Absolutely and 100% not cool whatsoever... Nigo, a sellout before he took his brand to America, basically handed it over to a group of people, Commercial Hip Hop Artists, who have whored the brand out like no one else previously...
The brand was already diluted in Japan before this, so it made sense for Nigo--- cash driven, to bring his brand to the united states, but I've seen more Baby Milo Animal Farm hoodies than I can possibly imagine existing, being that they are all limited... read, the brand is being bootlegged massively, or rather, there is an entirely new market for the existing bootleggers, which dilutes the brand, and makes owning the brand purposeless if some punter down the block can go buy a $40 dollar knock-off on Ebay.
Gwen Stefani is almost akin to a slave-trader, she's a white, Californian girl, who sudenly LIEK OMG BISHIES KAWAIIII!~DESU YO~! GLORP... decided that Japan was just like so cool, and has inspired a mass of minions who lockstep with her thinking that Japanese girls all run around wearing kneepads and act like gangster girls...
All the women that Gwen surrounded herself with were in fact, from california, they may be able to speak Japanese, if you watch the videos of them on Gwen's clothing site, you'll hear an even moreso hideous "ME SO SOLLY" voice over which tries to make a stereotype of even the way Japanese speak English... She's a brand label *****, with enough money to pay Japanese Americans to pretend not to know English, and follow her around like her posse... she's an utter fraud and a complete shame.
A Bathing Ape... one Ape in Warm water, and the rest will follow... that is exactly perfect for Nigo, because this is what happens all of the time in Hip Hop culture... sooner or later it will die out, that's for certain, like all trends do... but, all of this casual, oh, fashionable cause celebrite' of Japan really doesn't matter, it doesn't dilute Japan, or the Japanese for anyone who knows anything about it... it misinforms and generally confuses the people who know nothing about it, and again it creates a legion of idiotic, blind, ignorant followers.
Fast & The Furious... a movie which was filmed with virtually NO Japanese actors whatsoever, which took place in Japan for absolutely NO reason whatsoever... whatever, its a pop culture film, its not meant to be great--- but it doesn't represent Japan... but it creates again, this legion of people, "omg liek uh what is para para! I want to uh para para, zomg like now ^_^!!!!1"... It creates more confusion than it elucidates, so its damaging to people who don't know anything about Japan.
This is in no way at all a solvable problem. Education? Impossible... it's a dichotomy that will always exist, and has always existed... Those who live in anime-land where ninjas roam freely and the RZA drops mad beats because he scored the ed: Afro Samurai... (what RZA, really?? are you serious with this...?)... and then there are educated people whom the former will always ignore because liek they just don't understand how Bou & Gackt and liek bishies are teh love.
End of Rant.
ps. I'll just state as well, that there is also this dichotomy between the way that Japanese popular culture, anime, manga, yaoi, yuri, hentai, ecchi, shounen-ai, bishounen, shotacon, lolicon, moe, (what we might label paraphilias) etcetera etcetera etcetera are interpreted by non-Japanese versus how they are interpreted by the Japanese themselves... again, it's unsolvable. The two parties will always exist--- some may grow up out of it, but others will always be content to process this information as they see fit, in order to satisfy their own needs.
I know that it's not based in reality, but that's not why I watch movies anyway.
