"Mokoto Kusanagi can be white" Yeah okay, I'll let you have that...(Rant)

Verrik

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Gengisgame said:
Verrik said:
All these people, arguing and debating over the casting and how the character is represented and here I am, just laughing lol. Regardless of who plays Mokoto Kusanagi or what sexual orientation they give to her or whatever, I'm betting that this movie is gonna suck either way, because anime very very rarely ever translates well into live-action.
Edge of Tomorrow was a very entertaining film and very well received.
Alrighty. One that isn't garbage. That fills me with hope :p
 

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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Personally I find modern art styles of anime humans to look not asian at all (well if the characters are supposed to be japanese that is).

I mean especially when they make their eyes really wide and give them different colored hair and eyes.

I mean if Makokto was painted in the art style of say Lone Wolf and Cub then she will look more asian then now.
 

Lightknight

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Samtemdo8 said:
Personally I find modern art styles of anime humans to look not asian at all (well if the characters are supposed to be japanese that is).

I mean especially when they make their eyes really wide and give them different colored hair and eyes.

I mean if Makokto was painted in the art style of say Lone Wolf and Cub then she will look more asian then now.
Mmm, another poster invokes the name of Lone Wolf and Cub... best friends forever...
 

Gorrath

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Samtemdo8 said:
Personally I find modern art styles of anime humans to look not asian at all (well if the characters are supposed to be japanese that is).

I mean especially when they make their eyes really wide and give them different colored hair and eyes.

I mean if Makokto was painted in the art style of say Lone Wolf and Cub then she will look more asian then now.
Well, it's an interesting thing the way different cultures perceive humans rendered in art. It's fair to say that most Asian people don't have violet eyes and blue hair but then neither do most Westerners either. Sure, most Asians don't have huge eyes that dominate 2/3 of their face but then neither do most Westerners. So while we tend to see anime and think the people don't look Asian and therefore speculate that the characters aren't Asian, are they really representative of any other race of people either? This isn't a takedown of what you said, just me musing on the notion that anime characters don't look Asian and westerners often see them as looking western instead.
 

Gorrath

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The Almighty Aardvark said:
What indication do you have that they're going to make the Major straight? I think that all the things you mention are important aspects to the character, and they help define her as a cyborg, but it seems like you're jumping the gun on something that still could very well be in the adaptation.

To those people who say that there's no problem casting Scarlet Johansson because they're just casting her because of her star power, welcome to one of the ways that disparities like this keep facilitating themselves. In the wake of the white Oscars controversy, they did some evaluation on which ethnicities were most underrepresented based on population, and Asian actors are by far the most. If the vast majority of the actors with star power are white, and you keep casting actors just on the sole basis of star power (Even when the character is another race) then the majority of actors with star power will remain white.

The Lunatic said:
People kick up a fuss if a black character is replaced by a white actor, yet anyone who complains about a white character being played by a black actor is labeled racist.

I don't really get it myself. It just seems like a big double standard.
Don't you know it. I've always thought it's hypocritical how white countries on average give more food and care packages to black countries than vice versa. No one ever points out this double standard either
If 60-70% of your customer base is group X, then nearly 100% of your product is going to be aimed at group X. A much better way of attacking creative stagnation is to show that different creative paradigms can be commercially viable. The only way this can be done is through big companies taking risks or small companies making it big, I'll grant you that, but companies by their nature are risk averse creatures and rightfully so. You are right that the star power argument facilitates a continuation of the creative stagnation but one must also demonstrate that a break from that stagnation to be economically preferable. That's the hard part.

As to your analogy though, it's not a great one. You're conflating a macro situation(the whole economies of nations) with something micro (the ethics of individual hiring practices.) The ethics of "positive discrimination" are in no way comparable to macro-economic factors of nations because people aren't collectives and nations are.
 

Lightknight

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Gorrath said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Personally I find modern art styles of anime humans to look not asian at all (well if the characters are supposed to be japanese that is).

I mean especially when they make their eyes really wide and give them different colored hair and eyes.

