Nobody was implying exclusivity outside of you.

Slip of the tongue. I likewise reject the idea of eastern writers being “usually” better at writing emotions and/or moral ambiguity, or doing it more frequently. There are countless good and bad stories on both sides.

I felt it went without saying that this was referring to mainstream media because… video games. With an emphasis on action because… video games.

Most of the examples I mentioned were mainstream movies and videogames that sold millions of tickets/copies. Or at least as much mainstream as Kamen Rider and Yakuza. There are tons of examples of well-written human drama.

I also fail to understand why action = video games. There are tons of successful games where action is not the main focus, or sometimes it’s not even present at all. I enjoyed the cozy vibes of Life is Strange, for example.

Which, to use one of your examples, let’s look at (ugh) Rambo. The first one IS a pretty interesting character study into a man with extreme PTSD who can’t stop fighting his war (which is plenty of tropes). Which is why it is so telling that once they shifted fully into the action side, almost all of that went away outside of cheap drama over the naive pseudo-daughter… getting sold into slavery and raped to death.

As for your critique of (generally shonen) anime? Let’s look at the ur example of Dragon Ball Z (also DB but it is less fun). Vegeta.

Brushing off the first Rambo movie because of subpar sequels, and then using Dragonball (a series that had nowhere to go after Frieza and yet still gets milked with subpar sequels to this day) as a talking point is just nonsensical.

Mentioning Vegeta as a good example of moral ambiguity is hilarious because he is probably one of the worst written characters of all time, who single-handedly ruins the characterization of the entirety of the main cast.
The dude committed genocide or attempted one at least once per narrative arc and everybody was okay with spending their time with him for literally no reason. If I had two bullets and was standing in a room with Vegeta and Hitler, the safest option for Earth as a whole would be to shoot Vegeta twice. There is “respecting” another person, and there is “brushing off crimes against humanity because that character is cool”.

By the way, I don’t want to imply that eastern (Japanese? I don’t think you mentioned other media outside of Japan) writers are worse than western ones. I loved the first Yakuza game (the second one was very dumb and killed my interest in the series; maybe I’m missing out). Metal Gear Solid and Xenogears are, to this day, two of my favourite games ever. I went to the cinema twice in a row to watch Godzilla Minus One. I could also mention Oldboy for something outside of Japan, or Red Cliff, and those are both very much mainstream as well, and action too.

I just reject the idea of them being somehow better.