In the past 20 years, Japan has been in a period of fervent cultural export. With lots of money, a piece of land in Tokyo could buy all of the United States.
Among the cultural exports from Japan, tokusatsu films, as one of the signature genres, have a niche audience in the United States, even though they're not as popular as in the Asia-Pacific region, the most famous one being Ultraman.
If an American actor played Ultraman, it might make the news at most. If an Asian actor shot Ultraman in the United States, it probably wouldn't even make the news.
But if an NBA All-Star, voted the most popular, were to star in a tokusatsu film where the main character shared the All-Star's English name, that would be a different story.
Even though the immediate media reaction labeled it as "dereliction of duty," this news blew up!
