I never saw major as anything but japanese in the gits movie (or SAC), but maybe it's just me being used to weird anime designs.
Was it ever stated what ethnicity she was supposed to resemble?
In the 95 movie no(at least I don't recall it). In other media very much yes (Japanese)
There are times in Stand Alone Complex where people flat-out describe her as "Asian woman", sometimes with the modifier "tall"--for example, in 2nd GIG when she, Batou and Ishikawa are part of a international UN detachment. In retrospect, I wonder if that may not have been a response to exactly this scenario--Production I.G and Kodansha getting tired of a few years of reading, "Yeah, well, you know maybe she's not Japanese!" and going all "Okay, fine, here's her origin story and we're going to flat-out say it in multiple ways, so stop fucking pushing the issue weirdos." Being described as Asian and Japanese, giving an origin of her gynoid body in supplementary materials, even having her pose as a Taiwanese child's mother in one episode (in case people are unclear, Taiwanese people are Asian, though personally I don't think most of us look "Japanese" necessarily). That's one way to hammer your point across.
Even Arise actually puts the Major in a weird but unmistakable psuedo-Imperial Japanese Army dress uniform during her military career, which I guess could be a way of getting the point across (I've also heard she looks more "Asian", but I thought she looked Asian to start with so who the fuck knows).
Animation, and most anime really, tends to be perceived differently depending on the viewer. Going back as far as old anime fan rags, western fans have asked why all anime characters look "american" with large expressive eyes and colorful hair. The funny part is, I wager most Japanese look at anime and see those characters as asian. It's pretty clear when they do draw someone as explicitly western (like the baseball episode of Samurai Champloo or basically all of Attack on Titan save for Mikasa). It's a style. It's like trying discern race from a Picasso painting, it isn't gonna spell it out for you usually.
Japan uniquely makes globalized art with stories taking place all over the world and in many cultures, so it helps to have an art form where the characters are essentially protean.
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Animation, and most anime really, tends to be perceived differently depending on the viewer. Going back as far as old anime fan rags, western fans have asked why all anime characters look "american" with large expressive eyes and colorful hair. The funny part is, I wager most Japanese look at anime and see those characters as asian. It's pretty clear when they do draw someone as explicitly western (like the baseball episode of Samurai Champloo or basically all of Attack on Titan save for Mikasa). It's a style. It's like trying discern race from a Picasso painting, it isn't gonna spell it out for you usually.
It's not limited to anime, but it's a case of "implied Occidentalism"--maybe a bad name from it (darn you, Edward Said!), the notion that white audiences see other culture's art or fiction as being representative of themselves unless it's explicitly outlined otherwise (nor is that limited to white audiences). If I show an American a black-and-white political comic from Taiwan (or for that matter India), with the dialog removed, there's a tendency (not universal by any means) for the person to see that simple rendering as being about white people (even if you show it to, for example, a Black observer). Why? Because the vast majority of media that person is exposed on a daily basis to is about white people.
When I first watched The Simpsons in the early 1990s, years before coming to the US, I thought it was extremely unusual why Marge Simpson was described as white when, in fact, she didn't seem white even by the standards of the yellow-skinned people in the show. She had a tall blue flat-top afro, and very few other discernible characteristics. What made her white? The fact that her creators spell out, in fact, that she and the other Simpsons family members are white (and that it's actually a consideration in the plot).
But it's extremely variable too. My (Taiwanese) cousins, when asked to give a "race" to the character Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist (whom they already knew), called her Russian (so, Slavic?), distinct from white. Why? Because her pale complexion, physical build, and black hair were traits they associated with Slavic people, not Anglo-Saxon Americans or Europeans.
There are a very few anime that actually have characters that "look Asian" to a degree.
For example, nearly the entire cast of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei (aka So Long Mr.Despair) has black hair, with the only stand-out I can recall being a blonde-haired, blue-eyed biracial Asian-American transfer student (who also has a split personality, with one being a stereotypically demure Japanese woman and the other being a stereotypically loud and aggressive American woman).
The majority of characters in Kuragehime (aka Princess Jellyfish) also have black hair.
Personally I just suspect artists want to make Japanese characters that don't all have black hair, which explains the presence of unnatural hair colors like blue, pink and green.
Japan uniquely makes globalized art with stories taking place all over the world and in many cultures, so it helps to have an art form where the characters are essentially protean.
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Also @Synthesis Marge Simpson has a beehive, not an afro. Which is something you probably wouldn't be familiar with if you never watched a lot of US media from the like the 60s, and it was before Amy Whinehouse, but it was/is(?) a typically white hairstyle.
The '17 movie is definitely not an adaption of the '95 animated film. There are some influences, big and small, and whole scenes lifted (purely for the fan service) but that's all it is. The story has more to do with Robocop than Oshii's.
Simply put, the story is The Major's origin, tying into Hanka Electronics (the real bad guys) who are using her as prototype for mass produced full body cyborgs because reasons. She's supposed to be his crown jewel to get the public on board yet the first thing he does is put her in Section 9 (nee explained why), she's never taken on publicity for the media for Hanka or her work discussed in the media to sell the idea. The Puppet Master storyline is completely rewritten that it's barely recognizable, though there is a slight tweak merging that storyline and Kuze's, though not a direct adaption of either. Something something Kuze is building a hive mind thingy, which is dropped after one scene because the movie must reference hive mind consciousness. You'll see bits and pieces of fan service here and there, all inorganically put together over the framework of Robocop. Except this time it takes place in future Not! Japan.
wait, wtf?
at first i thought you were just fucking around, making fun of the movie, but then i realized midway that you were just describing the movie as is and then i was really sad.
In this entire debate about whitewashing there is one thing we haven't talked about: The companies funding this movie.
Or to be more precise: The Shanghai Film Group Corporation and the HuaHua Media.
It does add an extra twist of the knife that it was probably Asian money that got this made, but the kind of Asian money that would never hire anybody Japanese to star.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Japan uniquely makes globalized art with stories taking place all over the world and in many cultures, so it helps to have an art form where the characters are essentially protean.
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Isn't the default Japanese, though? Sure, they make art about people from other races and other worlds, but everyone country does that. Don't they also use artistic license to give visual distinctions to characters so they're not too similar, as well?
The human appearance is a symbol, they're still meant to represent an ethnicity. When it comes to casting these characters the symbol gets replaced with the appropriate actor, which tends to be Japanese.
In this entire debate about whitewashing there is one thing we haven't talked about: The companies funding this movie.
Or to be more precise: The Shanghai Film Group Corporation and the HuaHua Media.
It does add an extra twist of the knife that it was probably Asian money that got this made, but the kind of Asian money that would never hire anybody Japanese to star.
That's intriguing. I thought it was American money that got this made, so why didn't end up like another The Great Wall? Why not give the lead to a Chinese actress? Jing Tian should have been on their radar, if nothing else. With The Great Wall they trusted the production to Zhang Yimou, a highly experienced and celebrated Chinese director (he did Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower), yet with GiTS they chose --- Rupert Sanders? The guy who made Snow White and the Huntsman and this is his second film ever?
Japan uniquely makes globalized art with stories taking place all over the world and in many cultures, so it helps to have an art form where the characters are essentially protean.
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Isn't the default Japanese, though? Sure, they make art about people from other races and other worlds, but everyone country does that. Don't they also use artistic license to give visual distinctions to characters so they're not too similar, as well?
The human appearance is a symbol, they're still meant to represent an ethnicity. When it comes to casting these characters the symbol gets replaced with the appropriate actor, which tends to be Japanese.
For the answer to that, we look to the very interesting past of the history of manga in Japan. Contrary to the history of Georges Méliès as described in Hugo, exotic fantasy film is actually quite popular for a postwar audience - especially one that lost in an avalanche of unprecedented death and destruction. The last thing that the Japanese wanted was anything that reminded them of the traditional culture that got them into the war in the first place, which meant a rejection of the neo-confucianist principles of ethnocentrism and gender roles.
Funnily enough, one of the first Japanese graphic novels to come out during this period was Astro Boy, a story about a robot -
Wait actually reading up on it, hold on. Okay, a story about a robot created by a scientist to replace his dead son after a fatal car accident (gruesomely depicted), who he then, in a drunken rage, rejects for not being human and sells to the circus. The robot boy spends the rest of his life encountering other robots persecuted by society, also there is blackface and racism. Huh.
Well, uh, what I was trying to say at least is that here, at the beginning of modern Japanese animation, is a problem similar to the very one we are facing - is a robot Japanese or even human?
Of course, then there was grounded Sazae-san, a very Japanese story about a strong Japanese woman dealing with post-war Japan - very post-war Japan, it's basically the Japanese version of the Simpsons in its longevity except that the manga started in 1946 and lasted until 1974 - 28 years. The anime started in 1969 and is still going. Like the Simpsons, the characters are simplistically designed. Race is, as you say, tell rather than show, and nobody will argue the fact that Sazae-San is distinctly Japanese.
