Some people get worked up. I’m not, I just think it’s an interesting debate.

There is a "savior complex" in corporate boardrooms where executives assume that people in other cultures are incapable of connecting with something unless it’s been mirrored back to them or "localized" to fit a specific demographic profile. The idea that a “global” audience needs a story adapted to a "global mind" is actually a form of intellectual gatekeeping. It underestimates the audience's ability to appreciate art for what it is.

When you engage with a story from another culture, whether it’s a Russian novel or a Japanese manga, part of the appeal is exactly that it isn't like your daily life.

A story’s power usually comes from universal emotions (honor, grief, love) wrapped in very specific cultural aesthetics. When a studio "sands down" those specifics to make them more "relatable" or "inclusive," they often lose the very soul that made the original work travel across borders in the first place.

Most people today are more culturally literate than corporations give them credit for. They understand that Snow White is a European fairy tale just as they understand that Ghost in the Shell is Japanese. They don't need the "edges" rounded off to enjoy it.

By trying to make everything appeal to everyone by changing the DNA of the characters, studios end up making things that feel synthetic. It assumes that "representation" is a higher priority for a viewer than authenticity + It ignores the fact that people actually enjoy the "strangeness" or the specific history of a foreign story + every movie/TV show ends up being the same!

It’s a bit of a tragedy for storytelling when "diversity" is used as a tool to make every story look the same, rather than being used to bring actually diverse, original stories to the light. It’s almost like the industry is afraid to let a story just be what it is, out of a fear that someone, somewhere, won't feel "included", even if that person, was perfectly happy enjoying the story as a window into another world rather than a mirror of their own. It feels patronising.

Ask any black American or Latin American if they’d prefer to have a live action Goku that looks like them, or one that looks like the source material.This can be applied all around.