 Is Hollywood actually whitewashing the new Hayao Miyazaki animated film The Boy and the Heron? And if they are, what level of violation is this? The classic Japanese story, The Boy and the Heron, featuring Christian Bale, Dave Bautista, Gemma Chan, William Defoe, Karen Fukuhara, Mark Hamill, Robert Patton, and Florence Pug. Do you notice anything, Andrew? David, I noticed that there's a lot of big Hollywood stars on this English dub cast, but I got to say, there's no full Asian guys. Ow! Dave Bautista's half Filipino, but I feel like he doesn't fully play it. Anyways, guys, let's talk about this because a lot of people are kind of upset in the comments section that there are no full Asian men included in this English dub, but there are clearly full Asian women. So, we couldn't have been Mahito Maki with Luca Padovan. Guys, we're going to talk about it. We'll talk about, if I think it's whitewashing, what level of violations it is at. So, please hit that like button. Check out other episodes of The Hop-Hop Boys. But you know what's not whitewash, David? It's SmalaSauce. SmalaSauce.com. Check it out right now. Check out the Instagram for all the cool content that we're making, too. Alright, listen, guys. I don't want to, because I can understand this from both sides, but it is cool that a Japanese Hayao Miyazaki piece is getting that many big names attached to it. Right. And this is the English dub. Obviously, there's a Japanese one that's already done and the movie's coming out, but I'm saying this is for the English voices, because a lot of, they assume a lot of people are going to be watching it dubbed in English. For the Western world, not everybody wants to read the subs. Some people are into the dubs, Andrew. I'll say this, though. It is very indicative, and some people can say it's a big violation, medium, low, middle violation, Andrew. It's very indicative that they left Asian guys off the cast. Yeah, it's definitely a violation. I agree. I'm not making an excuse for them. This is a violation. But classically, because, as you guys know, Japanese anime, there's always been this push and pull with how Eurocentric it is and how Japan itself does not look at Asian representation the same way as Asian Americans do. So that's why Japanese people aren't driven. They care about Japan and they care about the West. Yeah, they don't really... They don't see it like, yo, I need to get a bunch of Asian Americans in there, but if they didn't care about Asian Americans or Westernized Asians, why do they have Gemma Chan and Kara Fukuhara playing Asian female characters? Yeah, I guess they essentially left out Asian dudes out of an animated film that takes place in Japan. So would you say that it does reveal some troubling Asians in the West dynamics? Yeah, I mean, dude, I think it should have been an easy fix, man. They could have left one Asian dude in there. I understand that not making all the characters Asian as far as the voices, because I think there's a lot of great actors on that list, but they could have put one Asian dude in there. Ken Watanabe, maybe somebody without an accent. I'm assuming that they're counting Dave Bautista and being like, well, Dave Bautista's half Filipino, so there's our Asian guy. And that's what Hollywood likes to do, right? Yeah, and I think that he counts a little bit, but I think they could have done better. And maybe this is me being an Asian guy and just like, oh, complaining and nothing's perfect. They don't like Asian men in Hollywood. Yeah, a little bit. I think it's true. Yeah, because Kara Fukuhara and Gemma Chan are full Asian. And Dave Bautista, even though I'm not taken away as Asianist, I'm just saying a lot of people don't even know that he's Asian. I think it's a violation that they should have made this change. So I guess I can understand why a lot of dudes, especially a lot of guys who love anime, a lot of Asian dudes watch anime and then even in probably the highest profile English dubbing of an anime. Ever done, right? There are no full Asian guys. Yeah, let's get into the comments section. Somebody said just as we expected whitewash, this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think they should only cast Asian actors for any anime. It's hard enough for Asian actors to get booked. Somebody said I also agree. Somebody said one of the whitest cast ever, SMH. People have a right to be mad, right? Especially if they value Hayao Miyazaki. By the way, I think Christian Bale in it, being in it is great. He was in other Hayao Miyazaki dubs. I can get it. I mean, these are, like I said, initially, these are huge big names. That's dope. That's dope that you would bring out the big guns for the dub. But why leave Asian guys out? Yeah, yeah. And I don't think, I don't agree that the whole cast has to be Asian for the English dub because it's an English dub. It's for the English market. But they should have been a little more sensitive for sure. So I think it's whack that they did that. Of course. People just said, man, why do you want to separate Asian men from the label Asian? Only Asian women actually count as Asian representation. Asian men do not even exist. We are just like essentially not Asian anymore. We're like aliens. Yeah. I mean, I think, I guess if Asian men get representation, then you got to, yeah, you got to represent for the aliens and everybody else that's weird, right? That's how weird it is. To be honest, this is kind of just like a Western thing at this point. I just know that anytime there's Asian representation, they're going to get like 90% Asian women and maybe like 10% of it will be like quote unquote like Asian guys. I don't know. It just plays out that way. Somebody said, let them do what they want. Yeah. But that's capitalism too. They can do what they want. Somebody said, even with these voices, watching a Miyazaki film in English is an absolute tragedy. But Andrew, how much of this subs versus dubs? I always watched the subs. I never watched dubs in anything. I don't enjoy it that way. It seems to be kind of weird. But I get for pure non-Asian people why they would watch the subs. But I'm saying everything is going to be happening in the boy in the hair on in Japan. Yeah. So they're going to be saying Japanese names in an English accent like Mikoko. Like, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I