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Ragga Ragga wrote:

Ryu Shoji wrote:

I'm pretty sure that the source material notes that Mikasa is the only Asian character amongst the significant cast members?

People get over this trivia ok? It worked for the anime but would not work for the live action version. And if you start asking yourself why, just pause, reflect and reevaluate...

Ah yes, I completely forgot that Caucasian actors don't exist. Oh wait...

Yes, it probably would have been harder to find suitable Caucasian actors to fill the roles when compared to just using local talent (of which the majority would be Asian), but if the Casting Director wanted to, they most likely would have been able to fill all of the Caucasian roles with actors who have a matching complexion.

Fedora-san wrote:

Rinkwolf wrote:

Um, no. That isn't how it works. If I have to sift though hundreds upon hundred of post about WHITE WASHING on any western adaption of a manga. Then, I sure as hell am not going to just "Brush it off" when they can't even give Arimn Blond hair for goodness sake.

So, now all of you bitching about White Washing can suck it because this is the crudest example of YELLOW WASHING I've seen to date.

"Yellow Washing"? It's really amazing this kind of ignorance exists in our society to this day.

And it's a Japanese comic to begin with. There's just.. so much wrong with this post I don't even know where to begin.

It's a Japanese comic that canonically states that only one main character is actually of Asian descent. All because a work originates from a particular country, doesn't mean that all of its characters do.

For the record, I'd be just as annoyed if a western adaptation of the manga didn't hire an actress with an Asian complexion to play Mikasa.

So wait, that second one is Armin and not just another shot of Eren looking over his shoulder? Seriously, aside from the hood I couldn't tell you which is which, they could be twins, even their hair is identical!

Emerje

Fedora-san wrote:

Rinkwolf wrote:

Um, no. That isn't how it works. If I have to sift though hundreds upon hundred of post about WHITE WASHING on any western adaption of a manga. Then, I sure as hell am not going to just "Brush it off" when they can't even give Arimn Blond hair for goodness sake.

So, now all of you bitching about White Washing can suck it because this is the crudest example of YELLOW WASHING I've seen to date.

"Yellow Washing"? It's really amazing this kind of ignorance exists in our society to this day.

And it's a Japanese comic to begin with. There's just.. so much wrong with this post I don't even know where to begin.

"Avatar: The Last Airbender" was made in America, but that didn't excuse the casting the director for white washing. It wouldn't be a problem if Mikasa's ethnicity wasn't a key point about her character. As Andre the Black Nerd pointed out in his video about Michael B. Jordon playing the Human Torch, Race Lifting should only be an issue if the ethnicity was part of that character. Mikasa's backstory sparked from her being Asian, thus worth something. If everybody else is Asian, then what's going to happen? Will her family just get killed for the Evulz?

Also, I'm not liking these OC characters while fan favorites like Levi are getting sidelined. This is shaping up to be Japan's version of the "Resident Evil" movies.

I'm worried about how the Titans will look. If they don't have the budget for blond hair dye, then I worry the Titans will look like Ryuk in the "Death Note" movies.

Last edited by Ryu Shoji on Wed Nov 19, 2014 8:47 pm; edited 1 time in total

I wonder if Mikasa's backstory will be altered so that she was targeted for being beautiful, as opposed to being exotic. They could have made Mikasa a different ethnicity to keep that part of her character (as finding and hiring one Caucasian person as opposed to a whole cast would be easier and cheaper), but "Mikasa" is a very Asian name (but then again, "Eren Yaeger" just screams "German!").

@#sukkar - But surely that's when you reach out to casting agencies and partners in other countries to expand a search outside of the local area? Loads of movies made in western countries feature actors and actresses from other countries.

Budget would likely have been an issue there, admittedly (due to Japanese productions being on a much smaller scale than Hollywood) but I wonder if such a large property like "Attack On Titan" could have attracted foreign investors or collaborations?

Miyanoai wrote:

MechaGolem wrote:

In case it all hasn't clicked yet, what Higuchi and crew are obviously doing is re-imagining AOT as a kaiju movie done in a traditional tokusatsu fashion. This isn't going to be a faithful retelling of the manga or anime. That was never the intent. The idea was to take AOT back to its roots, which is in Japan's long and storied Kaiju Eiga tradition.

For those who love anime but apparently can't tolerate Japan's live-action films I know I've undoubtedly made things all that much worse for you. But for those of us who enjoy (or maybe even prefer) tokusatsu to anime this all sounds amazing!

It didn't click to me before but now it makes incredible sense. If I end up seeing this film, I'll probably end up enjoying more with that in mind.

Yep. In fact a friend just told me that he heard from model maker Hiroshi Sagae - whose friends with director Higuchi - that Higuchi's pitch for the movie was essentially "A 21ST CENTURY WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS" - referencing the classic 1966 Toho kaiju film War of the Gargantuas about a pair of giants who battle to the death.

Utterly cringe worthy.

This is going to be a disaster Laughing

This is crazy, I'm against the Yellow Washing

Ryu Shoji wrote:

Budget would likely have been an issue there, admittedly (due to Japanese productions being on a much smaller scale than Hollywood) but I wonder if such a large property like "Attack On Titan" could have attracted foreign investors or collaborations?

This is where many fans would agree with you, and I'm one of them.

Ryu Shoji wrote:

(but then again, "Eren Yaeger" just screams "German!").

Eh, Eren is more of a Turkish name, and the last name Jaeger is a little odd when his dad has a Russian-ish name (Grischa, a diminutive for/of Gregory).

Last edited by ParaChomp on Wed Nov 19, 2014 10:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

What happened to some of the previous comments why are they gone?

