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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29372 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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It is true, though, that Elden Ring has hardly any Japanese or Asian influences in it and is in its core sensibilities a thoroughly Western game.

This sentiment I'm seeing is such a weird one. What even is "Asian" or "Japanese" here? The way people are speaking it's as if it has geisha women walking in woden sandals and gongs then it's "Japanesey" and if not then it's Western. Culture and the world did not end in 1800. This entire sentiment belies a denial and ignorance of the much more interconnected nature of modernity. People in Japan take influence from things outside of Japan now. What else can they, or anyone else, do but grow in such a way or choose to be an ossified cultural taliban? They were blue jeans. They eat hamburgers, and listen to rock music. And it's all 100% Japanese. Japan makes "western" fantasy and has done so for generations since the early days of D&D being translated over and the game Wizardry getting popular (in Japan).

I'm reminded of when I read a short story by Haruki Murakami about a couple robbing a McDonald's. And the author made an amusing account of the cashier being so shocked and confused by being held up at gunpoint in Tokyo at 1 am under charge to give up dozens of burgers that she didn't know whether to keep "that McDonald's smile." Which doesn't exist in, say, America. It hit me that here is this very American seeming thing but it's very much by and for the Japanese here, and of course McDonald's is just a much a fixture of modern Japanese life as the subway is. The same as childhood karate might be for an American. That's modernity for you.

Also what's a asian vs western game here for that matter? Japan in particular has been a mover and shaker of video games since pretty much the beginning. Arguably Japan more or less made the console a thing. Video games and computers are, again, one of those things made after 1800s. There's cross pollination here. If video games made in Japan by Japanese people are not asian game then what is? Touhou coded exclusively in Ruby?

Arguably Japan more or less made the console a thing.

I'd quibble and say that us Americans made the console (Atari and Fairchild), the Japanese just figured out how to make them a sustainable business by learning from our mistakes.

Thank you. I was circling the comments in this conversation preparing to write something similar.

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