I’m not sure how theFacebook algorithms got me so good, but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that there was a site actually called Koreaboo and it wasn’t just a slang term that I used amongst my friends. And obviously a site with such a name would have an obvious bias, but there were some interesting articles that piqued my interest and served as a little bit of fuel for some words to be spit up.
Obviously, when something becomes white hot popular as Netflix’s Squid Game has been, there are all sorts of detractors that come out of the woodwork or go out of their way to go all contrarian on it; I’d be the first to admit that I’ve most definitely done that on all sorts of things that I was late to the party on, so I just decided to shun it instead of embrace it late.
Naturally, since Squid Game game to the world courtesy the entertainment kings of Asia in South Korea, this would draw the skepticism, ire and jealousy from those in other, lesser Asian countries.
China, in spite of their general fear of Korean media, and even going so far as to basically ban K-Pop, citing that Chinese men needed to be more masculine and not as seemingly as fluffy as K-Pop boy band stars, responds to Squid Game, by basically ripping the whole fucking show off in order to create a variety show.
I mean, this was about the least surprising thing in the world as China as a country gives absolutely no fucks when it comes to copyrights and intellectual properties, and counterfeits anything and everything at all, without any shame. It’s like that internet rule where if it’s ever existed, there’s porn of it on the internet, but if there’s anything that’s ever existed, it has most definitely been ripped off in China.
Titled literally “Squid’s Victory,” it will be something of a variety show or a game show, where people will play kids games for cash prizes. So unfortunately, there will be no people killing themselves for money, but as the above title card shows, there’s literally zero shame by the Chinese company of ripping off the title card of the Korean Squid Game. Little else is known yet of Squid’s Victory, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that whatever set the show will take place on will have all sorts of maze-like colorful doors and stairs that is a completely original idea.
And then we have the Japanese, who are of course jealous over the juggernaut that Squid Game, going as far as to proclaim it’s position on Netflix rankings had to be due to some sort of cheating manipulation, and then proclaiming that Japan had the OG lock on the death game genre, which they’re not entirely wrong with, seeing as how Battle Royale came out two decades prior.
The real salt emerges when pondering why Squid Game is so popular globally, while films like Battle Royale really only won over weebs and convention nerds, which is a pretty easy question to answer, because the quality of the writing, the acting, and simply the plot itself was just far superior when comparing the two stories. Firstly, live-action Japanese actors can’t act for shit, and as entertaining of a film Battle Royale was, the acting is pretty terrible save for Takeshi Kitano himself. Then the fleshed out plot of Squid Game, centralized around the despair people feel when they’re economically facing drowning in poverty is something that people can relate to a whole lot better than getting randomly selected in a government lottery to have to fight to their death without any choice. And of course, there’s the obvious medium, where just everyone can access Squid Game, and unless you purchased a VCD or a region-free DVD on eBay, there was no real way to watch Battle Royale.
Regardless, seeing the jealousy bubble up from entire countries over the success of Squid Game is very amusing to me, and now that Korea has set the bar so high, it’s going to be amusing to see what all these lesser countries do to try and get a piece of the yellow fever for Asian media that the rest of the world is starting to get, thanks to Korea.
You’re welcome, China, Japan and all you other 개새끼 countries.
