The harder you try, the higher is the standard you’re judged against. This is just like an Asian mom who gets angry when you get 98 on your test score, but not if you get 80.

Being from Ireland, this definitely describes how I felt when I read the manga Hellsing. Especially that bit in the first volume set in Northern Ireland in a fictional town called "Badrick", which doesn't even sound like an Irish place name, and how it misunderstands the conflict there.

I am Chinese American and I believe many of us think about things from an individualist western perspective, even though we are very familiar with our cultures of origin. In your example of The Farewell, I would add that it wasn't only unpopular in China because it depicts a cultural phenomenon everyone is already too familiar with. I think it was also unpopular because it centers on the feelings of Awkwafina's character rather than on the mental and emotional health of the grandma. While many of us in the west would praise Awkwafina's character for staying true to her values, I believe many Chinese people would see her behavior as selfish- as she cannot handle the feeling of being responsible for a lie. So the same reason it appealed to Chinese Americans because of representation of another Chinese American who is struggling with feelings of self, identity, and guilt, it also left Chinese viewers unsatisfied with a main character who seems to center her own feelings of guilt and shame over the well being of her grandma

I think a good example of this working the other way is Fullmetal Alchemist. It avoided the cultural uncanny valley by highlighting a niche aspect of Western culture (namely various forms of Medieval Esoteric Hermeticism and early 20th century warfare), and as such became one of the most successful Japanese media in the West.

Will when use Mulan as an example... Disney's Mulan: Finding love and one self, and then you will overcome all the bullshit that have nothing to do with you... Chinese's Mulan: Face your destiny, put on your armor, sharpen your sword, time for WAR!! For you will be remembered for your bravery and glory...

I have a funny anecdote about how the Cultural Uncanny Valley can indeed apply to interactions between the diaspora of a single ethnic group. I'm a Malaysian Chinese and went to the UK for to study. I joined a society for Chinese students, though naturally, the vast majority of their members were British Chinese. I distinctly remember feeling weirded out by them, and must admit I did not walk away with a favorable impression of them. In contrast, when I interacted with Japanese students, I'd say I tended to get along better with them despite the obvious cultural differences between us. In retrospect, my expectations of what being Chinese were were solely based off my experience as a Malaysian Chinese and those small differences that the British Chinese had were a betrayal of those expectations. On the other hand, I did not have as many expectations when interacting with the Japanese students and ultimately, that just made for more favorable impressions between us.

19:19 a story about gunpowder engineering vs traditional martial arts, you say? Well you're in luck, my friend, because there happens to be a film about just that and it's called Kung Fu Panda 2 😂

Another genre that easily transcend culture barrier is children shows, Doraemon was introduced very late in India compare to other Asian countries, but it quickly became a national childhood because of relatable philosophy that most asian kid share

To me, Avatar always felt to me more like an Asian-American perspective on Asian culture rather than a continental Asian one and now I know why

As a Malaysian Chinese and history enthusiast, I agree that Kingdom is pretty Japanese in their description of Qin, this is a really interesting topic as I've found out that overseas Chinese are more interested in non-Chinese descriptions of China than the ones in the mainland

So I guess this is why China and Japan never actually tried to explore the histories of Europe and the Islamic world in their medias at all but rather go for the medieval fantasy worlds full of humans with magical powers, elves, orcs, goblins, nymphs and vampires. If they got something wrong, they might be called out for it. If they chose the wrong subject to portray, the peoples of those countries might feel upset about what they saw. Man, I can see the peoples in Spain, Portugal and the rest of the Islamic world are going to have quite different views about how they viewed al-Andalus, aka the Iberian peninsula under Islamic rule, for sure.

It's one of my main gripes with Shang-Chi. They should have doubled down on him being Chinese-American, and dealt with the pull of expectations from your heritage, and from your own sense of identity. Instead, they kept promoting him as a "Chinese" character, and was ultimately incredibly...standard.

I have a similar theory regarding the uncanny valley when it comes to Science Fiction. No one complains about the bad science in Iron Man or Back to the Future, yet The Core is considered to be a bad movie for all the science it gets wrong??? It baffled me for years, but what I finally realized is that movies like The Core generally try to present themselves as closer to reality than other movies, but the problem then is that the differences between the real world and the fictional one stand out more, and are typically considered defects, compared to other sci-fi shows which are further removed from reality

Just one thing to notice, in an overall excelent video, is that plenty of Japanese-Brazilians did try to enter the manga market, but only truly succeeded, the one from No Game, No Life, who was mostly raised in Japan and truly dived headfirst into the Otaku culture before writing an topic about whose culture he knew first hand, while still having clear diaspora ideas and perceptions.

