You might think that casting Scarlett Johansson in an adaptation of manga novel, Ghost in the Shell, marks a new trend of Hollywood pillaging Japanese comics. But there's been a longer history of big-screen adaptations of Japan's graphic novels than you might think.

Everything from Spike Lee's 2013 drama Oldboy, 2014's Edge of Tomorrow, to 1994's The Lion King have grown out of manga. There was even a Hollywood interpretation of Princess Mononoke in 1997 (before the Studio Ghibli version) which starred Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton and Claire Danes.

But what makes them so appealing as source materials? GQ asked two academics, two superfans and an anime illustrator to explain.

Why has Scarlett Johansson been chosen to play Ghost in the Shell lead, Motoko Kusanagi?

Steven Spielberg has owned film rights to Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell since 2009, but the first reports of Johansson's $10m casting in Rupert Sanders's Warner Bros adaptation came to light earlier this month. Spielberg's previous attempts to create a 3D movie failed to make it to the production stage, and it is thought that Johansson's backing will help the project finally get the green light.

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Scarlett Johansson will play cyborg detective Major Motoko Kusanagi, the team leader of a futuristic Japanese counterterrorism organisation focused on cyber-crime. But the resounding feeling is that she wasn't an obvious choice - until she played Lucy. Manga expert and The Anime Encyclopaedia author, Helen McCarthy says: "Johansson was stunning in Lucy. She was so violent - even more so than in The Avengers - she really had that nailed, that lack of control that goes beneath the surface."

Nova Zatzman, producer of The Akira Project, a crowdfunded fan group formed to create a live action trailer for the classic Eighties manga, Akira, hopes that Johansson's experience in Marvel's The Avengers will encourage her to stay true to the original Motoko's spirit. She says: "I think she's getting used to that level of fan expectation. She knows the pressures that are involved."

Why is manga, like Ghost in the Shell, appearing in Hollywood?

Zatzman, who works as a film stunt double (she appeared in the recent RoboCop remake), says, "In part, it is because the film already has a large fan-base in north America, but it's also because there is so much source material for filmmakers to pull from." "Not only is Ghost in the Shell already a serial anime film but a TV show, and manga too," she says.

Japan's post-World War Two history has shaped the format and given it a global appeal. Bayo Akinsiku, who has worked as an anime illustrator in the UK for over 25 years, says: "Manga asks what it means to be Japanese after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It asks what it means to be a human being in a post-apocalyptic age."

Akira, for example, is exciting precisely because it contradicts the typical American triumph-over-adversity storyline, says Akinsiku. "Japanese manga can be very robust, very violent. We can't ask the same questions the Japanese are asking because we haven't gone through the same apocalypse - it is cathartic, an attempt to heal a bloody wound."

Where does manga exist in Hollywood already?

Although some elements of manga are distinctly different from Western films, cultural exchange means that in some ways it is also more familiar than you might think, says Akinsiku. Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, the first manga series to ever be adapted into animation, is heavily influenced by Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, he says. "Even the haircut that everyone in manga seems to have comes from Mickey Mouse's two ears. In an ironic way, manga is Disney on speed. That's why when you see something like The Lion King it reminds you of the manga [Osamu Tezuka's Kimba The White], but that anime is far weirder."

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Similarly, Disney's Frozen, widely acknowledged to be based on Hans Christian Anderson's The Snow Queen, has been linked to Japanese graphic novel Saint Seiya in style, says Casey Brienza, a lecturer in publishing at City University and a manga specialist. "No one was working in a vacuum; the artist who drew Ghost in the Shell was heavily influenced by Star Wars and the walking robots in The Empire Strikes Back," says Brienza.

"There is definitely a lot of exchange in both directions.

or The Matrix", says Brienza. "The scene in the very beginning of The Matrix, where Trinity, the female character, leaps and she's frozen in mid-air and the image pans around her in a circle - that's right out of anime."

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There have also been a number of straight adaptations.

Although Speed Racer, which stars Christina Ricci, was a box office flop, it also had its fans. "I loved Speed Racer - it almost had no higher value than it was so cool and so much fun," says McCarthy. David Bower's 2009 interpretation of Astro Boy was also an accomplished adaptation, she says. "It did take Astro Boy a long way from his roots, but it did it in a way that kept the core of the story. It speaks about

Astro Boy's core values: fairness, a lack of discrimination, not letting people pick on you, and not siding with people who pick on others."

Edge of Tomorrow, which was also marketed under its original title All You Need Is Kill, and its tagline "Live, Die, Repeat", is arguably the first Hollywood manga adaptation starring a big lead - Tom Cruise - to please fans across the world. It grossed over $100m in the US, and $369m worldwide. This doesn't make it a massive hit, but it certainly wasn't the flop that some critics branded it after its poor opening weekend.

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"The film was compelling and stayed very close to the original story, and the way the director used practical effects [rather than CGI] was really credible," says Nguyen-Anh Nguyen, director of The Akira Project. "You really feel like you're in that world, where warriors are jumping down on you from aeroplanes."

The failings of Hollywood

One way that Hollywood has failed is that it often infantilizes manga's complex subject matter, says Nguyen. "Everybody refers to *Dragon Ball * as the worst way to adapt a Japanese animation to live action. I hope that as these new films come out directors will take manga more seriously, and realise that it's not just for children."

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Other films simply become so "Americanised" that they lose the Japanese spirit that made them what they were, says McCarthy. Pacific Rim (2013) was billed as the American take on the Kaiju movie but failed to deliver a Japanese message, she says. "The purpose of the monster movie, of Godzilla or Gomora, is not to teach us how to defeat the monsters. It is to teach us how to lose and to grow through losing to accept that we are more monstrous than any monster."

The overarching problem for many fans also seems to be an over-concentration on the teen male market. "It's sad that so far the only graphic novels to be turned into live action movies are those in the predominantly teen, predominantly male market," says McCarthy. "Japan never wiped out its female comic audience the way Britain and America did." "Everything Hollywood has been doing in terms of Japanese comics has been action related, and of course Japanese comics can be anything, they can be just slice of life stories," says Brienza.

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What does the future of manga look like for Hollywood?

Brienza says that, increasingly, Hollywood doesn't develop its own story-lines. "Movie producers are always looking for stories that have been market-tested in a different medium." Given that 40 per cent of all books published in Japan are comics (manga also dominates almost 80 per cent of Japan's digital book market), the pool of source material is also ever-growing.

After numerous adaptations of the Marvel graphic novel collection, Nguyen predicts a change in direction. "Right now it's the heroes of the Marvel universe that are exploding but people are starting to see the untapped potential of manga. I think that the next wave of films to come out will be a wave of manga from Japanese or Korean comic books. Stylistically filmmakers are already leaning towards that."

With this, Nguyen also hopes to see more Asian actors on screen. "That is a touchy subject for everybody," he says, "but as things evolve there will be more chances to see adaptations that are more truthful to the original texts."

For now, and with Ghost in the Shell, a simple acknowledgement of the appropriation would go a long way, says Zatzman. "I'd just like to see a reflection back to the original series, a throw back to Japan. If they can do a nod like that, that would be cool."

Find out what 10 manga stories we'd like to see adapted for cinema

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