By Shahrukh Rana
In my previous article on anime we looked at how Western Pop Culture inspired Japanese anime and how Western themes and storytelling made its way into the artform. This time we’re going to be looking at how the West took inspiration from anime. The globalisation of media works both ways, now let’s get into the article.
If you haven’t read the previous article, here is a short summary; anime is Japan’s style of animation. In other words, its cartoons, however unlike the West, there is no stigma behind anime, and it isn’t exclusively children’s entertainment. Anime today is a pop culture powerhouse and as a result, large media companies and directors have taken it upon themselves to adapt them for a western audience. Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel (2019), based on the anime of the same name was nominated for 5 Oscars, winning one of them and is considered one of the best anime adaptations of all time. When done correctly these films and shows are amazing, but there is an issue that comes with adapting from anime. These adaptations are localised for a Western audience which means most of the time white actors are cast in roles that were originally for Asian characters. A lot of people consider this to be “white washing” but I’d argue that this is just part of the localisation process, although it is jarring to see white actors with Japanese names. Anime is usually the first at coming up with stunning visuals and stories that captivate thousands, which is why it can be Hollywood’s go to when they’re looking for ideas, remakes, or concepts. Some directors are huge fans of the genre, like the Wachowski sisters. Fun fact: The Matrix (Wachowski Sisters, 1999) was even pitched as a live action version of Ghost in The Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995), which did eventually get a western remake in 2017. The Matrix was their attempt at a live action anime; they also directed the 2008 live action version of Speed Racer, which still holds up as one of the best live action adaptations of an anime.
Quickly taking a look at a film that is based on anime but isn’t from Hollywood, Crying Freeman is a 1995 Canadian production directed by Christophe Gans. The film is based on the manga and anime of the same name, but unlike a lot of the 90’s anime western remakes it surprisingly isn’t a bad adaptation or localisation, I’m looking at you Fist of The North Star. Bad movie jokes aside, the film stays very faithful to its source material even though it’s trying to squeeze 9 volumes worth of story into an hour and forty-minute runtime. The action scenes in the film are over the top and the director is a self-proclaimed Spike Lee fan which explains the over the top explosions at random points of the film. Yes, the source does have explosions but nowhere as grandiose as the film, might be a rare case in which the remake is more “anime” than its source material. The film casted Mark Alan Dacascos as the main protagonist, Yo Hinomura, who is a brainwashed assassin from a Chinese clan known as the Freemans. Even though most of the cast is white or Canadian they still keep the same names as characters from the anime which in the 90’s was quite unique. Even today with anime adaptations in the west they change characters names in an attempt to localise the story, which in this case isn’t as jarring as it seems. This might be due to the fact that most of the actors have vaguely Asian features.
I’ve talked about films that inspired some anime like Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and that they have taken the dystopian cyberpunk setting and made it their own. Well Blade Runner’s sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), found its inspiration from anime such as Akira and Ghost in the Shell. So much so that there was an anime short film released to promote the film that did a better job at tying the first and second movie together. There are clear nodes to the holographic advertisements to that of the two anime I just mentioned as well as the JOI holographic partners being a reference to the virtual love partners from the Ghost in the Shell manga as well as the base model having similar features to Major.
Second screenshot with Ghost in the Shell imagery
Speaking of Ghost in the Shell, the 2017 remake directed by Rupert Sanders is a great example of live action anime done right. The film takes ideas and visuals from the 1995 cult classic and recreates them fantastically in live action. This film is also a great example of how the West is borrowing heavily from Japanese culture and anime. In my previous article I stated how Mike Pondsmith’s work on the cyberpunk genre helped shape the anime and in a weird twist the live action remake has more in common with the manga rather than the anime. The film borrows heavily from Japanese culture and it actually looks like a futurist Tokyo with westernised culture integrated into the landscape. Back in 2018, I was fortunate enough to talk to one of the associate’s to Kim Docherty (one of the leads from Weta Workshops), who worked on the film’s prosthetics. She talked about how important it was for them to make sure the film translated well, staying as faithful to the source material as possible. I was kind of surprised she told me that they based a lot of the designs for characters from anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion (Hideaki Anno, 1995-1996) and Appleseed (Shinji Aramaki, 2004), rather than Pondsmith’s American work. Sadly, the film was overlooked when it was released due to it being released the same year as Blade Runner 2049, with some news outlets going as far as saying that it had more in common with the anime Ghost in the Shell than the remake itself. I can see why some of them would make this statement and seeing as the film did explore the anime’s themes of what it means to be human in very similar ways, it is understandable why people preferred Blade Runner 2049 over the remake. There was also criticism about the remake spoon feeding a lot of information. In anime this makes sense because rather than having to animate emotions they can have characters do long monologues. With Japanese being a very emotive language, they can get away with this, translating into western live action on the other hand, can completely undermine what makes these monologues so powerful in the first place. Due to Scarlet Johansson being cast as Motoko Kusanagi, uninformed news outlets and click bait articles claimed it was a whitewashed casting, even though the character herself has been seen through several ethnicities throughout the anime films and shows. Overall, the film is just a great example of Hollywood jumping on the anime ‘hype train’.
Moving onto another example, I can’t think of anything better than the Nickelodeon cartoon, Avatar: The Last Airbender (Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, 2005-2008). The cartoon follows the story of an airbender named Aang who’s been frozen in ice for over a hundred years. In the time he’s been gone, the Fire Nation has taken control over most of the four nations. It’s now up to him as the reincarnation of the Avatar, to master all the four elements, learn the other nation’s bending techniques, and save the world from the fire nation’s control. Not only does the story sound like it belongs in an anime, but also the art style is directly inspired by anime, and all the characters are Asian. The show also looks at mature themes and can get extremely dark at times, something that isn’t always shown on daytime Western children’s cartoons. The show, much like most children’s shows, was designed to sell toys but as the show went on they stopped introducing gimmicks, and to push the show on its own merits (with the art direction and Eastern inspired story), the show was a global hit. There are still arguments on forums today about whether or not the show is an actual anime because it’s overtly anti-western, despite being produced by Nickelodeon. To further this point other than its eastern storytelling, the show’s other inspiration is shonen anime. Shonen anime as described by Kotaku.com, literally means ““few years,” “shonen” (少年) typically referring to young boys under the age of fifteen. A lot of anime and manga have a young male hero and are focused on action, adventure, and fighting”. Anime tends to take inspiration from Western Pop culture, but in this case the west straight up stole from anime. Avatar’s sequel series, The Legend of Korra (Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, 2012-2014), added more western themes and character types while also inducing steampunk era technology. As a result, it was less successful in the long run, rather than adding and improving what Last Airbender left off.
Art style of Avatar vs actual Japanese anime.
In conclusion to this article, in the same way the West inspired Japanese anime through the decades, anime has inspired Western media also. Japanese culture is still considered quite “exotic” in the West, and whenever Hollywood is running low on ideas they’ll turn to anime for inspiration. That may come in the form of remaking anime classics, redubbing and localizing them for the western market, or turning to them for visual inspiration and flat out stealing their art style. Anime has just as much to offer to western audiences as western pop culture does to Asian audiences. Having said that, there is a whole subculture to mainstream pop culture based around Japanese anime in the west, and with the growth of sub-culture we can expect to see more anime influences in the foreseeable future.
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