But then, Japanese manga started delving into stories outside of Japan, far away from the culture and attitudes and ethnocentrism that led them to war. Princess Knight (Knight of Ribbons), made by the creator of Astro Boy, took place in a medieval European fairy tale setting. Little Witch Sally, the progenitor of magical girl anime, was an alien from a magical realm visiting Japan. Sally is not a localization; that is her real name, and was inspired by Bewitched. In the original black and white animation, she looked pretty much the same as the rest of the cast, but was given brown hair in the color production, making her stand out. Then there was Rose of Versailles, a story about a woman disguised as a man in Revolutionary France.
These were all super popular and super influential, and as a result, Japanese animation was globalized fairly early and stayed that way. Only one main character of the four titles I've mentioned so far was Japanese, and that ratio actually holds up for quite a while as Japan explored cultures other than its own. This exposure shaped future art styles, and western influence penetrated the animation vernacular. Large, impossibly large, huge colorful eyes, colorful hair, large heads, westernized clothes, and global settings evolved the stereotypical protagonist of Japanese animation into a melting pot of races, which they were able to get away with because the escapism of the animation and manga subculture created a wealth of imaginary settings and nationalities. Japan does a lot of space stuff and Dungeons and Dragons stuff and you can't tell what race they are because they don't have an existing race. The default is often not Japanese, or American, or European, or Earth.
As we can see in Ghost in the Shell (1995), the influence of globalization, an open-sourcing of cultures around the globe for permitted appropriation, has survived to this day. Japan is very familiar with creating a protagonist with an ambiguous race and ambiguous gender that is never defined. Believe me, especially in the latter area, they are light years ahead of our culture (in the wealth of stories involving ambiguous or alternate gender. In social reality, blech). The cyber body may be any race. The major may be any race or gender - or none.
So it makes sense to me that Mamoru Oshii is open to the interpretation of the Major as white, because the theme of the transcendence of race and gender - and really any cultural identity - has been brewing for quite a while in Japan.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I always got the impression he Geisha robots in ep1 of SAC were intended to be creepy and weird and fetishistic, part of the weird excessiveness that these corrupt government officials were able to get involved in. They do similar stuff a couple other times in the series, too.
The funny thing is that the whole point of the geisha in the original scene is that until they start getting shot they look completely human. Like, they're definitely fetishistic, multiple GitS properties have tackled the idea of robotics as a new sex trade, just as seedy as the old sex trade. But in the live-action they look kind of clockwork-y and obviously artificial, I can understand why they would sort of dumb that down for the first scene in the movie, but then again the whole point of the geisha bots is that they're robots replacing humans.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Japan uniquely makes globalized art with stories taking place all over the world and in many cultures, so it helps to have an art form where the characters are essentially protean.
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Isn't the default Japanese, though? Sure, they make art about people from other races and other worlds, but everyone country does that. Don't they also use artistic license to give visual distinctions to characters so they're not too similar, as well?
The human appearance is a symbol, they're still meant to represent an ethnicity. When it comes to casting these characters the symbol gets replaced with the appropriate actor, which tends to be Japanese.
In this entire debate about whitewashing there is one thing we haven't talked about: The companies funding this movie.
Or to be more precise: The Shanghai Film Group Corporation and the HuaHua Media.
It does add an extra twist of the knife that it was probably Asian money that got this made, but the kind of Asian money that would never hire anybody Japanese to star.
That's intriguing. I thought it was American money that got this made, so why didn't end up like another The Great Wall? Why not give the lead to a Chinese actress? Jing Tian should have been on their radar, if nothing else. With The Great Wall they trusted the production to Zhang Yimou, a highly experienced and celebrated Chinese director (he did Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower), yet with GiTS they chose --- Rupert Sanders? The guy who made Snow White and the Huntsman and this is his second film ever?
I think the simplest answer is just that they already had the rights to GitS and Lucy had done surprisingly well. So let's set up a bog standard superhero 3 act movie (and/or Jason Bourne movie) and borrow the set pieces and some of the art design from the thing we already have the rights to. After all GitS was a cartoon and nerds eat up comic books, same shit, print that check.
And just like with a lot of comic book movies, they didn't care who the director was, they just needed a workman to staple the exposition to the action sequences, and the CG studio is more in control of the fight sequences than he is anyway, so as long as he's shown he can come in budget he's fine. Getting a talented director with a unique vision is undesirable, because if it does well they want to grab some OTHER workman director to pump out 3 more of these things on the cheap.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Japan uniquely makes globalized art with stories taking place all over the world and in many cultures, so it helps to have an art form where the characters are essentially protean.
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Isn't the default Japanese, though? Sure, they make art about people from other races and other worlds, but everyone country does that. Don't they also use artistic license to give visual distinctions to characters so they're not too similar, as well?
The human appearance is a symbol, they're still meant to represent an ethnicity. When it comes to casting these characters the symbol gets replaced with the appropriate actor, which tends to be Japanese.
In this entire debate about whitewashing there is one thing we haven't talked about: The companies funding this movie.
Or to be more precise: The Shanghai Film Group Corporation and the HuaHua Media.
It does add an extra twist of the knife that it was probably Asian money that got this made, but the kind of Asian money that would never hire anybody Japanese to star.
That's intriguing. I thought it was American money that got this made, so why didn't end up like another The Great Wall? Why not give the lead to a Chinese actress? Jing Tian should have been on their radar, if nothing else. With The Great Wall they trusted the production to Zhang Yimou, a highly experienced and celebrated Chinese director (he did Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower), yet with GiTS they chose --- Rupert Sanders? The guy who made Snow White and the Huntsman and this is his second film ever?
I think the simplest answer is just that they already had the rights to GitS and Lucy had done surprisingly well. So let's set up a bog standard superhero 3 act movie (and/or Jason Bourne movie) and borrow the set pieces and some of the art design from the thing we already have the rights to. After all GitS was a cartoon and nerds eat up comic books, same shit, print that check.
And just like with a lot of comic book movies, they didn't care who the director was, they just needed a workman to staple the exposition to the action sequences, and the CG studio is more in control of the fight sequences than he is anyway, so as long as he's shown he can come in budget he's fine. Getting a talented director with a unique vision is undesirable, because if it does well they want to grab some OTHER workman director to pump out 3 more of these things on the cheap.
Yeah, but they could have done that on the Asian side - instead they went totally Hollywood on it. Pretty sure they have workman directors in China that they can hire at a moments notice, and the movie itself wasn't cheap either. They spent a lot of money on this thing, and it'd wiser to hire a workman that they know has a record. Sanders doesn't have much of a record, never mind a good one. And why would they go mostly in with their Chinese/Asian talent on this project? What will be interesting to know is whether Sanders truly had some control or he was merely a puppet director so if it failed he'd get the blame.
Japan uniquely makes globalized art with stories taking place all over the world and in many cultures, so it helps to have an art form where the characters are essentially protean.
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Isn't the default Japanese, though? Sure, they make art about people from other races and other worlds, but everyone country does that. Don't they also use artistic license to give visual distinctions to characters so they're not too similar, as well?
The human appearance is a symbol, they're still meant to represent an ethnicity. When it comes to casting these characters the symbol gets replaced with the appropriate actor, which tends to be Japanese.
For the answer to that, we look to the very interesting past of the history of manga in Japan. Contrary to the history of Georges Méliès as described in Hugo, exotic fantasy film is actually quite popular for a postwar audience - especially one that lost in an avalanche of unprecedented death and destruction. The last thing that the Japanese wanted was anything that reminded them of the traditional culture that got them into the war in the first place, which meant a rejection of the neo-confucianist principles of ethnocentrism and gender roles.
Funnily enough, one of the first Japanese graphic novels to come out during this period was Astro Boy, a story about a robot -
Wait actually reading up on it, hold on. Okay, a story about a robot created by a scientist to replace his dead son after a fatal car accident (gruesomely depicted), who he then, in a drunken rage, rejects for not being human and sells to the circus. The robot boy spends the rest of his life encountering other robots persecuted by society, also there is blackface and racism. Huh.
Well, uh, what I was trying to say at least is that here, at the beginning of modern Japanese animation, is a problem similar to the very one we are facing - is a robot Japanese or even human?
Of course, then there was grounded Sazae-san, a very Japanese story about a strong Japanese woman dealing with post-war Japan - very post-war Japan, it's basically the Japanese version of the Simpsons in its longevity except that the manga started in 1946 and lasted until 1974 - 28 years. The anime started in 1969 and is still going. Like the Simpsons, the characters are simplistically designed. Race is, as you say, tell rather than show, and nobody will argue the fact that Sazae-San is distinctly Japanese.
