Wapanese or Japanophiles

Wapanese/Japanophiles are abominations of God; they’re are all failed miscarriages that our Lord neglected to carry out. I see them online mindlessly worshiping all things stereotypically Japanese from Hello Kitty to Japanese AV (if you don’t know what AV stands for, the better).

I sometimes see them in groups crowding around the Japanese bookstore across the street from the Mitsuwa supermarket debating over which Naruto character is cooler, looking for magazines on “Gothic Lolita” or even getting tourist guides for various regions in Japan. However, I saw these people most when I was back at Rutgers in the good old Japanese Cultural Association (the Anime club).

Oh, why? Why do I despise Wapanese/Japanophiles? Well, there are several reasons for my dislike of these abominations.

1. Superficial Understanding of Asian culture. There was a time when Anime or Japanese animation was treated as any cartoon show on television. Asian kids who grew up with this stuff in either Hong Kong, Taiwan Province, the Philippines, and Japan would treat it as any other cartoon with the exception that it sometimes had mature storylines or topics. I grew up watching Doraemon (when it was called Xiaodingdong in HK), read Saint Seiya comics, and even the occasional Gundam SD models. Then again, I am Asian and this is the stuff a good number of kids there grew up on in back in the day.

However, things became extremely warped when you see 20 to 40-year-old Americans with no formal understanding of Japan or even Asian culture in general picking up interests that only Asian children would have done. Can you imagine seeing a 40 year-old American virgin obsessing over Anime shows that you and I have watched fondly when we were around the ages of 5 to 10? How about a 26 year-old graduate student bragging about how a heavily censored DBZ manga was the greatest thing he read until I pointed out to him that the storylines are nearly a decade old and they censored important points in the story.

Then, there are the high school kids who talked about how great “Gundam Wing” and “Gundam SEED” are while talking down on “Mobile Suit Gundam” without realising that the success of “Mobile Suit Gundam” led to the creation of the other shows and that the newer shows consist of nothing but recycled material from the original series.

2. Poor taste in Anime. For some reason, Wapanese/Japanophiles these days like their Anime girls drawn to look like 10-year olds, to act like submissive slaves and to have extremely annoying voices. It has even reached a point where some Wapanese/Japanophiles have openly stated that they prefer having an animated Anime girl over a real human being. With that in mind, it would be safe to say that Wapanese/Japanophiles would become overstimulated from looking at an “Anime” drawing I did of my friend instead of the real her even if she offered herself to them.

Then there are those Wapanese/Japanophiles who would go after girls who only resembled characteristics of an “Anime girl” meaning a girl that is at most 5 feet tall, Asian (preferably Japanese), big eyes, extremely friendly, and has a “cutesy” voice. I pray for any Asian girls who happens to fit these traits and is also unfortunate enough to bump into Japanophiles.

3. Unhealthy obsession with Japan. Because of Wapanese/Japanophiles, Japanese has been jokingly referred to as a “Sovereign state with the highest number of fanboys in the world…”. Interestingly enough, the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry has encouraged animation studios to produce more Anime television shows and films to export to the world alongside their existing exports of AV, cars, electronics, and electronic component.

As a result of increased output from studios, I feel the quality of Anime has drastically declined due to cliche storylines, weird show premises that only a Thai ladyboy could have conjured up, and low episode runs. There was a time when Anime shows would have long episode runs spanning at least 100 episodes with storylines that covered current issues or dilemmas of growing up as well as plausible premises such as dramas of a high school basketball team instead of 12-year-old girls battling necrophiliac Confucian-Nazi Aliens from a dimension grounded on Viking mythology in Okinawa while juggling the problems of finding cute boyfriends and surviving classes. That type of crap seems popular with Japanophiles.

It looks like I have digressed. What annoys me the most is the fact that Wapanese/Japanophiles will worship Japan as if it was God’s bastard son and go medieval on you if you even consider poking fun at anything pertaining to Japan. Even if you are making valid points on a particular issue on Japan, they will automatically argue that you’re wrong and even accuse you of being racist against Japanese people. Some arguments are:

“Oh grow up, Koizumi is praying for peace and Chinese and Koreans are just overreacting to a visit in a ancient Shinto shrine,”

or “My Japanese friends don’t know much about the issues so I think you don’t know what you’re talking about either”

and “You’re anti-Japanese because you are tempted to throw rocks at the Japanese embassy because of what the government is saying about the past.”

Then again, I have seen worse discussions with politically-conscious Asians and idiot Wapanese/Japanophiles. I remembered one thread where a Korean who loved Rurouni Kenshin praised Japanese annexation of Korea because “[They] fought against the Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War to help Korea become a modern power” and another where a hippie Wapanese/Japanophiles girl said “The Rape of Nanjing is just an isolated incident…move on and stop picking on Taiwan”.

Ironically, many of these Wapanese/Japanophiles have never been to Asia, had any formal study in Asian, let alone Japanese, history and culture; and they develop their views from superficial items such as Anime, sushi, and so on.

I am still surprised that Rutgers has an Anime club that is often attended by random Wapanese/Japanophiles and by the fact that there is no Star Trek or Star Wars club at Rutgers. I would also like to add that cosplay does not work for White people and it looks much better on Asians, especially the ladies. If you don’t believe me compare images of American cosplayers with those of Asian cosplayers…

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