I have summed up what the objective of the woke narrative is: you always root and side with the underdog. That’s simply, and unfortunately, it. Nothing deeper than that.
This is obviously a contentious topic. Under this framework, no matter the facts or the massive amount of hypocrisy and contradictions within it, the only objective is to root for the underdog.
The summary cuz who has time to read: a personal critique of how Western (especially progressive/Western-left) cultural lenses distort non-Western societies like Japan, using anime as the entry point. It argues that the dominant “woke” framework reduces everything to an underdog/oppressor binary, facts and nuance be damned. This leads to mislabeling mainstream Japanese norms (homogeneity, low immigration, traditionalism) as “extreme right” or fascist-adjacent, while excusing or downplaying contradictions (e.g., China’s history, corporate ownership shifts).
All coming from a person who not only stood in line, but donated to a campaign where I did not get the Shepard Fairey piece, but ended up with the Robert Indiana piece, two of them!
Dodge, Jeep, and even Budweiser might be your idea of Murica because their ad agencies know that being American is core to their brand. You might see George Washington fighting the Brits in a Dodge Challenger, cars and freedom bro. However, like many brands nowadays, they are no longer a reflection of their ethnic or national roots. The aforementioned Stellantis group (Dodge/Jeep) is now owned by Italian, French, and Dutch shareholders with only a small percentage American. As for Budweiser, the brand synonymous with my high school days, it is now a Belgian and Brazilian entity.
I bring that up because it points to a massive cultural double standard in how the West consumes brands and intellectual property. In the West, we are totally fine separating a brand’s corporate reality from its marketing illusion. We will drink a Belgian-owned Bud Light while cheering for “Murica.” We are also obsessed with trying to separate the art from the artist. Think of the endless Western debates over whether you can still love Harry Potter while rejecting J.K. Rowling, who by the way is gangsta in my books.
But when it comes to Japanese anime, the Western progressive lens does something entirely different and far more insidious. They want to consume the art, but they refuse to accept the actual culture that created it. Instead of letting a Japanese brand exist on its own cultural terms, Western entities swoop in to flagrantly redefine it. They want the IP, but only if they can colonize the meaning behind it.
This highlights the ultimate irony of the modern progressive framework. By insisting that “we are all just human” and stripping away cultural nuance to fit a universal narrative, they are actively erasing the very things that give a culture its value, its differences. You cannot separate the art, or the output, from the culture that forged it. For example, the reason Japanese products endure, and the reason their second-hand markets thrive, is not just a matter of supply chain efficiency. It is deeply rooted in Mottainai (the cultural regret over waste) and the Shinto belief that even inanimate objects possess a spirit, a theme visibly woven into almost every Studio Ghibli film. I know this not solely from anime, but from my mom talking to her lawn mower and many other objects around the house. The anime just reinforced that she is not crazy.
When Western commentators treat Japanese and Chinese output as identical, interchangeable commodities, they are not being inclusive. They are deliberately ignoring centuries of religious and cultural differences because acknowledging those unique cultural pillars would shatter their neatly packaged, flattened worldview. They claim to respect global cultures, but they only respect them as long as those cultures conform to a Western baseline.
As a third/fourth generation Japanese American, having been born in Colorado, I have experienced how popular culture impacts my life from the time Sixteen Candles with Long Duk Dong, Black Rain, to when the Karate Kid movie came out. Now, decades later, I see how Western audiences, especially now, are depicting and characterizing anime with the same shallow understanding as a live action interpretation. They are evaluating a fundamentally foreign medium using their own rigid, domestic political compass.
There’s a segment of the West that will only engage anime through live action, but the vast majority of their attempts have failed, from Cowboy Bebop onward.
I brought all that up because one of the biggest gateways into Japanese culture is anime. I am part of this group. I have been to Anime Expo multiple times and have been watching anime since I was a kid, which is several decades now. Except I do not think I match the typical demographics in the US, so here is what I found:
- Demographic Indicators: A 2024 study by Polygon titled “The Anime Opportunity” analyzed the American anime audience and found it is disproportionately younger (predominantly Gen Z and Millennials) and highly diverse. The study noted a much higher percentage of Black, Asian-American, and LGBTQ+ viewers compared to the general U.S. population. Because these demographic groups historically lean left in the U.S., the fandom’s overall political alignment naturally follows suit. A summary of the Crunchyroll findings.
Despite the data showing that the everyday American anime audience skews young, diverse, and politically liberal, certain institutional observers still apply Western political categories to the medium itself.
