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Comment by makeitdouble | Hacker News Reader

Overall an interesting read.

To go straight to the nitpicks:

> The Matrix Trilogy, Ghost in the Shell, [...]. Except Gibson did it first.

Ghost in the Shell started publication around 1989, but it's author was writing cyberpunk in 1985 (Appleseed), with already many of the themes approached in it.

1985 is a tad later than Gibson's Neuromamcer, but given the timeline to start a series with the level of details Masamune Shirow uses, they're basically writing at the same time.

I wouldn't put Gibson as a direct influence, and in the Japanese scene Akira, started in 1982 would be way more influencial.

What really stroke me is how far the Japanese culture feels from a western perspective, when it had a very flourishing Cyberpunk scene that doesn't get much credit outside of manga/anime fans.

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Gibson was obviously very inspired by Japan. The Matrix was also in part directly inspired by Ghost in the Shell, even creating The Animatrix at the same time. But Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner was told from the inside. It is about the authorities chasing down rouge elements. Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders.

Like someone else said in the comments here, cyberpunk is counterculture. It is in the name. Gibson moved to Canada to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam war. Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does. Considering the overlap between cyberpunk and anime, I would actually say that Japan is sometime given too much credit by being treated as the superior original with deeper meaning. When it is Western media that have explored more advanced and diverse interpretations.

A similar thing happened with Battle Royale. A niche movie. The same concept became a cultural phenomenon with The Hunger Games, and later Maze Runner and Divergent series. And then video games. Now made from the outspoken perspective of the teenagers.

So you should absolutely credit the US counterculture and environment for a large part of cyberpunk and dystopian, but also more utopian science fiction. I don't even like Hollywood much, but it still has a far wider catalog than anyone else. Who else could make Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or even Star Trek: Voyager? Disney made Andor by the way.

Ah..

Japanese media in general has poorer "production values", but they work very hard to draw (as accurately as possible) from global source, that's reflected in their mind boggling diversity. The less strange stuff get to inspire American versions.

It also seems that you have not asked any LLMs before posting this..

GTA "equivalent": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza_(franchise)

Why would one want to ask an LLM and risk maybe being led in entirely the wrong direction?

I really don't think Yakuza games are anything like GTA besides "being in a city". Yakuza has none of the sandbox elements like GTA, the city is more like an elaborate menu to go from mission to mission/side quest/activity.

You can't even drive in most Yakuza games! They made a bad comparison.

> Grand Theft Auto, ... Andor

Those were made in Britain by British creators.

The UK certainly have had its own counterculture. In some ways more than the US. That still doesn't take away from the franchises being published (and in parts made) by US companies with US culture in them.

The UK had an influence in punk music. But it was also banned by the BBC and bands were at times left to tour elsewhere. Japanese companies created most of the affordable electronic instruments. Yet, electronic music in jungle, drum and bass, UK garage and rave culture took off in the UK with influences from reggae, soul and R&B. Now with the help of BBC Radio 1. This style of music then made it into Japanese video games. With similar things happening in the US with jazz, hiphop and house music.

I'm sure it is possible to gotcha the argument. Hollywood has still created far more interpretations of science fiction in media than anyone else. If you really want to argue for British dystopian science fiction movies then Children of Men is an excellent example. But it is also almost the only one of note.

A country with major influence on science fiction that often goes uncredited probably isn't Japan but Canada.

So… your argument is that it’s not counterculture unless it’s mainstream culture? And that one should only credit derivative works once they become mainstream, rather than the original inspiring works because they were too obscure?

I don’t think anyone is trying to “gotcha” you. You’ve just got a bad take.

I think it is actually pretty difficult to look at countries and say which ones have successful countercultures. I mean to some extent if a counterculture is successful it becomes not a counterculture, just part of the mainstream culture. On the other hand, a maximally out-of-mainstream counterculture is a totally unknown thing that we’ve never heard of as outsiders.

Counterculture is a culture that is counter to the mainstream culture. If a culture is happy on its own, it is more of just a subculture. Cyberpunk itself features counterculture not just subculture, but is also inspired by the counterculture at the time.

Cyberpunk doesn't randomly contain megacorporations, harsh environments and loneliness but it reflects the worst-case scenario for the ideals at the time. The grey skies and rain is because of pollution having destroyed environment as was relevant in concerns over acid rain or the oil crisis at the time. It is literally in the name with "punk". Japan doesn't have that much counterculture so it could never be that influential in cyberpunk. Just like it could never be that influential in music.

Something can be obscure and influential, but there is a limit to how defining it can be. Akira and Ghost in the Shell (and some video games) have been influential and are frequently credited for that, but that is about it. Everything else including similar media before and at the same time as them comes from mixing in other things [0]. Just like in music.