I mean if Makokto was painted in the art style of say Lone Wolf and Cub then she will look more asian then now.
Well, it's an interesting thing the way different cultures perceive humans rendered in art. It's fair to say that most Asian people don't have violet eyes and blue hair but then neither do most Westerners either. Sure, most Asians don't have huge eyes that dominate 2/3 of their face but then neither do most Westerners. So while we tend to see anime and think the people don't look Asian and therefore speculate that the characters aren't Asian, are they really representative of any other race of people either? This isn't a takedown of what you said, just me musing on the notion that anime characters don't look Asian and westerners often see them as looking western instead.
Specifically the huge round eyes (a slur against westerners) usually conveys the message that they specifically don't look Asian. At least, that's what I see most commonly cited. I agree that they don't necessarily "look" like any particular Western group either. But they do look closer to Western than they do to Asian in most circumstances.
 

kris40k

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Samtemdo8 said:
I mean if Makokto was painted in the art style of say Lone Wolf and Cub then she will look more asian then now.
Jaysus, now you guys[footnote]This is directed at the thread in general, not just Sam.[/footnote] aren't even trying anymore...

Motoko. M-O-T-O-K-O

Not Mokoto, Makoto, Matoko, or what the fuck Makokto is.

Lightknight said:
The race and orientation bit is just silly. Not only is the character's shell ethnic/racially-neutral and could be literally anything, but we also don't know anything about the orientation of the character. Even if she's depicted as straight, who cares?
If you mean the character in the movie, yes, we don't know anything at this point in time. If you mean we don't know Motoko's orientation, that is wrong; her orientation is well established already in the manga and animation series.

Edit: Fans who prefer adaptations to try to stay true to the source material care. Other fans may not. I fall into the former category, but I felt long ago that this adaptation was going to be shit.
 

Gorrath

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Lightknight said:
Gorrath said:
Samtemdo8 said:
Personally I find modern art styles of anime humans to look not asian at all (well if the characters are supposed to be japanese that is).

I mean especially when they make their eyes really wide and give them different colored hair and eyes.

I mean if Makokto was painted in the art style of say Lone Wolf and Cub then she will look more asian then now.
Well, it's an interesting thing the way different cultures perceive humans rendered in art. It's fair to say that most Asian people don't have violet eyes and blue hair but then neither do most Westerners either. Sure, most Asians don't have huge eyes that dominate 2/3 of their face but then neither do most Westerners. So while we tend to see anime and think the people don't look Asian and therefore speculate that the characters aren't Asian, are they really representative of any other race of people either? This isn't a takedown of what you said, just me musing on the notion that anime characters don't look Asian and westerners often see them as looking western instead.
Specifically the huge round eyes (a slur against westerners) usually conveys the message that they specifically don't look Asian. At least, that's what I see most commonly cited. I agree that they don't necessarily "look" like any particular Western group either. But they do look closer to Western than they do to Asian in most circumstances.
They look closer to western people from the point of view of western people. To western people, Marge Simpson looks white because we identify the character as culturally white but I would be very interested to know if Asian people looking at Marge Simpson would think she looks white. What I can say is that I have heard that Asian people view anime characters as looking Asian. It's a view of artistic expression through the lens of our own culture, which isn't itself a problem so long as we understand that the cultural view of others are likely to lead them to a wholly different conclusion. In other words, assuming that because we think a character has Caucasian looking features doesn't mean the creator intended that or thinks that themselves.
 

Gorrath

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JustAnotherAardvark said:
kris40k said:
Motoko. M-O-T-O-K-O

Not Mokoto, Makoto, Matoko, or what the fuck Makokto is.
Thank you! I thought I must be going slowly mad ...
Don't be confused friend, though the constant litany of misspellings are not in your imagination, you are still going mad. Muahahaha!
 

