This year can be perhaps regarded as a good year for the fans of a few old anime series. It has been announced that the movies Astroboy animated and Dragonball live action ( or Dragonball Evolution) are coming out this year. Our beloved old characters such as Son Goku, the blue-haired hottie Bulma and perverted Roshi is finally going to star in their own life version. I can't actually express how happy I am knowing that they're going to do a live action version of my most favoured anime last year!
But as happy as I am, the westerners and those Hollywood jerks are always up with their antics!
Anime and other form of cartoon drawings have always been the Asian pride. It has always been enjoyed by young boys to old ladies. Internationally it has always been recognised even faster before Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow. Before there was cool swift kicking choreagraphed martial arts stunts there was the cool addictive image of anime. The legacy of Anime drawings have existed till today where you can see cartoons such as Totally Spies and others who clearly follows anime style drawings. Made famous in Japan where the birth of cartoons such as Captain Tsubasa, Dragonball, Blackjack and Ranma 1/2, the anime frenzy spread far wide even to people half way around the world.
Unfortunately for us, it seems that the westerners are always the one who seems to hold the larger stick. They buy the rights of these anime series and turns it their way. And when they do so, it is ALWAYS the westerners who potray the pratogonist. They have to always be the hero. It's always them who must be the knight in shining armor, grab the extremely hot Asian chick and have sex on the bed (sometimes not on the bed though) at the end of the day.
They've turned our heritage, our legacy and our stories to theirs where they potray the heroes and the villains are by the Asians.
Remember the Journey To The West ( Forbidden Kingdom as they called it), notice how the true hero is the white kid? and it's him who gets the Asian chick? and how Asians always potray the bad dudes?
And now comes Dragonball which is like the most awesome, coolest and funny anime to their hand and again another white kid plays our sayang Son Goku. Whats up with that? What is it up with them with just letting an Asian potraying a hero in the anime that's supposed to be OURS at the first hand anyway? Even the name is Japanese and someone actually asked in this site I saw that they never mention Goku was Asian right? That was really stupid!.
Not stopping at Goku, now Chi Chi (the heroin and Goku's future wife) is potrayed by a hot Asian chick!
And Bulma is potrayed by Emma Rossum
How can Justin Chatwin potray Goku lah honestly? I saw the posters and pictures for the movie today, and I was seriously dissapointed by everything. From the start till the bottom. I know that what i was hoping for didn't happen again this time for an Asian movie but i think this is just a bit too much.
The potrayal of Americans as heroes and our people as the baddies are really not going to a halt. Even in their movies, where there is a war, other races other than theirs are always potrayed in a discrimanate way where they goody we baddy.
For example, 30 or 40 years back whenever the Red Indians are mentioned, everyone would potray them as people with tomahawks, weird colouring all over the bodies and a pickaxe. Only now when they are in a smaller amount, discriminated, lost some of their culture and land, going as far as losing the America that was rightfully theirs that our liberal conscience tells us that 'Hey maybe they were not that bad right'. Are we going to wait for ourselves to be like that and then baru keluar movies like Dances With Wolves where ironically once again, an American potray the hero (Kevin Costner). May we be aware that liberal conscience is a manipulative and changing aspect and is never permanent.
I'm not tryng to say that westerners should not indulge themselves in other cultures. For me thats a good thing and it is through experiencing of cultures can we actually gain understanding among ourselves in a way globalising this world where the issue of money, technology and rapid materialistic development does not come into hand. What I'm tryng to say is there should be a limit where we must be proud and potray our Anime with our own people in it and not Americans potraying a Japanese hero.
It is just too much of on-screen discrimination!
P.s aiyo, Stephen Chow not going to be Roshi lah weyh, so dissapointed, He would've been perfect for it!! xD. Go Stephen Chow! He's making Kung Fu Hustle 2! Oh behave babe :P and i want to see Muallaf :(.