The Long Weekend

Okay, so it's inappropriate to title this post "The Long Weekend" because no one I know got blackout drunk and lost their way morally and compass-wise, but it was a long weekend and it was nice. Movies were watched, video games were played, Halloween costume stores were visited, frozen Cokes were consumed. The movies I watched this weekend were: Don't Look Now, Death Note and Wicked Little Things. (I also watched two Halloween episodes of The Addams Family.)

Here's something interesting about Death Note...but it's really geeky, so proceed at your own risk. Death Note is a manga, or Japanese comic book. They usually have these huge long twisting story lines that cover tons and tons of pages. For instance, Death Note is about 20 pages per issue. There are around 120 issues. Trust me when I say that although the story is very interesting, you could probably read every third issue and still know exactly what's going on. It's a little bit like a soap opera in that regard.

Some mangas get made into animated features or shows. Examples of animated features made from manga are: Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hunter D, Silent Mobius, etc. Some shows would be: Bleach, Samurai Champloo, Cowboy Bebop, etc. I don't like the shows very much, but some of the movies are alright. I'm a big fan of Akira, and Ghost in the Shell is really good too. Anyhow, Death Note was made into both an animated feature and a live-action feature...a movie with real people playing the parts. This has been done before many times. (Think, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Batman, etc.) But those are American movies made by Americans based on American comics. American comic book characters look like Americans, so casting an American actor in the role seems completely normal.

Japanese comics got started in the 50's, post WWII, when America was busy helping Japan to rebuild. A lot of American pop culture was pushed into that country at that point and some of it rubbed off on the Japanese. Japanese cartoons came into being. The first way a person learns anything is by imitation. Japanese artists watched a ton of American cartoons to get a jumping off point for their own animation/comics. What American cartoons did these Japanese artists have access to? Betty Boop, Crazy Kat, Little Nemo in Slumberland, 'Lil Abner. Betty Boop was a big deal to these new animators because she was one of the first animated cartoons, as opposed to being just on the page. The Japanese artists drew a lot of inspiration from Betty Boop and the way she was drawn which is why Japanese cartoon characters have such American-looking faces and eyes. Nowadays there is more of a swing towards reality, but there are still a ton of anime, Japanese animation, that carries that Americanized facial design.

So when you are used to reading a Japanese comic and seeing these American faces or used to watching Japanese animation and seeing the same American faces, when a Japanese live-action feature comes into being with Japanese actors, it's kind of jarring to see real Japanese people playing these parts. It was difficult for me to understand why these actors had been cast in these roles because they didn't seem to look anything like the characters I had been reading about. It worked out alright, except I had to turn off the dubbed dialogue and turn on the subtitles so I could listen to the Japanese being spoken. It just works better that way.