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The Super Mario Galaxy Movie finally hit Japan at the end of April after being delayed from the rest of the world to tie in with the country’s Golden Week vacation season. As a dutiful fan of Nintendo’s iconic video games starring the portly plumber, I went to my local cinema to see what the sequel to 2023’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie had in store. If you believe the critics, it’s apparently a travesty “worse than AI,” a dull cosmic ride that’s “rock-stupid,” and I suppose just one of the many other crimes being committed on the silver screen when a true sci-fi masterpiece like Project Hail Mary exists by comparison.

But is it actually that bad? Eh, let’s just say that I’ve seen far worse. Remembering what the the last film was like, my expectations were essentially met. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a visually scrumptious take on Shigeru Miyamoto’s colorful characters, the music is immaculate, and the nostalgia is back again in spades, but viewers expecting a deep story or anything beyond what the games have established as a baseline are bound to be disappointed. That’s probably why the majority of non-gamer film critics are not happy, while even a decent amount of gamers are up in arms over the final product.

While watching The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, another thought occurred to me that had little to do with the film’s actual quality. I asked myself a more relevant question: Can Mario truly work outside of being a video game? Like most of my late millennial generation, I started playing the franchise pretty much as soon as I could hold a controller. Growing up, Mario himself was synonymous with what the majority of the public envisages as the default concept of a video game. Specifically, you go from Point A to Point B across multiple stages for a simple objective like rescuing a princess from a dastardly villain, each level gets progressively harder, there are a plethora of power-up items which aid you on your quest, heart-pumping music plays in the background, and, of course, you’re on a time limit.

Since its inception, the Mario franchise has always prioritized gameplay over any kind of story. That goes back to the 1980s with arcade titles like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. being intentionally designed to burn through your quarters as you tried to clear each stage and reach a higher score. When Super Mario Bros. hit the Japanese Famicom and the equivalent North American Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985, the objective to reach the end was still pretty much the same. The game’s manual included a brief one-page synopsis explaining the basic lore around the Mushroom Kingdom setting, but that was about it. Most kids in 1985 probably didn’t bother reading this information as they were too busy stomping on Goombas and figuring out the correct order to clear the final stage. No one back then thought that any of this would lead to a particularly interesting film.

Well, except Nintendo themselves. Just one year later, an anime feature film entitled Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach!  hit Japanese cinemas. At just an hour long, it does an admirable job of trying to turn the game’s very simple story into a reasonably entertaining adventure with its comedy and spirited performances from the voice actors. With that said, it was basically just another marketing tool for the original Famicom game and its just-released sequel. As much as people want to criticize the recent Illumination movies for being cashgrabs, Great Mission was really no different 40 years ago. Nintendo pushed the film quite hard and released a plethora of associated merchandise from phone cards to instant ramen noodles. Many of these are collector’s items now.

Despite all the initial marketing hype, Great Mission was never officially released outside of Japan and Nintendo rarely acknowledges its existence today. Having previously only been available through poor quality VHS tape rips, the fan group Kineko Video moved mountains to secure a raw 16 mm scan and painstakingly restored it in 4K a few years ago.1 Many fans don’t like certain aspects such as the ending or Luigi’s Wario-like greedy personality, but one has to remember that the “rules” of Mario as we know them today had yet to be established back in 1986. In retrospect, I consider Great Mission to be my favorite film adaptation of the original game even if it’s more interesting as an obscure curiosity and fascinating moment in Nintendo history than anything else.

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This weekend, I visited the Kyoto Aquarium with my wife Minori for the first time in six years. Despite the happy atmosphere of all the sea creatures and friendly staff, it was somewhat of a bittersweet experience for me.

The Kyoto Aquarium was one of our first date spots, but around the time we went in 2020 coincided with me receiving the news of my father’s health getting progressively worse. I’ve discussed these sad events at length before, but long story short, Dad would pass away six months later of colon cancer.

Coming back made me feel more emotional than I thought it would because it reminded me of what was a very different time in my life. Namely, those first couple months Minori and I were together were some of our happiest memories. It was right before I had to deal with so much heavy and important stuff, as well as when I was completely sure I’d be pursuing an academic career.

In 2026, Dad is no longer with us and I’ve dropped out of my PhD program because it wasn’t working out for me. I’ll get into that whole ordeal of quitting academia another time, but I’m now trying to start my own import-export business with a good friend. Instead of having what I thought was a set path in life, there are now a lot of unknowns to navigate though ahead. It’s both an exciting and terrifying time, to put it lightly.

Despite all these uncertainties, Minori and I are now happily married. Our second wedding anniversary is this week, but it also marks six years since we’ve been together in total. She has truly been my anchor through thick and thin. I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am for her support because I wouldn’t have been able to go through everything that’s happened alone.

My own personal connections aside, the Kyoto Aquarium is indeed a wonderful place to spend an afternoon. It’s home to multiple specimens of the Japanese giant salamander, one of the city’s beloved historic symbols. I had a good laugh watching a sea lion that looked like it was posing for visitors as it had a stretch on dry land. The hall of jellyfish was newly renovated from the last time we were here. The penguins were expectedly adorable, and they were actually the source of an internationally viral post of mine back in 2020. We arrived too late to see the dolphin show, but I remember it being thoroughly entertaining the last time and that’s just another justification to come back.

The Kyoto Aquarium isn’t particularly large compared to other aquariums I’ve been to in Japan, but you get a nice selection of sea life to learn about. The layout is straightforward and the building itself is within short walkable distance from Kyoto Station. There were naturally far more people now compared to the pandemic era, but it didn’t feel overcrowded despite us being there on a Saturday. Passing through the various exhibits again felt comforting as I contemplated both past and future.

It’s also located in Umekoji Park, a beautiful spot with lots of colorful flowers in bloom at this time of year. Kyoto always bears the brunt of Japan’s brutal summers, but the weather in April is still just right. Minori and I had a nice afternoon together strolling through the area. Students from local schools practiced sports and hung out with friends, while the overall atmosphere felt surprisingly relaxing.

Kyoto has a reputation of being made worse by hordes of tourists who turn the city into what’s essentially an amusement park. While that’s sadly true in a few places and the post-COVID overtourism phenomenon can’t be ignored, you can still find good spots as a local. My wife and I enjoy taking long walks on Kyoto’s backroads, while parks like Umekoji have some great scenery. We’re past peak sakura season, but the flora we saw still made for some stunning photos. Later in the evening we walked over to one of my favorite restaurants for some excellent Vietnamese food.

Despite this only being my second visit, the Kyoto Aquarium and surrounding area will always mean a lot to me. The last time I was here coincided with one important turning point of my life, and I’m once again at a similar crossroads. Amid a day of charming animals and gorgeous flowers, I remembered more innocent salad days while I contemplated on what the future may hold.

As best as I could though, I also treasured the present because my personality has always made it difficult to just sit back and enjoy the moment. Depending on where I end up setting up my business, we may no longer be living in Kyoto this time next year. It will be sad if we have to leave, but we hope to stay in or relatively close to Kansai. In any case, the Kyoto Aquarium will always be a memorable place for us. I’m glad we could spend another day there again.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Articles such as these are exclusively for paid subscribers, so if you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Take advantage of my Welcome Back Spring Sale and get 20% off yearly subscriptions here!

If you told me last year that one of the best films of 2025 was Rental Family, I wouldn’t have believed you. It took me awhile to get this one due to a late February release in Japan and some other writing projects that took up my time, but I’ve finally seen it. My opinion now could not be more different. When I first heard about its premise featuring an American actor working for a family rental agency in Tokyo, the only thing that really caught my interest was that it starred Brendan Fraser in the lead role. I consider him to be among the best actors alive and knew that his performance would at least provide some entertainment. Rental Family’s titular subject, however, gave me some pause.

The story follows Phillip Vanderploeg, an American actor who has been living in Tokyo for a few years. Phillip is no celebrity, but he makes an irregular living as the token foreigner needed for commercials and background bit parts on television shows. One of these day jobs eventually gets him working at a company which aims to provide temporary companionship for the countless lonely souls living in Japan’s exhausting capital city. It’s almost like prostitution, but instead of sex, people in the “rental family” industry work to fill a lacking emotional or social absence. Phillip naturally has serious reservations about his new occupation, but he soon begins to realize there may be more to it than just fakeness.

Hiring who are essentially paid actors to play family members, friends, lovers, or other roles to keep up social appearances is indeed a real service in Japan, but it’s often something that Western media uses to portray the country as “weird” for the sake of entertainment. The exaggerated urban legends around used panty vending machines or the misconception that Japan has more adultery than other countries come to mind as other similar clickbait stories. In reality, rental families are a very niche business that most Japanese people would likely not be comfortable using or find rather sad.

This, however, is where Rental Family truly surprised me. Pretty much every fear I had about this film exoticizing Japan vanished during the first act when it became clear that this would be an intelligent screenplay about believable human drama. Phillip is naturally our audience surrogate, but he isn’t a clueless foreigner. He’s lived long enough in Japan to speak the language at a reasonably conversational level, and the code-switching with Japanese people who speak fluent English will be familiar to anyone who has lived here in a similar situation. Brendan Fraser’s performance is fantastic and despite having only phonetically memorized Japanese for his role, he could pass fine for your average expat.

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Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

My late father was a violinist for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, so music was naturally an integral part of my own life growing up. I was raised (reluctantly) learning how to play the piano and violin, the latter of which I took up until the end of high school. Having lived through the entirety of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Dad didn’t come from an educated background. He survived that tumultuous world by getting a job with the Peking Opera as a violinist, which eventually allowed him to get a scholarship to leave China, study in Switzerland under the tutelage of Yehudi Menuhin, and make his way to the United States where I was born.

With that in mind, you can imagine how it was essentially impossible for someone from my kind of familial background to not have regular encounters with The Sound of Music. Dad ensured it was one of the first films my younger brother and I watched when we were old enough to understand the basic plot. Pretty much all of my Chinese musician relatives know the main melodies of the songs even if they don’t fully understand the words. If you were brought up on classical music, good luck trying to avoid Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most famous musical.

To be frank, I long resisted The Sound of Music. As a kid I thought it was long, boring, and hardly befitting of my attention which could have been spent on more exciting films for a six-year-old. Like Stairway to Heaven, the songs themselves were so ingrained into America society to the point of nausea. Why would I want to watch the film when my mandatory elementary school music classes insisted on drilling “Do-Re-Mi” into our heads for the billion time while the children’s concerts at Heinz Hall that Dad dragged me to inevitably went ham on The Sound of Music?

Fast forward to 2015 and much had changed. I was now in the last year of high school, had more appreciation for classical music, and was spending the better part of that period religiously practicing John Williams’ theme from Schindler’s List for my senior solo performance. I was in a better state of mind to watch The Sound of Music and as luck would have it, the Hollywood Theater in Dormont was showing the film again for its 50th anniversary. A bit older and wiser (as much as a high school kid thinks he can be), I was able to drop my prejudices and appreciate the musical for what it was — a completely uncynical crowd-pleaser deserving of its classic status.

Jump ahead another ten years for the 60th anniversary, and things are once again very different. I’m married, living in Japan, my student musician days are long behind me, and Dad has sadly passed away. When I saw that The Sound of Music was being reissued on a 4K UHD Blu-ray boasting a brand new restoration, I decided to watch it again for old time’s sake. After loading the disc, the sweeping mountains of Salzburg and Julie Andrews’ dulcet tones once again greeted me like old friends. I was completely hooked.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown so disillusioned with the lack of seriousness Hollywood treats most of its tentpole releases in the last decade, but rewatching The Sound of Music reminded me of when going to the movies was an event. The best ones remained with you for the rest of your life, especially if it was a family affair when everyone took the time to get together for an evening to see the magic on screen. Apart from that, the sheer color, life, and beauty to The Sound of Music immediately resonate because they’re no longer modern conventions in movies anymore. Are the songs still schmaltzy and a bit lame if you actually sit down to contemplate their lyrics? Sure, but you never doubt for a second that this is a film which proudly wears its heart on its sleeve.

In fairness, many film critics even in 1965 thought that The Sound of Music was overly sentimental, sickeningly saccharine, and an old fashioned relic out of touch with the polarized social climate of the world (has that really changed?). Read reviews by writers like Pauline Kael and you’ll walk away with the impression that this film was some kind of horrible war crime that pushed the art of cinema back decades. Kael called it a “sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat” in a scathing piece that supposedly got her fired from her job at McCall’s magazine, though her former editor denied this. It wasn’t just the notoriously grouchy Kael who felt this way, either. Joan Didion was less vicious, but criticized The Sound of Music as “more embarrassing than most, if only because of its suggestion that history need not happen to people … Just whistle a happy tune, and leave the Anschluss behind.”

60 years later, however, and I’d argue that we need the optimism of The Sound of Music more than ever. Yes, the story does border on manipulative with how it draws emotion out of the audience, but you’d have to be the most cynical person on the planet to believe that its intentions were ignoble. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer carry the picture thanks to their raw talent, but also because their interactions with the child actors are so undeniably charming. Andrews in her prime was truly a once-in-a-generation voice, while Plummer was simply one of the greatest actors who ever lived. When you pair them with kids who were perfectly cast and directed, I’m not sure how you couldn’t be enthralled.

As an adult viewer more familiar with the history of World War II, I now have a better understanding of the film’s anti-Nazi themes. Somewhat similar to Casablanca, there are undertones of resisting tyranny at a time when the world is content to do nothing. The sudden tone shift after the intermission from a whimsical musical to an anti-fascist picture is admittedly somewhat jarring, but with context it’s clear to me that The Sound of Music is about the last days of innocence in the 1930s before the world went to hell in a hand basket. It’s loosely based on the 1949 memoir about the actual von Trapp family, though emphasis really has to be placed on the “loose” part as director Robert Wise freely admitted to wanting to create an entertaining film over something that accurately documented history.

Now that I’ve seen The Sound of Music on multiple occasions, I don’t think you can dismiss its emotional pull as naive sentimentality. “Edelweiss” when we hear it the first time is about a father trying to reconnect with his children after shutting them out, but its reprise is when things really get powerful. Knowing that complete Nazi rule of Austria cannot be stopped at this point, Captain von Trapp refuses to cede his principles and instead chooses to leave his homeland with a mournful farewell. The lyrics take on a new meaning that things will be better one day and that the light can shine through the darkness. Given the world that we live in now, it’s a message we all need to hear.

And of course, The Sound of Music remains an everlasting technical marvel. Its latest release is a textbook example on how studios should treat old films with the proper 4K restorations they deserve. The breathtaking outdoor vistas look better than ever, and some of my favorite moments are actually the more intimate closeup scenes. Like many classic Hollywood movies of the era, the cinematography relies on soft focus to create a warm or “waxy” effect that elevates the emotions on screen. It’s the sort of natural visual flair that can only be done to this kind of effect on actual celluloid film. While a lot of things are possible today via digital manipulation in post, the old fashioned analogue techniques are basically a lost art now. I’m not saying that the industry should or even can go back, but rewatching these works restored to their full glory reminds us of what the best of the best once looked like.

So yes, I’ve finally come around to accepting The Sound of Music as part of the canon of great films. My Fair Lady and Singin’ in the Rain rank slightly higher for me when it comes to musicals, but The Sound of Music likely has the most universal appeal. Despite the very different cultural background my father originally came from, it having been one of his favorite films is a testament to how it reaches people worldwide. That also holds true here in Japan where the film is a beloved classic. It’s a bittersweet feeling knowing that Dad is no longer around, but I was happy to create new memories watching it with my wife this time. We certainly plan on showing it to our own eventual children one day. That’s the true beauty of The Sound of Music — it’s meant for every generation.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Note: This review is spoiler free.

Polished white tile floors and ceiling. Walls lined with posters advertising an assortment of jobs and services. A hallway that appears to go on forever. Unnerving ambiance. Wandering middle-aged salarymen. This mundane setting could describe any one of Japan’s hundreds of underground metro stations, but most today would associate it with The Exit 8.

This viral indie video game took millions of players by storm both at home and abroad ever since it hit Steam in 2023 with a simple, yet ingenious concept. Via the first-person perspective of an unnamed commuter, players are trapped in station passageway that has no end. To escape, you must spot “anomalies” each time you maneuver through the very brief stretch of walkable space which loops to the beginning again after turning a couple of corners. These anomalies can be as small as an out-of-place advertisement or as large as a literal tsunami heading in your direction. You turn back if you spot these curious differences, but keep going if nothing seems amiss. Master the right order and you’re home free out Exit 8.

Emerging from its humble origins as a solo project by a developer named Kotake Create, The Exit 8 quickly went on to become one of the most profitable indie games of all time. Its success was so massive, it spawned a sequel, manga adaptation, a light novel, and now a film of the same name. I was out of the country when Exit 8 opened in Japanese cinemas last August, but finally got around to it this week after it was made available for rental on Amazon. It was just announced for release in the United States on April 10, so I expect there to be renewed discussion pretty soon.

I confess to missing most of the initial hype around The Exit 8 and only played it for the first time earlier this year, though you can chalk that up to my habit of being late to the party for most things. I was already aware of all the memes and parodies spawned by the game, so the concept of a cinematic take on what amounts to a walking simulator that can be cleared in about 45 minutes left me quite skeptical. Against all odds, however, Exit 8 is not only one of the best film adaptations of a video game ever made, it even enhances the interactive source material it came from.

I’ve long believed that video games and films should typically stay as separate mediums without trying to ape each other too much. As interactive entertainment, the best games use that unique element to their advantage and tell immersive narratives via player control. Films, on the other hand, are passive media and come from over a century of tradition in photography, acting, and sound design to attract audiences to their worlds. Rarely do the two mix successfully. Video games that attempt to be like movies often end up as pretentious imitators at the expense of their actual gameplay, while movies that try to adapt games are usually made by people who don’t understand or respect the medium. Even if some cinematic aspects are competent, the interactivity no longer being present can destroy what made the video game worth playing in the first place.

Exit 8 avoids these pitfalls by telling an original story set in the game’s familiar setting while being clear from the start that this intended to be a film which stands on its own. Those who know the game will appreciate a few references such as the protagonist initially doing the same things as first-time players; he tries to open locked doors, takes pictures of his surroundings to remember the anomalies, and makes mental notes to himself. That’s really where the cheeky nods end, though. With a runtime of 95 minutes, there clearly needed to be more substance than what could be found in a standard YouTube Let’s Play video.

Director Genki Kawamura wisely chooses to focus on the inner psychology of his characters. The nameless protagonist, referred to as The Lost Man, initially could be a stand-in for the millions of Japanese commuters who take the subway every morning. The opening track is Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, one of the most famously recursive compositions in musical history. The ad nauseam repetition of doing the same monotonous routine each day between a dull job and lifeless home is the obvious initial theme of Exit 8. Much could be said on how that applies to Japan in particular, but the film’s story adds effective emotional tension by establishing the central conflict as being between The Lost Man and his estranged ex-girlfriend who finds out she’s pregnant right after their breakup. Exit 8 then becomes something more introspective about unwanted fatherhood, responsibility, and societal pressure.

