I was just looking at random stuff and I noticed that The American Dream (anyone can do anything if you worked hard) is generally absent in Eastern culture stuff, and unsurprisingly tends to be more prevalent in Western stuff. Most Eastern stuff, whether it's book, movies, games, or manga, you'll see a lot of justification along the line of 'he's the chosen one.' In fact in some stuff you have to be the chosen ones just to do anything. For example in Suikoden (the novel, not the game), all the 108 Stars of Destiny are supposed to be reincarnation of celestial entities (some more important than others), so even the guy who has 3 lines in the novel still has some kind of divine power backing him up.
Now obviously this isn't absolute, but generally Western stuff has more than just 'chosen one' as the only basis. Sure there is no shortage of the one man army but it's not like Rambo is the way he was because when he borned the heaven shook and the earth trumbled. Generally speaking your average Western hero tend to be someone at the peak of his profession and got there presumably by hard work + skill instead of just being born as the world's top whatever. Even for something like The Matrix, people besides Neo sure aren't anyone special, and there's been more than one "The One" anyway so even that alone isn't enough.
I remember there was a guy assessing the difference between Jiang Yong and Gou Long's works, both considered very influential figures in modern Chinese literature, and it's something like: "Jiang Yong taught us that if you're the chosen one you can throw fireball, jump across buildings, and get all the girls you want even if you're some nerdy bumpkin. Gou Long taught us that being the chosen one isn't all it's hyped up to be." Now that doesn't necessarily say who is better, but certainly Jiang Yong's work is very reflective of Chinese literature.
Now obviously this isn't absolute, but generally Western stuff has more than just 'chosen one' as the only basis. Sure there is no shortage of the one man army but it's not like Rambo is the way he was because when he borned the heaven shook and the earth trumbled. Generally speaking your average Western hero tend to be someone at the peak of his profession and got there presumably by hard work + skill instead of just being born as the world's top whatever. Even for something like The Matrix, people besides Neo sure aren't anyone special, and there's been more than one "The One" anyway so even that alone isn't enough.
I remember there was a guy assessing the difference between Jiang Yong and Gou Long's works, both considered very influential figures in modern Chinese literature, and it's something like: "Jiang Yong taught us that if you're the chosen one you can throw fireball, jump across buildings, and get all the girls you want even if you're some nerdy bumpkin. Gou Long taught us that being the chosen one isn't all it's hyped up to be." Now that doesn't necessarily say who is better, but certainly Jiang Yong's work is very reflective of Chinese literature.