Lightknight

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kris40k said:
Lightknight said:
The race and orientation bit is just silly. Not only is the character's shell ethnic/racially-neutral and could be literally anything, but we also don't know anything about the orientation of the character. Even if she's depicted as straight, who cares?
If you mean the character in the movie, yes, we don't know anything at this point in time. If you mean we don't know Motoko's orientation, that is wrong; her orientation is well established already in the manga and animation series.
Yes, I'm talking about in the movie. We know nothing about it yet so the OP had no reason to complain about her orientation when said orientation could be anything or nothing at this point.

Also, has it been established in all storylines? Another poster stated that there have been multiple storylines and no real canon.

Gorrath said:
They look closer to western people from the point of view of western people. To western people, Marge Simpson looks white because we identify the character as culturally white but I would be very interested to know if Asian people looking at Marge Simpson would think she looks white. What I can say is that I have heard that Asian people view anime characters as looking Asian. It's a view of artistic expression through the lens of our own culture, which isn't itself a problem so long as we understand that the cultural view of others are likely to lead them to a wholly different conclusion. In other words, assuming that because we think a character has Caucasian looking features doesn't mean the creator intended that or thinks that themselves.
Oh, you found that article too, huh? It's also bullshit in parts. Why do people think the Simpsons are white? Because they represent an average American family and they depict all other races on the show. They depict Asian (Indian and Chinese/Japanese/Korean), black, and Native American. However, I don't think I'd say they look like white people. In context they appear to be the white demographic since other races are depicted but the creators have claimed that they are white and the reason they chose yellow was because an animator showed yellow colored characters to him and Groening thought it would help them stand out when people were flipping through channels. I don't think people are honestly saying that Marge looks white. She doesn't. She doesn't look like any race I've ever seen.

If you read to the end of the article the author they go into why Anime is clearly influenced by Western culture and looks. So the last half of the article is him back peddling the first half's comments.

From a purely aesthetic appearance I would never have guessed that most of the Anime characters were Asian. Can you honestly look at a picture of many of those characters and tell me that they "look" Asian with either a distinct narrower eye or yellower/darker skin or any other commonly accepted allele expression of people from those regions (I personally don't know many Japanese people with darker or yellowish skin, the only Asian friends I have with yellow tinted skin are Chinese and my Pilipino friends have kinda yellow but mostly just darker tinted skin that has more of a reddish/brown hue to it) ?

Anime is so common to the Japanese culture that of course the Japanese will view them as Japanese. But I'd have to debate with you that given more empirical comparisons they would have more in common with the western appearance than Asian. The art is clearly influenced by Western culture and the characters are at best somewhere in between and most commonly more European in appearance than Japanese.

The fact that opinions differ to not alter the fact of it. WWII changed Japanese art forever to more strongly align with Western art and culture. Sorry.

The original author, Julian Abagond, makes the case that people are somehow making the claim because they want to show that Japanese "worship" whiteness. How fucking nuts is that? "Those characters look white...", "Quite saying I worship white people". Ridiculous.

I would be willing to accept the idea that anime characters might be "race-less" or "race-neutral" even though they still clearly depict other races with more robust stereotypes. Maybe anime characters are a combination of white and Asian too?

<youtube=Qus34ySIbyI>

I think the youtuber makes a good point. The problem here lies on the shoulders of the animators and not on the masses. You can draw a thing to look like a thing. If people think it looks like a different thing then that's your problem, not theirs.
 
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Gorrath said:
If 60-70% of your customer base is group X, then nearly 100% of your product is going to be aimed at group X. A much better way of attacking creative stagnation is to show that different creative paradigms can be commercially viable. The only way this can be done is through big companies taking risks or small companies making it big, I'll grant you that, but companies by their nature are risk averse creatures and rightfully so. You are right that the star power argument facilitates a continuation of the creative stagnation but one must also demonstrate that a break from that stagnation to be economically preferable. That's the hard part.