The Lost Man’s journey through the infinite corridors of the metro station can be viewed as him literally being stuck in a time loop, but the more interesting interpretation to me is viewing the whole thing as a metaphor for his own spiritual and emotional journey. Perhaps less obvious to Western viewers are the subtle Buddhist themes. The religion, which plays a large role in Japanese society alongside Shinto, has the concept of samsara or the never-ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Beings trapped in this dynamic are perpetually suffering, while the chosen few who manage to escape it achieve a state of enlightenment known as nirvana.

To reach nirvana, one has to undergo the Noble Eightfold Path. This centers around following the Buddha’s teachings in the following eight areas: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. An eternally repeating cycle of suffering and mastering eight principles to exit out of it? While no one behind the original game or film has explicitly confirmed the Buddhism connection as far as I’m aware, the similarities are too striking for it to be a coincidence. Exit 8’s short runtime means that things have to move ahead at a certain place, but pretty much all of these themes feature at some point throughout the film.

I won’t spoil how other characters play into these events or what visual surprises Kawamura includes. With that said, Exit 8 is a more thought-provoking film than your average cinematic adaptation of a video game. It even keeps much of the game’s visual language intact by going for an unbroken “one-shot” style of cinematography similar to Alfred Hitchock’s Rope and Sam Mendes’ 1917. There are obvious cuts and scene changes, but you never feel taken out of the illusion. Everything comes together smoothly by the end, and I walked away with the impression that Exit 8 was evidently made by people who cared. Kazunari Ninomiya, who plays the protagonist, is a gamer himself and actively worked with the director to ensure that everything players enjoyed was maintained.

With that said, Exit 8 isn’t perfect. Despite the intriguing themes, the characters themselves aren’t particularly interesting on their own. While the protagonist’s ordeal is palpable, I would have liked to see a tad more insight into his backstory beyond what was shown and the other characters get even fewer details. Some viewers may just find the whole thing too pretentious for its own good and the premise as more experimental rather than a baseline for a compelling film. Indeed, those who were more reserved with their assessment of the video game believed it was closer to a solid proof of concept and too brief to satisfy as a standalone work.

Still, Exit 8 regardless of medium is about audience patience and open interpretation. It’s admirable that Kotake Create attempted to do something few games apart from perhaps Hideo Kojima’s cancelled Silent Hill teaser P.T. ever explored with its creeping atmosphere of psychological horror in liminal spaces. Exit 8 as a movie expands upon that base with an engaging story, impressive cinematography, and effective sound design. Even with the interaction removed, it all largely works because the game and film are meant to be companion pieces to one another instead of the latter being a cheap pastiche of the former. With video game movies likely to replace superhero movies as the next big thing, Hollywood should take notes from Exit 8 on how to honor the source material.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

It may surprise you what game I’ve been playing the most over half a year on since the Nintendo Switch 2 launched. It isn’t Mario Kart World, though I’ve been getting decent mileage (pun intended) out of it. It isn’t the system’s current killer app Donkey Kong Bananza either because I have a backlog of the great ape’s other games to get through. Ditto for Metroid Prime 4 as I’m still at the beginning of that series. My long-standing backlog gaps are what I intend to address this year instead of playing most new releases, but that’s easier said than done considering how little else currently interests me.

Instead of anything Nintendo themselves has actually made, I’ve recently sunk most of my gaming hours into Rockstar’s updated port of the original Red Dead Redemption. I breezed through John Marston’s Wild West adventure back in high school, but never really stopped to smell the roses, er, cacti of its open world. Thanks to this brand new Switch 2 version released late last year, however, I’ve been doing all the side missions, all the challenges, and all the collectibles that RDR has to offer in glorious 60 frames per second at 1080p in the palm of my hand. I achieved 100% completion last week and am currently playing through its excellent DLC expansion Undead Nightmare with the same goal in mind.

But why Red Dead Redemption specifically? I already had it for my older Switch OLED model when it hit the platform in 2023. I got about 60 percent through before putting it down to play other games. It was a perfectly serviceable port back then, but being able to experience it on upgraded hardware was enough motivation for me to get back in. Truth be told though, my original Switch is still getting considerable mileage. I dedicated most of last summer and fall to finally beating Super Mario Sunshine to 100% completion on that stupidly out-of-print Super Mario 3D-Stars collection. With the Switch 2 having returned to an LCD screen, many games still look more visually stunning on Nintendo’s older system with its vibrant OLED panel.

Red Dead Redemption on the Switch 2, however, offers noticeable technical improvements so I was willing to deal with the trade-offs. In the absence of many exclusive Switch 2 games, my choice of which platform to play really comes down to if there are any real upgrades with older Switch titles. If it’s something with retro pixel art or a lot of dark colors, then the previous Switch is still a no-brainer for me because OLED panels are more capable of displaying true blacks. There’s also the whole controversy around Nintendo’s frustrating approach to physical media, but put a pin in that because I’ll get to that whole can of worms later.

My greater point here is that the Switch 2 currently doesn’t have many games it can truly call its own. I’m sure that will inevitably change as the system isn’t even a year old yet, but this is the first time I’m playing a new Nintendo console without that feeling of magic around launch. Similar to how the PlayStation 5 is memed to eternity for having “no games” due to its lack of true exclusives, Nintendo’s latest is more or less just an incremental upgrade of what came before. Of course, it’s in the name itself. Nintendo has long resisted the Sony route of simply adding a number, but not this time. No Super Switch, no brand new name, and thankfully no Switch U. It’s just the Nintendo Switch 2, exactly what it is says on the tin.

On the actual hardware, I don’t have much to say. It’s what you’d expect from a Switch successor. The device is sturdily built like any Nintendo handheld should be, the ergonomics are a bit better (though I always use rubber grips so my hands don’t cramp), and the screen is noticeably bigger. As I mentioned already, it’s also unfortunately an LCD panel instead of an OLED one. The display is capable of running at 120 frames per second and HDR, though to what degree games utilize these features will vary. Sadly, the battery life has taken a considerable cut due to the increased energy consumption. After just two hours with Red Dead Redemption, I had to reach for the charger.

The detachable Joy-Con controllers use an improved locking mechanism, but teardown reports show that they’re more difficult to repair. Joystick drift was a notorious problem with the previous Switch, so I expect to run into similar issues down the road. The video games industry stubbornly refuses to use the more reliable Hall Effect joysticks and Nintendo is no exception. On a more positive note, the new Joy-Cons introduce mouse controls. Slide them across a flat surface and you get an experience quite similar to being on a PC. This comes in handy for simulation games like Civilization VII and first-person action titles like Cyberpunk 2077, but whether or not such features will be used is once again all down to the devs. While it’s certainly a nice thing to have, I wouldn’t buy a Switch 2 purely on the expectation that you’ll always have a PC-like experience with your favorite games.

If the lifespan of the original Switch is any indication, we can expect the Switch 2 to also last for another eight years. I’m sure in the interim we’ll inevitably see a Switch 2 Lite (the current model is indeed a bit of a unit) and a souped up OLED Switch 2 which addresses everyone’s issues with the screen, but those are just minor mid-generation upgrades. The Switch 2 itself isn’t particularly innovative or showing us anything we haven’t seen before. By the time 2033 rolls around, what’s Nintendo going to do then? The Switch 3? Will my grandchildren one day be playing with the Nintendo Switch 10?

I know I’m being glib, but the very concept of the Switch 2 as Nintendo’s next big thing moving forward is more or less a sign that they’ve innovated themselves into a corner. To varying degrees of success, the Big N has always tried to be different from their competition. Whether that was introducing two screens with the Nintendo DS or blurring the line between home consoles and handhelds with the original Switch being a hybrid system, each hardware announcement was a surprise in some way. For better or worse, there are no surprises with the Switch 2.

Naturally, the ace up Nintendo’s sleeve has always been their IP. There will no doubt be a new Legend of Zelda, a new Super Mario, and a new Super Smash Brothers over the next few years. Hell has seemingly frozen over with Microsoft bringing Halo to PlayStation and Sony slowly trickling out their premiere titles to PC, but unless the planets align on a celestial equinox, you won’t be exploring Hyrule on another console anytime soon. That will be the biggest motivation for buying a Nintendo Switch 2 even if it’s a rather boring piece of kit compared to what the company has done in the past. Regarding third party titles, it may not be as powerful as a Steam Deck or handheld PC, but it is objectively more portable and can generally run most games around base PS4 performance.

Buying a Switch 2 is also thankfully not a Sisyphean task like the original Switch was during its first year on the market. Most places worldwide have it in stock, so scalpers can’t pay off their mortgages through hoarded consoles this time. Things in Japan, however, are a bit different. Due to how weak the yen is compared to other currencies, Nintendo faced a serious dilemma around what to charge their domestic consumers. The Switch 2 as of this writing costs $450 in the United States, but that would be over ¥68,000 in Japan when converted directly. Charging closer to ¥45,000 yen would make it easy for foreign scalpers to simply buy and resell all the Japanese systems.

To address this problem, Nintendo released two versions of the Switch 2 in Japan. The model widely available to everyone here costs ¥49,980, but the catch is that it’s only compatible with the Japanese language and Japanese eShop accounts. The other model without these restrictions costs ¥69,980, but isn’t sold in general retail stores and can only be bought from Nintendo’s website if you fulfill certain qualifications such as over 50 hours of playtime connected to your account. As an American living in Japan with two eShop accounts, this put me in a bind. Do I go for the cheaper system and lose access to all the Switch games I’ve bought from my U.S. account over the years or bite the bullet and pay what is essentially a tax for foreign Nintendo gamers?

Luckily, I didn’t have to choose. A Foreign Perspectives subscriber who shall remain nameless, but goes by the handle Shadow of a Doubt on X, took the considerable time and money to ship me a Nintendo Switch 2 all the way from Canada. The process to get the package to Japan was long and convoluted, with it even being sent back by customs at one point due to containing lithium ion batteries. After a few weeks of back and forth, it arrived with a kind letter expressing appreciation for my writing. I repaid Mr. Doubt’s kindness by giving him a lifetime subscription to this Substack, which was the least I could do. This was undoubtedly the greatest gift from someone online I’ve ever received, so I thank him for his extreme generosity.

While digitally region locked consoles shouldn’t have to exist in this decade, it’s the result of economic factors outside of anyone’s control. Sony is currently producing a Japan-only PlayStation 5 model with the same mentality in mind. I was fortunate enough to have someone send me a region free Switch 2 from overseas, but I can’t begin to imagine the difficulties other foreigners in Japan will face if they want one. Not to mention that if Nintendo decides to do an upgraded OLED model eventually, or even the Switch 3, chances are high that I’ll find myself in a similar situation yet again if the weak yen doesn’t improve. Either way, I’m definitely not selling any of my old Nintendo consoles even with the promises of backward compatibility.

Less excusable is how Nintendo is approaching physical media with this generation. In contrast to the previous Switch, the vast majority of Switch 2 games are being released on “Game-Key Cards.” These are cartridges that contain no data, but instead interact with online servers to download the entire game to your system. You need the cartridge every time you want to play these games, acting as a “check” of sorts. This is problematic for two reasons: 1). You don’t actually own the game and 2). The huge size of most major titles means your Switch 2 will quickly run out of storage space. Only Nintendo’s first-party games and a handful of others have been released on actual cartridges, but this may change this year if recent industry rumors are to be believed.

This once again brings me back to my main complaint of the Switch 2 currently having few games worth playing. If the majority of these titles can be found on PS5 or PC for far cheaper and you can exercise greater ownership control over them, why would I want to pay the Nintendo Switch 2 tax? Portability is perhaps the one legitimate reason, but the trade-offs don’t compel me to shill out more money for games that are already in my library or can be found heavily discounted elsewhere. With subscriptions galore and the “you’ll own nothing and be happy” mentality becoming increasingly widespread in the tech industry, Game-Key Cards are complete anathema to my belief in media preservation. It’s currently very easy to curate what I play on this system when there is a paucity of games you can own for real.

Let me be clear, the Nintendo Switch 2 is not a bad console. It’s the natural evolution of what Nintendo started in 2017 and will probably come out as a more worthwhile platform than whatever Sony and Microsoft do over the next decade. With AI having shot RAM prices through the roof, you won’t be seeing the PlayStation 6 or the next Xbox for quite some time. I was able to snag a pretty decent mid-level gaming laptop before all this happened, but my return to playing games on PC is a topic for another day. That leaves Nintendo as having the newest and cheapest console compared to the competition. If for some reason you never got on the Switch train until now, you also have thousands of backwards compatible games. Not a bad prospect for Nintendo neophytes, all things considered.

Still, you really don’t need a Switch 2 now if money is tight and you have a backlog of existing games for consoles you already own. Playing Red Dead Redemption on the go at 60 FPS or Super Mario Galaxy docked in 4K resolution is cool, but these are gaming luxuries and not at all necessary to have a good time. The stuff that’s available on the system isn’t much of a justification for a purchase unless you’re either a dedicated Big N acolyte or potentially concerned about future price hikes due to AI and tariffs. I’m confident that Nintendo will eventually deliver the goods with more interesting games from their well of IP. Until that happens though, your old Switch should be sufficient for at least another year or two.

Games or no games, my biggest takeaway from the Switch 2 as it currently stands is that we’ve potentially reached an inevitable plateau for video game innovation. Apart from graphical updates like ray tracing and smoother frame rates, there isn’t much anyone can really do to knock our socks off anymore. Not even Nintendo, it seems. The company under its more conservative leadership with President Shuntaro Furukawa is sticking to what saved them from the failure of the Wii U days and no one can really blame them. With the original Switch having sold over 155 million units, there’s little incentive to fix what isn’t broken. If you’re Nintendo, you can afford to rest on your laurels.

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A look back on 2025

The 2020s are now halfway over, if you can believe it. So much has already happened during this decade that I both dread and look forward to whatever could possibly be in store for the rest. For better or worse, 2025 in many ways did feel like a pivotal turning point for history. It marked Trump returning to office, Japan getting its first female prime minister, and many global conflicts reaching their apparent crescendos (but not really). Taylor Swift also announced she was getting married, which I’m sure is more earth-shattering than all of the above for some people.

This is the last column of 2025 for Foreign Perspectives. Like what I did at the end of 2024, it’s a retrospective on my personal achievements and some thoughts on world events. I also use this opportunity to provide a look back on my best writing and the media that enriched my life the most throughout the last twelve months. But first, an apology. As you’ve probably noticed, things have been pretty barren here for the last few months. It started off as a productive year with me uploading columns nearly every week, but by the time the summer hit, all of that dropped off a cliff. I previously had to end Bonus Perspectives because there simply wasn’t enough time to keep doing it. October had no pieces at all and this is the only one for the month of December. To my paid subscribers especially, I deeply apologize.

In short, my life is going through a major transition period. As I write this column, the initial submission of my doctoral thesis in international relations is due by late January. I’m writing that behemoth every day, which is the main reason for there not being enough bandwidth to focus on Foreign Perspectives. I’ve also landed a regular freelance gig at The Dispatch, and they have given me more freedom than any other professional outlet I’ve contributed to. In fact, my latest for them discussing the decline of Star Wars under Disney was posted last week.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, I’ll still be in the middle of my annual end-of-year holiday with my wife hopping across multiple Japanese cities by the time this goes up. On trains and in hotels between our visits to hot springs and shrines, I’ve been writing my doctoral thesis and this column at the same time. I wanted to get it out to you all by the end of the year because it’s important to me and I owe it to my subscribers here at Foreign Perspectives. So once again, thank you for sticking with me through thick and thin.

While I’m hard at work finishing my thesis, I made the difficult decision this summer that I would not continue on with academia afterward. That’s right, after over five years working on my Ph.D, I’m deciding to call it quits right after I earn the damn thing. The biggest reason is because I’m currently in the process of moving into a different field entirely, one that will hopefully prove to be far more lucrative and fulfilling if it pans out. I can’t officially reveal what it is just yet, but rest assured there will be a full announcement here if and when it happens later in 2026.

The other reason for my departure from academia, however, I can talk about: I’ve simply fallen out of interest. When I moved to Japan for the second time in 2019, it was on a fully paid scholarship to do a two-year master’s program. After I finished that in 2021, I was able to extend the scholarship to cover what was supposed to be a three-year doctoral program. Well, as you can probably gather from where we are now, it’s been much longer than three years. The process to get to this point where I’m finally writing my doctoral thesis and about to submit it has been a frustrating one to say the least. As I was approaching the end of the tunnel, I also looked to see if there were any future job opportunities in Japan for someone researching Japan-North Korea relations such as yours truly.

To cut a long story that will be saved for a future column on why you probably shouldn’t bother with North Korean studies short, I hit a dead end. I searched high and low for any kind of assistant professor job I could do starting in April 2026 (the beginning of the next academic year in Japan) but found nada. Zilch. Nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. I then considered the next best alternative: a postdoc or research position. This only raised a question that had been curdling in the back of my mind for quite some time: Do I really want to go through all of this again with another research topic while I’ll probably be making peanuts in the process?

The answer is of course no, which brings us to the present. Throughout 2025 and the last couple of years, I’ve been fortunate to build my career as a freelance writer. I’ve achieved bylines in respected outlets columnists twice my age struggle to get while also mingling with some big names in geopolitics and other fields related to my interests. Why would I want to spend the rest of my life writing dusty academic articles that will probably be read by less than ten people each in dense language the average Joe can’t even understand? Most of the time you don’t even get paid to write this stuff. I can’t make a living off only being a freelancer, but what I get per article is usually at least enough for a nice dinner with the wife.

It took me a long time to stop kidding myself, but here I am now. I have to seriously think about the future both for myself and for my wife, especially since we’re approaching our 30s which is when you need to start planning if you want a family. We certainly intend to have children, but I have to be able to support that kind of lifestyle first. To tie everything back to the beginning of this ramble, I approached my turning point in 2025. I had the time of my life in the first half of this decade as a graduate student living abroad and came out of it as a married man. What happens for the rest of this decade is going to be new territory for me as I’ll finally be moving on from anything to do with schooling or academia. Better late than never, but I’ll save the full story for another day.

Health-wise, 2025 was the year I hit the ground running — literally. Since the end of 2023 until now I’ve dropped close to 22 kg (48.5 pounds). I had gained all that weight in the first place in an attempt to adapt to the bodybuilding lifestyle popular on social media through “dirty bulking,” but mostly just ended up gaining fat. So 2024 was spent undoing that mistake through diet, while 2025 was me finally being light enough to get back into serious running. I was able to get my 5K down to under 26 minutes (nearly at 25) while doing 10Ks, 15Ks, and even half-marathons all for the first time. My next goal is to spend 2026 training for the 2027 Kyoto Marathon. It’ll be a challenge for sure, but having gotten used to long distances, I’m only building upon what I’ve already accomplished.

