Ghost In The Shell (2017)

But in the original Ghost In the Shell movie the setting is more Hong Kong than Tokyo. Also worth noting that the movie was released well into Japan's (first) "lost decade".

Setting Ghost in the Shell between Hong Kong and Toyko would put it at the bottom of the East China Sea.

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Who said anything about "between"? (Sorry in advance if you're just making a joke and I'm being dense).

I was making a joke. "More Hong Kong" implies the setting is partially in Hong Kong.

Was it specifically Hong Kong? I certainly didn't get that impression from all the... Japanese.

Got it.

I don't remember them naming any specific real life locations or cities in the movie, which is the main reason I hedged by mentioning Tokyo at all; but yeah, all the signage I remember seeing in the movie is in Chinese (no kana), even while all the characters speak Japanese, and the architecture and street scenery has a very HK look to it. All of which isn't to say it's "specifically Hong Kong" (I always thought of it more as "fictional Asian city inspired by Hong Kong, along with a dash of Neo Tokyo/misc. other anime influences" -- hence the "more") but, if it takes place in Japan at all, it's a deliberately sinicized Japan.

A quick search turned up this interview with Oshi, which seems to confirm these impressions.

Japan's share of world GDP peaked in the mid 1990's:



Its not a coincidence that Japan's international cultural influence peaked in those years as well (Pokemon still is the biggest thing Japan ever did in terms of international cultural influence, Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon are also from the same period, now there is nothing of similar international influence).

GitS reflects very well that perception even though it's pretty obvious that the city feels like Hong Kong. Blade Runner is also set in a HK type of city.

Doesn't seem like a very good movie. all anyone can talk about is the ethnicity of scarlet?

Has anybody read 300 the comic before watching the movie? Did people say that the lack of popularity of 300, the comic, would make the movie bomb?

As I said before, its irrelevant wheter the source material is mainstream or not, Hollywood is Hollywood because it can turn almost anything into hundreds of millions of dollars in global box office revenue.

I can name 500.

Which I regard as completely irrelevant, she is a cyborg anyway, her body's appearance is fully customized.

That is a fair point, though I wouldn't say completely irrelevant.

Would Pacific Rim Qualify as An Anime Type Of Tribute That worked pretty well. I call it a tribute film to Gundam Wing and all Those Mobel Suit Anime films. Even Voltron In a Way.

Some consider it a success on a few levels. And some say Edwards Godzilla Remake was some what of a success although I didnt like that most of the film was so dark you could not see Godzilla at all at Night.

Some say the reason she got it was because of that movie Lucy and her acting somewhat like a machine which The Main character is a cybrog or something.
I dont think race was why they casted her. But Many have made it a reason too boycott the movie.

Pacific Rim is based on archaic 1970's series like Mazinger Z. The movie is all about Del Toro's childhood. Those series also influenced later giant robot shows like Gundam and EVA.

Voltron was in the 80 s and for me was the only big machine weapon series. My question is was voltron anime or like thunddercats american made.

Hmm, good point.

Because it's a major red flag that means that this film is all but certain to end up as a disrespectful travesty of an adaptation rather than just your average bad movie.

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Let's be honest here, does anyone SERIOUSLY believe they're going to supplement Scarlet with CG yellowface? That seems way too cynical to be real.

No real american actor would agree too such a thing unless it was always in the script that the major had the ability to change her face being a cyborg to were she can look like Scarlett and then there's her alter Asian hybrid face and then could be completely different Asian.

That's interesting, I hadn't really thought about the HK influences in Blade Runner before. It's way more of a hodgepodge than Ghost in the Shell, though. Just off the top of my head there are Japanese neon signs on things, that Coca-cola ad with the geisha, a sort of urban Chinese street market, a giant futuristic Ziggurat, Deckard's pseudo Aztec apartment, the derelict Art Deco hideout and the 50s-noir police station...

