Regarding remakes, something is to be said for execution. If the American version is a good film and a faithful adaptation that understands the property, then I think it's fine. But considering a remake like the American version of Old Boy, it doesn't capture or express the themes of the original. By sticking in a white dude and making allusions to the better film, you only draw negative comparison. It's usually not a race issue if they recast to expand the audience, but it becomes one when they cash in with an Americanize version for the money and not to do a faithful adaptation of an Asian work.
Regarding the "Scarjo got the job because she puts ass in seats" is a self-fufilling prophesy. Nobody casts Asian leads->there's no evidence Asians leads will sell a big budget film->we HAVE to get a white person is bad logic. Just because Hollywood is scared to get outside it's comfort zone of racism and sexism, doesn't mean a film with a minority actor will perform worse. Whenever a Jackie Chan movie is made in America, they pair him with a random popular American actor to soften the blow of an Asian starring in a Western film. Meanwhile his better, self-made films in are about him and his character, he doesn't play foil to somebody who will mock his accent.
And lastly, regarding wether or not Motoko looks Japanese, well... This first image is from a Japanese play they put on for the 25th anniversary of GitS:
Also, about Japanese people not caring about a white actor. I wouldn't put too much stock into that, Japanese culture is very racist in many other respects. They are very homophobic too, we really shouldn't use their take as a barometer for political correctness.
I think the most infuriating thing about these arguments regarding Ghost in the shellès casting of SJ as the lead is that it patently ignores core themes of the series and that specific character; that being the question of who we are if litterally every part of our body can be replaced with mass produced mechanisms that can pass for natural flesh and blood. Further, Kusanagi as a character was converted into a cyborg at an extroardinarily young age, to the point where shès not even sure she was ever human.
By casting a white actress to play the part of a japanese cyborg, the company may have stumbled ass backwards into a rather poignant truth bout the series.
We will have to see the movie before we can say if they missed it or not. The filmmakers can be pilloried for experimenting with adding "ethnic" effects, but it is too early to condemn them for missing that questioning of one's identity and self that is core to the setting.
Black lives matter.
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Point of order, Doctor Strange has nothing to do with Ku'n-Lun.
That's Iron Fist. And Ku'n-Lun already is a made up fantasy country place sorta, it's a Shangri-La kind of deal in the comics where it's like kind of "beyond" normal geography.
And I'm pretty sure that's what they're doing with it in the MCU? When Madame Gao in Daredevil (who is implied to be related to Iron Fist's stuff in some way) talks about returning to her homeland, she is asked if she is referring to China. She instead says it is " considerably farther".
Doctor Strange's shenanigans in the comics is explicitly Tibetan, the Ancient One is a Tibetan dude (from a fictional Tibetan city because, y'know, written by white guys in the 60s). You could also tie Doctor Strange in with the K'un-Lun stuff from Iron Fist, but since Marvel Films thinks so little of the Netflix series they cast a woman in Civil War who was already cast in Luke Cage as completely different characters, I doubt that kind of thing is gonna fly.
The bolded is the idea. I was unclear in my post. K'un-Lun is named after a Tibetan mountain range, so if they're pussy-footing around the Tibet problem, they need to move the K'un-Lun stuff too. The suggestion is to create one fictional place to house both backstories.
I don't know if Marvel is going to pussy-foot around K'un-Lun for Iron Fist because Iron Fist is Netflix, and ain't no Netflix in China.
Whereas the Chinese box office matters a great deal to the films like Doctor Strange.
So connecting Doctor Strange to Ku'n-Lun basically creates more problems than it solves? Because, once again, now you have a Tibet connection (which, to be frank, didn't even exist in the comics)
This is what C. Robert Cargill, writer for Doctor Strange, was talking about when he said he's frustrated with how everyone thinks they have a simple solution. There isn't one.
There are ways to solve Marvel's Asian superhero problems. Trying to work with their Asian stereotype characters isn't how you do it. You don't do it with Iron Fist or the Ancient One or Shang-Chi or Jimmy Woo or Amadeus Cho.
The right way would be to take a previously "white by default" character who has nothing to do with stereotypically Asian traits, and cast an Asian actor.
So, y'know, not a kung fu master or a guy who has math superpowers or is a "mystic oriental"
I don't think any of those characters are necessarily beyond rehabilitation in the right hands. Luke Cage is a good example of a character who was essentially a stereotype but developed by later writers into a real character.
Also, Amadeus Cho is great as hell. He's an anti-authoritarian, confident-beyond-his-abilities teen who insists on trying to pal around with the Hulk no matter how bad of an idea it is. I'd watch that movie. Just change his "great at math" superpower to a more general, Tony Stark-style intelligence and you're pretty much good to go.
I think the most infuriating thing about these arguments regarding Ghost in the shellès casting of SJ as the lead is that it patently ignores core themes of the series and that specific character; that being the question of who we are if litterally every part of our body can be replaced with mass produced mechanisms that can pass for natural flesh and blood. Further, Kusanagi as a character was converted into a cyborg at an extroardinarily young age, to the point where shès not even sure she was ever human.
By casting a white actress to play the part of a japanese cyborg, the company may have stumbled ass backwards into a rather poignant truth bout the series.
Kusanagi can be any "race" that she chooses. Hell, she can be any gender she chooses. She could be a fucking octopus if she found one with a slot for a cyberbrain.
But she chooses to be human. She chooses to be Japanese, she sees herself as Japanese, her ghost (seen in the cyberspace sections) is Japanese. She works for a Japanese special forces unit that deals with Japanese xenophobia and Japanese ultranationalism.
I mean, yeah, you're right that it's a manufactured statement about identity, but that doesn't make ScarJo the right choice (unless, as I've noted previously, they are very careful about it).
Yeah, it comes down to writing. If they have to scrap the Ancient One based on it being an inherently offense stereotype, then scrap him. Or write him better. Or anything better than take a traditionally Asian character and slide yet another white person in there. It isn't fair to Asian actors when you do that, and it's following years and years of disenfranchised talented people; they are either were forced to do stereotypical accents, or watch a hundred other talented actors step up to take the job when they refuse.
I think the most infuriating thing about these arguments regarding Ghost in the shellès casting of SJ as the lead is that it patently ignores core themes of the series and that specific character; that being the question of who we are if litterally every part of our body can be replaced with mass produced mechanisms that can pass for natural flesh and blood. Further, Kusanagi as a character was converted into a cyborg at an extroardinarily young age, to the point where shès not even sure she was ever human.
