Dragonball Z: Saiyan Saga - Help make this happen!

[TheDevilsCorpse]

Not to mention, since the Dragon World is heavily influenced on Eastern culture (especially Chinese influence in the early chapters.), its easy to assume that most of the character would be Asian since there in a world surrounded by primarily Japanese customs (excluding the language and text of course).

I'm not saying they can't be Asian, just that you can't draw that conclusion just by looking at them (and in this case, their alien culture). Same for a lot of anime/manga characters in general, because even when you have characters in a series from multiple countries standing right next to each other, most of the time they all look the same and you wouldn't know the difference unless they explicitly tell you.

[Insertclevername]

Not to mention, since the Dragon World is heavily influenced on Eastern culture (especially Chinese influence in the early chapters.), its easy to assume that most of the character would be Asian since there in a world surrounded by primarily Japanese customs (excluding the language and text of course).

I'm not saying they can't be Asian, just that you can't draw that conclusion just by looking at them (and in this case, their alien culture). Same for a lot of anime/manga characters in general, because even when you have characters in a series from multiple countries standing right next to each other, most of the time they all look the same and you wouldn't know the difference unless they explicitly tell you.

Yeah, I get you . I only said that because, well thats how most people would probably interpret character ethnicity. Most of my theories are typically based on thematic or cultural influence on a character rather than the series origin nation.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter too much on the ethnicity of the actors/actresses, since its the delivery that really matters. Not to mention that this is an adaption, so they could take some artistic or convenient liberties if they need to. Just hope they don't over do it like DBE did, which now serves as an example of how not to handle an adaption.

[Jord]

Piccolo:

[songohan619]

Piccolo:

It looks kind of good, except for the ends on his antenna, which they said in the video is going to be fixed in Post-Production, which is being done now.

[dbgtFO]

What do you guys think about the Saiyans being asian? Nappa looks perfect as a caucasian, yet Goku, Vegeta, and Raditz are a different race than Nappa now?

Well they are all Saiyans just like people of the caucasian, asian or black variety are all humans.

I don't have a problem with them being portrayed as asian-looking, in fact I myself would imagine them to look like that, but I'd be cool with any ethnicity to be honest. That's why I don't have a problem with Justin Chatwin playing Goku just because of his ethnicity, as it's not unusual for characters from various franchises to be reimagined as other varieties of humans; some examples that come to mind: Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury from The Avengers and the films leading up to it, Jeffrey Wright's Felix Leiter in the newest Bond films and Idris Elba's Heimdall in Thor.

WARNING! WARNING!

Tl; dr post coming right up!

I don't think it matters much, when it's rare we are given clear indicators. For example I'd argue, that Freeza in his true form looks Asian, obviously his eyes would need to be smaller, but the general shape of them along with the flat nose and lack of upper eye lids give me the impression, that he's asian-looking though I wouldn't be bothered, if he were to be portrayed by a Caucasian guy.

I've debated people on another forum, who adamantly stated that the guys making this film are being unfaithful to the series, because the main cast isn't caucasian, which they always imagined them to be.

There was this one guy who said he had always seen Goku and Vegeta as white guys due to being an American and them being his favorite characters, while not complaining in the least about Yamcha. To me it just seemed like clear bias, perhaps caused by him establishing this as fact, when he was a child, making it hard to let it go later on and/or the shock of learning that his favorite characters came from a Japanese series which could mean, that his favorite characters may in fact not look like him, as he always thought they would, meaning he can’t relate to them as much as he could before, so he takes a stance and denies any possible asian features.

The guy also claimed that all anime characters are designed as white people, because that is what’s preferred and called the guys behind this trailer, idiots for saying in an interview, that they always imagined the main cast as asian-looking.*

Now as I’ve established I don’t share his sentiments, but it’s interesting to see how other people can have such strong reactions to this. Especially the fact that he claimed he was justified, because all anime characters are meant to look like white characters anyway. It seems a lot of people share that opinion and I recall even some Japanese guy arguing that, but since he only brings one example to the table it seems like ridiculous cherry-picking.

People have even claimed that the Japanese artists see their race as inferior to the Caucasian one and so draw the characters that way, so they aren’t reminded of their own.
From my point of view, it seems more like something some people would like to believe to justify themselves as being inherently better than everyone else.
Now since I’ve said Freeza looks asian and he was bested by a guy with Caucasian features some would probably take that as further proof, that Toriyama like supposedly many other Japanese comic book artists sees his race as inferior making Super Saiyan Goku vs. Freeza a symbolic way of showing, that the little asian-looking bad guy stands no chance against the tall white-looking good guy.

