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I've never read Katsuhiro Ôtomo’s Akira manga, and the last time I saw the anime adaptation of it—which Ôtomo directed—I was in high school. (The only things I remember about it are that the motorcycles looked badass, it ended with some kind of mutated thing and a nuclear explosion [possibly a mutated thing turning into a nuclear explosion?], and that I understood none of it.) Akira's been rumored to be getting an American remake for a while now, with—unsurprisingly—the action being moved from Japan to New York, and the cast being chock full of white dudes. The current casting shortlist reads like a who's who of actors my girlfriend has crushes on. Via Deadline:

The picture is finally taking shape for an August start, following the delivery of a rewrite by Steve Kloves that has director Albert Hughes and the studio brass excited. The story takes place in the rebuilt New Manhattan where a leader of a biker gang saves his friend from a medical experiment. There are two major roles, and I'm told that for Tetsuo, Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield and James McAvoy have been given the new script. For the role of Kaneda, the script has been given to Garrett Hedlund, Michael Fassbender, Chris Pine, Justin Timberlake and Joaquin Phoenix.

(Okay, FINE, even I kind of have a crush on Andrew Garfield. WHO DOESN'T, I ASK.)

You know who does remember/understand Akira, though? Local podcaster (and occasional Mercury freelancer) Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts, who's posted some thoughts about the remake over on his blog. He's got some pretty good points.

There’s no way to adapt this story without bumping up against some serious problems. Ôtomo himself didn’t do it all that well. But there’s two decades' worth of time with the material, of familiarity with the text, of audiences steeping in the imagery and the aesthetic. In fact, while the comics industry continues to suffer shrinking audiences and a general inability to crack any market other than the stranglehold it has on arrested adolescents from the mid-'90s, manga and anime are enjoying ridiculous success. Trying to tackle Akira in 2011 would be hard, but it’d be a hell of lot easier than the late '80s had it.

Of all the problems I anticipated, I never thought whitewashing the fucking cast would be one of them.

I didn’t think taking Japan out of the story entirely would be another.

And yet Akira, a story that depends very much on Japanese history, on understanding the effects of being the only country to have nuclear weapons dropped on them, will be set in New York.

The whole thing's worth a read—especially since groups like Racebending, the community that voiced their justified anger when M. Night Shyamalan made The Last Airbender with a bunch of white kids—are already making their concerns known about the film. Read Bobby's piece here.