Low attention span? Isn't Game of Thrones one of HBO's biggest hits in a while, with a very large cast of characters? I think the general American audience can in fact handle a cast that large if they're invested.

But now you've got me thinking that the only trace of Rory in such an adaptation, since she's a politically-incorrect character, might just be a one-off shot of Rory's gothic lolita costume hanging in the closet of Itami's ex-wife to highlight "weird Japan" in a brief cameo.

Game of Thrones is an entire series. That's general 10 episodes for the early seasons with at least an hour per episode. That's more than plenty of time to develop every character. Now if we make this idea into a multi-part HBO series, it would make sense

Avengers Infinity War got away with it because all characters were established in previous movies




Also, it would be debatable for the American adaption would Itami be Japanese or even an Anime Otaku. Even though Anime is becoming more main stream, it still isn't that well known like Comics, etc

Finally, a film that brings some representation to the much neglected sweaty neckbeard community

Your initial suggestion was that this adaptation take the form of an HBO series. Itami being Japanese might be less jarring if he was part of a multinational team of characters (maybe some training advisors?), just like in the Battleship film adaptation.

Besides, given that this is a live-action adaptation of the anime, you are certainly going to get your primary attention from the anime fans. Straying too far from the source material upsets those fans and tanks sales, like what happened with the live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell.

To be fair, the gaming, airsoft, and shooting communities are all occasionally stereotyped that way too.

Well not necessarily. Edge of Tomorrow basically didn't even tell us it was an adaptation of something Japanese and that didn't even have its own anime release to be based from.

I think in this case, I'm only taking the premise and some story elements from the original source and adapting it to fit the American setting.

I'm more or less going with the manga and the book since the anime tamed a lot of the harder elements and I didn't like it as much as I enjoyed reading the manga.

Keeping Itami Japanese limits our pool of actors to call on. I'm not looking for representation like today's SJW media. I would rather have good actors with a good script without forced agendas in placements. Like since Itami's team in the series included 2 women, I'm not going to cut them out, but unless we have an HBO style series, they and others will be under-developed.

A lot of people didn't like the Ghost in the Shell live action adaptation because the actress who portrayed Major Motoko Kusanagi wasn't Japanese or even recognizably East Asian. Technically, the writers could have hand-waved it since the Major is in essence a braincase and can wear any cyborg body with any appearance she chooses, but that didn't work out either. Changing Itami's ethnicity with live-action casting might be considered "yellow-face" again.

My guess is that the harder elements of Gate were censored by not including them in the script used for the anime adaptation in the first place, probably due in part to budgetary concerns.

The main complaints I've read revolved around the movie not asking the right "existential questions" that the manga and animes are known for.

That stuff has always been kind of above my head, though. Personally, I liked the movie and thought Johansson did a great job in it.

You don't understand adapting some thing into a different culture. If I was making a 1 to 1 remake of the show in Japan or in an Asian setting and made all the cast white, THAT'S a problem.

Ghost in the Shell is a very Japanese piece of fiction with no room to work without. All they really needed to do is change all the names from their Japanese names and set it in a place appropriate for the cast. Hell, they should have kept the setting since it's very Bladerunner like and not tell us where in the world they are located at and we'd have no problem at all, but they wanted to keep all the names, including the Major and convoluted a plot to why she's Japanese in a white woman's body.

Also, a lot of NON Japanese people were harping on the white washing thing. There wasn't a single outrage or complaint from the Japanese anime community about it. I'm not sure if it's racist for other people to be offended in place of those that are supposed to be offended but aren't.

I'm not calling my main character Itami and casting a black guy in his place. That's stupid. I'm changing the names and location and taking the general premise. The cast of the other world doesn't need changing. Instead of Tokyo, Japan. It's in Chicago and there are more white, blacks and Hispanics in Chicago than Asians. I know because I'm Chinese and I lived in Chicago.

If I am keeping him Japanese, then I'd need to pick an appropriate Asian actor and if I want to be honest, the pool of competent Asian actors is very small compared to other people. The only reason I'm thinking about Micheal B. Jordan is because of the recent Black Panther success and that he's secretly an Anime fan.

Its also set in Hong Kong (heavy Western/British influence) and the Major turns out to be a Asian teen who got mindwiped and cyborged.

Well what do you know, something similar to what the original poster proposed has already happened. South Korea recently made a live-action remake of Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade and called it Illang: The Wolf Brigade.

They adapted the story to fit South Korean history, altered the timeline to 2029, and essentially only left the Protect Gear, the MG42s, and the bare skeleton of the story to become more of an action piece than the original.

Too bad PistolJunkie (the principal editor for the Jin-Roh page) doesn't appear to be around anymore to comment on this one.