Disney casts 19 year-old Halle Bailey as Ariel in "Little Mermaid."

Major Motoko Kusanagi is an assault-team leader for the Public Security Section 9 of "New Port City" in Japan.. It may have been made to look like Hong Kong.. but wasnt It was a made up coast city..
Batou had served in a military special forces unit and often states that he was a Ranger-trained soldier with the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force.. So he was "Originally" Japanese
Motoko, in the manga, had a run of the mill, average body.. like a ford focus.. but with the internals customized..

Plus, The japanese are quite a xenophobic people.. come and visit, but don't stay.. even Koreans..
well there's always 47 Ronin.. with Keanu Reeves..

I remember watching Mission Impossible, the 60's series.. not the Tom "Im short but Awesome" Cruise ones..
for 3 years they had Lenord Nemoy as the group's "mask/actor" guy.. and in 1 episode.. they were in Japan.. and they had Nimoy as the "Asian" guy with a couple make up props.. Ha!
(then there's you only live twice with Sean Connery getting make up to be an asian guy.. ugh)
So, back in the 60's.. they didn't care.. they had the lead guy play a Central American general alot of times.. and he was blonde (pretty much grey) hair blue eyes..

 

"Even Koreans?"

 

Given the history between the Japanese and the Koreans this actually makes sense.

 

I don't really see the problem with moving Akira to New York instead of Tokyo.
I just watched the anime a month or two ago, and I really don't remember there being anything about the story makes it only able to be done in Tokyo with a jhttps://www.ign.com/articles/2019/07/12/the-mandalorian-jon-favreau-reveals-he-is-currently-writing-the-script-for-season-2Japanese cast.
Sure it would be cool to see them do it in Tokyo with an all Japanese cast, but there's no way modern day Hollywood is going to do that.
If it was choice between just moving the whole thing to New York with an American cast, or setting it in Japan and then throwing in some excuse for why a bunch of white kids are running around there, I'd rather just see them set it in NYC.

 

Ah the last is a different country. I watched The Man With The Golden Gun the other day. Made my head spin. Makes You Only Live Twice look like an instructional video in race relations by comparison.

Newport City in the movie looked so much like Hong Kong it had real locations and Chinese writing. Shirow always went fro an...interesting approach to characters lineages etc. Because it’s supposed to be SF. Japan of the future is not the Japan of now. From a certain point of view, Newport may be in Hong Kong and Japan at the same time...he never said it wasn’t, and the geography is very different.

Motoko is just very different but the same in all the adaptations (unknown roots? Plane Crash? Premature birth?) and I think the movie very smartly extrapolated from some of those whilst also pushing it just a little further...I find it sad that a film with probably the most diverse cast across its hero characters simply got caught up in controversy. Making it more mixed in a country that usually isn’t told an interesting bit of world building, making it a sort of echo the things like Blade Runner but in reverse. The idea of Eastern European refugees turning up there also does that, and keeps in with the themes in all of the various GiTS. I give credit where it’s due.

As an amusing riddle, I can tell you that one of his other famous works is technically sort of set in Portugal, if you work it out, more or less, but which one? ; )

 

Akira is too bound up in post ww2 Japanese history and politics (and a bit before) including stuff to do with the American occupation thematically. Not to mention the olympics xD. If you transpose it to NYC it’s gonna be difficult to not think about the imagery in relation to 9/11 and that’s a very different thing.

If all people are going for is slightly schlocky horror though...sure you can transpose it to America. San Francisco might be a better bet though. And it’s name would change naming, and am not sure ‘john’ is such a catchy name.

 

OK, I didn't know about the post WWII thing.

 

I actually have hope now that Taika Waititi is directing. He's already said that he's wanting to cast Asian-American actors in the lead roles and it seems to be set in Neo-Tokyo again. He's also said that he'll be adapting the manga and not the anime.

 

I look at it as Ariel's predicament being similar to that of a person not feeling good as their gender, and then having a sex change.

 

I'd rephrase that a bit because it's old terminology, but yeah. There is a case that could be made for a very strong trans interpretation, even though it wasn't intentional. I'm trans and even as a kid I completely related to Ariel and watching it as an adult and being aware of who I really am, still do. There's a line that Sebastian has about changing her back.

That really hits close to home.

 

That's the power of good storytelling. Some experiences are almost universal and can apply to any number of circumstances, regardless of the overt context.
In this case, it's about a person who's true self isn't being recognised and her potential is being crushed by those that do love her, but presume they know what's best for her. Who hasn't felt like that at some point in their life? I think it's what truly makes a timeless story.

 

Then maybe they could hire some Japanese leads.
The manga is huge and sprawling and full of metaphors that is gonna need a huge budget and a large amount of extras...not sure the empire bit will sit well with a western audience.

 

There’s strong....imagery...to do with student riots, the nuclear blasts and subsequent study by American doctors, the idea of an occupied territory, and a fair chunk to do with imperialism (in the larger sense) not to mention the intergenerational struggles and a discomfort with that generation gap. It’s also very much about a cycle of death and rebirth, both for people but also for cities and nations...it’s an oddly specific nightmare, probably because of Otomos experiences growing up when and where’ve did.

It’s SF, and it’s future, so sure, you could transplant it anywhere you like, but thematically and imagery wise it’s very Showa era Japanese (which makes sense considering when it was originally written/made) in a way that some other anime isn’t. If you transplant it and keepsake imagery, it might not work, or gets muddled and loses some context. Tbh, unless they miniseries it, it’s gonna lose some stuff anyway if it’s the manga being adapted. The film...well, it’s a film. Not even technically an adaptation as it’s the same guy presenting an alternate version of his work.

Mind you...it would be incredibly dull in spots. Akira is incredibly, incredibly slow moving.

 

The trans charity in the UK is literally called Mermaids. It’s been somewhat adopted as a symbol.

 

Exactly. It's still an amazing and powerful film that holds up now just as well as it did back then. If it didn't connect to so many people it wouldn't have been the huge success it was when it was originally released, it basically saved Disney animation at a time when there was a very real chance it would be ended forever. It started the success that lead to a series of classic animated films and made Disney into what it is today. It was the first movie I really remember seeing a child and it has always stuck with me. I could easily sing all the songs from heart. I keep wanting an Ariel tattoo. I have an idea of one with either her silhouette swimming towards the surface or the iconic image of her on the rock.

 

I didn't realize that was where all of that came from. I can see now where it would lose a lot of the context if you move it out of Japan.

 

*shrug* I enjoy working out story stuff. Today I only just realised that Freddie Mercury is cameoing in a Terry Pratchett novel. (He’s a golem in making money.)
In terms of stories, sometimes the power is inside the story, sometimes it’s outside, sometimes the two work together. Sometimes it’s even the right time for a story. Tons of things only have the power they do because of the when and where they were made as much as their setting.

Sometimes I think people are just sick of stuff always being moved to America as the setting because of Hollywood. Especially when they will just film it in Canada, and aren’t shy of international shoots for tax purposes anyway xD.

They could move Bubblegum Crisis to the US and get way with it, if they want an eighties cyberpunk anime. It’s Blade Runner Fanfic anyway.

 

Like the Death note series on the netflix, they could have easily left the setting in japan, and filmed it in canada, with some cgi to make it look like tokyo or something.. with an all asian cast. Sorry but I'm harping on the asian thing because there also not many of them in hollywood making movies or tv, if there going to go into anime or chinese/korean stuff, don't westernize it!!
same for india or middle eastren stories..

 

That's why stories of people finding themselves and their full potential mean so much to me.

 

Which Golem?