…But I digress lol.

/tl; dr

I don’t have a problem with the main cast being something other than asian-looking.

*To find the comment in the interview just press the buttons "Control" and "F" and input "youtube." It's the first result.

[Gaffer Tape]

I've never seen the characters as any ethnicity. First off, just from a purely aesthetic sense, most of the characters don't necessarily look like any real life race. I mean, there are some exceptions, like Black looking very much like a black man, and Bora looking like a stereotypical native American. But for most of the characters, they could be almost any race. There just aren't that many racial characteristics present, and the art style is cartoony enough to be substantially removed from reality. Even in cases like Black and Bora, saying they are black or native American is such a broad, broad description that it only slightly narrows it down. There are so many possibilities beyond that.

But that brings me to my next point: despite the fact that the series is rooted in Asian culture, its world is not Asian. It's a fantasy world, unlike anything in our own world. There is no Asia, there is no Africa, etc. So even if we do see similarities between characters and real-life races, there's no reason to believe they adhere to them. After all, there are characters with naturally purple hair, a character with no nose, a character who only grows a nose at the onset of puberty, and races of animal people. For all we know, skin pigmentation, hair color, nose shape, or any other identifying racial markers are distributed completely differently in Dragon Ball's universe.

My point is that I don't care who plays these people. And, honestly, I almost find it silly to try to presume these things from a fantasy world cartoon. When you're trying to fill a cast of fantasy humans and aliens with a bunch of actors from the real world, you're bound to have incompatibilities. If Korean John Cho can play Japanese Mr. Sulu, then I think we can cut this some slack.

[TRL]

despite the fact that the series is rooted in Asian culture, its world is not Asian. It's a fantasy world, unlike anything in our own world. There is no Asia, there is no Africa, etc.

Actually, Goku lives in the east, in a region that closely resembles a romantic Chinese region. While Bulma lives in the west which has many industrialized cities. So Bulma and Satan are with high likelihood western. All the other characters mainly adhere Asian culture and wardrobe, so it's safe to assume they are asian. Which isn't all that weird because a lot of manga/anime series are mainly based in some sort of asian like society, write/draw what you know, right? The spiky black hair is an indication too. For all anime characters to have squinted eyes (like for instance buu or like how asians are portrayed in older western comics) would be totally counterproductive expression wise and kinda racist too. The huge eyes of anime could be like a counterstatement to this. The point of the caucasian like super saiyan form is one too.

Anyway I think this live action portrayal looks very well done up till now. Maybe they could have looked for a broader guy for piccolo though. Gohan, Yamcha, Krillin all look really how I'd imagine them. Kudos to this project!

[Gaffer Tape]

Um... wha? You do realize that eastern parts of our world have highly industrialized cities too, don't you? Also, not sure how spiky hair is at all indicative of race. Last time I checked, human hair only naturally looks like that if it has been slept on or the owner has been electrocuted. If it did look like that, the Asian actors wouldn't be having to wear wigs. And if Asian artists felt compelled to portray their eyes as smaller, you really feel they'd be perpetrating an act of racism? Against themselves? For drawing their eyes more realistically? You ever considered maybe their eyes are huge because it's easier to draw emotion that way? Honestly, it sounds more racist to me to link Western culture to high technology and eastern culture to living in a tiny house in the woods. And I'm not at all sure what your point about the Super Saiyan form is. That Caucasians come from outer space? But I thought you said that Blooma and Satan were more Caucasian because they come from the west? Except that Satan City is actually one of the easternmost locations in Dragon Ball's earth. And the Western Metropolis is called that because there's a matching one in each cardinal direction, so it certainly doesn't have a monopoly on being industrialized.

So, yeah, definitely a problem when you try to assign real world geographical knowledge to a made-up world...

[TRL]

Satan's city is in the east? Yeah checked the map. My bad! I thought I knew the geography by playing budokai 3, guess it has been a while.
And of course I didn't insinuate that asia doesn't have big cities. Everyone knows that. I ment it in contrast to the rural chinese area Goku is supposed to be from.
About the hair, I guess spiky wasn't the right word. I was alluding to the typical straw like black hair a lot of Japanese people have.

