“Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat.” This famous opening couplet from Rudyard Kipling‘s “Ballad of East and West” may be an exaggeration (and indeed, one belied by the life of Kipling himself), but it’s no revelation that the parts of the world broadly known as “the West” and “the East” have had their fair share of conflicts, misunderstandings, and discord. Even in the more benign and low-stakes world of cultural exchange, Westerners and Easterners have talked past, misinterpreted, unthinkingly offended, and crudely stereotyped each other. Anime may not get the critical eye that other, more high-profile works of this ilk do, but it’s subject to the same pressures, contexts, and interpretations as any other piece of art positioned in a multicultural framework. Put on…
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