Analysis / Values Dissonance

Anime and manga are particularly prone to this, due to originally written for different demographics in a different country:

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• The most obvious example is Family-Unfriendly Violence in shonen series: what's acceptable for relatively young children in Japan, such as Piccolo blowing a hole through Raditz and Goku's torsos in Dragon Ball Z, the entire Chimera Ant arc in Hunter × Hunter, or the entirety of Guyver, is generally very much not so in the West, likely due to the perception that animation in general is only for kids. This has slightly leveled out in the age of globalization, however, as graphic violence has become slightly less acceptable in these works in Japan, and America has learned to target these works towards teenagers and up rather than attempting to edit them for eight-year-olds. France is also very permissive of Family-Unfriendly Violence, to the point that they aired Fist of the North Star in a kids slot during the 80's (albeit as a heavily-censored Macekre). Though unlike Japan this attitude is met with mockery rather than criticism. Attitudes are however changing there as well as a lot of French people, being a prime victim of The Japanese Invasion, have become very familiar with Japanese terminology and started accepting that sometimes anime is meant for adults, though it is still messy what they think about it. American dubs often record two versions: One for personal sales, and another deemed "safe" for TV broadcast. This process has become less common as streaming becomes more popular, as streamed content typically has fewer restrictions than what traditionally would be allowed for public broadcast.
• Japanese Spirit and the Pillars of Moral Character are cultural concepts that many people outside Japan simply do not understand but are nigh-omnipresent in Japanese media, leading to confusion and even outright disgust regarding the actions of characters who are motivated by these tenets. Similar concepts were once present in Western society prior to the Eighteenth Century, but have been replaced by a cult of individualism and the attitude that "chivalry is dead".
  • One particular aspect of Japanese Spirit that trips westerners up is its emphasis on hard work—not that Western culture ever didn't value it, but Japanese moral principles place a lot more emphasis on the effort than the results, which is the reason for Japan's infamously long work and school days. Another key principle of Japanese Spirit is that everything, whether it be work, school, hobbies, or even something as mundane as eating or cleaning, must be approached with the utmost respect and seriousness. As a result, making fun of someone for trying their best is considered to be one of the worst things you could possibly do—even works which explicitly point out the Hard Work Fallacy will still note how awful it is to mock someone who's trying hard. To Westerners, treating making fun of someone's effort as a Moral Event Horizon is considered to be just plain odd, since constructive criticism is to be expected, and treating everything you do as 100% Serious Business will be viewed as strange, since it's accepted that some things (like hobbies) are just for fun and you shouldn't try very hard at them. Compare the Japanese 頑張って ganbatte (literally meaning "persevere") with the English "good luck", for instance. Both phrases are used in the same situations, but the Japanese one suggests that if you fail, it's because you didn't try hard enough; the English saying, meanwhile, implies it just wasn't fated to happen.
  • Another thing that Japanese Spirit values is the "sincerity behind one's feelings" which is strange to Western viewers for the same reasons. That's part of the reason why Sumire from Toradora! has her actions viewed more positively in the West—from a Japanese perspective, her response to Yuusaku's public Love Confession was mocking the sincerity of his feelings, which means the reader was supposed to side with Taiga when she fought and called out Sumire for her actions. Japanese would consider Yuusaku springing a confession on Sumire in front of the entire school to be a sincere gesture that shows how strong his feelings are that he's willing to risk humiliation for it, which makes Sumire laughing it off come off as unforgivable—but to Westerners, he comes across as Entitled to Have You and manipulative for forcing Sumire into a situation where if she rejects him, she'll be viewed as a Jerkass, and see her response as diplomatically attempting to hurt his feelings as little as she could.
  • The Pillars of Moral Character are applied in a special way that might seem relatively odd to foreign viewers when it comes to craftsmen, artists, musicians, and any other position that requires individual creativity. Japanese are famously fastidious when it comes to creative jobs—hopefuls study for years as apprentices in order to establish themselves in their chosen field of work, and artists such as mangaka are usually referred to with the same "-sensei" honorific used for professors and doctors because it's expected that they have spent many years working hard and sacrificing their freedom to become an expert in their field in a similar way. Consequently, a creator's work is viewed as sacrosanct art in a way that it simply isn't in Western countries—that combined with the Japanese tendency of respect toward your elders means that any criticism of someone's art, or even a change to it, coming from someone who isn't a senior or equal of the artist in the same field is viewed as a horrible faux pas comparable to directly insulting the artist personally. This is in stark contrast to the West, where it's been an accepted rule for centuries that not everyone is going to like your work, and you have to grin and bear it. Even the law is on the side of creators in Japan in a way that it isn't anywhere else in the world—writers, artists, game designers, and others automatically own the rights to their stories and characters by law, and any adaptation requires the creator's absolute consent to continue, which he or she can pull at any time for any reason, no matter how petty, and still leave the other party on the hook for breach of contract, while in the West contracts that any publisher worth its salt will sign with new creators makes all works of fiction the property of the company rather than the other way around—only the biggest authors and artists can get out of this. Something like Ken Akamatsu pulling a Torch the Franchise and Run on Negima! Magister Negi Magi simply wouldn't be possible in Western countries, where the series would be able to continue with a different author. In contrast, in the West, adaptation agreements are binding contracts, and the creators can't back out of it easily without the penalties for breach of contract falling on them.
  • In Japanese "meta-fiction" about art and/or fiction creation, expect any critic of the author/artist's work to be portrayed as a shallow Jerkass, and the producers of adaptations as meddlesome jerks who go out of their way to mess with the protagonist's art for no real reason other than jealousy or something similarly shallow that makes the protagonist look better by comparison. This not only stems from the above attitude toward criticism, but also due to several high-profile cases of anime directors and writers making changes to original works in ways that the creators didn't approve of around the turn of the new millennium (the most infamous of these being Fullmetal Alchemist (2003)), leading to any form of Adaptation Decay being viewed as only the domain of Executive Meddling. In contrast, the West tends to have a low opinion of control-freak creators due to both their acceptance of the profit-driven nature of entertainment and periods such as the New Hollywood era, where auteurs with Protection from Editors caused massive critical and commercial film flops. In a situation like that of Oreimo, where Kirino demands that her light novel's anime adaptation be done exactly the way she wants, Japanese viewers will see a strong-willed creator who's admirable for not letting her work be insulted, but Western viewers will usually see a prima donna who's making life difficult for everyone but herself by refusing to compromise on anything. Of course, since Most Writers Are Writers, creators will tend to be biased toward the creative side of things rather than the business side, so the views expressed above are opinions that Japanese artists tend to hold to more than the public at large.
    • Played With in Oshi no Ko, where manga author Abiko Samejima demands that the scriptwriter for the stage play adaptation of her series Tokyo Blade, GOA, be fired for his perceived Adaptation Decay insulting her story and characters, and she be allowed to write the script instead or she will withdraw her consent and leave the production company on the hook for hefty fines. That said, it's made clear that he's not intentionally changing her story to insult her but trying to do his best balancing the wants of both her and the sponsors, and that she has no idea how to write a play and any script she writes on her own will surely bomb. It's shown that their Creative Differences derive from genuine miscommunication rather than active sabotage on behalf of either party—their communications were filtered through so many middlemen who were too afraid of offending either of them to realize what sort of powder keg they were about to set off, which reads as a direct criticism of the above attitude. However, in a straight example of this trope, the only person who's able to convince Abiko to change her mind about plays and try to hash her differences out with GOA is her senior author Yoriko Kichijouji, who she once worked as an assistant to—Aqua absolutely knew that she would be the only person Abiko would ever accept criticism from. Once she and GOA actually meet, they get along very well and are able to produce a collaborative script that both of them love extremely quickly—which is also so self-indulgent that without the actors putting on the performances of their lives, it would have bombed. In the ever-changing world of entertainment, solving one problem isn't a guarantee that no others will pop up. Since the author Aka Akasaka has been on both the creator and producer side of entertainment in the past, his take is a lot more fair to both sides than that in Japanese fiction would usually be.
• Frankly, this trope could probably adequately explain a lot of what seems to be Relationship Writing Fumble in the eyes of Western fans. If you are more used to more open Western romances, don't realize that the Japanese are generally more shy about overt romantic affection, don't know what the mythological themes and symbolism mean, and don't pick up on a lot of subtle social cues, you're probably going to be pretty lost.
  • Or, in some cases, it could just be a matter of extending the "will they - won't they" as long as possible. REC is a seinen manga where a young couple meet and have sex on the same night, and the plot follows their relationship afterwards. Their sexual encounter is treated as healthy and ordinary.
  • A related issue is the Japanese attitude toward physical affection and public displays of affection. It should be noted that the Japanese are a touch-averse people (bowing instead of shaking hands, for instance), to the extent that the only people to whom they will generally show physical affection are immediate family members (especially little kids) and sex partners. (It doesn't help that the Japanese word for "hug" (daku) is more commonly understood as a euphemism for sex.) Therefore, it is the understanding in Japan that, by displaying your affection publicly, you are communicating not only that a lot more is going on behind closed doors, but that you are only too eager to boast about such activities to the entire world. Thus, anything more than hand-holding could be considered extremely provocative. (See Sacred First Kiss for some more discussion on the subject.)
  • Another factor is the fact that, traditionally in East Asian cultures, the use of the word 愛 (ai, translated as "love") and its derivatives has been generally disfavored. In China, among older generations, its use in reference to people was considered creepy and disgusting. Even nowadays in Japan, the use of 愛, as in 愛してる (ai shiteru, I love you), is seen as over-the-top exaggeratedly romantic, and it will mostly be heard in soap operas. Most Japanese, when expressing affection, will say 好きです (suki desu) or 大好きです (daisuki desu), meaning "I like you" and "I really like you", respectively (although it is understood that the speaker doesn't just like whomever they're saying this to). Even these phrases are not said as often as "I love you" in the West, as Japanese culture emphasizes actions over words (along with quite a bit more subtlety) in communicating one's love.
