Dragon Ball Evolution

This movie sucked. I'm not going to make any pretenses about that, Dragonball Evolution was a mess, more of a mess than my life is at any given point and that's saying something.

But for all the hate it gets, a lot of people don't remember why it ended up a mess. Because, if anything, Dragon Ball should be one of the most adaptable anime properties of all time.

To clarify, I'm not talking about why the film itself ended up being a mediocre chore of a film where only Justin Chatwin's forehead vein was having any fun. I'm talking about the conceptual flaws, which feed almost directly into the film's major flaws. Before I get into that, I do want to say a couple of things in the film's defense;

1. It's not bad because it varied from the source material.

Plenty of adaptations are actually served better by straying from the source material. Some films can recreate their anime counterpart shot for shot and still come out a hot mess. Some of the changes are, and I loathe actually saying this, actually for the better. I think the more correct argument would be that Dragonball Evolution didn't understand the core appeal of the source material. And yes, I think I am getting too caught up in semantics but if we can't deliver actually helpful critique then we can't ever hope for an improvement.

2. The whitewashing is bad, but it's surprisingly the least flawed aspect of the film

Dragon Ball's universe sits in this weird place where elements of fantasy and sci-fi are ever present, and it takes place both in the past and the future. It's weird and wonderful with characters from all walks of life. Honestly, I kind of wish that the white-washing was the worst part of the movie.

3. There are some surprisingly decent production values

The movie came out in 2009. While the CGI hand farts were out of place, there are plenty of moments where the film shows that there is an at least competent production team at work. Plenty of places where the film shows some of the least convincing and out of place special effects known to man but there are some decent shots.

Now, on to what I think is the biggest problem with not only the concept of Dragonball Evolution but also the Dragon Ball series;

Despite what Akira Toriyama's intentions were, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z (and onwards) are just two different stories.

Here's a fun fact, Dragon Ball actually didn't immediately sell very well. It was this weird little story from a guy whose bread and butter was making dirty and smutty gag manga. You can see the influence from Dr Slump (Toriyama's previous work) in practically every chapter. I theorise that the first drafts were probably filled to the brim with a bunch of smutty jokes and some poor editor probably had the unfortunate job of telling Toriyama to get back to the action sequences of the action shonen he was trying to make. As a result, it took a while for Dragon Ball to be brought over to the west. On top of that, the first translation of the anime is a weird bastardization that only lasted about 13 episodes. We wouldn't see a continuation of that translation until years later. This will be important later, I promise.

Conceptually, Dragon Ball is also just an out-there manga. If you didn't already know, Dragon Ball started out as a spoof on a well known Chinese fable called  Journey To The West. Son Goku is actually the Japanese reading of the name Sun Wukong. Goku's staff, the Nyoi-Bo is just Sun Wukong's staff Riyu Jingu Bang with a different name. They both even fly around on clouds! I remember watching a version of Journey To The West on television as a child and I loved Dragon Ball even more finding out this fact later in life. But it just highlights what a little oddity the original Dragon Ball was. It was quirky and smutty and funny but most of all, it was charming. In fact, to further highlight the contrast, the kamehameha wasn't actually Goku's original signature move. That honour actually goes to the Rock, Scissors 'N' Paper (or Jan Ken fist if you have taste), which is either a somewhat clever spoof of fictional techniques used in martial arts movies or just the most obtuse way of saying punch in face, poke in eyes and palm on cheek.


(source)

Now here's the kicker; In Japan, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z aren't two separate entities; They're just one long continuous story. In the west, because of how late in its life Dragon Ball became popular and how niche anime was and how weird manga publishing can be, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were simultaneously brought over as separate entities. The Dragon Ball Z anime also aired at the same time, and the difference is night and day. Dragon Ball Z is practically synonymous with the genre of shonen, and it was prototypical of a lot of the tropes and story beats later manga would then follow. Dragon Ball Z is this fantasy martial arts anime and the stakes are raised dramatically. Sure, it maintains some of Toriyama's signature slump humour but at this point in his career, he was better at writing action shonen than he was at making dirty jokes.

Chances are, you remember a lot more of Dragon Ball Z than you do of Dragon Ball. I remember the community following Dragon Ball Z had in my schoolyard playground. We'd all pretend to be Z fighters and whenever we had access to hair gel we'd spike it up and pretend to be super saiyans and I'm pretty sure every boy born in the 90s has at one point tried to perform a kamehameha. One of your friends had a copy of Budokai on his PS2, and if not, you were that friend. Every Spur and Mike's Kitchen in the country had a dedicated PS2 for playing Budokai Tenkaichi, just so you'd beg your parents to take you there so you can have another go at it. It aired every day at 17:00, right after we all got back from after school day-care. Dragon Ball Z was practically essential in establishing Otaku culture in the west, and was part of the Anime Starter Kit back when I was a yungin' (those dudes who had Saint Seiya as part of their starter kit must feel fucking ancient)

And it makes sense that Dragon Ball Z would be one of the first high budget anime adaptations the west would see.