The interaction between John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and Sergio Leone films are an interesting example of repackaging themes and plots from foreign countries and selling them back to each other. It is also telling how popular Kurosawa remains in the US vs Japan.

Spaghetti Western, particularly Sergio Leone's The Man With No Name Trilogy, is an example of successfully crossing the cultural uncanny valley. The soundtrack from the films has become part of the iconic Western soundtrack even though it was made by Italians. I think it had a lot to do with what you mentioned at the end about highlighting parts of another culture they've overlooked.

As a South American author of Asian historical novels, I have to deal with this phenomenon always. walking that tightrope between a correct cultural representation, and being able to give it a vision that can also be novel. looking for a fresh logical and congruent narrative thanks precisely to that mixture of cultures. the point in the unscanny valley is what i call "emotive respect". When a art work is written with respect and affection for the culture described, this is clear, and it tends to make the plot flow in such a way that the minor incongruities resulting from the foreign origin of the author are not insulting, but novel and fresh. the other way around, when the work is written from a purely economic objective (for example to enter a market) or simply to use "exotic" premises and scenarios, without mediating minimal respect, this is noticeable, especially for members of the culture wrong represented. When an author really knows and appreciates the culture he describes, and focuses on an audience that shares his feelings, this tends to create a connection with the audience of his own culture and those who also appreciate it. But, when the foreign culture described is used only as a "generic" exotic ingredient to season the play (typical example a crudely staged Western romance novel in ancient Asia) intended for a mass audience unaware of the culture described, this tends to be as obvious as bad special effects. the key tends to be an emotional understanding of the culture. versus the simple presentation of "exotic" aspects. When you emotionally understand the culture you describe, you know to what extent you can include your own cultural aspects, without disrupting the social logic of the culture you represent. romance tends to be a disruptive point when a western author describes a relationship in an Asian culture, especially a non-modern one. something that not only implies the cultural difference, but also has to ignore the difference of time. thus, it is common to see passionate modern western youth romances between characters from ancient and foreign cultures, which is obviously completely ridiculous.

As as German who speaks Japanese and Chinese and being familiar with most of the material I have to conclude this analysis is spot on. I'm excited and would call this your best content on modern intercultural exchange.

Interesting facts as you mentioned Cooking Manga. Stephen Chow was a big fan of Mr Ajikko when he was a young and his movie "God of Cookery" was his love song to that anime and Manga, there was a "Chinese cooking arc" in Mr Ajikko where they went to Hong Kong to do a competition. I really loved Chinese Cooking boy (Chuuko Ichiban), my dad who is a cook say he understand the principle of the stuff they talk about. I think the artist even went to China to study how Chinese cooking was made. Talk about Slamdunk! ironically Captain Tsubasa was hugely popular in Brazil, France and Italy and even inspired alot of future successful Soccer Player to take up football/Soccer as their sport.

As someone from Spain, Coco pretty much nailed the Southern-Europe/Latin America family bonding stuff. ... But then they botched some other things because they went too overboard with them. The grandma didn't hit people with a spoon, as the directors found out that mothers actually hit people with a slipper here. So, they went overboard with it, and exaggerated the grandma going completely nuts about the power of her slipper, and how she would do "slipper kung-fu" against her kids. It's okay, we got it. It's our cultural thing, I guess. It might be very different for an Anglo, but here it's just a normal part of everyday life when you were a kid. Everyone got slapped with mom's slipper a few times, yes. And it would be funny as a minor gag, but it is so overdone that it feels like a North American character who is crazy about hot-dogs, or a Texan who always talks about guns, and basing 1/3 of the character's personality off that mild trait like that seems kinda off.