I'd be more confident that Ghost in the Shell is about (or assumes) Japanese economic or cultural dominance if I could remember a strong indication of the sorts of things you mentioned. In particular I don't even remember there being much of a pop-culture presence at all. The closest thing I can come up with is the one Omnizoa mentioned -- the fact that the characters speak Japanese, but I don't see any obvious way to interpret that either. On the one hand if you assume it takes place in China, you could interpret the Japanese agency's actions in terms of Japanese political or military interventionism; on the other hand, if it takes place in Japan, you could read it as a demographic tidal wave from China that the city looks like Hong Kong and there are Chinese signs everywhere. I'm more comfortable assuming that Oshi was deliberately vague about the cultural/political/demographic context of Ghost in the Shell.

I'm almost as skeptical of a non-ambiguous reading of GitS on Japanese economic ascendancy. Even the graph of GDP share you posted shows Japan starting to stumble already by the late 80s, with a fairly short-lived recovery that doesn't far surpass the previous growth. I'm happy to be educated by you here, and don't want to make any too confident assertions, but from what I've read the "lost decades" started with the asset price collapse (and subsequent rise in unemployment) in the early 90s. And in terms of politics, the 1993 election saw big losses for the LDP, I think the worst since its formation to that point. So while I don't have that strong a grasp of the situation in general, or Oshi's outlook in particular, I'd need to see more evidence to be convinced that Ghost in the Shell is pressing the view of Japan in the link Iro shared. That idea seems more like the one hacks like Michael Crichton and Donald Trump were keeping on life-support, informed more by American insecurities from the 80s than actual engagement with contemporary circumstances in Japan; I suspect that the view there was more complicated by that point. Which I guess is a pompous, long-winded way of saying that I'm not diametrically opposed to a reading of GitS in terms of Japanese strength and confidence, so much as favoring an ambiguous interpretation.

To go back to the topic of the Hollywood remake, I don't have any strong evidence but I'm not buying the screenwriter's assertion that there needs to be a white star in order to sell this movie. For one thing isn't the international market more important than ever? Even discounting that I think Americans are ready for more diverse casting than movie producers are, but maybe it's just wishful thinking. Which isn't to say that the specific roles of GitS demand Asian actors (for the reasons I've already put forth as well as the ones Guap and others have mentioned), but that's hardly an argument for why they need to be white either. To be fair, I'm probably not going to be in much of a hurry to see it anyway, since I'm not really a fan of the Ghost in the Shell universe to begin with. I think my favorite incarnation was the PS1 game.

The point was made about Japan's exceptional advances in technology which feeds into the Neo-Tokyo trope I mentioned earlier. It just makes sense.


Besides, if they wanted it set in Hong Kong, they wouldn't have given all of the characters plainly Japanese names. It's also worth noting that Japanese is a derivative of Chinese, so some characters may appear similar if not outright shared.

It's a completely fair point that the movie presents a world with Japanese cyborgs and pervasive technology. I'm pretty sure I didn't argue that it doesn't "make sense" to view Ghost in the Shell from a perspective of Japanese techno-optimism, just that there is a more ambiguous reading -- based on the fact that many of the movie's geographical and cultural markers are noticeably sinicized -- that also "makes sense".

Yes, written Japanese borrows Chinese characters (China now uses simplified versions of a lot of characters, though I don't think that applies to Hong Kong so it's kind of beside the point.), but unless it's a really old text or just a list of proper nouns, the Japanese phonetic scripts are ubiquitous.



vs.


Even in Yokohama's Chinatown there's plenty of katakana and hiragana to read:



I don't have much more to say about the use of signs in Ghost in the Shell. I could be wrong, but I took several semesters of Japanese for reading/translation in college, worked in an East Asian Library for 8 years, and all the signs I'm finding in screen shots look Chinese to me. It was also a Japanese acquaintance who originally suggested the setting as Hong Kong to me, which is where I'm getting my assumption that the points I'm making might seem reasonable to the original audience. I'm getting kind of weary of arguing about this, but if you find some strong evidence that the signs are meant to be read in Japanese, let me know; it would probably change how I view the movie.