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INTEREST: Fullmetal Alchemist Anime Director Criticizes Upcoming Live-Action Film


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belvadeer





PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:23 pm Reply with quote
silentjay wrote:
They've been doing foreign language productions for ages, and don't generally have a bias against dubs or subtitles. There's a reasonable enough chance that all-Japanese FMA will flop because of the casting, because it makes The Last Airbender look like a minor misjudgment. Japan may be culturally homogeneous, almost to a fault, but it's generally not blindly so when it comes to the movie's target audience.


I asked because I thought of how the Kamen Rider directors cast a couple of non-native folks living in Japan to be in specific seasons, but they were required to speak fluent Japanese to participate in their roles.
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Enturax



Joined: 07 Jun 2015
Posts: 220
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 2:34 pm Reply with quote
FINALLY some smart director.
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Re:SOUL





PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 3:47 pm Reply with quote
I don't think that it is good criticism to make as Japan isn't like the UK or America where there's a diverse range of ethnic groups to choose from when casting characters. In Japan you mostly have Japanese people so unless the director and film crew choose to go abroad these films will have a predominantly Japanese cast. I don't know if the Japanese film.

Now if this were an American film and the entire cast were American I would you're much different because America has the ability to cast characters from different backgrounds. Edward Alphonse and the other military cast could be played by Americans while the characters from Ding could be played by Asian actors seeing as that's country is the manga Eastern region. Then the discussion to be had about what race would play the Ishvalans.
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ptj_tsubasa



Joined: 04 Feb 2009
Posts: 129
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 3:51 pm Reply with quote
Felicity dash wrote:
Seeing a Japanese director criticize a movie for not having diversity actually surprises me.

That's not really what he's saying. It's clearly a ridiculous and unfeasible idea to make a Japanese movie with foreign actors speaking Japanese.

What he's saying is that it's silly to make Japanese live-action movies based on some manga in the first place, since it's inevitably going to break the illusion that the work takes place in an exotic Western-style fantasy country. Which with the most popular shounen manga is usually the case.

With anime and manga you can sustain the Lord of the Rings style illusion that the characters who are speaking Japanese aren't actually speaking Japanese. All you need are some streetsigns and other text in English in the background, characters with Western-sounding names and a big pile of forks.

But with live-action the suspension of disbelief breaks. The characters don't look like anime characters anymore - you can't unsee that they're Japanese actors wearing silly wigs and costumes, pretending they're right at home among the European-style buildings in the European filming location.

Admittedly it's not as silly as something like Terra Formars, where some characters are supposed to be Japanese but the majority of the others are supposed to be American, Russian, German and so on.
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Vent



Joined: 22 Aug 2009
Posts: 316
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 4:42 pm Reply with quote
Okay but what does the director of the good FMA anime think?
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Codeanime93



Joined: 28 Jul 2017
Posts: 599
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 5:03 pm Reply with quote
Vent wrote:
Okay but what does the director of the good FMA anime think?

Why is the first FMA anime not good again besides it not being faithful to the manga?
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scriver058



Joined: 21 May 2006
Posts: 127
Location: NY
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:19 pm Reply with quote
Vent wrote:
Okay but what does the director of the good FMA anime think?


Didn't you read the article? He just told you.

Brotherhood is good (mostly it's second half), but very overrated. And the argument for it usually comes down to "it's based more on the manga", which is so lazy. I'll take FMA 2003 over Brotherhood every time, but if you could put the first half of the former together with the second half of the latter, you would have the quintessential FMA adaptation.

But yeah, Mizushima is right. FMA has a diverse cast, this movie simply isn't an accurate adaptation in that regard, perceived limitations of the Japanaese film industry aside.
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Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 1767
Location: South America
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:04 pm Reply with quote
The problem is that the Japanese live action film industry is itself very weak comlared to its glorious past. Back in 1960 Japanese films sold 1 billion tickets per year, nowadays they sell about 160 million tickets. Why that collapse? Manga happened and drew out all the market for itself.
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ArnisEnthusiast



Joined: 12 Jul 2017
Posts: 74
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 8:10 pm Reply with quote
I understand the difficulty of getting a non-Japanese cast in Japan but Fullmetal Alchemist just can't be adapted properly without a cast that isn't just Japanese. Racism is an important part of the story. That can't be portrayed properly if everyone's Japanese.
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Felicity dash





PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 9:20 pm Reply with quote
ptj_tsubasa wrote:
Felicity dash wrote:
Seeing a Japanese director criticize a movie for not having diversity actually surprises me.

That's not really what he's saying. It's clearly a ridiculous and unfeasible idea to make a Japanese movie with foreign actors speaking Japanese.
Maybe you didn`t read the "It was a bad idea to ONLY use Japanese actors" quote. Meaning he is criticizing for a lack of diversity. Also you have no idea how badly I want to punch you because your second sentence is very insulting.

