Honestly, I really dislike the trope partly because it's the sole reason why Mineta in My Hero Academia exists and won't get a narrative arc (unless he did, I've stopped paying attention to that series).
I mean, the localization change is partially a cultural difference. While the lovable flirt/charming cad trope does exist in Western media (Johnny Bravo, Joey in Friends, Pepe le Pew, etc), it's not nearly as ubiquitous as it is in Japan.
Unless they changed something since the last time I checked, which I doubt they did because I think Twitter oneboxing is still broken and/or discontinued.
Spoilers for an almost 10 year old expansion: this makes his fate in the story hurt all the more and his last words feel particularly poignant even years on.
In the original Japanese, he's incredibly flirtatious verging on sleazy whereas he is much more platonic in the English translation. The latter makes his constant support for your character seem much more altruistic than the original, which has shades of "helping you out to try to get in your pants".
Not looking at the images since I haven't played the remakes, sometimes I prefer changes in localization to the original. Case in point, Haurchefant in FFXIV is more compelling in the English localization than the original Japanese to me.
It's far too easy to interpret things in bad faith, so it's really not worth catastrophizing over bad faith interpretations. Take the new God of War games, for example. I could easily say that it's the story of how you can be forgiven for a literal murder spree as long as you then "settle down" to have a wife and child. You don't even have to stop killing, as Kratos clearly doesn't during the new games.
Seems like the problem of over-sanitization. At the end of the day, you can't guarantee that everyone will get the right interpretation (or the interpretation you're aiming for) out of any media you make, that doesn't mean you shouldn't make anything.
Hodes even says in the article you posted that it's impossible to control other people's behavior, the best you can do is make it difficult to twist your intention. And if you watched Bao to the end, you see that the credits tell a story of the kid and his girlfriend learning aspects of his and his mother's culture.
So the solution is to not tell stories relevant to minorities. Cultural integration and differences as a topic is inescapable in minority-centric stories, so to avoid including it in any way shape or form because it can be manipulated means that those narratives must be excluded wholesale.
As a quasi-second generation immigrant (technically I'm first-gen, but I came over young enough that I'm functionally second-gen), there was a major theme of a growing cultural divide between parent and child but not of superiority.
It's a different mindset certainly. And I can appreciate that each "clip" worked on its own (provided you intuited the context) and the animation was technically brilliant (as always).
It's weird, the themes are there, the scenes are there but there's just little to no narrative. It was like watching a clip show of nominees for Best Animated Short Film.
Mahito finally calling Natsuko his "mother" would normally be a huge emotional catharsis, but... for what? There was never any real tension between the two outside her saying she hated him literally five seconds before. It was like a bass drop without the build-up.
@Ronan Maybe "mess" is overstating it, "disjointed" might be better. Each part of the movie seemed coherent and was emotionally consistent, but they didn't go well together.
Fair enough, I suppose. Either way, Palworld probably just isn't on their radar. Even if it's selling like hotcakes now, it likely hasn't made any news outside of the game-osphere.
Who are the Knights of Ren? No clue. When did the First Order change from being the Empire? No idea. Who is that alien lady running the tavern who has Anakin/Luke's old lightsaber? Beats me.