I'm not good at English, I watched the video with translation software, so there may be something wrong with my understanding. But I want to point out a few minor issues 1. The military system of the Qin Dynasty originated from the military merit system of the Warring States Period before the Qin Dynasty. Therefore, in theory, the image of a soldier in the Qin Dynasty should be a few heads tied around his waist. The Qin army in Zhang Yimou's film is a very artistic expression (there were no stirrups in the Qin Dynasty). 2. In the movie of Black Panther, Wakanda, the prototype is the god of the Native Americans (Sioux). And their coming-of-age ceremony is that the young man is half buried in the soil and goes to sleep, and Wakanda will incarnate as a wolf, bison, or other great beast into the dream, which means that Wakanda accepts him and he becomes a true warrior ( After drinking the prototype of heart herbs). The black panther is a variant of the leopard, which is often distributed in Southeast Asia and other places. The distribution of black panthers in Africa does not seem to be as much as in Southeast Asia. 3! ! ! ! ! ! Few people in China like the movie "The Great Wall". The original concept of "The Great Wall" came from Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary Pictures. The film has seven screenwriters but none of them are Chinese, not even Asian. It is said that when Zhang Yimou gets the script and asks for a revision, what he can save is not to let Matt Damon and the heroine go to bed and kiss. (Because this plot is so fucking stupid in China). So even though the director of "The Great Wall" is Chinese. Funded by Chinese companies. There are Chinese filming locations. Most of the actors are Chinese. But the screenwriters, costume designers, art designers, styling designers, producers, supervisors, assistant directors (assistants) and other staff are mostly foreigners or even white. So The Great Wall is an Asian with a white soul. 4. The live-action version of Mulan is also garbage. The animated version is great. Although the animated version talks about the issue of gender equality. But in the live-action version, Mulan will use superpowers that only men can master, and after the war is over, her sister is happy that she was arranged by her parents to marry someone else. What is gender equality? Especially the verse about rabbits, which is meant to be that although male and female rabbits are different when they look closely, they can't see any difference when they run. (Although men and women can tell the difference if they look closely, it is difficult to tell them apart when they are at work or fighting) The animated version is that men should learn the strengths of women, and women should learn the strengths of men, In the live-action version, women are as strong as men, and ordinary women (supporting characters, such as her sister) should accept their destiny. 5. I think whether the cultural horror valley occurs or not depends on whether the producer has seriously studied the culture. Even if a serious producer uses the wrong cultural content, the audience will realize that he deliberately used the wrong content for the plot or other content. . And perfunctory people will only put together what looks interesting. It's like having surgery to connect the foot to the arm. Look how perfect. (shit)

“Vinland Saga” crossed the Cultural Uncanny Valley like a champ. Admittedly, as a US citizen with only distant ancestral connections to places like England and Scandinavia, my case probably falls under similar rules to that of the diaspora Chinese communities you mentioned, but a Japanese mangaka still managed to sell me a version of medieval Europe that I’ll buy.

i just realized his idea for a silkpunk "early gunpowder tech vs traditional martial artist wuxia story" is kinda the premise of kung fu panda 2!! lord shen, who grew up with gunpowder and fireworks, develops cannons that he uses to eliminate the other respected warriors of the jianghu so that he can dominate the realm kung fu panda 2 is soo good!

Loving the mixture of history and analysis of asian culture within multiple forms of media!

That was a really insightful video. As a Brazilian, I looked after asian media way more than Brazilian and overall western media. I devoured things from Japan like anime, mangas and novels, but I always felt a bit of a foreign feeling when they dealt with things from the west, especially fantasy. I chose to write my own fantasy story, being a bit annoyed at the low effort Isekai novels in Japan. There was a bit of this uncanny valley effect, but more due to the overwhelming cultural differences between the Japanese mindset and the Brazilian one. We are way more chaotic than them if we take D&D's Alignment system as an example, and we are their complete opposite regarding laws(The only laws that work as intended here and people obey faithfully are the Laws of Physics). I chose Baroque Occitania as the setting to inspire me, mostly due to being the region that mostly closely match my homeland's local geography and climate. I bet anything native here could grow in Gascogne or Provence with minimal effort. But now I thing, wouldn't my story bring this uncanny valley effect to the French? I did lots tons of research in French and Occitan (It helps a lot that Occitan is as intelligible as Spanish and Italian to a Portuguese speaker like me).I even started to learn Occitan solely for this project, yet I know I'm writing Brazilians in fantasy France. When I write a scene in a slum for example, it's clearly based in a Brazilian favela. Also, I cannot deny Japanese media and to some part Chinese media as well had a huge influence on myself either. I wish I can make a story both Brazilians, French and Japanese people can enjoy.