Speaking of accomplishments, I have to once again thank all of you for bringing Foreign Perspectives to well over 1000 subscribers in 2025. Part of this was due to my own push in the first half of the year to deliver timely content (sorry again about the last half), but another reason was me recommending other Substack publications and them recommending mine in turn. The material posted here can be all over the place as I don’t limit myself to just one subject, but I hope new and old subscribers alike have enjoyed the diversity of content. Rest assured, Foreign Perspectives isn’t going away in 2026. After I submit my doctoral thesis, I fully intend on returning to more articles on Substack while continuing my freelance writing for other outlets even as I change careers.

I’ll end this already long introduction with some brief thoughts on major events that I followed throughout 2025:

The return of Trump: I consider myself a center-right political moderate, but have never been anything close to a MAGA guy. I have friends and families who hate the man’s guts, while I know others who think he’s the bee’s knees. As an American who lives abroad, the only thing I can really comment on with Trump is how he approaches issues that affect my life such as trade and foreign policy. Unsurprisingly, I’m largely not a fan. While he’s done some good things in the Middle East, Trump’s tariffs have only alienated America’s allies and will inevitably cause many countries to look to China as a trading partner instead. It’s still too early to really know what the long term consequences will be, but I don’t live in the U.S. and I’m already Trumped out after ten years of him being a constant presence in all discourse.

Ukraine: A war I’ve had serious investment in since it started in 2022 due to the friends and colleagues I’ve made who are directly involved. I view Russia as one of the most evil regimes on the planet. It’s both a pragmatic and moral imperative that Putin’s ambitions to take over Ukraine, which he has been clear about many times, be stopped. Unfortunately, the current administration in Washington has done little but kick the Russian can down the road. February’s White House summit between Zelenskyy and Trump was one of the most shameful moments in American history. I previously believed that the U.S. would continue to stand with Ukraine after Russia’s continued stonewalling, but it’s now clear that Trump wants a hasty ceasefire that he can frame as “ending” the war in the short-term even if he knows hostilities will inevitably resume in the long-term. This is going to be a conflict that, like the Korean War, will remain technically ongoing for decades.

SignalGate: Pure idiocy which lowered my respect for Mike Waltz, who is otherwise an intelligent and accomplished political figure. Him being demoted to Trump’s ambassador to the U.N. was likely only done in consideration of his military service. It doesn’t mark the total end to his political career, but his lack of care in handling extremely sensitive intelligence does not bode well for his future either.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk: Utterly horrid, but sadly the culmination of political violence being normalized in the United States on both sides. It wasn’t the first time and it unfortunately won’t be the last time either.

Japan’s first female prime minister: Sanae Takaichi will likely be an improvement over the last few Japanese prime ministers, but she has big shoes to fill as the protégée of the late Shinzo Abe and Japan faces a ton of problems that will take more than public charisma to fix. I don’t think her administration will be a short-lived as Shigeru Ishiba’s, but longevity is never guaranteed in Japanese politics. See my column about Takaichi for The Dispatch here.

The general state of Japan in 2025: Things are far more pessimistic than the enthusiastic posts on social media from tourists who visit here for a ten-day holiday. I still have no plans to live anywhere else, but many Japanese people are struggling in the face of serious economic problems such as stagnant wages and rising costs of living. More foreign residents living in Japan is also an inevitable reality, which is why the government is carefully seeking to avoid the same mistakes as the West. See my column with further thoughts here.

China’s spat with Japan over Taiwan: Utter stupidity from the CCP that is a clearly calculated propaganda campaign to smear Japan as a nonexistent geopolitical bad guy. Takaichi’s remarks only stated the obvious and Taiwan isn’t going anywhere. The current diplomatic spat with eventually burn itself out, but it’s an eerie reminder that China’s aspirations to annex Taiwan should not be dismissed.

South Korea’s new president: Not a fan of his history of anti-Japanese rhetoric, but that was Lee Jae-myung before he had to run a country that needs Japan in the face of Trump and China. For the time being, he seems to have taken a pragmatic approach toward the U.S. and Japan instead of devolving into an ideologue like his predecessor Moon Jae-in. With that said, he has more common with Donald Trump than you may think despite their very different backgrounds. See my column about him I wrote for The Spectator here.

Netflix buying Warner Bros. Discovery: We live in hell.

The rise of AI slop: We live in hell.

My ten best pieces

As I powered through my doctoral program, I also continued my work as a freelance writer. My bylines in The Spectator and UnHerd continued as usual, but truth be told I’ll largely be moving away from geopolitical commentary in 2026. This is because the next stage of my career will likely require me to avoid publicly discussing anything too controversial, but I’m more interested in examining cultural topics anyway. The Dispatch has especially proven to be a wonderful platform. Most of my pitches are accepted and very little needs to be cut since they prioritize long-form essays. I look forward to continue working with them and whatever outlets wish to run my pieces.

Here are the ten best I wrote this year.

“Japan’s love affair with Dragon Quest spreads worldwide” — The Japan Times

A nice break from the more serious topics I usually cover. Dragon Quest is arguably the most popular video game series in Japan. The franchise is so huge that new game releases are planned on weekends so people don’t skip school or work. It took much longer for it to be successful in the West by comparison, but that too is finally changing. It was wonderful to discuss one of my favorite video game series and interview translator Jeremy Blaustein who I now consider a friend. Not only that, but Nagasaki Junior College even asked me if they could use some excerpts of the piece for one of their English exams! Now that’s one of my proudest achievements as a writer.

“A Personal Journey Through Japan Part 3: Toyooka” — Foreign Perspectives

I embarked on a solo trip to three Japanese cities in May 2024. Each of them meant something very personal to me because they played a key role in my formative experiences when I first came to Japan. I decided to turn my time on the road into an extensive three-part travelogue column, but it took until April of this year for me to finally conclude the series. Out of all of them, the piece on Toyooka was the most emotionally resonant as it centered around my first serious relationship. The larger themes are about the romantic feelings many expats tend to have toward their adopted country and how you eventually reach a crossroads at what direction to take your life in.

Going back to Toyooka after so much had changed for me over the years provided a sense of closure I very much needed. Incidentally, I went to Kinosaki Onsen again last week, this time with my wife. We had a wonderful experience and while I still felt nostalgic while we stayed at our hotel next to Toyooka Station, I no longer was wistful. This is a piece about some very specific experiences in a Japanese town most have never heard of, but I’m glad I was able to write it for my own sake.

“The iPod Reboot” — The Spectator

Millennial technology is back, baby. For various reasons, a segment of zoomers is returning to the gadgets and trends my generation experienced. I never gave up on the iPod though. I always valued having a dedicated music player on me as a detox from our always online 24/7 smartdevices which deliver an endless stream of notifications and dangerously addictive dopamine. In this piece for The Spectator, I wrote about why the iPod has returned, the enthusiast community that keeps it alive, and how it allows you to appreciate the music in your pocket much more.

“Japan’s populist pivot” — UnHerd

One of multiple articles I wrote this year that was aimed at correcting the sludge of fake news around Japan. A plucky populist party (try saying that five times fast) named Sanseito dominated international headlines which tried to frame the country as supposedly pivoting hard right a la MAGA or Reform, but I aimed to provide a more nuanced perspective. Hopefully it didn’t fall on deaf ears.

“Why Japanese People Still Can’t Speak English” — Foreign Perspectives

Many visitors to Japan are often baffled at the low level of English among Japanese people, but it turns out there are many factors contributing to this country’s linguistic separation from the Anglosphere. In this column for Foreign Perspectives, I broke down why Japanese people generally still can’t speak English and why this situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. From poor education methods to the fact that you really don’t need English to live in Japan, it’s been this way forever.

“Does the Lupin III series have a timeline?” — Lupin Central

A piece I did for free out of my love for the Lupin III. Lupin Central is a blog written by and produced for fans of Monkey Punch’s long-running franchise that shows no signs of stopping. With so many shows and films, I discussed the interesting question of if Lupin III has any semblance of continuity or a timeline. It was a pleasure to write this one because it was purely for fun.

“9/11 and Historical Memory” — Foreign Perspectives

In contrast, this piece I wrote for Foreign Perspectives the same month was the opposite of fun, but it was very important. Longtime subscribers will be aware of my interest in covering topics related to the September 11 terrorist attacks. On the 24th anniversary of 9/11 this year, I was able to visit New York City with my wife where we saw the official museum and memorial site in person. This article was about that experience and included some very moving photos I took myself. We’re now approaching 25 years since 9/11 happened, which makes it imperative that we continue to preserve historical memory of the events for future generations.

“Why Fake News About Japan is Spreading” — Foreign Perspectives

You could fill a book with all the fake news stories that are being spread about Japan online by people who don’t live here, but this piece was my attempt to summarize the main causes of the problem. Due to language barriers and social media sensationalism, so many are being fed a distorted image of Japan that simply does not match reality. It’s sadly a problem that I only see getting worse, but that also ties back to Japanese people not speaking English and being largely divorced from the discussions about this country taking place abroad. If you hear a story related to Japan that sounds too incredible or bizarre to be true, chances are it probably is.

“The Era of Immortality Is Here” — The Dispatch

I’m no Luddite, but the rapid adoption of AI technologies without any concern for their long-term societal consequences greatly disturbs me. In this piece for The Dispatch, I dove into the implications of companies “reviving” everyone from dead celebrities like Stan Lee to your own grandmother via AI and why this digital necromancy raises serious ethical issues. We’re only at the beginning of the tunnel, but at this rate there will be no end.

“Conservatives, Stop Bashing Video Games” — The Dispatch

Another article I wanted to write for a long time, but my pitch ironically got rejected by the very outlets whose readers I aimed to address. This only proves my central thesis: conservatives need to stop dismissing video games as a waste of time. Thankfully, The Dispatch was gracious enough to let me say my piece on why gaming is now becoming the dominant form of entertainment. Much of the political right apparently has a problem with this with how they frame video games and those who play them as some boogeyman responsible for all of society’s ills. That could not be further from the truth, but judging from the mostly positive responses I got, I’m confident that the general public’s perception of video games is changing for the good.

What I watched

Believe it or not, I thought 2025 was generally a better year for film than 2024. While Hollywood is still doing a ton of things wrong, they seem to currently be in a state of self-reflection after how much the pandemic and the SAG-AFTRA strikes affected their bottom line. I don’t think Netflix’s purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery will be good for the industry, but that’s currently too far away for us to really know what the consequences will be.

Regardless, I ended up going to the cinema almost every couple of weeks and saw over 200 films in total. I’ll also use this section to remind everyone that I’m active on Letterboxd where I post short reviews of everything I watch.

Honorable mentions:

I was pleasantly surprised by Thunderbolts* and Fantastic Four: First Steps despite MCU fatigue. As I wrote in my review, Superman was fine despite my dislike of some of its creative choices. I will stick my neck out to defend TRON: Ares as an enjoyable popcorn flick that is just as silly and short on story as its predecessors even if by objective standards it isn’t a very good movie. Eddington was good, but tonally inconsistent and probably released too close to the political era it’s depicting. Predator: Badlands was fine, but this franchise along with Alien seems to have few tricks left up its sleeve. Sinners was overhyped. Here in Japan, I had a good time seeing Lupin III return to theaters via Takeshi Koike’s latest film, The Immortal Bloodline, though I’ll always prefer the more lighthearted stuff instead of its darker and grittier direction. Suzuki=Bakudan is a police procedural you’ve probably never heard of based on a bestselling novel you’ve also probably never heard of. Surprisingly thrilling and well-acted.

Late releases in Japan:

Japan often gets a lot of 2024 films later than the rest of the world, so I was late to the party on these. The Apprentice was a surprisingly poignant examination of Donald Trump’s rise before he became president and easily Sebastian Stan’s best performance of his career so far. September 5 is a thrilling dramatization of the 1972 Munich massacre and an effective tribute to old school analogue journalism. The Brutalist won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but Brady Corbet crafted a labor of love that pays homage to the best Hollywood epics and Adrien Brody deserved his Oscar. Nosferatu is a gorgeous update of Dracula. I liked Wicked despite generally not watching musicals and finding most of the cast rather annoying. I have no desire to watch The Substance again because of how disgusting it is, but it’s undeniably well-made and acted with its uncomfortable depiction of how we inevitably all lose our beauty with age.

TV shows I watched:

Not a huge TV guy due to the time commitment it usually takes, but Season 2 of Andor was easily one of the best things I’ve watched in a long time. See my review here. I also caught up on The Sympathizer (it’s better than the book because it cuts out the fat) and The Penguin (this somehow ended up as one of the best shows based on a comic book ever made). I also watched The Hollow Crown (it starts off as a good modern adaptation of Shakespeare, but becomes too disjointed by the end) and Das Boot (slow, but very effective). I’m currently showing my wife Monty Python’s Flying Circus for the first time, which surprisingly has a full Japanese Blu-ray release. The people who handled the translation of that series deserve a medal.

My top ten films of 2025:

10. Avatar: Fire and Ash — Dammit James Cameron, I want to hate your Avatar films, but I just can’t. They’re too beautifully made for me to be that bothered by their shallow stories and rather dull characters. Maybe I’ve succumbed to key-jangling, but I don’t think so. This was easily among the best experiences I had in a cinema all year and I appreciated its earnest themes around family (a rarity in Hollywood these days), so it sneaks into the top ten at the last minute. Well-played, Jimbo.

9. Bullet Train Explosion — Being a legacy sequel to The Bullet Train released in 1975, this has to be one of the longest gaps between two films. The original starring Ken Takakura, Sonny Chiba, and a huge cast of other major Japanese actors of the 1970s is a classic here, but sadly not so well known overseas. That’s a shame because Bullet Train Explosion is widely available via Netlfix and is greatly enhanced if you see it after its predecessor. It’s fascinating watching both to see how much Japan has changed over the last 50 years. Thrilling action and a compelling plot with some decent twists makes this one worth a look.

8. Ballerina — The John Wick spin-off I never knew I wanted. Similar to how Furiosa was sadly overlooked in relation to the greater Mad Max series, it definitely is not “woke” pandering or an inferior version of what came before. Ballerina adds more interesting lore to its established world, Ana de Armas did a good job as Eve, the Keanu Reeves cameo was entertaining, and the action is stellar.

7. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle — Could they not have come up with a better English translated title? That aside, the newest Demon Slayer was the biggest Japanese film of the year and dethroned… the last Demon Slayer as the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. With expectedly stunning animation that never misses a beat, it did exactly what it needed to do as the big-budget adaptation of its respective manga chapter. I wouldn’t consider myself a super fan of the franchise as I always founded it to be a bit too shonen trope-y for my liking, but the incredible artwork and emotional flashback sequences won me over.

6. 28 Years Later — You’ll either love or hate this movie, but I applaud Danny Boyle for going outside of the box instead of repeating the same ground as the previous two movies. The first half of 28 Years Later is some of the most thrilling filmmaking I’ve seen in a long time, but the second half is where you’ll either buy what Boyle is selling or kick it to the curb in disbelief. I thought about this one for awhile, but I’ve come to the conclusion that his risk paid off since it’s never left my head in the months since. The upcoming sequel, The Bone Temple, could of course throw all of that away, but either way I enjoyed returning to this universe, albeit in an extremely unorthodox way.

5. F1 — The next Top Gun: Maverick-esque summer blockbuster we all needed. Pure, unadulterated adrenaline and great fun even if you do have to suspend your disbelief a bit considering Brad Pitt’s age. I wish we could have these kinds of “dad movies” at least once every year.

4. Weapons — Zack Cregger is to me inseparable from The Whitest Kids U’ Know, particularly his hilarious performance as Abraham Lincoln, but it turns out that he’s quite the accomplished director of serious stuff too. Weapons has an intriguing setup that continuously holds your attention and manages to be thoroughly creepy by the end. The less you know going in, the better. I’m not sure how that will affect subsequent rewatches of the film, but one thing’s for sure, Cregger is going places and he has a very promising post-comedy career indeed.

3. Black Bag — A big surprise from Steven Soderbergh who, despite being American, directed something that feels like it was ripped out of the classic era of British spy films and updated with modern technology. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett are fantastic, as are the supporting cast featuring the likes of Tom Burke and Pierce Brosnan. I was reminded of a Harry Palmer film or John le Carré novel, the kind of low-key espionage story that keeps you invested purely because the writing is so brilliant. It’s a brisk 94 minutes too, being exactly the right length for this kind of narrative and never overstaying its welcome.

2. Kokuho — And now I’m contradicting myself with the next entry, which is a three-hour long film about kabuki theater. Now don’t go away, it’s more interesting than it sounds. Kokuho has gone on to be the biggest live-action Japanese film of the year and has sparked a ton of new interest in young people for Japan’s traditional theatrical arts. It’s an epic, sprawling story about the contrasting lives of two men who sacrifice everything to be the best of their craft while knowing that only one of them can truly be considered “the best” of all time. A lot of Japanese live-action movies these days are disposable fodder that appeal to the lowest common denominator, but works like Kokuho and other recent hits like Godzilla Minus One give the impression that things are slowly changing. Lee Sang-il is certainly among the best directors working in the industry, that’s for sure. Even Tom Cruise sang his praises of Kokuho, which gave it an even bigger boost on the international film festival circuit. Don’t miss it when it hopefully reaches a wider audience in 2026.

1. Frankenstein — Not everything he makes is a winner (I really do not like The Shape of Water), but Guillermo del Toro is responsible for my favorite film of 2025. His take on Frankenstein is one of the most frustrating stories of development hell in Hollywood history, and it ironically took Netflix to step in for it to get made at all. For all the things you can criticize the streaming giant for, sometimes they really do put their money where it matters. In any case, Frankenstein is the film del Toro was born to make. It embodies every theme he has explored in his career, particularly the fine line between monsters and men. While there are notable diversions from Mary Shelly’s novel that purists will undoubtedly take issue with, it’s the passion that counts and this film has it in every frame. Really glad that a local Kyoto cinema was playing it because the full visual spectacle of Frankenstein deserves far more than just your television screen.

   

Films I watched for the first time in 2025:

The Lost City of Z (2016) — Based on the incredible and tragic life of Percy Fawcett, this is arguably the last great classic adventure film Hollywood ever made as the genre has sadly largely become cast aside. Be sure to read the book by David Grann for the full story.