But here's the only issue; Dragonball Evolution so desperately wants to adapt Dragon Ball Z, but what it's actually adapting is the original Dragon Ball.

And I actually feel sorry for it. If Dragonball Evolution had to start with the plot of Dragon Ball Z, it'd be in medias res. Everyone already knows each other, the characters are all established with backstory and have each all had character arcs. Dragon Ball Z spends most of its exposition time either retconning the original Dragon Ball or introducing new characters. On top of that, major studios and publishers don't seem to trust western audience with foreign material. As a result, showrunners, producers and directors get this weird idea that foreign properties need to be "westernized" in order to make them more relatable to the domestic market, which is a gross misunderstanding of why we even watch anime. So, if you're still with me, Dragonball Evolution is a westernized adaptation of an anime adapting a Japanese adventure/gag manga spoofing a Chinese fable that actually wants to adapt a westernized version of the anime of the Japanese martial arts manga that's the big brother of the adventure/gag manga that spoofs a Chinese fable.

This project was almost destined to fail.

Trying to craft a cohesive story in all this would have been a nightmare. It's so obviously jumbled and thrown together with stylistic influences that ranges from Michael Bay's 2007 Transformers to Avatar; The Last Airbender to chinese martial arts b-movies to whatever film Chow Yun-Fat thought he was acting in.

In fact, Chow Yun-Fat (he was Master Roshi if you were too lazy to google) actually acted in a much better adaptation of Journey To The West that manages to be a better Dragon Ball movie than Dragonball Evolution.

If that's not bad enough, in 2008 (one year before Dragonball Evolution was released) a movie called The Forbidden Kingdom came out with a functionally identical set up that loosely adapts Journey To The West, except it doesn't make you hate yourself for wasting an hour and a half of your own life.

Dragonball Evolution didn't need to be as unambiguously awful as it was. When you have a world inhabited by dinosaurs, dragons, anthropomorphic talking animals, cyborg supervillains, super powered aliens, weremonkeys from space, time travelling swordsmen, fighters fusing their physical forms together to become one better fighter... You have to have a certain set of skills to fuck up so badly that all of that becomes uninteresting. AND YOU HIRED CHOW YUN-FAT AND JAMES MARSTERS HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO FUCK THIS UP??? 

With a few changes made at the start, I bet with the same actors, the same production crew but with change out the writer and director for people infinitely more competent at their jobs, and there's an enjoyable film in there. Somewhere. Deep down. Really, really deep down. 

Remove the highschool setting and center Goku and Bulma, then we'd have something more in line with the spirit of the manga. Remember that Goku and Bulma's relationship was one of the most compelling parts of the original Dragon Ball. The city girl and a country boy going on an unlikely journey is a strong set up just from the contrast between the two leads, and their resulting friendship is pretty humanizing and endearing. Change the visual effect used for energy attacks like the kamehameha from wispy smoke to those striking lightbeams, and the film becomes a ton more palatable. Chi-Chi being more of a secret cage-fighter type wasn't the best change in direction either. She's the daughter of the legendary Ox King, one of the scariest freaking dudes alive. Just have her... Be Chi-Chi. How do you guys have more regressive decision making than the author of a manga where a little boy determines the gender of a person the same way Kevin Spacey does? I am also struggling to find the depth added by making this a coming of age highschool romance. Also the cool stuff like a flying cloud and a magic staff that can stretch to any length or taking a rabbit who is also a mob leader and putting him on the literal moon... There's so much fun stuff you could have done and you just left that shit on the cutting room floor!

In the end, I suppose Dragonball Evolution isn't about making a good movie, or even about making a decent Dragon Ball adaptation.

It's about cashing in on a license.

Someone needs to take away Fox's toys from them so they can't fuck up any more licenses OH HI THERE DISNEY.

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Ghost In The Shell's Whitewashing

Scarlett Johansson has made a name for herself as an action heroine. With huge roles like the titular Lucy and Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in several Marvel Cinematic Universe films, she's all but set for a top billing in a major Anime adaptation from director Rupert Sanders. She's capable and has the talent and popularity to drive box office sales.

The issue however comes in when you realize just how difficult it is for Asian-American actors to land leading roles.

To say one thing in the film's defense, it's pretty huge for a blockbuster action film to have a female lead, let alone to be a high budget adaptation of a critically acclaimed Japanese animation.  This brings a lot of diverse culture and ideas to mainstream audiences. And any leading female cast in the type of role that is generally played by men is also a huge win for feminism.