But then, Japanese manga started delving into stories outside of Japan, far away from the culture and attitudes and ethnocentrism that led them to war. Princess Knight (Knight of Ribbons), made by the creator of Astro Boy, took place in a medieval European fairy tale setting. Little Witch Sally, the progenitor of magical girl anime, was an alien from a magical realm visiting Japan. Sally is not a localization; that is her real name, and was inspired by Bewitched. In the original black and white animation, she looked pretty much the same as the rest of the cast, but was given brown hair in the color production, making her stand out. Then there was Rose of Versailles, a story about a woman disguised as a man in Revolutionary France.
These were all super popular and super influential, and as a result, Japanese animation was globalized fairly early and stayed that way. Only one main character of the four titles I've mentioned so far was Japanese, and that ratio actually holds up for quite a while as Japan explored cultures other than its own. This exposure shaped future art styles, and western influence penetrated the animation vernacular. Large, impossibly large, huge colorful eyes, colorful hair, large heads, westernized clothes, and global settings evolved the stereotypical protagonist of Japanese animation into a melting pot of races, which they were able to get away with because the escapism of the animation and manga subculture created a wealth of imaginary settings and nationalities. Japan does a lot of space stuff and Dungeons and Dragons stuff and you can't tell what race they are because they don't have an existing race. The default is often not Japanese, or American, or European, or Earth.
That is intriguing. That said, while Japanese may not be default ethnicities and nationalities remain, and yes some IP's are more global and non-Japanse centric than others. Gundam, for example. Not being on Earth isn't unique in art, we have plenty of that in the West too but even in anime they do show signs about what ethnicity or pseudo-nationality they are. Fullmetal Alchemist takes place is pseudo-Europe (Germany?) with the occasional pseudo Chinese thrown in (Xing).
With live action adaptions do you think if Japan had access to a more diverse population we'd be seeing more of this in their productions? That they're not as restricted on casting as it is the acting population is being the Japanese majority, without the power to reach out to other countries as easily as Hollywood can for actors. Maybe that's what's coloring my judgment with Japanese adaptions since Japanese actors tend to be the default from what I've seen.
As we can see in Ghost in the Shell (1995), the influence of globalization, an open-sourcing of cultures around the globe for permitted appropriation, has survived to this day. Japan is very familiar with creating a protagonist with an ambiguous race and ambiguous gender that is never defined. Believe me, especially in the latter area, they are light years ahead of our culture (in the wealth of stories involving ambiguous or alternate gender. In social reality, blech). The cyber body may be any race. The major may be any race or gender - or none.
So it makes sense to me that Mamoru Oshii is open to the interpretation of the Major as white, because the theme of the transcendence of race and gender - and really any cultural identity - has been brewing for quite a while in Japan.
In theory, yeah - in reality there are choices that the character chooses (unless it's out of their hands, like Batou sending Motoko's consciousness into a child to save her life) to represent her body to the world. Which tends to be female, and we know she likes a modified popular model from the Asian market to represent herself. Then we get to the meta side where decisions like race and gender have to made if they want the character to be on the big screen and when it came down to that they want a female Major and they chose her to be white. The thing is you're right their options for the ethnicity for the role could be up for grabs for any actress, Japanese or not, except from what I know of the production this was never given consideration - it was a famous white American actress or nobody. It wasn't an open casting call like Daredevil's, or likely the other members of Section 9.
What's fascinating about this movie is the production side, which the Asian side has a lot of control seemed to follow traditional Hollywood method to the letter. That's how powerful Hollywood's influence is on the world with entertainment - and there are similar patterns with other countries too, so they're not alone with this. Now I'm more interested in how The Great Wall got made, since that production, aside from Matt Damon as the lead, was very different from what we got with this.
Oshii has, shall we say, interesting take on whitewashing actors in movies. He's right that Motoko could technically be any race, then he said this
The director went on to point out how a number of actors in the past have played characters of different ethnic groups without issue. "In the movies, John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, and Omar Sharif, an Arab, can play Doctor Zhivago, a Slav. It's all just cinematic conventions," he explained. "If that's not allowed, then Darth Vader probably shouldn’t speak English, either. I believe having Scarlett play Motoko was the best possible casting for this movie. I can only sense a political motive from the people opposing it, and I believe artistic expression must be free from politics."
While i can see why people would give weight to Oshii's words on the matter, i don't see them as all that relevant.
Whitewashing is not really an issue in Japan, plenty of asian roles there to be had, and not sure a japanese director can be expected to be aware of, or concerned about, the racial issues going on in the west.
And the idea that "art should be free of politics" is in itself a political position.
While i can see why people would give weight to Oshii's words on the matter, i don't see them as all that relevant.
Whitewashing is not really an issue in Japan, plenty of asian roles there to be had, and not sure a japanese director can be expected to be aware of, or concerned about, the racial issues going on in the west. And the idea that "art should be free of politics" is in itself a political position.
An ironic opinion considering how he got famous adapting Ghost in a Shell of all things.
so i just saw the movie and it was sadly, just a bad movie.
like, i'm almost glad they whitewashed the film so they can't blame it's bad results on some poor asian-american actor.
edit: one of the really weird things that bothered me a lot was how scarjo seemed to be hunched over the entire movie, like she was walking really weird, which didn't look intimidating and didn't look robotic or whatever. it just looked forced and out of place, like that really rich white kid you know who dresses really gangsta and walks with a gangsta limp and wears his pants really low and speaks funny.
It would have been incredible had the movie-makers respected the parent material enough to present, on their own, the case that based on the history of Anime in Japan and Oroshii's own style that a non-Japanese would be equally suitable for the role of Major Kusanagi. They could have created an advertising campaign (youtube videos, print articles, etc) based around interviews with Asian-American actors and/or popular movie critics that showed them discussing this topic and concluding the race of the actor playing the body of Kusanagi was unimportant to the movie or the questions that the 1995 work asked.
But, that ideal situation is based on a fundamental flaw; that Hollywood respected Ghost in the Shell. As the movie has disappointingly shown, Hollywood could pantomime the imagery, but utterly failed to understand the commentary that GitS was making. And casting ScarJo wasn't a brilliant ploy based on ideas from the original work; but because Hollywood is highly risk adverse and tried to cast in as the lead an Actress that was able to make a terrible movie like Lucy profitable.
It's saddens me on several levels, because Hollywood has repeatedly demonstrated over the years that it can pantomime the appearance of foreign works, but is unable to develop that deeper appreciate or understanding needed to really convey to American audiences of why such stories are so well respected. And these efforts all are justified by the self fulfilling prophecy that you need need a white actor/actress to play the lead in order to be profitable, despite the fact that the casting decision isn't what caused the movie to fail.
While i can see why people would give weight to Oshii's words on the matter, i don't see them as all that relevant.
Whitewashing is not really an issue in Japan, plenty of asian roles there to be had, and not sure a japanese director can be expected to be aware of, or concerned about, the racial issues going on in the west. And the idea that "art should be free of politics" is in itself a political position.
An ironic opinion considering how he got famous adapting Ghost in a Shell of all things.
He got famous in the US for Ghost in the Shell; he otherwise has an impressive resume for Japan only stuff. And he did not simply ape the manga a la Watchmen. Like it or not, his vision is the western face of Ghost in the Shell. The manga has more in common with Moby Dick or Dune than the anime. If his opinions aren't relevant, then the franchise itself is already out of touch with American audiences and this whole thing was a nonstarter. Pick another franchise whose visionary will actually back you if whitewashing is a concern.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
When it comes to racism and white washing in the west, i do think Oshii's opinion is, if not irrelevant, atleast fairly unimportant.
I think he is more qualified than any of us to determine whether a non-asian lead is appropriate in regard to the source material. He is quite ignorant of the machinations of the American Movie industry, which has nothing to do with the themes of this particular franchise.
These are two different arguments. Does casting white people in any story written by a Japanese person constitute whitewashing, or does the content of the story itself make the casting inappropriate? For the latter, I trust his judgment. I'd defer to Jackie Chan or another Asian director with a US presence for the former.
I find justification that focuses on the industry to be pretty sound, but justification that delves deep into the actual story to vary greatly in quality. Some people who otherwise have good points trip up quite a bit when using story elements to sustain the furor of the whitewashing controversy. The American Movie industry and Japanese story culture are two different things requiring different studies; don't assume if you know one that you know the other.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
When it comes to racism and white washing in the west, i do think Oshii's opinion is, if not irrelevant, atleast fairly unimportant.
I think he is more qualified than any of us to determine whether a non-asian lead is appropriate in regard to the source material.
wait, what?
you just linked a well referenced article that said oshii didn't respect the source material at all and effectively dumbed it down to make it suit his own tastes.
i think oshii wanted to make a movie about blurring identities in the context of advance technology and he used gits to do it.
i think hollywood wanted to make a robocop movie with anime visuals and they used gits to do it.
clearly, neither of them have any real regard for or deeper understanding of the source material.
When it comes to racism and white washing in the west, i do think Oshii's opinion is, if not irrelevant, atleast fairly unimportant.
