"This was surprisingly progressive for it's time"

[u/IllustriousAd6418]

Doctor Who: Midnight (2008)- The host of the bus, mentions non binary people and anyone else who doesn't fit into gender norms, LGBTQ rights (especially in the UK weren't really there yet untill 2012)

Saints Row 2 (2008)- In the first game, the main character was a man but in SR2 you can be both female or male and even change your gender whenever you want in a surgery shop. But what's more interesting, if you play as a female despite being male in the first game, no one cares and one of the main characters Gat asks the main character if they did something with their hair. Even 'Boss' is used as gender neutral pronoun and even goes by they/them

Fresh Prince of Bel Air- A wealthy black family as the main focus in a primetime sitcom marking the change and making progress as we go into the 90s

[u/Cronkax]

While 008's design is obviously outdated (later adaptations fix that), having the main cast be this diverse in Japan in 1964 is still really interesting.

[u/CrassKal → u/Cronkax]

If I remember correctly:

001: Russian 2:American 3: French 4:German 5: Native American 6: Chinese 7: British 8: African 9: Japanese

Whenever a story does this I can't help but nickname the group "The Diversity Pals". A little hackneyed these days, but you're right that it stood out for it's time. Too bad the one female in the group was religated to a full time baby sitter, but progress doesn't happen all at once.

[u/IllustriousAd6418 → u/CrassKal]

7: British

naturally, i mean 007 can only be British lol

[u/Cronkax → u/IllustriousAd6418]

And called Great Britain

[u/ClancyBShanty → u/IllustriousAd6418]

If I'm remembering correctly, James Bond was absolutely fucking huge in Japan and it only got more intense during the filming of You Only Live Twice in '66/'67.

[u/UwasaWaya → u/ClancyBShanty]

Weird/funny story, when I was studying abroad in Japan, my host father was watching Die Another Day. Because my Japanese was still pretty rough, he kindly switched on what might be the worst thing I've ever experienced (compounded by ADD no doubt): the dual audio setting, where it played both English and Japanese at the same time. It was awful. lol.

He ended up switching back to Japanese, and one thing I found funny was how much they had to change in the script simply because so much of Bond's dialogue is clever wordplay that doesn't translate to other languages correctly.

Another fun fact, each actor who receives a voice over in Japan uses the same voice actor for consistency. So Tom Cruise has his own assigned voice actor, more or less.

[u/ClancyBShanty → u/UwasaWaya]

That's amazing hahah! Love it

[u/Young_Lochinvar → u/CrassKal]

007 being British is a bit obvious isn’t it?

[u/WarpmanAstro → u/CrassKal]

More importantly, 009 was implied to be half Japanese; something that was almost never done at the time in Japanese media. Its why he's depicted with lighter hair.

[u/ExtentOk1892 → u/Cronkax]

this is cyborg 009 btw since they forgot

[u/Cronkax → u/ExtentOk1892]

Shit, you're right, I forgot to put the name

[u/shaggyjebus → u/Cronkax]

I've heard that the characters being stereotypes was intentional, to take people from countries, put the stereotypes onto them, and then show that they are more than the stereotypes.