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Politics and Anime.


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Chien93



Joined: 28 Mar 2018
Posts: 10
PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 4:25 am Reply with quote
I have this friend I’ve known since high school. They’re agreeable most of the time but lately their reactions to some topics have kind of surprised me. We talk pop culture and all that especially stuff from Japan. To cut to the chase, they absolutely loathe cancel culture and people who care about social justice.

It happened a while ago after a very public and drawn out scandal in the anime community and it caused a shift in how they consume media. They now only watch sub, only plays games in sub if there’s an option and has turned their back completely on VAs they were big fans of because they’re convinced they’re all people who care about social justice. I once mentioned an actor in a show I watched and they blew their top off in chat.

Recently we were talking about fighting games and I brought up a particular title I was interested in. They fired back by saying that the studio behind it was an Shonen Jump Weekly hub or something. That really caught me off guard so I didn’t press further on why they thought that.

I’m not a fan of political correctness myself or how it’s affecting pop culture, but I personally believe my friend is being irrational. They tend to believe that those being cancelled are innocent, which is a very dangerous assumption to make depending on what they’re being accused of. I get being sceptical is fine, but assumptions based on personal beliefs can cloud your judgement. Whenever I step on a landline like this I just drop it and change the subject. I should confront them about it one day but I want to avoid the nuclear option of cutting them off.

So what’s everyone’s opinion? Do you know someone like this and how do you talk to them about it?
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Tony K.
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Joined: 18 Nov 2003
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Location: Frisco, TX
PostPosted: Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:41 pm Reply with quote
People with extreme, one-sided opinions and zero open-mindedness are difficult to deal with. If they get triggered just from the mere mention of it, or even keep pursuing the topic, that's even worse (and usually a sign of something else).

I've got a friend who's a movie critic and he loves, loves, loves some movies that I absolutely hate, and vice versa. But we just chalk it to personal preference, maybe make fun of the other for it in a jovial way, and move on to what we both like.

If your friend keeps exuding this aura of animosity every time the topic comes up (and you'll have to really read into it, carefully), then I would be wary of him, or maybe put your relation further back on the scale of friendship. Life is too short to have those kind of people distract you from living happily.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15546
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:26 pm Reply with quote
All art is political, even the apparent absence of such and providing of other reasons.

I think that a lot of the people that air on the side of anti-cancel culture or anti-woke (not just unconcerned over "woke" things but against the ideas), can have a predisposition towards "pure" Japanese media because it has the appearance of no politics as they see it, or at least nothing they are concerned with. Japan does have some rather conservative elements, that I think people who glorify anime can have blind spots to, rather some of its homogeneity, that I think would help those who worship the purity of it.

Maybe I am talking out of my butt, but I suspect you could probably see a character in anime that is clearly ethnically not Japanese, say pale skin, blue eyes, blonde hair and a comparatively different physique, and have that character not treated as inherently exotic, strange or some element of fetishized. You probably would see that as pretty political. But that is not something that comes across as what is familiar as being progressive.

The politics might not be talked about the same way, I don't think there is quite the same divisiveness, or at least the same type, that I think it is often that you hear people say that certain movements don't even exist in Japan, like say feminism, LGBT and racial profiling. And I think it is this lack of divisiveness that they are familiar with that has a lot of people run to anime saying that they want an escape from that sort of stuff, which I think is silly when I think you look at this site in particular where you will find things discussed.

As for what can be done for someone who has gone down that rabbit hole of purity of Japanese media to avoid political stuff, the political correctness. I am not entirely sure what could be done to scale it back, maybe seeing that there is politics in that stuff, even the stuff he liked and never thought about had some sort of political message he never thought of.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:18 am Reply with quote
Even apparently vanilla shows like Demi-chan wa Kataritai can have a subversive political agenda, in this case questioning Japanese xenophobia by portraying the demis as "others." In the end it promotes a culture of inclusiveness and sharing.

