Pretty much. This is a result of almost a century of the USA forcing its culture down everyone's throats, not the other way around.
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Japanese Games and Cultural Appropriation
- Thread starter Sea lion
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Pretty much. This is a result of almost a century of the USA forcing its culture down everyone's throats, not the other way around.
The point wasn't that the clothes are necessarily wrong. The point was that taking characters that look exactly like how they do in Japanese games set in Japan like Persona, throwing western clothes on them and calling it "well, that's the West folks" is pretty weak. The same way Tom Cruise wasn't a particularly believeable samurai just because he got the right-ish clothes for the part.
Catherine is set in an English-speaking country. The names, the activities, the visual styles all heavily imply that if it's not the USA it's at least very close to that. And yet, the characters look and act like what you see in Japanese characters represented by Japan. It's a distinctly Japanese way of presenting a story and looks, which makes it kinda jarring when they're trying to pass it off as "totally-not-Japan-but-an-unnamed-Western-country".
Catherine was just a random example, no need to attach to that one so badly. Even the recent Final Fantasy games definitely have gone for looks that I'd never ever call West-based, just like how Pokémon games put little effort into distinguishing the looks and behaviours of the various countries they're trying to mimic.
Serial killers are using bar graphs now
Sure, we shouldn't ignore that.
But more directly responding to the OPs concern that Western people are suffering some sort of indignity over this is...missing a lot of context and history, to put it mildly.
If anything, the fact that they're making these references at all is a win for what Western society was aiming to do.
Curious, why do you say that Catherine is set in an English-speaking country?
It isn't? It's been a while since I last played it but I recall signs and such being in English, characters having very obviously English names, and the game generally going for a Western-country vibe. Feel free to correct me if I'm factually wrong, I'm far from an expert on the game.
Sounds to me more like you wish white people could away with it the way the Japanese do. I don't believe your complaints are genuine.
I mean, there are places I can go to in Chicago where all the signs are Korean, or Chinese, or what have you. We don't get a look at nearly enough surrounding to gauge the actual locality in the setting of Catherine, though for me the presence of sake (which is not at all available in 99% of western bars) leads me to believe it's supposed to be Japan.
OK, maybe you used a bad example. Because ironically, those clothing styles are probably more common in Japan than they are in any given western country. Come visit and see for yourself!
"That's an awful nice bunch of games you've got there... it'd be a shame if someone bent over backwards to find something problematic about them."
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I actually had a theory, and I think it has been speculated now and then, that the anime design with those wide doe-eyes was almost like a self-compensation to suit the ideal of how people in "movies", primarily made in Hollywood have very big expressive eyes and so artists caricatured their Asian-representative art, their "manga" characters to represent that ideal. I don't know if it's true, or if it's intended as racially self-critical or as a slight, but I always wondered if it was a thing.
Has more to do with the Western cartoon aesthetic of Disney and Warner
It was to copy old cartoon with wide eyes such as mickey mouse. They needed large eyes to animate expressions easier.
How is this any different from the fact that everyone speaks English in Western films? I'd say that's even worse.
OP's framing contains harmful racial stereotypes and disingenuous take on cultural appropriation. Thread locked.
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