This article was great for helping me understand the motivations for localizing stories and characters (instead of simply translating them). I certainly don't blame the author (and other translators) for trying to provide the American audience with what they think is the best possible experience. But for anybody who isn't American, the localization might be entirely wasted - there's a good chance that they're just as familiar with Japanese culture and history as they are with American culture and history.
What's worse, in cases where the localization is wildly different from the original, the audience probably doesn't have any way of knowing it. It would be fair to tell the audience when the localization is inspired by or based on the original, instead of a direct translation of it. Otherwise, consumers can be misled to thinking they like or dislike a certain writer, while in reality their opinion is based entirely on a translator.
Slightly related: in Final Fantasy XIV, a character in the main story was COMPLETELY changed for the English version of the game. Playing in Japanese, I grew quite fond of the character, so when the character eventually died in the story, it had an actual impact for me. A friend of mine plays the same game exclusively in English, and when I discussed the death with him, he told me that this character was completely forgettable for him and he didn't even really remember the circumstances of the death. I'm fairly certain that the lack of impact for him was entirely because of the localization.