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1447260cookie-checkFullmetal Alchemist Live-Action Trailer Stirs Debate About Japanese Lead
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2017/04

Fullmetal Alchemist Live-Action Trailer Stirs Debate About Japanese Lead

Square Enix released the latest trailer for Fullmetal Alchemist, the live-action rendition of the popular manga and anime of the same name.

The trailer is barely a minute long and doesn’t really delve much into the story, but we do get some visually impressive sequences highlighting the movie’s special effects. You can check it out below.

The movie follows brothers Edward and Alphonse, who undergo some mystical alchemic transformations, resulting in both brothers losing some part of themselves to gain special mechanical abilities, such as Edward having a mechanical arm and Alphonse’s entire body being transformed and sealed inside of a giant metal suit of armor.

The trailer doesn’t go much further than that, only showcasing Alphonse’s fully armored suit, which looks identical to the way it was depicted in the anime, and Edward’s mechanical arm.

The special effects for Edward summoning the pike looks pretty good, and the pillars breaking through the walls at the end were sufficient enough.

Obviously, the elephant in the room this time around was that characters who were supposed to be white are Japanese. The comment section on the trailers have broken down into complete chaos as users debate as to why the main character is wearing a blonde wig instead of them just hiring a European actor to play the role of Edward.

It’s the inverse of what happened with Ghost in the Shell, where they hired Scarlet Johansson to play the Major, a cyborg police enforcer. There were groups of people saying that they should have hired in a Japanese/Chinese/Korean/Asian actress for the role. Others argued that Hollywood needed a bankable star for the movie to succeed. According to Paramount Pictures, the movie flopped because of the “fanboys”, as reported by Anime Lover.

In this case, some people think that the role should have gone to a white lead since that’s who the main character is supposed to be. Others argued that it’s a Japanese movie designed for a Japanese audience, and that hiring a Japanese lead made the most sense.

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Well, one thing is for sure… now that the media has stirred the pot and continues to push everyone towards a race war by focusing so heavily on SJW topics at every turn, it looks like no property is safe from the depressing discussions centered around identity politics.

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