>>1022348
Videogame wise? Deus Ex, Fallout 2, Arcanum, Warcraft III, etc.
Television/Movie wise? Jacob's Ladder, Taxi Driver, Excalibur, Sopranos, etc
Literature wise? I could go on and on but for the sake of brevity; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Dune by Frank Herbert, BNW by Aldous Huxley, Ubik by Philip K Dick, David Copperfield, etc.
Basically the main takeaway from my words is that while Japan might be great at making games and anime sometimes, and even once in a blue moon strike near something profound like what we saw in MGS2, as a whole, Japan and its people are stunted in terms of what they can put out due to two major things, in my opinion: Their culture, and their racial differences. Perhaps the former lead to the latter over thousands of years but in any case, you take a Nip out of Nippon and he still acts like the same Nip. They're surface level beings and their heads are very much planted in the sand. They inherently trust their governments and their elders in whatever hierarchy exists, they waste away most days at work and then go to company parties at the bar before being 'allowed' to go home, and they live in what is most likely squalor comparatively while mostly consuming the most banal of entertainment, such as those talk shows with everyone's faces in a little bubble on screen. They play their repetetive gacha, they worship idols whom they kill if they find out are in a relationship with someone, they read light novels of what mostly probably consists of teenage romance (all taking place at school which they wasted the majority of their youth in) and the same tired story about some Shinsengumi or Sengoku era badass samurai. They have never produced a single philosopher in their history unless you count Yukio Mishima for some reason, they seem to skip the entire 20th century in their history books because they can never fess up or accept their checkered past, their island was mostly isolated from the outside until around the 19th century and despite that haven't accomplished much technologically or socially without the assistance of western influences, and to make matters worse for them, they are currently battling against an aging population that will soon be forcing new mRNA replicon vaccines on their people. I don't wish to hear anything about the "underestimation" of Japan because I know exactly what they are, I've been a consumer of Japanese media since I was a boy and I have been learning Japanese as a language since 2018. N3 currently.
I respect Japan, believe me I do. They are great at making entertainment, yet they are far from the best. Kind of like how a lot of women out there are strong physically and very smart intellectually, but the smartest/strongest woman will forever be second to the smartest/strongest man.