I think he is more qualified than any of us to determine whether a non-asian lead is appropriate in regard to the source material.
wait, what?
you just linked a well referenced article that said oshii didn't respect the source material at all and effectively dumbed it down to make it suit his own tastes.
i think oshii wanted to make a movie about blurring identities in the context of advance technology and he used gits to do it.
i think hollywood wanted to make a robocop movie with anime visuals and they used gits to do it.
clearly, neither of them have any real regard for or deeper understanding of the source material.
I trust data from people who have actually reviewed the source material, but sometimes I draw different conclusions. I think the manga was considered unfilmable for many of the same reasons as Watchmen. I do not think your last statement has merit. Oshii did read the manga carefully and had to make choices about what to include.
His filmmaking focuses on setting and plot rather than characterization. Visuals are most important for him, and he likes a meditative pace interspersed with very short action sequences. This is very different from the manga, but these directorial choices were made intelligently for the time budget a single movie allows. It's really a different story on the same archtype.
Besides, his film is what excited our imaginations and got him those awards.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
simonwolfi can feel a differencetoday, a differenceRegistered Userregular
Not sure how much this might be a response to the Hollywood film, but it does strike me as an interesting development based purely on the timing: Ghost in the Shell Gets New Anime From Kenji Kamiyama, Shinji Aramaki, the dudes who directed Stand Alone Complex and Appleseed (respectively), based on the original manga, and produced by Production IG
The multiple versions of the world and characters of Ghost in the Shell just keep multiplying, huh
While i can see why people would give weight to Oshii's words on the matter, i don't see them as all that relevant.
Whitewashing is not really an issue in Japan, plenty of asian roles there to be had, and not sure a japanese director can be expected to be aware of, or concerned about, the racial issues going on in the west. And the idea that "art should be free of politics" is in itself a political position.
An ironic opinion considering how he got famous adapting Ghost in a Shell of all things.
He got famous in the US for Ghost in the Shell; he otherwise has an impressive resume for Japan only stuff. And he did not simply ape the manga a la Watchmen. Like it or not, his vision is the western face of Ghost in the Shell. The manga has more in common with Moby Dick or Dune than the anime. If his opinions aren't relevant, then the franchise itself is already out of touch with American audiences and this whole thing was a nonstarter. Pick another franchise whose visionary will actually back you if whitewashing is a concern.
Forget the manga, my point was the film subject matter was political by default. The film was heavily built on the manga's themes for the Puppetmaster arc. He did build the Puppetmaster arc, the characters or political environment in GiTS from scratch - that was mostly Shirow.
I didn't say his opinion wasn't relevant, I said his opinion isn't something we should take 100% as fact, for various reasons. If you want to go down that path Shirow himself is a superior example.
The franchise isn't out of touch with audiences, the people who made the movie are (and they didn't get Oshii's film either - all they bothered to understand was key phrases, and beautiful aesthetics). There is a massive difference between the two.
The franchise has always been more than Oshii. It was ever since the film came out, and his influence has been slowly fading until this film gave his film a resurgence. SAC has been slowly taking that away, as well. So much so the movie tried to piggyback off specific elements of the anime series, as well.
I can also disagree with a creator on whitewashing, they're not gods and we're free to have our own opinions.
When it comes to racism and white washing in the west, i do think Oshii's opinion is, if not irrelevant, atleast fairly unimportant.
I think he is more qualified than any of us to determine whether a non-asian lead is appropriate in regard to the source material.
wait, what?
you just linked a well referenced article that said oshii didn't respect the source material at all and effectively dumbed it down to make it suit his own tastes.
i think oshii wanted to make a movie about blurring identities in the context of advance technology and he used gits to do it.
i think hollywood wanted to make a robocop movie with anime visuals and they used gits to do it.
clearly, neither of them have any real regard for or deeper understanding of the source material.
I trust data from people who have actually reviewed the source material, but sometimes I draw different conclusions. I think the manga was considered unfilmable for many of the same reasons as Watchmen. I do not think your last statement has merit. Oshii did read the manga carefully and had to make choices about what to include.
His filmmaking focuses on setting and plot rather than characterization. Visuals are most important for him, and he likes a meditative pace interspersed with very short action sequences. This is very different from the manga, but these directorial choices were made intelligently for the time budget a single movie allows. It's really a different story on the same archtype.
Besides, his film is what excited our imaginations and got him those awards.
Parts of the manga are more than others, sure but not all of it. The smaller non-Puppetmaster chapters might be easier to film. It'd also be interesting to see the franchise being live action with a low budget ala Dredd.
Oshii may have read the manga, but I doubt Sanders' did. He thought Oshii's film was too "philosophical."
I disagree that this film did the best a live action movie could do, they completely avoided the slightest intelligence conversations about subjects, outright refused to acknowledge logical psychological consequences to actions and poorly integrated scene from the '95 film. They won't be able to get as much detail as SAC or Oshii's film, but they can definitely do smarter scripts than this. They're not even trying here. It was a waste of Scarlett Johanssen talent.
His film isn't the only thing about GiTS that got our attention with the franchise, not when SAC is sitting right there and the manga itself. He also tweaked Motoko's personality from the manga. I started rereading the manga and it's amazing how relaxed and silly she is early on, in contrast to her deadpan serious 100% persona in the adaptions.
Oshii's claim to fame for the GiTS franchise is getting it worldwide attention, which is laudable - but he is not the lone voice who dictates the direction of the franchise. I'd actually consider the people who did SAC as his superior, they've been able to understand the depth and the world better than he ever did.
Great Wall is Chinese propaganda. Damon is there to be an unwashed pleb awed at the majesty of the Chinese culture and purpose(and collect a check). He isn't really the main character.
Great Wall is Chinese propaganda. Damon is there to be an unwashed pleb awed at the majesty of the Chinese culture and purpose(and collect a check). He isn't really the main character.
I've seen the movie, they definitely give him the lead in the film. He's the main protagonist. The rest is in the background and surprisingly subtle.
While i can see why people would give weight to Oshii's words on the matter, i don't see them as all that relevant.
Whitewashing is not really an issue in Japan, plenty of asian roles there to be had, and not sure a japanese director can be expected to be aware of, or concerned about, the racial issues going on in the west. And the idea that "art should be free of politics" is in itself a political position.
An ironic opinion considering how he got famous adapting Ghost in a Shell of all things.
He got famous in the US for Ghost in the Shell; he otherwise has an impressive resume for Japan only stuff. And he did not simply ape the manga a la Watchmen. Like it or not, his vision is the western face of Ghost in the Shell. The manga has more in common with Moby Dick or Dune than the anime. If his opinions aren't relevant, then the franchise itself is already out of touch with American audiences and this whole thing was a nonstarter. Pick another franchise whose visionary will actually back you if whitewashing is a concern.
Forget the manga, my point was the film subject matter was political by default. The film was heavily built on the manga's themes for the Puppetmaster arc. He did build the Puppetmaster arc, the characters or political environment in GiTS from scratch - that was mostly Shirow.
I didn't say his opinion wasn't relevant, I said his opinion isn't something we should take 100% as fact, for various reasons. If you want to go down that path Shirow himself is a superior example.
The franchise isn't out of touch with audiences, the people who made the movie are (and they didn't get Oshii's film either - all they bothered to understand was key phrases, and beautiful aesthetics). There is a massive difference between the two.
The franchise has always been more than Oshii. It was ever since the film came out, and his influence has been slowly fading until this film gave his film a resurgence. SAC has been slowly taking that away, as well. So much so the movie tried to piggyback off specific elements of the anime series, as well.
I can also disagree with a creator on whitewashing, they're not gods and we're free to have our own opinions.
When it comes to racism and white washing in the west, i do think Oshii's opinion is, if not irrelevant, atleast fairly unimportant.
I think he is more qualified than any of us to determine whether a non-asian lead is appropriate in regard to the source material.
wait, what?
you just linked a well referenced article that said oshii didn't respect the source material at all and effectively dumbed it down to make it suit his own tastes.
i think oshii wanted to make a movie about blurring identities in the context of advance technology and he used gits to do it.
i think hollywood wanted to make a robocop movie with anime visuals and they used gits to do it.
clearly, neither of them have any real regard for or deeper understanding of the source material.
I trust data from people who have actually reviewed the source material, but sometimes I draw different conclusions. I think the manga was considered unfilmable for many of the same reasons as Watchmen. I do not think your last statement has merit. Oshii did read the manga carefully and had to make choices about what to include.
His filmmaking focuses on setting and plot rather than characterization. Visuals are most important for him, and he likes a meditative pace interspersed with very short action sequences. This is very different from the manga, but these directorial choices were made intelligently for the time budget a single movie allows. It's really a different story on the same archtype.
Besides, his film is what excited our imaginations and got him those awards.
Parts of the manga are more than others, sure but not all of it. The smaller non-Puppetmaster chapters might be easier to film. It'd also be interesting to see the franchise being live action with a low budget ala Dredd.
Oshii may have read the manga, but I doubt Sanders' did. He thought Oshii's film was too "philosophical."
