pointless backstory
I was born in the 80s and some of my earliest memories where the Karate Kid films. If anyone here is in their 40s, they’ll remember the obsession with karate. Kids were signing up for karate lessons left and right. I recall something on TV where kids were demolishing a house using karate (obviously it was staged by whatevs).
Then the 90s happened, and the West got paranoid about Japan taking over. Pop culture produced absurd books about Japan taking over the US, and people literally feared it happening.
I like anime. It’s definitely better than most white culture shit. It just feels like the #1 theme or trope for a video game or series (that isn’t the West) is Japan. I’m just utterly bored to death of Japanese schools, Japanese feudal themes, yakuza shit, Tokyo streets, etc. Yes, it’s 1000 times cooler than New York or Texas. I’d rather play Ace Attorney or a Yakuza game than COD or Modern warfare. I’d rather watch JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure than Family Guy. Japanese stuff is often cooler than Western stuff.
God I can’t complain if Japanese developers want to make something that they know with the language they speak. My big gripe is non-Japanese developers imitating Japan because that’s what sells. Think Genshin Impact, Battle Realms, or Blue Archive. My steam recommendations are filled with Japanese themes made my non Japanese developers. No, I’m not offended. I’d just like to play a game, once, that doesn’t have samurai and geisha. It would be neat to learn about another culture that isn’t Japan. Maybe go to another continent.
Wouldn’t it be neat to play a stealth game in Nigeria or Bolivia, and not yet another game with Samurai.
monkey paw curls
Here is your viking/nordic mythology game!
they never include the best shit like bathing, smelling pretty, and trying to murder your friend because they gave you a gift that was too fancy
and trying to murder your friend because they gave you a gift that was too fancy
No wonder those Nordic people are unfriendly lol
Inviting a friend to eat when they visit your house is a mortal insult
Or the shockingly expensive lawsuits because you murdered the fancy friend and now his family are asking questions like "how many blood fueds do we have time for this quarter?’
Actually dark age Icelandic legal drama/comedy sounds like a fantastic concept
I’m hinestly surprised we aren’t seeing more Chinese-themed things. It’s been a niche fandom in the west for a while now, but with China being what they are today, I’m surprised they aren’t more prominent in media, whether made in China or elsewhere
I’d actually really like to see more Chinese themed stuff.
Wuxia! There are a million adaptations of Legend of the Condor Heroes and its sequels. The novels are awesome, too.
New Gods: Nezha Reborn and White Snake (and it’s sequel Green Snake) are Chinese animated movies. They’re all really good. New Gods particularly is weird in a really good way.
Check out Sifu
but definitely don’t pay for it bc the director is an absolute freak
spoiler
Damn, their new rocket-league-without-cars game looked pretty interesting too. Guess I’ll just stick to rocket league.
oh that’s unfortunate
good thing i pirated it lmao
funny how that ends up being the right choice almost 100% of the time
Their darn movies are taking forever to get pirated. Where’s my copy of NeZha 2 at?
ong one of the highlights of the year for me was the new captain america movie bombing so hard they put ne zha 2 into imax theaters, shit was an absolute treat
Lol hilarious.
I didn’t know there was a new Cap’nmerica
getting anything that is not already widely distributed is a pain. thankfully (and not so thankfully due to the bad problems they have) crunchyroll is starting to distribute more donghua so it’s getting easier to find but there are still many series that look interesting and there is no way of watching them (maybe only learning chinese, but that will take time)
my partner is absolutely hooked on Chinese anime, fantasy dramas, music, etc (korean too).
some taiwanese (i know same thing) because there’s more open queerness but i think over time that gap will close
It’s definitely been ramping up in the last 2-4 years. We had black myth wukong last year that got really popular plus a handful of other chinese-themed action/souls-like games out or on the way.
I really liked Fabulous Beasts and I think all of it is available free on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=52SEMKujJ5k
Fog Hill of the Five Elements is another cool animated Chinese show worth checking out.
Good recco, thanks o7
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
China is so far behind on the culture game
I think it is starting to happen gradually. Some Chinese video game studios are starting to get off the ground with attention grabbing stuff, Black Myth Wukong for example.
they seem less interested in the export market?
or they haven’t made something that hits like Akira did 30 years ago and underground demand can’t build like it did for japanese art
I dunno. As much as I am a chinaboo I hate Chinese themed stuff. Like, I have no intrested in court drama for the old nobility
Yeah that stuff is pretty dull.
