Bullet Train Asia Pacific Arts

With the popularity of Lip Sync Battle, lip-syncing has become a vehicle for comedy in America. But in India, lip-syncing is done in earnest, and it’s an integral part of actors’ onscreen performances. We talk to filmmaker Richie Mehta of Canada’s Bollywood Star, musician Lucie Alaimo, and contestants of Kollaboration’s first Lip Sync Battle to see what really makes a good lipsyncer.

With the terms MILF and "la ma (hot mom)," contemporary mothers are being celebrated in the media for their beauty. But in China, is hotness a tool for empowerment or just a commodifiable distraction?

Otome has been extremely popular in Japan since the mid-1990s, but American gamers are just starting to realize how fun it can be to live out a romantic fantasy in a virtual world. But what can we learn about love from Japanese romance simulation games? We talk to Voltage game producer Michael Nakada, otome fan Eugenia Fung, and psychiatrist Ravi Chandra to find out.

We were impressed when we discovered the snarky humor e-card website Someecards.com had categories for ethnic holidays like Chinese New Year, until we realized they seemed to be written by people who weren't that familiar with Asians. So why don’t we make our own, with insider humor instead of outsider humor? We talk to Taz Ahmed, who makes humorous Muslim Valentine’s Day cards, and Dis/orient/ed Comedy co-founder Jenny Yang, who gives us some tips so we can come up with our own Chinese New Year one-liners.

In 2008, there was a flood of Japanese game show remakes, but there's only one that has not only survived but is getting more and more popular by the year. We talk to competitors Yen Chen, Ryan Stratis, and James McGrath -- as well as scholar Jaime Wright - about the phenomenon that is American Ninja Warrior and what we can learn about remakes in general.

If YouTube is a democratic space that finally allows all Asian Americans to tell our own stories, why are most of the creators still men? We talk to Christine Chen, a producer at Wong Fu Productions, and Anna Akana, an actress/filmmaker with over 1 million subscribers on her YouTube channel.