(Hated)changing somenthing to be more "progressive" ends up being a bad thing

[u/Morr4Seiya]

Now to be clear,i am not one of these "anti-woke" losers that complain some people exist,and i am also not the type to complain about changing somenthing in a new version or adaptation,however there are cases where it did ended up being a bad idea.

-In the anime of Cowboy Bebop there is the character Gren,despite being short lived the character is very memorable specially thanks to his tragic story.Basically his story was that he was a soldier from the titan war who was a great friend with Vicious(the main bad guy)after the war he was emprisioned thanks to Vicious who testified against him and he was forced to take a experimental drug that caused him hormonal problems,giving him a feminine appearence and even breasts.

In the Netflix live action,for some reasons they decided Gren was going to be non-binary,which wouldn't be a problem(some people believe he was gay in the anime)if it wasn't for the fact that they also removed all the nuances and complexities that made the character memorable and interesting,instead of a tragic war veteran that was betrayed and had his body changed against his will,Gren is just kinda there.

-The original Rugrats cartoon had the couple Betty and Howard,Betty was a big and masculine woman while Howard was a smaller and nervous man,it was a genuine interesting relationship that stood out from the other couples who were the standard straight couple.

In the new series however they replaced Howard with a woman named Trish,two things,first off why?What was the problem with having a woman being the stronger in a straight relationship?Second why does Hollywood seem to think that every tomboy or masculine woman is a lesbian?

Overall not the worst thing but it is jarring that they had a gender reverse roled that was progressive and decided that wasn't enough.

-Oh man,this one pisses me off the most so i am gonna have to break it down

So back in the late 80s and 90s there was this anime called Saint Seiya also knows as Knights of the zodiac,it tells the story of knights who fight for the Goddess Athena to protect earth,being divided in the golden,silver and bronze knights,the anime was a huge hit in latin america and Europe and while it floped in the US it still has a loyal fanbase.

Being a fan myself i can't recommend it enough,now granted the story does have a fair share of flaws,and that's because the author was honestly just making stuff up as he went along(also a lot of side characters are poorly used or even forgotten about)still it is a great story you should check out

But then a couple of years back Netflix got the rights and decided to a 3D reboot,in this reboot they decided to make the story more "american" to try to bring more american viewers,now i could go on and on a big rant about how that was a bad idea and the execution was so terrible that it made me want to strangle someone but this post is about one specific change.

So Saint Seiya has five main characters,those are Pegasus Seiya,Dragon Shiryu,Cygnus Hyoga,Phoenix Ikki and finally Andromeda Shun.

While the other four characters were the standard masculine and brute male characters who were always ready to throw punches,Shun was smaller,more sensitive and even feminine looking,a pacifist who didn't liked fighting,but don't mistake that for weakness because Shun was loyal to his friends and was extremely powerful.

Then Netflix decided to change Shun into a girl named Shaun.

So wait,you have a male character who goes against every male stereotype and you turn him into just another generic female character?

When asked about it,the showrunner Eugene Son said he made that change because there was no girl in the group and having a all boys group wouldn't be acceptable nowadays

First off that's not true because Athena was also part of the main cast,yeah she wasn't the fighting type but she still helped quite a lot in the story even saving the knights on several occasions,second if you wanted to add a girl to the main group why not use Marin or Shaina?Hell,if you were going to change the story anyway why not turn Seiya sister into a knight?

Thankfully this monstrosity was cancelled(so much for trying to bring more fans)

[u/Silent_Biscotti_9832]

Severus Snape being black in the new Harry Potter tv show

Could have been anyone else. But they had to choose the guy who got hung from a tree, and was bullied by James, Peter, Sirius and Remus in the 1950s ish

[u/Go_Water_your_plants → u/Silent_Biscotti_9832]

I will Die on that hill: they should have made dumbledore black.

They could have leaned into it and he could have been absolutely dripped out in colourful (wizard version of) traditional African robes (I’m aware africa is not a country but multiple countries in Africa have cool traditional clothings so I don’t want to exclude possibilities just because im personally more familiar with the Nigerian drip)

Like fuck it, give him the accent too! How much better of a representation would it be if the most powerful wizard in the franchise was African

[u/Iamabrawler → u/Go_Water_your_plants]

Would you really trust Rowling to do that and not give him a stupid or problematic name à la Cho Chang?

Seriously, the other most powerful Black wizard in the series is named Kingsley Shacklebolt.

[u/Extreme_Mall4756 → u/Iamabrawler]

What is the problem? I’m asking seriously; English isn’t my mother tongue—or my father tongue.

[u/CJCroen1393 → u/Extreme_Mall4756]

"Shacklebolt" has connotations of slavery.

[u/laurel_laureate → u/Iamabrawler]

Ugh... not the Cho Chang nonsense again.

Fun fact-

Cho Chang is a completely normal Asian name.

Chang is the Anglicized version of the Chinese surname Zhang and it is how Zhang is spelled in Taiwan.

Zhang/Chang is the third most common surname in China.

Hong Kong also sometime uses this spelling of Chang, and as it so happens Hong Kong was under the 100 Year Lease to the UK until 1997.

When that lease was up irl, some 50k Chinese immigrated to UK.

So Cho's family could very easily be a magical family that emigrated from Magical China to Magical Britain or they could be from Taiwan.

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As for her first name Cho, Chinese first names are much less standardized than elsewhere and, as long as it isn't their surname or the name of a family member, the parents have a lot of freedom of what to choose.

No Chinese reading of the name Cho was given in the series, but there are tons of names that could read that way.

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And iirc nothing in the series even states that Cho Chang is fully Chinese- she could be of mixed race.

In Japanese, "Chou" means butterfly and is a more traditional traditional feminine first name.

Which could even match well with Chang, because among several things Chang can mean "to draw a bow/to open or spread", and other surnames also pronounced Zhang/Chang can mean "brilliant".

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It's also worth noting that the whole reason people think Cho Chang's name is racist is because if the racist "ching chong" insult.

But that is very much an American thing, that iirc started in San Francisco when lots of Chinese immigrants started coming over.

The UK does not really have the same association with "ching chong" and, as explained above, it's an actual irl name.

And it wouldn't even be a problem if it wasn't an irl real name!

After all, this is the series with obviously not irl real names like Severus Snape and Luna Lovegood and Albus Dumbledore and Bellatrix LeStrange.

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So, in this case JK wasn't being racist.

The ignorant ones, that are sometimes not-quite-racist, are those that spread the whole "Cho Chang is a racist name" misinformation.