As to your analogy though, it's not a great one. You're conflating a macro situation(the whole economies of nations) with something micro (the ethics of individual hiring practices.) The ethics of "positive discrimination" are in no way comparable to macro-economic factors of nations because people aren't collectives and nations are.
I don't disagree with you here. Though it should be noted that what the higher up's in big companies think is economically viable isn't always what is. That's how movies like Deadpool can come out of nowhere and make a big splash, and how movies that they've sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into (Even those containing all the factors they believe will appeal to the majority demographic) can absolutely flop. One way to show different paradigms work is as you say, have something come out of nowhere and be a hit. Another is to have enough of a vocal support for a paradigm shift. Or through a combination of the two, to really drive it home.

The point of my analogy wasn't to say that these two scenarios are equal. It's not hypocritical for more white countries to donate food to black countries, as the reality is that the only distinguishing factors are not just that one group is majority white, while the other is majority black. There's also the fact that black countries overall hold a lot less wealth than white countries, and this is why you can argue that the situation isn't hypocritical, on average black countries need more food.

Same with casting roles, there are far fewer roles for black actors than there are for white actors. Casting one of the rare black characters as a white actor will make it more difficult for black actors than casting one of the common white characters as a black actor will for white actors. For a more micro comparison (Although of obviously different scale), taking food from a starving person and giving it to someone who's full isn't morally equivalent to the reverse. It's disingenuous to reduce the only relevant differences to the color of their skin.
 

SecondPrize

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For me, GiTS is the first animated movie and how the Major got where she is in it is pretty much left a mystery. As to whether they went with Scar-jo to appeal to a broad audience. Yes, of course they did. That is how it is done. You pick someone with star power and bank on the fact that they can draw the audience in. This has been what Hollywood does for a very long time and you can blame them if you want, but very few people would agree that a studio dropping tens or hundreds of millions on a flick should take shit for doing it how they think best.
 

JimB

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Angelblaze said:
I am very confused. Who said anything about the major being straight? Is there some news article you forgot to link, or something?
 

kris40k

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Lightknight said:
Yes, I'm talking about in the movie. We know nothing about it yet so the OP had no reason to complain about her orientation when said orientation could be anything or nothing at this point.
I agree; the OP is making an assumption based on the choice of actress and their own fear of mass-market appeal, and no real proof yet. While I get where they are coming from with their argument, I don't see enough reason to break out the pitchforks yet.

Also, has it been established in all storylines? Another poster stated that there have been multiple storylines and no real canon.
The adaptations of the original manga series have varied a bit. Saying "there is no canon" because the movies and animated series have varied a bit would be like saying Batman has no canon because the Nolan movies and Batman: TAS varied from the comics.

I strongly disagree that there is no canon to GitS. That's as polite as I can be with that discussion.

Yes, Motoko's orientation was established in the original manga, and also shown and matched in SAC and 2 Gig animated series.
 

Lightknight

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kris40k said:
Lightknight said:
Yes, I'm talking about in the movie. We know nothing about it yet so the OP had no reason to complain about her orientation when said orientation could be anything or nothing at this point.
I agree; the OP is making an assumption based on the choice of actress and their own fear of mass-market appeal, and no real proof yet. While I get where they are coming from with their argument, I don't see enough reason to break out the pitchforks yet.

Also, has it been established in all storylines? Another poster stated that there have been multiple storylines and no real canon.
The adaptations of the original manga series have varied a bit. Saying "there is no canon" because the movies and animated series have varied a bit would be like saying Batman has no canon because the Nolan movies and Batman: TAS varied from the comics.

I strongly disagree that there is no canon to GitS. That's as polite as I can be with that discussion.

Yes, Motoko's orientation was established in the original manga, and also shown and matched in SAC and 2 Gig animated series.
You using Batman just kind of proves the point since I think the same thing about Batman. When multiple storylines are accepted as legitimate then what is canon is out the door unless individual things are specifically designated as canon.

