Major Motoko Kusanagi is an enigma. The main protagonist of Ghost In The Shell in (almost) all its forms, leader of Public Security Section 9 of the Japanese police force, tasked with dealing with cyber-crime in the mid-21st century, is a tricky character to pin down. Her personality seems to change between each iteration, with nobody quite sure if she's a cyborg or a straight up robot. One thing that remains consistent over all of her depictions? Great hair. Oh and the fact that she's clearly supposed to be Japanese. Now, ethnicity is a tricky thing in manga and anime, since everybody tends to have colourful hair in styles impossible to replicated in real life. But it's a story set in Japan, always by Japanese creators, so it's safe to say the Major's supposed to be ethnically Japanese. Scarlett Johnasson is very much not Japanese. Her casting as Motoko Kusanagi or whatever the character winds up being called in the live-action Ghost In The Shell has some excited, but just as many outraged that yet another Japanese character is being whitewashed - ie played by a white person, not an Asian person. It's Avatar: The Last Airbender all over again.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
