[KineJapan] Akira remake and flat characters in Japanese films

Fri Apr 15 10:40:07 EDT 2016

I am not sure what the difference would be between (for example) a Gundam franchise initially created to sell merchandise, and a big-budget Hollywood movie made for commercial reasons. Azumi's statements only specify anime, but I would be interested to know whether he sees that as part of the problem with a largely commerce-driven industry, or as an issue specific with anime.

It's certainly tempting to assume that more commercially-driven media (the films of someone like Jaume Collet-Serra, for example) has less interest in aspects such as character, but I imagine we can all think of largely commercial movies (or anime etc) that have managed to be a bit more artistically developed, even if the majority haven't.

Jim.

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 15/4/16, Bruce Baird <baird at umass.edu> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [KineJapan] Akira remake and flat characters in Japanese films
 To: "Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum" <kinejapan at lists.osu.edu>
 Date: Friday, 15 April, 2016, 15:12

 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=CwIGaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=e7qMG9KFq7WNnPQWULWHJA&m=ET3Giu9HPKDBLrLitJ9esk5wwnFl-_lNsLwZ3eG0BGY&s=UQSNEVWdr2ZzFJBDujyqh53rId5JvelhaUdVMct9txY&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=CwIGaQ&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=e7qMG9KFq7WNnPQWULWHJA&m=ET3Giu9HPKDBLrLitJ9esk5wwnFl-_lNsLwZ3eG0BGY&s=QOM87Z33aFJF8JVmG0XTii-oNQMxLwQ1YwajGUQve0k&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
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 Phone: 413-577-4992
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 baird at umass.edu
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