George Takei Advises Warner Bros. Against 'Whitewashing' Akira Movie!

Agree, if you can't remake a classic like the 7 samurai correctly don't even bother trying to make Akira. Your better off releasing a remastered 3D version of the original in the theatres!

Borderline offensive? It's outright offensive. If they want to take the movie and do an outright westernization to appeal to a wider market, fair enough, but you don't then go marketing that as Akira or using the same character names.

Perhaps not the best wording but what I meant by borderline was the majority of the population won't see it as offensive despite the fact that we do. We as anime fans hate the idea of westernizing and whitewashing what are supposed to be Japanese characters. However the general public wouldn't even care as they are not as attached to the source material and probably don't even know where it came from or that it was Japanese to begin with.

Because of that it wouldn't be a big deal to them. Take for example The Last Airbender movie. We saw when it came out that fans of the show were all pissed at how bad the casting was for the various nations but none of the mainstream press for that movie brought that up. Only the reviews done by fans or those familiar with the show did. Now granted that was a totally different scenario but the point is still valid. Those who don't care enough or know enough about the source material won't know or care if it's offensive while those who are will find it very offensive.

I personally think whitewashing the cast is a disservice to the movie going population. People are gonna be watching the movie with characters who have Japanese names but CLEARLY are not Japanese and it's going to pull them out of the experience.

Not to mention the hundreds/thousands of competent Asian actors and actresses who would love to be given a chance to star in a Hollywood flick like this, but (as usual) they will never get that chance because the same ol' white actors and actresses who appear in everything will be starring in this movie.

Why are directors so scared of having Asian leads in their films? Do they think American audiences will freak out at the sight of someone "different" in a leading role? Do they think non-white actors won't bring in the money? It all comes across as horribly racist to me.