10 Superheroes Totally Ruined By Japan

Well, either ruined or made better, depending on your point of view.

There's a scene in Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation where €Bob Harris (the washed up actor played by Bill Murray) has found himself roped into travelling to Tokyo to to film an advertisement for Suntory whisky. When he finally arrives on the set he struggles with the language barrier, not understanding the photographer's directions until they hit upon common ground: James Bond. He wants the tuxedoed, older Harris to model his body language on 007. Harris instantly reaches for Connery, whilst the photographer asks for Roger Moore - to his mind, the best James Bond. The Japanese have weird taste in Bonds. Well, not weird, just different from everybody else's. These different tastes stretch to everything from their video game consoles to the penis-to-tentacle ratio of their porn; an isolated island that has been burned by the influence of outside cultures before, Japanese pop culture is like no other. Could you imagine Dragonball Z being made anywhere else? Or for that long? Well, maybe in America, where superhero characters appear in comic books over the course of decades. In fact glorious Nippon is probably the second biggest country to accept comics, cartoons and geekery as part of the fabric of their pop culture after the US. So it'd make sense for them to import some of the American stuff, right? Marvel and DC superheroes have some similarities with the likes of Goku and Naruto, but they still need some adapting to suit those particular Japanese tastes. And that's the way it's been for the past few decades of trying to bring American characters to the East, changing them to try and fit in amongst the Shonen Jumps and Power Rangers of the world - often with disastrous results. Beloved characters become unrecognisable messes, stuff gets lost in translation, Spider-Man becomes a sexual deviant; these are ten superheroes totally ruined by Japan.
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Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/