In the spirit of the recent Attack on Titan movie adaptations, another extremely popular franchise, Fullmetal Alchemist, is scheduled for a live-action release next year. Considering the franchise's depth and scope, a lot of fans have already expressed their reservations about the quality of the upcoming film.

After all, if the Attack on Titan live-action movies were any indication, simply throwing together a number of actors in a loosely-based plot does not work, and audiences react mostly negatively. Despite this, however, the Fullmetal Alchemist movie is being produced, with the cast of the main characters being announced.

The movie will be directed by Fumihiko Sori, who made waves in Japanese cinema with his 2002 film Ping Pong. Headlining the cast is Ryosuke Yamada stars as Edward Elric, Tsubasa Honda as Winry Rockbell and Dean Fujioka as Roy Mustang.

Considering that the movie is being produced for a Japanese audience and being produced by a Japanese film company, the casting does make sense. However, a number of fans online have already taken to the Internet, lauding the film for not white-washing the cast.

Recently, a live-action adaptation of Ghost in the Shell being produced by Hollywood has become the center of controversy after actress Scarlett Johansson was cast as Motoko Kusanagi, a cyborg officer. When still of the movie were released, many anime fans cried foul over the casting of a white actor to play someone who is Japanese.

Now, this very same demographic are lauding Fullmetal Alchemist for being non-whitewashed. However, apart from the fact that the movie is being made for a Japanese audience, there is another glaring error on this particular point of view.

Any fan of Fullmetal Alchemist knows that the cast of characters is the furthest from being Japanese. The setting of the anime alone is distinctly European, based in Germany during the Georgian period. The characters are also very European too, with names such as the Fuhrer, Bradley, Elric and even Van Hohenheim.

Thus, if there is one anime (apart from Attack on Titan) that actually would benefit from some whitewashing, it would be Fullmetal Alchemist.

If the source material is really all that matters, then the casting of the movie is all wrong. Casting Japanese actors to play the anime's characters is just as grave as casting a white Hollywood actress to play an Asian character.

Thus, it is important for anime fans to take this issue with a very careful perspective. The casting of the movie has nothing to do with race. It is simply a movie for a local audience using local talent.

Now, if Fullmetal Alchemist does go to Hollywood, they better get some white actors to play the role.

Related