did watch Dragon Ball Z sub though. But other stuff I perverse dubbed. Somebody says, why do I think that this said the boy in the heroin? Yeah. I mean, the hair on is just like a, it's a type of like a bird that looks like a crane. Yeah. Anyway, somebody said, but how great is that that Robin Pattinson and these Christian Bale and all these American legends signed up to be a part of it? No, it's definitely kind of cool. You know, and I feel like, uh, yeah, I think overall, man, like David, how mad are you about this? You personally, you being someone who you do like he'll my Miyazaki films, but you're not like the biggest anime head. So like, I'm not like a 10 out of 10. I'm like, I saw a princess. Let's just say you're like a four out of 10. Right? Are you mad? I just think it's very reflective of the dynamics here on the ground right now. I guess the way that the equation is set up. It's just playing out how you think it would play out. Do Asian women just count as representation now? I'm happy that Gemma Chan's on there. I think she's a good actor. Karen Fuguhara. Yeah, it's true. You know, they might be more assimilated or whatever they all, you know, All right. Taking that aside, I do not care at who they're dating or marrying at this point. I guess it doesn't matter to me. I just think that it's whack when Asian guys left out. Like maybe if the Asian guy is whitewashed or only dates white women or Latino women or black women, whatever, does that count against them? I don't know. At this point, I'm just like, dude, if it's an Asian story in Asian setting, and it's made by Hayao Miyazaki who is an Asian guy himself. Like one East Asian guy on there. Throw a Japanese guy who speaks English. Could be Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, whatever. Like maybe one Asian guy on there. Like it's, it's a Japanese story. Right. I mean, ultimately this is just what it is. It's not fair. And I do think that Asian males got left out of representation to be honest still to this day. But it's almost like you're looking at this club line and they're for the Asians into the Western club and they're only letting the girls go into this Western nightclub. You know, the Asian guys are still kept in the back of the line. And I feel like some Asian guys have gotten to the point where they don't even care about getting into the club at all anymore. Question, if this casting for the English dub wasn't full of stars and it was just like no name, low level actors, would we be even be talking about this and there was no Asian guys? Probably not. Probably not. And probably not if the whole cast was whitewashed either. I mean, it would turn into a whole community thing versus just Asian guys being mad about it. Right. Because Asian women, I'm not saying that they don't care and they're not supporting the guys either, they have their representation in character. So you think the Asian community would be more mad if the whole cast was non-Asian or that Asian guys would more than So the Asian-American community would be mad if it was a whole cast of Western stars, they probably would be less mad but still making a tiny bit of a thing of it if everybody was just a no-name voice actor. Right. But then this way it kind of makes, it sort of divides the Asian-American community. Right, because they're kind of trying to stunt like, hey, we got all these great actors and we even got these great female Asian actors, no Asian dudes, you know, and I'm like, well, aren't there like Ken Watnabe? You could have thrown Daniel Day Kim in there. You could have thrown a number of people in there. I guess it's a good discussion to have, especially, you know, that's why we're having it right now but it sort of is just a symptom, I guess, of a larger systemic issue. But on this note that, of course, everybody's going to use this and be like, oh, Asian guys shafted once again. Nobody cares about Asian guys. Right, even though it's such a trivial thing to use the dub of an anime, right? This is just one thing and you also see all this other progress and all these other things for Asian guys. So I guess at what point are we not gonna, are we just gonna not let these little things bother us? I think we should let it, I think for the people who can write think pieces and petition the system to change, they should do that. But I don't blame anybody for just being like, man, I got to protect my piece. I'm an Asian guy, I can't even care about this. Or overall, you just take it because Asian guys overall and the macro are doing better. And you're like, listen, as long as Asian dudes are doing better in the macro, in the big picture, then I'm not going to trip about this. Right, Hayao Miyazaki himself is an Asian man. Do we, did we ever think about who was the English dub for any other anime film? We never thought about it, at least on a mainstream level. Maybe anime geeks did, but I like, I did not. So I don't, in a way it's like. So I guess ultimately are you saying you're caring, but you're not really caring. I think it's a violation, but I don't care that much. Okay. It's a violation though. Let us know what you guys think in the comments section below. Is it a violation because it's representative of these larger societal dynamics, especially in old world industries that tend to be more social based and not like STEM based. Obviously Hollywood marketing business, finance, they may be more, you know, relationship based rather than hardcore, algorithmic, you know, number crunching based. And I think that that's, I'll tell you this man, it's complicated because a lot of Asian guys go to STEM fields because you're not going to see this Hollywoodification dynamics, right? But then if you stay in the STEM fields, even though those are very important fields for keeping America competitive or any economy anywhere competitive, it will never impact the social ladder. Like in America, the social ladder and the economic ladder, I, the one thing that's very different about the West is they're very separate ladders. Whereas in the East, they tend to be more combined into one ladder. So I, it's a catch 22 guys. Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Is it a big deal? Is it not a big deal? What are the implications? Until next time, we'd hop out boys, we out. Peace.