By casting a white actress to play the part of a japanese cyborg, the company may have stumbled ass backwards into a rather poignant truth bout the series.
Kusanagi can be any "race" that she chooses. Hell, she can be any gender she chooses. She could be a fucking octopus if she found one with a slot for a cyberbrain.
But she chooses to be human. She chooses to be Japanese, she sees herself as Japanese, her ghost (seen in the cyberspace sections) is Japanese. She works for a Japanese special forces unit that deals with Japanese xenophobia and Japanese ultranationalism.
I mean, yeah, you're right that it's a manufactured statement about identity, but that doesn't make ScarJo the right choice (unless, as I've noted previously, they are very careful about it).
Going into her perceptions is actually kind of murky. Since she herself claims that her physical appearance is only a very small part of who she is.
Interesting note for people not familiar with GiTS, as the series has moved between mediums her origin story has changed to make her younger and younger when she was turned into a cyborg.
The original version was never really mentioned, just that she had an accident and was shifted to a full prosthesis. SAC she was around 6 and in a plane crash that left her in a coma. Arise, was before she was even born.
So, breaking off from the MCU thread and elsewhere, this is a place to talk about whitewashing. And, in general minority actors, directors and more being looked over or put in a box when it comes to being portrayed and employed in Hollywood TV and films.
Some believe this is affirmative action nonsense of the highest order, while others see a disturbing trend going back over a century. Where do you stand? And try to keep it civil.
My personal opinion is thusly: it's been a long time coming to have a serious discussion on why whitewashing is so common even today. We live in a modern age where shows and movies starring minority actors do well as any others, and yet Hollywood is constantly giving roles to white actors using money as a justification. These arguments don't hold true anymore, and come across as insulting and degrading to people of color, women, and LGBT actors. We had a post in the MCU thread saying
"All roles to bi-racial multiply-disabled pansexuals
Every non bi-racial multiply-disabled pansexual cast is a crime against humanity."
Even as a mocking comment, that is fucked up and dated as an attitude. Giving these actors a voice isn't some succinct Tumblr post, about shouting down other opinions. It's about addressing a real world issue we give no thought to. People are actively annoyed when faced with discussion of this topic, and tell others to "Give it a rest". Well, we gave it a rest, for over a century. We need to be aware of the problems the film industry is facing in the immediate, and not scoff, scapegoat, and otherwise distract from the facts.
So like pretty much everyone, I never watched "Aloha."
When people said that Emma Stone was playing a half-Asian character, I thought they meant "She plays a character based on someone of Asian descent, but the movie kind of ignores that."
I didn't realize she actually plays a character who announces herself as half-Asian in the movie.
So like pretty much everyone, I never watched "Aloha."
When people said that Emma Stone was playing a half-Asian character, I thought they meant "She plays a character based on someone of Asian descent, but the movie kind of ignores that."
I didn't realize she actually plays a character who announces herself as half-Asian in the movie.
Which makes me feel sad for my son, who, while ethnically is half-Puerto Rican, doesn't have a single discernable Puerto Rican feature and is almost whiter than I am.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
It's a problem, but given the themes of Ghost in the Shell, being critical of the appearance of the protagonist in an environment where identity and appearance can be fluid makes it a weaker example of it in my mind especially since we currently lack the full context of the performance. For now, stick to The Last Airbender, Gods of Egypt, The Lone Ranger, or older movies like The Ten Commandments and Lawrence of Arabia for solid examples.
It's just particularly striking with Ghost in the Shell because they dyed her hair black to do it and initially did some test runs to see if they could use CGI to make her look more Asian. They failed spectacularly.
When you're casting a white actor to play a non-white part and you're looking for ways to make that actor look like some other ethnicity, that's a really big red flag that you need to stop what you're doing.
I wasn't really seeing much of a problem in this particular case because 1) cyborg and 2) anime's tendency to draw its characters as white anyway, but the bolded does make it a little indefensible.
I've seen this argument multiple times for different properties, and IMHO it's just terrible. Manga / anime is so stylized that it doesn't represent any ethnicity at all; it clearly is intended to evoke some ideal form of beauty (and arguably succeeds... I'm half tempted to ask @simonwolf to comment, since he's studied it professionally). Even just in terms of skin tone, properties are all over the place (and rare is the source manga that isn't greyscale or monochrome).
Regardless, manga /anime is a readily identifiable style with clear origins in Southeast Asia, often featuring protagonists / antagonists that are very explicitly Asian, even if they are visually depicted as the Platonic form of fuckability or whatever.
I like to link this post whenever this topic comes up
If I draw a stick figure, most Americans will assume that it is a white man. Because to them that is the Default Human Being. For them to think it is a woman I have to add a dress or long hair; for Asian, I have to add slanted eyes; for black, I add kinky hair or brown skin. Etc.
The Other has to be marked. If there are no stereotyped markings of otherness, then white is assumed.
Americans apply this thinking to Japanese drawings. But to the Japanese the Default Human Being is Japanese! So they feel no need to make their characters “look Asian”. They just have to make them look like people and everyone in Japan will assume they are Japanese – no matter how improbable their physical appearance.
You see the same thing in America: After all, why do people think Marge Simpson is white? Look at her skin: it is yellow. Look at her hair: it is a blue Afro. But the Default Human Being thing is so strong that lacking other clear, stereotyped signs of being either black or Asian she defaults to white.
This stickman argument is dumb, if only because it doesn't capture the truth of why we see the Simpsons as White and potentially give an even better answer as to why the Japanese see animus as Japanese. The "stick figure" part is a non-starter as it is just made up nonsense and/or factually incorrect depending upon which parts we wish to analyze.
We see Marge Simpson as white because that particular shade of yellow skin is white in the Simpsons verse - Jews, Southern Country music singers, old rich men, newscasters, the majority of Americans, hillbillies, et al are all Simpsons yellow. Many other ethnicities are represented and they each have different skintones. Furthermore, people of known ethnicities have ersatz or actual representations within the Simpsons universe. And also curly hair isn't inherently a marker of ethnicity (white people have it too), but also Marge has straight hair, she chooses to style it as her weird uber beehive. We also know that Marge is white as she's a caricature of Groening's mother (or grandmother or aunt).
All of which is to say that we can infer the races of the Simpsons from context about the world that they represent, so we conclude do the Japanese. It's set in Tokyo, Tokyo is full of Japanese people, ergo the majority are Japanese.
The wrinkle is this: do they represent Caucasians differently?
