Just Post

Really? Because other than weird outliers like Cutie or whatever, that's not really a thing in American culture

The majority of anime is not made for Japan's general domestic market. There are niches in Japanese society who consume weird anime, but it's not like your everyday normal business dude is watching them.

It's just a weird culture overall - everyone being shamed into looking exactly the same, insane emphasis on working so hard you keel over from it, etc.

That's just because they've lived in what is essentially a defanged fascist government since the end of WW2. During the Meiji restoration they basically destroyed their own culture and reinvented themselves as empirical conquerors. Unlike Germany after ww2 the empirical ruling class wasn't prevented from participating in government, so they've basically had a long line of war criminals followed by the children of war criminals controlling the government since.