Not everything was rosy in the land of anime. For decades, having a complex alphabet served as the perfect hiding place for the worst attitudes of the Japanese internet. But technology advances quickly, and Tomohiro Machiyama, writer of the Shingeki no Kyojin live-action has just made a rather bitter complaint about it. Machiyama blames X for completely ruining Japan’s global reputation, pointing directly to the automatic translation feature.

Image of the post translated into Spanish

A Barrier That No One Saw Fall

Think for a second. If a radical user wrote hate-filled comments or started one of those dense controversies, the damage didn’t cross their borders. No one on this side understood those characters. The detail is that recent social media updates completely changed the game. Now you tap a button and read all the venom in your native language. The author claims that suddenly exposing these posts made many foreigners lose that idealized and almost perfect vision they had of Japanese society.

Reading this divided forums into two camps. On one hand, you have people who finally accepted getting off their high horse, recognizing that romanticizing an entire country is a mistake and that they also face serious discrimination problems there. And in the other corner are the most stubborn fans. Those who defend it tooth and nail under the excuse that undesirable people exist everywhere. Regardless of who’s right, the algorithm is unforgiving and pushes these disputes to your feed to ensure interactions.

The Greatest Irony of All

What gives this situation an almost comical touch is the person who started the debate. We’re talking about someone who works creating the universe of Shingeki no Kyojin. A series that bases its entire plot on physical walls, hatred between races, and fear of how the outside world perceives you. That it’s precisely him who laments the fall of a digital wall that protected them from being judged is pure poetry. In the end, language stopped being a shield and left them without their best defense against criticism.

Do you think reading them without filters did us a favor, or would you prefer to ignore that side of the internet?