The reason why there’s so much Japanese or Japanese-flavoured media is that the Japanese government has actively funded their media sector for decades with the explicit purpose of swaying people to hold pro-Japanese views as a kind of political soft-power. These efforts have been broadly successful. The material conditions that facilitated these efforts (allowed to gain from the spoils of imperialism to serve as a buffer against communism, a one party state allowing long-term planning, no official military with which utilize hard political power) are largely due to the US-shaped sociopolitical situation that emerged out of post-WWII Japan.
Consequently, many pieces of Chinese/Korean media actively copy the (now-popular) anime aesthetic partly because it’s known to succeed, and partly because of the
effect.A pair of (rather long, admittedly) videos on the subject. Disclaimer, the presenter is somewhat of a lib and also a lawyer, but makes a convincing case imo:
Good post
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
I’d be cool to see some middle eastern stuff that isn’t just a backdrop for another “war on terror” fps game.
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I think just being willing to be critical instead of fetishize goes a long way. Seven Samurai is an all-time great film for several reasons, but one of them is that it challenges the mythology of the samurai in several ways and, despite the title, the only literal samurai in the narrative are people killed off-screen at an indeterminate point in the past because they were terrorizing peasants.
Edit: Also, Jojo has an extremely Japanese inflection, but only parts 4 and 8 are set in Japan (and 3 starts in Japan but by episode 2 they leave and don’t come back until basically the epilogue).
Seven Samurai is an all-time great film for several reasons, but one of them is that it challenges the mythology of the samurai in several ways and, despite the title, the only literal samurai in the narrative are people killed off-screen at an indeterminate point in the past because they were terrorizing peasants.
I thought Kikuchiyo was the only one who wasn’t a samurai? The rest were, but they weren’t wealthy or powerful samurai.
Technically, the remaining six are ronin rather than samurai. They used to be samurai, at least to the point of coming from a samurai family in the case of the youngest (I don’t remember the exact details if they are even given), but you aren’t really a samurai unless you’re actually serving under a lord, which none of them are when the film takes place. So six are ronin and one is a peasant or something but larps as a samurai.
We can infer from a couple of factors, not the least of which is actually possessing a substantial amount of armor, that the samurai killed prior to the movie were probably real samurai. It would also be much harder to get away with the crimes they were committing if not for them being under a lord, and if they were career criminals in the eyes of the law then they would probably just be referred to as more bandits by the villagers (because that’s what they would be).
At least, that’s my understanding of it.
make all genre media Bulgaria-themed
First-person shooter about the battle of Shipka Pass.
All i know about Bulgarian culture is “life is short and hard, work donkey” -a guy i worked with named Plamen
what im hearing is “untapped market”
Actually i think it’s pretty represented if you think about it there’s about a bajillion “gas station attendant” and “farm worker” simulators
I watched a North Macedonian film a while back, pleasantly surprised. It’s a shame we don’t see more good media from smaller nations around the world.
If that means more soundtracks by the Bulgarian Women’s Choir then yes please.
I was reading a blog post where the author was specifically going off about how media perception skews so much towards major areas, that whole nations (in the specific case, Greece) are reduced to the major areas (Athens) and this erases smaller regions and their cultures (e.g. Peloponnesus). What I’m saying is, if they are going to do Japan again, I’d like a Kagoshima walking simulator pls
Joke answer: My Summer Car
Real answer: Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) is based on Inuit lore.
I don’t think any Finnish person would dispute the accuracy of My Summer Car
From what I’ve seen it’s extremely accurate, one of these days I’ll actually get around to playing it.
It’s 100% accurate.
I realize it’s not exactly leaving the hemisphere, but I’ve always thought Thai culture is way underused in games
A Thai person I know once showed me a Thai anime and it was quite neat. For the life of me I can’t find it though.
Edit: searched my discord message history and found it!
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I get sad about this a lot. Like in the wasted human potential sense, thinking about all the cool artistic aesthetics and stories we’re missing out on because other cultures don’t get fostered with the same kind of media budget.