In GeGeGe no Kitarou (2018) the yokai often represent the "other" and are subjected to ostracism and worse over the course of the show. There are scenes that correspond to anti-foreigner rallies, and one episode where a foreign yokai is exploited by his Japanese employer. I often thought Toei deserved a lot of credit for airing this show on Sunday mornings at 9 am.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15546
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:45 am Reply with quote
yuna49 wrote:
In GeGeGe no Kitarou (2018) the yokai often represent the "other" and are subjected to ostracism and worse over the course of the show. There are scenes that correspond to anti-foreigner rallies, and one episode where a foreign yokai is exploited by his Japanese employer. I often thought Toei deserved a lot of credit for airing this show on Sunday mornings at 9 am.


Although, I would probably say there were a couple episode that things could get mixed around with certain elements. One such episode was one about Halloween, which I think might have said something about it being bad in corrupting what should be good Japanese traits. The youkai could both be allegories for the other, but also for traditional Japanese traits that I think could even be shown as incompatible with foreign things.
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
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Joined: 06 Jul 2015
Posts: 628
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 3:44 pm Reply with quote
All anime is political because all art is political. Period. None of your friend's raging and yelling about people who care about social justice is going to change that. Every choice the creators make about what to include and what not to include, who made it, and even the conditions it was made in, is political. It reflects their worldview, their values, their culture. Even the choice to make "apolitical" art is political in and of itself.

This article explains it in more detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/lin-manuel-miranda-what-art-can-do/600787/

When you say you dislike "political correctness" in art, what is it you really object to? The decentering of the straight male default? The inclusion of more marginalized people? The willingness to confront injustices? Why would you consider those to be bad things?

As for your friend, I'm not sure how much I can help. I don't know him, but there's a decent chance he's familiar with my work outside ANN and hates me. People with views like his are so antithetical to my values that I couldn't imagine hanging out with someone like that in the first place, and it sounds like he's only getting further radicalized. You're absolutely right that his assumption that being being called out for harmful behavior are actually innocent is dangerous, because he stands to do real harm himself with that stance.

I'm not here to change your mind or his mind, but if you want to save the friendship, I recommend having an honest chat with him. Tell him you care about him and value him as a friend. The less risky path would be to just tell him that he's not fun to hang out or talk with when he gets like this, so can he just tamp it down. The more risky, but ultimately more strongly path, would be to tell him you're worried about how he's being radicalized and some of his assumptions are kind of scary to you.

I hope this is helpful!
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Yttrbio



Joined: 09 Jun 2011
Posts: 3665
PostPosted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 9:48 pm Reply with quote
all-tsun-and-no-dere wrote:
When you say you dislike "political correctness" in art, what is it you really object to? The decentering of the straight male default? The inclusion of more marginalized people? The willingness to confront injustices? Why would you consider those to be bad things?
I notice you didn't wait for an answer before asking your followup question.

To the OP, I'm curious what you think is "dangerous" about assuming innocence (especially in cases where the accuser assumes guilt, as seems to be the case above). I don't think trafficking in the language of totalitarian police states is really the best way to reach your friend, since you don't actually have a totalitarian police state backing you up. Can you think of a case where someone was unreasonably cancelled? Discussing that gives you credibility as a person who understands your friend's values, so that when it comes to more clear-cut cases, you have credibility as someone actually considering the situation, rather than just joining the mob. Will that help you reach your friend? I don't know. I don't know anything about the person. But if you plan to actually address this with your friend, you have to lay some groundwork that you're someone who shares at least some values, rather than just someone repeating the "it's dangerous if you disagree" line.

While not exactly parallel, there was an interesting focus group on Trump voters who didn't want the COVID vaccine. These people had been largely immune to the many different appeals to get the vaccine, but the group found that personal appeals from relatively trustworthy sources made a lot more difference than any number of "official" statements. Your friend is not going to be responsive to a lecture regurgitating the "correct message" about how they're wrong, because that just makes you "one of them."

