Is it because Japanese pronunciation is easier to pick up than Mandarin? Also, is there a such thing as “Chinese” anime (as in made in China / Taiwan being originally in Mandarin), they do have an equvalent of Manga known as Manhua (漫畫) but is it even popular to the same extent as the Japanese counterparts? Why do those types of foreigners favor Japanese (language) over Mandarin regarding pronunciation?
Are sentences in Japanese easier to pronounce in comparison to Mandarin? JP does not have tones (rather pitch accent) with an “alphabet” of some sort (known as ひらがな & カタカナ) even though they have 漢字 (Furigana is used for placing kana above Kanji for native speakers to understand) while Mandarin places a big emphasis on tones and its entirelty written in 漢字 (for transliteration, either Pinyin or Bopomofo is used).
Japan projects soft power as a place that has fine crafts, allows different ideas to flourish and creates bleeding edge technology. Learning Japanese is seen as a high prestige activity due to that.
Nevermind that in reality it’s a misogynistic and tradition oriented society that is extremely xenophobic. Cars! Anime! Vidja! Caligraphy!
Due to the authoritarian CCP, and being a source of the cheapest, lowest quality goods, china does not have that kind of reputation.
Even though shitloads of electronics, consumer technology manufacturing, and etc are produced in china.
Both sides of both coins are true. However, the reputation is not the same.
Man I read that first paragraph and grabbed my pitchfork until I read the second paragraph.