Except java is proprietary, and requires a separate JVM, with all its GUI bloat and backward compatibility, while WASM was instantly implemented by all browsers and only does a very limited set of things, which is running an almost-binary in a browser.

Any language can be compiled into WASM, but java being garbage collected, it's far from being the case.

WASM is agnostic and flexible and allows a broad range of things.

Java was never designed with the web in mind, and money ruined it, because it tried to do everything, but did everything poorly. WASM can actually make fast webapps a reality, maybe even on android.

And even if it reinvents java, so what? At least it replaces it and fixes its many problems, they are many things that cannot be done in java. Its VM had no chance to be made standard in browsers...

So in short, if you reinvents something, but you make it an open standard, it's clearly an improvement.