Ghost in the Shell: Anime’s Chance for the Limelight

With the announcement of the live action Ghost in the Shell adaptation a common narrative is consuming the internet: why is a white woman playing a character named “Motoko Kusanagi”. Most of the criticism seems to be coming from those outside of the anime community, so I’m here to shed some perspective on this from an anime fan (and one who’s favorite film of all time is the 1995 Ghost in the Shell). Warning: long read, tl;dr at the bottom.

Before we talk about the original Ghost in the Shell, let’s take a look at at one of the most famous anime produced so far in the 2010s: Attack on Titan.

In Attack on Titan all of humanity has been confined into just a single city in a similar style to Ba Sing Se from Avatar: The Last Airbender, walled in to keep themselves safe from the ever-threatening titans. In both the manga and anime Asians are nearly totally extinct, and the only one in the entire show is a half-Asian character named Mikasa.

Despite this, when Attack on Titan got a live-action adaptation in Japan, this was the cast set to play the white, mostly German, cast of characters:

Now not only were the Attack on Titan characters cast as a separate nationality/ethnicity in the movie, it actually affected the story. The reason the 2 leads, Eren and Mikasa, met and became adopted siblings is partially because of Mikasa and her mother’s status as the last Asians.

This is a compelling argument all on its own, that having actors play roles originally written for certain races has been done many a time and does not affect the quality nor cause under-representation. In fact opening up roles written for white characters to those of other races can combat under-representation. It is a good precedent to not decide whether an actor gets a role based on their race, which could lead to some unwanted situations.

All of this aside, let’s look at Ghost in the Shell itself, and the actual substance of the franchise and Kusanagi’s character. One of the most telling aspects of the people complaining about the choice in casting is that nearly none of them have ever watched any iteration of Ghost in the Shell, nor are they involved in the anime community in general. Ghost in the Shell takes place in a future where any and all parts of one’s body can be replaced with cybernetic parts and enhancements, even down to the brain.

The origins of Motoko Kusanagi are never extrapolated on beyond: she lost most of her body at a young age and became 100% cybernetic as a result. In a future where the entire world is so connected that we can communicate wirelessly with our brains, it is not unreasonable to assume that individuals have been immigrating to new countries more than ever before, despite the film’s opening line of text “In the near future, electrons and light flow freely, and corporate computer networks eclipse the stars. Despite great advances in computerization, countries and races are not yet obsolete…”. We already live in a heavily globalized world, and the future can only be even more globalized and connected.

Marc Bernardin in the LA Times recently described The Major as a character who is “written as Asian”. First off, what does this even mean? The only meaning I can think of is that her characterization, development, motivations, and actions are inextricably tied to her Asian-ness, which is certainly not true. Ghost in the Shell is a story about what it means to be human, and about where the soul resides when the body is artificial hence the title, Ghost (soul) and Shell (body). These themes are, despite what comic artist John Tsuei seems to think, universal and not “inherently Japanese”.

The story also touches on ideas of human interconnectedness through technology, which Tsuei claims is an inherently Japanese theme due to Japan’s status as the world leader in technology when the original film came out. Japan may have led the world in consumer technology in 1995, but they have never led in military technology since the United States claimed sole possession of that in the early 1900s. Military technology is what GITS mostly focuses on as a story about a group of covert agents. He claims that those defending Scarjo’s casting lack a “nuanced” understanding of Ghost in the Shell when in reality, most of the criticism is coming from people who have never even heard of the movie before, and probably have never seen an anime in their lives. Within the western anime community and within Japan, there is little to no criticism of the choice in casting including from the original creators of GITS, and in fact many a Japanese are defending the casting citing Attack on Titan as I did earlier as an example of anime live-actions not matching up with the races of the original. Additionally, the owners of the Ghost in the Shell license said that they “never imagined” a Japanese actress to play the lead when they licensed the rights to Steven Spielberg back in 2008, and said that Scarjo is “well cast”.

To look at Kusanagi’s character herself. What she actually looks like in the original films is not really white nor asian nor any race. She looks like a robot. Maybe that has something to do with her body being 100% artificial. Of course who knows that’s just a theory… A cyborg can look like anything, regardless of their name or country of origin. She could have anything done to her appearance she wanted, shown in Arise (3 films + a TV show) by her having blue hair.

Clarisse Loughery wrote in The Independent that if Hollywood is not confident in the name Ghost in the Shell alone to bring in sales then a GITS movie shouldn’t be made in the first place. This is such a cynical and regressive way of thinking. Ghost in the Shell may be a big name in anime, but anime itself is still an extremely niche hobby even within Japan itself. Despite gaining increased recognition with creators like Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Hosoda gaining critical acclaim from abroad, the masses have never been able to fully accept anime and the viewership numbers remain far lower than any American produced entertainment even for the top anime like One Piece and Attack on Titan. The purpose of Ghost in the Shell is to pay homage to a work and medium that despite not gaining traction among the average viewer have greatly influenced the works of artists and filmmakers all over the world. Ghost in the Shell itself inspired and was heavily borrowed from by the modern classic The Matrix. The Wachowskis were always very open about GITS as a source for much of the themes, cinematography, and action sequences.

To say hollywood should not be celebrating a medium with as far of a cultural impact as anime has had is just cynical. Ghost in the Shell will draw new fans into anime to experience the originals and grow the industry, the movie can only have positive effects. Anime is an industry that was saved in part by Ghost in the Shell (and partially Evangelion) in the nineties when the entire industry was facing a breaking point, and it’s only fitting that this legendary franchise be the ambassador to mainstream western audiences.

If Ghost in the Shell were to cast a Japanese actress, yes Japanese, not any Asian actress and I’ll get into why later. If it were to cast a Japanese actress the only feasible option would be Rinko Kikuchi, who actually voiced a role in Sky Crawlers made by the same director as the original Ghost in the Shell and has done many other voice acting roles for various anime. She has some notoriety in the west for her role in the anime inspired Pacific Rim but her English isn’t up to the task of being a lead role, and Pacific Rim did much worse locally in the United States than it did abroad. Outside of that the only high profile Asian actresses in Hollywood are of non-Japanese descent.

Using an Asian actress who is not Japanese and pretending they are is not only racist, it’s been done before in the film Memoirs of a Geisha in which multiple Chinese actresses were cast to play Japanese roles. The backlash from the Japanese community was so severe that it certainly scared any Hollywood studio away from attempting that ever again.

Conclusion and tl;dr: Ghost in the Shell would probably not exist without Scarlett Johansson as the lead role, it never would have been greenlit in the first place. Anime may be steadily gaining popularity but it is still a very niche part of an already niche sub-culture within pop culture, the name of any anime, even one as big as GITS is not enough to sell tickets to your average movie-goer, and that’s what matters for a high budget, cyberpunk, cerebral, action, military film. GITS has the potential to finally pay Hollywood’s dues to anime as a medium for all of the ideas and inspiration that it has drawn from it.