i can agree with the notion that hollywood has a long history of whitewashing roles in movies.. they have a long history of portraying native americans etc. as whites. for instance.

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ct...09/connors.jpg
http://www.amoeba.com/dynamic-images...f-Chandler.jpg
or even moses, who i doubt looked anything like this white guy here.
http://mattstone.blogs.com/photos/ch...ses-heston.jpg


when dealing with anime its a bit of a different story imo, because many characters in anime are not always represented as asians. example.

http://fresstv.com/wp-content/upload...axtogether.jpg
http://myswordisunbelievablydull.fil...dwardwinry.jpg
http://www.allisnow.com/anime/images...g-cast-01b.jpg

now, whether the japanese studios who produce these anime comics or shows portray some of their characters in this way because they are trying to broaden their base by trying to include a wider demographic, or because it gives the characters more variety and to make them more distinguishable i don't rightly know, but this is what i suspect. almost all of these blonde and brown haired characters are given japanese names and (seem to be) japanese culturally aswell. but i don't think in these cases it makes sense to cast these people (in the event of making a real life version of these comics) to cast japanese people who don't look like these characters.

then you have shows like AVATAR. in this shows case it is ridiculous to cast the avatar movie with white people when the characters in the show were very obviously chinese and inuit etc. though aang is kind of ambiguous racially, but its a comic so what do you expect?

http://tvmedia.ign.com/tv/image/arti...1277765874.jpg


i do find it interesting that a couple people in this thread who are up in arms about the whitewashing in hollywood had very little to say when a black actor was cast in the movie thor, even though it makes no sense casting a black person in a movie based (albeit loosely) on norse mythology which is european in origin.

Actually the worst offender which comes to mind of this is older than most or all people posting on this thread... here it is:

http://www.kungfu-guide.com/img-reso...kfdvdpilot.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_(TV_series)

I also didn't care when they cast some white people in Avatar. Both of these are based on comics or animated cartoons. Also it's worth noting that the producer of the Avatar film:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Night_Shyamalan

... is an Indian. I recall that he was criticized for casting Indians in place of East Asians for some roles. In any case, that movie sucked, and it would have sucked just as badly with an all-mongoloid cast.

BLASPHEMY hahaha. i didn't see the movie, but i loved the show. im speaking of avatar.


me personally i think you should cast movies with who fits the role the best, not only by looks but by who does the character the most justice. i don't like the idea of white people playing indians and i don't like the idea of a black person playing a norse character.

anime as i said is a bit different, as the characters are a bit harder to pin down racially, but then again its just a comic so its not too big of a deal, not as big as for instance portrayin malcolm x by tom hanks or something like that. idk where i got that analogy, i think it was from the chappelle show but i think that would be hilarious to see tom hanks do that.

The Last Airbender cartoons are not bad. I used to watch them with my sons. It's the movie that I'm saying sucked. I also took them to see the movie in the theater, and it was a major disappointment. They butchered and compressed the story, chose a few crappy actors, and the 3D effects were crap.

well its probably a good thing i didn't see it then haha. its a shame really, i don't usually watch cartoons but the last airbender was a pretty decent show imo.