Why do japs like elves so much? They pretty much made them a part of their own folklore

So a movie you saw has an elf in it and you think that counts as actual folklore huh? Goddamn dude.

>one movie reflects the culture of an entire nation

That's a demon though.

> I want to say because they most likely draw a lot of parallels between Elves and those Moon Gods and their Lunar Kingdom that they told about in folklore, like, the ones that came down to take back the bamboo cutters daughter.
Notice how their elves are attractive women who are young forever 90% of the time in their fiction and male elves are nearly nonexistent?
Well that’s a lot closer to the reasons why elves are popular in Japanese-made Western fantasy shit then anything coming out of classical Japanese mythology.

A movie based on folklore. The author of GeGeGe no Kitaro (THE yokai manga) designed the yokai for it.

The Great Yokai War.

The comment equivalent of
>"I post on /a/, so I'm basically an expert on Japanese culture"

>The Great Yokai War

Looks fun.
I'll have to give it a watch, thanks user.

>A movie from 2004 partially based on a manga created in the 1960’s and using the antagonist from a novel series written in 1983 is totally a legit example of classic historical Japanese folklore!
Next you’re going to be telling us that Lethal Weapon and Tango & Cash are legit good examples of what American police detectives do on a daily basis.
Yasunori Katō is an awesome villain though and Teito Monogatari is a seriously cool book with some great influence on Japanese pop culture.

>The great yokai war
>Thinks that literally anything in it could be an 'elf' due to pointy ears

Do Hylians from Legend of Zelda count as elves, Veeky Forums?

Kinda, I guess.
The follow the basic design aesthetic (blonde, pointy-ears, Japanese-made Western-style fantasy setting), but for the most part they’re basically just the regular humans of their world. I gusss there’s some fluff in certain Zelda games about them “hearing the gods” better, but for practical purposes that has no game or storyline effects at all.

All youkai have pointed ears. they don't even have words for elves.

Yeah, in LoZ, having pointy ears means you're a highborn Hylian who is closer to the gods or spirits or whatever, and the fact that Link is a literal nobody with pointed ears is significant because [wibbly hand gestures] destiny and shit. Same with Ganondorf, aside from the fact that he's one dude getting BTFO by different Links and Zeldas repeatedly across time and space. You'd think sooner or later he'd just tell his minions "If you see a nigga in a green tunic and green hat, kill his ass on sight. No fair fights, no duels in a flaming arena, no toying with him, kill him fucking dead ASAP." If the Helmaroc King had just bitten off WW!Link's head, a whole lot of trouble could have been avoided for Ganon.

>thinking folklore was put in suspended animation 200 years ago and that popular culture doesn't influence folklore

put me in the screnecap

>classic historical Japanese folklore
Nobody ever said "classic historical folklore". For what it's worth, elves were never a part of classic historical folklore in most of Europe, now they are.

Nah, they're just humans with ears better shaped to hear the gods. There are non-pointy humans too, and the ears are the only physical difference.

Cringe.

Hylians = elves, Gerudo = orcs. Quite straightforward.

Here (You) go. And your shitty bait, too.

エルフ

Someone please explain to me why popular culture doesn't at the least heavily influence forklore, if not outright defining it. Like... ain't that explicitly why Yanks know about the whole Paul Bunyan bullshit?

It IS the modern form of folklore. People who deny it are clueless idiots.

I would think that moblins = orcs.

>Yasunori Katō is an awesome villain
He's about as nuanced as Dr Robotnik.
Nice design though.

They're more like trolls/ogres to me.

Op is retarded.

Honestly, I have a theory that they have them as a means of having white people in a fantasy without making them be white people.

I’m not saying it’s for racist reasons necessarilly though, and I doubt it’s something don’t purposefully.

Elves (or what they've become in modern pop culture) are by far the most desirable fantasy race. They're tall, beautiful, skilled, ageless. There's a good reason why everyone loves them, the only thing you can hate about them is "arrogance", and even then that's only because they realize they're just that damned good.

>Varying degrees of want

>Asian Elves look cute
It's worth noting that Tolkien's OG Elves were Asian. What else do you think "almond-shaped eyes" mean?

Because elves were made for hentai

They don't like elves. They like what they did to elves: boobalicious foreigners that retain their beauty forever.

That's katakana, specifically the alphabet they reserve for foreign words because their language has no equivalent.

Doesn't "Oni" just mean "Japanese Goblin?"

It's a specific type of creature. They wear the skins of tigers and carry large iron clubs. Ogre might be a better word.

They're usually large, horned, and mean. There's a red oni/blue oni thing you can look up for the details that basically has red ones being rage filled meanie heads and blue ones being more calculated.

