I’m no fool, I knew coming to Asia that there would be significant cultural differences between my old life and what awaited me in Singapore. But nothing could have prepared me for this:
That right there is a demonic vampire Astro Boy, and he seems to be a little “too excited”.
I wasn’t ignorant to some of craziness of Asian culture, I had seen plenty of game shows from Japan and even been an avid anime fan as a child. (I’ll still watch a show of Pokemon given the chance, and think that The Last Airbender is one of the best shows to come out on Nickelodeon in a long, long time.) So I thought I was prepared for almost anything.
But given the conservative nature of Singapore I never would have thought that a poster like this would be around, at least not in public and certainly not in a major tourist hot spot. (One impression I have of Singapore so far is they take great pains to make the country look as good as possible, hence the no chewing gum laws)
I couldn’t get a picture of the whole poster but it was around a whole store, and on the other side it featured Kim Jong-il in shutter shades. So the entire thing was generally weird. So as it turns out the poster is for a Japanese beer company named Asahi, which is to be honest one of the best beers you can buy here in Singapore so maybe they have a little more leverage than the average advertiser.
I guess this is more of a cautionary tale in that you should always expect the unexpected and that although you might think a country is really strict, but everywhere has a little bit of a wild side.
tylerkellyon 