[KineJapan] Akira remake and flat characters in Japanese films

[Bruce Baird]

Hi Jun-Dai,

There is no point in debating whether or not Japanese culture has strong characters. I think we can all find millions of them, and thus millions of reasons why this is wrong. But it might be useful to point out that there has been a long history of such comments: Virginia Woolf thinking that the Tale of Genji lacks depth, or Lacan saying that the Japanese are not analyzable. Usually these comment betray the ignorance of the commentators rather than any insight into Japan.

That said, by chance today, I was looking through an interview with Azuma Hiroki, and he had this to say:

"We’re now celebrating the 30th anniversary of Gundam. Three decades ago, Gundam’s coloring was chosen at the request of a toy company in order to sell robots. This kind of thing is standard practice. From the beginning, Japan’s anime culture has been based on selling toys. For this reason, there’s hardly any purpose in poring over Japanese anime or game narratives in and of themselves—they’re being produced to sell merchandise." 

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.japantoday.com_category_arts-2Dculture_view_hiroki-2Dazuma-2Dthe-2Dphilosopher-2Dof-2Dotaku-2Dspeaks&d=CwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=e7qMG9KFq7WNnPQWULWHJA&m=49VscMzTRc4n8pHjfZbL8rgSJ-ToGS57IoifNY5_SnE&s=1Dg_f-FtZGnQVVWzCGbPxqO79B3ND4GWmlQVdufYFoo&e=  <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.japantoday.com_category_arts-2Dculture_view_hiroki-2Dazuma-2Dthe-2Dphilosopher-2Dof-2Dotaku-2Dspeaks&d=CwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=e7qMG9KFq7WNnPQWULWHJA&m=49VscMzTRc4n8pHjfZbL8rgSJ-ToGS57IoifNY5_SnE&s=1Dg_f-FtZGnQVVWzCGbPxqO79B3ND4GWmlQVdufYFoo&e= >

I am not going to defend or argue against Azuma (beyond noting that he often has it in for otaku so his comments should be considered in light of his own bias), but to the extent that he is right, you might expect manga and anime to spend less time in something like character development than other media. But by the same token, you might expect all merchandise driven media to spend less time in this than other media. 

Beyond that, you could take a look at books like Marc Sternberg’s Anime’s Media Mix for hints about how the anime industry conceives of creating characters.

Best,

Bruce



> On Apr 14, 2016, at 2:26 PM, Jun-Dai Bates-Kobashigawa <jd.kinejapan at kurutta.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I hope this doesn't count as trolling :-/  While reading about yet another attempt to get a Hollywood version of Akira of the ground, this comment really stuck out to me:
> 
> > Nobody’s interesting. Tetsuo’s interesting because weird sh*t happens to him, and Kaneda is so two-dimensional. That’s part of the Japanese culture, they never have strong characters. [1]
> 
> This seems fairly offensive, and also makes the director seem like an incredibly poor choice for working on this material (not that a Hollywood remake of Akira sounds promising to begin with). Luckily, it looks like Collett-Serra is not going to be working on Akira, but I'm curious if anyone knows what he's talking about? Is it total nonsense, or has Mr. Collett-Serra captured something essential about Japanese film/literature that has until now escaped me? Are the characters in Akira (or Japanese films/literature in general) any flatter than, say, Hollywood?
> 
> Yours,
>   Jun-Dai Bates-Kobashigawa
> 
> 
> [1] source: https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__comicsalliance.com_akira-2Dlive-2Daction-2Dremake-2Ddirector-2Djaume-2Dcollett-2Dserra-2Djapanese-2Dculture-2Dstrong-2Dcharacters_&d=CwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=e7qMG9KFq7WNnPQWULWHJA&m=49VscMzTRc4n8pHjfZbL8rgSJ-ToGS57IoifNY5_SnE&s=b4i5V4hpRbqfkymXn5nJRtJrP-LJv8p1bSR9TW_xQwk&e=  <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__comicsalliance.com_akira-2Dlive-2Daction-2Dremake-2Ddirector-2Djaume-2Dcollett-2Dserra-2Djapanese-2Dculture-2Dstrong-2Dcharacters_&d=CwIFaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=e7qMG9KFq7WNnPQWULWHJA&m=49VscMzTRc4n8pHjfZbL8rgSJ-ToGS57IoifNY5_SnE&s=b4i5V4hpRbqfkymXn5nJRtJrP-LJv8p1bSR9TW_xQwk&e= >)
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Bruce Baird
Associate Professor
Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Butô, Japanese Theater, Intellectual History

717 Herter Hall
161 Presidents Drive
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003-9312
Phone: 413-577-4992
Fax: 413-545-5876
baird at umass.edu

Now out in paperback and e-book: Hijikata Tatsumi and Butoh:

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