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FilthyImp posted:Old Anime had very similar character designs and used Hair/Eye color as a shorthand to quickly distinguish the cast. Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't this make anime effectively post-racial? Like, if the form dictates that visible characteristics are purely for visual readability, or to represent the character's personality or whatever, then what do we mean when we say that Major is ethnically Japanese in the anime? Given that race is a social construct built around appearance.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 00:50 |
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# ? May 22, 2024 09:04 |
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Sir Kodiak posted:Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't this make anime effectively post-racial? Like, if the form dictates that visible characteristics are purely for visual readability, or to represent the character's personality or whatever, then what do we mean when we say that Major is ethnically Japanese in the anime? Given that race is a social construct built around appearance. well her name is motoko kusanagi white people in manga/anime are canonically blonde haired, blue eyed and huge-nosed. really the only perceptibly white thing about the major is eye color, and maybe skin color but japanese people irl are pretty light skinned so icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 00:55 |
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Mithaldu posted:That setpiece isn't an action scene imo. It's too deliberate, too tactical. It feels more like watching a play of chess. Move, consideration, move, consideration, move, consideration, ... Half the fights they didn't show any people fighting either, you only see people flying or falling over. ACTION FALLING.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 01:01 |
Sir Kodiak posted:Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't this make anime effectively post-racial? Like, if the form dictates that visible characteristics are purely for visual readability, or to represent the character's personality or whatever, then what do we mean when we say that Major is ethnically Japanese in the anime? Given that race is a social construct built around appearance. Well, see, that's the thing. Anime characters are often designed in a way that is - and I can't believe I actually had to go read about anime to get a handle on this - stateless. It's called mukokuseki. Basically, it is that physical features, colors and other elements of art style of the character are designed to not represent any kind of ethnicity. This isn't what it always means, however, but it's a starting point to consider. Gohmak, for example, points out that Major must be Asian because her skin isn't ethereally pale (????) and she's not blonde (??????) despite the fact there's nothing about her that points to Asian ethnicity beyond a name, in a world where bodies can be mass-produced and she can hop between them as easily as swapping clothes. As pointed out, Major's facial structure is identical to the blonde-haired pale-skinned Puppet Master. So, wouldn't it be more obvious to most viewers that she is a dark haired, slightly tanned Caucasian? It gets more confusing when you look at GITS: SAC which absolutely draws certain characters as more obviously Asian (Saito, Gouda, for example) and some as more obviously Caucasoid (Batou) and some who have features that humans can't have naturally (Motoko, Kuze) and a heap who fall into a more nebulous zone (Togusa, Ishikawa). And then, when you look at the casting and compare it to the character art, it's basically spot on. Some of these characters even say their their bodies are just tools to affect a certain response in others, too, which means perhaps the nebulous ethnicity of some of them is intentional! So, when you're doing a live action adaptation, what do you aim for? Do you go for someone who matches the physical features as depicted, or do you choose an actress based simply on the character's name? icantfindaname posted:so im not sure if you've noticed this but american and more broadly western views of japan are insanely racist. when you inject into that environment a self-loathing japanese-american talking poo poo on their ethnic homeland and thus legitimating the gut feelings of white liberals that the japanese are diseased and pathological subhumans the whole situation just becomes an apocalyptic singularity of racism My extended family are Chinese-Malay so, yeah, I've got a bit of experience with the astoundingly bizarre views that can float around SEA, particularly when comparing immigrants to people who still identify as being from their home country first. It his, however, very easy to render down views you don't like into "whitesplaining" as some have said in this thread. Much easier than actually engaging. But it seems weird to me to say that Japanese-Americans have more validity to their arguments about what constitutes an unacceptable portrayal than the Japanese, particularly when those Japanese-Americans are basically castigating their own homeland and identity because it isn't marketable enough. That's messed up. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 01:37 |
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Milky Moor posted:Well, see, that's the thing. In the montage scene Motoko is looking around the city and notices herself sitting at a dinner, modeling clothes in a shop window, basically blending into Japanese society. Mukokuseki does not mean "not Japanese" gohmak fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 01:58 |
gohmak posted:In the montage scene Motoko is looking around the city and notices herself sitting at a dinner, modeling clothes in a shop window, basically blending into Japanese society. Mukokuseki does not mean "not Japanese". Well, it's funny that I didn't say 'not Japanese' then, isn't it?