Pleasantly surprised to see a clip from The Chinese Ghost Story (倩女幽魂). 午马's performance was pretty awesome and has left a pretty strong legacy.

Overall, you've made a great contribution to cross-cultural understanding. Now you just have to expand it into a PhD thesis!

The talk of the localization changing a lot of things and getting good reception is very interesting because usually, in the West, dubbing and localization is associated with bizarre changes such as the infamous 4Kids dubs. I wonder if there is an Asian equivalent to the Western community of people who say "only subs" or if that's a uniquely Western thing to be obsessed with when it comes to cartoons and anime.

I’m glad you pointed it out about separate cultures of the same ancestry. This even happens between immigrant families. President Dutuerte was almost universally disliked in FilAms who are born in America but almost the opposite was true even among the native born who are now living in America. This is why Asian Americans can’t ever get away with claiming to speak on behave of Asians.

Cannot agree more to the embarrassingly zero mentioning and researching into the early science efforts in China! Love the idea!! Have this wish to see something like this for decades ever since found out how overlooked and deliberately buried back in teen age time. Thank you for pointing that out. Feel happy to hear it from others.

I am tempted to pick up your challenge. Perhaps you can make it a competition to see who can do the best Chinese steampunk/gunpowderpunk story.

It's similar in reverse, when Asian cultures do western properties they can seem strange.

the farewell is an incredible movie for chinese diaspora struggling to reconcile mainland chinese culture with diaspora chinese culture, but it's probably meaningless for everyone else. also it's funny you say a "smart asian scientist" would be more popular in asia, because that would be considered extremely stereotypical in america

Many people usually stop at their own comfort zones. Millenial overseas Chinese are typically just Chinese in name and ethnic association. For one, most of them can't speak Mandarin (I am one of them), and they don't actively pursue further understanding of the language let alone the culture. I readily admit that I don't know how to determine "auspicious day" let alone which lunar date to observe so we need to set up fruit offerings on the altars. I never really cared until I found "Three Kingdoms" (2010) drama produced by Mainland China. When Cao Zhi cited "qi bu shi", it was immediately familiar, because I was taught that poem in local Mandarin class. Yes, since 2001, we have electable Mandarin class in Indonesia. This doesn't mean I am not interested in foreign depiction of ancient China or Indonesia. For me, Kingdom is a great series that I follow quite religiously, I even paid money for it. Looking at the comments of how the eventual loser and snob general Li Xin's comments by the manga's fans really shows how much knowledge of history average people really has. This greatly affects their acceptance of certain stories. Plus, there is this famous Japanese game "Dynasty Warriors" series, made by Koei Tecmo, which is then crossed over with their own Sengoku-themed game called "Samurai Warriors" and dubbed "Warriors Orochi". It is weird to see them crossed over and pitted as equal, but since this is fantasy and also include immortal beings like Nuwa, Fuxi, Susanoo, Dodomeki, and various other Japanese kamis and Chinese deities, it is fine I guess. The latest installation even included Greek and Norse gods plus a French hero. What doesn't work is that Three Kingdoms period was around 200-300 AD (a lot of people simply don't know when do this stories happen), while Sengoku era Japan started in the 1500s. That is almost 1,200 years apart. But modern perspective is really skewed, it only took 60 years, from Wright Brother's flyer I (1903) to Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (1964), and today we are so used to gigantic 20 years old Airbus A380 taking off to the skies. Could you imagine F-22 fighting Mitsubishi Zero or Fokker Triplane? That's probably how historians imagine Takeda Shingen clashed swords with Liu Bei. That's 1,200 years of advancement from Liu Bei to Takeda Shingen, while it only take 40 years from Zero-sen to F-22. Having more knowledge really do change your perspective drastically. Our knowledge about mainland China is also very limited. But through game / flight sim modding community, we get to know the mainland youths, creative and seemingly on their own. They produce quite a lot of top quality contents, they even put out nifty hardware hacks to modify your Flight Sim gear to be more realistic. It is not that they aren't receptive towards foreign stuff. The failure of Avatar: The Last Airbender is really confusing, however it is not that "cultural uncanny valley" plays a big factor for the massive success of Total War: Three Kingdoms by British video game maker Creative Assembly. Now that's China, a diverse nation that absorbs you and quite open. Then there is Japan, a nation comfortable in its own Galapagos syndrome. If the west have their own idea about Asia, the same can be said for Japan about others. You can try to find "western food" in Tokyo, a supposedly global metropolis to experience how Japan "interpret" the rest of the world. For Japan, their ramen is "Chinese food" and their curry rice is "western food" (since curry was introduced to them by British sailors). That's what makes them really unique.

