On the other hand, in the original anime series, there are many Japanese cultural reference, which, I believe, is a better way of incorporating different culture together. For example, in Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG, origami is an important symbol throughout the whole season. Origami has special meaning in Japanese culture, it is believed that when one folds one thousand origami cranes, their wishes will come true. It is the origami crane that reminded Motoko of her childhood memories with Hideo, and the origami cranes appeared again and again in the season.
In this contemporary world, there is no doubt that different cultures and emerging and evolving into new culture. In Disjuncture and Difference in Global Cultural Economy, the author defined a simple framework that consist of five dimensions, which including enthoscape and techoscape. Ethnoscape refers to “the landscape of persons who constitute the shifting world in which we live in”, and technoscape refers to the “ever fluid, of technology, and of the fact that technology, [...] now moves high speed across various kinds of previously impervious boundaries.” By looking at these two aspects, we can easily imagine how the world will be like in the future, and thus build the world in science fiction. Cyberpunk is a subgenre under science fiction, and therefore it is based on how we imagine the world is like in the future.
While we are imagining what the future is like in science fiction, we can certainly invent new cultures. Porting existing culture into another society seems to be definitely possible in the future. In the past history, there are many examples of how two completely different culture merges and evolve into a new culture. However, we cannot forget that things happen for a reason. If we ignore the context behind culture and be disrespect to culture, that is not acceptable. When we reduce the deep meaning behind culture in the works, the meaning of the cultural artifact will be reduced to only decorating purpose.
Perhaps the next time, in our imaginative New Los Angeles, instead of just putting up sign boards with different Asian language, we can also explain why those sign board would exist there with Japanese or Korean. Perhaps instead of one character with Asian name but played by a Caucasian actor, we can try to put more cultural reference that makes sense and influence the whole story line by its cultural meaning. Perhaps before blindly fetishizing any Asian cultural object we can understand the history and background story of it.