#grief and isolation and alienation and suicidal ideation have nothing to do with japanese culture

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like ‘this media is about X but i am analyzing it in the context of Y’ is both interesting and normal. ‘this media is about X but i don’t know very much about that so i am not going to think about it’ is also completely normal, especially in a casual environment. i think it is utterly absurd when people expect western fans to understand complex historical context to watch cartoons & in fact the insistence that one must do so is often quite performative and orientalist. it’s almost always non-japanese people who take up this mantle and it often comes with the unspoken implication that the japanese people are a different class of human beings who cannot be understood without academic study. most anime makes sense without any knowledge whatsoever of japanese culture — like yes you are probably missing some context but that’s true about all media outside your direct realm of experience. (also i rarely see people saying the the same thing about western countries, even though cultures also vary dramatically across them.) what IS an issue is the refusal to take japanese media seriously or to recognize that it is rooted in human experience. it’s a lack of respect for japanese authors and artists and a refusal to take them seriously as adults who care about their craft and who incorporate their lives into their work. a failure to recognize cultural context is ofc a part of this but it’s just symptomatic of a larger problem. a lack of knowledge isn’t inherently harmful and acquriing more knowledge is not a solution.