However, Kelly Hu, Sandra Oh, Lucy Liu, Yunjin Kim, Davon Aoki, Rinko Kikuchi , hell, even Kristin Kreuk could have been cast and none of the above would be invalid. It's not like Hollywood is devoid of Asian actors with long careers and star power. And even so, some of the best selling films of all time have had relatively unknown leads.

But here's where it gets tricky yet again; Anime itself has an issue with race. Let's take... Say, Unbreakable Machine Doll as our case study.



Of what ethnicity would you guess this character is? That wavy mostly straight hair, big blue eyes, pale skin, I'd definitely wager he's European, maybe even from a Germanic country. But he's not, this is actually Raishin Akabane, of the very Japanese Akabane clan. To make matters worse, he's voiced by english voice actor Clifford Chapin.

And this is an unnervingly common practice. Because of how hyper stylized Japanese animation is, mangaka and animation studios often have trouble designing Japanese characters as... Well, Japanese looking.

Unbreakable Machine Doll is my favourite case though. Look at the other cast of characters in the show and apart from vocal ques (I'll admit Lisette has a really pleasant Irish voice in the English Dub) and their names, I couldn't tell you their country of origin.

One of the many reasons so many western cartoonists opt to use anthropomorphic animals as their characters is that there are only so many different ways to draw a human face. I mean, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Felix The Cat, Garfield, Snoopy, Hobbes, Sonic... Half of these characters would be unremarkable as humans.

Anime gets around this unfortunate handicap with it's unique visual design quirks and stylization. Light Yagami is as recognizable as Bugs Bunny from that sinister look in his eyes to his ridiculously perfect hair and that eerie smirk that he wears on his face.

(The face one makes when they take a potato chip, and eats it)

 So it's perfectly natural for a medium to struggle to represent the subtleties of human ethnicity through it's abstract design when the phrase exaggerated subtleties is in itself an oxymoron.

What about when it does?


(Soichi from Detroit Metal City)

(Nakai from Bakuman)


(Afro from Afro Samurai)

(Balalaika from Black Lagoon)

Conversely, a Nicktoons show called Kappa Mikey managed to solve this ethnic incoherence by matching two extremely different visual designs together, and a lot of the humour of the show comes from the cultural differences of Mikey versus his Japanese cast members. I remember a whole lot of laughs coming from the spoofs of popular shonen tropes and just the silly situations the characters find themselves in.



What I'm saying is, it's possible to to both stylize and communicate ideas through creative design. And this is probably where the issue itself was born. Add to the fact that most popular anime protagonists are fair skinned males with European facial features and one might reach the startling conclusion that anime has kind of... Whitewashed itself. Don't believe me? Here's a picture of the Shonen Jump Ultimate Stars roster.



In a recent video published by That Japanese Man Yuta we see that most of the randomly chosen Japanese citizens on the street are perfectly fine with the casting. And while a handful of folks on the street don't represent an entire ethnic group, we can safely assume that to a lot of the general public, this is just a non-issue. Even the creator of Ghost In The Shell has supported and approved Scarlett Johansson's casting. While that makes for a separate discussion on whether or not a creator necessarily knows what's best for their own intellectual property and the adaptations thereof, the crux of the matter is that Scarlett Johansson has been cast, the film has already started production and is likely near finished and this won't be the last time it happens.

In future, I think I'd like to appeal to manga publishers like Shonen Jump, Tokyopop, Tanoshimi and the like to publish works with more ethnic diversity and racial themes. I'd also like to appeal to mangaka to create more protagonists that aren't the default harem attracting fair skinned Mary Sue Sasuke Uchihas in favour of more ethnically diverse heroes.

And finally, I'd like to appeal to anyone who likes anime to stop shitting a brick and screaming for the death of SJWs whenever anyone raises a legitimate concern about the state of the industry. Feminism, black activism, LGTBQ activism and political correctness are not going to kill your grandmother and take your toys. And to everyone else, it's okay to not go watch Ghost In The Shell because it did take a great anime and plaster a white face on it like the Kardashians claiming to have invented braids, but it looks to be a good film and to be honest, it might end up being the closest thing we ever get to a truly great major Hollywood adaptation of an anime, and if you can stomach ScaJo's face, it might be worth watching (I'd wait until the Rotten Tomatoes scores come out though).

Otherwise, there are plenty of live action adaptations from Japan that do their source material justice. I quite liked the second Death Note live adaptation because it ended in a better way than the anime did. So find a copy or stream it, grab popcorn and remember, the subtitles don't bite.

But fuck that Light Turner bullshit. That shit should get it's own theme song. Like fucking, Light Turner was an average kid that no one understands, his dad and the investigation unit always giving him commands. Gloom and doom up in his room, appearing instantly, is a magic shinigami giving him a book and in reality Ryuk's his god of death, odd god of death.

Fuck dat noise.

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