Been busy with work + restarting school. Since I picked school back up that kind of became what I spent my time on fully (well kinda fully).
Recently read some Korean web comics and it got me thinking of cultural influences on media and stuff.
I haven’t done much research into it but I’ve heard some stuff about Korean culture being very hierarchical. The elites viewing themselves as fundamentally different from others. I think the korean movie Parasite portrayed some of this stuff? Idk I didn’t watch it, but I heard part of the theme is how the rich are bad.
Also the show Squid Game. Never watched it but I also heard it had themes of the elite doing bad stuff. I believe the games done in the show are done by/for rich peoples entertainment.
Reason I bring this up is because apparently a popular trope in Korean comics is tower climbing/doing challenges for entertaining. I didn’t do any research into what the trope is called, but the trope more or less goes like this: towers (or whatever) show up in a world, because of these towers (and other influences) monsters are destroying the human world or something, the only way to stop this is to beat the tower, except after you beat the tower it turns out that the tower was part of a bigger show. Typically the towers are a way to find the best of humanity to participate in further events and shows.
I say shows because you end up learning that your tower fight and other events are being watched by higher level entities for their entertainment.
Two of the most popular Korean webcomics (at least on the western side) are based, in part, around this: The World After the Fall and Omniscient Reader.
After noticing this and learning that this kind of gimmick is popular, I wondered if this represents a part of Korean culture where they may feel that they are in a game for the entertainment of the rich.
Similarly, something I’m more familiar with, Japanese media has a lot of stories either in high school or in other worlds (like transported to a fantasy world). That’s because, in general, Japanese adult life is so crap that they can’t imagine, in a sense, an adult world that is enjoyable. So they either go back to high school or go to another world.