ATLA is actually quite popular in some parts of Asia such as the Philippines. Which actually fits some of your points. The country has a large Christian majority, understands English, and is greatly influenced by North American (among others) pop culture.

since you mentioned silkpunk, have you read the dandelion dynasty by ken liu? To my knowledge, Ken Liu coined the term to describe his series since there wasn't any other genre label that perfectly encapsulated what he was writing. In addition, since Liu doesnt like genre labels anyways, he decided to coin his own genre label specifically for his works

Cultural and historical accuracy is important when it comes to both western and eastern historical dramas. What bothers me the most is when the creator or director bashes a lead character or adds something modern to the character or story... After that it can't be taken seriously or enjoyed. For western examples: King Louis the 16 in the Marie Antoinette movie or William Of Orange in that tv show. There is no evidence those guys were gay whatsoever. The world was very different back then. Though yet again this all comes down to propaganda in either book form or film is worldwide thoughout history and culture. The Last Airbender and Kung Fu Panda are merely fantasy world entertainment. If one becomes distracted by the imperfections it becomes unenjoyable. Creativity is the elixir.

Yessss!! Been waiting for this! Love this entire cultural uncanny valley concept.

Love this, so much interesting information! Thank you

I love the in depth perspective on this challenging subject.

Well sorta like how Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon kinda flopped in China but become a huge success in rest of the world. Reason is that they were deconstruction of Chinese Wuxia genre. Also Kingdom might not be so popular but the Sangokushi by late Mitsuteru Yokoyama is really popular in China as Mitsuteru Yokoyama manga tend to use alot of Historical facts for his historical mangas. One of my favorite Hollywood made movie set in Chinese culture is actually Big Trouble in Little China. John Carpenter really managed to take up the Wuxia style and did alot of research how the fight is. My less favorite is actually "Sleeping Dogs", for some reason it try to look like Hong Kong, but on the same time doesn't feel like Hong Kong at all.

I love your videos, but this is probably one the best videos I've seen you produce. It's a really great insight on how to properly break into the Asian markets from a creative aspect. Thanks a lot bro!

Hey dude, great video. I honestly never thought about it this way, but it does make sense. If you wanted to see something like your culture, you'd just go to your culture. I think it'd be cool to see a video doing the opposite. East/Souteast Asianmedia being made about Western culture and experiencing Cultural Uncanny Valley in the West. I think a good example of this is Earthbound. While the series experiences massive cult popularity in the West now, when the first game finally made it stateside in 1995, it was nothing short of a catastrophic failure despite being an ENORMOUS success in Japan. I think it may be due to this same phenomenon. The game is heavily written and portrayed like a Japanese perspective of American culture and it definitely feels like a parody as an American. Yes it had a gross out marketing campaign and yes it was very expensive, but gross out marketing was just a thing in the 90's everywhere and gaming was seen as expensive in general in the day. I think the issue is it rarely appealed to American kids. Think about it. You start the game to find out that you're a normal boy living in suburban America (OK Eagleland but it's just parody America). You have a hard working dad, a stay at home mom, and a younger sister. You love baseball and adventure. This screams America. Then the game throws you with a talking bug from the future, cops beating up a kid, and magical centers of the Earth. Not to mention all the weird stuff later on in the game like Mr. Saturn and Master Belch. On top of that, it was an RPG, which, while a massively popular genre of games in Japan at the time, was a very small genre in America where platformers and adventure games were king still. I think this oddly faithful interpretation of America in a genre Americans didn't like much made it weird to most that played it and prevented the game from becoming popular until many years later. I think it's especially noteworthy that the two games with the most dead set on the America parody, Mother 1/2, are hyper popular in Japan while the third game that isn't remains much less popular where as the American fanbase especially finds it the best game by far. I think the success of things like FF7 just two years later later proves that it wasn't just "America hates RPGs". FF7 went a lot more Japanese and a lot more fantasy than Earthbound and became a lot more popular and I think it may be because it managed to totally dodge Uncanny Valley

Thank you for this video. Please do more videos about this topic. There is a lot of material and this kind of nuances.

