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Forum - View topicWho Is The Real Motoko Kusanagi?
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prime_pm
 Posts: 2375 Location: Your Mother's Bedroom |
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Next year: Octavia Butler's "Kindred" starring Emma Watson.
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andyos
ANN Associate Editor
Posts: 269 |
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Many thanks for the article!
One point of detail:
Just had another look at the manga... There's no explicit link, afaics, but the nature of the translator's hacker is left a mystery at the end of the chapter. The person who seems to be the hacker turns out to be a puppet (the translation calls him a 'puppet 'borg'). I was inclined to assume Shirow meant to imply the _real_ culprit, was indeed the Puppet Master, as it seems to have been involved in exactly those kinds of schemes when we learn about its history in Chapter 9. My perception may have been skewed by seeing the film version first, where the link is made explicit, but I thought the suggestion was already present in the manga. |
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
Exempt from Grammar Rules
Posts: 638 Location: inland US west, pretty rural |
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Excellent article. Thank you guys for publishing this.
Now my short two bit opinion. Really, these are two separate continuities. And I'm fine with that. I think the comic is good and the movie is excellent. The movie is more "of a piece", a more fully formed single work, but movies have to be that to be good. Action movie does not equal meandering fun, hardly ever. Personally, I enjoyed the Major's character more in the comic, it is more fun to watch the different sides to her personality, but that is just my personal preference. And I should say that the movie was my first introduction to anime, and so I'm biased as all hell towards it. 
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2911 |
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the saderst part about thehollywood flick is not the white washing, hell it would have been veryinteresitng if they adapted some of the man machine interface stuff that has kusanagi as a blonde european (not a by the letter adaptation, but somethign based on that); but the fact that they cahgned it to a revenge history with no other themes.
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eely225
 Posts: 96 Location: West Lafayette, IN |
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The above is from the second sentence of the first paragraph. I'm willing to guess the author meant to say "The only clue" |
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TranceLimit174
 Posts: 963 |
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Amidst all the articles and discussion, one thing seems to be lost on a lot of people: the Hollywood film completely misses the point of GitS and Motoko Kusanagi. Never mind that they are trying to pass off her rank as a proper name, but that's another discussion all together...
Once the trailer started going on about Motoko's past, who she was, and presenting the idea that she's some sort of new, special cyborg is exactly when it stopped being GitS. I don't care how much they try to copy it visually. Her personal conflicts are not about who she was, but who she is because everything about her, body and mind, are interchangeable. That's what makes her and the GitS world interesting yet that's been scrapped for a by-the-numbers Hollywood script because "hey, these are the themes and plot lines general audiences respond to." It's Hollywood movie-making at its most cynical and rather than seeing the celebration of a revered franchise I see pure exploitation with everyone involved somehow managing to do their research yet completely either misunderstand the source material or just not care. Let's be real ya'll, this isn't Ghost in the Shell, it's Black Widow the Movie 2, with the first being Lucy. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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What a measured and keenly-observed article! The last paragraph manages to connect this franchise's distinct thematic core to the new adaptation's pre-existing shortcoming far neater, I dare say, than what we can expect of the assorted commentary soon to appear in the presses.
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anddo
 Posts: 670 |
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Oshii's melodramatic "vision" ruined the entire franchise by preventing any proper adaptations of the original manga to be done. Even Stand Alone Complex which is far closer to the manga in plot and characterization draws much from the 1995 film and hardly recreates Kusanagi and the rest of Section 9's personalities any better than that film.