Like most mediums, except for Hollywood nowadays, Japan’s anime industry content is very diverse. But the organizations that studied the market have labeled the U.S. fandom as liberal, while the Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET) has labeled parts of it extreme alt-right, which is often associated with Nazis and fascism. Here is a summary of GNET without the word “obsessive,” which is how Joshua Bowes describes the fandom as the extreme-right:
- Idealization of Japan: Extremist groups frequently co-opt “otaku” culture not because they align with the broader fandom, but because they heavily idealize Japanese society. They often project their own ethno-nationalist desires onto Japan, viewing its racial homogeneity, strict immigration policies, and social traditionalism as a “perfect” society.
- Thematic Resonance: Anime that heavily feature militarism, imperialism, or traditionalist themes (such as GATE or Attack on Titan) are frequently used as vehicles for right-wing political messaging.
- Conclusion: For the extreme-right, anime can be a vehicle of socio-political propaganda that befits ethno-nationalist sentiments. The admiration of otaku culture and anime aesthetics is directly interlinked with calls for neo-Nazism, white nationalism and accelerationist ideology, delineating a tapestry of dangerous thought and action. Fringe political movements infuse such rhetoric and imagery into their discourse and propaganda, juxtaposing ordinarily innocent and innocuous iconography against extreme political dialogue.
To understand the weight of that, GNET is the official academic research arm of the GIFCT (Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism). GIFCT was created in 2017 by a consortium of the world’s largest tech giants: Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Google (YouTube), Microsoft, and Amazon, along with later members like Twitter (this is pre-X, prior to Elon Musk purchasing the platform in late 2022/2023) and Discord.
“The takeaway: The data shows that the actual, everyday anime fandom is largely young, diverse, and liberal. However, the medium’s aesthetic has been aggressively co-opted by a vocal extreme-right minority who use it to champion the perceived racial and social purity of Japan.”
– Google Gemini
I love the anime Attack on Titan, yet GNET labels it as a vehicle for right-wing political messaging. This is how an entity in the US labels a title that is also loved throughout Japan. Hita City in Oita Prefecture is even themed after the anime. I also expect that even the things I write will be distorted for a narrative, regardless of whether I point out the facts. Like Hajime Isayama and many other anime artists, it is neither pure right-wing propaganda nor liberal messaging. It is a tragedy about how tribalism and power corrupt, no matter the side. It has elements that can be associated with right-leaning audiences (heroic military, freedom through strength) while delivering a message that war and ethnic supremacy lead to ruin. The reason Hollywood and mass media are so blatantly left is because they treat their audiences like idiots. Ambiguity confuses people, like with GNET’s interpretation. The narrative demands clear-cut oppressors and underdogs. I brand myself with ambiguity because when it comes to my views, I cannot be on any side. That is why my X account just says “I like crab,” whereas everyone else is announcing which side they stand on.
Why is this offensive to me? Because 55% of the Japanese population actively watches anime, and for manga, around 70% of Japanese people read at least one manga per year.
If an American observer takes the standard U.S. political compass and applies it directly to Japanese society, most are unaware of how the Japanese actually think, unless they engage them via X. Japan is now the second largest user base on the platform (United States: ~99–108 million users (clear #1), Japan: ~71–74.5 million users (#2)). Even this platform, including Elon Musk, gets labeled alt-right by US media.
Majoritarian views in Japan on core societal pillars look incredibly conservative from a Western perspective, or to dudes like Joshua as an American and his take on Japanese culture:
- Immigration: Japan’s strict limits on immigration and refugee acceptance are a matter of national consensus. While there has been a recent push to bring in more foreign blue-collar workers due to labor shortages, maintaining strict control on demographic shifts is not a partisan battleground. It is a mainstream reality supported across generations.
- National Identity and Homogeneity: The cultural value placed on ethnic homogeneity and social conformity is deeply embedded. In the U.S., actively campaigning for a racially or culturally homogeneous state is an explicit platform of the extreme right. In Japan, it is the historical default status quo.
- Social Policy: On issues like gender roles, working structures, and family law (such as the legal requirement for married couples to share a surname), Japan’s legal framework remains highly traditional compared to Western progressive standards.
If we define “extreme right” by Western policy benchmarks, such as strict border enforcement, preservation of ethnic identity, and traditional social structures, then the baseline of Japanese society matches those descriptions closely. It reveals the sheer arrogance of mapping American culture wars onto a sovereign nation operating on an entirely different historical axis. So as I sat on my couch or wherever I was lounging, I heard President Joe Biden say multiple times:
“You know, one of the reasons why our economy is growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants. Look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants.”
This was said or babbled at a campaign fundraising event to mark the beginning of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 2024.
