Interesting points. Another example of how all the best cultural criticism is on the right these days.
My big caveat would be the 'Asians aren't creative' implication. We've seen a huge influx of Japanese and now Korean culture, at least in part because the West vacated those positions by being super-woke. Pretty much the only place to find a strong male protagonist in a series aimed at teenagers these days is anime or manga.
There are some interesting aspects of this. While the technical artistry of Japanese animation is far superior to the CGI of the modern-day west, Far Eastern entertainment is almost entirely lacking in humor. Creativity in the East is not the same as it is here.
The Biblical elements of Evangelion are really just window dressing--Anno admitted he put the Dead Sea Scrolls and Sefirotic Tree of Life in there because it looks exotic to Japanese people, the way Westerners used to toss in Hindu gods as demons. It's more of a giant robot show where someone decided to show how depressed the teen soldiers got.
Anime has a huge variety of genres ranging from giant robots to magical girls to totally realistic sports series or slice of life series where you just watch people go about their lives. I'm not saying Westerners couldn't do it too--our creative class just got taken over by a very restrictive set of values that makes realistic depictions impossible. If you always have to show women (or BIPOC) as morally superior you are far away from real life. For all of Japan's silly conventions they can still show the full gamut of humanity.
As for the non-asiatic elements...it gets a little too close for my taste to 'everything good must have come from white people', which strikes me as almost as hard to believe as the woke 'everything coming from white people is bad'. Almost, because Western Civ really did accomplish a lot the others didn't. But we also had a few good breaks. If you start thinking you'll always be ahead it's much easier to fall behind. That's what happened to China, after all.
Personally, I prefer media from the period when they were ascendant.
Brilliant! Love the DHMIS reference at the end
Interesting points. Another example of how all the best cultural criticism is on the right these days.
My big caveat would be the 'Asians aren't creative' implication. We've seen a huge influx of Japanese and now Korean culture, at least in part because the West vacated those positions by being super-woke. Pretty much the only place to find a strong male protagonist in a series aimed at teenagers these days is anime or manga.
There are some interesting aspects of this. While the technical artistry of Japanese animation is far superior to the CGI of the modern-day west, Far Eastern entertainment is almost entirely lacking in humor. Creativity in the East is not the same as it is here.
True, though I think it's kind of hard to judge as humor's one of those things that wouldn't translate well apart from slapstick.
The Biblical elements of Evangelion are really just window dressing--Anno admitted he put the Dead Sea Scrolls and Sefirotic Tree of Life in there because it looks exotic to Japanese people, the way Westerners used to toss in Hindu gods as demons. It's more of a giant robot show where someone decided to show how depressed the teen soldiers got.
Anime has a huge variety of genres ranging from giant robots to magical girls to totally realistic sports series or slice of life series where you just watch people go about their lives. I'm not saying Westerners couldn't do it too--our creative class just got taken over by a very restrictive set of values that makes realistic depictions impossible. If you always have to show women (or BIPOC) as morally superior you are far away from real life. For all of Japan's silly conventions they can still show the full gamut of humanity.
As for the non-asiatic elements...it gets a little too close for my taste to 'everything good must have come from white people', which strikes me as almost as hard to believe as the woke 'everything coming from white people is bad'. Almost, because Western Civ really did accomplish a lot the others didn't. But we also had a few good breaks. If you start thinking you'll always be ahead it's much easier to fall behind. That's what happened to China, after all.