NeckSpike

I think it's good that you're talking about it. Like obviously it doesn't FEEL good, and educating and spreading knowledge about this SHOULDN'T be placed on your shoulders. But I dunno. I'm glad you're talking about it.

Thank you for posting about this, it has got me thinking about stuff which I appreciate

I appreciate you posting about it! if nothing else it makes me feel like less of a stick in the mud when I point out how weird and genuinely harmful it is

It absolutely sucks that opening up the floor to a little introspection has resulted in such pushback. These are conversations game devs need to have and I’m really grateful that you’re sharing your thoughts and experiences on this.

"Like this is probably on the more blatant side of things but the servile, infantile, submissive Japanese anime body pillow waifu is fuckin everywhere."

I get the feeling that Western devs do this (use this style) so they can "get out of jail free" with gross misogynistic "big tiddy anime girlfriend waifuuuuu" shit without being held accountable because they can just point to Japanese media and be like "Well that's just the culture/style!" (I have seen this. It also includes them bringing up 'age of consent' shit too). And since there are almost next to no articles from Japan about the pushback in Japan about this on anime news sites, they just get everyone thinking that it's 'OK' and not debated in Japan so "You certainly shouldn't be calling it out here in "

Also if I see a .moe site I assume the owner is a pedo because that's what I see from stuff tagged moe. Sexualized children. (I know in Japan it encompasses more.. there's even male characters! However over here.. well..)

Americans treat pretty much everywhere not America like this and it's... just so exhausting. I'd prefer to just be forgotten most of the time then have a bunch of Americans weigh in on or try and engage with anything to do with where I live.
And I imagine with a bigger focus in pop culture media it's like a million times worse for Japan.

Appreciate your posts on it. It's absolutely one of those elephants that keeps hanging out in the room.

As tough as it's been for you, I appreciate what you're doing. Thanks for speaking up.

probably a tangent of what you're saying but I, too, have engaged with a lot of cultural products that have been using east asian cultures as aesthetics, settings, inspirations, etc. and I often walked away thinking "surely, there's something from these people's cultures that is similar enough -- that could work -- for these narratives?"

I once read a GL webtoon set in a japan (the whole high school student angst stuff) that felt like any other high school stuff because there was nothing good about it being set in japan other than give the protag vaguely japanese names and make them wear vague uniforms. and the author was from a country that had schools with uniforms! genuinely NOTHING begged for the setting to be japanese and yet they went ahead and did that, because they loved yuri manga and wanted to do it as an homage of sorts. and genuinely, it ruined a lot of it for me. "you couldn't think of how to use the japanese setting properly? you couldnt research high school settings in japan to make it make sense?" etc.

Like, in general, there's a failure to engage with your own culture + a dreamlike escapism in orientalism. it's so peculiar to me (and frustrating)

These are good posts, thanks for posting them.

It sucks that this has been used as a stick to beat 'wholesome games' specifically, coz like you say, orientalism (and other varieties of racism) are everywhere.

Also thank you so much for bringing up bojack's brie problem. I hadn't encountered anyone who thought it was iffy before and I thought I was losing my mind.

Echoing so many of the comments here saying thank you for writing on this. Don't let the folks saying otherwise or playing "devil's (in this case, racist) advocate."

Your first post put an issue I've had for a while into words. Your second brings up a good point that could be applied to pretty much all media that tries to use "foreign" cultural concepts. Great stuff 👍

i saw this post on my feed like, nine times and thought "ah good people are being normal about this" only to find out today that people are being very fucking not normal about this so uh

just wanna say this is a good post and it made me think.

someone here made a post a while ago (i forgot who...) like "all learn a mysterious language games are either orientalist or pro-cia or both" and i immediately thought of chants of senaar and heaven's vault off the top of my head and was like "yeah...yikes." (there are a few games i know of that aren't either but they're obscure little IF or Flash games)

as an asian person (not japanese tho) i gotta say the orientalist fetishizing from everyone everywhere is so goddamn tiring. yet another white person telling me they study japanese and want to go to japan because they really like anime.

also to other commenters, no, it is not exactly the same for how America treats non-American places...or how anyone treats places foreign to them...this is a pervasive issue SPECIFICALLY toward Asia, that's why it's called orientalism (How the West sees the East). It manifests in very specific ways.