The fact that the movie is largely about "what's on the inside" makes it a really poor target for anger about the actors' heritage.
I get the "what's on the inside" idea - it could be irrelevant. But there are also reasons why it does matter. She's specifically using a generic-looking body to not stand out and the setting is Japan. Americans do stand out from a crowd in Japan. (although in the anime nobody else seemed to use the same model...)
* It's fine that Hugo Weaving used prosthetic eyelids to look asian, the movie is about reincarnation across different ethnicities
* Emma Stone can play a half-asian half-white character since the character is half-white anyways.
* Ang and the other 3/4 principals can be white in The Last Airbender, since...???
* Mickey Rooney was being funny in Breakfast at Tiffany's, don't take it so seriously
Imagine being an asian-american actor and losing a role for Motoko Kusanagi to a caucasian actor, when the industry already has a long history of preferentially casting caucasian actors in at least the past 20-30 years, and before that basically always hired caucasian actors to play other ethnicities, not always very respectfully.
Kusangi has the ghost of a Japanese woman even if the shell she has is a mass manufactured generic. I'd prefer Motoko to be a Japanese woman because that is just more interesting.
It's disgusting and incredibly disrespectful. I don't know how they can continue to make these insane casting choices.
Why bother even pretending its set in Japan if the characters all seem to want to distance themselves from even the appearance of being Japanese?