Japanese Highschoolers and American Marines

[Zack]

Shamelessly stolen from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/50c6rh/generic_marines_in_western_games_vs_generic/


The article is about how the Hero's story is told in Japan and in America. How in Japan they value 'becoming the hero' and in the US they value 'Being the Hero'. Certainly it is something to think about for anyone telling a story.

Or to quote Lotus Flare:

Generally in the west, we value being the hero. You train and grow when you're young in a stable environment, then adventure as an adult. Once you've got full independence with your own place and steady income, that's where the adventure begins.

Generally in Japan, they value becoming the hero. The training and growing when you're young is the adventure, then you settle down and become stable as an adult. Once you've got a job and a home, you're supposed to dedicate yourself to those responsibilities. That's where the adventure ends.

In general, the west has the trope of the established hero being the main character and the young ward being his backup. Whereas Japan would view the established hero as an older mentor while the young up-and-comer is the real hero. There's exceptions of course. We've got our Avatar: The Last Airbenders, and they've got their Cowboy Bebops.

I'm not sure how true this holds to real life expectations, but it's a prevalent storytelling trope.

 

[Amaryllis]

I wouldn't be surprised if the easy explanation to these so called differences in values is that Japanese manga might be aimed more at youth and better succeed at attracting the young while I bet western comics typically have an older audience that has gotten older over the years. I wouldn't be surprised if Japanese manga sells better in Japan than comics sell in America and that Japanese manga is often sold in magazines that have many different series in them that are constantly ending and beginning while western comics are relying more on the same old characters. Like if I think western comics I think Marvel and DC with characters being milked forever that are over 50 years old while when I think of Japanese comics I'm thinking Shonen Jump and Jump magazines that constantly have new series and bundle them together with long running ones.

Of course you'll have more youthful heroes in Japanese manga if they have more success appealing to young people. I bet even if manga has a stigma to many people it isn't at the level of the stigma comics have in the west where people who are into them are thought of as nerds who must really like collecting stuff and be heavily influenced by nostalgia whereas I bet it's not a big deal in Japan to buy a weekly magazine with several titles especially when you could just read it before passing it to a young sibling or even your kid.

And if someone says there are many comics besides those of Marvel and DC I'd question how popular they are and I'd think about the fact that I read about them being described as art and fresh stuff breaking from the norm with social commentary or breaking the mold of the industry and that sounds to me like stuff for older people or stuff older people are more likely to appreciate. I wouldn't be surprised if Japan wins when it comes to the idea of cheap disposable guilty pleasure entertainment in comic form which would make it easy for young people to get into making using young heroes sensible.

Maybe young heroes sell because of a young demographic and not because of an appeal to culture.

Also from my experience it feels like the Japanese medium is more accepting of young people in mature situations so characters don't need to be old to be in a serious violent or sexual situation.

If I can tell a wider range of stories or have a wider range of situations with young characters in manga then why use older characters when I want to hook people on comics when they're young and they might be using someone else's money to buy them so they don't worry about price?

 

[Wes]

Sadly, when I read the thread titled I assumed this thread was going to be about sex and/or sexual assault. It seems like an unwritten rule that putting soldiers in proximity to a foreign population often results in crimes like the 1995 incident, probably in part due to the occupying force seeing the locals as "others."

 

[Navian]

I'm mostly just repeating what Amaryllis said here in different words, but I don't see this stereotype as very broadly applicable... part of the problem being something called 'the competence zone'. For every piece of media, there's a target age group--or at least one it focuses on--and in most cases, only those in that age group are shown as competent and capable of having adventures, with few exceptions.

Even in the west, most cartoons have always been about young people, so they've been the ones to have adventures--not adults--even before Japanese animation became popular here. The stereotype given above seems to have been more common in Western comic books, but that's hardly a good example. The west has had plenty of literature with adventuresome children and stodgy adults going back to the 19th century, and though I don't know much about Eastern literature, I don't doubt it has plenty where young people were invisible, or helpless and objectified, which were also common attitudes in the west, at the same time.

I think it has more to do with what consumers expect than what cultures value, although Japanese culture certainly puts more value on cuteness and androgyny, while American culture places more value on manliness and mature appearances (and I do have to get more specific than mere 'east' and 'west' before I can say that.) In other words, I think it's more shallowly based on what people are superficially willing to look at, than on their deeper beliefs about stages of life, which vary almost as much within cultures as ages do.