  • All of the above issues with how romance is represented are becoming increasingly fraught as both anime and Western media increase their representation of LGBTQ characters and relationships. Many Western (and especially American) fans are quick to accuse Queer Romance series like Yuri!!! on Ice or Revolutionary Girl Utena of "queerbaiting" based on them failing to live up to the much more direct and verbal milestones of Western TV romances. But if they compared them to popular heterosexual anime romances, they'd find they hit a lot of the same beats. Many of the expectations Western fans have of what makes a couple "canon," like an explicit "I love you" declaration, just don't apply to a culture and media landscape that tends to prize subtlety and symbolism over having feelings and messages fully spelled out — even aside from Japan's different attitudes about Real Life romantic affection. So the fact that Western fans can piece things together despite this for man/woman couples, but not for two men or two women, really just reveals their own Double Standard.
• As mentioned on the main page for Stay in the Kitchen, a lot of Japanese gender attitudes come across as quite sexist to Western audiences.
  • Fetishized Abuser characters in shoujo and yaoi manga are almost always significantly more popular among Japanese fans than Western ones, where they can be seen as glamorizing or excusing abusive or, at best, dependent behavior.
  • To Western viewers, the Quitting to Get Married trope can seem very strange that a female character would quit her job just because she was getting married, or that marriage would be seen as an alternative to a career instead of a separate issue. In the West, it's uncommon (but not unheard of) for a woman to quit her job due to getting married. Pregnancy or the husband's income is usually the more deciding factor as to why a woman would quit. In Japan and Eastern countries, a woman quitting her job once she gets married is so common, it's more or less expected to happen.
    • The West and East also have different opinions on this issue. In the West, a woman who did this would typically be seen as needy, spoiled, and overly reliant on her husband, or at worst, a gold digger. The East, on the other hand, would typically see this behavior as someone devoted to their family and a strong pillar of support for the husband and community.
    • It's worth noting that this is something that has changed over time in the West, and likewise is also gradually changing in Japan as society becomes more comfortable with women in the workforce. Western works set in the past, such as Mad Men, often feature a similar type of Values Dissonance in women quitting or being expected to quit their jobs upon marriage. (Though in the case of Mad Men, it's on purpose.)
  • The treatment of sexual harassment is another issue that can raise more than a few eyebrows in Western audiences. In Japan, "inappropriate touching" on trains is so widespread that some stations and trains have signs warning women about perverts. Yet, women are not supposed to raise a fuss about it should it actually happen to them; it's the emphasis on dignity coupled with an attitude of female subordination. The train stations offer women-only cars nowadays though to help alleviate the issue, but this in turn is seen as discrimination, since men-only cars have yet to be implemented. There is still great controversy in Japan over the legality of this, the lack of prosecution in all but the clearest of cases, and the lenient punishments of those who actually do get convicted.
    • It certainly doesn't help that one of the main reasons behind the creation of the separate train cars was an incident where it was found that 3 high school girls were essentially blackmailing a salaryman into getting money or saying that he tried to molest them. Cases like this are on the rise recently, as committed by savvy juniors who know they cannot be prosecuted.
    • In short, the Accidental Pervert trope simply wouldn't be a thing in any other culture; no other society has normalized sexual harassment to such a degree that a false accusation can be played for laughs, especially considering most other culture's de facto "guilty until proven innocent" policy. (Whether or not this is actually any better is a topic best discussed on another site.) More serious plots may feature outright, deliberate harassment, but very often the heroine will be scolded for fighting back or told not to make such a big deal out of it. Often it's not entirely clear whether the story is on the heroine's side ("sexual harassment is bad"), or backing up society's view ("the heroine needs to accept her lot in life as uncomplaining, submissive victim"). This could be due to the fact that Most Writers Are Male. In Mars (1996), for example, Kira, the heroine, is assaulted while at her work. Naturally, she retaliates. Her boss, however, forces her to apologize to her attacker, even though she is the victim. The story is just ambiguous enough to leave the reader wondering if the author takes the manager's side or the best friend's. If you were to look at a lot of shoujo manga, you will notice that the girl is considered "pure" and more "chaste" if she just quietly and tearfully takes the groping from the molester. It is generally up to her boyfriend to call the molester on it and protect her, because a woman should never protect herself. However, most shoujo manga that indulge in this are fantasies in the vein of romance novels and bodice-rippers, so they don't necessarily reflect society's actual opinions.
  • This is changing somewhat; in the manga Sgt. Frog, for instance, Aki Hinata, strong mother and aikido master, is groped on a train and responds by slamming her attacker to the ground. Several other writers have followed this trend, especially when dealing with strong female characters. In The New '10s and The New '20s, train gropers are always villains by default and will inevitably end up being subdued and Perp Walked by either the woman herself, the woman's Love Interest, or a passing Good Samaritan. The only place where you can expect to find a chikan that's not an automatic Hate Sink is in Hentai or particularly offensive comedies.
    • Also in the Parasyte manga, when one of the infected humans humiliates a groper, the other passengers cheer her on.
    • In one Detective School Q anime filler episode, Megu and a rival DDS student are groped in a train. They actively track down and collar the groper, and proceed to demolish the carefully crafted alibi he presented to "prove" he wasn't guilty.
    • Something similar occurs in Cheeky Angel.
    • The Beach Episode of Ouran High School Host Club turned some heads among Western fans by having the heroine Haruhi be reprimanded by her male friends for confronting two thugs who were harassing some girls, but the source of the guys' complaint is that Haruhi is slight and short, knows no martial arts, and can't swim, but didn't even think of calling for help even though the guys were within earshot and the beach is swarming with armed private police. The lesson is thus less about any notions of "proper" behavior for a girl, and more about recognizing when a situation is dangerous to confront alone and being able to rely on her friends for help. At the end of the episode, it's also shown that the reason she didn't think of calling for help is that she's not used to having help to call on, softening the impact of the reprimand somewhat. (This is also partly a consequence of another cultural disparity, as explained farther down the page, due to the much lower crime rate in Japan than many Western nations, Japanese people are much less inclined to call the cops in the first place because it's seen as an admission of failing your personal social responsibilities.)
    • Megatokyo sort of goes in between when someone gropes Erika on the train. She is at first freaked out with a 'Wtf?" expression on her face and then returns to the conversation she was having while slowly reaching behind her and painfully snapping something on the pervert. However, being written from an American's point of view on the issue, this is probably more of an exception.
    • Change 123 uses this when a pervert begins molesting main-character Motoko. She quietly takes it until she transforms into Hibiki of HiFuMi. Then she proceeds to reach down, place her hand over his, and severely break his fingers. She walks off the train, leaving the pervert on his knees in agonizing pain, surrounded by confused bystanders.
  • This is all but averted now, by the point of creating its own issue.
  • In Naruto, Sakura kicks in the face a man who grabs her butt. When the client she's watching over notes that girls in his town don't look after themselves that way, Sakura declares that they should.
• The Yamato Nadeshiko trope, when exported to the West, seems a bit sexist... (despite the fact that their Western counterparts like Proper Lady, English Rose or Southern Belle exist as well)
  • ...but the Well, Excuse Me, Princess! and Tsundere types are, for some specific groups of fans, far more popular overseas than they are back home.
    • But not for others. Westerners will like Tsundere girls (due to their like of strong female characters), but only if they have a reason to snap. Otherwise, they will be seen as whiny, unfair, or overly bitchy. It's also easy for the girl to cross the line into Dude, Not Funny! if her actions are seen as unjustified, especially if she's not called out on it by others.
  • An example of this, albeit with males rather than females, is Yuri's harem in Kyo Kara Maoh!. Gentle, chivalrous Conrad seems to be the most favored candidate for Yuuri's affections in Japan. In the West, however, Tsundere-esque Wolfram appears to have a bigger following. Mind you, this may be due to Conrad being interpreted as a father-figure by some Westerners.
  • On the third hand, presentation is everything...
  • Likewise, in Ai Yori Aoshi, Kaoru's preferred match is Yamato Nadeshiko Sakuraba Aoi for Japanese fans; but western fans prefer hooking him up with Lovable Sex Maniac and Manic Pixie Dream Girl-wannabe Tina Foster.
  • Another notable Values Dissonance is the fact that pure Tomboys, while well-liked in the west, are very, very hard to come across in Japanese works, except in those deliberately aimed at a global audience or set in a western setting written by those who have Shown Their Work and/or have actually grown up heavily exposed to Western culture; this can even be seen in those who fit tomboy tropes like the Tsundere, Unkempt Beauty, Passionate Sports Girl, Bokukko, and sometimes even The Lad-ette. Like in real life, it is not uncommon to see masculine girls and women seeing said masculinity as a flaw, wanting to be more feminine, or becoming angry if someone doesn't think they're feminine, to the possible annoyance of western fans who are very much used to independent women who embrace their un-femininity. This is very much shown in the expression "Girl Power"; while in English it means purely Exactly What It Says on the Tin, the expression's closest translated equivalent in Japanese, "Joshiryoku", describes how well a girl cooks, how good she looks, and generally how attractive she is to men.
    • That aside, Japanese viewers who watch a lot of American (and to a lesser extent, European) television will grow accustomed to the pure tomboy character. Some even find them more appealing than their own country's female character archetypes, as is evident in how My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's Rainbow Dash is actually pretty far up in the unofficial popularity polls for their Periphery Demographic (though 4th in the Mane Six), going as far as gaining the nickname "Air Wife" as so many of them find her assertive and athletic personality so appealing.
  • In Japan and several other Asian countries, it's common to see women cover their mouth with their hand while laughing, as showing your teeth and laughing out loud is considered unladylike and lacking in class. Many anime and manga set in places like America and Europe have female characters do this as well, even though those countries generally don't have this specific hangup.