The Pianist (2002) — As someone whose father survived the Cultural Revolution by being a musician and given my own lifelong interest in Holocaust history, The Pianist had me hooked from start to finish. This is rightfully considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Loving Vincent (2017) — One of the most breathtaking and painstakingly drawn animated films that shocks you with every frame with its artistry. Damn shame that it’s overlooked and modern viewers will mistake it for AI due to the motion.

Used Cars (1980) — Very underrated comedy starring Kurt Russell that is absolutely ingenious with every joke setup and conversation.

Speed (1994) — Yes, it’s often made fun of as “The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down” starring Keanu Reeves, but Speed is one of the top thrillers of the 1990s for a reason. Despite only watching it for the first time this year, by reputation I always viewed it as a loose remake of The Bullet Train given the near-identical premise save for the vehicle used. Jan de Bont was friends with Ken Takakura, so I’m sure he saw it for inspiration. Disappointing he only had a very limited directing career after Speed.

Michael Clayton (2007) — Got around to this one because of Andor and just like that incredible show, watching Michael Clayton proves why Tony Gilroy is one of the greatest writers working in Hollywood today. All the parts come together perfectly by the end like a grand symphony.

Conspiracy (2001) — One of the most disturbing films ever made about the Nazis and the Holocaust despite not a single scene of bloodshed actually shown. Given everything that’s happening in the world today around antisemitism, Conspiracy needs to be seen by everyone to show how slaughter on a massive industrial scale was brought to reality.

The Naked Gun (1988) — Yes, it took me this long to see it and the other sequels with Police Squad. You already know why The Naked Gun is a classic. Even subtitled in Japanese, which is its own mindblowing achievement given the material, my wife couldn’t stop laughing with me.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) — A “they don’t make them like they used to” adventure film produced during a time when even back then they weren’t making them like they used to. John Huston directs like he’s making a matinee thriller from decades prior, but that old fashioned spirit of heroism mixed in with the subtle cynicism of the 1970s makes The Man Who Would Be King truly special. Probably the best performances of Michael Caine and Sean Connery’s careers.

Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005) — Essential viewing if you want to understand where Takashi Yamazaki got his influences for Godzilla: Minus One. Always: Sunset on Third Street and its two sequels are postwar Showa-era Japan encapsulated as an intentionally idealistic and nostalgic trilogy. It’s unfortunately not so well-known overseas, but the Japanese Blu-rays contain English subtitles. Worth tracking down for sure.

Gods and Monsters (1998) — A rare biopic that shows the twilight years of someone who worked in Hollywood at the beginning of the 20th century, yet is still around to see the rapidly changing modernity around him long after his relevancy has passed. James Whale was a fascinating director, having been openly gay during a time when such things were unheard of in the film industry. Yet because he was responsible for Frankenstein and other hits, his work was championed by studio executives. One of Ian McKellen’s best performances, which can also be said for Brendan Fraser in a very underrated early role.

The Mummy (1999) — Speaking of Brendan Fraser, I finally got around to watching The Mummy trilogy. All of them are entertaining, yes I’ll even defend the third one to a point, but it’s really the first that everyone remembers and speaks highly of. Hollywood, please bring back the traditional adventure film. None of that horrible Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny crap.

A Room with a View (1985) — The positive inverse to Barry Lyndon’s pessimistic commentary on class divides in British society. Like Kubrick’s period piece, this is an utterly gorgeous film where every frame is a painting. Everyone here is fantastic, whether it’s Denholm Elliot and Maggie Smith as the stalwart veteran performers, or the then-up and coming young talent like Helena Bonham Carter and Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s also a rare leading part for Julian Sands, one of my favorite supporting actors who sadly died a couple of years ago in tragic circumstances.

There Will Be Blood (2007) — Yes, another classic I put off for too long. Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance lives up to the hype as one of the best of the century and Paul Dano is great no matter what Quentin Tarantino tells you. While a very good film, it is largely carried by the acting and not the script itself which I found somewhat barren. There Will Be Blood is not among my favorites at this stage, but I definitely respect and acknowledge its place in the canon.

True Lies (1994) — James Cameron’s last low stakes film before he became a director of absurdly expensive blockbusters, possibly for the rest of his life at this rate. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis have great chemistry of course, but True Lies sticks out to me as emblematic of when Hollywood action films could still be funny. And not in a constant ironic winking to the audience either. I hope we can one day see movies like these again where the silliness and camp are embraced, not discarded.

What I listened to

Wham! — Listened to their music peripherally for years due to “Last Christmas” and “Careless Whisper,” but checked them out properly for the first time this year. Despite their popularity back in the day, many forget they only had three studio albums. Not deep by any means, but fun pop regardless.

Al Bowlly — One of the most underrated crooners who set the groundwork for more well-known singers like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Most know him best for “Midnight, The Stars and You,” which provided the haunting ending piece for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. “Be Still My Heart,” “Close Your Eyes,” and “Guilty” are some of his other hits. It’s very old timey music by today’s standards, but succeeds at transporting you to a different era of more musical innocence. Due to age, most of his discography is in the public domain so it’s easy to find.

Chet Baker — Jazz heads like myself know Baker’s music well, but he sadly doesn’t have the same household name status among the public today like Miles Davis or John Coltrane. “You Don’t Know What Love Is” has seen a resurgence because of its appearance in Cyberpunk: 2077 so perhaps there’s some hope. Baker was an accomplished vocalist, but check out his excellent covers of jazz standards like “Autumn Leaves,” “Tangerine,” and “Have You Met Miss Jones?” for a taste of his stellar trumpet skills.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov — I constantly listened to “Scheherazade” throughout the year while working and studying. I think it’s one of the most accessible pieces of classical music ever composed and in many ways is an early precursor to film scores with its adventurous themes and approach to melodic storytelling. Many great versions, but I’m partial to the Berlin Philharmonic recording with Herbert von Karajan.

Dimitri Shostakovich — Another one of my favorite Russian composers. Shostakovich’s seventh symphony is another stalwart entry of my work and study playlists. Leonard Bernstein’s recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is legendary.

Leroy Anderson — “Sleigh Ride” is arguably the best holiday song ever composed because its longevity lasts far beyond Christmas and into the general winter season. Leroy Anderson was the king of light orchestral music with so many wonderfully crowd-pleasing compositions. “The Typewriter” is another classic, while “The Penny-Whistle Song” is a good example of Anderson’s penchant for memorable, feel-good melodies. The album Orchestral Favorites with Richard Hayman and His Orchestra comes recommended.

Akina Nakamori — One of the greatest J-pop queens of the 1980s. Her earliest work was closer to classical kayokyoku ballads, while she later took on a more “bad girl” image with her fashion and musical choices. “Joken Hansha,” “Into the Azure Night,” “Shojo A,” and “Jukkai” are some of my favorites and they’ve also provided good upbeat material for my jogging playlists.

Dead Kennedys — Playing the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater for the first time naturally exposed me to some of the best musical acts of the 1990s. Apart from “Superman” by Goldfinger, which is basically the franchise’s anthem, I particularly enjoyed listening to the Dead Kennedys. “Police Truck” is great, while “Holiday in Cambodia” is something relevant for every age of clueless college campus activism. It might surprise you that I enjoy such edgy music given the other selections on this list, but I’ve always had wide tastes.

Eurythmics — This year I rewatched Nineteen Eighty-Four, the underrated cinematic adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel. It’s exactly what I’d imagine the book brought to screen to look like. What stood out to me this time apart from its incredible visual language was the haunting soundtrack by Eurythmics. It’s pretty amusing in retrospect that a song like “Sexcrime” was played in the discotheques given the original source material, but “For The Love of Big Brother” is my favorite track on the album. With the film having actually been released in 1984, I view it to be a fascinating bridge between the era Orwell lived in to the modernity we find ourselves in now.

A Single Man — I watched this moving 1960s period drama starring Colin Firth at the end of 2024. It’s equally stunning soundtrack stuck with me throughout 2025. Abel Korzeniowski composed the majority of the score, but it also features contributions from Shigeru Umebayashi, who is probably best known today for Ghost of Tsushima. Korzeniowski’s “Stillness of the Mind” gives a taste for the lush orchestrations that appear throughout the album, while Umebayashi’s recurring motif for the protagonist features prominently. It’s a film and score I hope more people check out.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — Haven’t played the video game enough to form an overall opinion yet, but I was immediately a fan of the music. The whole score over eight hours long, yet it’s remains of consistent quality with full orchestrations for the most important moments. Not to mention it’s completely free on YouTube! Hopefully I can give Clair Obscur a proper playthrough once I’m done with my doctoral program.

What I read

Last of the Blue and Gray by Richard A. Serrano — Fascinating book on the last Civil War veterans who lived well into the 20th century. It illustrates how memory of the conflict changed as all those who participated passed away, but it’s also about the countless fraud cases of old men pretending to be veterans for benefits.

First Blood by David Morrell — Where the Rambo franchise all started. There are a lot of differences from the more famous film adaptation starring Sylvester Stallone, which makes me hope that perhaps we’ll get a more novel-accurate miniseries one day. While the prose is straightforward, it provides nuance to both sides of the story as an overall commentary on generational divide during the Vietnam War.

Kubrick: An Odyssey by Robert. P. Kolker — The latest and perhaps most comprehensive biography on Stanley Kubrick. Everything you could have possibly wanted to know about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time is here in addition to newly-revealed details about his life and work. Cinephiles will be very pleased indeed.

The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin — A compelling thriller centering around a Nazi hunter who uncovers a wider conspiracy that could shake the foundation of future world events. Best to go into this one with as little prior knowledge as possible. Also check out the excellent film adaptation starring Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, and James Mason.

The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides — A splendid biography on Captain James Cook that is equal parts an exploration of one of the most important explorers in history as it is an examination of the tragic relationship the West would have with many indigenous peoples. Sides wisely does not editorialize the facts. Cook was no monster and unlike many of his contemporaries made an active attempt to understand the cultures of the societies he encountered. You will be thrilled by the adventures on display, but also left to contemplate the complex questions this book raises.

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann — At nearly 900 pages, this is an exhaustive history of the Nazi concentration camp system and will probably be the definitive text on the subject for decades. The Holocaust is of course front and center, but Wachsmann peels back layers of history to show how the Third Reich employed campus to first imprison political dissidents and then later to attempt full-scale genocide of European Jews. I listened to the audiobook version, which is over 30 hours long, and had to space it out over a few weeks. Very difficult material that is both emotionally and mentally draining, but absolutely one of the most important books written this century.

Star Wars Legends: Tales of the Jedi Omnibus — No, not the animated series of the same name on Disney+. This is a complete collection of the 1990s Dark Horse comics taking place thousands of years before the original Star Wars trilogy. Its esoteric portrayal of the Force, the Jedi, and the Sith set the groundwork for lore that is still being used today under the current canon, but these stories are heavily reminiscent of Biblical tales with their epic scope and myth-like narratives. It’s arguably the closest Star Wars ever got to the fantasy elements George Lucas envisaged. Will do a more in-depth review in the future.

Star Wars: Battlefront: Twilight Company by Alexander Freed — Who could have predicted that one of the best modern Star Wars stories would come from a novel that’s a tie-in to a video game most people hated on launch? It probably says more about Disney’s own misguided priorities with this franchise than anything else, but Battlefront: Twilight Company comes recommended to anyone who enjoyed the likes of Rogue One and Andor. Freed tells an old-school war story that adds more lore to the events of the original trilogy and emphasizes the sacrifices made by the grunts on the ground. A shame most will probably never read it due to overall apathy toward Star Wars at the moment.

Random by Penn Jillette — A hilarious novel written by the loudmouth part of the famous magician duo Penn & Teller. More prudish readers won’t appreciate its profanity and explicit content, but if you’re already familiar with the irreverent antics of Jillette like I’ve been for years such as with their television series Bullshit!, you’re in for a swell time. The audiobook read by Jillette himself makes the material all the more laugh out loud funny.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré — I’ve been reading le Carré’s work for the first time. After the previous two George Smiley novels, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is where most agree he hit his stride. It’s a darkly cynical spy thriller about the callous choices made by both sides of the Cold War that continues to be a great read even decades later. Looking forward to the rest of his bibliography.

What I played

Limbo — I replay this one every few years. Limbo is one of the classics of the golden age of indie video games. It creates a ton of effective atmosphere with so little, while the wordless story leaves room for tons of interpretation players are still debating 15 years later. Goes on sale often and it’s available on everything, so no excuse not to own it.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater — Played the original PS1 games for the first time. Very tough to get all the moves down correctly, but still tons of fun with a killer soundtrack. Hope to eventually play the sequels.

Scribblenauts — Was nostalgic to play this Nintendo DS classic of my childhood where you could conjure up any object (within age-appropriateness, of course!) to solve a plethora of puzzles. The concept is admittedly more interesting than its execution, but this is one of the most innovative video game concepts ever created and it provides hours of entertainment.

Wolfenstein 3D — Decided to replay the grandfather of first-person shooters, this time with the goal of 100% completion. I’ve only finished the first three chapters, but that was technically the full game release back in the day. Have to get to the rest and Spear of Destiny. It’s archaic and simple, but shooting Nazis never gets old. Nightdive Studios needs to give Wolfenstein 3D a full remaster because it’s long past due.

Tokimeki Memorial: Forever with You — Arguably the greatest dating simulator ever made.

Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties — Arguably the worst dating simulator ever made.

Mario Kart World — I still need to do my full write-up on the Nintendo Switch 2, but if you own the console, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have Mario Kart World. It’s not as polished or well-developed as Mario Kart 8, but that’s to be expected given how much time in the oven its predecessor got with nearly a decade of updates. World will inevitably improve and it’s already gotten better. With that said, I do wonder if this series is beginning to run out of steam. Having now done an open world, what else can Nintendo do next? An even bigger open world? As I’ll expand upon in my piece on the Switch 2, the Big N may have finally innovated themselves into a corner.

Harvester — A 1990s adventure title that’s dated in a lot of ways, but still one of the most effective commentaries on video game violence and American society’s fixation with violence as a whole. Whenever I have more time I’m hoping to do a column series on controversial video games. Harvester will definitely be one of the first I cover.

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe — My wife and I played this one almost every day when we were visiting my family in Pittsburgh. It gives you all the fun you’ve come to expect from a standard Kirby platformer, but the multiplayer is great, the Deluxe edition adds tons of entertaining mini-games, and the later stages provide a good challenge. Needed this one after Harvester.

The Elder Scrolls: Arena — I’ve ironically not played any of The Elder Scrolls games apart from this one, but that’s because I have a penchant for starting at the beginning of franchises and I’m a sucker for archaic games. Yes, Arena is old, outdated, and for many will be a slog to play through. For me, it provides a good challenge and serves as a fascinating time capsule into the early beginnings of CRPGs. Still not close to finishing it yet, but I’m finally getting used to the mechanics and have been enjoying going on quests for loot.

Dragon Quest IV — Finally beat this one after having started it over 18 months ago. While I think Dragon Quest III is the better game overall due to pacing, this fourth entry has a ton of great stuff going for it and is particularly mindblowing considering its origins as a Famicom game. I plan on getting to Dragon Quest V in 2026, but there are a couple of other RPGs I’d like to play first.

Super Mario Sunshine — I played this sequel to Super Mario 64 on and off for over five years to reach 100% completion. Finally accomplished that horrible task earlier this month. It is indisputably the most broken game in the Super Mario franchise and never should have been released in the state it was. I love to hate it, but I will never touch Super Mario Sunshine ever again.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

About ten minutes into Seven Samurai, one can see a young man walking through the streets of a bustling town. He is clearly a samurai, but not one of the titular main warriors in Akira Kurosawa’s jidaigeki epic. The character is nameless and unimportant the story; a mere blink-and-you’ll-miss-him background extra no one in 1954 would have paid attention to. Yet just a few years later, the man playing him would become known throughout Japan as Tatsuya Nakadai and later acknowledged worldwide as one of his country’s finest actors.

Over the next seven decades, Nakadai worked with Kurosawa again multiple times, as well as other acclaimed directors like Masaki Kobayashi and Keisuke Kinoshita. He acted alongside multiple generations of acclaimed Japanese actors from Toshiro Mifune to Hiroyuki Sanada, while also starring in Japanese stage adaptations of William Shakespeare and Arthur Miller well into his twilight years. Few Japanese performers from the mid-20th century successfully transitioned into the 21st, but Nakadai continued his appearances in film, television, and plays long after most of his contemporaries retired or passed away.

If one looks at most of the films Nakadai appeared in, he was often the sole surviving principle cast member due to him starting his career young and never ceasing to be prolific. Sadly, it was announced this month that Tatsuya Nakadai died of pneumonia at the age of 92 on Nov. 8, 2025. Among the last of Japan’s dwindling generation of silver screen icons who lived through World War II, his passing truly marks the end of an era. I’m not in the habit of writing many obituaries, but this is one of the few occasions I feel compelled to do so.

Western audiences will probably best remember Nakadai for playing opposite Toshiro Mifune in the Akira Kurosawa pictures Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and High and Low. Those films are stunning examples of his fidelity as an actor, skillfully pulling off roles from slick police inspectors to Edo era gun-toting gangsters. When Kurosawa turned him into the protagonist of his later jidaigeki films Kagemusha and Ran, Nakadai brought forth a powerful presence that commanded attention and made ancient Japan feel like a living, breathing place with human characters reminding us of our modern foibles.

Even more than his Kurosawa collaborations, my favorite films of Nakadai’s were the ones he did with Masaki Kobayashi. At the age of 27, he carried the entirety of The Human Condition trilogy released between 1959 and 1961. This nine-and-a-half-hour epic saga followed the tragic story of a Japanese idealist who begins World War II as a well-meaning, but naive labor chief of Chinese slaves in Manchuria to becoming a prisoner himself in the desolate Soviet POW camps of Siberia. It was a complex role that most older actors would struggle with, but Nakadai’s youth and commitment proved to be his assets.

Perhaps Nakadai’s best performance was in Harakiri, Kobayashi’s bitter attack on idealized views of the samurai class and a greater commentary on the dangers of dogmatic systems. The protagonist is a wandering ronin with a tragic backstory that slowly unfolds throughout the course of the narrative. What makes it all the more incredible is that despite Nakadai only being 29 at the time of filming, he convincingly plays a middle-aged samurai with an aura of bitter world weariness. The verbal back-and-forth he has with the antagonist played by Rentaro Mikuni proves to be just as thrilling as the film’s sword duels. To anyone wanting to get into Nakadai’s work for the first time, Harakiri is the place to start.

Despite these deadly serious roles, Nakadai off screen was described as one of the most approachable actors in the industry. He was known to be a practical joker when the cameras were not rolling and regularly made his co-stars laugh with humorous impressions. Not all his characters were fierce warriors or tormented lords, either. In the heartbreaking drama about Hachiko, Nakadai showed his warmer side as the loyal Akita dog’s departed owner. He even lent his voice for a few anime films like Belladonna of Sadness and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.

