Collider: If you’re a sci-fi fan, the name of Laeta Kalogridis is one that should become very familiar to you in the weeks, months, and years ahead, if it isn’t already. Kalogridis, whose work as a writer/producer goes back to the early 2000s, has a sci-fi heavy slate of projects at the moment, with Netflix’s Altered Carbon being foremost.
3 comments:
I personally loved Sword Art Online when I watched it in middle school. The story posed a world that was believably accessible and had a wonderful combination of action, suspension, and romance. What I can distinctly remember from the anime series is how beautiful everything looked, from the landscape to the player’s choice in clothing I could really see the detail and passion the animators put into this show. I am really excited to see how that beauty and detail is transferred over into a live action version of Sword Art Online. I also really appreciate that the Laeta Kalogridis is being so forward about clarifying that she is sincerely trying to avoid whitewashing SAO, giving the show the accurate context of being a global game played by all types of people. Asuna and Kirito are both japanese from Tokyo and their identity is very important to the story since people are allowed to go into this game and virtually change their appearance.
YES! Like Lily, I also personally loved Sword Art Online and the series itself became highly popular when it premiered. I'm so excited for this story to be retold in a different way as it really is a beautiful story about humanity - with some very cool sword fighting included. What makes me even more excited about this adaptation is how strongly Laeta Kalogridis feels about staying accurate to the ethnicity of the characters. I don't know how many times I have angrily reacted to an article on this page that dealt with whitewashing asian characters so it is such a relief to know that one creator is adamant about representing Asian characters as Asian. I find that people like Kalogridis bring hope to a new era of entertainment where diverse actors/ actresses have the chance to be in the spotlight. I have never understood why anime characters are white washed. The audience that watches the anime most likely watched it in Japanese, with English subtitles and have no problem that these characters are very obviously Asian. There is no reason to believe that a live action adaptation with an Asian lead would be any less popular. I really am so excited to see what Kalogridis does with the source material she is given and can't wait to see how she translates such a high tech imaginative world onto the screen.
With the history and the recent news about whitewashing in the movie Annihilation, that is why Laeta Kalogridis the executive producer of the new anime adaptation of Sword Art Online, she made it very clear that SAO is “Japanese property, in which Kirito and Asuna, who are the two leads, are Japanese. In the television show, Kirito and Asuna will be played by Asian actors. Whether or not that was the question underneath your question, it’s not a conversation about whitewashing. When I sold it to Netflix, we were all on the same page. They are not interested in whitewashing it, and I am not interested in whitewashing it. In terms of the secondary characters, because the game is meant to be global, the way it’s presented in the anime and in the light novels, there are secondary characters that clearly are from other parts of the world, like Klein and Agil. To me, it’s very obvious when you watch it that you’re meant to take that this game spans the globe, but Kirito and Asuna are very clearly located as kids from Japan, and Tokyo, if I’m not mistaken. That is what we will be doing because that is the story. They are, in my mind anyway, much like Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell, defined in part by being seminal characters in an Asian piece of art. That’s the first and biggest thing”
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