General Japanese Culture Thread

Is it unique to Japan though?

In a sense, yes. Sure, mobile gaming is universal, but Japan, at this point, is exceptionally successful with it. Let's see:

• Puzzle & Dragons has handheld and arcade side games.
• Show by Rock!! and Monster Strike has animated adaptations.
• Tokyo 7th Sisters has its own live concert.

It appeared that my assumption is wrong, but for a huge franchise, it's about time, I guess.

Speaking of this, I noticed that Japanese mobile games always have lotteries, something that doesn't always happen in western titles. This is a headscratcher for me too.

edited 20th Nov '15 6:09:30 AM by murazrai

Angry Birds is about to have a feature-length animated movie <_>

I think this Quora answer explains things pretty well.

The people who live in cyber cafes.

Can any of you guys give me advise on where to find more information on these two topics: (1) Animism in Japanese culture and its influence on Anime. (2) Gradual progression in challenge in Japanese Anime. How villains become stronger as the main character advances in the story.

Isn't number 2 just basic storytelling? If the villains got weaker as you went on there'd be no sense of drama or challenge.

Shinto: The Kami Way, by Sokyo Ono is a good place to start.

When it comes to free sources, I suggest looking for English websites of different shrines, such as this one.

if I remember, in Japaneses works, the villain doesn't get stronger as the plot continues. they remain completely static in power level, while its the hero who gets stronger, and eventually overcomes the villain.

the fact that the villain is a static entity is an important element, having to do something with their value system, hubris of their position, something. I don't remember the exacts at the moment.

Then Cell and Frieza were heretics?

Villains who survive their defeat often get stronger, unless Defeat Means Friendship comes into play, in which case its 50/50 depending on how much of a game breaker they were when they were bad.

Dragon ball Z was one of the few shonen fighter's I can think of that do have their antagonists level up, but even then, it does fall into this pattern.

Frieza doesn't get stronger as the fight goes on. they were just holding back at the beginning, and slowly revealing their true power.

Cell does gets stronger, but he doesn't do it through training or "hard work" like our hero's, but by stealing other people's power (in his case the androids, other being who had a set power level)

And Buu is a mix of both holding back, and stealing other people's power.

in the end, it accomplishes the same effect as having antagonists who get stronger, but it is the rationale and reasoning, which is different.

Most other Shonen fighters have the hero's go through villain's like candy. I don't even know how many foe's the Straw Hat Pirates of One Piece have gone through. and i know some of them come back, but I don't know of any of them that returned as a threat.

edited 24th Nov '15 6:01:58 PM by Jetyl

Could anyone be kind enough to link some journalism that discusses the relationship between yakuza, police, and then the rest of polite society?

A Quora answer in my feed said something along the lines of how the yakuza have a strange symbiosis with the police in self regulating criminal industries and keeping the peace and how it's accepted pretty much nationally.

Here's some

"Accepted" maybe a strong word. Mostly tolerated, unless they do something exceedingly stupid like fire a gun.

edited 24th Nov '15 11:33:06 PM by TerminusEst

Japanese society's desire for stability means that they'll tolerate the criminal element they know rather than destroy them and create something potentially more dangerous and disruptive.

To be fair, this also happens with lower-level crimes in other countries, although in the US its used more to keep a steady source of police informants by letting a few low-level crooks run free if they can be scouts for the rest of the underworld.

I see, thanks.

Regarding free sources of info on Shinto I'd recommend these sites:

http://k-amc.kokugakuin.ac.jp/DM/dbTop.do?class_name=col_eos

http://www.greenshinto.com/wp/

http://www.davidchart.com/category/japan/shinto/

The last one isn't specifically about Shinto but does have a lot to say about it.

edited 25th Nov '15 6:01:35 PM by FalseDichotomy

Thanks for that first one. I knew there were some cultic practices, but not that many. Along with other things.

edited 25th Nov '15 10:24:35 PM by TerminusEst

How well aware Japanese companies that their otherwise region locked games have significant number of foreign players, some of which might actually managed to make way to pay for in-game purchases?

I asked this because I came across this commercial which is for a live battle event with celebrities as guest players. I would really want to join to tell the devs that there are foreigners who played it and liked it, but I fear that my game account or worse, my Google account could be banned because of it.

They are, but they prefer to cater to domestic players due to the domestic players being more willing to pay for microtransactions than players... everywhere else. The whales, so to speak.

Then why they didn't simply lock the game itself instead of letting outside mechanisms do the ineffective locking? Some games actually go as far as blocking VPN and proxies, but that is the exception rather than the norm.

Games and Anime cost a lot more in Japan and reverse importing is seen as a problem. Why pay ~90$ For 2 episodes when you can import the entire series for roughly the same price. That is all they care about.

It's why you see dub only Atlus games and hard subbed bluray releases in the west.

edited 26th Nov '15 5:02:20 AM by Memers

That's fair for offline games. But why ban foreign players from playing F 2 P online games? So the pure Nipponish game won't be sullied by gaijins' filthy hands? Or does it have the same goal as lotteries - creating deficit?

edited 26th Nov '15 5:18:11 AM by Pz_VI

Very few FTP Japanese games come to the west period, probably a lot less money than the Japanese whales yet more server congestion.

There have been a few apparently successful experiments like the Love Live idol game and Final Fantasy Record Keeper but other than that the few that come over don't last long in the west as they don't make money.

Also games like Kancolle are very controversial.

edited 26th Nov '15 5:36:51 AM by Memers

The thing to keep in mind is those game genres and anime series run on razor thin margins. Basically the inflated prices in Japan are a necessity to keep companies afloat with the customers they know than the ones they don't.

I think Anime News Network had a series of articles on this in the past.

Also something worth thinking about: insular thought means most of the time... they just won't think to open the games to a global market.

Because why would you? You've made a Japanese game for Japanese consumers and you support only Japanese-standards of infrastructure with which to run it. Doing otherwise would just add cost for something you don't really know how to do.

When you know what you can do really well, why change the formula?

edited 26th Nov '15 12:59:20 PM by Euodiachloris