For example, consider the following two questions:

1. Is Batman's back broken in a way that impacts his mobility? Answer: Depends.

2. Is Batman a man? Answer: Yes.

Can you honestly say that the Major is pansexual or whatever in all iterations? I mean, I honestly don't know and seeing as I was married to a transman for about 6 years I really don't care (I mean, I don't have a horse in the race against her being bi or whatever).
 

kris40k

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Lightknight said:
Can you honestly say that the Major is pansexual or whatever in all iterations? I mean, I honestly don't know and seeing as I was married to a transman for about 6 years I really don't care.
Yes.

Bisexual. In all adaptations where the Major's sexuality has been established she is bisexual.
 

Lightknight

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kris40k said:
Lightknight said:
Can you honestly say that the Major is pansexual or whatever in all iterations? I mean, I honestly don't know and seeing as I was married to a transman for about 6 years I really don't care.
Yes.

Bisexual. In all adaptations where the Major's sexuality has been established she is bisexual.
Oh, ok. Then that leaves everything open for interpretation even if Scarlet is engaged in a heterosexual relationship. As long as she doesn't literally say, "Boobies, gross" then the integrity of the character's identity can be maintained.

Oh, and I meant I don't care as in I don't have a vested interest in her not being pansexual or bisexual or whatever. Not that I don't care about what you have to say. Sorry if that came across that way.
 

Gorrath

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Lightknight said:
Gorrath said:
They look closer to western people from the point of view of western people. To western people, Marge Simpson looks white because we identify the character as culturally white but I would be very interested to know if Asian people looking at Marge Simpson would think she looks white. What I can say is that I have heard that Asian people view anime characters as looking Asian. It's a view of artistic expression through the lens of our own culture, which isn't itself a problem so long as we understand that the cultural view of others are likely to lead them to a wholly different conclusion. In other words, assuming that because we think a character has Caucasian looking features doesn't mean the creator intended that or thinks that themselves.
Oh, you found that article too, huh?
Actually no, it's just something that popped into my head as an artistic representation of people that could be culturally/racially confusing. I tend to avoid Kotaku like the plague it is. I may have to make an exception here though.

It's also bullshit in parts. Why do people think the Simpsons are white? Because they represent an average American family and they depict all other races on the show. They depict Asian (Indian and Chinese/Japanese/Korean), black, and Native American. However, I don't think I'd say they look like white people. In context they appear to be the white demographic since other races are depicted but the creators have claimed that they are white and the reason they chose yellow was because an animator showed yellow colored characters to him and Groening thought it would help them stand out when people were flipping through channels. I don't think people are honestly saying that Marge looks white. She doesn't. She doesn't look like any race I've ever seen.
Right, she doesn't, but that was my point. She doesn't look white at all, we just perceive her as white because of the culture portrayed in the show. We see the Simpsons as white because they are portrayed culturally as being white Americans. That's precisely what I was saying about anime. The characters don't look like actual humans of any race any more than the Simpsons do. If you look at characters which are explicitly supposed to be American in anime, they can get pretty out there compared to the non-white, non-american characters, just like how the Simpsons don't look white but they don't look Asian either, especially in comparison to the characters in the show which are explicitly Asian.

If you read to the end of the article the author they go into why Anime is clearly influenced by Western culture and looks. So the last half of the article is him back peddling the first half's comments.

From a purely aesthetic appearance I would never have guessed that most of the Anime characters were Asian. Can you honestly look at a picture of many of those characters and tell me that they "look" Asian with either a distinct narrower eye or yellower/darker skin or any other commonly accepted allele expression of people from those regions (I personally don't know many Japanese people with darker or yellowish skin, the only Asian friends I have with yellow tinted skin are Chinese and my Pilipino friends have kinda yellow but mostly just darker tinted skin that has more of a reddish/brown hue to it) ?
I would never have guessed they were meant to be Japanese people either. Then again, if you showed me a picture of the Simpsons, sans any context, I'd also have no idea they were supposed to be white Americans. Cultural context in the shows is where we get our clues as to the artist's intention, not the aesthetic of the characters themselves, which was exactly the point I was making. In light of a totally alien looking character, we perceive their race based on culture, not aesthetics. You seem to agree with this based on what you said about the Simpsons.