Anyway I'm sensing you're getting a little too heated about this. Let's call it at that then. My bad for not expressing myself more clearly. I just thought it was a pretty safe assumption to make that cultural products are mostly rooted in their own culture. Therefore I assume that most dragonball heroes are asian "inspired" except the ones that are clearly not. Note that I never intended to say that saiyans are ACTUALLY asian within dragonball. We all know they're from outer space. So that would be retarded.
Thinking so low of someone's intelligence makes it hard to discuss something in a civilized manner..

And of course any made up world can be linked to it's real world sources of inspiration if you have enough imagination!

[Gaffer Tape]

I'm not heated in the least. I find it fascinating. You seem to misunderstand me, though. Of course works of fiction are intrinsically tied to the culture in which it was made. I hold that point in debates in this forum all the time, most recently in the discussion about whether honorifics have any place being left in a dub. The opposing viewpoint was that, since Dragon Ball doesn't take place in Japan, there is no place for overtly Japanese things like honorifics in the translation. While I'm still not sure if honorifics should be in a dub, I find the argument silly because of course the series is rooted in Japanese culture, despite there being no Japan in it. So, no, I'm certainly not saying anything to nullify inspiration. Toriyama was clearly inspired by China. The Tenkaichi Budoukai was clearly inspired by his trip to Bali.

What I find silly, though, is when people complain about live action casting like this, saying, "Goku is clearly _____, so he has to be played by a _____ actor." Well, no, he's not, and no, he doesn't. I don't really know anything about Dragon Ball Evolution, but I'm sure that, of all the myriad problems in it, the only problem there is with Chatwin not being Asian is that it makes it hard to believe that Gohan is his grandfather. But there is nothing in the series to suggest that Goku HAS to be played by an Asian actor. But then again, there's nothing to suggest he's supposed to be white either. Or Aboriginal, Inuit, or anything else. Because this isn't something like Sailor Moon, where, despite the characters having completely unnatural for Asian (or in some cases *coughAmicough* human beings in general) hair colors, they are explicitly stated to be Japanese people living in Japan.

Those factors, in a live-action adaptation, are going to end up being totally up to the culture of the people casting it. And in this case, these people saw a lot of those characters as Asian. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. If there was a live-action DB movie being made in Japan, that'd most likely be the cast too, just based on the available talent. But it's no different from international dubs of characters having the local dialect. And again, I always find it somewhat silly when people complain about certain characters having certain dialects (a la the, "He's from space. Why would he be Australian?") when most of the other characters, including other aliens, sound like Americans, which makes just as much sense if you think about it!

[TRL]

Well, that's certainly all true. Especially the comments about the dubbing.
But when you think about. Before Goku turned out to be from outer space in dbz, in dragonball Goku was probably intended to be of asian origin. Hell maybe Toriyama originally thought Gohan was his actual grandpa, we'll never know. And for Gohan it's pretty safe to assume that he is asian righ? His typical asian (is it chinese?) clothing and the typical asian architecture of the little house where he lives. To even the backdrop mountains and bamboo. So by that merit I assume Goku is supposed to look asian, but even by merit of dragonball being a japanese cultural product you could say he should be portrayed by an asian actor.

Anyway I really can't wait to see some action released of this trailer. I hope they pull it off real well. I've never even seen DBE so I don't have a bad taste in my mouth about live action yet. I'm good to go!

[TripleRach]

And again, I always find it somewhat silly when people complain about certain characters having certain dialects (a la the, "He's from space. Why would he be Australian?") when most of the other characters, including other aliens, sound like Americans, which makes just as much sense if you think about it!

My problem with that is the fact that American actors are purposely using foreign accents. And they tend to do a poor job of it, which makes it stand out more than a genuine non-American accent like Tim Curry's. Those characters' voices were never supposed to stand out that way, but suddenly they sound different from the rest of the cast for no reason.

[Makaioshin]

But when you think about. Before Goku turned out to be from outer space in dbz, in dragonball Goku was probably intended to be of asian origin. Hell maybe Toriyama originally thought Gohan was his actual grandpa, we'll never know. And for Gohan it's pretty safe to assume that he is asian righ? His typical asian (is it chinese?) clothing and the typical asian architecture of the little house where he lives. To even the backdrop mountains and bamboo. So by that merit I assume Goku is supposed to look asian, but even by merit of dragonball being a japanese cultural product you could say he should be portrayed by an asian actor.