Is it worth the effort? That's up to you. I tend to just avoid landmines with my friends, because there's no friend I value enough to put in that kind of effort, and getting along with people on some things but not others is fine with me. It certainly doesn't matter to me what my friends think about the broader world, they're just one person each. But you've got to decide what you value and what you want.
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El Hermano



Joined: 24 Feb 2019
Posts: 450
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 2:11 pm Reply with quote
all-tsun-no-dere wrote:
When you say you dislike "political correctness" in art, what is it you really object to? The decentering of the straight male default? The inclusion of more marginalized people? The willingness to confront injustices? Why would you consider those to be bad things?


I think there's a very big difference between holding a belief and forcing it upon people against their will. Nobody cares if works exist for a non-straight men, marginalized people, or anyone else; they only take issue when it's something like an established work being altered. I think a lot of western fans in particular have such strong pushback against political correctness so hard because they already experienced it with so much western media over the past decade and don't want to see it happen to anime and manga. Although I'll say it's mostly unfounded given Japanese works are creator owned rather than company owned. Anime and manga are not going to suddenly go the way of American comics or video games. Maybe that reassurance can help OP's friend.
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juaifan



Joined: 20 Mar 2021
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 5:36 pm Reply with quote
@DuskyPredator

I'm not a dub watcher, but if there really English VAs and translators out there insisting characters like Thirteen from BnHA or Paimon from Genshin Impact are non-binary despite it obviously not being true, then it sounds like a good idea to avoid those actors and translators if they're going to be weird like that and try to co-opt someone else's work for their own means.

I'd personally ask him why he's watching dubs. I always wonder why people who complain about those dubs even watch them to begin with. If you want more accuracy, then yeah, watch subs. Seems like a no brainer and easy solution. If he watches them just to get angry than that's on him.

I don't see anything wrong with avoiding bad translations and actors. Seems like a reasonable thing to do.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15546
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 6:08 pm Reply with quote
juaifan wrote:
I'm not a dub watcher, but if there really English VAs and translators out there insisting characters like Thirteen from BnHA or Paimon from Genshin Impact are non-binary despite it obviously not being true, then it sounds like a good idea to avoid those actors and translators if they're going to be weird like that and try to co-opt someone else's work for their own means.


I can't attest to every example, or person that reads into a character being such, but we non-binary folk do kind of hurt for representation, and I would say that is fair to look for examples where they might be. Outside of the identity non-binary not being well known, and that we would still be non-binary without the label existing, it is kind of natural that we would question if a character might fit into the identity if it was understood.

So you are going to see me possibly put the question forward if a character is non-binary if they are androgynous, fluid with their presentation, or generally ambiguous over their gender. I kind of just started a topic about trans or gender non-conforming characters to hopefully do that. Although, any good person who is taking part in an official capacity of translating a character into another language, should take care when using someone else's character.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4736
PostPosted: Tue Apr 13, 2021 7:15 pm Reply with quote
juaifan wrote:
I'm not a dub watcher, but if there really English VAs and translators out there insisting characters like Thirteen from BnHA or Paimon from Genshin Impact are non-binary despite it obviously not being true, then it sounds like a good idea to avoid those actors and translators if they're going to be weird like that and try to co-opt someone else's work for their own means.

Gee it's almost as though people can create differing interpretations of the media they consume based on how certain elements resonate with them personally, even if the author may not have consciously intended for that particular interpretation to be present in their work.
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juaifan



Joined: 20 Mar 2021
Posts: 136
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:26 pm Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
I can't attest to every example, or person that reads into a character being such, but we non-binary folk do kind of hurt for representation, and I would say that is fair to look for examples where they might be. Outside of the identity non-binary not being well known, and that we would still be non-binary without the label existing, it is kind of natural that we would question if a character might fit into the identity if it was understood.

So you are going to see me possibly put the question forward if a character is non-binary if they are androgynous, fluid with their presentation, or generally ambiguous over their gender. I kind of just started a topic about trans or gender non-conforming characters to hopefully do that. Although, any good person who is taking part in an official capacity of translating a character into another language, should take care when using someone else's character.


