I think a great deal of animated shows end up in some form of live action. The Hawaii Opera Theater just put on “Green Eggs and Ham” and “Gertrude McFuzz.” As I understand it “Inuysaha” was also made into a live action play.
The bad thing is it looks like they aspire to attain the creative heights of the Power Rangers. Not that I ever watched that show. And the only times I watched Sailor Moon was when it came on before Toonami and I’d have it on while I surfed the dope.
You don’t need to read Japanese to know how old they are. Just a little luck to get to the right page. I’m giving you only one guess as to the birthdate of each one. However I can’t read their bios. Tell me Tars, does it mention them having any sort of athletic abilities?
it says Sailor Jupiter has strength, but the bios seem to be about the characters not the girls. (which is why they are all listed as age 14 while their real birthdates are listed above)
if i knew more Kanji, i’d be able to tell you more, i only knew the girl’s names because of the Hiragana above. Sailor Moon says something about being an ordianry middle school girl in second grade? when a black cat named Luna shows up. I don’t watch the cartoon, but the few times i saw it i remember a cat with a moon on it’s head, so that must be what they are talking about.
Yeah, the “canon” is that as the story starts the 5 core girls are 14. And then one has a boyfriend in his mid-20s. And the character of Tsukino Usagi (literally, Moon Bunny) is Japanese, just that she’s a blond Japanese.
The attempts at “Westernizing” the show that accompanied its importation into the USA in the mid-late 90s just compounded the silliness.
But heck, it’s not like a whole lot of Anime aren’t redone in live-action. One notable case I’ve seen is live-action City Hunter starring Jackie Chan, no less! Even the anime pornos like La Blue Girl have been done “live”. And there is of course the threatened live-action Evangelion, which honestly, to me, would be more effective as an extortion attempt (pay up or we WILL make it! )
Uh… there’s lots of blonde folks in japan! heck, there’s a red-headed japanese lady working in the office next door to mine. And a good friend of mine is chinese and has blond hair, and a korean friend of mine has lighter skin than my so-called ‘white skin’.
Hell, my WIFE’S skin is fairer than mine! (Chinese vs Anglo-rojak)
So what’s all this about japanese (or asians) not having fair skin? I’m not well-versed with the Sailormoon mythos, but those girls look pretty damn sailormoon-appropriate if you ask me. Mind you, that’s just my humble opinion.
Say what you will about the Cosplay Sailor Moon, but the soundtracks RULE!!! Just listen to “Ai no Senshi,” “La Soldier,” or “Zig Zag Slash.” Of course, if you’re not into JPop, then you’d probably rather be gang-raped by the house of Lords than have to listen to the music.
I wish I could read that page. I’m taking a Japanese class and I live in Japan but sadly, all I can read yet is hiragana and even if I could make out a few words I probably wouldn’t know what they meant. : ( But hey, can anyone tell me what channel this show’s gonna be on (in Japan)? I want to see it!
I will ask the question I always ask when this subject comes up, which it does with depressing frequency – what do you think a proper “Japanese-looking” cartoon character would look like? If they should not be fair skinned with round eyes, what features should they have?
I’m not sure what you think the Japanese look like, but many of them are in fact quite light-skinned. I know a lot of Japanese people, and I have seen many as light as my glow-in-the-dark self. Most are not so pale as that, but I have never seen one darker than the darkest-skinned Caucasions of my acquaintance.
As for the eyes, cartoon characters typically have round eyes. They’re easier to draw that way. This is not a “Western” feature – I don’t know any Westerners with eyes the size and shape of saucers. It’s just a cartoon thing.
Actually, there have been a number of live-action Sailor Moon videos made. Of course, they’re usually only found in the ‘over-18’ section of the video store.
Well when I think of animated Japanese I think of most everyone from Inuyasha, all the guys and all the girls except for Mihoshi from Tenchi, everyone except for Haruko from FLCL.
But you can tell Serena is Japanese by her parents and brother. However there is an interesting theory as to why she looks the way she does. Namely the various girls were meant to represent various types of women world over and the characterists were supposed to match those of the various regions. Sailor Moon represents an American girl (her name starts with USA and the colors she wore too). Sailor Mercury is the timid Japanese girl. Sailor Mars was the newer vocal and demanding Japanese girl. Sailor Jupiter was European. I forget the rest of the theory. It’s probably untrue but I thought it was interesting.
Sorry, he’s wrong there. It started out because the very first post-war anime maker was convinced that the Western world would overshadw the east culturally. Ther is a cite supporting me on that one big anime site with the blue background and a Q/A section, but I cannot remember the address. I’m sure someone will point it out.
Japanese are no more perfectly homogeneous than any other people. However, most Japanese have noticably darker skin tone than caucasians and what I think are called “bilabial eye folds”. Now, they are nowhere near the dark tone of the Central Asians peoples, much less west Africans. They are also mostly darker-skinned than Han Chinese or Koreans. In anime, I’ve noticed that men are more often drawn with darker skin.
I talked not at all about non-Japanese people before this, so they aspersions that I intimated that all Asians are dark-skinned is a total lie. Next time read what I type, people.
That’s not true at all. Many anime characters have thinner, slanted eyes. They deliberately draw them with fat, wide eyes.
This site has a lot of pictures. While a fair portion of the people in them are fair-skinned to a degree, on average they are darker than most caucasians. In anime, the ratios are practically reveresed: most people are very fair skinned and only a few are sort of dark-skinned.
The blond guy is supposed to be American, I think. The rest, particularly the blue-haured girl, are Japanese. She looks a lot more like the American guy than the onbviously Japanese guy, though.
They make a bigger distinction between the “dangerous” and the “innocent” than between western and japanese, though.
I’d have to see that to believe it – I’d be VERY curious to see this cited anywhere. I can’t seem to find it. I do find information that the founders of the Japanese animation industry consciously emulated the American industry (e.g. Tezuka Osamu and his admiration of Walt Disney’s works).
The point that Scott McCloud (and I) was trying to make is this: To Americans, anime characters look American. To the Japanese, they look Japanese. This goes for any anime, including American shows that come here.
You seem to be making it sound like the Japanese artists are deliberately choosing to draw these characters as Americans. Not so. Your mind takes the cartoon drawing, with its lack of detail, and “fills in the blanks” to give you the impression that it’s an “American” face. Japanese people see these same drawings, and fill in the blanks to see a Japanese face.
If you see a drawing of a face with a lot of detail included, those blanks aren’t there to be filled in anymore.
You say that pretty much all anime characters look “American.” Like I’ve said several times now (and I apologize for repeating myself), it’s a matter of perception. This question has been asked before, but I don’t think you really answered it – What do you think a proper “Japanese-looking” cartoon character would look like?"
I see many of them as having Japanese features, but more so now than in previous decades. Many of them don’t look caucasian anymore. I never specified American so much as caucasian.
[qote]What do you think a proper “Japanese-looking” cartoon character would look like?"
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Sousuke Sabara, on the Full Metal Panic page. Tenchi Masaki’s father Nobuyuki would be another.