With over 160 films to his name, seemingly no role was too challenging for Nakadai to undertake. Whether his characters required physical action, deep pathos, lighthearted comedy, or a smooth tongue, it was practically guaranteed to be a knockout performance and often became the highlight of the entire picture. He was the kind of old-school Japanese movie star that no longer exists today. Tatsuya Nakadai’s passing closes a chapter, but what he contributed to cinema will live on for ages.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain articles such as these are exclusively for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

In The Travels of Marco Polo, the people of Japan are described as having “tremendous quantities of gold.” So rich is this country that “the King’s palace is roofed with pure gold, and his floors are paved in gold two fingers thick.” Such lavish stories were all Europeans had to go on about “Zipangu” back in the 13th century when Travels was written. This includes Marco Polo himself who never actually visited Japan.

The intrepid Venetian explorer most likely got his information secondhand during his time in China. Japan did export gold and other valuable commodities to the wealthy Song dynasty, but the country might as well have been a different planet to Marco. It would be well over 200 years before the first Westerners stepped foot in the Land of the Rising Sun with the arrival of Portuguese merchants in 1543. One can only imagine what must have been going through their heads considering the tall tales they had heard.

While Japan is no longer an isolated country, most Westerners still have no real conception around what’s actually happening here. Urban legends like there being vending machines which sell used panties on every street corner are usually based on outdated information in an attempt to make Japan seem more “weird” than it really is. In more serious cases, Westerners with certain political agendas will attempt to use Japan to prove their talking points around immigration, race, and other shibboleths despite having very little real understanding of Japanese society. Just this month, people on Anglosphere social media went wild with blatantly false claims that the country’s new prime minister was pursuing “mass deportations” of foreigners.

Despite the invention of the internet giving us 24/7 updates on everything going on in the world, misinformation around Japan continues to run rampant. Our shift into an online landscape has only made this problem worse, and it’s enough of an issue that I felt compelled to write about why fake news around Japan is so widespread.

Few qualified people know Japanese and English

The obvious language barrier is the biggest immediate obstacle to getting reliable information from Japan. One habit of mine that I’ve basically done since the day I first arrived is turning the television on when I get home so I can see what stories are being discussed in the zeitgeist. Even with the internet, TV is still how the majority of Japanese people get their news and popular variety shows which cover trending social topics are extremely popular.

Unsurprisingly, all of this is in Japanese. If you’re a monolingual English speaker, you’ll inevitably have to rely on translations which only give you a small sliver of daily events in Japan. Sure, you can go to the BBC, The New York Times, or any “respected” publication for some of the highlights, such as the results of major elections, but most of these places aren’t going to report on stories of local interest which give a better sense of how the average Japanese person might feel about things or what news items are gripping the country.

I’ve previously written about why Japanese people don’t speak English, but the same holds true in reverse. Japanese is a notoriously tough language to learn for foreigners, and the few who do learn it rarely get to a level where they can regularly interact with untranslated resources. The pool of people who are functionally fluent in Japanese, employed to produce professional commentary on Japan, and are good writers to boot is, as you can probably guess, infinitesimally small. That’s not the end of it either. Within this narrow criteria, there are plenty of grifters in the small world of Japan coverage who have outrage to push and narratives to sell. You will be shocked how deep this rabbit hole can get after reading how much of Tokyo Vice was made up.

Of course, there are exceptions. The Japan Times under its current editorial leadership has done a far better job producing articles on more esoteric, but still fascinating Japan-related subjects compared to its direction in the past. I highly recommend journalist Alex Martin’s work. Tobias Harris, who wrote a fantastic book on the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is the gold standard for English-language commentary on Japanese politics and his Substack publicaition Observing Japan comes highly recommend. Another reliable commentator is Gearoid Reidy, a voice of reason amid a sea of fear-mongering with his well-written columns.

Because most on both sides of the Pacific don’t really know each other’s languages, however, a significant gap in knowledge remains. Some people who got famous writing about Japan like Pico Iyer barely even speak Japanese! As Damien Flanagan argued a few years ago, this does not immediately disqualify you from cultural commentary, but I would still push back and say that it does cast doubt on your reliability as an expert if you can’t even speak to a country’s people in their own language. Considering how discourse around Japan can quickly devolve into a game of Chinese whispers due to a lack of linguistic knowledge, you really need to take the time to separate the wheat from the chaff in deciding whose opinions are reliable.

Japanese soft power creates self-proclaimed “experts”

For the handful of genuine experts who produce insights on Japan, there are also the weeaboos who fashion themselves as “experts.” Presently, global interest in Japan is probably at an all-time high. The weak yen is drawing in millions of tourists from across the world, and the popularity of “soft power” from anime and video games means that more people are paying attention to this country than ever. Yet many of these observations are often surface level and not very meaningful.

Read more

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks are nearly a quarter of a century behind us. Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the worst day in U.S. history, which is a bittersweet milestone that I don’t think enough people grasp the significance of. That is especially true with younger generations of Americans who have no memories of 9/11 and, increasingly, no understanding of how much those events shaped the current trajectory of the 21st century.

I wasn’t old enough to remember 9/11 itself as someone born toward the end of 1997, but I distinctly recall growing up in the 2000s with the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars as a constant backdrop of my childhood. With that said, I didn’t grasp the full context and significance of 9/11 until I seriously started studying international affairs much later. I eventually spent so much time researching the subject that I was able to write about 9/11 professionally for outlets like The Japan Times and bring attention to the lesser known aspects of it on social media.

It was with that background that I finally made an auspicious pilgrimage to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum yesterday, having booked a tour of the premises with my wife while we were visiting New York City this week. I would have gone today, but the area is largely closed to family members of victims for their own personal remembrance ceremony. Yet even on the day before 9/11, one immediately feels the weight of history in the air.

The main memorial site of two reflecting pools symbolizing where the Twin Towers once stood is easily the most peaceful location in New York City. Crashing sounds of water landing on the granite basins below create an aural effect that drowns out the noises of traffic and airplanes, while all those present know that they’re treading on sacred land. The 400 swamp white oak trees, native to New York, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, are planted throughout the grounds because they represent victims from all three locations of 9/11. Those are the kinds of careful details that went into the arduous process of creating this special place.

Here amid the hustle and bustle of the busiest metropolis on earth is a space dedicated entirely to solemn reflection. Every single victim’s name is written on the panels installed around the reflecting pools and grouped not by alphabetical order, but in careful consideration of the friends and colleagues they worked with every day in the towers. Those who were on board the hijacked planes, at the Pentagon, or even killed in the original 1993 World Trade Center bombing are also included. With their names physically carved out via hollow gaps in the metal, an endless supply of flowers and photographs from loved ones is always present.

The adjacent museum provides one of the most exhaustive overviews of 9/11 a person could ask for. It was set to close early in preparation of today’s memorial and the general admission line was completely packed with visitors, but we were able to gain instant access due to booking group tickets ahead of time. I’m glad things turned out this way because visiting will not be an experience I’ll easily forget. Despite knowing the general timeline of 9/11 pretty well at this point, little can really prepare you for how emotionally draining the exhibits are.

Everything from the largest steel beam to the smallest scrap of office paper is meticulously preserved and given a full explanation. You should plan to spend a full afternoon here due to the crowds, but also because there’s simply so much information to fully process. I was reminded of similar museums in Japan dedicated to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but this one goes into even more extensive detail. It’s heavy stuff that many will find difficult to come to terms with, but not facing the gravity of what happened is how history becomes forgotten.

Indeed, precisely how the history of 9/11 should be remembered is itself a central theme of the entire site. The memorial was not established until 2011, while the museum finally opened to the public in 2014. With thousands of people affected and the family members of the deceased being a powerful lobbying force, creating a place that properly honored everyone connected to 9/11 was no easy task. I walked away with the impression that they did as good of a job as could be expected.

In my time researching 9/11, I’ve come across horrible photographs of “jumpers” — the colloquial term for people forced to make the impossible decision to leap from the World Trade Center and receive an instant death or be burned alive in the smoldering flames where they stood. I’ve seen other disturbing images of severed human limbs on the streets below and Pentagon victims reduced to literal ash. With 9/11 having taken place in a pre-smartphone, pre-social media world, those with cameras were very selective in what they shot and the most unsettling media was often cut for broadcast on television or print in newspapers.

You won’t find any explicit pictures of gore at the 9/11 museum, but there was obviously no way such material would ever be widely shown to the public. I’m of mixed feelings around this choice because while I understand the need to keep things to a certain level out of taste, it comes close to whitewashing just how bad things truly were on that day. In the years after 9/11, we’ve certainly seen some misguided attempts to make it more “palatable” to Americans.

For quite some time there was this frustrating post-9/11 trend to remove any depictions of the Twin Towers in pop culture. Movies like The Bourne Identity and video games like Metal Gear Solid 2 had their plots significantly altered, which made some sense given the sociopolitical climate of the time. Far more unacceptable was censors feeling the need to airbrush any World Trade Center references out of media that already existed such as in Home Alone 2 and The Simpsons. Considering that al-Qaeda’s goal was to morally weaken Americans and break their spirits, there’s an irony that in some ways they got their wish with how taboo the Twin Towers became.

Thankfully, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum largely succeeds in striking a balance between proper historical documentation and conveying the gravity of what happened without needing to resort to provocative imagery. There’s a time and a place for more shocking photographs, but those are probably best left to online archives that can be freely accessed. For a public-facing site that’s primarily intended for general education, I doubt much could be done better. You can’t teach people if you scare them off.

The 9/11 Archive on Reddit is the definitive online source for all things 9/11. It is run by mods who are dedicated toward covering it from all possible angles, and their tireless efforts have allowed for “lost media” around the events to be saved. Many videos that were taken on that day remain in government possession, stuck on aging analog tapes, or have remained forgotten in private collections. Some material is locked away behind layers of legal tape, but much of it only needs to be found and properly digitized. In 2024, an hour of new World Trade Center collapse footage was posted online by a Japanese tourist who was in New York City on September 11, 2001, but he never publicly released it until 23 years later. Who knows what else is out there?

Still, we also need physical places like the 9/11 Memorial & Museum to preserve history more than ever now. The current digital landscape of fake news is causing many to doubt their very eyes whenever new photographs or videos are posted online. Conspiracy theories around 9/11 have always existed of course, but the rapid evolution of AI will only make separating fact from fiction all the more difficult in the years and decades to come. There will come a time around the end of the century when the public remembers 9/11 like the sinking of the Titanic — a devastating tragedy in its time, but a distant memory after all those who survived it are no longer around. “Never Forget” can only have real meaning if the record is made now.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain articles such as these are exclusively for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

In the opening of My Fair Lady, Henry Higgins asks why the English can’t teach their children how to speak. If he happened to visit Japan for some reason, I’m sure the phonetics professor would also wonder why the Japanese can’t teach their children how to speak English either. After all, it’s the de facto lingua franca of the world, the lingo of global commerce, and often the default tongue even for people who speak a different language natively. English is such an integral part to modern society, you’d have to make an active attempt to avoid it.

Or you could be born in Japan. If you’ve ever visited this country, you’ll quickly become aware of the startling reality that English fluency is almost nonexistent. Out of all the countries recorded, the English Proficiency Index places Japan in last place at number 92 with neighboring South Korea even beating them at number 50. Vietnam, Bangladesh, Brazil, Malaysia, and others were all ranked higher. To be fair, China is only one spot above Japan at 91, but we’ll give them a pass considering how they basically own the entire world now. Doing that *without* prioritizing English language skills is almost its own achievement, probably because our CCP overlords are plotting a Mandarin takeover.

But what’s happening here in Japan? How could a country with so much soft power and economic influence be more or less removed from the Anglosphere when most neighboring Asian countries appear to be doing better? It’s a complicated picture and largely the result of a combination of factors that are unlikely to change anytime soon. From bad teaching methods to cultural barriers that to this day have never really gone away, here are a few reasons why most Japanese people don’t speak English.

English education in Japan sucks

For my fellow Americans, think back to your time in high school when you were forced to take Spanish classes. Apart from asking where the library is and half-hearted attempts at trying to wrap your head around a different word order, do you really remember anything your underpaid teacher taught you? Of course not. You had zero interest in being there and spent most of the time staring at the clock until the dismissal bell rang.

Now imagine doing that for about ten years and you basically have English education in Japan. In fact, it’s arguably even worse. For as ineffective as your foreign language classes probably were, I’m assuming you had a qualified instructor who was a native speaker or at the very least someone with enough professional fluency to teach the material. That’s the bare minimum, right? Not so over here in the Land of the Rising Sun.

There’s a famous sketch by the late comedian Ken Shimura parodying the average English class at a Japanese public school. In a hilarious reversal of roles, the “students” are all real native speakers of English and good ol’ Shimura-sensei is the witless Japanese instructor who insists on “correcting” their pronunciation. Obviously there’s a ton of exaggeration involved here, but the general premise isn’t that far off from reality. Instead of actually teaching the proper sounds of English, most students will end up speaking some garbled Japanified version.

By the time English education starts in Japan, which is around the 3rd grade of primary school, children have already internalized most sounds of their native language. There’s still time for more development, but that would require a teacher with a native or near-native accent for proper instruction. Since most Japanese teachers are simply relying on rote memorization and other ineffective methods from stiff textbooks while they also have to juggle a bunch of other subjects, you probably begin to understand why there’s little room for improvement.

“But what about all those foreigners who come to Japan to teach English?” you may ask. This subject itself is worthy of its own piece, but to make a long story short, very few of these people are actually qualified to teach much of anything. Most of them are hired as ALTs, or assistant language teachers. As their title implies, their job is to assist the actual instructor in the room. This mostly comes down to providing “native” examples of English speech. Some ALTs play a more active role than others, but “human tape recorder” and “dancing monkey” are some of the nicer epithets that get thrown around online.

Being an ALT typically only requires a BA and a pulse, so the pay is low and the work is repetitive. When you pair them with a Japanese teacher that barely knows how to speak the language themselves, you have an extremely ineffective education system that does nothing to improve anyone’s level of English. Naturally, there are certified English teachers in Japan who know the language and have the right qualifications, but that is unfortunately not what most kids in this country will grow up having. By the time they reach university where such educators would be more plentiful, they’ve already gone through a decade of terrible instruction that’s very hard to unlearn.

Learning English is tougher than you think for Japanese people

Some might disagree with me on this one, but I truly believe that learning English for a Japanese person is about as difficult as learning Japanese is for a native English speaker. Anyone who has been on either side of this knows how radically different grammar, word order, and pronunciation are between the two languages. Japanese and Chinese at least have somewhat of a shared written script and Japanese and Korean have near-identical grammar. Romance languages have their quirks, but they aren’t that hard to wrap your head around if you’re only familiar with English.

Japanese and English though are like oil and water. While the former has adopted tons of loanwords from the latter, you quickly realize that there’s often a vast gap between their original sounds and meaning. That’s just on a vocabulary level. Japanese people have to unlearn everything they know about the way they were raised speaking which is why English grammar is so alien to them. Writing is no picnic either. You might think kanji are difficult for foreign learners of Japanese, but remember that English has odd spellings, silent letters, weird letter combinations, and rules around capitalization.

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My grandmother was five years old when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Manchuria on Sept. 18, 1931. While the traditional start date of World War II is typically associated with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, you really can trace the beginning of the overall global conflict to what was happening in Northeast Asia long before.

Hailing from Shenyang, my family lived under the Japanese occupation like millions of other Chinese. My grandmother’s father was the chauffeur for a high-ranking official, which gave her family a better living than most. She and her sister learned Japanese at a good school and even visited Tokyo during World War II to record music with the NHK Symphony Orchestra as a child singer. As all that was happening, my great-grandfather was apparently stealing gasoline to sell the black market. Somehow he didn’t get caught, and they were lucky enough to survive the war.

Emperor Hirohito’s official proclamation of surrender happened 80 years ago to this day on Aug. 15, 1945. The now defeated Japan would officially sign the official documents a few weeks later on Sept. 2, bringing an end to the bloodiest conflict in human history. My relatives were some of the lucky ones. Up to 20 million Chinese are estimated to have died in the conflict. Depending on the criteria used, the worldwide total deaths could have been as high as 75 million.

Grandmother lived to the ripe age of 96, passing away of COVID in 2022 surrounded by loved ones in the United States. She had not just survived World War II, but the Great Depression beforehand, the Cultural Revolution afterward, and practically all of the turbulent events that China went through in the middle of the 20th century. I had the privilege to hear her stories firsthand, which is something I will always be grateful for. When I look back on her life, the realization hits me that my generation will probably be the last to hold conscious memories of speaking to the World War II generation.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Recent updates from 2024 reported that just about 66,100 WWII veterans were still alive in the United States out of the 16.4 million who participated in the conflict. The real number is assuredly lower now considering that about 131 die every week. It is unclear how many surviving vets there are worldwide, but the total number is somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000. I remember being in middle school when the last surviving American veteran of the First World War, Frank Buckles, passed away in 2011 at 110 years old. Florence Green, a British woman who was believed to be the last known service member of the entire conflict, followed in 2012.

As of this writing, Ilie Ciocan from Romania is the oldest living WWII veteran at the astounding age of 112. Considering that the youngest people who served are in their late 90s and the age patterns of veterans from WWI, we can probably expect the final WWII vets who achieve the greatest feats of maximum human longevity to pass away in the 2030s. The last men to tell their stories will be those who lied about their age to enlist or the ones from countries where teenagers were drafted to fight. Beyond soldiers, there are over 200,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust still alive. Many of them were children liberated from the camps. With their median age today being 87, a small portion will likely live into the 2040s or even 2050s. Regardless, 90% of all Holocaust survivors will pass away in the next 15 years.

Eight decades on from the end of WWII, we have reached a turning point when it comes to public memory and direct connections with the men and women who sacrificed everything to create the world we live in now. Those who participated in the war or are old enough to remember what life was like before, during, and immediately after it are literally a dying breed that will soon be gone forever. Being born in 1997 and growing up in the early 2000s, my default image of WWII vets for the longest time was people in their 70s and 80s. Elderly folks, but ones you felt would be around forever to offer pearls of wisdom and sage advice. The passage of time, unfortunately, does not work that way.

One should remember that this is a generation born when widespread radio was still a relatively new invention and the closest thing to a modern computer was a tabulating machine. After being raised on the economic struggles of the Great Depression, they were thrust into a world tearing itself apart through territorial invasions waged by empires, rapidly changing borders, mass slaughter, and eventually the invention of nuclear weapons. The sheer amount of people who were killed by the end of World War II is a staggering pile of corpses that hardly anyone today can comprehend. Those who lived through that era then witnessed the decades of profound historical and social shift which brought the 20th century into the 21st.