• Anime often features underage or underage-looking girls in sexualized outfits and situations. While this is often blamed on Japan supposedly having a lower age of consent than the West, this is a misconception; Japanese sex laws are notoriously complicated, and the common generalization of "13+ is legal" has led to a number of stautory rape cases caused by ephibophilic foreigners traveling to Japan specifically to diddle teenagers. While nationally, the minimum age of consent is 13, it's set at the prefecture level where it's always 16 or higher, making it comparable to most U.S. states. Additionally, what constitutes "legal" age is dependent on whether or not one is 18 or older: Japanese law expressly forbids sexual activity between 18+ individuals and people below the age of 18, but people who are younger than 18 and at or above their prefecture's minimum age of consent are permitted to engage in sexual activity with people up to one year older or younger than them (so long as they're also between the minimum legal age and 17). This has more to do with a culture that prizes innocence (particularly in women) higher than the West does in the first place; Japan fetishizes innocence in a way that would come off to Westerners as demeaning to women at best and borderline pedophilic at worst. Even so, this is more Values Dissonance with anime otaku culture in particular rather than Japanese culture as a whole, where those images are often used to condemn anime and its fandom in general as perverted.
  • Its most famous and well-talked about example is Sailor Moon when it first aired in the West during the 90s. The show's emphasis on female sexuality and fanservices were particularly loved by male audiences. However, things went downhill when Western viewers learned that many of the female characters whom they have been jacking off to were in their teens. The main character, Sailor Moon, who was given so much visual focus, was 14(!). It caused an uproar in America at that time and made some frowned-upon changes in its format as well.
  • In another form of dissonance, America tends to react more harshly to this than other Western countries, as due to Hollywood Provincialism most media treats the age of consent over there as 18, while several other Western countries (and some other US states) have it at 16, and find it very strange that America reacts so objectionably to teenage sexual activity.
• Nudity in Japanese culture is viewed very differently. While it's used for plain old Fanservice, it's also used to convey innocence and purity. This really causes a problem with children — a nude child or a panty shot is not intended to be sexual at all in Japanese culture and in fact, a nude child is often intended to emphasize their lack of sexuality. Consider, for example, the bathing scenes in My Neighbor Totoro (in which the father is bathing with his preteen daughters) or the numerous panty shots in Kiki's Delivery Service.^note On This Very Wiki, there was -– once upon a time –- a page called "Innocent Panties", which were just that. It had to be cut because... um... well... This does not translate well to a pedophile-wary West, in which any instance of this is thought of as child pornography. Parents bathing with children, even fathers and daughters, is not uncommon in Japan, up to a certain age. Girls taking baths together is considered more a relaxing social thing than anything else, especially if they happen to be visiting an onsen, even (stereotypically) comparing bust sizes and curves and such while in the bath. Even mixed sex baths are OK, as it's not really a sexual thing, just a chance to relax and chat with friends. It should be noted however that this is mainly dissonant with American values. Many European countries share the same attitude about children appearing naked and parents bathing with their children as the Japanese. Northern Europe even has a whole bathing tradition where mixed sex bathing is seen as a relaxing activity, and sexualizing it is frowned upon.
  • Interestingly, America did not used to be quite so uptight about this. Look at classic advertisements for Coppertone sun block from 1953.
  • In some anime programs, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, any nudity or suggested nudity tends to be censored when ported to the Western viewers; in the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX episode "It's all Relative", Bastion takes off his clothes completely before running after his moment of deep thought. In the Western localization, Bastion was still wearing his boxers, but in both versions the rest of the characters simply watch on and no action in taken, unlike what would've happened in America, where such action was grounds for arrest.
  • This lack of nudity taboo makes the prominent testicles on many Japanese depictions of tanuki highly problematic during localization. Same can be said for depictions of tomcats and male dogs, since the testicles will often be drawn and even joked about.
  • Carrying over from cultural ideas about the Nipple and Dimed trope, Japan has an odd way of balancing it out. Female breasts will be covered, but generally have the nipples present, albeit censored. Male chests will be left uncovered, but instead have no nipples to speak of (or an areola-shaped mark resembling nipples, but no nipples themselves), unlike western works where they tend to be shown in full. The exceptions to the rule tend to be sparse, but when they can be found, it will be in female-targeted works. Fully uncensored male nipples, like female ones, will be mostly in 18+ series, and in their highest density if there aren't any girls involved in the sexual acts within.
• Then there's the fact that in certain Western countries (like the USA, Australia, and Canada but not most of Europe), cousin intermarriage is treated as almost as bad as Brother–Sister Incest (both as a cultural taboo and, in some jurisdictions, a criminal offense), causing an aversion to cousin Unwanted Haremettes in Dating Sim games and shows based upon them. Cousin marriage is fully legal in Japan and seen more as odd or quaint than Squicky. It is still comparatively common in some social circles as a way to ensure an equitable match. The acceptability of Kissing Cousins varies from series to series. In many it's barely even like they're cousins, but in others it can be a big moral dilemma. For example in Daily Lives of High School Boys, one of the characters has a crush on a boy only to learn he's her cousin, prompting her to abandon said feelings.
• In many anime, a character will be reprimanded for laughing loudly, crying, or generally showing an "excess of emotion." While this may be universally understood in certain places (such as in an important meeting, in the cinema, or in a library), it can be confusing if the character is just sitting with friends or talking to their parents. It only makes sense once you realize the emphasis Japanese culture puts on Dignity, and not bothering other people with your personal problems. It works both ways, of course. The stereotypical American's emotional and dramatic nature, as well as their infamous Constitutional right to own a gun, is absolutely shocking to the Japanese population. This resulted in "half-crazy, gun-toting American" characters appearing in anime. Examples: Leon of Pet Shop of Horrors, K from Gravitation, and most of the cast of FAKE (except Ryo, who's half Japanese). Another example happens when laws allowing citizens to own guns are passed: Burst Angel, for example, depicts Tokyo as slowly becoming a more rotten place than the lowest favelas of Rio de Janeiro after one of these laws was enacted.
  • France has a similar attitude toward private gun ownership, as has Britain, which introduced some of the tightest gun control laws in Europe after the Dunblane and Hungerford massacres.
  • In Akikan!, the main character had to transfer to a new school after saving a friend from a kidnapper using the kidnapper's own gun. To a Japanese audience, this is apparently considered horrifying and scandalous, while in an American context, he would have been lauded as a hero for his actions.
    • Similarly, Shino Asada's story in Sword Art Online. She and her mother were at the bank when an armed thief came in, and a series of events culminated in her getting a grip on the thief's gun and shooting him. Because of Japan's values towards guns and Children Are Innocent, she sees herself as some kind of monster, until Kirito finds the woman and child she saved and introduces them to her.
  • Perhaps this can be best illustrated by a story. In an unnamed show, the group consisting of two Texans, a Louisianan, a French-raised American, and a Brazilian. When the protagonist of the show pulled out his personal pistol and shot a guy about to cause somebody else harm, the Texans and Louisianan applauded the action as the act of a good Samaritan. In those states, citizens didn't have reliable police services at one time and had to protect themselves from Indian raiders and troublemakers. The French-raised American and the Brazilian were both horrified and thought they saw an act of barbarity, since the protagonist shot the guy rather than trying to talk him down.
• In Japan, the extended middle finger is seen as a harmless, petty gesture (for Japanese sign language, anyway), like sticking your tongue out. Hence, the reason Old Tom gives one to Star Saber in Transformers Victory, a children's cartoon.
  • Likewise with the tendencies to flip people exhibited in the main characters of the Viewtiful Joe anime and the Naruto manga (though not the anime).
  • In Great Teacher Onizuka, there are times when the titular character did the finger. Apparently, that one's a humorous case of Deliberate Values Dissonance; he's telling whoever it is "f*** you" in a "harmless" way.
  • Subverted in Lucky Star when Akira flips off the camera and her finger is blurred. Likewise, at least one instance of a character flipping the bird was removed from the anime of One Piece.
  • This sort of thing is also why Gurren Lagann's Bruce Ironstaunch is loved in America for giving Rossiu a Bicep-Polishing Gesture when he announces the arrest of Simon. In Japan, the reaction was approval. In America, it was more of a "Who the Hell do you think you are?"
  • However, Japan does have its own equivalent of the middle finger, which is a clenched fist with the thumb sticking out between the index and middle fingers (it essentially means, "get fucked" in most contexts). In the West (well, most of the West), this is a harmless gesture. At least currently, since it DID carry that meaning until recently (it's called a fig). Similarly, pointing with the thumb down accomplishes a similar effect, which may confuse American audiences (as in America it mainly just means "no" or "not good"). Another gesture that is more Asian than specificaly Japanese: pointing at someone with one's foot is a major insult, coming from the Buddhist tradition that the head is the most sacred part of a person while their feet is the dirtiest and most impure part.
  • Lampshaded in The Legend of Black Heaven: deceased band member Joseph Watanabe doesn't understand what he's doing when he goes waving his middle finger around after getting pinched by a lobster. He was in the US on a solo tour at the time. As a result, a very large, angry man throws him through a billboard. It was clearly emphasized that he really didn't understand what was offensive about it.
  • Subverted in the baseball episode of Samurai Champloo, where one of the Japanese characters was flipping off another in the episode and it was blurred. Of course, half the cast in that episode were Americans.
  • A Tokyo District Court judge in a 2001 assault case noted that while "the finger" may not be as common in Japan as in the U.S., it's a recognized symbol of insult and provocation. As a result, the person making the gesture bore some responsibility for the punch in the face he received.
• As some specific examples below can show you, Japan has a... different way of dealing with child abuse than the West. Child abuse is treated as something the family themselves should deal with, and that it's no one else's business. Several series where a teacher or fellow student tries to tell someone has the speaker shot back down, told to not get involved, or worse, which is pretty much exactly what happens to them in real life; unfortunately for many Japanese children, this real-life "tradition" is putting tremendous strain on Japan's social services...
