Inbreeding. Keep it in the family". |
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Codeanime93
Posts: 599 |
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Also I would hope some don't take from anime that Japan is lax with regards to having underage teenagers getting into dangerous situations constantly and sometimes are thrusting them in these situations even if fictional like piloting an EVA. Or my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! which has teenagers taking off from high school to play sometimes dangerous card games on an island somewhere privately to be possibly killed or have their soul sucked out by some powerful American billionaire. Then again school in that show is virtually nearly dropped as an element by the 3rd or 4th season. That and student council in Japanese high school is treated ultra seriously as it is in certain anime. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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I wonder what images of America Japanese anime viewers take away from a show like Baccano!
Or what their views are of people from America, Russia, India, and Jamaica from watching Uchuu Kyoudai ("Space Brothers")? The Russian family has matryoshka dolls all over the house and a refrigerator with hardly anything in it besides vodka. The Indian woman is believed to have mystic powers and can foretell the future. The guy from Jamaica looks like a Rastafarian. And, of course, we have the "Mr. Hibbit" shorts where the African-American astronaut appears as "Buddy Gorilla." 
I once had dinner in Scotland in the 1970s and was seated at a table with a nice young English couple from the London suburbs. The wife wondered how we could stand living in America since it was all so dark and grimy, which especially surprised my then-wife who was from Nebraska. Turns out the American crime series Kojak was being aired in Britain, and the English lady concluded all of the United States must look like the dark, dank New York City portrayed in that show. Guess she never saw The Rockford Files (southern California) or Hawaii Five-O. |
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the green death
Posts: 128 |
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I know sushi and anime are huge exports but I think we shouldn’t need underestimate the reach that Haruki Murakami has with a different subsection of the population. He’s one of the bigger international writers these days and I’m sure colors a different subsection of Westerners’ view on Japanese culture. Admittedly he’s a very Western-style Japanese novelist, but he still paints pictures of modern japan.
On a smaller scale and from more than a decade ago you had Banana Yoshimoto. There seems to be a popular Japanese writer or two around much of the time. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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Yuna, you should've asked her what it was like to live her whole life as a servant of the Queen.
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the green death
Posts: 128 |
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In response to people who say you need to be rich to travel abroad - you really don’t. There are good deals regularly on flights and if it’s a priority you can travel for about the same price it would cost you to travel locally (food and hotels can be a lot cheaper in some parts of the world, in India $2-3 would get you a pretty good lunch at the inflated tourist cost. Best pho I ever ate costs a dollar in Vietnam. I’ve stayed in hotels that cost $7 a night.) No problem if you don’t want to travel abroad and I get it if you have kids and don’t want to deal with extended plane time - but cost doesn’t have to be a barrier to entry for international travel.
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16963 |
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There are plenty of Americans without access to the internet as well. Many do have narrow minded views from never traveling out of their own state let alone country. This goes down even more if you take out Cancun and other spring break destinations for college kids. Plus, just having access to the internet does not automatically mean they are less narrow minded.
You guys do realize that Tempest is Canadian himself right? Plus whether or not the land itself is viable for living on it doesn't change the fact that Canada is still larger than the US. Simple geography. Plus if you're going to say America is "bigger" because a portion of Canada is not habitable then you should say the same for Russia and China too right? |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1122 Location: Puget Sound |
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. Nobody has ever claimed that the US was bigger than Canada. That whole nonsense started with a misquote of my original post. (Go back to the first page and read for yourself) And even though it's true that in a simple minded comparison Canada has a larger land mass than the US - the subsequent discussion following that misquote isn't about simple minded comparisons. What you're missing is a more nuanced discussion comparing the actual inhabited area of Canada and it's climate (and thus the number, diversity and types of destinations) with the United States. In the terms of why a smaller portion of Americans have passports, those nuances matter. |
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Shiflan
 Posts: 418 |
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I was born in Europe, but my parents and I immigrated to the US when I was 3 years old. We have lived there since (30+ years), due to my father's job. I have been back home to Europe many times and talked with relatives there, so I think I have a pretty good perspective on both sides of of the fence.