All of which is to say that we can infer the races of the Simpsons from context about the world that they represent, so we conclude do the Japanese. It's set in Tokyo, Tokyo is full of Japanese people, ergo the majority are Japanese.
The wrinkle is this: do they represent Caucasians differently?
One cannot hold up any single anime or manga as emblematic of all representations of Japanese, nor of Caucasians. That said, artists over there generally do depict Caucasian individuals differently. The typical stereotype, of course, is blond hair, blue eyes and a big nose.
Also, Max Landis posted a 6 minute rant that this is a cultural issue and not to be mad at studios, actors, and the movie industry in general. While he may be right about the cultural issue, I don't think the right answer is to just be mad at society. Movie makers have a lot more influence than they think. By giving minorities people in film to identify with, you give then a voice they didn't have before.
To put the Scarjo casting into a different light, they passes over Rinko Kikuchi when she auditioned for the role. She's literally the first Japanese woman to be nominated for an Oscar in 50 years. She was in Pacific Rim and has been nominated for and won numerous awards. But, they go with Scarjo because of money. If GitS flops, they might not make enough back to pay her salary for the film.
So like pretty much everyone, I never watched "Aloha."
When people said that Emma Stone was playing a half-Asian character, I thought they meant "She plays a character based on someone of Asian descent, but the movie kind of ignores that."
I didn't realize she actually plays a character who announces herself as half-Asian in the movie.
Which makes me feel sad for my son, who, while ethnically is half-Puerto Rican, doesn't have a single discernable Puerto Rican feature and is almost whiter than I am.
One of my co-workers back when I was a letter carrier was entirely Puerto Rican, right down to his light brown hair and easily sun-burned skin (yeap). He complained one time that he couldn't convince a customer with limited English that he could, in fact, speak perfect Spanish and could she please stop trying to explain her situation in incomprehensible English and please just tell him what the problem was. Looks can be deceiving etc.
All of which is to say that we can infer the races of the Simpsons from context about the world that they represent, so we conclude do the Japanese. It's set in Tokyo, Tokyo is full of Japanese people, ergo the majority are Japanese.
The wrinkle is this: do they represent Caucasians differently?
One cannot hold up any single anime or manga as emblematic of all representations of Japanese, nor of Caucasians. That said, artists over there generally do depict Caucasian individuals differently. The typical stereotype, of course, is blond hair, blue eyes and a big nose.
Depending on the cartoon, it can be clear when then draw different races. For instance, Attack on Titan has a predominantly German inspired cast, with names that are typical German names and drawn with blonde hair or blue eyes. The only Asian depicted is specifically referenced as Asian, and drawn and named differently to reflect this. There's also Hetalia: Axis Powers, which gives good insight into what Japanese stereotypes of foreigners look like. And my personal favorite, G Gundam, where eash nation has his own racist Gundam such as "Gundam wearing a Sombrero" or "Gundam that represents China's repression of Japanese culture" or "Gundam from France who is a giant robot version of Napoleon"
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simonwolfi can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered Userregular
Minor addition to the recent comment: GitS, across its media incarnations, has a history of depicting non-Japanese characters in a manner that specifically marks them as Other. I'll dig up specific examples later, if need be.
Goku is actually more white than Motoko. In that he inhabits a world with many many racial stereotypes including Asians and seems to be white and the same race as other pretty explicitly white people.
Motoko Kusinagi, the Japanese national working for the Japanese government who has a cyborg body provided by the Japanese military which is the most popular model in Japan for Japanese women is about as far from "maybe white" as you can get
I know it's sometimes hard to understand, but Motoko and Goku are supposed to be Japanese. That's just how that art style depicts asian people.
Dragonball beyond not being set in Japan has pretty explicit white characters. And I don't mean "I bet they're white" I mean explicitly white. Goku's "father" is white. Roshi is white. You can tell because there are explicitly Asian characters (and black and Native American and hick) and they are drawn differently (mercenary Tao, master shen, the murasaka brothers)
You don't see this in z because they've moved beyond that but it's pretty obvious in the original cartoon.
Minor addition to the recent comment: GitS, across its media incarnations, has a history of depicting non-Japanese characters in a manner that specifically marks them as Other. I'll dig up specific examples later, if need be.
Please do, I may be wrong, but I don't remember their versions of Americans looking any different.
Edit: I'm only really familiar with SAC. I have seen the original movie at one point, but didn't care for it and don't remember anything from it.
I find it interesting that people are so interested in making sure that the Japanese portray white people distinctly in their media, as though we should not hold Hollywood to a standard higher than "well they do it too so"
This idea that we should just ignore the opinions of actual Japanese people seems insane to me.
If the general consensus in the country of Japan is that this is fine and good that should probably carry some weight. Otherwise you're just talking over the very people you're trying to defend. And even among Westerners I have yet to see an actual Japanese-American, or a Japanese person from whatever country, come out against it.
I would also like to know how faithful the GitS film is with the themes of the original comic. Cross-cultural adaptation is a real thing and the Japanese do it all the time with Western stuff. I do think that if they want to cast Scarjo they probably should have changed the name of the character, and the thing about using CGI to make her look more Asian is, if not a bullshit rumour, clearly pretty dumb.
This idea that we should just ignore the opinions of actual Japanese people seems insane to me.
If the general consensus in the country of Japan is that this is fine and good that should probably carry some weight. Otherwise you're just talking over the very people you're trying to defend. And even among Westerners I have yet to see an actual Japanese-American, or a Japanese person from whatever country, come out against it.
I would also like to know how faithful the GitS film is with the themes of the original comic. Cross-cultural adaptation is a real thing and the Japanese do it all the time with Western stuff. I do think that if they want to cast Scarjo they probably should have changed the name of the character, and the thing about using CGI to make her look more Asian is, if not a bullshit rumour, clearly pretty dumb.
Do you mean Japanese people living in Japan, or Japanese-Americans, or both?
Because most Japanese people would be, "Who cares?" because it's an American movie which isn't really going to be high on their cultural zeitgeist and Japan itself is extremely ethnically monolithic.
Japanese-Americans and other Asian-Americans care a whole fucking lot more.
This idea that we should just ignore the opinions of actual Japanese people seems insane to me.
If the general consensus in the country of Japan is that this is fine and good that should probably carry some weight. Otherwise you're just talking over the very people you're trying to defend. And even among Westerners I have yet to see an actual Japanese-American, or a Japanese person from whatever country, come out against it.
