I get the feeling Nintendo is convinced the Japanese advert wouldn't fly in other countries because their most successful IPs have always been 'deodorized' of anything too Japanese. When exporting a new game idea, they always have to strike that balance between being weird enough to be interesting, but not so Japanese as to be alienating. A squid hopping around Shibuya falls on the wrong side of that.
I wrote a 2,000-word essay on the appeal of Pokémon last semester, so I ended up reading a lot about this stuff. :p
I won't disagree, but I just think that the fact of this being the case is kind of sad. I wish eastern influenced entertainment were less of a niche thing in the west and more socially acceptable. Even being niche is alright, but having to bastardize something in localization for it to be deemed "acceptable" to the point that it loses some of its original charm is disappointing to me.
I think it's more of a problem with western culture, because eastern culture has adopted many things from the west that are found to be completely acceptable and don't have to be masked or censored, such as baseball, basketball and regular use of Latin characters and western words. We use some eastern words in the west (many people probably without even knowing their origin) but we mostly convert them to our alphabet.
Don't mistake me for a liberal. I'm actually quite isolationist -- perhaps why I admire Japan. I just think that preservation of culture and original charm is important, regardless of which culture.