This is a ridiculously good video essay, with wide range of appeal - I'm hoping more people will get to see it. He posts a video a week, but I am sure this took much longer than that to make. Chapeau!

Good video and the comment section is also full of interesting additions. I barely read the comments on youtube anymore because it's either boring and full of people not adding anything or just bots. When people are actually sharing their experiences, viewpoints, and asking each other questions you know you've touched on something interesting + relatable and done it right!

I love the idea of a Cultivator vs Engineer story. I also really like the idea of a Cultivator who incorporates gunpowder weaponry into their martial arts.

Awesome explanation as always, Stay cool CJ!

Wow, I'd really love to see that kind of show you suggested at the end!

Apparently The Never Ending Story (the book, not the movie) was really popular in Japan. I'd be curious to see how that relates to the content of the book. The book seemed like it combined a bunch of western and eastern imagery and symbolism, so I'm curious how Japanese people might perceive it with regard to the cultural uncanny valley concept.

This very educative thank you for this what I love your channel it's so simple and authentic

awesome videos as always

I feel cultural uncanny valley is why Asian immigrants really have a hard time connecting with western Asian diaspora or Asians who are Russians or Central Asian. Our mannerisms, morality, assumptions are western, but if we do not have non-Asian faces this would not be an issue but since we have Asiatic faces, Asian from China, Japan, Korea have a hard time with us. I get weird looks cause I always ask for forks since I don't use chopsticks in restaurants lol

There's an exception, a 2005 Korean Political TV drama "The Fifth Republic" is an internet phenomenon in Japan, Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan. Despite the cultural difference between Koreans, Japanese and Chinese, that TV drama is still immensely popular nowadays, some netizens even making memes from it.

A random Japanese Brazilian made No Game No Life though. But I get it, as an isekai, it doesn't need to have a rock solid grasp of Japanese culture.

Cultures tend to be melting pots and sometimes the foreigners taking part of your culture and changing it can make it exotic and exciting again. Example finnish saunas were imported into japanese bath-houses as an exotic experience for the local japanese. They followed finnish sauna traditions to a tee but eventually over the years japanese fans of finnish sauna developed their own cultural quirks like their own slogans they say when throwing water on hot rocks, etc. So from a finnish perspective, visiting a finnish sauna in the middle of Japan is a new experience because its an odd mix of familiar and new things melted together. The hot saunas you see in gyms these days are also altered versions of finnish saunas.

Personally, I don’t think that the “white savior” outrage was the main reason why The Great Wall failed in western countries (sounds more like complaints from a loud minority), but rather that the film is just… bad. It’s like you said with the Mulan remake (and I’ll be paraphrasing here): a polished turd is still a turd.

CJ: Ends video on a casual mention of early firearms for a setting Me: All the research and art I've done for a Korean early firearms 5e setting feels VALIDATED

Damn... I know (and have seen) pretty much all the reference media you use here (except for the Onmyoji game)... Now I feel old. Well... Great video as always.

So interesting, thank you so much!

That's actually pretty fun to learn about the Different of each other Cultures between such a Close Neighbor Country.. 👌

Well explained.

Fascinating discussion, incisive analysis! It would be interesting to note if there are different responses to these "valleys" from different age groups, i.e., do children, teens, young adults, and old adults have different reactions to these movies and mangas? As a westerner interested in eastern culture and history, I really appreciate your work!

I loved this video. I learned a lot, I was one of those who thought"The Great Wall" was Hollywood Pandering. This information is worth remembering, and someone who should see it is all of current Hollywood, like desperately.

The development & spreading of early gunpowder arms sounds cool to me

So many perceptive comments here. Keep up the good work.

As an american who is in no way a part of any east asian cultural diaspora: I really enjoy Kingdom, I've been reading it for a while now. Its a fun story and I don't mind the historical inaccuracies, but then again I haven't been steeped in stories about Qin for my whole life like I imagine Chinese audiences are. It's interesting to hear about these sorts of things, I'm trying to imagine what the equivalent would be for me!