Discussing where possible spam went aside let's cut to the chase. Casting someone of a foreign race costs more money and in turn usually isn't worth it since the budget needs to be spent wisely. This is more prevalent in Japan's case. Big Hero 6, Godzilla (2014) and the Wolverine come to mind as examples of Americans adapting Japanese characters all with different results.

The RPG is a big standout at first but considering what exists in the world it's comprehensible once you think about it. I have no problem with the original characters unless their roles could be filled by other characters. Otherwise I'm not too big on Japanese movies but I'm curious about this one due to Attack on Titan's popularity.

mdo7 wrote:

Ryu Shoji wrote:

Budget would likely have been an issue there, admittedly (due to Japanese productions being on a much smaller scale than Hollywood) but I wonder if such a large property like "Attack On Titan" could have attracted foreign investors or collaborations?

This is where many fans would agree with you, and I'm one of them.

Someone needs to remind you of what America has done to some of your precious Japanese cartoons.

ParaChomp wrote:

]Someone needs to remind you of what America has done to some of your precious Japanese cartoons.

It's irrelevent and that's not the point (also it's possible Japan has done something similar too to American cartoon like Beast Wars: Transfomers for example). The point, is that the live-action Attack on Titan should've been a Hollywood co-production rather then a Japanese films, the characters from the manga are not Japanese or Asian except Mikasa.

Looks like utter shit. The one time I wish Hollywood gave a shit enough to make a Live Action.

mdo7 wrote:

ParaChomp wrote:

]Someone needs to remind you of what America has done to some of your precious Japanese cartoons.

It's irrelevent and that's not the point (also it's possible Japan has done something similar too to American cartoon like Beast Wars: Transfomers for example). The point, is that the live-action Attack on Titan should've been a Hollywood co-production rather then a Japanese films, the characters from the manga are not Japanese or Asian except Mikasa.

It could be argued that the ethnicity of the characters in the source material is even more irrelevant.

After all it didn't phase Hollywood filmmakers to recast the characters in either Dragonball or Speed Racer as white, or to propose the same thing for a live-action adaptation of Akira. They also ignored the implicit implication that all the characters in Avatar were Asian and again cast white actors for most of them.

It also didn't appear to be a problem to cast both black and Japanese actors for roles as Norse gods in the Thor movies or for Akira Kurosawa - back in the day - to turn Shakespeare's characters Japanese in his adaptations of both MacBeth and King Lear as Throne of Blood and Ran respectively.

In turn Sergio Leone remade Kurosawa's Yojimbo and made the main character white and Martin Scorsese remade the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs as The Departed and all the characters became white along with it.

There are obviously many many more examples but one more that springs to mind is S. Korean director Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer - which was mentioned earlier here. That movie was based off a French graphic novel in which all the characters were... French. Joon-ho changed that however and gave the movie an international multi-ethnic cast.

So yeah I would say that the ethnicity of the characters in the source material of anything is pretty irrelevant, it entirely matters what the filmmakers want to do. In this case they decided to have an all Japanese cast for Attack on Titan. This was undoubtedly done out of necessity, true, but also probably a choice. After all they could have cast a few no-name gaijin actors in it but they didn't.... and we're probably better off for that.

After I posted here, someone sent a PM and was really angry I don't really like AoT. Wonder if I'm the only one.

Anyway, I understand why they couldn't cast actors that look the part, but I do wish they would dye some of their hair. I still feel like this would have been better as an animated thing, but I do like the actors in it.

MechaGolem wrote:

It could be argued that the ethnicity of the characters in the source material is even more irrelevant.

After all it didn't phase Hollywood filmmakers to recast the characters in either Dragonball or Speed Racer as white, or to propose the same thing for a live-action adaptation of Akira. They also ignored the implicit implication that all the characters in Avatar were Asian and again cast white actors for most of them.

It also didn't appear to be a problem to cast both black and Japanese actors for roles as Norse gods in the Thor movies or for Akira Kurosawa - back in the day - to turn Shakespeare's characters Japanese in his adaptations of both MacBeth and King Lear as Throne of Blood and Ran respectively.

In turn Sergio Leone remade Kurosawa's Yojimbo and made the main character white and Martin Scorsese remade the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs as The Departed and all the characters became white along with it.

There are obviously many many more examples but one more that springs to mind is S. Korean director Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer - which was mentioned earlier here. That movie was based off a French graphic novel in which all the characters were... French. Joon-ho changed that however and gave the movie an international multi-ethnic cast.

So yeah I would say that the ethnicity of the characters in the source material of anything is pretty irrelevant, it entirely matters what the filmmakers want to do. In this case they decided to have an all Japanese cast for Attack on Titan. This was undoubtedly done out of necessity, true, but also probably a choice. After all they could have cast a few no-name gaijin actors in it but they didn't.... and we're probably better off for that.

The same could be said and I'll agree with you, but my point is that there's double standard/hypocrisy when it comes to whitewash/yellowwash characters when casting characters based on certain ethnicities.

When US remade Asian films, a lot of people complain and cry "whitewash". When Japan, South Korea, Mainland China few years ago started to remake American (and European) films like for example, Japan remade Unforgiven. Nobody complain at all, the same people that complain about Hollywood remaking Asian film never complain about Asia doing the same to Hollywood/western films.

That's what I don't like the anime/manga and Asian pop fandom, hypocrisy.

momopeach wrote:

After I posted here, someone sent a PM and was really angry I don't really like AoT. Wonder if I'm the only one.

You may want to post your abusive PMs concern here.

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