> “Your first sentence contradicts your second sentence. You either care about the source material or you don’t. If you don’t care about the source material at all, her being a cyborg with a Japanese name is moot.”

No, he’s starting from an unbiased position and pointing out that “she’s a cyborg that doesn’t look…

Because 7 individuals make a statistically relevant sample of a people.

That said it is interesting to see the Japanese perspective. But all the interviewer did was find 7 people who had opinions on the topic.

It’s not racist, it’s a lame attempt to broaden the appeal of the GitS franchise by sticking familiar faces into the mix. But diluting things to reach a broader audience detracts from the substance that made it desirable in the first place.

The Major was always a neutral confident perspective navigating the world of GitS, and she was never, ever unsure about her place in it (until the Puppeteer shook things up.) That was part of what made her so appealing - a competent, intelligent female character instead of yet another damsel-in-distress, or god forbid…

While I understand the desire to frontload a movie’s appeal with star power, the salaries those same stars command takes away from the movie’s budget for everything else. And GitS is likely to have very demanding expenses for CG and special effects.

Additionally those stars often make additional unreasonable demands of…