This are some valid and interesting ideas about Asian representation in the media.

You know, this analysis works super well for martial arts as they spread across cultures too.

People also seem to cut some slack for the cultural uncanny valley in the alternate history genre.

This video made think about how my own culture is depicted on foreign media and how it is received and if the cultural uncanny valley influenced it and I realized that generally no. Maybe it's because my country produces so little content that most people watch foreign movies and series and we barely have a way to represent our own culture (even our own movies and TV shows are a bad representation of our culture and lifestyle). By the way, I'm mexican.

Silk Punk would really be an awesome setting! someone has to write a book!

i'm not really a fan of my own culture's media but i know not every time indonesia is portrayed in foreign media it shall be all about jakarta or bali. rooting for a hollywood movie set in bekasi or an anime set in gorontalo (edit): also mind gamelan musics. sundanese, javanese, balinese, and _malay_ gamelan sounds distinct

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Total War: Three Kingdoms also very popular in China despite media and video games adaptions of Romance of the Three Kingdoms being extremely oversaturated in China?

I've noticed that Japanese media set in other countries is often very loose regarding the historical accuracy of clothing and armor. It looks wrong to me. But, non-Japanese media set in Japan probably often looks wrong to Japanese people, too.

your idea of that scientist in the Song dynasty... already a web novel.... Protagonist's consciousness time travelled to the Song dynasty with all his memories of the last few hundred years of modern ideas and knowledge. still ongoing but pretty awesome series.

if you see mangas like bokkou by mori hideki it portrays qin era warring states china so well the chinese made a live action movie on it. i like those kind of gritty and realistic depiction of war and ancient times over the kingdom style of high fantasy driven aesthetics

19:30 Thinking of the Water Margin. Pitting Ling Zhen versus Gongsun Sheng, would be interesting

As Taiwanese the version I'm more familiar of Romance of the Three Kingdoms is the Sangokushi manga from the 70s and 80s and the anime from 90s. I remember reading them in the school library. Chuka Ichiban was huge too, even my father would watch it.

A Lot of anime based in medieval times includes alot of fantasy elements so like its easy for people from those places to get into without being put off

I think part of Avatar the Last Airbender's unpopularity in Asia is because it wasn't that popular initially in the west more so than the uncanny valley. It actually fits in with Kung Fu Panda and Dragonball as being unrealistic since there are the jokes about how the cast don't understand what a regular bear is. Its large following was generated overtime since it was marketed as a kid's show while having complex themes and fans either were exposed to it as youths or watched it as adults looking for that complexity. A similar show in the west would be Batman The Animated Series from the 90's. If you're looking for silk punk style story I recommend the successor series to Avatar the Last Airbender, Avatar Korra, which is even more thematically complex and set in a romanticized steampunk Hong Kong in the early 1900's. It deals with nationalism amongst the nations and how in a post-war world you can have brothers who are respectively a fire bender and an earth bender as well as the politics of non-benders. Or Ken Liu's Dandelion Throne series. The first book is basically Fall of Qin/Chu-Han Contention but with battle kites and airships, presented similarly to a greek epic like the Iliad. Second book is even better since it goes into uncharted territory and goes into reverse engineering weapons for warfare. That series is an interesting mix of Asian and Western classical story telling in a hybrid way.

I think this was my reaction to Kara Tur. Initially, I have gripes on aznsrepresent's take on it and decided to have a look...then I began to find some issues. Like ignoring the poor organization issues and inconsistency (like say Shou/Fantasy China having no swordplay then having an image of two swordsman), trying to decipher their "chinese-coded terms" (either misspelling, alternate terms that wasn't use now, or both...plus using Japanese terms in not Japanese areas) or annoyed at lack of Guan-Dao polearm and Jian sword. If it was a separate RPG with 1E rules or stand-alone, it is fine but got into a consistency issue when they put it in high-magic Forgotten Realms (that or someone didn't bother to ask Ed Greenwood for review or something) instead of low-magic swords-and-sorcery Greyhawk and Blackmoor. I mean even Warhammer's Nippon and Cathay did a better job even though it was three paragraphs (plus like OA, dropped out of production) and a tongue-in-cheek parody of pseudo asian settings. And I think WoTC had doubts on the setting in 2003 since Kara-Tur is based on Samurai movies, cheap Kung Fu movies, and maybe some orientalist fictions in 1980's but 2000's audience had more exposure to high-budget martial arts movies, Avatar the Last Airbender, Legend of Five Rings (which WoTC's Oriental Adventure used, plus maybe trying to use their newly-acquired license as well), and even anime (like Naruto, Dragon Ball, and other fantasy anime). Interestingly, many Kara-Tur players do hate Anime despite many of it being more suited to post 2E's "high-magic heroic fantasy" (in contrast to 1E's low-magic sword and sorcery fantasy) like DnD did published Book of Nine Swords for anime-craze and widely coined as "Weeaboo Fightan Magic".