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:02 |
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Mukokuseki just means a character is depicted in a style not expressantly representative of a specific ethnicity. The clip I posted earlier of Hikaru No Go is about a japanese boy playing a korean boy in a korean Go Salon in Japan. The japanese characters are depicted in mukokuseki with exagerated eye shapes, colors and hair. So is the Korea boy he is playing. The adults Koreans in the scene are not styled in mukokuseki. They are contrasted with Japanese characters as having small squinting eyes.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:08 |
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Snak posted:It's not about having "a bunch of scenes". RoboCop is about Murphy becoming RoboCop becoming Just wanted to say this is a really good post and sums up a lot of problems in the movie. I also forgot she just got captured by Hanka without putting up a fight. What the hell was that about? Lucky for her the Doc changed her mind or she'd be dead. Thread title really should be Ghost in the Shell: Watch Robocop Instead
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:08 |
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gohmak posted:In the montage scene Motoko is looking around the city and notices herself sitting at a dinner, modeling clothes in a shop window, basically blending into Japanese society. Neither of the Ghost In The Shell films is set in Japan.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:08 |
gohmak posted:Mukokuseki just means a character is depicted in a style not expressantly representative of a specific ethnicity. The clip I posted earlier of Hikaru No Go is about a japanese boy playing a korean boy in a korean Go Salon in Japan. The japanese characters are depicted in mukokuseki with exagerated eye shapes, colors and hair. So is the Korea boy he is playing. The adults Koreans in the scene are not styled in mukokuseki. They are contrasted with Japanese characters as having small squinting eyes. "Characters aren't styled to look like a specific ethnicity, except when they are" ????????
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:18 |
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Ghost In The Shell 1995's unnamed setting is based on Hong Kong. Motoko Kusansgi was, all along, a Japanese woman in a Chinese body.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:26 |
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Neither of the Ghost In The Shell films is set in Japan. I believe the first one is un-named but the second one is explicitly Japan isn't it? They fight the Yakuza's.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:27 |
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cosmically_cosmic posted:I believe the first one is un-named but the second one is explicitly Japan isn't it? They fight the Yakuza's. All the GitS media are in Japan though you can make a pretty decent argument that it's really Hong Kong in the first two movies. The primary city is never named by a character in either of the first two movies but is called Niihama or New Port City/Newport City in writing that appears in background and on computer displays. It's blatantly Hong Kong with the serial numbers filed off though they didn't even bother to replace some of the Chinese writing with Japanese characters. SAC and Arise explicitly name it and make it much less distinctively Hong Kong.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:38 |
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Milky Moor posted:"Characters aren't styled to look like a specific ethnicity, except when they are" When they are styled as a specific ethnicity they are that specific ethnicity. When they are styled in an exaggerated manner (mukokuseki) with colorful hair and eyes it does not mean they don't belong to a specific ethnicity. gohmak fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:53 |
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In any case, the unspoken point of Ghost 1995 is that Japan has become a power with enough political and economic clout to have occupied Hong Kong. So you have all these Japanese Megacorporations and government agencies building skyscrapers overtop of decaying Hong Kong neighbourhoods. In 2017, things are blurred even further - the setting is similar, but there is a crisis involving a massive influx of European immigrants. It's bad enough that terrorist organizations are out bombing refugee ships. And this terrorism is obviously fuelled by the overwhelming influence of... German companies. You see can see Adidas ads in the skyline, but the important point is that Hansa Robotics is German(!) - a reference to the Hanseatic League: "Hanse, later spelled as Hansa, was the Middle Low German word for a convoy, and this word was applied to bands of merchants traveling between the Hanseatic cities whether by land or by sea. The League was created to protect the guilds' economic interests and diplomatic privileges in their affiliated cities and countries, as well as along the trade routes the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and furnished their own armies for mutual protection and aid. Despite this, the organization was not a state, nor can it be called a confederation of city-states; only a very small number of the cities within the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city." -Wiki SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:55 |
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Midjack posted:All the GitS media are in Japan though you can make a pretty decent argument that it's really Hong Kong in the first two movies. The primary city is never named by a character in either of the first two movies but is called Niihama or New Port City/Newport City in writing that appears in background and on computer displays. It's blatantly Hong Kong with the serial numbers filed off though they didn't even bother to replace some of the Chinese writing with Japanese characters. SAC and Arise explicitly name it and make it much less distinctively Hong Kong. SAC is explicitly Japan and it looks quite different. The only parts of SAC that look similar to the movie are when they go to refugee areas. And when I say explicitly Japan, I mean that Section 9 is explicitly a section of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Government of Japan. There's no vague "this government" type statements. edit: SuperMechagodzilla posted:... the important point is thay Hansa Robotics is German(!) - a reference to the Hanseatic League: Snak fucked around with this message at 03:06 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 02:58 |
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Is this movie actually "good"? For people who liked the original films and SAC? I have been ignoring everything about it mostly but I used to be really into GITS and I recently found out my girlfriend used to be a fan of the show so it'd be a fun thing we can do together. But I'm not sure what kind of expectations I should have for this thing.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:04 |
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Item Getter posted:Is this movie actually "good"? I like it. It's not great. If you guys are fans, I say check it out. It's got some great scenes and really nice visuals. If you want to see some iconic visuals reimagined in live action, definitly check it out. If you want a really amazing GitS story... uh, don't.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:08 |
gohmak posted:When they are styled as a specific ethnicity they are that specific ethnicity. When they are styled in an exaggerated manner (mukokuseki) with colorful hair and eyes it does not mean they don't belong to a specific ethnicity. Okay, so, bringing this all back home. Given that she is not styled in an exaggerated manner in GitS, and given that she exactly resembles a form that you have called Caucasian (albeit based on hair and eye color), what ethnicity is Motoko Kusanagi's shell in the first movie?