I disagree that this film did the best a live action movie could do, they completely avoided the slightest intelligence conversations about subjects, outright refused to acknowledge logical psychological consequences to actions and poorly integrated scene from the '95 film. They won't be able to get as much detail as SAC or Oshii's film, but they can definitely do smarter scripts than this. They're not even trying here. It was a waste of Scarlett Johanssen talent.
His film isn't the only thing about GiTS that got our attention with the franchise, not when SAC is sitting right there and the manga itself. He also tweaked Motoko's personality from the manga. I started rereading the manga and it's amazing how relaxed and silly she is early on, in contrast to her deadpan serious 100% persona in the adaptions.
Oshii's claim to fame for the GiTS franchise is getting it worldwide attention, which is laudable - but he is not the lone voice who dictates the direction of the franchise. I'd actually consider the people who did SAC as his superior, they've bene able to understand the depth and the world better than he ever did.
Regardless, the 2017 was based on Oshii's take rather than Production I.G., geisha and Kuze aside. The fact is that SAC, while excellent, didn't get the recognition in America that the Oshii films did. Superior or not, it's what they chose. Kamiyama and Shirow didn't care enough to comment because America was totally Oshii's thing.
So in the absence of comments from any of the other creators (+ the publisher) we have no source to claim that the Major is indelibly Japanese.
That's all. Your opinions regarding Oshii and SAC, I 100% understand where they're coming from, and I don't disagree that they would have been exciting. They are all different versions that respect each other. America just prefers the Budweisers of other cultures, and Oshii won out.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
@Synthesis I know Gundam is not tthe best possible example, but it's also one of a vanishingly small number of anime with both a large Caucasian cast and is also tolerated in some quantity on these forums. I figured it makes a good example of how those characters from my original screenshot are how most anime draw white features, for those reasons. Also because I don't remember any white characters' names in GitS and don't feel like investing time to rewatch the whole show
The explicitly white people that I can think of off the top of my head are the American Empire navy officer who is the antagonist in "Jungle Cruise", one of the CIA operations officers sent to make sure he does (the other was half Japanese iirc), and a few of the guys at the end of 2nd Gig from the American embassy affecting the defection of Gouda. Also maybe some of the people in the airport trying to steal the cyber brain from the geisha house incident.
To elaborate, there are white people in every episode set in a predominantly white country--so, in the London episode (ep. 17, Angel's Share, an excellent one) there's Chief Aramaki's old friend Ms. Seymour, the chief of police, his sectary, the thieves, etc., are all white characters with spoken parts. In Germany in 2nd GIG, Batou meets a German girl looking for her father. And so forth. Additionally, because of Japan's relations with America, North Americans pretty regularly in Niihama (the major city in most episodes), as in the first episode, the Canadian ambassador's son who is a central character of a later episode after that and so forth.
Interestingly, the two CIA officers sent by the American Empire (who appear in one episode per season) are explicitly Japanese-Americans--their mannerisms, style of dress, and appearances are copied from the most general appearance of Japanese (though not necessarily Japanese-Americans) in Hollywood cinema, to the point of hamfisted satire. It'd be impossible to miss (one of them also looks a little bit like Shinzo Abe, though that's coincidental). When the two are separated and one is confronted alone, he quickly drops the hyer-polite, formalized persona and behaves like almost all other government intelligence officials we've met in the series.
Alongside the Gundam franchise, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex falls easily with Black Lagoon, Jormugand, Appleseed, New Dominion and the earlier part of Eden of the East in terms of shows that are full of Americans (predominantly though not exclusively white ones, which is fitting with American demographics). All these shows also put an emphasis on world geopolitics and have international settings, so that's not surprising--it's kind of like asking why there are so many Russians in Fullmetal Panic. I didn't include Cowboy Bebop because, even more so than Gundam, it has a setting that transcends nationality (and also features almost no Japanese people by virtue of that).
+2
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Not sure how much this might be a response to the Hollywood film, but it does strike me as an interesting development based purely on the timing: Ghost in the Shell Gets New Anime From Kenji Kamiyama, Shinji Aramaki, the dudes who directed Stand Alone Complex and Appleseed (respectively), based on the original manga, and produced by Production IG
The multiple versions of the world and characters of Ghost in the Shell just keep multiplying, huh
if u say the word database im reporting u to the king of spain ok
To elaborate, there are white people in every episode set in a predominantly white country--so, in the London episode (ep. 17, Angel's Share, an excellent one) there's Chief Aramaki's old friend Ms. Seymour, the chief of police, his sectary, the thieves, etc., are all white characters with spoken parts. In Germany in 2nd GIG, Batou meets a German girl looking for her father. And so forth. Additionally, because of Japan's relations with America, North Americans pretty regularly in Niihama (the major city in most episodes), as in the first episode, the Canadian ambassador's son who is a central character of a later episode after that and so forth.
Interestingly, the two CIA officers sent by the American Empire (who appear in one episode per season) are explicitly Japanese-Americans--their mannerisms, style of dress, and appearances are copied from the most general appearance of Japanese (though not necessarily Japanese-Americans) in Hollywood cinema, to the point of hamfisted satire. It'd be impossible to miss (one of them also looks a little bit like Shinzo Abe, though that's coincidental). When the two are separated and one is confronted alone, he quickly drops the hyer-polite, formalized persona and behaves like almost all other government intelligence officials we've met in the series.
Alongside the Gundam franchise, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex falls easily with Black Lagoon, Jormugand, Appleseed, New Dominion and the earlier part of Eden of the East in terms of shows that are full of Americans (predominantly though not exclusively white ones, which is fitting with American demographics). All these shows also put an emphasis on world geopolitics and have international settings, so that's not surprising--it's kind of like asking why there are so many Russians in Fullmetal Panic. I didn't include Cowboy Bebop because, even more so than Gundam, it has a setting that transcends nationality (and also features almost no Japanese people by virtue of that).
I wouldn't say IP's like Gundam transcend nationality, as much as the focus and inclusion is higher for non-Japanese characters. For example, in Gundam Wing IIRC Quatre was Middle Eastern/Arabian, while Wufei was Chinese. Series/franchise with settings like this still have characters that are assigned a certain ethnicity/nationality, it's not like the creators ignored that entirely. I'm not saying that goes for everyone, of course, some characters have more flexibility than others in this area. This can also be a negative since by Hollywood rules this makes those slots open for white actors more than minorities, though it varies on what role they have in the series. If they're a lead, or have a big role in the supporting cast they'll have a bigger chance at going to white actors - like what happened with the GiTS movie. It's a shame Section 9 was pushed aside because they actually did have a diverse cast there, but this breaks down if they're rescued to cameos rather than actual supporting characters in their own movie.
You're right that SAC had characters from other countries, but this isn't really about them per se as much as the main protagonists who are implied to be Japanese or the chances are higher they are Japanese. That's a difference between GiTS and something like Attack on Titan, Gundam or FMA* where the main characters come from nations or settings where they have fewer Asians/Japanese, especially in the main cast.
I'd like for the new GiTS anime series to delve into the American Empire since the IP never seems to put them in the spotlight.
Black Lagoon is definitely a diverse IP, which can have a cast that is non-Japanese/Asian. Ethnicities and nationalists from all over the world are present there and someone like Revy yeah, I can buy her not being Japanese. But what about someone like Rock? In a movie are they going to make him a white American due to his role as a lead/audience surrogate? I'd say that's definitely a risk with a Hollywood movie adaption, and that'd be a shame.
To elaborate, there are white people in every episode set in a predominantly white country--so, in the London episode (ep. 17, Angel's Share, an excellent one) there's Chief Aramaki's old friend Ms. Seymour, the chief of police, his sectary, the thieves, etc., are all white characters with spoken parts. In Germany in 2nd GIG, Batou meets a German girl looking for her father. And so forth. Additionally, because of Japan's relations with America, North Americans pretty regularly in Niihama (the major city in most episodes), as in the first episode, the Canadian ambassador's son who is a central character of a later episode after that and so forth.
Interestingly, the two CIA officers sent by the American Empire (who appear in one episode per season) are explicitly Japanese-Americans--their mannerisms, style of dress, and appearances are copied from the most general appearance of Japanese (though not necessarily Japanese-Americans) in Hollywood cinema, to the point of hamfisted satire. It'd be impossible to miss (one of them also looks a little bit like Shinzo Abe, though that's coincidental). When the two are separated and one is confronted alone, he quickly drops the hyer-polite, formalized persona and behaves like almost all other government intelligence officials we've met in the series.
Alongside the Gundam franchise, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex falls easily with Black Lagoon, Jormugand, Appleseed, New Dominion and the earlier part of Eden of the East in terms of shows that are full of Americans (predominantly though not exclusively white ones, which is fitting with American demographics). All these shows also put an emphasis on world geopolitics and have international settings, so that's not surprising--it's kind of like asking why there are so many Russians in Fullmetal Panic. I didn't include Cowboy Bebop because, even more so than Gundam, it has a setting that transcends nationality (and also features almost no Japanese people by virtue of that).