Korea is currently success with K-pop. But that is nothing in terms of influence compared to TikTok.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyberpunk_works

tl;dr: Cyberpunk is counterculture. Japan doesn't really do counterculture. Therefor it isn't very influential in cyberpunk despite having had influence.

By the early 90s, “cyberpunk” had largely become self parody, meaning that the counter culture was already rejecting cyberpunk as too mainstream. Search around for the Usenet reactions to Billy Idol’s album of the same name.

Or take a look at the opening sequence of Snow Crash, where the deliverator is clearly making fun of ubiquitous cyberpunk tropes. At the time it was considered a tombstone for cyberpunk, rather than some sort of positive signal milestone.

These are only two data points to demonstrate that the “counterculture” era had already expired in the US by the early 90s, as members of that counterculture felt that it had already stopped being counter to any part of American culture.

The claim that there is “not much Japanese counterculture” is too bizarre for me to wrap my head around. The more traditional a society is, the more “counter” any underground culture is —- by definition.

American counterculture hasn’t really properly existed outside of capitalist smother and capture since the early 90s either by the way. Give No Logo a read for more on that.

> Japan doesn't really do counterculture.

i dunno. some of the most influential d-beat/crust bands of all time are from japan (d-clone, disclose, gauze, gallhammer, gism, death side... that's barely scratching the surface of bands that are/were actively countercultural).

it may not always take the same form, but anywhere you find big cities, you'll find some form of countercultural punk movement because the economy is big enough to support people at the fringes (even if you just work as a bartender or whatever).

> The UK had an influence in punk music. But it was also banned by the BBC

Punk music was not in fact banned by the BBC. They sometimes refused to play the more outrageous tracks that had charted but a massive number got through. The songs weren't somehow eliminated from the charts.

> bands were at times left to tour elsewhere

You could have gone to any Uni town/city in the UK and there would have been punk bands playing in pubs and clubs. The table stakes were extremely low.

> UK garage and rave culture took off in the UK with influences from reggae, soul and R&B. Now with the help of BBC Radio 1

I think there's an important middle step here, which is stuff that wasn't "banned" but was nevertheless not on the playlist, and the pirate radio stations whose personnel gradually went mainstream. Both from the Radio Caroline era (Jonnie Walker, rock) and Kiss FM (Trevor Nelson, UK garage). Let's not forget the government's attempts to ban the rave scene.

In comics you had 2000AD and Judge Dredd, inspired by the French Metal Hurlant.

> If you really want to argue for British dystopian science fiction movies

Not movies, but TV: Doctor Who (often dystopian), Blake's 7, the Prisoner, and the little-seen but extremely prescient Doomwatch. And of course the darkest nuclear apocalypse movie, Threads. Filmed in the parts of Thatcher-era Sheffield which looked like they had already been nuked.

UK always simply had less money and a narrower set of TV/radio gatekeepers. The diversity and inventiveness is there nonetheless. So, yes, a lot of things have to get American money and licenses in order to be made.

Tony Gilroy isn't British.

> Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does.

I would put Akira in that bucket, but I see your point.

The way counter-culture is brought into mainstream is a lot more strategic in Japan, and the reader is expecting to do more deciphering work than in Blade Runner for instance.

E.g. Final Fantasy is overtly about fighting a Zaibatsu like corporate overlord that's depleting the vital resources of an environment. But what's promoted is gun-swords, spiky hairs and cute or sexy fighters.

Same way Reiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999 is a 113 episodes long dissing of the corporate culture but it's all behind psychedelic tropes.

Those are arguably mainstream, given the money,an-hours and corporate weight invested in them and the general reception.

But none of them will put the main message up-front as much as Hunger Games would for instance, there is always a veil of flashiness that needs to be peeled to get to the substance.

(to note, SF live action is a lot harder to fund in Japan. I'd attribute that to the existence of anime which is so much more cost effective. With the budget for a live action Gundam you could make three TV series)

>Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does.

"Mainstream counter-culture" is certainly a funny turn of phrase. That's largely the problem with it, there's a great book, The Rebel Sell[1], about how American counter-culture isn't the opposite, but the actual driver of American commercial culture. The Hunger Games is not authentically creating any kind of subversive message, to be a Hunger Games rebel is mainstream. Baudrillard, who is featured in the Matrix, used to remark that the the Matrix is the kind of movie the matrix would make to think you've won. The Wachowskis who are very American did not understand S&S.

Japan's counter culture has always been much more serious because it's always been much less interested in spectacle. There's very few things that stand out as much as Oshii's Patlabor II when it comes to genuine criticism of, in that case, the role of Japan during the cold war and the ways peace tends to be fake in many ways.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Sell

> used to remark that the the Matrix is the kind of movie the matrix would make to think you've won. The Wachowskis who are very American did not understand S&S

to be fair this is explicitly a theme in the (imo unjustly maligned) sequels

Fascinating how people can make "counterculture" into a contest between nation-states.

