the princess & her king ;

The official site for the Ace Attorney anime has been updated, and boy they weren’t kidding when they said it’d air in April: the show will run on Saturdays at 5:30 PM, starting on April 2nd!

Wasn’t expecting this to pop up until Jump Festa later today, but here we are!

Oricon reports that the Ace Attorney anime will be directed by Ayumu Watanabe of A-1 Pictures, with music by Kaoru Wada.  The main cast is as follows:

Yuuki Kaji as Phoenix Wright

Aoi Yuuki as Maya Fey

Masashi Tamaki as Miles Edgeworth

Chie Nakamuara as Mia Fey

Masami Iwasaki as Dick Gumshoe

Tooru Nara as Larry Butz

The show will air weekly Saturdays at 5:30 PM JST on Yomiuri Television and Nippon Television channels.

There are Black people who live in Asia and use chopsticks. There are Black people who don’t live in Asia that use chopsticks. Diaspora exist. Diasporic communities exist. There is cultural exchange and trade all over this planet. So when writers use that, I think it’s really neat.

But when writers go “What would happen if I randomly had this people group have this other group’s culture?” it makes me feel like they think other people’s cultures exist to be their toys. For funsies!

Culture is not for shock factor. A people group’s culture, history, cultural artifacts and traditions - these aren’t toys and doing this is not the way to insert originality into a work.

Cultural elements don’t have to go with certain skin colors because there’s a huge range of skin colors in almost every country. Diaspora, immigration, intermarrying, that’s all stuff that happens. But cultural elements don’t exist as a sort of external force that has nothing to do with the people of that culture. Culture is created, consumed and changed by people. So when you pick things here and there willy-nilly, you’re divorcing people from their culture for no reason.

And I’m not sure if you know this, but chopsticks (what they’re made of, how they look, proper usage) vary all over Asia/East Asia. Their usage has evolved differently in different countries. For example, Koreans like metal chopsticks that are kind of skinny/flat, and they’re intended to be used in sets with spoons (so they’re intentionally designed to be sold in sets). 

Chopsticks in Japan, though, are often made of wood, are more “chunky” shaped, and often lacquered. You don’t really buy Japanese chopsticks in sets with spoons like you would in Korea. [Mod Stella honestly prefers using Japanese-style chopsticks because they’re just more comfortable for her to hold. But she definitely grew up with Korean chopsticks!]

Chinese chopsticks are longer because they eat “family style” which is putting everything on the table and reaching for it. [Mod Jess says, “Family style is how I certainly eat at home, reaching for things instead of asking to pass them. So it’s actually expected that some stuff might drop onto the table itself, which is solved by mopping it after each meal.”]

But my point is that randomly taking the idea of chopsticks and arbitrarily assigning it to a people group just seems like a really problematic thing to do. Chopsticks have a specific history. We don’t put them in our hair. Some things that are rude in one country that uses chopsticks isn’t considered rude in another. How do you describe that (as well as the reasons why chopsticks evolved differently) while divorcing it from the actual country that uses them? 

The idea of randomly assigning cultures to other peoples is a very uncomfortable and frustrating one, so we’d advise you to reconsider it.

mishapocolypse

that one time they changed the color by 3 shades

the cole sprouse nightmare

the mario kart meme 

flappy bird meme

photoshopping surprised patrick into everything

jennifer lawrence EVERYWHERE

doge

mitt romney 

only REAL 90s kids remember 

bee movie

do you love the colors of the sky??

I GIVE YOU A HAMBURGER

peasants 

the moreos guy

you can literally see Tadashi breathe

If you are a Nineties kid with a tender spot in your heart for the good old days when boy bands would wear matching clothes and have a dance routine, this is the one for you.  Backstreet’s BACK with a zombie movie called Dead 7, written, directed and starring Nick Carter (because LOL why not).  Doesn’t sound fun enough?  N’ SYNC WILL BE IN IT AS WELL.  This is like the American, zombie version of McBusted.  Our bodies are ready.

They are original.  They are the only ones.  They are sexual (yeeeeeah), so it stands to reason that the Backstreet Boys and N’ Sync boy band zombie extravaganza Dead 7 is going to be the greatest movie of modern times. It is foolproof.

“90′s Boy Bands Make Zombie Western”

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!?!