I would also like to know how faithful the GitS film is with the themes of the original comic. Cross-cultural adaptation is a real thing and the Japanese do it all the time with Western stuff. I do think that if they want to cast Scarjo they probably should have changed the name of the character, and the thing about using CGI to make her look more Asian is, if not a bullshit rumour, clearly pretty dumb.
The video linked interviews 7(?) people on the street. I'm no statistician, but I have a hunch it's not exactly a truly representative selection of the opinions of the entire country.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I find it interesting that people are so interested in making sure that the Japanese portray white people distinctly in their media, as though we should not hold Hollywood to a standard higher than "well they do it too so"
Well, that is born of a response to an argument, is it really that surprising? A somewhat abstruse point though,
I find it interesting that people are so interested in making sure that the Japanese portray white people distinctly in their media, as though we should not hold Hollywood to a standard higher than "well they do it too so"
Well, that is born of a response to an argument, is it really that surprising? A somewhat abstruse point though.
It's only really applicable to ask if they hire foreigners to play appropriate parts in their live-action films, to which the answer would be "yes, but they don't have many foreign parts to cast because most of their films are set in Japan"
Also, Max Landis posted a 6 minute rant that this is a cultural issue and not to be mad at studios, actors, and the movie industry in general. While he may be right about the cultural issue, I don't think the right answer is to just be mad at society. Movie makers have a lot more influence than they think. By giving minorities people in film to identify with, you give then a voice they didn't have before.
To put the Scarjo casting into a different light, they passes over Rinko Kikuchi when she auditioned for the role. She's literally the first Japanese woman to be nominated for an Oscar in 50 years. She was in Pacific Rim and has been nominated for and won numerous awards. But, they go with Scarjo because of money. If GitS flops, they might not make enough back to pay her salary for the film.
Let's say that if they cared, they could have had a whole bunch of actresses (and actors, let's not forget that the problem isn't just ScarJo) for the parts that would be decidedly less problematic.
Goku is actually more white than Motoko. In that he inhabits a world with many many racial stereotypes including Asians and seems to be white and the same race as other pretty explicitly white people.
Motoko Kusinagi, the Japanese national working for the Japanese government who has a cyborg body provided by the Japanese military which is the most popular model in Japan for Japanese women is about as far from "maybe white" as you can get
I know it's sometimes hard to understand, but Motoko and Goku are supposed to be Japanese. That's just how that art style depicts asian people.
Dragonball beyond not being set in Japan has pretty explicit white characters. And I don't mean "I bet they're white" I mean explicitly white. Goku's "father" is white. Roshi is white. You can tell because there are explicitly Asian characters (and black and Native American and hick) and they are drawn differently (mercenary Tao, master shen, the murasaka brothers)
You don't see this in z because they've moved beyond that but it's pretty obvious in the original cartoon.
Wait, people were up in arms that the alien baby with a tail that fell from the stars was not played by an Asian?
Goku is actually more white than Motoko. In that he inhabits a world with many many racial stereotypes including Asians and seems to be white and the same race as other pretty explicitly white people.
Motoko Kusinagi, the Japanese national working for the Japanese government who has a cyborg body provided by the Japanese military which is the most popular model in Japan for Japanese women is about as far from "maybe white" as you can get
I know it's sometimes hard to understand, but Motoko and Goku are supposed to be Japanese. That's just how that art style depicts asian people.
Dragonball beyond not being set in Japan has pretty explicit white characters. And I don't mean "I bet they're white" I mean explicitly white. Goku's "father" is white. Roshi is white. You can tell because there are explicitly Asian characters (and black and Native American and hick) and they are drawn differently (mercenary Tao, master shen, the murasaka brothers)
You don't see this in z because they've moved beyond that but it's pretty obvious in the original cartoon.
Wait, people were up in arms that the alien baby with a tail that fell from the stars was not played by an Asian?
I was up in arms because the whole thing looked like a giant turd. Oh and because Bulma's hair wasn't completely blue but mainly because the movie looked terrible.
This idea that we should just ignore the opinions of actual Japanese people seems insane to me.
If the general consensus in the country of Japan is that this is fine and good that should probably carry some weight. Otherwise you're just talking over the very people you're trying to defend. And even among Westerners I have yet to see an actual Japanese-American, or a Japanese person from whatever country, come out against it.
I would also like to know how faithful the GitS film is with the themes of the original comic. Cross-cultural adaptation is a real thing and the Japanese do it all the time with Western stuff. I do think that if they want to cast Scarjo they probably should have changed the name of the character, and the thing about using CGI to make her look more Asian is, if not a bullshit rumour, clearly pretty dumb.
Except as I mentioned earlier the Japanese are among the more racist modern countries. They hold very dated views on other cultures, even other Asian cultures. Most countries don't consider racism because the majority of the populace consists of single race, and equal represenation isn't an issue because majority of content is featuring and tailored to that audience.
If you want Japanese or Asian American reactions, look no further than YouTube. Plenty of people have commented on this and said that yes, it is problematic.
Goku is actually more white than Motoko. In that he inhabits a world with many many racial stereotypes including Asians and seems to be white and the same race as other pretty explicitly white people.
Motoko Kusinagi, the Japanese national working for the Japanese government who has a cyborg body provided by the Japanese military which is the most popular model in Japan for Japanese women is about as far from "maybe white" as you can get
I know it's sometimes hard to understand, but Motoko and Goku are supposed to be Japanese. That's just how that art style depicts asian people.
Dragonball beyond not being set in Japan has pretty explicit white characters. And I don't mean "I bet they're white" I mean explicitly white. Goku's "father" is white. Roshi is white. You can tell because there are explicitly Asian characters (and black and Native American and hick) and they are drawn differently (mercenary Tao, master shen, the murasaka brothers)
You don't see this in z because they've moved beyond that but it's pretty obvious in the original cartoon.
Wait, people were up in arms that the alien baby with a tail that fell from the stars was not played by an Asian?
Okay, people keep saying this with regards to the fact that Makoto is a cyborg, as if these are good justifications for changing the race. Referencing the original design and author's intent for the characters, they were clearly drawn from their own culture. Even if Goku is an alien space baby, he looks Japanese. Piccolo is green alien with antenna, no one questions his alien status.
Meanwhile, Superman just so happens to look Caucasian as all get out, not Asian or black or green or any other ethnicity. Nobody questions his appearance, he is easily able to blend in among humans by tossing on glasses.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I find it interesting that people are so interested in making sure that the Japanese portray white people distinctly in their media, as though we should not hold Hollywood to a standard higher than "well they do it too so"
Well, that is born of a response to an argument, is it really that surprising? A somewhat abstruse point though.
