You know something odd is going on when people offer personal experiences of whitewashing and racism, yet the collective response is, "my pet theory about anime/manga is more real than your 'fake' life story."

• you have Japanese-American actresses telling true stories from everyday experience of how whitewashing harms their careers and affects their personal lives;

• you have George Takei -- Japanese-American luminary of sci-fi TV and cinema whose family was imprisoned in the American internment camps of World War II -- personally tracing a direct lineage of pop-culture racism to present-day Hollywood;

• you have the voices of thousands, both Asian and non-Asian, telling us that whitewashing is wrong and harmful to not only Asian-Americans, but all non-white Americans and thereby the diversity of American and global culture;

Yet we still have a small, loud group here acting like amateur politicians, using meaningless dog-whistle phrases like "don't 'politicise' Ghost in the Shell by talking about whitewashing", or framing the experiences of real people as "fake controversy".

Now we have blog posts spreading disinformation -- false data masquerading as real facts.  
 

Debunking the new disinformation about 'fake controversy' surrounding Ghost in the Shell

Here's a seven-point guide to the new game of disinformation, how to spot it, and answers for each false talking point:

...1. Ghost in the Shell is based on the original anime and manga series. This is also known as the "source material" for Ghost in the Shell. Focusing exclusively on the anime film makes no sense when there are several homages and references to other material throughout the 2017 film.

...2. The anime begins by outright stating that ethnicity still matters in the future:

In the near future - corporate networks reach out to the stars, electrons and light flow throughout the universe.

The advance of computerisation, however, has not yet wiped out nations and ethnic groups.

It makes no sense to say that this somehow means "nation states and distinct ethnic groups had began to fade away." The passage directly states the opposite, and those are the first words of the film.

To put it another way: "although networks have connected us all, nations and ethnic groups are still important enough to form the setting of this story. So important that I'll print it onscreen for you to read before the film begins." And of course that's true -- the 1996 anime is a tale of international political intrigue. Ghost in the Shell's plot is literally based on issues of nationality and ethnicity, as the backdrop for the larger questions of transhumanist philosophy. Ethnicity and nationality aren't fading to the margins -- they're front-and-center from the first frame of the anime.

...3. The Japanese government does not name cities in English -- and neither did Masamune Shirow or Mamoru Oshii. At least, neither have made that claim, so there's no reason to believe it.

The setting for Ghost in the Shell is "新浜市". On the chance that you don't read Japanese, 新浜市 means "Niihama-shi", translated as "New Port City". This is not an English name -- in fact, there is a real 新居浜市 "Niihama City" and Prefecture in modern-day Japan.

...4. The apparent "white" features of characters in the 1996 anime have nothing to do with their ethnicity or how they would appear in real-life. Otherwise, the vast majority of Japanese anime characters would secretly be portrayals of white people in Japan, which makes no sense at all.

Anime is made by, for and about Japanese people. Hence, the characters are Japanese unless otherwise stated. It's not at all hard to comprehend.

...5. Would Japanese people want to take on the bodies of white people in the future? Who knows. The only way to know would be to take a poll of real people across Japan, not to guess based on the fact that many Asian women undergo double-eyelid surgery.

Here's an analogy to make this clearer: Does the average woman who gets breast implants secretly wish to look like a sex doll? Many women see larger breasts as more attractive -- that doesn't mean that most women secretly desire to transform into a man's sex toy or fully embody anyone's masturbatory fantasies.

...6. The 1996 anime wasn't whitewashing. It is a Japanese story created in Japan, by Japanese people, for Japanese people. There is no such thing as whitewashing in Japan, because Japan's population is 98.5% Japanese. Whitewashing is a problem when white actors consistently take roles that could be played by non-white actors in diverse countries like the United States. In the case of GitS2017, it's a Hollywood problem. Tokyo is on the opposite side of the planet -- Japanese people (including Masamune Shirow and Mamoru Oshii) have no reason to know or care about whitewashing in Hollywood films.

...7. Japan is a world leader in robotic technology. There is no reason why Japan would prefer to import European-looking cybernetic bodies rather than build Japanese versions. In fact, cybernetic and robotic bodies are already being built -- and they look like Japanese men and women, not white people.

It's perfectly fine to enjoy Ghost in the Shell, without trying to beat the same old dead horse back to life by pretending that racism and whitewashing don't exist.