It's a shame that literally every single adaptation of GitS has to rely on a film with virtually no similarity to the actual source material, which was so clever and entertaining, and sometimes became this whole scientific thesis with its ideas on microbiology, chemistry, robotics and so much more (military jargon, sexuality's evolution in a world of prosthesis, the ethereal concept of ghost dubbing, etc.) beyond the two-dimensional philosophical babble Oshii's version wasted so much time on. Not to mention the lack of any visual resemblance to the manga's bright and detailed art style (seriously, that movie was ugly as sin). Shirow's serious works always have this sort of inter-fictional worldbuilding that seems to get labeled fluff and subsequently filtered out by the adaptations that are made of them, if any are made at all. Orion and the original Dominion manga are some of my favorite manga of all time because of all the detail Shirow spends tirelessly putting in, only for licensing companies to discard. It really stinks. I hope we get a proper adaptation of GitS one day, like with Madhouse's 1:1 Monster, but I just don't see it ever happening with the existence of that awful movie. |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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Of course the original Japanese audience (and many but not all Japanese-Americans), prefer ScarJo or some other non Asian person in the role than a person of Asian but not Japanese descent presenting as Japanese. The particular social construction of "Asian" has more purchase in the USA than in Japan, but even in the US if one looks at actual Census Bureau responses you will find many people who indicate that their "race," not just ethnicity, is Japanese, Korean, or Chinese. The identification with some "Asian" race that includes Southeast Asians and those from the subcontinent instead of just East Asians is even weaker. That there's an arbitrary social element to how these boundaries are drawn means that they have very different meaning in different societies. It's unsurprising, of course, that Japanese, a vast majority in their own country, would not necessarily have the same concerns as minority Japanese Americans nor feel any solidarity towards their geographic neighbors and minorities in their own country. There is close to zero interest or preference in Japan in having characters from anime and manga derived properties played by non-Japanese Asian actors and actresses as opposed to not, and only mild interest in having them played by nikkeijin. The argument of "oh, now this is being adopted by Hollywood, they should get some globally famous Hollywood actor we've heard of" is persuasive. That of course does not mean that the Japanese-American and Asian-American community cannot and should not be concerned, only that they should not expect much if any support from Japan. |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5159 |
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Personally, I think that that the best way to approach the movie is to keep one's expectations low. That way, one can minimize one's disappointments. Hell, it is even possible that that one might be pleasantly surprised -- as unlikely as that might seem. |
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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[quote="John Thacker"]
Your entire post pretty much lines up with what I think about the whole situation based on what my father's told me about his Asian co-workers AND what I've read and experienced personally. I've got no personal stake in this film and frankly the casting of Scarlet Johannson as the lead really doesn't influence my opinion one way or the other... This really isn't about her or her ability to act and I frankly don't want to comment on that. I already felt GiTS was gloriously overhyped as it was before the live-action film deal was even inked! I've seen the Japanese "desecrate" (if you want to go over the top and be quasi-religious) anime properties in their own live-action films WITHOUT Hollywood's help! They did that fine enough with just Japanese and no Europeans or non-Japanese Asians in the cast... This brings me back to another recent live-action adaptation of something done in anime first (Attack on Titan) and the complaints about the fact that there were "only Japanese" in that film instead of reflecting the mostly non-Asian makeup of the manga and anime. You just can't win with live-action... |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2251 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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You know this debate makes me think if anyone has ever considered the "double standard" here that anime dub fans have...
No one is complaining that the vast majority of english dubbing voice actors/actresses aren't asian/japanese, despite voicing characters who are! So is it really only because of the visual appearance of the actor/actress that we care about diversity? There are definitely plenty of talented asians who also speak fluent English. Where's the outcry over the "white-washing" at Funimation, for example? (In case it's not clear I think this is a ridiculous idea but it's something to think about). |
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lympic
 Posts: 2 |
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Hahahahaha... you can't be serious, right? That last part is a little ambigious. If you're kidding, then funny joke. If you're not, then funny joke. |
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RANGIT
Posts: 80 |
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Huh? I don't see Funimation whitewashing at all. If you see someone is white and they got the part that's because they can act the part. Matching the voice however is a different thing and depends on which studio is doing it, but since we're talking about Funimation, they tend to prioritize acting the part before voice matching. Besides, take Micah Solusod for example, he isn't white. In fact, I believe he's Hawaiian/Japanese/Filipino and he's been cast as so many leads in Funimation dubs you'd tire yourself out hearing him. You also have his wife, Apphia Yu who's of Japanese descent. Trina Nishimura who's half-Japanese. Then you have people like Ricco Fajardo, who is also part Filipino. Monica Rial herself is Hispanic and she's been cast as a lead in so many dubs over the years. There's also Jason Liebrecht, again Hispanic. Todd Haberkorn, also a lead of many dubs and is of Vietnamese descent. I can list more people, but I think you get the point. The anime English dubbing industry is actually very diverse. As for your question, I think the fact that most anime characters don't look particularly Asian or Caucasian helps. Most seem to be a mix of both (helps that Disney designs were an inspiration, given a Japanese flavor) and I think the actual equivalent in real life is someone of Eurasian descent. Anyway, what's great about voiceover is that your looks and/or ethnicity don't play a part in getting cast at all. So unless we have a character who is specifically not Japanese in the original dub, I don't think ethnicity should play a role at all. By default, all Japanese speakers become English speakers in an English dub and that's what matters. If you can speak English and act the part, then by all means audition. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2251 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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See this is the argument that I think people have always just accepted. But why should it only apply to voice-over but not acting? Why should an actor's ethnicity matter if they can act the part but not someone doing voice over? I was being purposefully hyperbolic in my post above but it's something to stop and think about. |
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