I’ve noticed more and more of late something rather unique I think in American culture that has been going on the last 5-6 years. That is the blending of the Japanese and the American Cultures. Now I think this is interesting because I think it is really one of the first times that the east and the west has ever decided to blend in some way.
I should say that by blend in this particular case I am talking about the blending of cartoon art style (see almost new saturday morning cartoon show on the WB or Cartoon Network), and technology (we don’t have quite the nifty toys they do, but it gets closer every year).
The latest thing to really catch my eye is a new game that is being put out by Disney. It is coming on the DS this March and I would be shocked if there weren’t Wii versions and cartoons and such already in the works to go along with it.The game is called Spectrobes and is probably going to be the first original game by Disney since Toontown Online. It is very much a new type of Pokemon, but what catches my eye on this game and why this post is that above the title of Spectrobes is what I assume to be the Japanese characters of the same word.
Some cartoons and games have done this before, but most of the time this happens when a game comes from Japan to the United States. This is Disney… an American company… this game is American first. So it is for this reason that I find it interesting that Disney chose to cater to the Japanese people, even here in the U.S. They don’t need to do this, so why are they?
I think this is occurring because Corporate America has come to the realization that the Japanese spend probably about as much money, if not more, on television, gadgets, video games, and movies. So instead of making two seperate shows with different animation styles and titles and such. Companies have begun to merge the two. Therefore, if you do not like the anime style that the Japanese and Korean people like, you better get used to it, because companies want to maximize profit and I think that there have become enough people here in the U.S. that are at least ok enough with the style that they are just doing it in the anime style instead of the american style. It also may very well mean that the money gotten over there on these ventures, does indeed outdo the money that is made here, and therefore, we don’t even matter anymore.
It is all very very interesting stuff going on, and being a fan of Japanese culture, I’m very happy to see it happening.