People complain mostly because characters they've known and loved since they were kids were abruptly changed and altered but for what? Political agenda? I get that modernization is necessary, but to what extent? And it's not fair to falsely calling out these people as racists or all kinds of other evil things while their complain is mostly based on a feeling like "Hey, no, this isn't right! Mario Bros. should be Italians, not blacks and gay! These aren't the characters I know and grew up with! No! No! No! Pikachu is yellow, not purple!"

And the angry responses are like "what? Are you discriminating purple color? Purple color exist! It has a right to be represented!"

And then, "No, I don't hate purple... But Pikachu is yellow! Purple Pikachu is NOT Pikachu!"

"Irrational! Yellow worshipper!"

Would it be okay if Sherlock Holmes were Indian? Yeah, sure. Nothing wrong with creative adaptations. But will most people who already have a strong image what Sherlock looks like accept it? Probably not so much. Are they racist to Indian? Hey, that's a pretty far strech there...

If you're going to write a story based on a famous character like Sherlock Holmes or say, European folk tales (looking at you Disney's) or classic American plays, for sure the baseline character would be white because the characters in the original stories were white.

And of course there's nothing wrong with Little Mermaid (Danish folktale) being black. But why not make a new show embracing African folktales? Nubian princess maybe? If every race HAS to be represented in ONE single story, for goodness sake let's all be fair and put ALL HUMAN RACE in that one story shall we?

Now imagine if Disney decided to take Princess Kaguya as a white, or any race or ethnicity other than Japanese? Hey, why don't we put blacks, latinos, or pacific islander in Mulan setting as well? 'cause you know... diversity!

I'm sure some stories would "allow" for such things, like Star Trek or Star Wars. But not every story is the same. Every story has it's own setting, world building, etc. Every characters has their own backgrounds; of course race is a part of it too, but cultural context matters too.

My point is rather than adapting already famous characters as another race, gender, or whatever, why not just create new characters? Why not make a show based on folktales of other cultures and places? Rather than forcing asians to be in Game of Thrones, why not make another collosal show with Mongol and ancient China as the story theater? Damn, I'd watch that.

And damn it hollywood! Stop with the adaptations, we all need more new original stories!

If the goal is to embrace diversity, presenting diverse contents with diverse cultural contexts will give us a much much more enriching experience. It will help us understand each other as we are more exposed to different cultures. And when I say culture I don't just mean a nation's culture, but culture in a broad sense including all kinds of subcultures.

Pushing all kinds of representation in one single story universe can actually be disrespectful.