Since I began working on the Western adaptation of Playing Anime Legends, one of the most important decisions was to avoid keeping real-world countries as the direct foundation of the story. In particular, I chose not to use China as an explicit reference, even though many of the themes, power systems, and social structures of the original work clearly draw from traditions commonly associated with novels, manhwa, and xianxia.
The reason is simple.
This version is being presented to a much broader audience, including Western readers who may not be familiar with the cultural, symbolic, and narrative conventions of those genres. When these elements are tied too closely to a real-world nation, certain behaviors, hierarchies, and concepts of honor, power, and social order can feel strange, confusing, or create unnecessary distance from the story.
That is why, in this translation and adaptation, Ishtar was introduced.
Ishtar is a fictional country located in East Asia, formed by multiple cultures, peoples, and lineages - a vast multicultural federation, the "Brazil of the East" within the world of the story. It does not represent China, Japan, Korea, or any real nation. Instead, it exists as a neutral narrative space where different surnames, traditions, technologies, religions, and ideologies can coexist without binding the story to any specific real-world people.
This choice was made to improve immersion for Western readers, preserving the spirit, intensity, and style of the original work while avoiding the risk of fictional conflicts being interpreted as commentary on real countries.
In the end, Ishtar allows Playing Anime Legends to be read as what it has always been: a story about characters, ambition, power, and destiny - not about the borders of the real world.
Thank you for following this adaptation.