Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is Hollywood Pillaging Anime And Manga For Material?
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Way back in '99 when it first came out and became the House That Built ADV, and ADV wanted to make their name on producing it, because they thought that nobody else had heard of that little New Zealand CGI-FX unit that had had such a big success with the upcoming Tolkien movies. For any reason you want to name, it never happened, and wasn't almost until the death of ADV that they admitted it. |
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Gta0012
Posts: 5 |
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If Japan were to film a live action movie based on an American/English book I would expect the cast the be japanese.
If India made a bollywood Harry Potter or something I would expect the cast to be Indian. I'm more worried that movies like the upcoming Ghost in the Shell will be horrible, I don't really care about how many white or non white people are in it. The whole cast could be Japanese and it might still suck. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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Overall I agree with Justin's perspective here. A lack of roles/representation for Asians is a huge problem for Hollywood. However, Ghost in the Shell is also probably the worst hill to die on in regards to this issue. It's always been a tremendously international story and the characters' ethnicities have always been pretty ambiguous, both in terms of who they were originally and in terms of what "race" their cyborg bodies are meant to have. True, it's still not exactly a great look just on the face of it to have a white person playing a character called "Motoko Kusanagi" but then, it sounds like they're just gonna call her "The Major" which is definitely the way to go. Although it's still broadly problematic to some degree insofar as it takes a potential role away from an Asian actor, actually making a formerly Asian character white in your adaptation is definitely miles better than simply having the character still be Asian but casting a white actor to play them. As Justin said, Western movies will invariably have an Western slant. That's going to more often than not mean a Western setting and predominantly Western characters. And that's fine. That doesn't excuse whitewashing and/or a lack of representation because, of course, there are plenty of Asian-Americans and Hollywood should reflect that. If anything though, that's what I'd most like to see. I'd much rather see Hollywood get better at writing Asian-American characters into their movies. It shouldn't be the case that the only characters who Hollywood even considers making Asian are non-American. That's not to say it has to be an either/or thing but ultimately, focusing your outrage on the notion that they turned an Asian character into an American one largely misses the point.
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oblivious247
Posts: 242 |
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Hollywood puts out something like 200 films a year on average. There's plenty of quality in there. If you don't look past the titles that get massive amounts of media coverage (the blockbusters and remakes) that's on you for not looking. Just a few weeks ago saw the release of Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some. Great film from one of the best directors working today. Who's gonna see it? Nobody... |
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doubleO7
 Posts: 1072 |
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No, it was an original project from Del Toro. He never had any involvement with the Eva film, but PR was heavily inspired by kaiju films and mecha anime in general. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13614 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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I would imagine some Japanese people may have been doing that. If a live-action movie is about a Japanese person, it should be played by a Japanese or Japanese-American. If a move is about Englishmen, it should be played by Englishmen. |
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Ozzy4k
Posts: 156 |
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One anime idea out of how many gosh darn movies made here I don't really think pillaging is the word better yet it's a good topic starter but really should go no where as nothing of importance has happened now if it were every other big movie id understand but to be drastic about such small measures is just your everyday blog trying to heat things up and things are no different here
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Anime and manga are just another source of stories. Hollywood's been adapting from other media for as long as moviemaking's been done there and changing up their stories heavily. There's nothing special about it, and it's certainly not new. If Hollywood's pillaging from anime and manga, then it's pillaging from every other source of work of fiction imaginable (well, except for video games right now...it hasn't been working so well for them).
Picking the right story to adapt is definitely a big thing to consider, which I personally think is not considered enough. As an example, by the time I read Watchmen, I knew a movie was coming out, and when I finshed reading it, I thought that it would never lend itself well as a movie: It's too introspective, too stream-of-consciousness at times, not focused enough on one character, and the frequent cuts to Tales of the Black Freighter would make for a jarring movie experience. I think Zack Snyder made a mistake in adapting TOO closely to the source material for that one. The same goes in every media. Plenty of popular books come out that would never make a good movie. Among Stephen King's books, can The Dark Tower work as a movie? Sure. (And now it's being done.) Can From a Buick 8 work as a movie? Not without changing the story until it's unrecognizable. Just as how I think Death Note can work as a Hollywood film, but Bakuman. has no chance whatsoever even though it's from the same author, same artist, and same magazine.
George Takei too, if he counts (though he is a very naturalized American). He's in Kubo and the Two Strings, is he not? While an original story, that's an example of a AAA Hollywood movie that's deeply tied to Japanese folklore, and they got a bunch of Asian actors for that one (though not even close to the entire cast).
If for a while you mean since the Silent Era. Don't forget that Disney did nothing BUT adaptations until The Lady and the Tramp and never cared at all for faithfulness, and Disney became wildly successful thanks to that. |
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Chrysostomus
Posts: 335 |
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Banken
Posts: 1281 |
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She's a full-body cyborg and no one knows her real name, age, or where she's from.
The race she appears to be is irrelevant, although I admit it looks vaguely Asian in the anime. Bato is (ostensibly) American and also a full-body cyborg. And it would be fair to assume his cyborg body is at least vaguely Caucasian. As long as Aramaki (apparently Takeshi Kitano was cast), Togusa, and Saito look Japanese, I don't see a problem. |
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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Well, if this article is anything to go by, live-action films starring white actors that have been cast as People-of-Color characters are far from a surefire bet...
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1051 |
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You realize there are more Japanese-Americans Los Angeles than there are Germans in all of Japan? We're talking about one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries on Earth (even counting the Ainu). You cannot compare it to a multi-ethnic country like the US. And pointing out that East Asians make up 5% of the US population but account for significantly less than 5% of roles in films (let alone lead roles) has nothing to do with hating whites. |
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SWAnimefan
Posts: 634 |
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Wow, was expecting this article to go into the depths of Hollywood with Anime and Manga, but instead the article turned into a complete rant about GitS. Not to mention complaining about a nonexistent Twitter hashtag and pointing out Rinko Kikuchi, when it's well known Ming-Na Wen (Mulan, Agents of Shield) had commented on the GitS situation on her twitter.
Look, given the controversy over changing races and sexes of well-established characters isn't new and likely never going away. You got the traditional / die-hard fans who like it the way it is, and there are those who don't know the property and don't really care. That's who Hollywood focuses on, because they don't really care about the 100,000 (just throwing out a number) original fans when they are looking at millions of people who could be seeing this movie who don't care if the Major is Asian or not. Besides, we don't even know if the movie will even be in future Japan. For all we know they moved the story to New York. |
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Deacon Blues
Posts: 401 Location: Albuquerque, NM |
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Is it that hard for ANN to spell her name right? Every article seems to misspell Motoko... lol.
If it doesn't take place then where does it take place? The story does take place in Japan, in the fictitious Newport City. Although it may not have been specifically spelled out in the movie (however obvious it should have been based on dialogue), the design sheets for the movie indicate it is Japan. |
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Rochelle Ragnarok
Posts: 1 |
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Both Anime and Hollywood is unoriginal. Most stories are overall because there like only seven story premises in existence so the originality is in how the story is told. And even then most Animes and Hollywood movies aren't very original. This controversy about GitS is understandable but I feel most anime fans are cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. If the movie fails, we probably won't be getting any Hollywood anime adaptions for a very long time, even if the anime character is Caucasian (i.e Spike, Cowboy Bebop or Vash, Trigun). Hollywood may just feel compelled to either hire Asian actors or just not bother.
The way I see it, if no one complained about Attack on Titan's "yellow washing" treatment then I don't see why they are complaining about GitS's "White washing" |
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