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:17 |
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Milky Moor posted:Okay, so, bringing this all back home. All anime characters are Japanese unless explicitly stated otherwise. That goes for fantasy euro influenced anime as well.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:22 |
gohmak posted:All anime characters are Japanese unless explicitly stated otherwise. That goes for fantasy euro influenced anime as well. That isn't what you said, though? You said, "when styled as a specific ethnicity they are that ethnicity". More importantly, being Japanese in nationality doesn't preclude someone not looking Japanese. Again, given that she is not styled in an exaggerated manner in GitS, and given that she exactly resembles a form that you have called Caucasian (albeit based on hair and eye color), what ethnicity is Motoko Kusanagi's shell in the first movie?
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:34 |
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This is dumb. She is Japanese. When the Japanese draw themselves, they don't go "Ohh I better draw slanty eyes and buck teeth!" because they are the majority. A stick figure is Japanese to a Japanese person. You would have to give the stick figure a big nose and blonde hair for it to be a Westerner because that is how poo poo is coded there.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:42 |
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Snak posted:SAC is explicitly Japan and it looks quite different. The only parts of SAC that look similar to the movie are when they go to refugee areas. Midjack posted:All the GitS media are in Japan though you can make a pretty decent argument that it's really Hong Kong in the first two movies. The primary city is never named by a character in either of the first two movies but is called Niihama or New Port City/Newport City in writing that appears in background and on computer displays. It's blatantly Hong Kong with the serial numbers filed off though they didn't even bother to replace some of the Chinese writing with Japanese characters. SAC and Arise explicitly name it and make it much less distinctively Hong Kong. It makes more sense knowing the backstory of the comic setting. In every comic/anime continuity all Ghost in the Shell stuff takes place in a fictional version of Niihama which is (in some English localizations this is changed to a generic Port City, or New Port City, etc. in some localized media) an actual city in Japan, but is currently a relatively old mining city (I think it has a population of like 100,000 people). In Ghost in the Shell it's the "big city" because due to the manga's backstory the entire planet's geopolitical structure is completely different from anything today. Like Tokyo effectively doesn't exist anymore, huge parts of the world are radioactive wasteland, the land that is the US in the real world is three totally separate nations in Ghost in the Shell. The earth in the Ghost in the Shell franchise is basically a different planet in terms of where we now associate different countries and super powers to be. When they were making the 1995 movie Oshii used Hong Kong because they felt it was the closest real city that would reflect that level of cultural and national fracturing that is the basis of GitS. It's in Niihama because it's a place that right now, isn't very important, meaning it would be one of the places probably left relatively untouched after a massive nuclear war/etc. and, since it isn't a super strategically important place today since it is on a coast it could conceivably rise up as an important place again. Niihama itself can kinda sorta be translated as "second seashore" so It's not as insignificant a city choice as we're often lead to believe when the 1995 movie is discussed. So the 1995 movie is metaphorically set "in" Hong Kong cosmetically because it conveys some of what the movie is meant to be about effectively, but like every Ghost in the Shell thing it takes place in Niihama, a new metropolis that has arisen out of a broken planet.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:43 |
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7c Nickel posted:A stick figure is Japanese to a Japanese person.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:45 |
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Snak posted:Hanka Robotics Huh. I like my version better, but we're still talking about the film's context in reality. Hanka is a Norwegian word. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:46 |
7c Nickel posted:This is dumb. She is Japanese. When the Japanese draw themselves, they don't go "Ohh I better draw slanty eyes and buck teeth!" because they are the majority. A stick figure is Japanese to a Japanese person. You would have to give the stick figure a big nose and blonde hair for it to be a Westerner because that is how poo poo is coded there. Oh. Then why are some characters in GitS media drawn more closely coded to Asian features? Is that "styled as a specific ethnicity"? Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:50 |
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Milky Moor posted:Oh. Because you're interpreting "squinty eyes" as "styled as asian" when it just means "squinty eyes".
