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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3283 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 3, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Describing the Japanese (at least the Yamato) as a distinct ethnic group isn’t really correct, is it? All the relevant DNA analysis suggests they’re well over 90% ethnically Korean in terms of ancestry. There hasn’t been the same ethnogenesis one sees in some Western European populations because there really wasn’t much mixing. They’re pretty much Koreans.

As regards cultural production I think Japanese film and literature has been in a dark age since at least 1970, for whatever reason. And as other users have said, the Japanese have a reputation for being more parochial and inward-focused than other East Asians.

What I'm trying to scratch at is why a big country of ostensibly smart people who are industrious and diligent in everything they pursue, with a large publishing market and average age of 48, so easily satiated with low ceiling entertainment?

I mean, what percentage of American readers regularly read high quality literary fiction (modern or classical)? 2%? It doesn’t seem like we’re much more advanced than the Japanese, a Colleen Hoover, Stephanie Meyer, Nicholas Sparks, John Grisham, Clive Cussler doesn’t seem more highbrow than most anime, and I say that as someone who doesn’t watch any anime (or read any of the above), so it’s not a defense per se.

A collection of somewhat disassociated thoughts in the matter:

Fate these days is a waifu gacha game before all else.

it's between a gacha game and a visual novel (as was the original). Being a gacha game doesn't preclude it from good writing either, even though I must admit the first part of the story is rough (explained I think by being a project that wasn't expected to be as successful as it was). Shimousa, Camelot, Babylonia and the lostbelts are worth it to slog through the Orleans (even if it had the Mozart speech to Mash) and Oceanus of the game.

As for Eva, yeah, it's a shame that the movies weren't as iconic as the original works, but considering the story, it would be difficult to follow up on it after EoE. It would be difficult to gauge the interest of the fandom in side stories in the same universe, considering the apparent totality of Seele.

And something more appropriate to compare 40K or MTG to, would be to gundam, where there is a physical and collecting aspect to it.

On the topic of western franchises for every Eva over there, we have to contend with our own star wars and Marvel/DC shenanigans. It's a fact of life that greed seeps in and properties can be mismanaged (the Final A Song of Fire and Ice book will have Sanderson in the cover, mark my words) or corpos can Virtue Signal and toss under the bus iconic artists that worked for them.

You sound weirdly confident for someone that just admitted to not knowing about the franchise. But to each their own I guess.

Gundam is about the psychic Newtypes, and the fate of empathy which transcends the factions of war.

If you're short on time, Char's Counterattack is the quickest way to get the flavour of it, however, you will be spoiling the original series. I don't know if it would meet your standards of intellectual, anyways.

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