It would of course be ahistorical to idealize the WWII generation as uniquely better than those who came after them. They were human beings prone to the same follies and weaknesses which still exist today. The tyranny of the Nazis and the atrocities of the Holocaust were not solely due to Adolf Hitler, but the culmination of antisemitic attitudes and other social conditioning which had existed among Germans long before. Italian and Japanese fascism were similarly the result of destructive collectivist attitudes shared by enough people in their respective societies. Scholars have spent decades examining the underlying causes of WWII, but the era overall showed the best and worst parts of the human condition.

While many veterans on the Allied side have regaled the world with their stories, those on the Axis side are far less willing. For quite obvious reasons, German and Japanese veterans are reluctant to admit their part in being on the wrong side of a war which killed millions of people. Some were drafted and had simply had little choice, while others feel immense shame for being duped by their governments and the social climate around them at the time. Even so, what they have to say still matters. A recent piece published in The New York Times highlighted the rare perspectives of surviving Japanese veterans. None of the men interviewed glorified their time serving in the war and instead expressed hopes that future generations do not go down the same path.

My position as an American of Chinese descent living in Japan today would have certainly been unthinkable 80 years ago. This was a country that bombed Pearl Harbor and waged a completely unjustified war of aggression against its Asian neighbors, yet it is now a stalwart ally of the United States and among the best examples of liberal democracy in the world. No one in 1945 believed that Japan would be able to rise from the ashes of its utter destruction into the nation it is now, but it defied all the odds. As with modern Germany, that kind of transformation was not the result of happenstance. It could only have happened by learning from the mistakes of the past and actively wanting to build a better future.

When the last of the WWII generation departs from this world, we will only have the memories they leave behind in testimonies, photographs, and film. It is imperative that we preserve as much as possible before all of them fade into history. If you are fortunate enough to know anyone who served and they are still alive, treasure all the time you have with them. The experiences and stories they have to share will be invaluable long after they are gone.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain articles such as these are exclusively for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

With 37 million international tourists visiting Japan in 2024, it’s safe to say that this country is at the peak of its global popularity. A trip to Japan to millennials and Gen Z might as well be what a trip to Europe was for their parents; the kind of aspiration you should put on their bucket list because everyone seems to be doing it. Japanese soft power being stronger than ever is undoubtedly one of the biggest contributing factors to this phenomenon, and when you pair that with the weak yen, why wouldn’t you want to come to Japan?

Of course, going to Japan as a tourist is worlds apart from actually living in Japan as a long-term resident. There’s a saying I often hear which I’ve always thought was a rather banal observation: “I’d love to visit X country, but I could never live there.” This is a trite thing to say because it’s only stating the obvious. Tourists are typically shown the best bits of a country and given experiences specifically catered to them as temporary guests. Living anywhere different from what you’re typically familiar with is of course going to be a challenge. After all, the point of travel is largely for pleasure and escapism.

With that said, I do think the gap between tourists and residents in Japan has only grown larger in the last few years. Inbound travelers largely congregate in the big three cities — Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto — and don’t really see much else of the country. Those places of course can provide unique experiences, but most tourists are going to end up seeing and doing the same things on nearly identical itineraries. Social media has especially contributed to overtourism, turning previously special locations into over-congested nightmares. The average Japanese person dealing with rising costs of living and stagnant wages has no reason to go to these places.

So what’s it like to actually live in Japan when you leave the tourist traps? In 2023, I wrote a piece explaining why I chose to move here. In 2024, I discussed what foreign commentators often get wrong about Japan. This time around, I aim to provide an updated assessment on what the current state of things are in the Land of the Rising Sun. Is Japan an attractive place to make your home in 2025? Is the anti-foreigner sentiment real or imagined? And how exactly does one make a living here? Well, I’m still trying to figure out that last question myself as a grad student reaching the end of his PhD, but I’ll draw on the experiences of many others I’ve known.

In any case, here are some thoughts that have been on my mind lately.

Moving to Japan is relatively easy (if you know what you want)

The good news is that if you’re interested in moving to Japan, it’s arguably the easiest it’s ever been. We’re long over the days of the pandemic when prospective foreign visitors were barred from entering the country due to the travel ban, so if you simply want to step foot onto Japanese soil as a tourist, go ahead. Japan has visa-free travel agreements with 73 countries, so chances are high that this probably applies to you. Most of these allow a maximum stay of 90 days.

However, don’t forget this crucial point: you *cannot* work in Japan while on a tourist visa. That should go without saying, but many with the time and cash to burn in this country for an extended period of time are sometimes under the mistaken impression that they can come here as a tourist and simply find work afterward. It doesn’t work that way and you’re most likely going to set yourself up for some legal trouble if you attempt it. You can certainly look for jobs and gauge what places are hiring while you visit on holiday, but the process of securing a work visa will almost assuredly require you to return to your home country.

I highly recommend at least visiting Japan before deciding to move here. A short holiday will obviously only give you a very skewed perspective, but it’s better than going in completely blind. You can gain some insights into how things are done and if the pace of life in the bigger cities is something you might be able to adapt to. Try to take the time to go off the beaten path as well and visit locations most tourists tend to be unaware of.1

The easiest time to attempt life in this country is when you’re young and still trying to figure things out. I first arrived in Japan when I was 19 thanks to an internship and study abroad program offered by my university which lasted a collective total of 15 months, so I strongly recommend seeking out those kinds of opportunities if you’re around that age. Trust me, there’s no better feeling than being in your early 20s while living abroad in a foreign country. After that though, it gets more complicated the older you get.

I returned to Japan via a scholarship for master’s in international relations provided by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology or MEXT. It was a very generous stipend, but unfortunately the Japanese government may be looking toward ending such programs over the next few years. That’s a topic for another day, but if you were planning on coming to Japan via the scholarship and higher education route, I suggest you start doing your research now. Most of these funding opportunities accept candidates up to the age of 35.

Beyond that, many choose the English teaching path like the JET program to get their foot in the door, but as I’ll explain in the next section, you shouldn’t bet on this being a sustainable, permanent gig. Instead, the best piece of advice I can give is to ask yourself what you would like to do in life regardless if you were living in Japan or not. One viable option is looking for employment at a company within your own country that could lead to work in Japan down the road. Start learning Japanese, build your portfolio, and have the marketable skills that make you an attractive candidate for being stationed in Japan.

The language bit in particular is non-negotiable if you want to have a successful life here.2 With Japan’s declining population, the government is currently looking for “specified skilled workers” to fill important jobs in fields like construction, aviation, and agriculture. This is not the route I personally chose, but there are no shortage of open occupations in Japan. This is why I believe it’s “relatively easy” to move to Japan now. If you already have the qualifications and a solid plan for the industry you want to get into, knowing Japanese on top of that should practically make you a shoe-in for a work visa.

It’s still certainly possible to move to Japan in your late 30s and 40s, but by that point you have to consider any existing responsibilities and commitments in your own country. Are you married? Do you have kids? Does it makes sense to change your career? The more of these things tying you down, the less likely moving to Japan long-term becomes. If you’re already doing pretty well and you have the disposable income, it might make more sense to instead look toward staying in Japan for only a couple of months on an annual basis. As long as you don’t overstay your tourist visa, there’s nothing preventing you from taking a yearly holiday here.

Staying in Japan is hard (and English teaching probably isn’t a career)

Getting a work visa to come to Japan is the initial hurdle, but it’s arguably the easiest part. What comes next is deciding how long you will stay in Japan and the steps required if you want to make it your permanent home. Foreigners have risen to around 3.8 million people or roughly 3% of Japan’s population — a considerable increase from the numbers seen over 20 years ago. With that said, this data needs to be viewed within the proper context.

Of those foreigners, less than 919,000 are classified as permanent residents. The rest fall into categories like temporary trainees and students who will stay in Japan for a few years, but will return to their home countries. Reasons for leaving are numerous, but they mostly come down to hitting a career ceiling and being unable to fully adjust to the culture. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of immigrants to Japan come from neighboring countries. Most domestic discussions around “gaikokujin” are pretty much referring to the thousands of Chinese, Vietnamese, and other Asian workers, not the far smaller number of Westerners who happen to come here.

What does this mean? Well for starters, it’s generally easier for other Asians to adapt to another Asian culture. The number of people from Anglosphere countries has also increased, but they tend to be short-term expats who ultimately leave after being unable to fully integrate. The longer you stay in Japan, the more you have to become accustomed to how things are done here. As I’ve often emphasized, learning the language is just the first barrier. You also need to gain cultural fluency in understanding social cues, nuances, and general societal rules that can seem downright arbitrary and pointless. All of that can take years to understand just on a base level, so seriously reconsider coming to Japan if you aren’t ready to commit.

So what if you’re able to get over those cultural differences and you’re doing a decent job gradually picking up the language? You then have to consider what your future is going to be in Japan beyond whatever entry level position got you here. Expat life on convenience store food in a one bedroom apartment is fine in your early to mid 20s, but that can’t last forever. The majority of Anglosphere expats start in Japan on English teaching because most of those jobs only require a BA and a pulse. I cannot emphasize this point enough: get out of this field as soon as you can into something else.

This subject too is worthy of its own article, but I’ll give you the abridged version here. English teaching in Japan, apart from qualified instructors employed at places like universities, is a career dead end. For Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs), wages have stayed stagnant between ¥230,000 to ¥300,000 per month for years. With how weak the yen is, that’s roughly $1500 USD to $2000 USD a month. That’s barely enough to get by on in rural areas, while you would be in a state of near-poverty in major cities like Tokyo. Some places offer better wages than others and you might get subsidized housing if you’re lucky, but there’s a finite ceiling to how much you can make. Forget about having any kind of savings on what’s essentially a fast food worker’s salary.

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Note: This column is spoiler free.

In his lukewarm review of Tim Burton’s Batman, Roger Ebert called the 1989 cinematic take on the Caped Crusader a “depressing experience” and poised the question if the opposite of comic book is a “tragic book.” While I disagree with Ebert’s assessment of the film (I’m personally a big fan of Michael Keaton as Batman), I’ve always kept his review in mind with how seriously the superhero film genre has taken itself in recent years. Marvel and especially DC have opted to portray their characters in as drab a light as possible, following the same predictable story templates and seemingly forgetting that people read comics back in the day for their colorful worlds.

While it can’t escape all the tired modern tropes of the genre, James Gunn’s Superman is unapologetically a classic superhero movie that comes closest to the vision Richard Donner had for the Man of Tomorrow back in 1978. I wouldn’t consider myself a Zack Snyder hater by any means, but this brighter take is definitely what I prefer seeing of Superman. It gets the rebooted cinematic DC Universe off to a promising start, and the overall vibes are much closer to how most of the world views the iconic American hero. Well, it’s pretty debatable now if Gunn and DC still even consider Superman quintessentially “American” apart from scoring some culture war points, but more on that controversy later.

To get the good things out of the way, Superman wisely chooses to not waste the audience’s time with yet another origin story or a first act full of tedious exposition. Like any comic book you would take off the newsstand, the opening text brings everyone up to speed with this universe’s superheroes (referred to here as “metahumans”) and we cut to the action straight away. Arguably too much is happening, but I appreciated how Gunn sets up the lore and characters. The costumes look fantastic, the CGI is pretty good, and “fun” is the first word that came to mind as I was leaving the cinema. That’s what a Superman movie should be, right?

I wish I could end the review there, but the culmination of enough small nitpicks results in Superman being only a good superhero film instead of a great one which can be put in the same conversation of Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight, Logan, and Richard Donner’s two films featuring the Man of Steel. The biggest flaw is ironically with Superman himself. David Corenswet looks the part visually with his rugged good looks, Hollywood physique, and the character’s trademark hair curl, but I felt taken out of the moment as soon as he opened his mouth. Apart from the voice being too husky and something off about the cadence, Corenswet in my eyes is closer to a good Superman cosplayer as opposed to an actor who convincingly embodies the character.

Like Sean Connery to James Bond and Hugh Jackman to Wolverine, Christopher Reeve will always be the definitive version of Superman. That’s obviously an impossibly high bar to follow, but what made his performance so memorable was Reeve convincingly pulling off the duality of the character. Many have argued that Batman is the real person and Bruce Wayne is the mask, but in the case of Superman, Clark Kent is indisputably the assumed persona. Kal-El is an alien from the planet Krypton and whatever civilian form he takes on Earth is meant to disguise that. Reeve certainly understood that assignment, but so did succeeding Supermen over the decades like Tim Daly and Henry Cavill.

In Gunn’s Superman, Clark Kent is only on screen for a few minutes and the ease in which people seem to accept Lois Lane dating Superman almost makes you wonder what the point of the character’s secret identity here is in the first place. I don’t think Corenswet is a bad actor, but I don’t buy him as the timid news reporter in what little we see. Even as Superman himself, he’s not necessarily that convincing as a the do-gooder boy scout either. He has his moments, but in other scenes Corenswet’s Superman comes across more as a whiny teenager who sulks and needs help from others rather than someone full of boundless positivity and optimism. A few of his lines could have benefited from additional takes.

Superman is admittedly difficult to write since he’s essentially a near-invincible demigod, but James Gunn seems to have wanted to be the opposite extreme of Zack Snyder in having him get beaten up as much as possible. The film was supposedly inspired by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s All-Star Superman comic, though I don’t see much resemblance apart from a few aesthetic choices. Having read it in full before writing this column, I can confidently say that the two works are vastly different takes on Superman. Morrison understood the character’s psychology and personal flaws much better than Gunn did, which makes me wish it was closer to the film we ultimately got.

Instead, we’ve been delivered another James Gunn superhero movie warts and all. Taking a page from his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel, you can expect quippy dialogue, humor that lands about two-third of the time, fast-paced editing, and charmingly bubblegum retro aesthetics. Gunn leans dangerously close to annoyingly cringe Gen X writing when his excesses aren’t reigned in, but Superman thankfully avoids having any notable eye-rolling moments. The Justice Gang (essentially the spiritual successor to the Guardians) consisting of Hawkgirl, Mr. Terrific, and Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern provides most of the comedy. Kendra Saunders, Edi Gathegi, and Nathan Fillion all have great chemistry together and I ironically enjoyed them considerably more than the titular protagonist.

If I sound overly harsh toward David Corenswet, I will say that I think there’s still plenty of time for him to get more used to the role in future DC films. He is by no means an awful Superman and I see further potential in him. What will undoubtedly be more offensive to purist audiences is a certain storytelling decision around Superman’s Kryptonian parents. I won’t get into it for the purposes of spoilers, but you can count me in the camp of fans who strongly disagree with what route Gunn chose. While it isn’t anywhere as bad as what Rian Johnson did to Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi, it follows a similar pattern of Hollywood’s tedious obsession with “subverting expectations” and deconstruction.

On a more positive note, Rachel Brosnahan is exactly what I would expect from a Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult even moreso as Lex Luthor. While I wish we could have seen more of Clark Kent, this version of Lois has excellent chemistry with Superman. Hoult’s Lex is also a classically evil comic book villain with his piercing expressions and long monologues of wanting to destroy his nemesis. Morally complex antagonists are fine, but sometimes you just need a bad guy who is unapologetically a scoundrel just because he wants to be one. I look forward to seeing future Superman villains like Brainiac, the Toyman, and Mister Mxyzptlk appearing in this universe one day. Krypto as Kal-El’s canine sidekick is pretty cute too. He’s entirely a CGI character like Eagly in Gunn’s Peacemaker, but the effects are convincingly lifelike and a testament to how far the technology has come.

Despite all the genuinely good things Superman has going for it, the film couldn’t avoid controversy in the weeks leading up to its release. Coverage initially focused on the backlash from Zack Snyder stans who hilariously attempted a “boycott,” but I would chalk that up to a loud minority of teenagers and immature young adults having nothing better to do. The greater dispute came after James Gunn decided to turn his film into more fodder for a culture war via a comment to the press:

“We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants and if you don’t like that, you’re not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way.”

This unsurprisingly caused the MAGA movement to decry Superman as “woke,” even though the movie itself really doesn’t contain any kind of notable political posturing or preachiness. At the same time, something has to be said about Gunn attempting to have his cake and eat it too. Despite claiming that immigrants are “the American way,” Superman has no such references to the character’s iconic catchphrase and in recent years DC has moved toward eliminating it entirely. Both sides of this debate have a kernel of truth to them, but they’re missing the bigger picture.

Gunn is correct when he calls Superman an immigrant. The original creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both from Jewish immigrant families, and Kal-El being a literal alien outsider raised on American values makes the parallels difficult to ignore. You can find works analyzing Superman with that lens from decades ago, so it’s hardly a new concept. What Gunn and other liberals seem to be missing, however, is that Superman is an immigrant who assimilates. Endless compassion for outsiders is not a viable policy and as someone who has extensively written about immigration issues before, I’m not swayed by meaningless calls for “empathy” from elite celebrities who don’t have to deal with the consequences. It was a boneheaded move on Gunn’s part to wade into this debate in the first place.

You can’t go on about the “American way” when your film is quite lacking in the American way department. Gunn’s Superman follows DC as a whole trying to turn the character into a more universal, global hero. To give the MAGA side their dues, an argument can be made that too many in liberal Hollywood have become tone deaf and out of touch with the average American. You can certainly be critical of your own country, but you’ve lost the plot when it devolves into self-flagellation and this idea that one should erase Superman as an iconic hero representing the pinnacle of American values. As an American living abroad, I can confidently say that the rest of the world still associates Superman with the United States. That’s even one of the perceived reasons why the film is only showing modest box office returns overseas.

With all of that said, I’ll praise Superman for being an optimistic mainstream Hollywood picture after so much nihilism and cynicism. The pacing moves a bit too quickly for my liking and I’m not the biggest fan of Gunn’s ADHD-like approach to jumping from scene to scene, but his crowd-pleasing tone is what the character needs right now. I’m in general agreement with Chris Gore over at Film Threat that despite the film’s imperfections, it’s refreshing to see Superman spark some old fashioned comic book nerd debates over its storytelling decisions and that it will likely be most successful with younger audiences.

It’s also worth noting that it wouldn’t be a Superman movie without some blemishes and faults. Richard Donner’s Superman has an incredibly stupid ending and Superman II was infamous for being the odd Frankensteined result of two starkly contrasting visions because of its director switch, yet both are still regarded as classics. The less said about Superman III and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, the better. Superman Returns and Man of Steel have their dedicated fans, but few would argue them as being masterpieces. So really, James Gunn’s Superman is just following tradition. I’m glad that the new DC Universe has arrived with a generally respectable introduction. Whether it can stick the landing from here though is another question.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

The last time I can remember being truly excited for a new video game was nearly ten years ago. It was Sept. 1, 2015 and my first week at the University of Pittsburgh had just started. A GameStop nearby which no longer exists soon became my go-to place to pick up the latest releases before heading home. On this occasion, I walked out with something I was anticipating for years — Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

As I didn’t yet own a PlayStation 4 at the time, it was the inferior PlayStation 3 port which ran at a pretty terrible frame rate and resolution. But it was $10 cheaper and it was still Metal Gear Solid V. As Hideo Kojima’s final (for real this time) mainline entry in his long-running stealth game franchise which started back in 1987, anticipation was unfathomably high.

