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I follow aramatheydidnt over on my personal journal, mostly because I am a fan of J-Pop (though these days I mostly listen to K-Pop, but since there's a crossover in the two countries my fave bands like Kara and Girls' Generation get mentioned from time to time), and while most of the time I don't pay too much attention to the posts outside of the PVs that are posted, this post made me think:
Is Hollywood 'whitewashing' Asian roles?
While I have never been particularly vocal about my love for the series here, probably because I don't watch it often enough, there is a live action version of Cowboy Bebop which is supposedly being done with Keanu Reeves as the lead. This one I object to more in that it's Keanu freaking Reeves trying to play Spike Spiegal, and nothing will convince me that he can do the role justice. But that was the first time I encountered the idea of an anime I liked being whitewashed. Now, you might argue that Spike and Jet and Faye and Ed may or may not be Japanese, considering the events of the series. Okay, you can make a good case for it; they all have Western names, and Faye and Ed in particular have very light skintones in the manga. So with this particular movie, if the cast was more white than Asian, I wouldn't be as upset.
But then I heard Warner Brothers is doing a live action version of Bleach, and here is where I'm terrified of whitewashing. There is absolutely nothing about the structure in Bleach that could be adapted to an American set of character without having to do major rewriting. The concept of shinigami does not exist in the Western world; most of the Western world is predominately Christian, making them monotheistic, and so the idea of death gods is foreign except in the belief of a Grim Reaper. But a group of death gods who form an army, and the idea of Soul Society as a whole? In Western culture, particularly in America, there is no comparison.
So what could be kept? Well, you can keep the ghosts, and the basic idea of Hollows (ghosts who simply do not move on and mutate), and a high schooler who can see them and has to fight them to keep his hometown safe. And possibly you could keep Rukia, if you equate her as a singular Grim Reaper and ignore the fact that she comes from an entire society of them. But you'd need a villain, and a two hour long movie of watching Ichigo fight Hollows is...well, boring. I hate to say it (and when I say hate I mean hate), but you need Aizen. Which means you need to explain that there's more than one of the Grim Reapers, and that flies in the face of American stories. And it just won't work.
Plus, there's a lot about Bleach outside of the shinigmai structure that is uniquely Japanese. Ichigo having orange hair wouldn't automatically brand him a punk here. Hell, I have reddish-purple hair right now that is obviously not my natural color and I'm not branded a punk. In most places in the United States it's considered normal for kids to have strange colored hair, and strawberry-blonde really isn't that unusual. Various cultural norms and things are simply not the same, such as the differing use of honorifics between the characters (for example, Ichigo calling most of his friends by their last names and most of the Soul Society residents by their first could be explained, but how do you deal with the way that Ishida uses honorifics for everyone except Ichigo and his father?), and it would be lost in translation.
I have mixed feelings about their being a live action version of Bleach being made by anyone except the Japanese, to be honest. I'd much rather pay more and go see the movie with a Japanese cast in Japanese with English subtitles than watch an American company butcher yet another great Japanese idea by turning all the characters white and Americanizing it, but if the story idea is compelling and the cast makes some sense I might download it to watch at home before seeing about spending any money on it. Why can't Hollywood just leave well enough alone? There's no point in whitewashing because then you piss off a good majority of the fanbase?
I recently heard they're also considering making a live action Ghost in the Shell, and when I heard some of the names being cast (for example, Ryan Reynolds as Togusa and Kate Bekinsale as The Major) I wanted to scream. As was pointed out many times in the comments to the post, there are no Western actresses around that could conceivably pull off The Major, but I bet there are a few Japanese ones who could. And making it set in America would completely undermine the series. Just leave it alone, Hollywood, or let the Japanese do it. I don't trust Hollywood to not take these three animes and ruin them forever in the Western public's eyes. I rue the day where I write Bleach fanfic and get the comment "Why does X act like this? He/She didn't act that way in the movie!" I may stop writing fanfic if the fan dumb ever gets that bad.
Is Hollywood 'whitewashing' Asian roles?
While I have never been particularly vocal about my love for the series here, probably because I don't watch it often enough, there is a live action version of Cowboy Bebop which is supposedly being done with Keanu Reeves as the lead. This one I object to more in that it's Keanu freaking Reeves trying to play Spike Spiegal, and nothing will convince me that he can do the role justice. But that was the first time I encountered the idea of an anime I liked being whitewashed. Now, you might argue that Spike and Jet and Faye and Ed may or may not be Japanese, considering the events of the series. Okay, you can make a good case for it; they all have Western names, and Faye and Ed in particular have very light skintones in the manga. So with this particular movie, if the cast was more white than Asian, I wouldn't be as upset.
But then I heard Warner Brothers is doing a live action version of Bleach, and here is where I'm terrified of whitewashing. There is absolutely nothing about the structure in Bleach that could be adapted to an American set of character without having to do major rewriting. The concept of shinigami does not exist in the Western world; most of the Western world is predominately Christian, making them monotheistic, and so the idea of death gods is foreign except in the belief of a Grim Reaper. But a group of death gods who form an army, and the idea of Soul Society as a whole? In Western culture, particularly in America, there is no comparison.
So what could be kept? Well, you can keep the ghosts, and the basic idea of Hollows (ghosts who simply do not move on and mutate), and a high schooler who can see them and has to fight them to keep his hometown safe. And possibly you could keep Rukia, if you equate her as a singular Grim Reaper and ignore the fact that she comes from an entire society of them. But you'd need a villain, and a two hour long movie of watching Ichigo fight Hollows is...well, boring. I hate to say it (and when I say hate I mean hate), but you need Aizen. Which means you need to explain that there's more than one of the Grim Reapers, and that flies in the face of American stories. And it just won't work.
Plus, there's a lot about Bleach outside of the shinigmai structure that is uniquely Japanese. Ichigo having orange hair wouldn't automatically brand him a punk here. Hell, I have reddish-purple hair right now that is obviously not my natural color and I'm not branded a punk. In most places in the United States it's considered normal for kids to have strange colored hair, and strawberry-blonde really isn't that unusual. Various cultural norms and things are simply not the same, such as the differing use of honorifics between the characters (for example, Ichigo calling most of his friends by their last names and most of the Soul Society residents by their first could be explained, but how do you deal with the way that Ishida uses honorifics for everyone except Ichigo and his father?), and it would be lost in translation.
I have mixed feelings about their being a live action version of Bleach being made by anyone except the Japanese, to be honest. I'd much rather pay more and go see the movie with a Japanese cast in Japanese with English subtitles than watch an American company butcher yet another great Japanese idea by turning all the characters white and Americanizing it, but if the story idea is compelling and the cast makes some sense I might download it to watch at home before seeing about spending any money on it. Why can't Hollywood just leave well enough alone? There's no point in whitewashing because then you piss off a good majority of the fanbase?
I recently heard they're also considering making a live action Ghost in the Shell, and when I heard some of the names being cast (for example, Ryan Reynolds as Togusa and Kate Bekinsale as The Major) I wanted to scream. As was pointed out many times in the comments to the post, there are no Western actresses around that could conceivably pull off The Major, but I bet there are a few Japanese ones who could. And making it set in America would completely undermine the series. Just leave it alone, Hollywood, or let the Japanese do it. I don't trust Hollywood to not take these three animes and ruin them forever in the Western public's eyes. I rue the day where I write Bleach fanfic and get the comment "Why does X act like this? He/She didn't act that way in the movie!" I may stop writing fanfic if the fan dumb ever gets that bad.