I live in Texas. When I was younger I have had European relatives ask me what kind of horse I ride and if I really carry a 6-shooter all the time. It turns out a lot of their perceptions of "Texas" were from Wild West movies filled with gunfights and cowboys. It's no different than the question Justin answered, really. People can't help but formulate an idea of a country based on the media they see and cultural stereotypes like yuna49 mentioned. And Japan does the same quite often. How many times do you see stock character designs in anime like the drunken Russian, the blond-haired, blue-eyed American (complete with comically huge boobs if the character is female), and so on. Heck, Mobile Fighter G Gundam is basically nothing but exaggerated stereotypes of different nations. I'm not defending that but just pointing out that it happens everywhere. As for the travel angle: All my relatives live in fairly cold northern European countries. It is very common for many if not most people in those countries to travel to a warmer country for vacation, like the south of Spain, or Greece. It's also very simple to travel like that because you can just get on a train (and perhaps take a ferry somewhere along the way). So there is a strong motivation to travel abroad, and it's also simple and cheap. The distances covered are short, and the public transportation network makes it simple. On the other hand if you want to get away somewhere in the US it's much easier and cheaper to simply drive somewhere else but remain in the US. Yes, there are deals to be had with international flights, but those are still a lot more costly than a similar alternative in Europe. There's not much need of a passport here in the US unless you need to travel on business since traveling internationally for pleasure is less common. |
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Compelled to Reply
 Posts: 358 |
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I don't know what the East/West dichotomy is in Mexico, but you're referring to the "Anglosphere."
Yes, but obviously the discussion here entails otherwise.
To be fair, sometimes I favor this, because watching foreign news like the BBC when talking about countries outside of one's "comfort zone" is like they're saying it's your fault that countries in Africa are so poor. Travel shows exist for a purpose.
To be fair, Japan historically has had an indifferent view on homosexuality, in fact encouraging it within certain time periods. Somebody flaunting their sexuality anywhere will always be frowned upon by the majority of the population, who would rather one keep it in their bedroom. Well, with exception to a certain bloc of countries, where it's punishable by prison time or execution.
It didn't help when a few years ago the Western news media made it sound like Japan "finally" banned child pornography, when the law was actually possession of what was already banned for quite some time. The United States didn't ban possession nationwide until quite recently, too.
If Baccano! was more historically accurate for the 1930s, it would legitimately be a lot more racist. Space Brothers deliberately makes fun of Western stereotypes, especially considering the fact it meant to be Western audience-friendly. Last edited by Compelled to Reply on Thu Oct 19, 2017 1:55 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Jonny Mendes
 Posts: 997 Location: Europe |
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Most people don't understand that Yuri and Yaoi like shonen-ai and shoujo-ai have a big fan base not because they support LGTB but because of the fetish nature. Yuri and Yaoi are more in a fetish level like incest, NTR and lolicon than in a real suport of LGTB. Most Japanese fans of Yuri are heterosexual males that buy it because they want to see 2 girls making out and having sex. And most Japanese fans of Yaoi are heterosexual females that buy it because they want to see 2 boys making out and having sex. They are manga from a mostly heterosexual artists for a mostly heterosexual audience. The manga that have the homosexual audience in mind is Bara. That been said, Japan is not that bad to LGTB people by Asian standards. Most of other Asian countries are allot worse than Japan. Even if there is not a great social and legislative support of LGTB, at least they not have history of hostility towards homosexuality and are at least tolerant. But most LGTB Japanese people conceal their sexuality. |
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Shiflan
Posts: 418 |
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I admit I know nothing about the reality of the "running toast" gag, but I think it must mean something. I have seen it in several Anime, mainly from the 80's and early 90's. Perhaps its use in Eva is a running gag or homage to those earlier shows? As for the spoiler, spoiler[the running toast scene occurred at the end of the very last episode after everything was pretty much rebooted. The Rei in that scene seems human, no the same as the clone from the previous episodes. I think that was the whole point of the toast gag, to show her humanity] |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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Well, considering the reception the "Buddy Gorilla" sequence got on this and other anime forums, if that was their intent, they failed miserably. I don't think that was their intent though, since few anime are intended to be "Western audience-friendly." (Space Brothers wasn't "friendly" enough to get a dub.) I didn't read the manga to know if the Mr. Hibbit sequence appeared there as well, or whether it was added by A-1 Pictures. At one point I recall reading it was a four-koma strip added to the manga, but I can't seem to confirm that now. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I'm currently watching Space Brothers(about 32 episodes in) and I don't see anything suggesting this was made for Western Audiences. It seems pretty directly targeted at Japanese kids who like space. It's a good show, and definitely not mean-spirited in its portrayals of different ethnicities and US cultures, but it does have a lot of stereotypes(I haven't gotten to the monkey thing, but just the image makes me cringe). Anyway, yeah, doesn't seem made for Westerners at all. And there are a lot of jokes about American culture that only Japanese people or people familiar with their culture would really get. |
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