Even now I continue to associate the first weeks of my college career with MGSV. As I was commuting back and forth between campus and home, my head was full of thoughts of what work I had to do for my courses and the next opportunity I would get to see the next part of Big Boss’ story before his final transformation into the series’ main antagonist. In retrospect, the game had its share of storytelling issues and the feeling that too much had been cut before final release. These quibbles aside, I ended up sinking close to 100 hours into MGSV’s vast open world depiction of Afghanistan.

There have of course been other high profile video game releases since MGSV, but none ever really came close to capturing the same level of my attention. I have a pretty bad habit of starting games and taking forever to finish them, but Hideo Kojima’s work was always different. Whenever I fired up something made by him, it was practically guaranteed I would see it to the end. The worlds he creates consistently have this alluring pull with their strangeness, and you don’t want to stop once he finally lets you take control.

Well, until I got to Death Stranding. Now before you get out your torches and pitchforks, let me preface by saying I don’t hate the game. In fact, I can’t really say I have a strong opinion on it either way as of this writing. That’s because I haven’t finished it. To be more accurate, I’ve only played a few hours of it. Believe me, I’ve tried to do more. After this column goes live, I’ll be embarking on what’s by now probably my fourth serious attempt to get through Death Stranding and give it an honest assessment.

The game has been out since the end of 2019 and the sequel, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach hit store shelves on June 26. That was ample time to get through the first one, but for the life of me I just haven’t been able to. As someone who once considered himself a devoted Kojima acolyte (Kojimacolyte?), such a notion would have been blasphemy to the gamer ten years ago who stayed up until 3 a.m. to get through one more mission in Metal Gear Solid V instead of being well-rested for his morning commute. In sharp contrast to all of that, Death Stranding never clicked with me and its successor is the first new Hideo Kojima game I’m not immediately rushing out to play.

For whatever reason, the story didn’t grab me. Obviously some game narratives take longer to get going than others, but I don’t really find this to be a problem with the first few hours of Kojima’s other games. I wanted to learn more about Gillian Seed’s mysterious past in Snatcher and see Jonathan Ingram adjust to his unfamiliar surroundings in Policenauts. I wanted to infiltrate Shadow Moses Island to rescue the hostages in the first Metal Gear Solid and explore the jungle of Metal Gear Solid 3. The characters of Death Stranding may have similarly ridiculous names to Metal Gear bosses, but I didn’t find myself really caring about them. I’m sure that will gradually change when I eventually try to play it seriously once and for all, but I can already tell that the narrative isn’t going to resonate with me like Kojima’s previous work.

So have I changed or has Hideo Kojima changed? Truthfully, the answer is both. After I wrapped up my time with MGSV, I was genuinely excited for whatever the man would do next. When the first teaser trailer for Death Stranding dropped in 2016, like many I was confused, intrigued, and very much hyped. I had no idea what this game would turn out as, but I regularly followed updates around its development. Yet throughout that time, my own life went through many important milestones.

I moved to Japan for the first time in 2017 for an internship and university study abroad program. In 2018, I moved back to the United States to finish my fourth year at the University of Pittsburgh. In September 2019, two months before Death Stranding was set to release, I once again returned to Japan to begin grad school. Long-time readers of Foreign Perspectives will know the rest, but my father passed away, I finished a master’s, I got married, and I’m currently in the late stages of my doctorate.

I bought Death Stranding at launch, but that coincided with the start of everything I’ve experienced over the last six years. Something else always seemed to come up and my attention was held by other video games. The biggest one for me was Shenmue III, the long-awaited third entry to Yu Suzuki’s epic saga that most believed would never come out. Death Stranding happened to come out at roughly the same period in 2019, but I was always going to prioritize Ryo Hazuki’s quest to avenge his father over anything else. The game had considerable shortcomings and Shenmue IV is looking very unlikely, but that’s a topic for another day.

Even when Death Stranding was re-released on PlayStation 5 in 2021 via its “director’s cut,” I still couldn’t get into the game. I once again tried and failed to make much progress beyond a few hours. I was baffled. What didn’t I like? It wasn’t necessarily the slow-paced package delivery gameplay that was bothering me. I generally like methodical games, as evidenced by my passion for Shenmue and other adventure titles. Even now I’m confident that if I gave Death Stranding a few more hours, I’d probably come around to its gameplay and have a better time than before. But a Hideo Kojima game without a compelling story is like going from a robust sandwich to one with much of the meat removed. Edible, but not fully satisfying. It was around this time that I finally realized something shocking — I had fallen out of love with Hideo Kojima.

Yes, the same gamer who has replayed the Metal Gear series countless times, wrote a novelization of the MSX2 games in high school, has spent hundreds on rare Snatcher memorabilia, and was even part of the fan translation group which brought Policenauts to English-speaking audiences is no longer excited by a new Kojima game. I’m like a Catholic who once regularly attended Mass or a Jew observing kosher suddenly becoming a lapsed believer, only in this case I’m an atheist that has become a lapsed Hideo Kojima fan. So what happened? Well for starters, Death Stranding is not the sole cause, but the culmination of how much his output has moved outside of my personal interests.

Kojima’s best years to me span from the mid-1980s when he began his career at Konami to roughly 2004 with the release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Between all the Metal Gear games, he either directed, wrote, designed, or produced diverse titles from the cyberpunk adventure Snatcher to the anime-inspired robot action game Zone of the Enders. Whether it was the bait-and-switch routine with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’s protagonist or Boktai requiring the use of a special cartridge to literally take advantage of outdoor solar power, Kojima was always pushing the envelop in what video games could do. Some never liked his style to begin with, but few could call him boring.

What I’m about to say may be an unpopular opinion, but I truly believe that Kojima always worked best when he had others around him to reign in his excesses. Back when the original PC-88 version of Snatcher was in development, the man seriously intended to coat the floppy disk in special paint that would smell like blood when activated by the heat of the computer to mimic the feel of the game’s crime scenes. When conceptualizing Metal Gear Solid 3, he at one point wanted the Japanese cast to phonetically record all their lines in Russian to reflect the Soviet setting, but that was obviously not going to happen. Some of his ideas are great, but others rightfully were left on the cutting room floor.

Like George Lucas or Francis Ford Coppola with too many resources at their disposal, Kojima needs other writers, designers, or even company executives to tell him when to dial it down. Even the great Stanley Kubrick who was notorious for his perfectionism and exacting demands worked with dozens of other screenwriters for his stories or relied on the advice of others when he wasn’t sure about something. To make another analogy, I consider Kojima during his time at Konami essentially the lead vocalist of a band. The guitar, bass, and drums are just as important as what immediately catches the listener’s ear. Collaborations of course don’t always lead to success, but I personally subscribe to the belief that Kojima’s stories became less focused after Tomokazu Fukushima stopped being credited as co-writer on his scripts.

All bands eventually break up, but it was a long time coming between Kojima and Konami. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots always felt like a reluctant chronological conclusion to the Metal Gear series since the man never wanted to make it in the first place. He only took on the project as director after immense fan pressure and while it certainly has its moments, both the gameplay and story pale in comparison to the preceding trilogy. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker was a considerable improvement due to its smaller and more intimate scale, something that I wish Kojima would explore more. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, however, went in the opposite direction by going bigger than ever before. This is reflected with its stellar open-world gameplay, but the bare bones story which ended in a whimper was likely due to Kojima’s clear fatigue with the franchise.

Inevitably, Kojima was always going to move on and form his own studio to make the games he truly wanted without the demands of gray suit executives. It was clear from all the drama around Metal Gear Solid V’s development that his time at Konami had run its course. I suspect that the game was getting too ambitious and expensive, but NDAs prevent us from knowing the full truth of what happened. Either way, I don’t blame Kojima for wanting to leave if he felt creatively constrained. With that said, Metal Gear will forever be tied to him as his greatest contribution to the world. Do most people really prefer Sting’s solo work to what he did with The Police? “Russians” is a good song, but his legacy is always going to be “Every Breath You Take” and “Message in a Bottle.”

I admit that this is entirely a personal problem, but what Kojima does these days simply doesn’t interest me. It’s not like I want him to go back to Metal Gear either. I’d very much like to see him do another adventure game like Policenauts or an RPG like Boktai, though I know it’s probably never going to happen. Kojima instead seems more content to pal around with Hollywood celebrities and have them feature in his games. As a well-known cinephile, I’m sure this was always his dream short of making a movie himself. Again, good for him and I’m happy that he’s living the life. After nearly 40 years in the video game industry, the man deserves to rest on his laurels with the level of fame he has reached. It’s just that the games he’s making now don’t seem to have the magic of what came before.

I’m not sure what to make of OD, an upcoming horror title announced for Xbox nearly two years ago that’s supposed to use cloud technology. Given my strong advocacy for media that actually lasts, this alone raises several red flags apart from its pretentious teaser trailer that can barely be called a preview. Physint is set to be his return to the stealth game genre, but it’s literally years away and I hope it’ll be more than just a callback to Metal Gear. Kojima’s focus for the time being is OD and the upcoming film adaptation of Death Stranding, which doesn’t exactly inspire much enthusiasm within me.

It gives me no pleasure to write such a pessimistic column about an artist whose work I was once so enamored with. If there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this though, it’s that neither creators nor consumers stay in the same place forever. Tastes and interests inevitably change over time. Those on the producing side especially will move on to greener pastures if that’s where their inspiration lies. I hope that one day I’ll be able to appreciate Death Stranding more and relight my passion for Hideo Kojima’s work, but it’s also perfectly fine if that never happens. I’m content with the years of enjoyment I’ve gotten out of his other games, and I only wish the man himself continued success producing the art he sees fit.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

True crime is one of my lesser-known guilty pleasures. Ever since I was a child, I’ve always been fascinated by strange disappearances, unsolved murders, and even a serial killer or two. There’s something about the unexplained and macabre that keeps me up at night, apart from when I’m not thinking about my next deadline or article to write. Geopolitics, Star Wars, and obscure foreign films no one has ever heard of aren’t the limits of my interests. I often wonder if that alleged photo of Tara Calico is real or not too.

At the same time, true crime is a lot like the horror film genre. You have to wade through a lot of schlock and terribly produced content to get to the stuff that’s worth your time. YouTube has gotten especially lazy with this sort of thing, with everyone and their mother fashioning themselves as an online sleuth who knows the answers to bizarre mysteries that aren’t actually mysteries. It’s reached the point where some channels don’t even try anymore — many are just AI voiceovers reading a script generated by ChatGPT. I’ll save my ire toward artificial intelligence destroying art and making everyone dumber for another day though.

Apart from YouTube and podcasts, the other main outlet for true crime is Netflix. Being a professional media company, overall standards for their documentaries are obviously higher, but there’s still plenty of rubbish programming. It seems that everyone has tried to ape the style of Making a Murderer, a popular series which came out a decade ago and was later revealed to have its own problems with bias. Many of these shows demonstrate considerable issues with how they frame their subject matter and some eschew the “true crime” label entirely. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was a straight up dramatization of its titular cannibal serial killer, sparking controversy around whether it was exploiting the horrific experiences of Dahmer’s victims.

So it was with much trepidation that I dove into American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders expecting another tired Netflix true crime documentary with all the cliches, but walked away pleasantly surprised at what it accomplished. Across four episodes, director Zachary Treitz and his journalist friend Christian Hansen try to make sense of the mysterious 1991 death of Danny Casolaro. To make a long and very convoluted story short, the freelance writer had arrived in Martinsburg, West Virginia supposedly with the intention of meeting with a source who was to assist him on a story about “The Octopus” — a sprawling international cabal allegedly tied to the highest echelons of the U.S government with its fingers in everything from drug trafficking to assassinations.

If this spy novel-esque story couldn’t get any stranger, everything came to a screeching halt after Casolaro was found dead at the Sheraton. Housekeeping staff discovered him in the room’s bathtub with his wrists deeply slashed a dozen times and blood splattered everywhere. With no signs of a struggle outside the bathroom and a farewell note from Casolaro, police quickly ruled the affair a suicide. Yet even back in 1991, many who knew the intrepid reporter were not convinced and news stations across the country began raising questions around what actually happened.

For one thing, Casolaro was said to have been very squeamish around blood. He likely would have chosen a different method over something so gruesome if he was serious about taking his own life. In the weeks before his death, the man additionally told his family to not believe any reports of suicide. While none of that alone is proof of murder, police did not find the briefcase of notes that Casolaro constantly carried with him. Their subsequent investigation left out critical testimony from a witness who claimed to have seen someone visit his room and much of what he did during the final hours of life remains unclear.

Central to American Conspiracy is the parallel story of Christian Hansen who is shown dedicating over a decade of his life toward this case. Some viewers may question the decision to turn this documentary into a personal story, but it becomes apparent that there is a point. Whether Casolaro ended his own life or was murdered, his pursuit of uncovering a grand conspiracy and stepping on the toes of powerful people played a significant factor in his ultimate end. If he was indeed killed by some shadowy government organization, then it was because he ventured into a highly dangerous world. If he committed suicide, then it was the culmination of obsession driven or exasperated by mental illness. Either way, Hansen is aware that he too walks the same fine line.

After setting up the basic facts around how Casolaro’s body was found, American Conspiracy peels back the layers to several years previously with the Inslaw affair. A Washington D.C.-based tech company developed software dubbed PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information System) in the 1980s to assist prosecutors’ offices with their caseloads. The United States Department of Justice took an interest in PROMIS, but the firm accused them of illegally modifying the software for the purposes of surveillance. The two sides ended up embroiled in years of legal battles which Inslaw initially won, only for suspicious machinations behind the scenes to shift victory in the DOJ’s favor.

Casolaro’s investigation into the Inslaw affair supposedly revealed a greater web of connections tied to corrupt officials, contracted assassinations, and other unsavory transactions that sound exactly like the “smokey rooms and backdoor deals” image most associate with three-letter government organizations. Dubbing this network “The Octopus,” we learn of convenient deaths of inconvenient people, the possibility that multiple presidential administrations were in on the whole thing, and the exploitation of Native American land to facilitate illegal arms sales. The series could have easily devolved into another Netflix documentary after cheap sensationalism from here, but American Conspiracy instead proves to be something that is fully self-aware of what territory it’s entering. Treitz’s focus is on how deep the conspiracy could potentially go. The implications for this line of thinking are truly horrifying — there is no bottom to the rabbit hole for the committed.

One of the most disturbing scenes comes midway through when Cheri Seymour, a reporter who wrote the 2010 book The Last Circle on Casolaro’s death, is interviewed. She recounts a chilling meeting with Robert Booth Nichols, a wealthy businessman with possible CIA ties who is one of the key figures tied to The Octopus conspiracy. After telling her that “no journalist has done enough work to deserve to know” what happened to Casolaro, Nichols allegedly showed her the “real” version of the Zapruder film capturing the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the cut Seymour says she watched, the driver of Kennedy’s car suddenly turns around and shoots the president. After informing her that all public copies of the film are modified, Nichols dryly states, “Nothing is as it appears to be.”

Seymour and the filmmakers know that the above story is utterly ludicrous, but so should the audience. Nichols most likely showed a copy of the Zapruder film that he altered to discredit anyone who repeated what they saw. After all, no one can find this “real” version because it doesn’t exist in the public record. No one else apart from Seymour can verify that her meeting with Nichols ever took place. Say what occurred verbatim and you look like the unhinged one. Shut up about it and you’re back to square one — a catch-22. Or maybe none of this ever happened in the first place. American Conspiracy features many similar haunting anecdotes and tangents throughout its runtime, but it lets the audience come to their own decisions around who to believe and to what degree everything ties together.

Case in point, the Iran-Contra affair involved the Reagan administration illegally selling weapons to Iran in order to fund anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. It’s a real political scandal written in the history books, but it started life as a conspiracy theory known only to a select few. Even after the subsequent fallout, Ronald Reagan continued his second term and Oliver North remains a successful political pundit who you can follow on social media. Like it or not, the public eventually got over what was a blatant abuse of presidential power and violation of congressional law. American Conspiracy suggests that Iran-Contra was possibly one piece of the Octopus web and it very well could be. Then again, the series also acknowledges that it isn’t hard to find threads between separate events if you look hard enough.

Unlike many other Netflix documentaries which are heavily skewed toward one conclusion, American Conspiracy is content to throw its hands up and acknowledge that it will perhaps be impossible to ever learn what went on in Casolaro’s room. Thanks to persistent FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, Treitz and Hansen gained access to new information which was never made public. These revelations give their series genuine value beyond any previous online investigations. The duo even consider the name of a possible assailant who would’ve had the skills, training, circumstances, and technical know-how to get rid of Casolaro. Due to several key witnesses and persons of interest having died in the ensuing years, however, this is still only speculation.

That may prove to be a frustrating coda for some viewers, but a true dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist is never really satisfied. By the end, Hansen himself has to decide when to call it quits and move on with his life or risk succumbing to the same obsession which led to Casolaro’s demise. Taking the red pill over the blue pill would not necessarily be salvation either. If there really is an octopus-like web of interconnected organizations and powerful men being controlled at the behest of the U.S. government, could anyone really stop them?

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain articles such as these are exclusively for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

With everything going on in the world, you would be forgiven for not being aware that South Korea held a presidential election last week. If you did happen to catch the news, you were probably one of millions rushing to Google to learn who newly-inaugurated President Lee Jae-myung is. Like Japan, what goes on in the Republic of Korea on a domestic level is usually not something that most foreigners pay attention to. There are surprisingly few analysts out there worth a damn producing high quality analysis on Korean politics in English, most likely because it’s similarly a rather esoteric topic that doesn’t capture headlines as much as Ukraine or the Middle East.

I’ll use this opportunity to shout out the Substack published by my colleague Jeffery Robertson. He has over 25 years of experience researching topics related to the Korean Peninsula and regularly puts out high quality articles which provide important insights that more people should read. I also recommend NK News and its sister site Korea Pro, outlets I’ve previously contributed to that feature the work of some of the best Korea scholars in the world.

There was no new column on Foreign Perspectives last week due to some graduate school commitments on my end (I recently became a TA), but also because I rushed to put out some timely analysis for The Spectator within 24 hours of Lee Jae-myung’s election victory. You can check out the article here and a paywall-free link to it here. Due to the short timeframe of the commission and the audience of The Spectator, my piece only focused on the implications of Lee’s administration for the United States and North Korea. I wasn’t able to discuss Japan, so that’s what this follow-up is intended to cover.