I was annoyed when I heard this because lumping both China and Japan together is ridiculous. One is a US ally, the other is not. But what really perturbed me, and what is on topic, is that anyone who doom scrolls online may have watched videos of the Japanese appreciating other cultures, from Black to Latino to American Bluegrass and rockabilly. To a woke American, the initial response is to call it cultural appropriation because they cannot fathom mutual respect. It has to be seen as exploitation and one group dominating the other. I laughed at that again because both Japan and China are homogeneous. They do not view the exchange of ideas through the neurotic Western lens of power dynamics and oppression.
This brings us to the ultimate hypocrisy. None of this matters if it breaks the underdog narrative.
On liberal platforms, you will still regularly see comments like: “Do you know what Japan did to China, and they have never apologized for it?” It does not matter that Japan has apologized multiple times. It does not matter that Japan has given China more financial aid than any other country and remains one of its largest investors. The historical tragedy is simply weaponized as a permanent moral gotcha, a flex that whoever says it, is smart.
This selective memory becomes especially glaring when you look at the bigger picture. The Chinese Communist Party has been responsible for far more recent Chinese deaths in the last 76 years than any foreign power. Estimates for deaths under the CCP, through the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, COVID lockdowns, and organ harvesting, range from 65 to 85 million. By comparison, Japanese actions during the war are estimated in the 5–15 million range. Yet these much larger, more recent atrocities are routinely downplayed or ignored because the CCP does not fit neatly into the current “oppressor vs. underdog” template.
Facts do not matter when they conflict with the narrative.
This is not limited to anime. Movies, gaming, and all sorts of entertainment are coming, and will increasingly come, from Asia, like China, Japan, and South Korea. None of which plays by a narrative dictated by the United States, though it can still be distorted to fit one. Take Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows, set in 16th-century feudal Japan, where one of the two main characters is a Black samurai.
A Brit like JK Rowling wasn’t left alone, and even Harry Potter faced it from the left and the right. Allegations from witchcraft to fascism and as a government critique.
Everything is about spewing what little or as much as you know, and that is what I am doing now. The only difference is that you hope the person writing has absorbed as much as they possibly could about the topic to give you an accurate perspective.
You may also think that you do not need a human and can rely on AI to give you its take, but you would be wrong. AI comes from a liberal, and to some degree woke, Western point of view, along with a large majority, if not all, Western dataset. Also, when writing these pieces I always run it by an AI. Both OpenAI and Anthropic flagged my content as contentious. The machine is literally programmed to guard the Western narrative.
Why does any of this matter? It matters because daily life there runs on a shared, unspoken manual. People stand to one side of the escalator, they stay quiet on trains, and they do not jaywalk even on an empty street. If those just sound like standard Japanese tropes, consider what happens if you apply wokist ideals, like open borders. Japan is an island nation with natural borders and a population that is 97 to 98 percent Japanese. Injecting radically different cultures, religions, or languages is like driving a Toyota your entire life and suddenly switching to a Tesla. Where are the climate controls, the parking brake, or the turn signal stalk? The entire interface is suddenly foreign.
Furthermore, Japan is a society built heavily on high trust. The country is filled with street vending machines that do not look like bank vaults, and if you lose your wallet with $500 inside, you can expect to get it back (it happened to an acquaintance). However, leftist narratives often argue that systemic oppression justifies property crime, suggesting someone might deserve to take that wallet because others have more. Introducing that mindset would completely fracture the foundational trust that makes Japan function.
Watching that exact ideological shift actively fracture my own country is what made me step back. I am loyal to us Americans, but I will not sit back and not criticize things, which is one hundred percent American. I had been a lifelong voter on one side until recently because I have seen the shift in that party, like many other Americans have also experienced.
I am also not tribal. Due to being a marketing professional for such a long time, I cannot base things solely on my anecdotal experiences or my feelings. So I try to do whatever I can to interpret everything from Elfen Lied and Berserk to whether or not I will still keep buying Bud Light. Yes, because I have no issue with the LGBTQ+ community. No, due to my disdain for most businesses’ marketing departments willingly and blindly virtue signaling at the lowest common denominator, equivalent to putting “gluten free” on water.
This mentality carries over to Japan, a homogeneous country where the saying “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down” would be ridiculed by the West if it did not open its borders and adopt Western views. If it did not, it would be called right-wing, or the equivalent of Nazis. It almost seems like the West ought to adopt the Japanese proverb 出る杭は打たれる (Deru kugi wa utareru). Maybe the West is the nail sticking up, and reality is about to be the hammer.
Before judging another culture, check yourself foo (ask yourself): Am I understanding it on its own terms, or am I forcing it through the language, assumptions, and conflicts of my own culture first, naw mean?
