General Japanese Culture Thread

I'm wondering how they thought people wouldn't think that was creepy. I mean, seriously, cannabilistic undertones to the whole thing would have seemed obvious to me.

They were probably going for "we want people to think of our eels as cute and likable. Little girls are cute and likable, so let's cast a little girl as the eels!".

Obviously, they didn't really think things through.

They probably found the usual approach in non-Japanese ads — namely, the use of mildly anthropomorphic animals that heap praises upon the human-imposed system that is supposed to end with them slaughtered for human consumption (the slaughering and consumption parts are either unmentioned or heavily euphemized) — to be too barbaric on charges of implying Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul-type Happiness Is Mandatory on part of the animals.

edited 27th Sep '16 7:52:33 AM by MarqFJA

@ old people running Japan:

In regards to ultranationalist elements in general, it has been noted that even in Yasukuni, the attendance in rallies has declined considerably (and aged). Nippon Kaigi is a strange beast. While they're definitely getting old, they do get many new politicians to join (IIRC), although ostensibly due to membership being practically required for higher positions.

edited 27th Sep '16 8:10:33 AM by TerminusEst

Who is the core ultranationalist generation, though? Not the people who fought in the war, who are mostly dead by now, are they people who were alive in the 40s and lived through Grave Of The Fireflies? Are they the first batch of the Japanese Boomers, the oldest people who don't remember the horrors of war, but remember from their parents a time when Japan was strong in a different way?

That and often members of more nationalistically inclined families (children of veterans, wartime politicians etc.). It's an ideological inheritance.

And now for something completely different:

Finland's only surviving BT-42 tank has become a pilgrimage sight for enthusiastic fans of Girls und Panzer (and Japanese people interested in Finnish war history in general). They even managed to gather over 10 000 euros to maintain it.

edited 27th Sep '16 9:10:41 AM by TerminusEst

The Tank Museum in Bovington has probably has something similar (incidentally, their Stug III is an ex-Finnish example, and now shown as a Finnish example).

What about the Panzer IV?

Panzer II Is and I Vs, along with STU Gs, tend to be common sights in larger museums. Plenty of intact, if not operational models survived the war.

In Tokyo Game Show which has been held a few weeks ago, instead of providing gameplay demos and such, the devs of Puzzle of Empires decided to promote their game using a VR simulation of taking onsen with one of the characters. Said character does have a card which depicts her in one, though. For the record, the actual gameplay is like this, which is a match-three-game/MOBA hybrid with the sliding control scheme of Puzzle & Dragons. I wondered why, other than the fanservice, that is....

Ugh... I hate this kind of otaku fanservice pandering crap. The defenders of this crap always say: "A game is all about the gameplay, so this things don't matter or need justification." or "It's just culture."

Yeah, right. A game is more than just gameplay, especially considering how far games have grown after so many years. Besides these fanservice games have poor and uninspired gameplay or mediocre at best, and those fanservice are there, so those otaku will fawn over their waifu instead of noticing that those games suck. It has reach to the point that even games that don't need fanservice also got it because reasons. As for the culture part, that sounds stupid and desperate. I'm not just an Asian, I also have brain and eyes, I think I can tell apart what is culture and what is fanservice.

A lot of the people defending this online are really just entitled Western white cis males who badly pretend to be not neurotypical who don't like the idea of being criticised.

Never mind that the games in question were never intended for them but domestic consumers with "niche" tastes.

edited 28th Sep '16 3:15:37 AM by Krieger22

I agree with the article in the link that you posted, but damn the comments below that remind me of the old forum that I used to go online to until I get sick of it and join Tv Tropes. Those otaku wannabe fanatically defend this fanservice, misogynistic crap and even the right-wingtastic jingoistic crap as well. I really can't understand them. For information, not all of these otaku wannabe are entitled western white cis males. There are a lot of non-western males, too. I have even met some of them from my country. *sigh*

The fanservice crap just make me cringe and facepalm at best or disgust me at worst. I mean they got eroge. Can't they just dump all that fanservice crap at their eroge instead? The right-wingtastic jingoistic crap is much worse, though. I hope that it won't be as mainstream as the fanservice crap.

edited 28th Sep '16 5:28:58 AM by Advarielle

Regarding Puzzle of Empires itself, the gameplay is actually solid and with some very interesting game mechanics. It is light in fanservice, unless you count battling in body covering bathsuits (which is very far few in between) counts as such. Then again, it is a game full of female historical warlords (including those who were male in real life)....