In short, things at first glance do not look good. For all of his faults, the outgoing Yoon Suk-yeol was one of the most pro-Japan presidents South Korea ever had and his administration took active steps to rebuild ties with this country. The decisions of the Moon Jae-in administration resulted in what was largely considered to be the nadir of Japan-ROK relations. Seoul’s Democrats chose to reopen old wounds with Tokyo over historical issues that previous government declared resolved. I won’t get into war crimes discourse here as it’s really a topic worthy of its own piece, but the Japanese government has repeatedly apologized for its atrocities and given out multiple forms of reparations to surviving victims.

For those not in the know, the typical pattern is that conservative South Korean administrations will be more pro-Japan and less likely to use historical issues as a political cudgel, while liberal governments will do the opposite. There are numerous reasons for Korean leftists resorting to “Japan-bashing,” but more often than not it’s a cynical ploy for clout with a specific base at home and a cheap negotiating tactic abroad. This is why despite decades of conciliatory statements, apologies, reparations, and economic aid, there are always politicians in Seoul who think that slamming Tokyo will benefit them.

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Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain articles such as these are exclusively for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is a branch of the U.S. State Department which is tasked with training American diplomats. Before taking on their responsibilities, many have to learn a foreign language in order to navigate the complex challenges of international affairs. On the FSI website, each language is ranked from Category I to Category IV. The former consists of languages closest to English like French and Italian which take 24-30 weeks of intense study to reach a basic level of fluency. The latter are languages about as far removed from English as one can get, taking a whopping 88 weeks of study. Japanese happens to be one of them.

That number of 88 weeks, or 2,200 class hours, should give you a rough idea of how difficult it is to absorb Japanese and other Asian languages like Mandarin or Korean, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. FSI candidates are not the average person. If you’ve made it that far, you’re being taught by the best teachers in the world because the U.S. government wants qualified diplomats who can represent American interests abroad. For these students, language is a required part of their skills toolbox. You aren’t going to be learning Russian just to chat about borscht and Dostoevsky. Well, maybe you will if it means keeping your cover as a secret agent when infiltrating the upper echelons of the Kremlin, but I digress.

In a nutshell, you’re looking at a serious time commitment. Given my position as someone with a decent readership who lives in Japan full time, I’m frequently asked how one should go about learning the language. For starters though, I think that’s the wrong question. The first thing you ought to ask is “Should I learn Japanese?” Once you figure that out, then ask “Why do I want to learn Japanese and are my goals realistic?” I’ll get to all of that and more, but this piece is aimed at who I presume will be the majority of readers — people who do not live in Japan.

If you live in Japan as a foreigner, I’ll state the obvious. Learn Japanese. You should have started learning Japanese yesterday if you haven’t already. While we inhabit an age where English is more ubiquitous worldwide than ever, some level of Japanese is still a requirement for basic survival in this country. The more you put off knowing how to at least speak the language, the worse off your life is going to be here. It places a significant burden on Japanese people who have to deal with you and only contributes to bad stereotypes around foreigners that refuse to integrate. That, however, is a topic better suited for a separate column on why short to medium-term expats leave Japan entirely.

Living outside of Japan places you at a far greater disadvantage with learning the language. While Japanese has over 124 million native speakers, 99% of them reside in its country of origin. The biggest Japanese diaspora populations are in the United States and Brazil, but it was very rare for me to ever encounter someone who spoke the language outside of a university setting when I lived in America. Most East Asians throughout the U.S. are of Chinese or Korean descent, which is great if you’re studying those languages, but you’re likely to encounter far more difficulty finding a Japanese person to befriend in your daily life. Language learning apps and websites can somewhat alleviate this problem, but you have to start somewhere before you touch those.

Remember that 88 weeks figure I mentioned earlier? Well, it won’t apply for the average person. That’s because the typical language learner is realistically going to have to spend more time studying Japanese to get to a level where you can have basic conversations and read texts intended for children. Think about what those FSI candidates have to go through. They practically eat and breathe language study on a daily basis because that’s what they’re trained by the U.S. government to do before spending months or years living in a foreign country. Green Berets undergo a separate, more intense course for similarly difficult languages like Mandarin and Arabic, but it’s uncommon for even those guys to become truly fluent.

You probably aren’t a diplomat in training or a would-be John Rambo. You’re most likely either a college student or an average adult who works a 9-5 job. Along with sleep, you have families, friends, hobbies, and a ton of other real life responsibilities that significantly eat into those precious 24 hours. If you’ve ever exercised, played a sport, or practiced a musical instrument, learning Japanese or any language is the same kind of daily commitment. You cannot half-ass it and expect any progress. Before starting your Japanese language learning journey, consider if it’s something you can incorporate into your life. If you are serious, then you have to turn it into a daily ritual like brushing your teeth or eating a balanced meal.

Japanese will cause you to rethink everything you know about communication. To quote Yoda, “You must unlearn what you have learned.” While Japanese in its modern form incorporates a ton of borrowed words from European languages (known as gairaigo), which gives you about 10% of the vocabulary, that’s about where the similarities end. The word order and grammar are completely different. The written script might as well be moon runes if you have no background in Chinese characters. The levels of formality in addressing people across age and social status are completely alien to a monolingual English speaker. The sounds, thankfully, are actually on the easier side compared to other Asian languages, but you still need to constantly practice them in order to not sound like the American sailors in Shenmue.

Again, you need to ask yourself why you want to learn Japanese and if those goals are realistic. Is living in Japan in the cards for you at some point? Are you dating or married to a Japanese person and perhaps want to converse with your significant other’s extended family? Maybe you’re more focused on trying to read texts like novels or manga. The state of Japanese video games being released overseas is far better now than it was a decade ago, but there are still niche titles like Tokimeki Memorial and Segagaga which are unlikely to ever get an official translation. Or perhaps you’ve realized that translations themselves will always be someone else’s interpretation, so you want to experience the original Japanese and come to your own conclusions. Those are all valid aspirations for learning Japanese or any language, but whatever results you get are entirely dependent on how much effort you’re willing to put in.

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Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Note: This piece discusses Andor’s premise and themes in general terms, but avoids major show spoilers. It does, however, spoil other Star Wars films including Rogue One.

Who would have guessed that the best piece of Star Wars media in years would be an interquel television show that also serves as a prequel to a prequel? That may sound like opening to a random chapter in a sprawling epic novel, but not to worry. Series creator Tony Gilroy always intended for Andor to be something both Star Wars fans and non-fans alike could enjoy. God knows that the brand certainly needs it now. Against all odds, this spin-off to the already excellent Rogue One film is hands down the strongest entry Star Wars has seen under Disney. Not only that, it’s simply damn good television that everyone should watch.

Andor has finished its all-too-brief run of 24 episodes across two seasons, but I’m confident that this is a series that will stand the test of time and be fondly remembered as something that only comes around every decade or so. From its impeccable production design on real sets to its introspective writing which puts most Hollywood films and television shows to shame, it’s easy to forget that this is indeed a Disney-made Star Wars project. It defies all the expectations of a prestige television show released in the “art reduced to content” era of modern streaming, which is something the House of Mouse themselves played a direct hand in creating.

What’s all the more amazing is that Gilroy has openly admitted to not being a hardcore fan of Star Wars. While he watched George Lucas’ original film when it first came out in 1977 like millions of others, his approach to storytelling is worlds apart. Coming from a family with a long history in the arts, Gilroy is primarily known for being the director and screenwriter of the action thriller Jason Bourne franchise and more cerebral dramas like Michael Clayton. At first glance, he does not seem like someone suited for space opera fantasy at all. Yet Andor ended up becoming the best Star Wars show not because it’s deeply seated in established lore, but because Gilroy put strong writing and moving parallels to real-world history ahead of everything else.

Andor is set five years before the Battle of Yavin, or 5 BBY as per the now official dating system of the Star Wars timeline. Audiences will remember this pivotal moment as the conclusion to A New Hope when Luke Skywalker successfully destroys the Death Star. Yet the path to defat the evil Empire’s massive space station with the capability to blow up entire planets was hardly a straightforward one. Andor’s premise centers around the years of spycraft, guerrilla missions, and sabotage it took for the Rebel Alliance to come together into one organized entity — as well as the countless lives lost in their struggle against the Empire.

The great man theory posits that talented, ambitious, resourceful, or otherwise extremely intelligent individuals are the ones who drive history. These are the household names ranging from Alexander the Great to Adolf Hitler. If these men did not act in the ways they did, then the times we live in now could have ended up very differently. George Lucas being heavily inspired by the “hero’s journey” template as popularized by Joesph Campbell is why his six Star Wars movies lean heavily into “great men” and related mythology. Andor, however, is the inversion of such themes.

The eponymous protagonist of the series, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), first appeared in Rogue One as the operative tasked with assassinating the lead engineer of the Death Star. In that film, we see him as a dedicated member of the Rebel Alliance who sacrifices his own life in the process of furthering its goals. Andor shows how Cassian radically changes his outlook over time in going from a selfish survivor to a fighter believing in a higher cause. Yet despite being named after him, it can be argued that the series is more about the Rebels’ overall struggle against the Empire as a whole. If George Lucas’ Star Wars is an epic tale of great men, then Tony Gilroy’s Andor is the behind-the-scenes backstory of the nameless heroes who fall through the cracks of history to help them.

Just as Cassian kills a fellow Rebel spy who turns out to be a liability at the beginning of Rogue One, Andor contextualizes the difficult choices resistance fighters have to make in order for their cause to survive. Central to that is Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard), a brutal leader who makes first contact with Cassian and changes his life forever by bringing him into the rebellion. Luthen is a man of two faces; by day he’s a smiling seller of antiques on Coruscant, by night he’s a callous operator willing to make any sacrifice necessary to fight back against the Empire. Throughout Andor we’re only given bits and pieces of his backstory, but by the end we’re given a portrait of an incredibly complex man far deeper than your average Star Wars character.

The other important figure of the rebellion is Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly). Originally only a small supporting character in 1983’s The Return of the Jedi, her character has since been greatly expanded in other Star Wars media. Andor fleshes her out even more. Like Luthen, Mon is a complex figure who has to play dual roles as both a loyal Imperial subject and covert resistor. Her wealth is a vital asset to funding the rebellion, but such privilege means she is constantly in the public eye. This is in contrast to Mon’s cousin Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) who has much more freedom to be on the front lines, leading to subtle feelings of jealousy.

Significant time is also dedicated to depicting the brutality of the Empire and those part of its machine. The entire series begins with Deputy Inspector Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) attempting to investigate the deaths of two Imperial officers. Despite him suspecting early on that Cassian Andor was responsible, the higher-ups attempt to sweep the entire investigation under the rug. It soon becomes clear that the Empire, like real-world fascist or communist regimes, is full of opportunists who view ideology as secondary to career advancement or preserving the illusion of order. Karn is earnest in his dedication, but Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) of the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) is even more of a ruthless fanatic. Their paths eventually cross — and the result is one of the most unorthodox relationships in Star Wars history.

Practically all characters in Andor — whether they be the leads, supporting roles, or guest appearances only intended to be present for one story arc — are given their dues. Major Lio Partagaz (Anton Lesser) is the commanding officer of the ISB, but more of a resigned pragmatist than a dyed-in-the-wool ideologue. Kino Loy (Andy Serkis) goes from being a no-nonsense prisoner who follows the Empire’s rules until his entire worldview is shattered and he becomes radicalized into fighting. Lonni Jung (Robert Emms) is an ISB supervisor secretly spying for the Rebels, yet gradually realizes he is completely trapped in an impossible situation by both sides. By putting individuals into morally gray or chaotic situations, Andor never ceases to be engrossing even if we already know where things end up by Rogue One.

We would be here all day if I described the complicated relationships between each Rebel and Imperial, but such dynamics prove to be among the show’s most fascinating elements. Gilroy and his team of writers have taken great pains to make sure that every line of dialogue matters. Virtually all conversations carry nuances underneath which make Andor richly rewarding upon multiple rewatches. This is a level of writing that can only be achieved by people who have read up on real history and 20th century literature — a rare breed in today’s Hollywood landscape. It’s akin to a very good Expanded Universe novel written by a technical writer like James Luceno or a more introspective character-driven one like John Jackson Miller. It may take some time for all the details to unfold, but paying attention is well worth it.

Paired with Andor’s compelling writing is its magnificent visual direction. Previous Star Wars Disney+ shows heavily relied on StageCraft technology — large LED screens projected behind actors while they acted on set. While this can generally be fine when put in the hands of skilled directors, the artificial feel is difficult to get over. Andor faces no such problems because it was filmed on actual locations. Every planet, building, and interior shown feels truly lived in, which is what made George Lucas’ trilogy so memorable. From costumes to weapons to even the fictional languages spoken, this is exactly the kind of world-building I wish Disney would attempt with every Star Wars project.

I’m not surprised that the reported budget of the entire series was over $645 million, and that colossal amount of money is felt with every minute shown on screen. In the back of my mind, I was frequently reminded of George Lucas’ proposed live-action Star Wars: Underworld show that never came to pass. Some impressive test footage was leaked online a few years ago, with its gritty tone almost being a dead ringer for Andor. Underworld was similarly intended to be dialogue-heavy, low-level with its storyline scope, and more focused on human drama instead of lighthearted adventure. Over fifty scripts were apparently written and Lucas supposedly had plans for up to 400 (!) episodes, but each costing up to $5 million made the entire series unfeasible to produce.

A single episode of Andor costing about $27 million is ironically far beyond the scale Lucas conceptualized nearly two decades ago. If he had waited just a bit longer for television streaming run by huge media conglomerates like Amazon or Disney to become the norm, his vision for Underworld may have been possible. Still, you don’t have to go far to see just how unsatisfied both audiences and people in the industry are with the current media landscape. Despite smaller episode counts, subscription costs are rising, shows take far longer to produce, and the quality is arguably getting worse. Disney has played a huge role in this, to the point where CEO Bob Iger has even admitted they’ve gone overboard with too much content.

Andor subverts all these trends by having in-depth episodes which tell meaningful stories, not being an expensive vanity project, and actually striving to be something more than a disposable Star Wars spin-off. It fulfills the promises of what streaming-exclusive television should have been and is probably the closest we’re ever going to get to Underworld. Unfortunately, Disney is unlikely to do anything like Andor again. Viewership for its second season was noticeably better than its first, but it still paled in comparison to The Mandalorian and Obi-Wan Kenobi which are closer to what the general public considers Star Wars to be. The return on investment for a passion project like Andor just isn’t there — further demonstrating how unsustainable the current model of streaming is.

For everything Andor does right, a segment of the fanbase is additionally in doubt if it truly “represents” Star Wars. With nary a lightsaber or Force move in sight, there’s possibly an argument to be made that straying too far from the mysticism of George Lucas takes the magic out of Star Wars. The Empire in Andor is more brutal than ever and we regularly see their atrocities. The Ghorman Massacre, previously only referenced in a few books and the Star Wars: Rebels animated series, is front and center as a major event. Early into the second season, a female character is subjugated to attempted sexual assault by an Imperial officer with the word “rape” being explicitly used. This is definitely not a show that children should be watching.

With that said, I still believe that Andor is Star Wars. Going back to the EU comparison, this series is merely attempting a different kind of storytelling. There are plenty of novels and comics which emphasize the totalitarian nature of the Empire, and Andor is in line with a kind of existing Star Wars that deals more with militarism than the Jedi or the Force. It will make you watch Rogue One and the original trilogy in a completely different light after knowing how much was sacrificed for the Rebels to win their victories. Instead of taking away from the achievements of Luke Skywalker and his friends like the sequel trilogy did, Andor enhances existing Star Wars lore while being respectful of what came before it. So yes, I would fully expect the Empire to have rapists, genocide advocates, and other unsavory characters.

With its high production values and mature storytelling, Andor is a miracle of modern television. It dares its audience to consider the implications of how history is shaped by factors both in our control and those forced upon us by oppressive systems. Most hardcore Star Wars fans will appreciate what Andor contributes to the canon, but one need not be a franchise devotee literate in Aurebesh or knowledgable of Tusken Raider burial practices to appreciate its greatness. Tony Gilroy’s show is part sci-fi, part spy story with plenty of influence from heist and prison break thrillers blended in for good measure. If Andor is the only time Star Wars ever attempts to be so ambitious, it will still go down as one of the greats discussed for generations.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is gradually shifting into more paid content. Certain columns will remain free for all subscribers, but articles like these will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

It may seem like just yesterday, but over two months have passed since Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to blows at the Oval Office. The explosive spat between what should have been stalwart allies was an embarrassing moment for the world to see and underscored the Trump administration’s frustrations with how to address the war in Ukraine. Well, most in Washington can probably agree at least that Vice President JD Vance should probably be kept as far away from Zelenskyy as possible.

This complete breakdown in communication was contrasted earlier late last month by a notably Vance-less meeting at Pope Francis’ funeral. While the 15-minute encounter was not pre-planned in advance, both men were photographed in deep conversation amid their solemn surroundings. As the next few weeks have shown, it seems that this got the ball rolling. Later reports suggested that Zelenskyy apparently was able to get Trump to admit that he may have to change his approach to Putin. Washington and Kyiv ultimately framed the talks as positive, which was likely a major factor in the long-awaited minerals deal finally being signed.

Vladimir Putin at the same time announced that there would be a unilateral three-day ceasefire beginning on May 8 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. Moscow’s supposed humanitarian generosity was unsurprisingly a sham. After all, the previous 30-hour “Easter truce” in April fizzled out as quickly as it started. Russia continued its launch of missiles on Ukrainian territory within the first six hours of that truce, according to Zelenskyy and even Trump himself issued a warning to Putin, curtly telling him to stop.

The next so-called ceasefire was just as meaningless. If Moscow was truly serious about ceasing hostilities, it would not have arbitrarily waited until May 8. Just days after Putin’s announcement, a Russian drone attack on May 1 killed one person and wounded 28 others in Zaporizhzhia. Fast forward to last week and Kyiv once again accused Moscow of violating the latest ceasefire. Make no mistake — the only reason Russia is even suggesting “ceasefires” is to make themselves look the party interested in peace and Ukraine the side that insists on continuing the bloodshed.

It is evident that Trump isn’t taking the bait — he most recently accused Putin of “tapping him along” and suggested that new actions such as sanctions may be in order. He re-affirmed this last week after a call with Zelenskyy, threatening more sanctions on Moscow if a full ceasefire was not implemented. The U.S. president has privately expressed his frustrations toward Russia “wanting the whole thing,” and even Vance is saying that Putin is “asking for too much.” Trump now finds himself at a crossroads of what to do with a conflict he previously boasted that he could end “in 24 hours.”

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