THE DYSTOPIAN CITY’S HUMANS SPEAK PARED-DOWN JAPANESE.

Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post’s chief film critic, is among the reviewers who note Anderson’s obvious passion for many Japanese art forms — from film (such directors as Kurosawa, Ozu and Miyazaki) to theatre to architecture — while also pointing out the effect of this precious cherry-picking. She writes: “The spectre of cultural appropriation haunts a production that clearly revels in the design elements and mood-board inspirations of Japanese technology and art.”

Chang allows that this fastidious curatorial preciousness marks every Anderson film. (Co-production designers Adam Stockhausen and Paul Harrod told Entertainment Weekly that this “film’s aesthetic is the 1963 vision of a futuristic Japan, drawing from the urban architecture, advertising, and graphic design of 1960s Japan as well as old Japanese woodblock prints and tapestries.”)

Chang also anticipates that some readers will let the film off the hook by reminding that Isle of Dogs is not set in a Japanese reality but rather in a stop-motion fantasy of “Wes Anderson Land.” And Variety notes that “while the film pays homage to Japanese art and culture, the designers allowed themselves some latitude to convey Anderson’s vision.”

Yet Slant’s Steve MacFarlane asks “why Anderson had to set this fairy tale in the real-life country of Japan. Using feudal history ... and remixed anime tropes (the characters appear hand-drawn on TV screens and faux woodcuts), the film yields only aesthetic answers: The images may be rich, but their context is shallow.”

One of Anderson’s key collaborators on the film was Kunichi Nomura, who, in a fitting bit of symmetry, made his screen debut in Lost in Translation. Nomura’s role grew much larger here: Not only does he voice the city’s evil, cat-loving mayor, but he helped conceive the film and served, he told CBC Radio, as an expert when it came to cultural authenticity and accuracy, from design aspects to language translations.

Yet Nomura’s acting role — among a starry voice cast that includes not only Murray, Johansson and Gerwig but also Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Jeff Goldblum and Liev Schreiber — spotlights another criticism raised by some reviewers: A film that plumbs Asian culture features so few actors of Asian descent.

In that regard, Isle of Dogs has perhaps no more similar peer recently than Laika’s stop-motion Kubo and the Two Strings. Its director, Travis Knight, told The Washington Post that he has long deeply appreciated Japanese art and culture.

Yet much like Anderson, Knight chose to cast white Hollywood stars in most of his animated film’s featured roles, including Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron, Ralph Fiennes and Rooney Mara. That sparked yet another round of debate over whitewashing, which in recent years has included films starring Johansson (Ghost in the Shell) and her Isle of Dogs castmate Tilda Swinton (Doctor Strange).

In terms of casting, Isle of Dogs and Kubo stand in marked contrast to the more recent pivot by Disney to hire voice casts predominantly of colour for such culturally specific films as Moana and Pixar’s Oscar-winning Coco.

As more American film critics call out cultural appropriation, insensitivity and whitewashing, even animated Hollywood movies will surely see a continued increase in diverse casting.