• Related to the child abuse are vastly differing ideas for what makes a good parent, which can presumably be traced back to ideals regarding filial piety. In manga, a parent that ignores or even commits what a Western audience would consider child abuse are more likely to be overlooked or even praised depending on the situation. A parent who is too busy working to pay any attention to their child may be considered hard-working and supportive despite their hurt and confused children and one who verbally or even physically attacks their child for what is considered improper behavior may be simply considered strict but well-meaning and possibly correct. When actual error is admitted in parenting, the child is also expected to forgive them easily. If they don't, the problem is assumed to be with the child and not the parent.
  • For example, Tomoya in CLANNAD was actually given a permanent injury that disabled full usage of his arm by his father, who after the fight began ignoring his child to the point where Tomoya felt like a stranger in his own home and nearly failed out of school as a result of not wanting to come home while his father is awake. However, in the true route, Tomoya is expected to forgive him because his father was trying to raise him on his own and was doing his best until he just gave up.
  • In Good Luck Girl!, the main character is the victim of extreme neglect with her parents regularly breaking promises or failing to appear for any events in her life to the point that by the time she was a little girl she'd given up on them. When her father comes back to Japan for the first time in what is implied to be years after having fun as a musician in America, his daughter wants nothing to do with him, especially since his idea of an apology is 'Okay, now that I'm back for the first time in a decade, we can all be a family in a place you've never been apart from everyone you've ever known.' The next couple chapters are all devoted to trying to make Ichiko be more 'reasonable' and forgive her father, who is now considered the victim. Earlier, Ranmaru had been portrayed as noble for sticking up for a father that had beaten her and forced her to live a lifestyle she was not comfortable with because of his own desires.
  • In Higehiro, despite Sayu's abusive mother unambiguously being the villain and a Hate Sink, Yoshida and Sayu's brother Issa both prostrate themselves and beg her to take Sayu back, assuming that the best thing for Sayu is going back to living under an abusive parent's roof.
  • In Police in a Pod, an episode revolves around Atsushi, a stereotypical high school delinquent, whom the main characters think is acting out because of his mother's neglect. When the cops perform an autopsy on his recently-deceased grandfather, they see how well his mother cared for him, which causes Atsushi to stop his delinquent ways and start going back to school. While the story is intended to show his Character Development by realizing how much his mother is dutifully performing her societal expectations, leading to him maturing and doing his own part, to Western viewers it's baffling how she's treated as a dutiful parent and such a good role model it gets her son to change his ways—because, well, she was neglecting him, her only child, for her elderly father-in-law. Western viewers would expect her to get called out in this situation, even if she was still intended to be sympathetic.
• Related to that, it's much more common to see incidents of parents hitting their children being Played for Laughs in Japanese productions. In the west, modern day comedic portrayals of domestic violence towards children are generally limited to intentionally offensive or edgy productions like Family Guy and South Park (and even then, the latter show once got into hot water with the network over an episode where Butters got beaten by his parents), whereas in Japan, it's not uncommon to see incidents like that in various works regardless of genre or content level.
• The phrase "I'll protect you" in Japanese is often used in anime as a declaration of devotion and commitment — especially when said to a woman by a man — and not a petition to be her bodyguard (although that does come up now and again). It's often translated as just "I love you" in English. Because gender roles in Japanese culture are much more rigid than in other parts of the world, this is sometimes used to show a male character who has been less than macho to be stepping up as a man, and gives a tomboyish girl a chance to showcase her femininity by being protected like girls are supposed to. This can be weird for Western audiences, who are left to wonder why the hero is offering to protect his super-powered/magical/martial artist/psionic girlfriend if she's clearly capable of taking care of herself. Girls who want to be protected despite being capable are similarly confusing for Western audiences.
  • In Princess Knight, Sapphire says this to a female knight who is helping her escape from a dungeon, as they are being attacked by enemy soldiers. The female knight is confused, and yells at Sapphire for talking "like a man".
• Japanese couples will often use the term Lover to innocently describe their relationship status. This is essentially telling others they are boyfriend/girlfriend in Western terms. However, with a Western context, this statement takes on a much deeper meaning, as the term Lover connotes a sexually active relationship, and often an inherently adulterous one - which can be somewhat shocking to Western audiences when high school couples use the term, what reads to Japanese audiences as a neutral statement that "I am in a relationship" reads to many English-speaking audiences as "I am not only being unfaithful to my significant other but most likely having actual sex on the side."
  • Granted, this is sometimes a translation issue, as with situations where the gender of the potential partner should be ambiguous. Japanese has a gender-neutral term for "boyfriend"/"girlfriend" but English doesn't really have one that communicates the same meaning ("partner" tends to imply something more serious in a romantic context, and also can mean a totally platonic or professional relationship. The verb form "dating" is gender-neutral and quite common, but there is no one-word, gender-neutral term for "the one I date/am dating"). "Lover" is the closest equivalent. This became an issue with Yuri!!! on Ice when the official subs initially translated Victor as asking Yuri if he'd ever had a girlfriend and then talking about his "first girlfriend." The Japanese term, though, was gender-neutral and given the nature of the series, it was kind of important to keep it that way. The official English dub changes the word to "lover" to avoid confusion.
• Teacher-student romantic relationships can be pretty common, even suggested as ideal or desirable, in fairly mainstream romance manga like Maison Ikkoku or Marmalade Boy. This can be pretty shocking in the U.S., where Pædo Hunt worries have increasingly put the kibosh on media romanticizing those relationships (though exceptions still exist). In Real Life, the stigma is so strong in the U.S. that even American colleges typically fire professors who sleep with their students (as it's seen as either the professor abusing his power or the student using sex as a bribe for a better grade). Japan in general is less uncomfortable with Unequal Pairing in media and even, to a certain extent, real life, though of course teachers of high school level and below sleeping with students are still considered wrong and face severe consequences.
• Japanese media attitudes about homosexuality differ greatly from Western views. On the one hand, it's a lot more common in anime, and they usually make less of an issue out of them; you'll find a lot less Gayngst and Coming-Out Stories, for example. Japanese media is also more likely to emphasize the romance in these storylines, rather than the sex. On the other hand, the apparent acceptance is largely due to seeing homosexual relationships as a fancy of youth which provides "training" for "real" opposite-sex relationships later in life; this is why you see so many schoolgirl lesbians but not so many older ones. As recently as 2013, a lesbian couple made headlines for having a wedding ceremony at Toyko Disneyland despite the fact that same-sex marriages are not legally recognized by the Japanese government. One of the brides even stated in interviews that she hoped the attention their ceremony garnered would help convince the government to stop marginalizing sexual minorities.
  • This attitude is actually discussed in Sweet Blue Flowers. Hinako's mother tries to set her up with a male suitor despite the fact that she knows Hinako is in a live-in relationship with her longtime girlfriend Orie, and when Hinako scoffs at this, her mother dismisses their relationship since they aren't legally married. In the final chapter, the couple state that they'd be interested in getting married if they could find a way to do so, a rarity in Yuri manga. Indeed, the ending drew acclaim from some LGBT rights activists for showing Fumi and Akira in a live-in relationship after they graduate, making it clear their relationship is legitimate and not just youthful experimentation or "a phase".
  • Westerners' attitudes toward anime portrayals of homosexuality have evolved a great deal over the years as Western attitudes about the subject itself have evolved. As recently as the late 90's, worries about Moral Guardians led English localizers to often turn same-sex couples in anime into opposite-sex couples or Heterosexual Life-Partners (the 90s North American dub of Sailor Moon infamously did both). The fact that anime has enough homosexuality to devote two whole genres to it was seen as progressive, but as times change (and as more Westerners find out what Japanese attitudes toward homosexuality are really like), it gets more criticism from the West for relying on tropes like Bait-and-Switch Lesbians and If It's You, It's Okay. While there are some LGBTQ people in Japan who hold similar complaints, the Yuri and Yaoi Genre tend to get flack from Westerners who assume that the authors are straight and Always Female, who write works geared towards a straight audience, when a good number of authors and readership are male and/or queer themselves.
  • Bloom Into You sometimes discusses this trope. It turns out that at Sayaka's previous (all-girls) school, she had been in a relationship with her senpai, until said senpai broke up with her, saying they were getting too old for the relationship. Later on, the senpai showed up and apologized for making Sayaka interested in girls, hoping she was back to normal by now. Sayaka, who's still a lesbian and in love with Touko, tells her senpai that she doesn't need to worry, since Sayaka doesn't know why she fell for the older girl in the first place, then leaves arm-in-arm with Touko. While many characters don't take the prospect of a relationship between two girls seriously, two adults are in a committed, if secret, lesbian relationship.
• Characters such as Chocolove from Shaman King would likely be considered highly offensive in America or any other country with a sizable black population. In fact, in the American airings of the show, his name was changed to "Joco", while the English translations of the manga were altered to give him a less offensive physical appearance. However, such depictions of black characters are not anything out of the ordinary for Japan, which has a complicated history when it comes to things like Blackface, with heroic and otherwise sympathetic black characters often being given minstrel characteristics. As Japan lacks the racial history and context, blackface humor is often not portrayed as offensive, and indeed, can even be considered positive, shocking as that sounds. Japan's lack of comparative racial sensitivity makes sense when you remember that Japan is an extremely ethnically homogenous nation, and it is very possible for a Japanese citizen who doesn't leave the nation to go their entire lives without actually meeting a black person.
  • Another prominent example would be Cyborg 008 from Cyborg 009, who despite being one of the protagonists and not a source of comic relief, was drawn as a blackface caricature in the manga and most of the original adaptations. He was finally given a normal-looking appearance in the 2001 anime adaptation and has thankfully been depicted as such in most subsequent appearances.
    • The original manga has other dissonant moments, such as Doctor Gilmore being much more of a Jerkass at times and Joe telling Francoise to Stay in the Kitchen.
  • A good example would be Episode 8 of Love Lab, which contains an uncomfortable gag involving several Japanese schoolgirls in Blackface. While the scene was rightfully found offensive by a number of Western viewers, it's made clear that the girls aren't trying to be racist and actually meant to use the make-up as a compliment. They even state afterwards that they find black women to be strong and beautiful.
