Most Excellent Super What?

[nenena]

Via Mangablog:

This.

Apparently it's PR for Final Crisis that was sent to some bloggers... including, for some baffling reason, Mangablog. (Edit: Or maybe Brigid re-posted it from scans_daily, I'm not sure.)

Tell me, what's wrong with his picture?

I'll start.

1. I know that we all like to make fun of Engrish, but I can't imagine that any Japanese person would be particularly thrilled to have Japanese superheroes represented in an American comic book as linguistically-challenged morons. And I mean, that's what Engrish IS - it's somebody getting it wrong. There's this queasy air of "LOL stupid Japanese can't speak proper English LULZ!" Maybe I'm just being oversensitive here because I live in Japan and I get the opposite reaction a lot - "LOL, stupid gaijin can't speak Japanese!" Look I know that my Japanese isn't perfect, I know. But it still hurts to be laughed at sometimes. Yes I know, laughing is important, and of course I laugh at myself when I seriously flub the language. But at the same time I know that I'm banging my head against a culture saturated in nihonjinron and the very prejudiced belief that all foreigners are parrots who run around squawking reliably hilarious Japanglish gibberish because they're too stupid to ever learn how to speak proper Japanese. Seriously. I want to bang my head against the wall every time I see a movie/TV show where "the American" is the character who runs around screaming "ME-TACHI WA JAPAN LIKE SUKI DESU RAMEN SAMURAI WAI!"* Memo to Japan: Foreigners, even the ones who suck at Japanese, don't actually talk like that. Memo to DC: Neither do the Japanese.

*actual quote from an American character in Angel Blade.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Look, I know, Engrish can be funny, the same way that all language flubbing can be funny. I don't see anything wrong with, say, taking a picture of some unintentionally hilarious Engrish on a candy bar and posting it on Engrish.com, or something. Likewise with posting hilariously flubbed Chinese characters to Hanzi Smatter, or whatever. But it's different when you're face-to-face with real people. You can laugh at the candy bar, you won't hurt its feelings. But people are different. There's a difference between laughing at random smatters of English splashed across a corporate product for stylistic purposes only, versus laughing at a real person's sincere attempts at communication. And you know what's really offensive and hurtful? Deliberately creating fictional characters who are so stupid and mealy-mouthed that they're incapable of speaking [insert language here]. Especially if you give said characters dialogue that's basically your racist idea of what a foreign speaker of your language sounds like, instead of what they would actually sound like. NO English speaker of Japanese would ever say "Me-tachi." NO Japanese speaker of English would ever adopt a superhero name like "Most Excellent Superbat." Etcetera.

2. This quote:

[..] Japan's willingness to co-opt and mash together Western music and fashions to create bizarre pop hybrids.

First, there's this weird sense of othering, as if only CRAZY JAPAN would be a country wacky enough to co-opt and mish-mash elements of another country's pop culture with their own. No way, no other country or culture would ever do anything remotely like that.

Then there's the use of the phrase "bizarre pop hybrids." But of course all of the things that I linked in the previous sentence wouldn't be "bizarre," right? Also, again, there's that sense of LOL Crazy Japan! othering. Not cool.

Finally, please explain to me, DC: What, exactly, are the "Western" music and fashions that are being co-opted here?

Is it the superhero chic? Please. Japan has had superheroes for decades (yes, even animal-themed ones, complete with bat-themed villains. Oh and bird-themed costumed do-gooders too, while we're at it.) Is it the music? Er, what music? I have no idea how "music" is going to play into this thing, based on the preview image alone, but... DC, are you perhaps talking about rock music? Seriously? Japan has also had its own rock scene for about as long as any other country has, and it even has its own homegrown subgenres of rock.

Now the Batman and Superman symbols, that I can see as being directly lifted from Western pop culture, even if the Superman connection is utterly unrecognizable in the preview image here. However, I'm baffled as to why whoever did this write-up would implicitly stake out cultural territory like "superheroes" and "spandex" as exclusively Western, hence needing to be "co-opted" by the Japanese.

3. The description of Most Excellent Superbat himself:

Self-styled leader of the team, a vivid and garish combination of Superman and Batman motifs. He's the superhero as dandy, as fashion cult, as Couture icon. Everything about superhero costuming refined into pure style as worn for the catwalk. Polished, sleek and shiny, super-colorful. Cheekbones like Johnny Depp. He has his own TV show and legions of fans who swoon over his every inane utterance.