I wouldn't say IP's like Gundam transcend nationality, as much as the focus and inclusion is higher for non-Japanese characters. For example, in Gundam Wing IIRC Quatre was Middle Eastern/Arabian, while Wufei was Chinese. Series/franchise with settings like this still have characters that are assigned a certain ethnicity/nationality, it's not like the creators ignored that entirely. I'm not saying that goes for everyone, of course, some characters have more flexibility than others in this area. This can also be a negative since by Hollywood rules this makes those slots open for white actors more than minorities, though it varies on what role they have in the series. If they're a lead, or have a big role in the supporting cast they'll have a bigger chance at going to white actors - like what happened with the GiTS movie. It's a shame Section 9 was pushed aside because they actually did have a diverse cast there, but this breaks down if they're rescued to cameos rather than actual supporting characters in their own movie.
You're right that SAC had characters from other countries, but this isn't really about them per se as much as the main protagonists who are implied to be Japanese or the chances are higher they are Japanese. That's a difference between GiTS and something like Attack on Titan, Gundam or FMA* where the main characters come from nations or settings where they have fewer Asians/Japanese, especially in the main cast.
I'd like for the new GiTS anime series to delve into the American Empire since the IP never seems to put them in the spotlight.
Black Lagoon is definitely a diverse IP, which can have a cast that is non-Japanese/Asian. Ethnicities and nationalists from all over the world are present there and someone like Revy yeah, I can buy her not being Japanese. But what about someone like Rock? In a movie are they going to make him a white American due to his role as a lead/audience surrogate? I'd say that's definitely a risk with a Hollywood movie adaption, and that'd be a shame.
That's on me--I was trying to convey that Cowboy Bebop very much does it, whereas Gundam--particularly the older series, wherein nationality is rarely given--flirts with the idea.
The bit with the hyper polite CIA agents was so obvious I picked it up.
All handing out business cards and whatnot.
That goes to business card culture in Japan--which is certainly a thing, though if you did it outside a business-related setting, I think you'd be considered a giant weirdo.
The gag within a gag, I think, is that despite having some sort of business rendezvous in almost every episode, business card exchanges are very rare in the show (Togusa exchanges one with a member of the Sunflower Society, and I think a reporter attempts to jam one in the face of one of Aramaki's counterparts at one point), due to the advent of cybercoms.
Cowboy Bebop doesn't let us know the nationality of all its characters, but it's very obvious that people of a variety of ethnicities are present, and Faye, the only primary character who we know is of Asian descent, has a different skin tone and eye shape than the other characters.
Cowboy Bebop doesn't let us know the nationality of all its characters, but it's very obvious that people of a variety of ethnicities are present, and Faye, the only primary character who we know is of Asian descent, has a different skin tone and eye shape than the other characters.
The emphasis of nationality versus ethnicity--namely, those nations don't exist anymore, except as historical artifacts. Faye, for example, is given a subtle reveal as Singaporean (perhaps Singaporean Chinese) by virtue of the Beta cassette episode. I'm pretty sure she's the only one, by virtue of her age, whereas Jet and Spike are residents of celestial bodies, like Mars, which don't actually have nations I believe. They're more like cities or provinces.
Cowboy Bebop doesn't let us know the nationality of all its characters, but it's very obvious that people of a variety of ethnicities are present, and Faye, the only primary character who we know is of Asian descent, has a different skin tone and eye shape than the other characters.
The emphasis of nationality versus ethnicity--namely, those nations don't exist anymore, except as historical artifacts. Faye, for example, is given a subtle reveal as Singaporean (perhaps Singaporean Chinese) by virtue of the Beta cassette episode. I'm pretty sure she's the only one, by virtue of her age, whereas Jet and Spike are residents of celestial bodies, like Mars, which don't actually have nations I believe. They're more like cities or provinces.
Isn't Jet black, as well?
Nationalities definitely aren't a thing in Cowboy Bebop, but ethnicities are. The Red Dragon organization is heavily implied to be Asian of some sort, very yakuza influenced mixed with Imperial China. That was my take on them.
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In the 95 movie no(at least I don't recall it). In other media very much yes (Japanese)
There are times in Stand Alone Complex where people flat-out describe her as "Asian woman", sometimes with the modifier "tall"--for example, in 2nd GIG when she, Batou and Ishikawa are part of a international UN detachment. In retrospect, I wonder if that may not have been a response to exactly this scenario--Production I.G and Kodansha getting tired of a few years of reading, "Yeah, well, you know maybe she's not Japanese!" and going all "Okay, fine, here's her origin story and we're going to flat-out say it in multiple ways, so stop fucking pushing the issue weirdos." Being described as Asian and Japanese, giving an origin of her gynoid body in supplementary materials, even having her pose as a Taiwanese child's mother in one episode (in case people are unclear, Taiwanese people are Asian, though personally I don't think most of us look "Japanese" necessarily). That's one way to hammer your point across.
Even Arise actually puts the Major in a weird but unmistakable psuedo-Imperial Japanese Army dress uniform during her military career, which I guess could be a way of getting the point across (I've also heard she looks more "Asian", but I thought she looked Asian to start with so who the fuck knows).
This aspect is un-live-actionable. There is no human model that can pass as anything. So their actual human appearance is very open to interpretation.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It's not limited to anime, but it's a case of "implied Occidentalism"--maybe a bad name from it (darn you, Edward Said!), the notion that white audiences see other culture's art or fiction as being representative of themselves unless it's explicitly outlined otherwise (nor is that limited to white audiences). If I show an American a black-and-white political comic from Taiwan (or for that matter India), with the dialog removed, there's a tendency (not universal by any means) for the person to see that simple rendering as being about white people (even if you show it to, for example, a Black observer). Why? Because the vast majority of media that person is exposed on a daily basis to is about white people.
When I first watched The Simpsons in the early 1990s, years before coming to the US, I thought it was extremely unusual why Marge Simpson was described as white when, in fact, she didn't seem white even by the standards of the yellow-skinned people in the show. She had a tall blue flat-top afro, and very few other discernible characteristics. What made her white? The fact that her creators spell out, in fact, that she and the other Simpsons family members are white (and that it's actually a consideration in the plot).
But it's extremely variable too. My (Taiwanese) cousins, when asked to give a "race" to the character Lust from Fullmetal Alchemist (whom they already knew), called her Russian (so, Slavic?), distinct from white. Why? Because her pale complexion, physical build, and black hair were traits they associated with Slavic people, not Anglo-Saxon Americans or Europeans.
For example, nearly the entire cast of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei (aka So Long Mr.Despair) has black hair, with the only stand-out I can recall being a blonde-haired, blue-eyed biracial Asian-American transfer student (who also has a split personality, with one being a stereotypically demure Japanese woman and the other being a stereotypically loud and aggressive American woman).
The majority of characters in Kuragehime (aka Princess Jellyfish) also have black hair.
Personally I just suspect artists want to make Japanese characters that don't all have black hair, which explains the presence of unnatural hair colors like blue, pink and green.
This guy gets pretty close.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/05/20/cliff_curtis_supercut_actor_plays_every_ethnicity_hollywood_throws_his_way.html
Also @Synthesis Marge Simpson has a beehive, not an afro. Which is something you probably wouldn't be familiar with if you never watched a lot of US media from the like the 60s, and it was before Amy Whinehouse, but it was/is(?) a typically white hairstyle.
Amy Whinehouse
wait, wtf?
at first i thought you were just fucking around, making fun of the movie, but then i realized midway that you were just describing the movie as is and then i was really sad.
sounds terrible.
Or to be more precise: The Shanghai Film Group Corporation and the HuaHua Media.
It does add an extra twist of the knife that it was probably Asian money that got this made, but the kind of Asian money that would never hire anybody Japanese to star.
Isn't the default Japanese, though? Sure, they make art about people from other races and other worlds, but everyone country does that. Don't they also use artistic license to give visual distinctions to characters so they're not too similar, as well?
The human appearance is a symbol, they're still meant to represent an ethnicity. When it comes to casting these characters the symbol gets replaced with the appropriate actor, which tends to be Japanese.
That's intriguing. I thought it was American money that got this made, so why didn't end up like another The Great Wall? Why not give the lead to a Chinese actress? Jing Tian should have been on their radar, if nothing else. With The Great Wall they trusted the production to Zhang Yimou, a highly experienced and celebrated Chinese director (he did Hero and Curse of the Golden Flower), yet with GiTS they chose --- Rupert Sanders? The guy who made Snow White and the Huntsman and this is his second film ever?
For the answer to that, we look to the very interesting past of the history of manga in Japan. Contrary to the history of Georges Méliès as described in Hugo, exotic fantasy film is actually quite popular for a postwar audience - especially one that lost in an avalanche of unprecedented death and destruction. The last thing that the Japanese wanted was anything that reminded them of the traditional culture that got them into the war in the first place, which meant a rejection of the neo-confucianist principles of ethnocentrism and gender roles.