It's only really applicable to ask if they hire foreigners to play appropriate parts in their live-action films, to which the answer would be "yes, but they don't have many foreign parts to cast because most of their films are set in Japan"
It applies to the stick figure argument regardless.
However, it is sort of an odd argument to begin with.
It's uncontroversial that the majority of manga people are intended to be Japanese. The question is what the intended appearance it is meant to represent, if any at all. This seems to be a relatively intuitive distinction to draw contra the extremely stylised The Simpsons - the Simpsons lacks most detail about the world further signifying its non-realistic character representations, a lot of manga and anime does the opposite (though, some SD stylised stuff would be semi-equivalent in principle, perhaps?).
It is an empirical question though - one which our more anime infected academics can answer - as to what the appearances the artists intend to represent actually are.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
On the other hand, how would you cast a Sailor Moon feature film? Given Usagi is blonde and blue eyed but lives in Tokyo someplace and is certainly Japanese.
It seems like the disconnection between ethnic indentity and physical appearance couldn't be starker and these sorts of distinctions make it obvious why the question comes up at all.
This idea that we should just ignore the opinions of actual Japanese people seems insane to me.
If the general consensus in the country of Japan is that this is fine and good that should probably carry some weight. Otherwise you're just talking over the very people you're trying to defend. And even among Westerners I have yet to see an actual Japanese-American, or a Japanese person from whatever country, come out against it.
I would also like to know how faithful the GitS film is with the themes of the original comic. Cross-cultural adaptation is a real thing and the Japanese do it all the time with Western stuff. I do think that if they want to cast Scarjo they probably should have changed the name of the character, and the thing about using CGI to make her look more Asian is, if not a bullshit rumour, clearly pretty dumb.
Except as I mentioned earlier the Japanese are among the more racist modern countries. They hold very dated views on other cultures, even other Asian cultures. Most countries don't consider racism because the majority of the populace consists of single race, and equal represenation isn't an issue because majority of content is featuring and tailored to that audience.
If you want Japanese or Asian American reactions, look no further than YouTube. Plenty of people have commented on this and said that yes, it is problematic.
Goku is actually more white than Motoko. In that he inhabits a world with many many racial stereotypes including Asians and seems to be white and the same race as other pretty explicitly white people.
Motoko Kusinagi, the Japanese national working for the Japanese government who has a cyborg body provided by the Japanese military which is the most popular model in Japan for Japanese women is about as far from "maybe white" as you can get
I know it's sometimes hard to understand, but Motoko and Goku are supposed to be Japanese. That's just how that art style depicts asian people.
Dragonball beyond not being set in Japan has pretty explicit white characters. And I don't mean "I bet they're white" I mean explicitly white. Goku's "father" is white. Roshi is white. You can tell because there are explicitly Asian characters (and black and Native American and hick) and they are drawn differently (mercenary Tao, master shen, the murasaka brothers)
You don't see this in z because they've moved beyond that but it's pretty obvious in the original cartoon.
Wait, people were up in arms that the alien baby with a tail that fell from the stars was not played by an Asian?
Okay, people keep saying this with regards to the fact that Makoto is a cyborg, as if these are good justifications for changing the race. Referencing the original design and author's intent for the characters, they were clearly drawn from their own culture. Even if Goku is an alien space baby, he looks Japanese. Piccolo is green alien with antenna, no one questions his alien status.
Meanwhile, Superman just so happens to look Caucasian as all get out, not Asian or black or green or any other ethnicity. Nobody questions his appearance, he is easily able to blend in among humans by tossing on glasses.
Ehhh.. his outfit is distinctly Asian but all of Toriyama's characters look pretty damn similar, more so when you look at the rest of his body of work and character designs.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
This idea that we should just ignore the opinions of actual Japanese people seems insane to me.
If the general consensus in the country of Japan is that this is fine and good that should probably carry some weight. Otherwise you're just talking over the very people you're trying to defend. And even among Westerners I have yet to see an actual Japanese-American, or a Japanese person from whatever country, come out against it.
I would also like to know how faithful the GitS film is with the themes of the original comic. Cross-cultural adaptation is a real thing and the Japanese do it all the time with Western stuff. I do think that if they want to cast Scarjo they probably should have changed the name of the character, and the thing about using CGI to make her look more Asian is, if not a bullshit rumour, clearly pretty dumb.
Except as I mentioned earlier the Japanese are among the more racist modern countries. They hold very dated views on other cultures, even other Asian cultures. Most countries don't consider racism because the majority of the populace consists of single race, and equal represenation isn't an issue because majority of content is featuring and tailored to that audience.
If you want Japanese or Asian American reactions, look no further than YouTube. Plenty of people have commented on this and said that yes, it is problematic.
Goku is actually more white than Motoko. In that he inhabits a world with many many racial stereotypes including Asians and seems to be white and the same race as other pretty explicitly white people.
Motoko Kusinagi, the Japanese national working for the Japanese government who has a cyborg body provided by the Japanese military which is the most popular model in Japan for Japanese women is about as far from "maybe white" as you can get
I know it's sometimes hard to understand, but Motoko and Goku are supposed to be Japanese. That's just how that art style depicts asian people.
Dragonball beyond not being set in Japan has pretty explicit white characters. And I don't mean "I bet they're white" I mean explicitly white. Goku's "father" is white. Roshi is white. You can tell because there are explicitly Asian characters (and black and Native American and hick) and they are drawn differently (mercenary Tao, master shen, the murasaka brothers)
You don't see this in z because they've moved beyond that but it's pretty obvious in the original cartoon.
Wait, people were up in arms that the alien baby with a tail that fell from the stars was not played by an Asian?
Okay, people keep saying this with regards to the fact that Makoto is a cyborg, as if these are good justifications for changing the race. Referencing the original design and author's intent for the characters, they were clearly drawn from their own culture. Even if Goku is an alien space baby, he looks Japanese. Piccolo is green alien with antenna, no one questions his alien status.
Meanwhile, Superman just so happens to look Caucasian as all get out, not Asian or black or green or any other ethnicity. Nobody questions his appearance, he is easily able to blend in among humans by tossing on glasses.
Goumindong has given multiple accounts that argue that Goku is white using, at least, the same eliminationist reasoning that we would use with regard to the Simpsons and possibly more explicit justifications.