The opposite viewpoint would be that we learn he is from another planet in the Saiyan arc and that he shouldn't have been wearing that kind of clothing or living in that little house. Goku told Bulma in the first arc that his grandfather found him(unless this is a Viz thing) so we always knew they weren't blood relatives. And with the Saiyan arc Toriyama did his own spin on a staple of martial arts stories, the foreigners who fight with malice, and had the prince of these foreigners shout out attacks in English(except his first signature technique). There seems to be different inspirations for Goku and the Saiyan which makes it hard to say that it would be more accurate for him to be portrayed by an actor of a certain race. That and things others have said.

[Gaffer Tape]

Before Goku turned out to be from outer space in dbz, in dragonball Goku was probably intended to be of asian origin. Hell maybe Toriyama originally thought Gohan was his actual grandpa, we'll never know.

Actually, we will, as Goku admits that Gohan found him all the way back in Chapter 2, and when Muten Roshi is at Mt. Frypan, he says that Gohan had told him he had found a child with a tail, so he was never intended to be Gohan's biological offspring, even from the beginning of the series. But, yes, I will give you Son Gohan. He is definitely drawn to look more what WE would consider a traditional Asian.

My problem with that is the fact that American actors are purposely using foreign accents. And they tend to do a poor job of it, which makes it stand out more than a genuine non-American accent like Tim Curry's. Those characters' voices were never supposed to stand out that way, but suddenly they sound different from the rest of the cast for no reason.

No, I getcha on that. I don't really have a conclusive idea on the subject (I mean, I don't watch the dubs anyway, so obviously Jheese, for example, sounding Australian is completely out of the question). I just find it weird when people complain about characters having accents at all, when everybody has a dialect, whether they realize it or not. I just don't know where the line should be drawn because all characters have to sound like something.

[Attitudefan]

Well, to be fair, in one of the chapters/episodes of Dragonball, when Roshi tells Goku to look for a hot woman he shows Goku 2 pictures. One looks more like Bulma, (the character in the picture reminds me of Marilyn Monroe) and the other is a fat oriental chick. The way the facial features are drawn (nose and eyes) are a definite indication of race. In the anime, the tone of their skin is also an indication; the oriental woman has 'yellower' darker skin and 'Marilyn Monroe' has the lighter white skin.

Roshi thinks the white girl is beautiful while the Asian is not at all beautiful. Maybe Toriyama preferred Caucasians...

[Attitudefan]

EDIT: DOUBLE POST (somehow)...

[DarkPrince_92]

Those women are two extremes.... I don't think that's a racial preference.

[Makaioshin]

He might have been more sexually attracted to Caucasian women but that information doesn't have much to do with how he imagined Saiyans would look like in real life.
I also think it had more to do with the fact that one woman is a model and the other is out of shape. Roshi also didn't like the body builder(something like that) that Goku brought him.

[Piccolo Daimao]

Well, to be fair, in one of the chapters/episodes of Dragonball, when Roshi tells Goku to look for a hot woman he shows Goku 2 pictures. One looks more like Bulma, (the character in the picture reminds me of Marilyn Monroe) and the other is a fat oriental chick. The way the facial features are drawn (nose and eyes) are a definite indication of race. In the anime, the tone of their skin is also an indication; the oriental woman has 'yellower' darker skin and 'Marilyn Monroe' has the lighter white skin.

Roshi thinks the white girl is beautiful while the Asian is not at all beautiful. Maybe Toriyama preferred Caucasians...

No, the white girl is smiling looks like a model that you'd see in a magazine (a lot of Japanese fashion seems to be influenced by Western fashion too), while the Oriental girl is fat and frowning (looks a bit like a female Yajirobe). You're bringing race into the equation when it wasn't there in the first place, like people who claim that Rockstar's racist because the first black protagonist in the Grand Theft Auto series is a stereotypical gang member. Whether or not Toriyama was more attracted to Caucasian women than Oriental women is irrelevant.

Also, I think the reason that many people envision numerous anime characters as white is because, well, that's basically the default race for many around the world, because it's the majority. And many associate slanted eyes with Asian, and it's easier to show more emotion with big eyes. In terms of skin tone, let's face it, most Caucasians and Asians/Orientals are as light-skinned as each other. There's really no such thing as a "yellow" skin tone, unless there's something wrong with you. Of course, there are exceptions, but they're in the minority.

I think one character you can quite clearly say is Asian (or, at least, heavily inspired by that race's facial features) is Kuririn. In the beginning of the series (and on rare occasions later), he's drawn with slanted eyes. And, well, he's a Shaolin-like monk with dots on his head.

[Nex Carnifex]

So no one ever thought to ask toriyama what race he saw his characrers as?