  • Case in point: in 2006, the Japanese government issued illustrated earthquake safety pamphlets to English-speaking tourists which, in an attempt to show diversity, included black/African-American characters. Unfortunately, these black characters were drawn in a manner which would be seen as embarrassingly outdated in Western society at best, large pink lips and all. Complaints were made, assumptions were formed, and Japan was left wondering what the big deal was.
  • This is a very common cause of Cross Cultural Kerfuffle between Japan and Western nations, lack of exposure to other racial groups means that Japanese creators or citizens are on average less familiar with the negative stereotypes associated with them. Case in point, this Barack Obama Sock Monkey◊ plushie. Japanese viewers, who were less cognizant of the long history of racist images comparing black people in the US to monkeys, just saw the cute stuffed toy celebrating an important politician, and without the important cultural context, were left wondering, how could it be a bad thing to have yourself represented as an adorable stuffed toy? Conversely, Americans were unsurprisingly outraged by what was perceived as a racist comparison denigrating the achievements of the first black president.
• Japan has a very odd view on humility when it comes to talking about family members within their vicinity. In places like America, we tend to agree when other people say "your child is so good at this-and-that." For Japan... when someone says your child is good at something, people respond like this, "Oh, no! She/He's such an embarrassment to the family!" This has been going on since ancient times, and this is considered the highest form of humbleness and humility, while Americans might construe it as either demeaning or even verbal abuse. The Japanese consider bragging about their child's talents to be impolite and rude. It's not restricted to children, either—when given a compliment in Japan, you are expected to deny it. Agreeing makes you sound extremely arrogant. This is even lampshaded in a comedy manga called My Darling Is A Foreigner.
• This leads to another point: Heroic Self-Deprecation is seen very differently between Japan and the West. In Japan, you are obliged to talk-down your own achievements when speaking to others, even to the point of outright calling yourself bad at the things you do. This is seen as polite and humble. In the West, a character who does this is considered to have major self-esteem issues or having cynical attitudes at best, and as an unsympathetic spineless wimp at worst. Conversely, being assertive and taking pride in your own accomplishments is seen as extremely egotistical in Japan.
• In general, Germany gets far better treatment in Japanese media than other Western countries, say France/Italy/UK/USA:
  • For example, a Japanese audience would have huge difficulties understanding why the All Germans Are Nazis trope is bad/a portrayal as inherently evil, as to them it's just "part of German history", thus it gets used more unironically (even positively!) in Japanese media than in European or American productions, even when talking about the questionable portions of German history (again, "it's just history"). There are three possible reasons for this; Germany played a large part in modernizing Japan economically and politically in the late 19th century, and the Japanese are grateful, Germany has no history as a colonial power in the Far East beyond a Chinese port and some pacific islands, and Germany and Japan were allies during the Second World War (Japan was an ally of Britain and fought against Germany during the first world war, but their part in the war was mostly taking ports and islands in the pacific and the fights were over quickly and without much loss on Japan's end. Due to this, German characters tend to be disciplined, straight-laced no-nonsense types and often have military backgrounds (like Asuka from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Elise from Sky Girls, Laura from Infinite Stratos (complete with SS style uniforms for the Schwarzer Hase special unit), Leo from The Irregular at Magic High School etc, just to mention a few more recent examples). That said there are of course also the opposite types, special mention going to the Vampire Nazis of Millennium from Hellsing.
    • Perhaps part of the reason for the different attitudes can also be tied into the respective outcomes for each country in the wake of WW2. Germany's international name was soiled, with the world-famous Nuremburg Trials and other, more informal acts — like Allied units forcing German townspeople at gunpoint to march out to the concentration camps and see the human refuse left behind by the atrocities committed there — cementing the "evil that Germany did" into the minds of the Allied countries. Even in the present day, the German government and media work tirelessly to keep that feeling of shame alive, to imprint into the social consciousness that "this must never happen again", even when the public's opinion is shifting to "Give it a rest already, we get it!" In contrast, Japan's war crimes, such as the Rape of Nanking and the horrific human experiments carried out at Unit 731, are comparatively obscure outside of China, so other countries don't forcibly remind Japanese people of them the way they do Germans of Nazis. Furthermore, the Japanese government has attempted to downplay, obscure or outright cover up these crimes, so most Japanese people have no idea that they acted as bad as the Nazis during WW2. It's easy to not feel ashamed when nobody tells you that you did anything to be ashamed of.
  • On a side note, this is also true in other countries with similar relationships that Japan has to Germany, like Mexico. Rammstein had a concert there and a fan brought a t-shirt with a swastika and wanted it signed. Rammstein had to inform him that they, as Germans, are deeply ashamed of this part of history, which got a confused reaction along the lines of "Why is that? It's your history, you should be proud of your country's history." End line was that a local radio station send messages that no one please bring any stuff with Nazi iconography since modern Germans completely reject it and are ashamed that it ever even happened.
• Calling the police, especially in a domestic dispute. In the West, it's never something you want to do, but you do it if you must, and there's no shame in it if you're the victim. However, the Japanese pride themselves in being a civilized people, who can resolve conflicts in a socially acceptable manner. Calling the police is proof that one has failed at doing so, and is consequently seen as disgraceful. Japan also has both a very low crime rate and very low rates of gun ownership (see above), unlike the West (especially the United States), where the default assumption is that if you are calling the police it's an emergency and you or someone close to you is in immediate danger. Consequently, calling the cops in Japan is seen less as "officer, I fear for the safety of myself or a loved one or the personal private property of myself or a loved one" and "officer, I need you to take time out of your day to help me resolve this civil dispute I am incapable of dealing with on my own."
• A common Japanese phrase used at introductions or on New Year's Day is 宜しくお願いします ^note yoroshiku onegaishimasu, or, more informally, どうぞ宜しく ^note douzo yoroshiku. Literally translated, they mean "Please take care of me," which, especially if said to a complete stranger, would sound comically needy in the West, and can seem rather odd to Western viewers of more literally translated Japanese media. However, in Japan, these phrases have the same purpose as "Nice to meet you" does in English, and many language courses and official anime dubs translate them as such.
• Animal Cruelty is not considered to be okay at all in the West and everyone who takes part in it, whether or not it is in a fictional story or in real life, is considered to be a Psychopathic Manchild at best, but works that portray it as being that humiliating are accessible there for everyone, and it's not usually seen as the worst crime that someone could commit. In Japan it's considered taboo, on the same level as things like rape and pedophilia are in the West, and works about it are there as hard to obtain as Lolicon and Shotacon works are in the West. The anime Midori (Shojo Tsubaki) is a good example of this, because it has scene in which animal cruelty was shown to show how morally low the standards of the people in the circus have become. In Japan the anime was temporarily banned because of those scenes, with even the creator saying that he refuses to screen it unless the avenue is presented as a carnival highway. In the West it premiered to much acclaim in a few film festivals and got a French DVD release with multiple dubs for those Europeans interested enough to import it, with the main point of discussion for Western critics being how well it succeeded at being a Darker and Edgier take on Cinderella. It is therefore often used in the same reviews as an example to show how much more tolerant Western culture is in comparison to the Japanese culture.
  • Interestingly, the Westerners' reaction to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure penchant to having animals, both good and bad, being brutally killed was really shocking. But apparently that's because Hirohiko Araki has no qualms about showing how horrific his villains can be.
  • It did however evoke the same feelings on both sides of the Pacific when it showed up in Elfen Lied, where a couple kids murder a defenseless puppy just to mess with one of the protagonists. Even though in return she retaliated and killed them all for it, there is almost nobody who thinks they didn't deserve it.
• A lot of discussions about feminist media in the West stumble when they try to apply the same standards to anime, where some of the fault lines and stereotypes are different. For example, The Bechdel Test, which requires that a work "has two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man," can be seen as reductive but as addressing a real problem with female character representation in Western media. It's a rather low bar to clear, so works that pass aren't necessarily feminist, but part of the point of the test is that surprisingly many works can't fulfill the third requirement or even the first two. Yet the results are strange when applied to Japanese media, where a lot of male-oriented Fanservice features all-female casts (who therefore, mostly don't talk about boys) who are, nevertheless, full of shallow and/or stereotypical characters. Another issue comes with interpretations of Magical Girl shows, which Western viewers often see as positive for showing that feminine girls can be strong, too, and don't need to fit the traditional tomboyish Action Girl. In Japan, however, being a tomboy is rarely portrayed as a positive trait (as mentioned above), and even Action Girl characters tend to be realistically feminine. So the extreme girliness of the Magical Girl aesthetic could be seen as just furthering traditional gender roles. That said, a lot of the more basic stuff, like female characters needing to be well-rounded, realistic, not overly-sexualized, and have lives outside of male characters, apply across cultural boundaries. It's worth noting Japan does have its own feminist movement that criticizes Japanese popular media like anime, too, even if not enough of their works have been translated into Western languages.
• The Real Men Hate Sugar trope comes off as this to certain audiences. It appears in a lot of Japanese works, but it tends to come across as overcompensating in many other countries (with the exception of alcoholic beverages and sometimes coffee). If anything, the notion that hating sweets is "manly" comes off as immature.
• Ever wonder why you never see characters in Japanese works with braces, even in live action? Aside from the procedure being more expensive and not covered by insurance, straight teeth are not considered all that important in Japan, and crooked teeth are even considered cute. There is also an attitude resulting from this where the Japanese assume that dentists are not only overly expensive, but also actively malicious and may intentionally slow down the procedure to get paid even more. Few professions, bar judges, have such a negative reputation.
  • See also the explanations on the page for British Teeth.
• Speaking of, it is judges, not lawyers, that are distrusted (sometimes even hated) in Japan. This has historical reasons: a lawyer was generally a common person educated in law, while a judge would always be a noble, and Japanese nobles, just like any other, tended to be arrogant and malicious towards peasants. For this reason, the judge in Ace Attorney gets off a lot worse than a Western audience would normally expect and thus in the translations, the judge is portrayed as a Cloudcuckoolander to balance the original script and Western expectations.