[/quote]
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CrownKlown



Joined: 05 May 2011
Posts: 1762
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 10:02 pm Reply with quote
Though fairly low budget, Mamoru Oshi did a co production with a Polish studio called Avalon that was part GitS and part Matrix, it was honestly kind of decent and would probably have cult status if anyone actually knew it existed.

I do have to go with what seems to be the consensus that animated works rarely translate to live action. Anime in particular uses an art style that tends to be vague combing Asian and Western traits on purpose creating a fictional "race" that doesn't really translate into the real world, there is some term for it but forgot what it was.
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Guile



Joined: 18 Jun 2013
Posts: 595
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 11:13 pm Reply with quote
I agree with him anime is always going to be the best choice when adapting a manga. You can make the characters look 100% like they're supposed to.

Felicity Dash wrote:
Maybe you didn`t read the "It was a bad idea to ONLY use Japanese actors" quote. Meaning he is criticizing for a lack of diversity.


Is it diversity if its how they actually look? Diversity would be if a Hollywood adaption made Mustang or Armstrong black for no reason. Technically the FMA movie is diverse since it lacks white people and has Asians
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Posts: 5113
Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 12:27 am Reply with quote
Wait up! What the heck is a meat festival? What does one do at a meat festival? Get autographs from your favorite butchers? If they are going to have people to discuss a Hiromu Arakawa work at a meat festival, you'd think they'd talk about Silver Spoon. Lots of discussion about meat production there!
Anyway...

#861208 wrote:
Quote:
“2D is freer than live action,” was the consensus. “You can express more with it.”


This, though.

Can we just... this.

I don't really have a problem with the race thing (it's standard in stage productions to just ignore that, and I watch more stage productions than live action), but it is just one of the many areas in which animation is totally superior to live-action. Live-action just seems pointless to me, especially since so much of it is basically just CG animation now. If you're not going to have it live on stage, why not just make it animated? The only reason for live-action is the stigma against animation.

I just want to world to see that animation is the greatest art form of the modern age, and to really appreciate it. I want there to not just be this one little country with a decent, varied animation output. I want the whole world to appreciate animation.

100%! Animation is a medium suitable for most any type of story, with the added benefit of being as realistic or fantastical as necessary to enhance the story without a separate special effects budget. I love animation and wish it could be considered the definitive way to adapt stories more often.

hehe652 wrote:
So you mean to tell me that they need to find someone from Resembool, Amestris irl that is white and an actor and lives in Japan and speak Japanese to act as Edward? Wow~

Yes, the whole cast needs to be Amestrians, otherwise it won't be realistic! Razz

Guile wrote:

Is it diversity if its how they actually look? Diversity would be if a Hollywood adaption made Mustang or Armstrong black for no reason. Technically the FMA movie is diverse since it lacks white people and has Asians

That's *not* what diversity means. Diversity literally
means difference; a variety. So it would mean actors of different racial backgrounds in a film.

Other live action:

WANNFH wrote:

Quote:
“Gintama just looked stupid,” he complained
Well, if it comes to Gintama, the word "stupid" is more a compliment that complain. Even Sorachi acknowledges that by saying that movie will more looks like the comedy cosplay party.

Sorachi said that?! That's hilarious! Laughing

CrownKlown wrote:
Though fairly low budget, Mamoru Oshi did a co production with a Polish studio called Avalon that was part GitS and part Matrix, it was honestly kind of decent and would probably have cult status if anyone actually knew it existed.

That sounds really cool! Is it streaming anywhere?
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Ashen Phoenix



Joined: 21 Jun 2006
Posts: 2904
PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 12:44 am Reply with quote
scriver058 wrote:
Vent wrote:
Okay but what does the director of the good FMA anime think?


Didn't you read the article? He just told you.

Brotherhood is good (mostly it's second half), but very overrated. And the argument for it usually comes down to "it's based more on the manga", which is so lazy. I'll take FMA 2003 over Brotherhood every time, but if you could put the first half of the former together with the second half of the latter, you would have the quintessential FMA adaptation.

But yeah, Mizushima is right. FMA has a diverse cast, this movie simply isn't an accurate adaptation in that regard, perceived limitations of the Japanaese film industry aside.

Thank you, scriver058. While I grew to love most of what Brotherhood had to offer, and damn did it offer a lot of great things, I will still always love the overall tone and handling of the 2003 FMA more. In a perfect world they could've been combined--transmuted, if you will, highlighting the greatest strengths of both adaptations.
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SheRrIs





PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 4:51 am Reply with quote
Agent355 wrote:

CrownKlown wrote:
Though fairly low budget, Mamoru Oshi did a co production with a Polish studio called Avalon that was part GitS and part Matrix, it was honestly kind of decent and would probably have cult status if anyone actually knew it existed.

That sounds really cool! Is it streaming anywhere?


It's on Amazon.
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