Spot the over-used and utterly clichéd stereotypes of Japanese men! Hint: I bolded them for you!

Where to even begin? The young Japanese male as feminized - check. (dandy, catwalk, sleek and shiny.) The feminized Japanese male as ultra-fashionable - check. (fashion cult, Couture icon, pure style.) The feminized ultra-fashionable Japanese male as a buffoon - double-check. (vivid and garish, dandy, his every inane utterance.)

Look, here's the deal: I love bigger-than-their-britches buffoon characters. Especially if they're also vain and/or narcissistic. That's usually a winning combination for instant character-driven comedy. BUT at the same time, I gotta admit that this particular character archetype is waaaaaaaaaay over-used on Asian men, and when combined with the usual racist clichés of Japanese men (i.e. feminized, flamboyant, and linguistically challenged), it starts to look kind of skeevy.

Something about this character rings truly hollow to me. It's as if his creators reached into a grab-bag of Japanese rock/pop idol clichés and then threw them willy-nilly all over the page. The result is a bunch of "funny" Engrish, tired recycled stereotypes, and what appears to be an utter ignorance of Japan's own thriving superhero pop culture.

This whole concept basically boils down to crazy Japanese people copying American superheroes and getting it silly/wacky/wrong! Ugh.

I could be wrong about all of this. I hope that I'm proven wrong about all of this. But this preview image, it does not look promising. I love the idea of a group of teen Japanese superheroes, but not if they're going to end up as some sort of comic-book minstrel show. And that's certainly what this preview image looks like.

Edit: The rest of Grant Morrison's Japanese superheroes. Yeah wow holy shit. Where to even begin? First there's this gem:

Japan has embraced every aspect of the superhero culture, chewed it up, spliced it together, and incorporated the result into its own hyper-accelerated pop media landscape.

1. Same as the quote that I deconstructed behind the cut. Wow.

2. Obviously "the superhero culture" means exclusively American comics, since all of the superheroes listed are "hilariously" derivative of American superheroes.

And again with the assuming that "superhero culture" is foreign to Japan to begin with. Hint: Cutie Honey is older than Wolverine. She also rocked the boob window for years before Power Girl was even created.

3. "Hyper-accelerated pop media landscape"? Seriously? From a country that produces more iyashikei and slice-of-life anime per quarter than it does science-fiction or giant robot shows? Really?! Oh no, that's not a dumbass stereotype of Japan at all.

Western motifs are chopped up, collided and spliced with manga fetish wear, Sailor Moon meets Batman, Mecha-Wonder-Woman, Lolita Undertaker Zatanna girls.

What in the world is manga fetish wear?!

And again with the only listing American superheroes as examples of "superheroes" in the first place.

Let's [...] take a look at the original Japanese superhero team.

AW HELL NO. Okay, granted, the leader of the "original Japanese superhero team" is an Ultraman rip-off homage, so at least we're finally getting some recognition of iconic Japanese superheroes. But then he's immediately followed by a Silver Surfer, a Human Torch, an Aquaman, and then (thankfully) a Patlabor homage. Look, I'm not just saying that these are Silver Surfer/Human Torch rip-offs, it's actually stated in Morrison's notes. With the exception of the Ultraman dude and the Patlabor thing, I suppose we're left to believe, then, that "the original Japanese superhero team" is almost completely derivative of American superheroes because of course the Japanese don't have enough superhero icons of their own! At least, not in the fictional DC universe they don't. Nope, this whole "superhero" thing is something that they had to "co-opt" from Americans.

And I'm not even touching the parts of the descriptions that read "just like Pokemon!" and "just like the emo boys in Akira!". Ugh.

Finally, there's this jaw-dropping shit. I cannot even touch that. I'm not even going to try. Luckily Filby already analyzed it six ways to Sunday, so you can go read that post.

Wow. Grant Morrison, is this how you research another culture before you portray it in your works? Suddenly I'm starting to feel nervous about your Mahabharata project. Very, very nervous.

Edited to add: One more link of interest, The Sooz versus a hyperventilating Morrison fangirl. Popcorn is on the house. Also, arionhunter schools you on Japanese superhero aesthetics. Morrison got so much wrong, it's not even funny.

Edit on June 20th OMG I know BUT: THIS IS HOW YOU DO IT. Grant Morrison, are you taking notes?

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