At the moment we have contrary assertions, and the "Goku is Japanese" argument is basically resting on the very subjective "he looks Japanese".
On the other hand, how would you cast a Sailor Moon feature film? Given Usagi is blonde and blue eyed but lives in Tokyo someplace and is certainly Japanese.
The answer is they have normal Japanese hair colors until they transform into their sailor scout mode, after which they wear brightly-colored wigs.
It seems like the disconnection between ethnic indentity and physical appearance couldn't be starker and these sorts of distinctions make it obvious why the question comes up at all.
We've already talked about how animation isn't limited to reality for depicting characters. Either you can go for faithfully adapting those anachronisms, as in the above clip or you can take an approach where you have the characters be realistic-looking but somehow still faithful to the original cartoon version, be it in appearance or mannerisms. Assuming you want to stay super-faithful to the original characters. Nothing says you can't simply be inspired by the original property and make a new film on the basis, like the American version of Ringu or Edge of Tomorrow's take on All You Need Is Kill.
On the other hand, how would you cast a Sailor Moon feature film? Given Usagi is blonde and blue eyed but lives in Tokyo someplace and is certainly Japanese.
The answer is they have normal Japanese hair colors until they transform into their sailor scout mode, after which they wear brightly-colored wigs.
On the other hand, how would you cast a Sailor Moon feature film? Given Usagi is blonde and blue eyed but lives in Tokyo someplace and is certainly Japanese.
Another thing I can comment on in brief: there have been multiple live-action adaptations of Sailor Moon, in each case Usagi (and the other scouts) have been depicted as "real" Japanese girls in their normal-form, and wearing colourful wigs and such in their scout form.
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miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
edited April 2016
I linked these tweets from jon tsuei in the movie thread before, rather than posting like ten tweets i'll just transcribe them
I've been seeing a lot of defenses for the ScarJo casting that seem to lack a nuanced understanding of a Ghost In The Shell as a story.
The manga came out in 1989, the first film 1995. An era when Japan was considered the world leader in technology. Everything hot in that era came out of Japan. Cars, video games, walkmans, all of that. Japan was setting a standard. This is a country that went from poised to conquer to the Pacific to forcibly disarmed. They poured their resources into their economy. And as a country that was unable to defend themselves, but was a world leader in tech, it created a relationship to tech that is unique.
Ghost In The Shell plays off all of these themes. It is inherently a Japanese story, not a universal one.
This casting is not only the erasure of Asian faces but a removal of the story from its core themes. You can "Westernize" the story if you want, but at that point it is no longer Ghost In The Shell because the story is simply not Western. Understand that media from Asia holds a dear place in the hearts of many Asians in the west, simply because western media doesn't show us. Ghost In The Shell, while just one film, is a pillar in Asian media. It's not simply a scifi thriller. Not to me, not to many others. Respect the work for what it is and don't bastardize it into what you want it to be.
I find it doubtful that the filmmakers considered the story through this lens, but more than anything what this casting does is telegraph to me that this probably isn't gonna be a good movie? Like they flubbed this part this badly already, how am I supposed to expect them to handle the actual meaty, cerebral bits of the story with any sort of care or understanding? The IMDb page has the Laughing Man listed, but are they actually going to incorporate the salient themes of Stand Alone Complex or are they just using the name as a shortcut, because it's recognizable, etc?
My expectations at this point are that it's gonna be a generic scifi action movie dressed up in GitS trappings and I haven't really seen anything to suggest otherwise
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
On the other hand, how would you cast a Sailor Moon feature film? Given Usagi is blonde and blue eyed but lives in Tokyo someplace and is certainly Japanese.
Another thing I can comment on in brief: there have been multiple live-action adaptations of Sailor Moon, in each case Usagi (and the other scouts) have been depicted as "real" Japanese girls in their normal-form, and wearing colourful wigs and such in their scout form.
The point of why anime characters have weird colored hair and eyes is simple: so you can tell them apart. If the art style is simple, then the vast majority of Asian characters will look like dark haired, dark eyed with fair skin. They don't tend to have a lot of defining facial features, so it's easier to show the difference by giving them unique color schemes.
That said, if you don't think Goku, star of a manga in Japan based on a Chinese folk tale that dates back to before they even knew white people existed, has an Asian complexion... Well we are hitting critical mass of hair splitting. Again, nobody calls out Superman for miraculously being a stereotypical looking white male.
The cultural view of Toriyama’s Dragon Ball universe is a reference to Pure Land Buddhism, where the chaos of the universe is juxtaposed against the afterlife that Goku so frequently enters upon dying. Like American super-hero comics, Goku never truly “dies,” but enters a new realm where he may attain enlightenment through his martial arts training with the regional deities that oversee his part of the cosmos.
On the other hand, how would you cast a Sailor Moon feature film? Given Usagi is blonde and blue eyed but lives in Tokyo someplace and is certainly Japanese.
The answer is they have normal Japanese hair colors until they transform into their sailor scout mode, after which they wear brightly-colored wigs.
Which is contrary to the source and doesn't make for a convincing effect.
But part of the problem there is the budget is garbo, but I remain sceptical.
And it doesn't answer either question
How a Hollywood Sailor Moon production should handle such a production
And
How the obvious discrepancy between appearance and ethnicity is to be resolved in terms of what the manga style is supposed to represent.
Edit: to say "animation isn't limited to reality" doesn't answer the question of what they are intended to represent.
I have no idea how Hollywood would pursue making a Sailor Moon film, but they probably aren't going to keep it set in Japan.
Eventually you get to a point where you have to ask yourself what exactly about the property you want to preserve and what you don't want to.
Look, people's problem with the live-action The Last Airbender film went far beyond the cast (except the villains) being super white. The film also managed to completely lack any of the spirit of the original that made it so enjoyable. The cast for The Last Airbender could have been cast with each of the four nations being properly represented by people of different Asiatic nations, but it wouldn't have saved the film from being a complete turd. That the cast was whitewashed wasn't a guarantee of a poor film, but it was definitely the first warning sign to people that maybe the film was going to miss out on what made the original so great.
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Ultimately, it is an empirical question though, if the artists say "I intend this to represent a girl who looks just like my little sister, but with pink hair, and flowers for pupils" or "that is my grandfather, but with a weird shock of green hair and blue eyes" then that question is solved.
If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.