Funnily enough, one of the first Japanese graphic novels to come out during this period was Astro Boy, a story about a robot -
Wait actually reading up on it, hold on. Okay, a story about a robot created by a scientist to replace his dead son after a fatal car accident (gruesomely depicted), who he then, in a drunken rage, rejects for not being human and sells to the circus. The robot boy spends the rest of his life encountering other robots persecuted by society, also there is blackface and racism. Huh.
Well, uh, what I was trying to say at least is that here, at the beginning of modern Japanese animation, is a problem similar to the very one we are facing - is a robot Japanese or even human?
Of course, then there was grounded Sazae-san, a very Japanese story about a strong Japanese woman dealing with post-war Japan - very post-war Japan, it's basically the Japanese version of the Simpsons in its longevity except that the manga started in 1946 and lasted until 1974 - 28 years. The anime started in 1969 and is still going. Like the Simpsons, the characters are simplistically designed. Race is, as you say, tell rather than show, and nobody will argue the fact that Sazae-San is distinctly Japanese.
But then, Japanese manga started delving into stories outside of Japan, far away from the culture and attitudes and ethnocentrism that led them to war. Princess Knight (Knight of Ribbons), made by the creator of Astro Boy, took place in a medieval European fairy tale setting. Little Witch Sally, the progenitor of magical girl anime, was an alien from a magical realm visiting Japan. Sally is not a localization; that is her real name, and was inspired by Bewitched. In the original black and white animation, she looked pretty much the same as the rest of the cast, but was given brown hair in the color production, making her stand out. Then there was Rose of Versailles, a story about a woman disguised as a man in Revolutionary France.
These were all super popular and super influential, and as a result, Japanese animation was globalized fairly early and stayed that way. Only one main character of the four titles I've mentioned so far was Japanese, and that ratio actually holds up for quite a while as Japan explored cultures other than its own. This exposure shaped future art styles, and western influence penetrated the animation vernacular. Large, impossibly large, huge colorful eyes, colorful hair, large heads, westernized clothes, and global settings evolved the stereotypical protagonist of Japanese animation into a melting pot of races, which they were able to get away with because the escapism of the animation and manga subculture created a wealth of imaginary settings and nationalities. Japan does a lot of space stuff and Dungeons and Dragons stuff and you can't tell what race they are because they don't have an existing race. The default is often not Japanese, or American, or European, or Earth.
As we can see in Ghost in the Shell (1995), the influence of globalization, an open-sourcing of cultures around the globe for permitted appropriation, has survived to this day. Japan is very familiar with creating a protagonist with an ambiguous race and ambiguous gender that is never defined. Believe me, especially in the latter area, they are light years ahead of our culture (in the wealth of stories involving ambiguous or alternate gender. In social reality, blech). The cyber body may be any race. The major may be any race or gender - or none.
So it makes sense to me that Mamoru Oshii is open to the interpretation of the Major as white, because the theme of the transcendence of race and gender - and really any cultural identity - has been brewing for quite a while in Japan.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The funny thing is that the whole point of the geisha in the original scene is that until they start getting shot they look completely human. Like, they're definitely fetishistic, multiple GitS properties have tackled the idea of robotics as a new sex trade, just as seedy as the old sex trade. But in the live-action they look kind of clockwork-y and obviously artificial, I can understand why they would sort of dumb that down for the first scene in the movie, but then again the whole point of the geisha bots is that they're robots replacing humans.
I think the simplest answer is just that they already had the rights to GitS and Lucy had done surprisingly well. So let's set up a bog standard superhero 3 act movie (and/or Jason Bourne movie) and borrow the set pieces and some of the art design from the thing we already have the rights to. After all GitS was a cartoon and nerds eat up comic books, same shit, print that check.
And just like with a lot of comic book movies, they didn't care who the director was, they just needed a workman to staple the exposition to the action sequences, and the CG studio is more in control of the fight sequences than he is anyway, so as long as he's shown he can come in budget he's fine. Getting a talented director with a unique vision is undesirable, because if it does well they want to grab some OTHER workman director to pump out 3 more of these things on the cheap.
Yeah, but they could have done that on the Asian side - instead they went totally Hollywood on it. Pretty sure they have workman directors in China that they can hire at a moments notice, and the movie itself wasn't cheap either. They spent a lot of money on this thing, and it'd wiser to hire a workman that they know has a record. Sanders doesn't have much of a record, never mind a good one. And why would they go mostly in with their Chinese/Asian talent on this project? What will be interesting to know is whether Sanders truly had some control or he was merely a puppet director so if it failed he'd get the blame.
That is intriguing. That said, while Japanese may not be default ethnicities and nationalities remain, and yes some IP's are more global and non-Japanse centric than others. Gundam, for example. Not being on Earth isn't unique in art, we have plenty of that in the West too but even in anime they do show signs about what ethnicity or pseudo-nationality they are. Fullmetal Alchemist takes place is pseudo-Europe (Germany?) with the occasional pseudo Chinese thrown in (Xing).
With live action adaptions do you think if Japan had access to a more diverse population we'd be seeing more of this in their productions? That they're not as restricted on casting as it is the acting population is being the Japanese majority, without the power to reach out to other countries as easily as Hollywood can for actors. Maybe that's what's coloring my judgment with Japanese adaptions since Japanese actors tend to be the default from what I've seen.
In theory, yeah - in reality there are choices that the character chooses (unless it's out of their hands, like Batou sending Motoko's consciousness into a child to save her life) to represent her body to the world. Which tends to be female, and we know she likes a modified popular model from the Asian market to represent herself. Then we get to the meta side where decisions like race and gender have to made if they want the character to be on the big screen and when it came down to that they want a female Major and they chose her to be white. The thing is you're right their options for the ethnicity for the role could be up for grabs for any actress, Japanese or not, except from what I know of the production this was never given consideration - it was a famous white American actress or nobody. It wasn't an open casting call like Daredevil's, or likely the other members of Section 9.
What's fascinating about this movie is the production side, which the Asian side has a lot of control seemed to follow traditional Hollywood method to the letter. That's how powerful Hollywood's influence is on the world with entertainment - and there are similar patterns with other countries too, so they're not alone with this. Now I'm more interested in how The Great Wall got made, since that production, aside from Matt Damon as the lead, was very different from what we got with this.
Oshii has, shall we say, interesting take on whitewashing actors in movies. He's right that Motoko could technically be any race, then he said this
http://au.ign.com/articles/2017/03/21/original-ghost-in-the-shell-director-mamoru-oshii-has-no-problem-with-live-action-remake
He's all over the place here.
Whitewashing is not really an issue in Japan, plenty of asian roles there to be had, and not sure a japanese director can be expected to be aware of, or concerned about, the racial issues going on in the west.
And the idea that "art should be free of politics" is in itself a political position.
An ironic opinion considering how he got famous adapting Ghost in a Shell of all things.
like, i'm almost glad they whitewashed the film so they can't blame it's bad results on some poor asian-american actor.
edit: one of the really weird things that bothered me a lot was how scarjo seemed to be hunched over the entire movie, like she was walking really weird, which didn't look intimidating and didn't look robotic or whatever. it just looked forced and out of place, like that really rich white kid you know who dresses really gangsta and walks with a gangsta limp and wears his pants really low and speaks funny.
But, that ideal situation is based on a fundamental flaw; that Hollywood respected Ghost in the Shell. As the movie has disappointingly shown, Hollywood could pantomime the imagery, but utterly failed to understand the commentary that GitS was making. And casting ScarJo wasn't a brilliant ploy based on ideas from the original work; but because Hollywood is highly risk adverse and tried to cast in as the lead an Actress that was able to make a terrible movie like Lucy profitable.
It's saddens me on several levels, because Hollywood has repeatedly demonstrated over the years that it can pantomime the appearance of foreign works, but is unable to develop that deeper appreciate or understanding needed to really convey to American audiences of why such stories are so well respected. And these efforts all are justified by the self fulfilling prophecy that you need need a white actor/actress to play the lead in order to be profitable, despite the fact that the casting decision isn't what caused the movie to fail.
He got famous in the US for Ghost in the Shell; he otherwise has an impressive resume for Japan only stuff. And he did not simply ape the manga a la Watchmen. Like it or not, his vision is the western face of Ghost in the Shell. The manga has more in common with Moby Dick or Dune than the anime. If his opinions aren't relevant, then the franchise itself is already out of touch with American audiences and this whole thing was a nonstarter. Pick another franchise whose visionary will actually back you if whitewashing is a concern.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I think he is more qualified than any of us to determine whether a non-asian lead is appropriate in regard to the source material. He is quite ignorant of the machinations of the American Movie industry, which has nothing to do with the themes of this particular franchise.
These are two different arguments. Does casting white people in any story written by a Japanese person constitute whitewashing, or does the content of the story itself make the casting inappropriate? For the latter, I trust his judgment. I'd defer to Jackie Chan or another Asian director with a US presence for the former.