Speaking of those games, I starting to wonder if the actual devs mentality when it comes to foreign players boils down to "let Google or Apple lock the game from the outside and see if the number of players dedicated enough to break the lock justifies a wider release if there are no other hurdles or some random distributor buy rights to distribution". The official Twitter for 8 Beat Story actually mentioned that the playerbase is 20-30% foreign after some random South Korean player went as far as commenting at the game VA's blog.

Some games went "let's pretend that we don't cater to foreign players by not translating the game". This has happened with Hanafuda Miyabi, Prhythmic and SD Gundam Strikers. The former two are understandable, but the latter....this is Gundam we are talking about here....

Maybe only a business insider will know the intricacies of these sort of things.

edited 28th Sep '16 5:17:08 AM by murazrai

This reminds me of a VR DOA game demo I saw on youtube once. You wouldn't believe the amount of people going "Yay, now I don't have to deal with real women anymore!" or something to that effect.

Honestly, I've grown to be okay with it, and kinda think it should be released stateside. Can you imagine the wonders it'd do for the gene pool?

I'm pretty sure that they don't give a damn about foreign players. They only give a damn about them if their numbers grow so large that they comprise around half of their playerbase. One of the more telling case is Kancolle: the Abyssals are definitely not meant to be the American after they realize that they got a huge western playerbase (because all western people are American to the Japanese). Some Kancolle fans are going to correct me after I post this.

As for that Puzzle of Empires, the fact that it's full of female historical warlords (genderbent or not) is already questionable. Add body-covering bathing suits and I just cringe and facepalm here. At least I'm not disgusted like the moment I read about umamusume. Ugh...

I have met a lot of those kind of people at my old forum, including "loli is the best" kind. It's like talking to an otaku version of alt-right. I wish that I'm just exaggerating, but I'm not.

There's a bit of overlap between the two.

What does the "cis" is white cis male mean?

Cisgendered. i.e., not trans. Or something like that.

So homophobic basically?

I used to be homophobic back in high school... until I grew up and realized how idiotic I was acting.

No, not homophobic. The vast majority of gay men and lesbians are cis.

Transphobic then? [/still confused]

Not at all. Cisgender means you identify your gender as the same as your birth sex, that's it

The majority of the general population is cisgender. It's not an insulting term in any way. I'm cisgender, because I was born male and I still see myself as male. And I'm definitely not homophobic.

edited 28th Sep '16 8:03:55 AM by TotemicHero

Regarding sexual fanservice (because fanservice isn't inherently sexual in nature): In Japan the playing field is pretty even, actually. Naked fictional males are arguably just as prevalent as naked fictional females. For every Kancolle there's a Tokuten Ranbu. Otome and BL is what the Comiket is originally all about. I'm not saying that it's not a problem but it is a thing to consider should you choose to see it as one.

Regarding Japan's treatment of the foreign playerbase, I believe here multiple factors are at play. The Japanese is, compared to the West, a lot more collectivist, which is why they have the infamous 'hammer the nail that sticks out' mentality. There is a kind of domestic Old Shame going on about the entire anime/otaku culture that's caused by many things like the Tsutomu Mizayaki murders, which severely defamed otaku culture both domestically and internationally, and the kind of shunning that came with things like Rapelay existing (fyi, those games continue to exist and be released even today, I still find it odd that Rapelay got singled out). The end result is that Japan had this bipolar reception to otaku culture. Despite that, the culture of cute and the more mainstream manga is taking the forefront as Japan's cultural icons in the 2020 Olympics, and the new Tokyo Governor seems to like anime very much.