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Regarding the "Scarjo got the job because she puts ass in seats" is a self-fufilling prophesy. Nobody casts Asian leads->there's no evidence Asians leads will sell a big budget film->we HAVE to get a white person is bad logic. Just because Hollywood is scared to get outside it's comfort zone of racism and sexism, doesn't mean a film with a minority actor will perform worse. Whenever a Jackie Chan movie is made in America, they pair him with a random popular American actor to soften the blow of an Asian starring in a Western film. Meanwhile his better, self-made films in are about him and his character, he doesn't play foil to somebody who will mock his accent.
And lastly, regarding wether or not Motoko looks Japanese, well... This first image is from a Japanese play they put on for the 25th anniversary of GitS:
Also, about Japanese people not caring about a white actor. I wouldn't put too much stock into that, Japanese culture is very racist in many other respects. They are very homophobic too, we really shouldn't use their take as a barometer for political correctness.
Reposted since I got botpaged
We will have to see the movie before we can say if they missed it or not. The filmmakers can be pilloried for experimenting with adding "ethnic" effects, but it is too early to condemn them for missing that questioning of one's identity and self that is core to the setting.
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I don't think any of those characters are necessarily beyond rehabilitation in the right hands. Luke Cage is a good example of a character who was essentially a stereotype but developed by later writers into a real character.
Also, Amadeus Cho is great as hell. He's an anti-authoritarian, confident-beyond-his-abilities teen who insists on trying to pal around with the Hulk no matter how bad of an idea it is. I'd watch that movie. Just change his "great at math" superpower to a more general, Tony Stark-style intelligence and you're pretty much good to go.
Kusanagi can be any "race" that she chooses. Hell, she can be any gender she chooses. She could be a fucking octopus if she found one with a slot for a cyberbrain.
But she chooses to be human. She chooses to be Japanese, she sees herself as Japanese, her ghost (seen in the cyberspace sections) is Japanese. She works for a Japanese special forces unit that deals with Japanese xenophobia and Japanese ultranationalism.
I mean, yeah, you're right that it's a manufactured statement about identity, but that doesn't make ScarJo the right choice (unless, as I've noted previously, they are very careful about it).
Going into her perceptions is actually kind of murky. Since she herself claims that her physical appearance is only a very small part of who she is.
Interesting note for people not familiar with GiTS, as the series has moved between mediums her origin story has changed to make her younger and younger when she was turned into a cyborg.
The original version was never really mentioned, just that she had an accident and was shifted to a full prosthesis. SAC she was around 6 and in a plane crash that left her in a coma. Arise, was before she was even born.
So like pretty much everyone, I never watched "Aloha."
When people said that Emma Stone was playing a half-Asian character, I thought they meant "She plays a character based on someone of Asian descent, but the movie kind of ignores that."
I didn't realize she actually plays a character who announces herself as half-Asian in the movie.
I should hope so, considering the amount of time she spends possessing sexbots in the second movie.
Which makes me feel sad for my son, who, while ethnically is half-Puerto Rican, doesn't have a single discernable Puerto Rican feature and is almost whiter than I am.
This stickman argument is dumb, if only because it doesn't capture the truth of why we see the Simpsons as White and potentially give an even better answer as to why the Japanese see animus as Japanese. The "stick figure" part is a non-starter as it is just made up nonsense and/or factually incorrect depending upon which parts we wish to analyze.
We see Marge Simpson as white because that particular shade of yellow skin is white in the Simpsons verse - Jews, Southern Country music singers, old rich men, newscasters, the majority of Americans, hillbillies, et al are all Simpsons yellow. Many other ethnicities are represented and they each have different skintones. Furthermore, people of known ethnicities have ersatz or actual representations within the Simpsons universe. And also curly hair isn't inherently a marker of ethnicity (white people have it too), but also Marge has straight hair, she chooses to style it as her weird uber beehive. We also know that Marge is white as she's a caricature of Groening's mother (or grandmother or aunt).
All of which is to say that we can infer the races of the Simpsons from context about the world that they represent, so we conclude do the Japanese. It's set in Tokyo, Tokyo is full of Japanese people, ergo the majority are Japanese.
The wrinkle is this: do they represent Caucasians differently?
One cannot hold up any single anime or manga as emblematic of all representations of Japanese, nor of Caucasians. That said, artists over there generally do depict Caucasian individuals differently. The typical stereotype, of course, is blond hair, blue eyes and a big nose.
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To put the Scarjo casting into a different light, they passes over Rinko Kikuchi when she auditioned for the role. She's literally the first Japanese woman to be nominated for an Oscar in 50 years. She was in Pacific Rim and has been nominated for and won numerous awards. But, they go with Scarjo because of money. If GitS flops, they might not make enough back to pay her salary for the film.
One of my co-workers back when I was a letter carrier was entirely Puerto Rican, right down to his light brown hair and easily sun-burned skin (yeap). He complained one time that he couldn't convince a customer with limited English that he could, in fact, speak perfect Spanish and could she please stop trying to explain her situation in incomprehensible English and please just tell him what the problem was. Looks can be deceiving etc.
Depending on the cartoon, it can be clear when then draw different races. For instance, Attack on Titan has a predominantly German inspired cast, with names that are typical German names and drawn with blonde hair or blue eyes. The only Asian depicted is specifically referenced as Asian, and drawn and named differently to reflect this. There's also Hetalia: Axis Powers, which gives good insight into what Japanese stereotypes of foreigners look like. And my personal favorite, G Gundam, where eash nation has his own racist Gundam such as "Gundam wearing a Sombrero" or "Gundam that represents China's repression of Japanese culture" or "Gundam from France who is a giant robot version of Napoleon"
Dragonball beyond not being set in Japan has pretty explicit white characters. And I don't mean "I bet they're white" I mean explicitly white. Goku's "father" is white. Roshi is white. You can tell because there are explicitly Asian characters (and black and Native American and hick) and they are drawn differently (mercenary Tao, master shen, the murasaka brothers)
You don't see this in z because they've moved beyond that but it's pretty obvious in the original cartoon.
Please do, I may be wrong, but I don't remember their versions of Americans looking any different.
Edit: I'm only really familiar with SAC. I have seen the original movie at one point, but didn't care for it and don't remember anything from it.
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If the general consensus in the country of Japan is that this is fine and good that should probably carry some weight. Otherwise you're just talking over the very people you're trying to defend. And even among Westerners I have yet to see an actual Japanese-American, or a Japanese person from whatever country, come out against it.
