Saw this first on Facebook, and ooh shiny:
Since this is apparently going to come up, eventually: …screw it, I like Scarlet Johansson as an actress and as an action heroine. Plus, it’s one of the weirder conventions of anime/manga that far too few of the people drawn in that style ever actually have recognizable Asian facial features, and the ones that do typically are there to do heavy-handed stereotypical comedy. It’s not my place in the universe to psychoanalyze Japan’s self-image issues for it – I haven neither the capacity, nor the inclination, to do so – so let me just get my popcorn and my Dr. Pepper* so that I can enjoy my well-swept cyberpunk manga movie in peace, OK?
*Coke for the day-to-day. Orange soda for pizza. Dr. Pepper / Cherry Coke for movies. And grape soda when I’m at Subway, for some reason. I’m not sure why that one myself.
“Plus, it’s one of the weirder conventions of anime/manga that far too few of the people drawn in that style ever actually have recognizable Asian facial features, and the ones that do typically are there to do heavy-handed stereotypical comedy. It’s not my place in the universe to psychoanalyze Japan’s self-image issues for it…”
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OMG!! Anime characters ARE NOT WHITE!!
No obvious epicanthic folds in anime, so don’t look asian. But also not look quite caucasian or anything else either.
I- I am absolutely flabbergasted that the above comment was written on this site. D:
I’m with Jeff on this one. As someone who watches more anime than anything else Anime characters don’t tend to look particularly Japanese. And, yes, I watched the video at the link.
Don’t know if it was my share or not, but it looks good. Hope they get some Fujikomas in there.
I love the Fuji’s, but they werent in the original movie (that this one seems to be adapting fairly closely) so I won’t hold my breath.
Yeah, and every time I think of them, I think more along the lines of the original Playstation game.
It’s been many years since I watched the original, but this trailer seemed like a mostly faithful reproduction, except near the end when they started telling Kusanagi everything she knew was a lie or whatever, which I do NOT remember being there originally.
I was a big fan of the manga and the movie and TV adaptions. As long as they get the core of it, there’s a ton of room for play with the story. Her country of origin doesn’t matter, the specifics of the political games don’t matter, the adversaries don’t matter. change them up as much as you want, it will still work. The trailer looks like they opted to recreate scenes from the Mamoru Oshii in live action, which is kind of neat, but since I’ve already seen that film multiple times, I kind of wish they had gone with new concepts (or perhaps pulled from scenes from the manga. The Oshii’s film was nearly a complete new story taking only the premise, characters and the broadest of outlines from the source material). I see that they are adding a “lost memory” aspect to the story. That’s new. In the manga The Major, knew her past, but didn’t share it much with people. It will be interesting to see what they do with it. I’m hopefull. I do hope a proper adaptation of Appleseed get made someday. Of all Shirow’s works, that was my favorite.
The Japanese anime fans actually have less problem with the Scarlett Johansson playing Major Kusanagi than the SJW Western fanatics.
Look, I don’t have a problem with Scarlett Johansson playing Major Kusanagi (as long as it makes sense in the movie). I have a problem with people saying that anime characters are all white or not asian. Sure there are a few non-asian characters in anime, but the vast majority of characters are asian.