I watched some classic Senegalese films recently and was dismayed to learn that domestic funding pretty much dried up in the 1980s. Wikipedia:
Even today in Senegal many cinematographers and people who have knowledge of film production, particularly in Dakar, but don’t have resources. Any films produced since have almost entirely been financed from abroad and exhibited at international film festivals rather than in Senegal.
Genuinely depressing.
Same, I’ve pondered about that too.
I can’t get extra mad at all of those Tokyo games when there’s also all of those goddamn New York and LA games. I wish studios would set their stories somewhere that isn’t the same four or five places over and over again, but a big corporation isn’t going to subvert the forces of cultural imperialism. Quite the opposite, really. This is all part of the cultural industries reinforcing the global cultural hegemony.
After all, many of the big games set in versions of US cities aren’t even made by US studios (eg GTA, Cyberpunk). Just like how many of the films set in the US are actually made in Canada. This is all part of cultural production under capitalism. The market logic says that people already watch films and tv shows and play games set in New York, LA, Tokyo, and London, so therefore all films and shows and games must be set in New York, LA, Tokyo, and London. You want to set your story in Tonga or Malaysia or Chile? No, that’s not allowed, it must be in New York or LA or etc etc.
TBF that’s more to do with studios wanting a certain baseline of familiarity than an explicit desire to make enforce cultural imperialism hegemony. The global audience has at least a surface level grasp of the cultural nuances of the big urban megalopolis’ like Tokyo, LA, NYC, London, etc. Whereas they have next to no grasp on a place like Tonga or rural northern Alabama, which means more time explaining and less time entertaining. Of course, that greater understanding of major cosmopolitan centers is a side effect of capitalism.
Kind of a “the purpose of a system is what it does” thing though isn’t it
Sure, just distinguishing between conscious reinforcement of a system versus unconscious.
It’s not familiarity thats just a byproduct of the cycle. It’s because New York (and Tokyo, London, etc) is important to capitalists and to capitalism and is one of the centres of global power. So the big studios set their stories in New York, people around the world see films etc about New York, people are made to be familiar with New York, so then stories are even more likely to be set in New York because it is important and people around the world are familiar with it. Or rather, they are not familiar with the real New York, they are familiar with the mediated representation of New York. They know New York from watching Friends and Seinfeld, neither of which were filmed in New York.
Originally the studios themselves were in NYC (still are to an extent), as that’s where capital was. Also, actors, writers, songwriters, art builders/designers, but all of that is also a byproduct of capital being there. And if we go back to first causes, it’s NYC being at the mouth of the Hudson and thus central for the flow of goods in the Northeast that made it a place capital wanted to be.
So yes, the familiarity is a byproduct of where the centers of capital are. But it’s not a tautology where NYC is important to capital because it’s important to capital. It’s important to capital because of its material contexts. Even with LA, yeah it formed as a result of filmmakers escaping Thomas Edison’s lawyers, but it also had a lot of barns that could be easily converted to sound stages, and it was a 1-2 drive from locales that could convincingly pass for nearly any biome on film. It served their material needs.
I want more games and shows about Japanese culture, but more specifically modern day salarymen in Shinjuku. Those guys rock.
If I can’t play as the drunkest middle manager to ever exist, what’s even the point?
The Japanese depressed alcoholic salaryman aesthetic is so much sexier than the western version.
I’m a weeb for high functioning alcoholics
That’s kind of what Takeshi’s Challenge is
Sounds like you need to play Incredible Crisis or Salaryman Champ.
Have you seen Zom 100?
I was playing Maimai in Shinjuku right around the last train and had a bunch of salarymen amused at my Touhou washing machine powers
Disco Elysium but you’re a Japanese Salaryman sounds like a lot of fun.
Pop culture produced absurd books about Japan taking over the US, and people literally feared it happening.
I was a weird nerd as a child (still am I guess) and read my dad’s tom clancy novels. I read debt of honor in grade 4 or 5 not long after it came out. my teacher at the time would sit down with us and talk about books we read as we finished them. that’s how I accidentally spoiled jack ryan becoming president to a 40 year old man when I was 11.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is a metroidvania set in an African-themed world, although I don’t think it’s historically or mythologically any one specific place in Africa. Fantasy-world Africa as it were.
I would love more Indian media but I don’t like Bollywood and someday soon I’ll run out of left-wing Bengali directors.
