@Afiaki The publishers might care, and you're right, no one still reading it would care. But the people who make big deals about these kinda things aren't actually fans of the series in the first place. Remember this series is 'officially' licensed in the west, meaning the author is making money from it. He might not care what the west thinks, but pretty sure he would care if cancel culture attacked him and got his comic shut down in the west and he wasn't making that money anymore.
And thing thing is, the human painting didn't happen. It's been a fairly consistent joke up until this point but it didn't happen for some reason now. People are going to guess at what that reason is. But if your strongest argument against someone's idea is "The west are enemies in the story so the author doesn't care about the West" then don't bother objecting. You have an opinion with no way to prove it, it's just what you believe. If you try to refute other people's opinions with nothing to actually substantiate your claim, you're not debating, you're not even arguing, you're just being an arrogant prick.
So go have your opinion, but don't attack other people's opinions unless you have something substantial against said opinion that is provable.