I would also like to know how faithful the GitS film is with the themes of the original comic. Cross-cultural adaptation is a real thing and the Japanese do it all the time with Western stuff. I do think that if they want to cast Scarjo they probably should have changed the name of the character, and the thing about using CGI to make her look more Asian is, if not a bullshit rumour, clearly pretty dumb.
Do you mean Japanese people living in Japan, or Japanese-Americans, or both?
Because most Japanese people would be, "Who cares?" because it's an American movie which isn't really going to be high on their cultural zeitgeist and Japan itself is extremely ethnically monolithic.
Japanese-Americans and other Asian-Americans care a whole fucking lot more.
The video linked interviews 7(?) people on the street. I'm no statistician, but I have a hunch it's not exactly a truly representative selection of the opinions of the entire country.
It's only really applicable to ask if they hire foreigners to play appropriate parts in their live-action films, to which the answer would be "yes, but they don't have many foreign parts to cast because most of their films are set in Japan"
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Let's say that if they cared, they could have had a whole bunch of actresses (and actors, let's not forget that the problem isn't just ScarJo) for the parts that would be decidedly less problematic.
Wait, people were up in arms that the alien baby with a tail that fell from the stars was not played by an Asian?
I was up in arms because the whole thing looked like a giant turd. Oh and because Bulma's hair wasn't completely blue but mainly because the movie looked terrible.
Except as I mentioned earlier the Japanese are among the more racist modern countries. They hold very dated views on other cultures, even other Asian cultures. Most countries don't consider racism because the majority of the populace consists of single race, and equal represenation isn't an issue because majority of content is featuring and tailored to that audience.
If you want Japanese or Asian American reactions, look no further than YouTube. Plenty of people have commented on this and said that yes, it is problematic.
Okay, people keep saying this with regards to the fact that Makoto is a cyborg, as if these are good justifications for changing the race. Referencing the original design and author's intent for the characters, they were clearly drawn from their own culture. Even if Goku is an alien space baby, he looks Japanese. Piccolo is green alien with antenna, no one questions his alien status.
Meanwhile, Superman just so happens to look Caucasian as all get out, not Asian or black or green or any other ethnicity. Nobody questions his appearance, he is easily able to blend in among humans by tossing on glasses.
It applies to the stick figure argument regardless.
However, it is sort of an odd argument to begin with.
It's uncontroversial that the majority of manga people are intended to be Japanese. The question is what the intended appearance it is meant to represent, if any at all. This seems to be a relatively intuitive distinction to draw contra the extremely stylised The Simpsons - the Simpsons lacks most detail about the world further signifying its non-realistic character representations, a lot of manga and anime does the opposite (though, some SD stylised stuff would be semi-equivalent in principle, perhaps?).
It is an empirical question though - one which our more anime infected academics can answer - as to what the appearances the artists intend to represent actually are.
It seems like the disconnection between ethnic indentity and physical appearance couldn't be starker and these sorts of distinctions make it obvious why the question comes up at all.
Ehhh.. his outfit is distinctly Asian but all of Toriyama's characters look pretty damn similar, more so when you look at the rest of his body of work and character designs.
At the moment we have contrary assertions, and the "Goku is Japanese" argument is basically resting on the very subjective "he looks Japanese".
The answer is they have normal Japanese hair colors until they transform into their sailor scout mode, after which they wear brightly-colored wigs.
But seriously.
We've already talked about how animation isn't limited to reality for depicting characters. Either you can go for faithfully adapting those anachronisms, as in the above clip or you can take an approach where you have the characters be realistic-looking but somehow still faithful to the original cartoon version, be it in appearance or mannerisms. Assuming you want to stay super-faithful to the original characters. Nothing says you can't simply be inspired by the original property and make a new film on the basis, like the American version of Ringu or Edge of Tomorrow's take on All You Need Is Kill.
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Which is contrary to the source and doesn't make for a convincing effect.
But part of the problem there is the budget is garbo, but I remain sceptical.
And it doesn't answer either question
How a Hollywood Sailor Moon production should handle such a production
And
How the obvious discrepancy between appearance and ethnicity is to be resolved in terms of what the manga style is supposed to represent.
Edit: to say "animation isn't limited to reality" doesn't answer the question of what they are intended to represent.
Another thing I can comment on in brief: there have been multiple live-action adaptations of Sailor Moon, in each case Usagi (and the other scouts) have been depicted as "real" Japanese girls in their normal-form, and wearing colourful wigs and such in their scout form.
I find it doubtful that the filmmakers considered the story through this lens, but more than anything what this casting does is telegraph to me that this probably isn't gonna be a good movie? Like they flubbed this part this badly already, how am I supposed to expect them to handle the actual meaty, cerebral bits of the story with any sort of care or understanding? The IMDb page has the Laughing Man listed, but are they actually going to incorporate the salient themes of Stand Alone Complex or are they just using the name as a shortcut, because it's recognizable, etc?
My expectations at this point are that it's gonna be a generic scifi action movie dressed up in GitS trappings and I haven't really seen anything to suggest otherwise
This gets us nowhere, as outlined above.
That said, if you don't think Goku, star of a manga in Japan based on a Chinese folk tale that dates back to before they even knew white people existed, has an Asian complexion... Well we are hitting critical mass of hair splitting. Again, nobody calls out Superman for miraculously being a stereotypical looking white male.
The cultural view of Toriyama’s Dragon Ball universe is a reference to Pure Land Buddhism, where the chaos of the universe is juxtaposed against the afterlife that Goku so frequently enters upon dying. Like American super-hero comics, Goku never truly “dies,” but enters a new realm where he may attain enlightenment through his martial arts training with the regional deities that oversee his part of the cosmos.
I have no idea how Hollywood would pursue making a Sailor Moon film, but they probably aren't going to keep it set in Japan.
Eventually you get to a point where you have to ask yourself what exactly about the property you want to preserve and what you don't want to.
Look, people's problem with the live-action The Last Airbender film went far beyond the cast (except the villains) being super white. The film also managed to completely lack any of the spirit of the original that made it so enjoyable. The cast for The Last Airbender could have been cast with each of the four nations being properly represented by people of different Asiatic nations, but it wouldn't have saved the film from being a complete turd. That the cast was whitewashed wasn't a guarantee of a poor film, but it was definitely the first warning sign to people that maybe the film was going to miss out on what made the original so great.
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If an anime is supposed to be some idealised form that doesn't have any particular representative content/a physical representation independent of ethnicity then that is another thing.
Well, from the perspective of argumentative consistency. I don't think representation of ethnicities is a sufficiently well defined issue to assent to judgements of moral import.