Traditionally, yokai are translated as goblins and oni as ogres.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loanword

Not really.
Oni sort of has similarities with a bunch of western creatures. Translating it as Japanese goblin (or ogre or something similar) conveys a functional understanding of the thing but misses some of the nuance and variety.

>boobalicious foreigners that retain their beauty forever
And this is different from the Western concept of elves how?

that is a very cute elf.

Elves are for rape

Slaanesh is for squatting

Slaanesh enjoys that position too.

Japanese elves are the best

Cause elves are the perfect being in a fantasy world, the harmonized blend between humanity spirituality and nature

That's not an elf.

Pointy ears are the standard visual cue for lots of yokai. This is why anime elves usually have ridiculously long, animalistic ears - because in Japanese media the standard knife ears we associate with Tolkiensian elves denote that a character is a type of demon.

As for why they like elves? They're a concept that is broad enough to be tweaked a lot while specific enough to be instantly recognisable. So basically the same reason elves have stayed popular in the west, maybe with a bit of the added cross-cultural fascination of the same sort that make westerners think of ninjas and samurai as cool.

You want to know the truth? It's because Japanese males secretely lust after blonde white women and elves are basically idealized version of them.

>anime elves usually have ridiculously long, animalistic ears
So do western elves

The extremely long ears on Warcraft elves are influenced by anime elves.

Warcraft isn't the only western IP with XXL ears

Says who?

This got me thinking, I've never seen a Japanese dwarf. The real question is why they hate dwarves.

>secretely

What about weaboo elves?

The up-their-own ass naughtiness and severe depression has been replaced with a hundred attitude, their males are either super effeminate or nonexistent, and their alien lithe like figures have been replaced with more humanoid thiccness

I think it’s because the appeal in the West is Dwarves are all manly, but given the Japanese have different perceptions of masculinity it doesn’t resonate that much with them.

An Isekai about Japanese Dwarves could be fun.

More of what we called a "dweeb" rather than a nerd. The dweeb is into esoteric shit but doesn't really know anything. The nerd knows things but wrongly thinks everyone else is into his esoteric shit as much as he is.

>You'd think sooner or later he'd just tell his minions "If you see a nigga in a green tunic and green hat, kill his ass on sight. No fair fights, no duels in a flaming arena, no toying with him, kill him fucking dead ASAP."
>in a green tunic and green hat
You know, that could explain both how Calamity Ganon happened in the first place and how amnesia Link ended up beating him.

>Wakfu
>not influenced by anime

Nerds are shitty defective people. Keep fighting the good fight.

No, orcs were asian. They were short, sallow skinned, squint-eyed, bowlegged debased people. So asian.

Wakfu long ears are cute but Warcraft long ears look like disgusting fleshy antennae

Everyone likes elves, dude. They are the perfect "I am so exotic and strange but still look like a hot human" fantasy race.

Well, as delicately implied, the "manly" dwarf stereotype of the Tolkienian mold actually fits the Japanese stereotype of gay men, so that probably doesn't help.

Likewise, there's the fact that the standard dwarf is heavily rooted in stereotypes that don't make a particularly good impact on Japanese. The dwarven fondness for living in the depths of the earth and crafting things from stone actually has some pretty negative connotations in Buddhism, if I recall directly.

At the very least, the dwarven "gruffness" instead translates as "rude, lowbrow bastard" - there is a reason why the D&D "Oriental Dwarf" is basically a surly, hairy, stereotypical peasant.

Japanese culture is HUGE on beauty, refinement, grace and cuteness. Dwarves are not any of these. So they pass over them in favor of beings more fitting to their palate, namely elves, gnomes and halflings.

>Next you’re going to be telling us that Lethal Weapon and Tango & Cash are legit good examples of what American police detectives do on a daily basis.

Th-they aren't???

Check out Robert Whiting's "You gotta have Wa"
vrs
George Will's Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball.

Almost makes you wish Japan did invent baseball. Also compared to the Japanese, American baseball fans are little bitches.
America doesn't shut down for "Golden Week" just to watch "amateur" baseball.
Fun reading on both of those by the way.

I thought he was just a re-skinned Gilgamesh.
I mean he's got the bull and all.

>up-their-own ass naughtiness

>short, sallow skinned, squint-eyed, bowlegged debased people
So Native Americans?

>folks

You take this back this instant.

GOOD TASTE GRORIOUS NIPPON

Natives are just feral asians. You know this.

Not all. They left Siberia back when modern type Asians didn't even exist. The closest Asian nation you can find to them are a tiny tribe in North Siberia.

Elves only originally exist in Germanic folklore. If you're not Germanic, your country made them a part of their own folklore.

So if I isekai’d into a magical realm of Japanese Dwarves, what would I be in for? Lots of Loli?

Lots of gay humping

One Piece's dwarves are like Keebler elves with fluffy tails.

Dude, that's not dwarves. Gnomes at best.