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:55 |
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Huh. I like my version better, but we're still talking about the film's context in reality. Hanka is a Norwegian word. Yeah, and it's not a terrible reason for everyone who works there to be white. I don't think the nationality of the company if mentioned. It could easily be a European-based international corporation. edit: v Yeah, it's in a poo poo ton of languages. I was just saying if it was Finnish or something then it actually might not be as crazy that basically every Hanka employee we see is a white European. Like, Cutter is British, Oulet is French, and Dahlin is Romanian. So if they were some kind of European megacorp... Snak fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 03:58 |
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Snak posted:Yeah, and it's not a terrible reason for everyone who works there to be white. I don't think the nationality of the company if mentioned. It could easily be a European-based international corporation. Also "Hanka" is common enough in a multiple languages, as a name it's Biblical, Hebrew for Anne or Hannah in English. It also has several meanings in Japanese that one could say are relevant.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:01 |
7c Nickel posted:Because you're interpreting "squinty eyes" as "styled as asian" when it just means "squinty eyes". Oh. Then how do you "style someone as a specific ethnicity"?
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:07 |
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7c Nickel posted:Because you're interpreting "squinty eyes" as "styled as asian" when it just means "squinty eyes". Here, let me expand on this a little. This is Pazu, a minor character in Section 9. You might look at him and think he looks "more asian" than the other characters. But the features like the narrow eyes and deep lines in the brow are actually communicating that the dude is shady. And indeed, the dude is an ex Yakuza. The markers that you see are handed down by your culture, not divinely granted truth.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:09 |
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Snak posted:Every Hanka employee we see is a white European. Right: that, not the etymology, is the important part. The film's future Hong Kong setting has a great deal of anti-European sentiment, probably because there are English billboards everywhere and English has become the dominant language.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:09 |
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If anyone is interested, here is a post by someone called Larry Sandwiches who saw an early edit pre-FX. He talks about some of the changes to the story that were made between that version and the release version. It's kinda vague but there are a few neat details. http://disq.us/p/1hjqbkf
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:15 |
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Milky Moor posted:
I in turn find it weird that you wouldn't think Japanese Americans that actually have to navigate the hosed exoticizing and stereotyping and depriving of economic opportunities that happens to them due to living here wouldn't have more weight accorded to their views regarding an American film than people that live in another country.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:22 |
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Milky Moor posted:Oh. First episode of Space Brothers when they have a press conference in Texas with American press, JAXA and NASA astronauts speaking in english(its in Japanese). @6:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXrLSWWJWjo gohmak fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:22 |
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Snak posted:SAC is explicitly Japan and it looks quite different. The only parts of SAC that look similar to the movie are when they go to refugee areas. Yeah, although I thought it was part of National Public Safety Commission and not Public Security. Snak posted:Yes, I'm sure that Hanka Robotics is a reference to the Hanseatic League, and not, you know, Hanka Precision Instruments from the manga. I was just going to post this...
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:24 |
7c Nickel posted:Here, let me expand on this a little. Oh. So nothing means anything, all is interpretive, appearance depicts character traits more than anything else (therefore, you cannot "style someone as a specific ethnicity"), and the ethnicity of all the characters is basically unknowable based on physical appearance then? Weird.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:25 |
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Young Freud posted:Yeah, although I thought it was part of National Public Safety Commission and not Public Security. I looked this up, and wikipedia says some translations have it as Public Safety. In whatever the regular American English dub of SAC is, it's Public Security Section 9. So Safety's not incorrect at all, it's just a different translation.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:35 |
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Milky Moor posted:Oh. All anime characters are Japanese unless stated otherwise. They will explicitly say "this character is from _______" and have some sort of art style to differenciate them from the other Japanese cast.
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# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:39 |
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Milky Moor posted:Oh. You can, but those characteristics are culture bound and just because you think she doesn't look asian enough doesn't mean that you're right in interpreting the markers correctly. As far as I know there is only one canonically Western character in GITS95. He has blonde hair, blue eyes, and a giant loving nose. The Puppetmaster may or may not be a Caucasian version of Motoko's body model, but they don't stack the giant nose on there because it's important that it's almost identical because it serves as a distorted mirror version of the Major. :edit: Ohh wait there's also the interpreter. Let's see what she looks like. Hmmmm... 7c Nickel fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Apr 6, 2017 |
# ? Apr 6, 2017 04:45 |