Being Mexican and a mesoamericanist archaeologist, this really rung a bell with a lot of Hollywood chicanno productions about mexico or mesoamerican history, that are aimed mostly at "latino" audiences that currently reside in the states as opposed to us.

oof that jab on WoW is like pouring salt on Blizzard's wounds. then again, they're not doing particularly well at the moment with... whatever that is going on in their suits

I can't be too hard on them. They're clearly trying. But I can't get over how "themepark-y" Asian-esque settings feel in western media.

As a bro, I really enjoy CJ's videos. My only discomfort is that I worry the word "asian" used in most of the videos would mislead people to perceive that chinese is the only asian race everyone should care about. Not sure if nitpicking here but personally I would feel more comfortable if chinese is referred to as asian chinese (or chinese asian whatever) the key thing is be more specific, either geographically or culturally or other appropriate pairing. European/American chinese u ask? Well don't get me started. Props to CJ for all his hard work.

This gunpowder idea is cool, somebody should do it

I really wanna see a Wuxia version of Avatar. Like Aangs is part of the force of Justice: Shaolin sect. But we’re destroyed. Now his forgotten martial arts has returned, trying to master Nirvana, to grant him the ability to bring peace in the land. Just a little example

There's a Taiwanese puppet yanxia show that really popular in Japan atm. Even thought it's laced with chi and martial art shenaningan that japanese wouldnt digest, the japanese audience in the end love the concept very much.

Dude an early-gunpowder show about an inventor would be SO FUCKING COOL

Not sure that I would consider 2020 Mulan to be avoiding the cultural uncanny valley. The comments on Douban all recognize it as a Western Hollywood "strong womyn protagonist" film that just happens to have some Chinese window dressing applied almost intentionally to look as ugly as possible.

Underated video

People here in the west have forgotten their history. Before Christianity youd find that the beliefs etc of my ancestors the Celts wasnt that much different to some from Asia. The balance of male & female principles etc. Though it does deem interest in our own culture has returned w/ a good chunk of the population.

Interestingly enough while not "silk punk", the chinese anime Scissor 7 (called Killer 7 in china) already features fights and plotlines between a technologically advanced faction and a Wuxia faction, and is extremely entertaining, and at least popular enough in china to warrant 3 seasons.

The gunpowder thing versus traditional stuff sounds like the Last Samurai.

You are absolutely right, even as a South East Asian, I felt shang chi was meh, to the point it was a little cringe. The movie was shang chi finding his self and whatever, which is very foreign concept to Asians? And its value was purely as a representation of Asian Americans as representation is a thing there, therefore it doesn't click with us even if with the chinese minority in Malaysia

An interesting fact I think it's worth mentioning, the plot of Avatar is actually based on Hinduism, specifically the deity Vishnu and his, well, Avatars. Not East Asian concepts. "Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth. For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil, and for the establishment of righteousness, I come into being age after age"- Bhagavad Gita Chapter 4 verse 7-8

A great example of cultural uncanny valley in american cinema were the old Spaghetti Westerns. I live in the western U.S. and for some reason they just never felt American to me. I still love them but the way they portray are culture just always seem off somehow, not to mention their disregard for historical accuracy. I just accept them as part of the western mythos and love them for it.

I'm curious as to where you think this would fall for something like Chinese mythology or similar topics where there is a cultural context behind it, but like Greek culture in the West, it has shifted so much in how some of those figures are viewed nowadays. Would you say that there is a different kind of Cultural Uncanny Valley to that?

Brilliant video mate. I would be curious to know your opinion about the representation of chinese culture in the upcoming Warhammer Total War 3 through the Cathay faction.