• The Senpai/Kohai dynamic and various related tropes are commonplace in many, many anime and manga (it would be easier to list those in which they don't appear) and are an accepted part of Japanese society. In the West, however, where respect is usually given equally on the basis of talent and seniority, rather than just the latter, the opinions of such a system can range from hopelessly quaint to downright insulting, especially if the kohai is more competent, few years of experience separate the two, or both.
• The age ratings you'll find on anime and manga—specifically shonen and shoujo—outside of Japan will often not match the intended target demographic. For example, VIZ Media has a separate "Shonen Jump Advanced" line, which publishes more mature Shonen Jump titles such as Death Note, Food Wars!, and Hunter × Hunter with at least an "Older Teen" rating and sometimes parental advisory labels. Despite this, these same titles are read by elementary and middle schoolers in Japan, and no one bats an eye with them being shelved/ran in the same magazine as tamer titles.
  • In some cases this goes fully into What Do You Mean, It's for Kids? territory, such as with Interspecies Reviewers, a shonen series about Cute Monster Girl prostitution. In the West, the volumes are labeled "Mature" and sold shrink-wrapped in plastic.
• Curly hair being portrayed as inherently ugly or unappealing is a no-no in many places such as the Americas or UK and can even lead to accusations of racism. In Japan most people have straight hair, given how ethnically homogeneous the country is. Naturally wavy/curly hair is uncommon and often associated with Japanese Delinquents. As a result, manga and anime are more likely to make fun of a character for having curly hair (and without the mockery being portrayed as negative in the narrative). Funny Afros are also more common in Japanese media, as are characters whose ethnicity is unclear. Since Japan is such an ethnically homogeneous country, and most of its citizens have very little exposure to people of other races, so traits like dark skin, curly hair, or large lips are perceived by anime fans as just another "neutral", if exotic, characteristic regarding someone's appearance, no more ethnically significant than their haircut or the color of their eyes or hair (specially the hair) without the racial connotations that they inherently carry in more diverse nations. As a consequence, most Japanese fans don't see those characters as actually representing any specific ethnicity at all, (and they usually aren't), compared to Western countries like North America or the UK where these characters are assumed to be representative of something, even if it's just "mixed ethnicity."
• Similar to the above, red hair and, to a lesser extent, blonde hair, while normal colors in the West, have different connotations in the East.
• The Huge Schoolgirl trope often confuses non-Japanese fans. In many countries, the typical height measurement given for said girls would be average height if not a bit short for their age, but by Japanese standards, they're abnormally tall. This makes sense when you remember that Japan is, statistically speaking, a very short nation by height.^note That Other Wiki gives the height of the average Japanese man as being 170.7 cm (5 ft 7 in) in height and the average woman as 158.0 cm (5 ft 2 in). Most other countries in the West have a significantly taller population on average. The United States, for example, is on average a full 4 cm taller (2 in) taller than Japan, with 175.7 cm (5 ft 9 in) being the norm for men and 162.9 cm (5 ft 4 in) for women. Above-average height for females is much more of a severe downside in a country where cuteness is a pervasive cultural force and the standards of beauty for females heavily prioritizes petite cuteness, often in a very young or childlike manner (there's a reason why the Magical Girl genre is almost entirely represented by women and girls who are both A: very short and/or petite, and B: appear to be somewhere between 12 and 17 years old) rather than "highly-developed and sexy", as is the standard of beauty in most Western cultures, and one to which being tall does not inherently interfere with. Even in cases where female characters or school-age girls are tall by Western standards, this is not usually seen as a bad thing, and sometimes even as a bonus by many men both in fiction and in real life.
• Third-Person Person characters are common in Japan, as it's usually viewed as either a sign of childishness (whether it's from actual children or older characters with childish personalities) or a sign of humility. Dubs and translations often remove this as it either comes off as either annoying in the language or it unintentionally sounds cocky. The dissonance is even worse in Spanish, especially Mexican Spanish, where talking in third-person is often associated with, and used to bully, people with intellectual disabilities. Verbal Tics are often removed or downplayed for similar reasons.
• A character being Put on a Prison Bus creates much more Fridge Horror in some Western countries than it does in Japan. Prisons in Japan are fairly safe and their conditions aren't even expected to be much of a punishment... it's the shame that being sent there causes that provides it. In America, the UK, and some other Western countries^note save for a few Nordic countries, such as Norway, readers are more likely to associate prisons with hell on earth and see the implications as being far less benign.
• Japan makes a much bigger deal in the 'purity' of female characters than the west, which is why Idol Singer contracts often have restrictions against dating and other activities. Similarly this affects a character's ability to be considered attractive to an audience: Japan does not have the same level of interest in attractive mothers as the west does and having a child is considered a negative in a characters ability to be a 'waifu'.
• It might shock Westerners, especially Americans, how the police are portrayed as unacceptable targets in Japanese media. Corrupt Cops are a dime a dozen in American Cop Shows (though they're usually portrayed as an exception rather than the norm), and American police have had a long history of dealing with corruption scandals, most notably in The Roaring '20s when practically every single police officer in every major city was on the payroll of The Mafia. In addition, there have been many notable cases of Police Brutality in America during the Civil Rights era and beyond, which led to a popular public perception that a lot of police are racist, thuggish criminals who just happen to be wearing a uniform. In contrast, Japan has never had major issues with corruption or brutality (the much lower rate of violent crime helps with this), and so police are looked upon as dutiful public servants who put themselves in danger in order to keep the streets safe. While a Corrupt Cop may occasionally show up in anime or manga, it's usually more common when the series is not set in Japan, and depictions of Japanese cops as anything other than morally upstanding are so rare you could probably count them on one hand.
  • Double Subverted in Police in a Pod, which at first goes out of its way to show that the police are definitely not unacceptable targets in Japan, and the abuse that they get is so vicious that sweet-natured Mai considers quitting multiple times—but it also treats the people who hate the police as themselves targets of derision by showing them to be various kinds of louts and Jerkasses. All the characters who are intended to be sympathetic either respect the police or have their opinions changed by the end.
• Some Japanese stereotypes of other countries, particularly those of other Asian countries, differ so much from Western stereotypes of those same groups that socially-conscious Western fans are often far more forgiving of these characterizations than their counterparts in Japan, who see these characters as something like an Ethnic Scrappy. This is particularly clear with Chinese characters, with the Japanese stereotype of Chinese people as loud, duplicitous, martial arts masters differing so much from the American stereotype of Chinese people as high-achieving nerds with strict Education Mamas. It's to the point where you'll find some pretty grossly stereotypical Chinese (or Chinese-coded) characters in anime such as Black Butler, or Banana Fish called progressive by clueless Western fans.
• Japan has stricter views on recreational drug use than a lot of other countries. This is especially noticeable with marijuana. In a lot of western media, Stoners Are Funny and a lot of characters are implied to use drugs (or at least riff off of stereotypes). In Japan, this is much less common.
• In Japan, the legal drinking age is 20. This causes dissonance with many European countries where the age is 18 (or even lower). This is the rare case where the cultural values of the United States align much closer with Japan than they do with Europe, in the United States, drinking alcohol is seen as an inherently "adult" activity (which, of course, makes it that much more appealing to teenagers) and the last milestone to becoming a fully-fledged citizen (after being legally able to smoke, vote, drive a car, buy a gun, and engage in sexual intercourse with someone else above the age of consent) whereas many European children start drinking with their parents' moderation much younger and don't really see what the big deal is. Drinking culture in Europe is in many ways similar to the way some adults in parts of the United States treat teaching their children to shoot a gun - not something you ever want your kid doing without strict adult supervision, but perfectly acceptable as long as there's a responsible adult present who makes sure that the child follows all the appropriate rules.
  • This is brought up in Hunter × Hunter (which takes place in a Constructed World with several Fantasy Counterpart Cultures): 19-year-old Leorio offers a glass of wine to Gon and Killua, who are both 12. They politely refuse, saying that they're too young to drink. Leorio replies that where he comes from, the drinking age is 12 (16 in the 2011 anime).
• Anime and manga have many Wholesome Crossdressers, Bifauxnens, androgynous men, and androgynous women. Many of these characters might dress, act, or even speak a certain way but they're intended to be cisgender.^note Some Western fans may headcanon some of these characters as trans, especially if a gender identity is neither confirmed nor jossed. There are comparatively far fewer explicitly transgender characters. Fans, especially western fans, often get confused on these characters gender identities due to a combination of Values Dissonance, mixed messages in the writing (including making the mistake that Trans Equals Gay), and language barriers. This can lead to characters having an Ambiguous Gender Identity. After Lily from Zombie Land Saga was revealed to be trans, there was a controversy about whether the episode meant to imply she was a trans girl or whether, similarly to Ryo from iDOLM@STER, she was intended to be an effeminate cisgender boy.
  • Confounding this problem is the okama, or Japanese Drag Queen, who usually dress and act in a over-the-top stereotypically female manner and will sometimes use feminine language to refer to themselves, but they're clearly meant to be seen as male. Western countries, which never had a long tradition of crossdressing like Japan, will usually default to viewing these characters as trans and using feminine pronouns for them, while in Japan they may either be referred to as male or referred to without using gendered language at all. That sort of linguistic vagueness is not possible with English or other gendered European languages.
  • Even the most explicit and sympathetic portrayal of a trans person in anime or other Japanese media will usually end up bringing up the character's biological sex, and some will look a lot more like their biological sex than what they identify as. In the West, even making any note of a trans person's biological sex is considered to be traumatic and offensive.
