(Justin and Keiji are discussing America's role in Japan. A difference of opinion, I suppose...)
Really long expert from this article (sorry it's long...):
"Anno [interviewed dude] understands the Japanese national attraction to characters like Rei [his lame-o character] as the product of a stunted imaginative landscape born of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. 'Japan lost the war to the Americans,' he explains, seeming interested in his own words for the first time during our interview. 'Since that time, the education we received is not one that creates adults. Even for us, people in their 40s, and for the generation older than me, in their 50s and 60s, there’s no reasonable model of what an adult should be like.' The theory that Japan’s defeat stripped the country of its independence and led to the creation of a nation of permanent children, weaklings forced to live under the protection of the American Big Daddy, is widely shared by artists and intellectuals in Japan. It is also a staple of popular cartoons, many of which feature a well-meaning government that turns out to be a facade concealing sinister and more powerful forces."
Americans just think Japan is just another smooshed nation beneath America's big butt. The end.
Your caricatures are always hilariously expressive and... dare I say ACCURATE. So the American thinks they've squashed Japan and the Japanese person thinks they're all little babies to big America?
ReplyDeleteJapanese letters really add authenticity to this. O_O
(at least to silly americans like me)
Sidenote: The sideways hanging microsoft banner in the photo cracks me up BIG TIME.
(WOAH apparently I had another account I could post under without even realizing it!!!)
ReplyDeleteThat old cartoon is funny too. Leave it to america to throw a bunch of money in someone's face to upset their delicate pride and social systems. :)