Chanpon

In a post to the video game weblog Game Girl Advance, "game girl advance: East Meets West, With A French Twist," Sanford May begs a comparison: "I think it would be interesting to play through and compare, say, Fatal Frame 2 and Manhunt: what scares on the Pacific Rim as opposed to what's supposed to give us the creeps western style." (May writes a column on modern Japanese Literature on the web site BookSlut.com.)

Fatal Frame 2 is a Japanese horror-type game, widely exported. Manhunt is a US/European game, widely banned for ultra-violent content. In comments on the thread, John Hummel posits that the Fatal Frame series of games plays more on terror, and the Manhunt game plays more on shock. But other people resist having those broad generalizations applied to Japanese and Western horror overall. Sanford lends his voice throughout, grounding the discussion in the history of Japanese modern film and literature.