Anime is so common to the Japanese culture that of course the Japanese will view them as Japanese. But I'd have to debate with you that given more empirical comparisons they would have more in common with the western appearance than Asian. The art is clearly influenced by Western culture and the characters are at best somewhere in between and most commonly more European in appearance than Japanese.
I think doing an empirical comparison is quite moot because we are talking about subjective interpretations of art. The eyes of anime characters don't look like what many western people might think of as Asian looking but to me, they sure don't look like Western people either. They are hugely exaggerated for effect. Even being affected, clearly and historically, by western art doesn't mean that people should or do think the characters in said art are of any specific race or ethnicity.

Take for example typical fantasy anime, where the characters look like they are wearing some kind of really elaborate but European inspired armor. Those suits of armor look nothing like historical Japanese armor but they also don't look anything like historical European armor either. They are a mix of European inspired fantasy with a really strong artistic bent.

The fact that opinions differ to not alter the fact of it. WWII changed Japanese art forever to more strongly align with Western art and culture. Sorry.
Agreed that opinions of how the characters look don't affect the history of the influences but I'm not sure why that matters. The fact of historical influence is also moot with regard to subjective views of what race a person might think a character resembles.

The original author, Julian Abagond, makes the case that people are somehow making the claim because they want to show that Japanese "worship" whiteness. How fucking nuts is that? "Those characters look white...", "Quite saying I worship white people". Ridiculous.

I would be willing to accept the idea that anime characters might be "race-less" or "race-neutral" even though they still clearly depict other races with more robust stereotypes. Maybe anime characters are a combination of white and Asian too?
That's a tough question because we'd be digging into an unknown state of the artist's mind, which is ripe ground for leading our own interpretations. I think it is fair to say that, often enough, non-Japanese characters in anime are made to look explicitly not like the Japanese characters in the show, though even this is not always the case. If someone were to see Ryu from Street Fighter without any context, I could easily see how a Japanese person might think he's Japanese and an American might think he's white. Throw Ken in there though and it starts to get a bit more clear. Throw Zangeif and Guile in there and we're talkin' turkey. On the other hand, throw Ryu up there along with E. Honda. Japanese person might say both Japanese, where as an American might say one's obviously Japanese and the other looks very much American in comparison. Obviously the artist intended Ryu to look Japanese and Ken to look American though.

I think it's fair to say that artists will have their own ideas about what makes a character look like a certain ethnicity and that it will vary from artist to artist, though we will also see some strong trends across a broad style like anime. The human characters in Gate may look more or less Japanese depending on the perception of the viewer but toss in the characters that are explicitly not Asian and you can see how the artist is differentiating between the two.

<youtube=Qus34ySIbyI>

I think the youtuber makes a good point. The problem here lies on the shoulders of the animators and not on the masses. You can draw a thing to look like a thing. If people think it looks like a different thing then that's your problem, not theirs.
Agreed totally! Though I'd say it's not even really a "problem" as such. Is it really a big deal if we think anime characters look white and Japanese people think they look Asian? I don't think it's a problem, I'd just caution against asserting that our interpretation of the character's looks is the correct interpretation. I sort of get the feeling you might have read more into my original statements than I actually meant.
 

RobertEHouse

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First you have to realize that Scarlett was really picked not for being sexy but because she is know in China. Second the rights for this movie were signed off to the studio meaning the original creator has no control over the story or character in this version. They will however will be getting a percentage from the profit of the movie and merchandise based off it. Third , because The big studios are targeting Asia , they will stay away from any LGBT as it is not accepted in a lot of those countries.

China also holds the largest purse strings more then the US and Europe combine , so the studio will make a single movie copy. This copy will get past the censor board in China and be passable to western audiences. Remember studios don't care about story elements or even character creation in movies; it all comes down to profit. A lot of this was covered in Variety and a few other sites , a few years back so it is happening in the industry.

So to answer your question, No... They will not directly hint at her sexuality, if they somehow do by chance it will not really be pushed or flushed out so they can delete it from the Asia region copy.