Why Does All Cyberpunk Themed Worlds Have Big Japanese Influence?

[molten]

I'm not talking about just this game alone. I'm talking about the whole genre of cyberpunk.

Like in Blade Runner for example.

They all have the same concept of "Japanese Being the Dominant Culture Over American Culture".

Japanese signs, corporations etc. are everywhere.

Why is that?

[ΛΞL™⚡]

Because 80s and 90s Japanese tech culture and futuristic animes like Ghost in the Shell and Akira mostly.

[SkunkWerks]

When the genre first started to coalesce- in the late 70's and early 80's, there was a general sort of concern (or maybe paranoia) among experts in fields like Economics that the Japanese would quickly wipe the floor with us (the West, or the US) in terms of technological advancement/achievement.

This didn't happen, but it remains a big feature in a lot of presentations of the genre. Even Bladerunner 2049 goes to some length to portray what one can only describe (if one is paying close attention) as an "alternate universe" that seems stuck in time sometime around the early 80's.

Of course, the original Bladerunner was set in the very "futuristic" year of 2019, so... yeah.


It also helps that there was a lot of cross-pollenation of the genre- which Japanese pop media would later portray in it's own ways not long after (Akira, Ghost in the Shell, etc.).

[Grobut]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hex:

Oprindeligt skrevet af deadsponge:

i put it down to blade runner influence

This is 100% true.

Nah. Blade Runner was by no means the first cyberpunk/technoir to show heavy Asian influence. Maybe it was the first you saw, but it was not first.

Even if it had been though, you have to ask why was it there in Blade Runner? And the answer is because Japan was the fastest growing economy at the time, and people legit thought they would become a major player in the future.

[AscendedViking7]

Because Japanese culture is cool.

[BOT Cecil]

Because the first and most prominent cyberpunk works (gibson's sprawl trilogy, cyberpunk 2020,etc.) featured japanese culture extensively.

[pale_horse]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Bob ฏ๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎๎:

Oprindeligt skrevet af talemore:

Robocop, I am Robot, the terminator.

I think OP is wrong and has prejudiced the theme of cyberpunk.

Or he's secretly racist. Yes, you are right there are plenty of Cyberpunk/Futuristic games,shows and stories that don't involve Asians.

Knock it off. I posted above about the establishment of the genre. It is a known thing.

[Alpha and Omega]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Zero McDol:

Think about it for a sec.

What culture created the Cyberpunk theme? Japanese. How so? Look at the various anime created back during the 80's and 70's. Bladerunner was created in 1982; Hollywood was inspired by the idea, just as Star Wars was originally inspired by a Japanese movie.

So in short, it's not surprising that Japanese culture is a huge part of the Cyberpunk universe.

Edits: Date fixes.

Actually here you go, from Google:

It has roots in the Japanese punk subculture, that arose from the Japanese punk music scene in the 1970s, with Sogo Ishii's punk films of the late 1970s to early 1980s introducing this subculture to Japanese cinema and paving the way for Japanese cyberpunk.

None of Sogo Ishii's early films are cyberpunk. While they certainly influenced later cyberpunk media like Akira, I think it's a stretch to that the Japanese invented cyberpunk as a media genre.

However as William Gibson himself noted in a 2001 TIME magazine article,

"It was not that there was a cyberpunk move-ment in Japan or a native literature akin to cyberpunk, but that modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. And the Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns — all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information — said, "You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town." And it was. It so evidently was."

Japan may not have invented cyberpunk, but by the time it became a genre they were already living it.

[セーラーマーズ]

Plenty of good answers in this thread. I am pleasantly surprised lol

[Wayz]

Because Arasaka was written as the most dominant corporation back in 1988 with cp2020.
CDPR had other choices they could have gone with but they chose ALT and Johnny as the core of the story making Arasaka also core to the story.

Katana's however was mostly someone at CDPR, I never really saw them as a dominant weapon in 2020.
If I am going to a gun fight I personally would pack guns not swords etc.