  • Translations of Japanese media can run into Pronoun Trouble when it comes to a character with an Ambiguous Gender or Ambiguous Gender Identity, due to a language quirk. In Japanese, referring to others except for extremely close family and friends by second-person pronouns is considered to be rude, so it will be avoided in polite society whenever possible. The only thing that gives a clue to a speaker's gender is the first-person pronoun they choose to refer to themselves as, but there are several gender-neutral first-person pronouns, and Japanese speakers will switch between different forms of the word "I" depending on who they are talking to. Even in the case of pronouns with a gender connotation, sometimes women will use male personal pronouns, such as in song lyrics where it's needed to fit the rhythm of the music, or vice versa, like in the above case of Camp Gay men sometimes using the feminine "atashi". Because of all this, it's extremely easy to write a character in Japanese fiction as completely gender-neutral, usually in order to make it a mystery for the readers. In contrast, most European languages frequently use gendered second- and third-person pronouns, meaning that translators have to pick and choose what they refer to certain characters as... and sometimes they can get it explicitly wrong. In other cases, it can end up like Ryuuji from Blue Period going back and forth between being referred to as "she", "he" and "they" multiple times in the series. While in The New '20s English translators have started to attempt to clear this up by referring to characters with Ambiguous Gender with the third-person pronoun "they" more often, in English this carries the connotation that someone explicitly does not identify as either male or female, instead of showing that the character's gender is not known. It's gotten to the point where any sufficiently androgynous character, no matter how they identify, gets called "they" in recent localization, which is its own can of worms.
• Many Japanese schools forbid students from making stops on the way home, out of concern for their getting in trouble and negatively affecting the school's reputation, not necessarily for anything they do while there, a rule many Western viewers find overly strict. For example, in Citrus, after Yuzu gets home late, her stepsister Mei realizes that Yuzu and her friend Harumi went to karaoke on the way home, and assigns them cleaning duty as punishment. That said, many characters in various series flout this rule, and it's often only acknowledged by their hoping that they don't get caught.
• Somewhat similar to the above, many other Japanese schools forbid students from taking part time jobs, or won't let them take jobs under very specific circumstances.
  • In YuYu Hakusho, one early episode involves Mr. Akashi threatening to revoke one of Kuwabara's friends' permission to work unless the group stays out of trouble and does well enough on their exams. This seems fairly understandable, at least from a Japanese perspective... or at least it would be, if Akashi hadn't lowered Kuwabara's score to make him hit Akashi and break the agreement.
  • In Yuri is My Job!, the main character works at a salon in which she and her coworkers roleplay as students at the prestigious Liebe Girls' Academy. While her high school lets students have part-time jobs, she's understandably confused why the Elaborate University High portrayed would let its students talk about how best to serve customers.
• Although Japanese media has no shortage of strong, assertive female characters, many of them tend to end up in situations where a male love interest, family member, or friend has to save or stick up for them, as if this weren't something they could do themselves (and most such characters will accept this without question). Japan has gotten more socially progressive over the years, but some attitudes on traditional gender roles still linger, and there's a nagging belief that women should know "when to let a man handle things"—female characters who are unafraid to stand up for themselves are viewed as overly pushy, rude, or even downright bossy, an attitude which rather evokes Stay in the Kitchen to Western viewers.
• The Japanese have a rather apathetic view towards bullying. In Western areas, bullying is treated very seriously, and schools have been cracking down hard since The '90s due to waves of suicides and school shootings brought on by bullying to the point of harshly punishing anyone they even suspect to be bullying others. Even before that, Western students were always taught to fight back, or help others who couldn't. But in places like Japan, bullying is swept under the rug, and because of Japan's rigid, conformist views, kids who get bullied are often told that it's something they themselves have to deal with, or that they somehow brought it on themselves, even if they're bullied over something that isn't their fault and should reach out to the classmates bullying them, regardless of whether they'd actually resolve things or get along. This is why tropes such as Loners Are Freaks or Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics are so prominent in Japanese media. Japanese society wants everyone to conform to the group ideology, and if someone stands out in any way or disrupts the status quo, from something as simple as having low or high grades, or disagreeing with the group, to having a disability, they are ostracized for not meeting society's standards. Plus, bullies are rarely, if ever punished, and the victim is often told that they need to be the ones to change themselves in order for any bullying to cease. These two articles here can explain it in more detail.
• There's a difference in treatment between hikikomori in Japanese media and in some other countries. It's often treated as a quirk of being a socially awkward otaku similar to how American media portrays Basement Dwellers as lazy nerds. Even if it's not, it's treated as an easily treatable weakness. In other regions, such repression would be seen as a sign of severe social anxiety or another mental illness that needs medical attention. It's also not uncommon in Japanese fiction for even teenage students to suddenly quit school and stay home, with little issue. That'd quickly lead to Child Protection's Services appearing in places like America.
• Japanese high school is much harder than Western secondary education, which leads to much lower grades. Grade inflation never hit Japanese education like it did the West, so characters in Japanese fiction end up getting low grades that a Westerner may never see throughout their entire educational career, except in some college science or engineering classes:
  • A common gag in many Slice of Life anime is a dumb or airheaded character getting scores in the single digits on exams. In the West, you have to be deliberately trying to get such low scores, as most Western high school classes are a fair bit easier than their Japanese counterparts, and many use multiple choice exams where a fair amount of points can be earned just by guessing.
  • In Kuroko's Basketball, the main character shows his test scores, which are 50s and 60s. The others talk about how average those are, as part of a gag about him being so average he goes unnoticed. In the west, those grades would not be average unless the majority of the class is failing.
  • To pass an exam in The Quintessential Quintuplets, students must score above 30 percent, which proves to be so challenging for the five sisters that they have to hire a tutor. In the West, for reasons mentioned above, it's difficult to imagine a student needing everyday tutoring just to get a score higher than a 30, and no student would be crying Tears of Joy after scoring a 34 on an exam.
  • The flipside of this particular Dissonance is while Japanese high school is considered very hard, Japanese undergraduate degrees are comparatively easier, to the point where they're often referred to as "four years of vacation". Seeing characters in college, like the cast of Grand Blue placing more emphasis on goofing off and club activities than studying but suffering no ill-effects from it seems strange in the US and Europe, where universities are extremely rigorous. While drunken escapades definitely are a thing in Western college media, they're usually shown to affect their participants negatively in terms of grades.
• In Japan, it's not considered weird to wear surgical masks for completely non-medical reasons. Japan is a very dense country and it's very easy for a sick person to infect others without protection, especially in cities like Tokyo. It has been ingrained within the culture for past decade or so, and some people have taken to wear surgical masks for other reasons (when they're not wearing make-up, when they're trying to avoid people, even as a fashion statement, etc.). While the COVID-19 Pandemic had made this into a minor case of Values Resonance, most Westerners strongly associate people wearing masks in public with the pandemic. Before the pandemic became a wide-spread issue, most people outside Japan see those people as being paranoid about diseases in general. Even today, seeing characters in anime wearing masks would be considered weird if there's no specific reason mentioned within the anime.
  • Nico Yazawa from Love Live! really considers her wearing a pair of shades and a medical mask as a perfect disguise to being unnoticed. It's considered to be even more ridiculous outside of Japan, where you'd get catch attention of passerby for wearing something so irregular in public with no good reason. In Japan, it wouldn't be a very interesting sight for anyone, although considering it's Nico, it wouldn't be the mask that would make people notice her. Same goes for Yoshiko from the sequel series who uses the same tactics for going incognito.
• Headpatting. In Japan and other Asian countries, the gesture is, while considered to be a bit patronizing, acceptable for men to do to their girlfriends, female friends, or younger siblings. In the West, doing it to anyone older than eleven is grounds for you to get smacked.
• Aristocrats Are Evil is a common theme in both Western and Japanese fiction, especially in historical fiction and fantasy, but how it is handled between them differs. In Western fiction, evil aristocrats are usually isolated cases of individuals or families operating for personal gain, such as a harsh lord trying to squeeze extra money out of the peasantry or an Evil Chancellor trying to assassinate the ruler, but often not all nobles are portrayed that way, and frequently a higher noble comes to the people's aid. This is because the traditional Western code of chivalry, which derives heavily from Christian thought, places a high emphasis on nobles being benevolent rulers to their subjects; other aristocrats are expected to find the villain's behavior just as distasteful as someone from the lower classes would. In contrast, feudal Japan had a much stronger caste system derived from Confucian philosophy, where the nobility were not only allowed to, but sometimes encouraged to look down upon the peasantry as inferior, and extort, abuse, and even kill them. Such practices as tsujigiri, where a samurai tests the craftsmanship of a new sword by killing a random peasant passing by, would be shocking in Western feudal societies, but were accepted in Japan. This behavior led to Japanese creators portraying the nobility as universally abusive to those beneath them even when it serves no benefit to them—where this trope falters is in Japanese works that attempt to use their view of the nobility in settings that are clearly European-inspired or even actually European, such as what Moriarty the Patriot does to Victorian Britain—casting aristocrats in those works as invariably abusive to the lower classes will make Western viewers assume they are Straw Characters used to make a particularly Anvilicious point about classism and social abuses. Japanese viewers, or viewers from places like India which had even stricter caste systems, would just see it as a standard portrayal.
• Attitudes towards companies in general differ greatly between the East and the West. Although it only truly became widespread in the late 2000s thanks to the Great Recession and the rise of social media, Westerners tend to view Mega-Corps in an overtly negative light, often using them to depict why Capitalism Is Bad and featuring them as the villains facing off against heroic activists who attempt to expose long histories of massive abuses of power. Much of this is born out of the United States, one of the most prominent nations in the Western world, having a long history of letting major corporations strongarm governments into protecting their economic interests at any cost, leading to events such as the American-backed coups in Latin America that gave rise to Banana Republics. In the East, meanwhile, corporate skullduggery is believed to be nowhere near as extreme as that; at worst, systemic workplace abuse is treated as the product of specific "black companies" rather than being emblematic of corporate culture as a whole. Consequently, Eastern media is much less likely to portray corporations as the dystopian villains commonly seen in Western media.
