there is a real kneejerk disgust/discomfort a lot of westerners have to hearing a spoken asian language, especially if its not japanese but japanese is absolutely not excluded.
And I also think that these same reactions get sort of twisted if 1. the voice is coming from an animated character and 2. that character is a woman or god forbid, a little girl.
like i remember watching BTR with some of my family on a vacation years ago and they all acted like it was literally dragging nails on a chalkboard to hear the characters speak. it still makes me so fucking mad LOL
Even where I live, where it's basically impossible to go a day without hearing a spoken asian language (especially Mandarin and Cantonese) it's still really common to hear people make those sorts of remarks or do racist mockery when they think nobody who cares is listening
This isn’t exactly the same, but when I was younger I got really used to telling people that I had “terrible music taste” whenever someone asked me about music. I just assumed it was true cause whenever I showed someone a song I liked, they would always act like it was the most awful ear-bleeding shit they had ever heard. I vividly remember playing one second of a Japanese song for my dad, and him just going “nope, nope, can’t do it” like he was gonna throw up. I’m honestly really surprised how long it took me to realize that it was literally just racism
I think I did something similar except I REFUSED to call the music I listen to terrible so instead I would just say "you aren't going to like it" to anyone who asked "what kinda music are you listening to?"