> Neuromancer and The Matrix is from the perspective of the outsiders.

The primary difference being that in the latter, it's an allegory about being trans, written by two trans women who had not yet come out. Which makes the most superficial interpretation of the movie's themes by toxic masculine types all the more hilarious...

It's buried enough to have kept Hollywood's morality police from killing it and if memory serves they never discussed this with Reeves until well after. There still had to be concessions; I believe Switch's character was originally more androgynous or outright trans, not just a butch woman with a male partner.

> Japan never really did counter-culture as mainstream as the US does.

...what? Bosozoku (for example) has its roots in WW2 veterans who struggled to integrate back into society. Japanese manga and anime is waaaaaay more diverse and counterculture. Christ, can you imagine a comic book and cartoon in the mid/late 80's about a character who repeatedly switches genders both by accident and on purpose?

IIRC Switch was originally conceived as having one gender in the outside "real" world but another when incarnated in the Matrix (where your own self body image defines you). Hence their name - they switched.

This was all dropped at some point - the only surviving relic being the name of the character.

You're right about Switch but the other context is one of the Matrix directors said the original idea for The Matrix was a trans metaphor.

Somehow this became "the Matrix is a trans metaphor" to people with poor media literacy skills.

There was also an unfinished plot thread in The Matrix Online that a woman who emerged from a coma at the same time Neo died may or may not be a reincarnated Neo. This story setup was never concluded or followed up on.

"Fans were quick to note that "Sarah Edmontons" is an anagram for "Thomas Anderson," leading many players to believe Neo may have been reborn as Sarah after dying."

https://www.cbr.com/the-matrix-resurrections-online-female-n...

Right: bascially, 1980s-vintage William Gibson is a post-New-Wave SF writer who's a fan of hard-boiled novels and of New Hollywood "outlaw" bohemianism, so his heroes are pimps, thieves and murderers. 1980s-vintage Shirow is a fan of military SF, so his heroes are paramilitary death squads. Now, that's a little jaded, but I think mostly simply accurate. I don't think that generalises well to a US/Japan distinction though. As others have said, Akira is surely more of an outsider story. (Beyond cyberpunk, have a look at the political backgrounds of senior Ghibli people like Isao Takahata, Kondo Yoshifumi and Hayao Miyazaki. I've read somewhere, but can't confirm, that people like that tended to end up in animation precisely because Communists were blackballed out from more respectable industries.) And the US is the land of Dirty Harry and Niven and Pournelle as much as Bonnie and Clyde and Blade Runner.

I read an interview in the back of one of the volumes of Gundam: Origin where original series creators Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Yoshiyuki Tomino reflected on their history in the student protest movement of the 1960s. It was a fascinating read because I didn't know anything about the Japanese New Left, and all of a sudden it made Gundam click for me in a way that it hadn't before.

It also made me realize that my knowledge of Japanese history and culture was extremely limited, but because I consumed a lot of Japanese media I vastly overstated my own knowledge. These days I try not to make sweeping statements comparing our respective countries.

I would suggest you think about what you don't know.

"my country counterculture is so much better" could be ridiculously funny if it wasn't so sad to consider a presumably intelligent adult could utter it in complete sincerity.

Producing more in quantity, with far biggest allocated budget, and even better quality on everything that can be measured at surface level, all that is no guarantee to reach a work that is deeper in spirit.

Those who don't question what's wrong in themselves due specifically to the culture they were fed with are not on the path to elude its sway.

Do you know how the Japanese think of and/or talk about "Japanese Cyberpunk"; e.g. Tetsuo: The Iron Man? It's interesting to me that there is "Japanese cyberpunk" and then there is regular cyberpunk made by Japanese artists (e.g. Ghost in the Shell). Do the Japanese consider these completely separate genres? Variants of the same genre? Are most fans even aware that Westerners make the distinction?

The way I see it, works like Tetsuo is Japanese extreme cyberpunk - niche-within-a-niche kind of thing.

> Tetsuo: The Iron Man

It's not actually framed as cyberpunk: Shinya Tsukamoto positionned it as "human size kaiju".

On the perception...I think its fans are mostly outside of Japan, and it was basically reversed imported. Tsukamoto sent it to foreign film festivals first, and only brought it to domestic theaters after it won at the Rome festival. Even now in interviews it's only brought back as it's directorial debut, and a stepping stone for getting money for bigger movies.

I have the feeling the whole notion of mixing human and technology just doesn't resonate as much in a country that is way more technology friendly and doesn't see robots as much as a threat than in the west.

PS: the "action hero" genre is basically humans transforming into machines, that speaks to the wide acceptance of the concept.

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