  • The consequence of the Japanese opinion toward companies is that their worst ones (the aforementioned "black companies") are portrayed as being comically abusive toward their employees in a way that Western viewers would either be shocked by or view as a particularly anvilicious strawman, overworking their employees in a way that resembles the sweatshops of the early 1900s more than it does any middle-class office job that they've ever experienced. While similar abusive, slave-driving jobs did exist at the turn of the century in Western countries, the prevalence of unions and the ever-present threat of legal action from disgruntled employees has helped make outright exploitation by employers a thing of the past—but in Japan, where the social stigma about quitting your job and not working hard still dominates, employees don't have nearly as many recourses for cases of company exploitation. Death by overwork is common enough in Japan to have a specific term in the language, while in the West any instance of that would bring out enough lawyers and then government officials to drive the offending company into bankruptcy—even workplace injuries that are entirely caused by the employee's incompetence tend to be the catalyst for lawsuits. As a result, if a Western-made work wants to criticize corporate culture, it will usually focus on the banality, bureaucracy, and office politics of the job, while Japanese works will show companies that are one step away from slavery. Likewise, the Pointy-Haired Boss in Western media (think Michael Scott) is likely to be an incompetent in over his head or at worst, a serial backstabber, liar, or office politicker, while in Japanese media the PHB (think Kosugi) is likely to be outright verbally or even physically abusive in a way that would quickly get them fired in the West, as being a liability that could cause the company to get sued is the quickest way to earn yourself a pink slip and possibly a blacklist from your industry if the behavior is severe enough. In a similar vein, the Pointy-Haired Boss of a Japanese female protagonist may (but not always) be a sexual harasser or Straw Misogynist in a way that would not just invite a firing but sometimes criminal charges in the West.^note This whole phenomenon can also be a Truth in Television, as shown within controversies embroiling within the video game corporates. On the Japanese side, the company Konami came under fire at 2015/2016 due to an interview that portrayed them like such black companies, which was ontop of their feud against the fan-favorite developer Hideo Kojima. While the Japanese were mad, they eventually let time heal their wounds (and they've been making a genuine comeback years later, not to mention they didn't even scratch the Top 10 black companies in the country, so the Japanese actually have seen worse, or think that such issue was nothing new in their country to be so extremely mad about) and still re-accepted them later. However, the Westerners were absolutely livid and held eternal hatred towards Konami for that incident since there's no way to bring them to justice in their way (for them, Konami became a Karma Houdini), not to mention that this is most likely one of their first main exposures of a Japanese black company antics, therefore making their anger much more profound. On the Western side, when Blizzard Entertainment was caught doing a similarly massive controversy involving workplace abuse (including sexual ones) in 2021, it didn't take long for the Court of Justice to press their charges against Blizzard's misconducts and spreading this news to a greater awareness that shakes the views of video game companies, putting the company in further precarious state and even prompted Microsoft to buy them out along with their parent company Activision. Since Blizzard's presence in Japan isn't as prominent, how the Japanese feels about this issue is not known.
  • Even among Japanese and Westerners who share a negative view of Mega-Corps, the type of company is likely to differ. The go-to model for an evil MegaCorp in the West (America especially) is an oil company, mainly for the Green Aesop factor, while the Japanese evil company of choice is likely to be a pharmaceutical company because of how prevalent they are in the country (and the inherent potential for human experimentation). Both, however, might go for tech companies, due to the sheer ubiquity of computers, cell phones, and the Internet today.
• A big one that affects how one accepts video game platform between the two regions can be originated from how the West and East clash in lifestyle as time goes on:
  • In the West, the salary rate is quite high and homes are generally rather big, enough to put on TV or other powerful gadgets, and generally people could afford some quality home time. Therefore, the people there end up valuing home consoles or PC, which also allowed greater, powerful graphics that's almost like seeing the real thing. Unfortunately, this also leads to a sense of elitism that looks down anything that doesn't look too high-definition, especially mobile platforms, which is why smartphone games tend to be looked down upon.
  • In the East, the salary rate is a bit lower, and the workplace mentality means that people spend more time less in their home, but either driving, commuting with public transport, or simply spending long days in school or the office—Japan's famously overworked students and Salarymen simply do not have the time to sit down at home and play games, and the homes there could get cramped that it makes putting up a lot of big gadgets a hassle. Therefore, they become more attuned to mobile platforms that they can take anywhere, valuing portability more than pure graphical power. While home consoles aren't being looked down upon, it's more considered a 'luxury item'.
• Japanese adults of all ages and genders happily drink beer, while in Western countries a woman drinking beer, especially the cheap pale lagers that dominate in Japan, is considered unusual and usually a sign that she's The Lad-ette. Women in Western countries are stereotyped as preferring wine instead, but in Japan, wine is a rare luxury item because of the country's lack of arable land—fruits are grown as expensive gifts and not in large enough quantities to make alcohol from. If a Japanese woman prefers her alcohol on the sweeter side, she'll usually drink a chuhai^note a canned beverage consisting of the distilled spirit shochu, seltzer water, and some sort of flavoring, not unlike a wine cooler.
• Reactions to injustice or exacting vengeance are usually viewed differently between Japan and the West. The most common scenario is when one character sees a villain cross the Moral Event Horizon and the other character is so hurt that they want revenge.
  • In Japan, coinciding with both Japanese Spirit and Pillars of Moral Character issues above, it is discouraged to enact unlawful revenge. They will put more emphasis on tropes that dissuade revenge, such as He Who Fights Monsters, Revenge Is Not Justice, and If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!. The greater focus here is the avenger. They are more concerned to ensure that the avenging party is not going down a self-destructive path just by enacting revenge; they have to be in "the right mind" if they want to punish that villain. If enacting revenge will instead mentally corrupt the avenger, then they should not take revenge, lest they will feel utterly empty and do something damaging to themselves afterwards. Problems that may arise as a result of this include cases where the villain becomes a Karma Houdini or gets punished by another bad guy just so the heroes' hands remain clean.
  • In the West, it's the other way around: The greater focus is instead on the villain. It's more encouraged to take revenge because the avenger has all the rights to enact revenge, especially when the villain has proven themselves to be unrepentant or really heinous. Sparing the villain simply to avoid getting their hands dirty risks accusing the avenger of being a Holier Than Thou person and a coward unwilling to do what must be done: The Villain Must Be Punished, or else they may gleefully harm another; when that happens, then the avenger will be blamed for not putting an end to the villain when they could and should before another tragedy happens. Making sure the villain pays for their crimes is put on a greater priority, and the aforementioned side-effects of taking revenge, such as how the avenger will feel afterwards or spiral down into a self-destructive circle, will be put on a second priority. While Western works can and do show the negative side effects of vengeance^note Indeed, the most culturally important work of Western literature in history contains prohibitions against this very act, they are much more likely to do so by having the revenge-taker succeed and then realize it wasn't worth it or that it caused more problems after the fact, unlike in Japanese works where the character who wants to get revenge will usually be stopped before he can go through with it.
  • Perhaps for these reasons, vigilantes are seen in a greater light in the West compared to Japan. As noted above, Japan has a higher tolerance for police and law enforcement groups, whereas Westerners tend to lose faith in them easily. Someone who operates beyond the law to enact justice on evildoers that manage to worm their way out of the punishment of the law will be much more appreciated in the West, where there is a greater emphasis on 'punishing the evildoer'. In Japan, however, due to its collectivist culture, a vigilante may not get all the appreciation it deserves. The people may disdain them for being uncooperative and threatening the harmony of unity. The thanks they get are mostly from the wounded party or their relatives, but even that's not a guarantee. When a Japanese work shows a society where vigilante justice is common, it's usually meant to be An Aesop about how much that society's morals have degraded, not one in favor of taking matters into your own hands.
• The portrayal of nuclear bombs tends to be more depicted with seriousness, compared with Western shows that don't do much and even play for laughs. The attitude toward atomic bombings to Hiroshima and Nagasaki play a large role in this values dissonance. In Japan, where the cruelty and dangerousness of nuclear weapons are taught deeply. It is understandable to some extent, considering they were the target of these kind of bombs and knew "what" happened after these bombings, but it is also noted that "why" they are dropped is not well-taught in Japan and it's (no matter it's intentionally or not^note When it's "intentional", it's usually claimed by the far-right politicians and trolls. The latter one comes from the pure lack of knowledge about the atrocities that their country had committed.) sometimes used to magnify their victim-mentality and ignore what they did during the war. ^note Not completely though, since the main history textbooks at least mention Japanese war crimes like the Nanking massacre and Bataan Death March, even though it's usually very brief. The works about these bombings like Barefoot Gen also mention Japanese war crimes. On the contrary, in non-Japanese countries including East and Southeast Asian countries which were the prime target of the Japanese invasion and suffered its brutal occupation which make them enough to think Japan "deserved" being nuked, Japan's resentment toward these bombings are considered mere their aversion from their own atrocities and "What" happened after the bombings are often overlooked.
  • The casual portrayal of the nuclear bombings like the comical use of real footage of nuclear explosions^note Such as the last scene from the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Dying for Pie" is especially intense in the US, the very country which used nuclear weapons for the first time and the common theory about these bombings is "They ended the war and saved people who would have died if the Operation Downfall is performed." On a similar note to Japanese society which is relatively ignorant toward their war crimes, the US tend to turn away from the result of the two bombings which killed not as many as the victims of the Japanese, but still countless noncombatants, so as not to break their belief about the nuclear power and "The Good War". When the nuclear weapons are depicted in a critical way, they blame it on France, most notably in the American remake of Godzilla in 1998, or the Soviet Union. Just like in the East and Southwest Asian countries, Japan's opposition toward these bombings is often seen as their victimisation and whitewashing of the war, but not only these kind of the statements are motivated by the resentment toward the treatments they have given like Pearl Harbor, captive abuse and the Bataan Death March, but also (occasionally) by the aversion from their responsibility about the cruelty of the nuclear bombings, just like how Japan uses these bombings to play victim.

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