I find justification that focuses on the industry to be pretty sound, but justification that delves deep into the actual story to vary greatly in quality. Some people who otherwise have good points trip up quite a bit when using story elements to sustain the furor of the whitewashing controversy. The American Movie industry and Japanese story culture are two different things requiring different studies; don't assume if you know one that you know the other.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
wait, what?
you just linked a well referenced article that said oshii didn't respect the source material at all and effectively dumbed it down to make it suit his own tastes.
i think oshii wanted to make a movie about blurring identities in the context of advance technology and he used gits to do it.
i think hollywood wanted to make a robocop movie with anime visuals and they used gits to do it.
clearly, neither of them have any real regard for or deeper understanding of the source material.
I trust data from people who have actually reviewed the source material, but sometimes I draw different conclusions. I think the manga was considered unfilmable for many of the same reasons as Watchmen. I do not think your last statement has merit. Oshii did read the manga carefully and had to make choices about what to include.
His filmmaking focuses on setting and plot rather than characterization. Visuals are most important for him, and he likes a meditative pace interspersed with very short action sequences. This is very different from the manga, but these directorial choices were made intelligently for the time budget a single movie allows. It's really a different story on the same archtype.
Besides, his film is what excited our imaginations and got him those awards.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
http://kotaku.com/the-incredible-art-of-the-ghost-in-the-shell-movie-1794015446
The multiple versions of the world and characters of Ghost in the Shell just keep multiplying, huh
Forget the manga, my point was the film subject matter was political by default. The film was heavily built on the manga's themes for the Puppetmaster arc. He did build the Puppetmaster arc, the characters or political environment in GiTS from scratch - that was mostly Shirow.
I didn't say his opinion wasn't relevant, I said his opinion isn't something we should take 100% as fact, for various reasons. If you want to go down that path Shirow himself is a superior example.
The franchise isn't out of touch with audiences, the people who made the movie are (and they didn't get Oshii's film either - all they bothered to understand was key phrases, and beautiful aesthetics). There is a massive difference between the two.
The franchise has always been more than Oshii. It was ever since the film came out, and his influence has been slowly fading until this film gave his film a resurgence. SAC has been slowly taking that away, as well. So much so the movie tried to piggyback off specific elements of the anime series, as well.
I can also disagree with a creator on whitewashing, they're not gods and we're free to have our own opinions.
Parts of the manga are more than others, sure but not all of it. The smaller non-Puppetmaster chapters might be easier to film. It'd also be interesting to see the franchise being live action with a low budget ala Dredd.
Oshii may have read the manga, but I doubt Sanders' did. He thought Oshii's film was too "philosophical."
I disagree that this film did the best a live action movie could do, they completely avoided the slightest intelligence conversations about subjects, outright refused to acknowledge logical psychological consequences to actions and poorly integrated scene from the '95 film. They won't be able to get as much detail as SAC or Oshii's film, but they can definitely do smarter scripts than this. They're not even trying here. It was a waste of Scarlett Johanssen talent.
His film isn't the only thing about GiTS that got our attention with the franchise, not when SAC is sitting right there and the manga itself. He also tweaked Motoko's personality from the manga. I started rereading the manga and it's amazing how relaxed and silly she is early on, in contrast to her deadpan serious 100% persona in the adaptions.
Oshii's claim to fame for the GiTS franchise is getting it worldwide attention, which is laudable - but he is not the lone voice who dictates the direction of the franchise. I'd actually consider the people who did SAC as his superior, they've been able to understand the depth and the world better than he ever did.
Great Wall is Chinese propaganda. Damon is there to be an unwashed pleb awed at the majesty of the Chinese culture and purpose(and collect a check). He isn't really the main character.
I've seen the movie, they definitely give him the lead in the film. He's the main protagonist. The rest is in the background and surprisingly subtle.
Regardless, the 2017 was based on Oshii's take rather than Production I.G., geisha and Kuze aside. The fact is that SAC, while excellent, didn't get the recognition in America that the Oshii films did. Superior or not, it's what they chose. Kamiyama and Shirow didn't care enough to comment because America was totally Oshii's thing.
So in the absence of comments from any of the other creators (+ the publisher) we have no source to claim that the Major is indelibly Japanese.
That's all. Your opinions regarding Oshii and SAC, I 100% understand where they're coming from, and I don't disagree that they would have been exciting. They are all different versions that respect each other. America just prefers the Budweisers of other cultures, and Oshii won out.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
To elaborate, there are white people in every episode set in a predominantly white country--so, in the London episode (ep. 17, Angel's Share, an excellent one) there's Chief Aramaki's old friend Ms. Seymour, the chief of police, his sectary, the thieves, etc., are all white characters with spoken parts. In Germany in 2nd GIG, Batou meets a German girl looking for her father. And so forth. Additionally, because of Japan's relations with America, North Americans pretty regularly in Niihama (the major city in most episodes), as in the first episode, the Canadian ambassador's son who is a central character of a later episode after that and so forth.
Interestingly, the two CIA officers sent by the American Empire (who appear in one episode per season) are explicitly Japanese-Americans--their mannerisms, style of dress, and appearances are copied from the most general appearance of Japanese (though not necessarily Japanese-Americans) in Hollywood cinema, to the point of hamfisted satire. It'd be impossible to miss (one of them also looks a little bit like Shinzo Abe, though that's coincidental). When the two are separated and one is confronted alone, he quickly drops the hyer-polite, formalized persona and behaves like almost all other government intelligence officials we've met in the series.
Alongside the Gundam franchise, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex falls easily with Black Lagoon, Jormugand, Appleseed, New Dominion and the earlier part of Eden of the East in terms of shows that are full of Americans (predominantly though not exclusively white ones, which is fitting with American demographics). All these shows also put an emphasis on world geopolitics and have international settings, so that's not surprising--it's kind of like asking why there are so many Russians in Fullmetal Panic. I didn't include Cowboy Bebop because, even more so than Gundam, it has a setting that transcends nationality (and also features almost no Japanese people by virtue of that).
if u say the word database im reporting u to the king of spain ok
I wouldn't say IP's like Gundam transcend nationality, as much as the focus and inclusion is higher for non-Japanese characters. For example, in Gundam Wing IIRC Quatre was Middle Eastern/Arabian, while Wufei was Chinese. Series/franchise with settings like this still have characters that are assigned a certain ethnicity/nationality, it's not like the creators ignored that entirely. I'm not saying that goes for everyone, of course, some characters have more flexibility than others in this area. This can also be a negative since by Hollywood rules this makes those slots open for white actors more than minorities, though it varies on what role they have in the series. If they're a lead, or have a big role in the supporting cast they'll have a bigger chance at going to white actors - like what happened with the GiTS movie. It's a shame Section 9 was pushed aside because they actually did have a diverse cast there, but this breaks down if they're rescued to cameos rather than actual supporting characters in their own movie.
You're right that SAC had characters from other countries, but this isn't really about them per se as much as the main protagonists who are implied to be Japanese or the chances are higher they are Japanese. That's a difference between GiTS and something like Attack on Titan, Gundam or FMA* where the main characters come from nations or settings where they have fewer Asians/Japanese, especially in the main cast.
I'd like for the new GiTS anime series to delve into the American Empire since the IP never seems to put them in the spotlight.
Black Lagoon is definitely a diverse IP, which can have a cast that is non-Japanese/Asian. Ethnicities and nationalists from all over the world are present there and someone like Revy yeah, I can buy her not being Japanese. But what about someone like Rock? In a movie are they going to make him a white American due to his role as a lead/audience surrogate? I'd say that's definitely a risk with a Hollywood movie adaption, and that'd be a shame.
That's on me--I was trying to convey that Cowboy Bebop very much does it, whereas Gundam--particularly the older series, wherein nationality is rarely given--flirts with the idea.
All handing out business cards and whatnot.
That goes to business card culture in Japan--which is certainly a thing, though if you did it outside a business-related setting, I think you'd be considered a giant weirdo.
The gag within a gag, I think, is that despite having some sort of business rendezvous in almost every episode, business card exchanges are very rare in the show (Togusa exchanges one with a member of the Sunflower Society, and I think a reporter attempts to jam one in the face of one of Aramaki's counterparts at one point), due to the advent of cybercoms.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
The emphasis of nationality versus ethnicity--namely, those nations don't exist anymore, except as historical artifacts. Faye, for example, is given a subtle reveal as Singaporean (perhaps Singaporean Chinese) by virtue of the Beta cassette episode. I'm pretty sure she's the only one, by virtue of her age, whereas Jet and Spike are residents of celestial bodies, like Mars, which don't actually have nations I believe. They're more like cities or provinces.
Isn't Jet black, as well?
Nationalities definitely aren't a thing in Cowboy Bebop, but ethnicities are. The Red Dragon organization is heavily implied to be Asian of some sort, very yakuza influenced mixed with Imperial China. That was my take on them.