Do you know the differences between Western movies, games, cartoons and series with Japanese ones? Japan is a country with a unique and strange culture which results in tastes totally different from those of the West, thus influencing their works and creations. In this article, we will see the differences and comparisons between Western and Eastern works from games, comics, movies, series, etc.
Unfortunately, I realize that young westerners consider Japanese children's works just because they don't have a violent content, use costumes, cute and colorful characters. Which I think is absurd, and motivated me to write this article about the cultural differences between Japanese and Western works. In my opinion, nowadays most westerners like violent and realistic action games because they are part of the environment they live in. This is not the case in Japan as there is a security system that prevents the entry of weapons and drugs into the country, and causes the death toll to be less than 1 in 100,000.
The setting of most modern western games depict wars, criminal life, heroic life, medieval world and fiction themes. In Japan, most action-themed games portray medieval RPGs, robots, fantasy universes, feudal Japan and yakuza. Most Japanese games are RPG, fighting and visual novels that frighten Westerners. While in the West the genres that are successful are FPS, TPS, arena, racing and sports.
What causes this cultural difference?
Western culture considers animation something childish, which ends up causing discussions between manga and anime fans with Westerners who don't respect it and say it's a child's thing and prefer to watch series because they are realistic. The same thing happens in games, many people accuse Mario as a children's game, despite it reaching audiences of all ages. Something ironic because most kids today who don't play Minecraft are playing GTAV or some FPS while Mario players are always over 20. In my opinion westerners can't accept the fact that fantasy is better than reality.
Japan is very fond of fictional and colorful characters because this has been included in Japanese culture for a long time, mainly with the invention of manga. Nowadays, prefecture mascots, clothing and fashion, signs and signs, brochures, websites, Japanese paintings and decorations involve kawaii a term that indicates cute and colorful things. This immersion in kawaii culture makes all ages see animations, fictional and cute characters as normal, while the West sees it as children's stuff.
Things like education, culture, religion were also influences for the themes found in Japanese works. Shintoism and Buddhism allowed the creation of Japanese mythologies and fantasy universes that we find today in JRPGs, manga and anime. I have to say that the works reflect the culture and personality of the nation. We can take Brazilian songs as an example, most of them talk about picking up women, drinking or partying which reflects Brazilian culture. In Japan, the contents of the songs are usually beautiful poetic and romantic lyrics, which represent the shyness and the problem of the Japanese to relate.
Have you ever stopped to think about this subject? What is your opinion?