If it was just fan theories then that'd be one thing, but to have someone who works on the American localization trying to state something false as fact is a very different thing and pretty unprofessional in my opinion. I know people say "all art is political" but I can't think of anything like these incidents happening on the Japanese side of these shows. I watch shows in Japanese because it's the original language but the lack of "politics" just seems like a bonus every time I hear about some drama in the English community like that recent Sk8 drama over some line in the dub being politically charged. When people say politics they mean stuff like this.

Top Gun wrote:
Gee it's almost as though people can create differing interpretations of the media they consume based on how certain elements resonate with them personally, even if the author may not have consciously intended for that particular interpretation to be present in their work.


Not everything is open to interpretation. You can't interprete that Son Goku as actually a Namekian and not a Saiyan. We know he's not.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15546
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Wed Apr 14, 2021 7:58 pm Reply with quote
juaifan wrote:
If it was just fan theories then that'd be one thing, but to have someone who works on the American localization trying to state something false as fact is a very different thing and pretty unprofessional in my opinion. I know people say "all art is political" but I can't think of anything like these incidents happening on the Japanese side of these shows. I watch shows in Japanese because it's the original language but the lack of "politics" just seems like a bonus every time I hear about some drama in the English community like that recent Sk8 drama over some line in the dub being politically charged. When people say politics they mean stuff like this.


I was curious over what sort of line change in Sk8 might have happened that you might call drama, so I did a quick search, and I assume that it is the first result that the article I found was saying was good actually. It was that a character's dub lines were changed to include not only males and females (a form of ladies and gentlemen) but included a nod to non-binary people. I guess the change is from the Japanese that did not necessarily refer to gender and was inclusive, was changed in localisation into the "ladies and gentlemen" format, with an unfortunate inclusion of us non-binary people.

You know, if males and females getting referenced, that too would be political. I am not an expert of the Japanese language, but announcing to the audience in gendered terms might be the correct sort of translation to get across what the character was doing. Also, I don't think the existence of my gender should actually have to be political, it is treated that way because one type of the political aisle tends to ignore our existence, ignoring our existence is treated as the norm.

I don't think you understand what it is like to have your gender treated like it does not exist, and how positive it can feel when it is actually treated as normal. So, not sorry that localisation included nods to non-binary people, we should be treated as normal.
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Snowcat



Joined: 01 Feb 2021
Posts: 190
PostPosted: Thu Apr 15, 2021 7:38 am Reply with quote
El Hermano wrote:
Although I'll say it's mostly unfounded given Japanese works are creator owned rather than company owned. Anime and manga are not going to suddenly go the way of American comics or video games. Maybe that reassurance can help OP's friend.

Nice point here, i had missed that specificity that will buffer the influence of any group trying to have leverage on anime/manga producers.
I also think that fear is egocentric because even outside japan, north-america is a tiny market (12% for anime) and i don't think a majority of animefan are interested in having "political correctness" in the media.
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Snomaster1
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Joined: 31 Aug 2011
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 19, 2021 12:23 am Reply with quote
You know,looking at this post reminds me of something. It reminds me of a post I did a few years ago on a similar topic. But,I've also heard recently that anime and manga have become extremely popular and I think I know why. There are dozens of reasons but I think that the major reason is that a lot of current American comics have become heavily political in the past few years to an unnecessary degree.
In my view,I have nothing against it,as long as it's done in a way that doesn't get in the way of the story being told. From what I've been hearing,that's what been occurring,and not just in comics,but throughout a sizable proportion of the entertainment here and in other parts of the West. That's why a lot of people have been turning to things like anime and manga. They don't want to be constantly reminded of the creator's political views on a topic,they just want to read good comics.

People like me want an escape for a time from the real world in stuff like comics,movies,etc. We mostly want to be entertained,not harangued. For a lot of people in the entertainment industry lately,we've seen that many of them would rather be political activists rather than just be actors,comedians,movie directors,and the like. Personally,I have no problem with political humor,as long as it's funny. Unfortunately,it hasn't. It's become less about being humorous and more about using humor as just another weapon to be used against political adversaries. I wish that they'd stop doing this and just go back to what they should be doing,entertaining people instead of being political activists.
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