[BOT Cecil]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Wayz:

Katana's however was mostly someone at CDPR, I never really saw them as a dominant weapon in 2020.
If I am going to a gun fight I personally would pack guns not swords etc.

Dominant no, but melee builds are common. The Kendachi MonoKatana is a melee favorite in cp2020.

[albedozero]

William Gibson...

[セーラーマーズ]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Wayz:

Katana's however was mostly someone at CDPR, I never really saw them as a dominant weapon in 2020.
If I am going to a gun fight I personally would pack guns not swords etc.

It does depend on how effective the missile weapons are against the defences of the day, though. If the average target isn’t something squishy boxed in a hard outer shell and limited by natural human muscle, the dynamics could change drastically. Not to mention if the belligerents were not afraid to close with each other, especially in urban settings.

‘Black Magic’ and ‘Venus Wars’ are also a worth mentioning for Japanese contribution to cyberpunk, but the ‘Mobile Armored Riot Police’ (Ghost in the Shell) manga is the most important for me, and which also has significant influences on CP2077.

[Bahamut_A6M5]

Oprindeligt skrevet af BOT Cecil:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Wayz:

Katana's however was mostly someone at CDPR, I never really saw them as a dominant weapon in 2020.
If I am going to a gun fight I personally would pack guns not swords etc.

Dominant no, but melee builds are common. The Kendachi MonoKatana is a melee favorite in cp2020.

Melee builds in CP2020 aren't as common as you portray them. It's easier to find edgerunners hidding a knife or two in their clothes as sort of "fall back" weapons than running into a katana wielder as main, almost exclusive weapon. And, personally, IMI chainsaw knife is better melee weapon than monokatanas.

Oprindeligt skrevet af セーラーマーズ:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Wayz:

Katana's however was mostly someone at CDPR, I never really saw them as a dominant weapon in 2020.
If I am going to a gun fight I personally would pack guns not swords etc.

It does depend on how effective the missile weapons are against the defences of the day, though. If the average target isn’t something squishy boxed in a hard outer shell and limited by natural human muscle, the dynamics could change drastically. Not to mention if the belligerents were not afraid to close with each other, especially in urban settings. (...)

Firearms in Cyberpunk are very effective, specially considering the array of available ammonition (DP, API, HE, armor defeating, concussive,...) to punch through personal armors and damage the flesh under it. Not to mention trying to melee someone while wearing a flak jacket, a gunner vest and a bulletproof trenchcoat on top is quite hard because of those layers of armor. Believe me, if your intended target is wielding an electrothermically upgraded FN-FAL with dual purpose ammonition, the last thing you want to do is getting close (at point blank range, that weapon will tear you apart).

[セーラーマーズ]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Bahamut_A6M5:

Firearms in Cyberpunk are very effective, specially considering the array of available ammonition (DP, API, HE, armor defeating, concussive,...) to punch through personal armors and damage the flesh under it. Not to mention trying to melee someone while wearing a flak jacket, a gunner vest and a bulletproof trenchcoat on top is quite hard because of those layers of armor. Believe me, if your intended target is wielding an electrothermically upgraded FN-FAL with dual purpose ammonition, the last thing you want to do is getting close (at point blank range, that weapon will tear you apart).

But what if what you're trying to hit underneath the armor isn't flesh? xD

[Mrbud420 💩]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Alpha and Omega:

5. While Japan didn't invent cyberpunk, in the wake of Neuromancer and Bladerunner they took the ball and ran with it. Many of the early seminal works in cyperpunk were made in Japan: Akira, Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Bubblegum Crisis... and that's just for starters.

This is basically the answer. Cyberpunk exist because of Japan, and Japanese anime is one of the biggest contributors to cyberpunk like Akira and GitS. Americans only think about American influences like Bladerunner.

I feel 2 of the best cyberpunk shows are AD:Police (part of the bubblegum crisis series) and Goku Midnight Eye. Both Japanese animes and America has nothing like it.