Forum - View topicThings I hope never get Americanized.
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Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2796 |
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There have been people who've asked me are there things that I don't want to see an American version of done. Well,yes,there are. Unlike stuff like "Cyborg 009,""Sailor Moon" or others like that that could be either easily adapted to an American audience or done so with some work,these three shows I hope never get an American version,either because they're extremely bad,extremely violent,or are in some way that would make such an adaption extremely impossible. And now,without further ado,here they are.
The first one of these shows should also be the most obvious. It's called "Apocalypse Zero" and to be quite honest,it's one of the worst reviewed properties I've ever heard of. For those unfamiliar with it,I'll try to explain it to you. It's about a guy in a suit of armor who has to fight a bunch of mutants that have taken over a post-apocalyptic Tokyo. These mutants attack teenagers who try to go to school even though their city has been totally destroyed. Why am I hoping this doesn't get an American version? Well,I once read a review of the OVA version on "Anime Jump" when it was still active and it has a pretty gory description of one mutant encounter with a teenage couple. Basically,the mutant grabs the girl and proceeds to basically squish her into oblivion. She then goes after the boy and eats him. Believe me,the beginning of the review was a little more graphic than the description I gave. Do we really need an American version of this? I don't think so. The world doesn't need to see a destroyed San Francisco,Los Angeles,Seattle,New York,or Washington D.C. covered with mutants attacking teens. Both the manga and anime versions of this got horrible reviews for their gut-churning violence. I hope no one gets the insane idea to do this either in a live-action or animated format or even as a comic book. The reactions to it would be the same as the Japanese version got. I hope an American version of "Apocalypse Zero" never comes to pass. It's too gory and violent to even consider and it seems a little unnecessary not to mention controversial. And altogether needless. The second thing is "Battle Royale." This was controversial even in Japan,which should be a red flag for anyone considering doing this. The original novel which spawned a live-action film and manga series basically had a group of teens taken to an island and forced to fight each other to win some horrific game. This may have been one of the inspirations for "The Hunger Games" but I hope that this one doesn't get an American remake. With the recent spate of shootings we've have recently,I don't think it's a good idea. Hollywood tried once before in 2008 and those plans were cancelled by the shootings at Virginia Tech. And it's a good thing too. It seems more than a little needless. Hollywood makes violent movies all on it's own. It doesn't need to be remaking other violent stuff from overseas. There's already enough controversy about violence in films. An American version of "Battle Royale" would add nothing to it. It would be one more violent film that didn't need to be made. The third one would come as a surprise to many of you because some may think it's needed. I don't. It's called "Thermae Romae,"the recently released manga series already out. It's about a Roman bath engineer that falls through a time vortex and ends up in modern day Japan. He then learns new ways about public bathing and then returns to implement them in his time. I can't see how an American version of this would work. We don't really do public bathing here in the U.S. and remaking the Japanese movie version would make no sense. I can't see the Roman engineer falling from ancient Rome to modern day America. It might work with stuff like "Just Visiting" but not here. Both audiences and movie critics would have a hard time sitting through this one. In many ways,"Thermae Romae" wouldn't work in a Hollywood remake. It's just too incompatible with American life to do effectively. Some might see it because then there'd be more Caucasians and just about all of Rome is Caucasian. But,just because the American version would have more white people in there,doesn't mean it should be done. It's simply impossible to do in an American context and it simply wouldn't work. Well,those are my things that I hope don't get a U.S. version. What are yours? I'd love to know so please tell me. [EDIT: Changed the title to make it less long-winded and fixed the paragraph formatting. -TK] Last edited by Snomaster1 on Tue Jun 04, 2013 4:56 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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EricJ
 Posts: 876 |
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(Oh, darn, I forgot to label MY last few thread headers as "(Anime-related: )" too...
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4609 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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You're blogging again, sno.
Ask questions that can be answered and responses may be given. |
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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First off, the thread header is a reference to the forum this was posted in. Remember that Snomaster is under moderation, which means his posts have to go through an approval process. The thread header tells the mod where the thread is supposed to go, the mod simply forgot to remove it. So way to attack Snomaster for something he didn't even do. Now how about you contribute to the post in the future instead of trolling it, yes? Believe it or not you can actually not post if you aren't interested. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator  Posts: 11296 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Actually this is a little different from his norm. Instead of going pro-Americanization, he's simply stating what he doesn't want to see localized for North American, or maybe even western, audiences in general. And there have been plenty of threads expressing this notion (what you would like / dislike to see made), only this seems to have more of a cultural implication behind the theory. It's a completely legitimate topic that gives his reasoned opinions and basically asks the question, "what do you not want to see turn into the next Dragon Ball Evolution?" And I think this, a) is way better than some of the crap-posts I've been seeing in Talkback because it's not just a rant or insult; b) has a good amount of thought and effort put into it, unlike most people's one-liners and over-quoted messes; and c) is a step in the right direction for Snow in regards to how he used to be. Just give it a chance. Can anybody think of anything else that's so overtly Japanese that it probably wouldn't work as an American version? And remember, no one-liners or listing; put reasons. EDIT: Substituted a single word. Last edited by Tony K. on Sat Feb 02, 2013 10:14 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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getchman
Space Cowboy Posts: 9120 Location: Bedford, NH |
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as in, it would be pretty much impossible to properly adapt a script into English without loosing everything in translation? something like that?
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3652 |
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On the one hand, who am I to say "don't make something"? I can always just not watch it.
On the other, I'm always wary of poorly-thought-out attempts to capitalize on things by moving them to a different media, creating a miserable failure that makes it impossible for actually worthwhile adaptations to be sold to the folks with money. Still, almost everything made in Japan shouldn't get Americanized, and no one even considers doing so, so I'm not sure what I would put in this discussion. Are we talking about projects that are being considered or attempted now? While a direct adaptation of a bathhouse show may not work, tying it to something more culturally relevant to Americans is something that could be, and indeed has been, done. |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11296 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Not necessarily a script, but a concept in terms of cultural acceptance or interpretation. And it can be anything currently considered, or just hypothetically.
Like, initially, I would've said mecha wouldn't translate well, but Michael Bay proved that wrong, at least from a technical standpoint. Sure, the stories aren't all that great (especially the 2nd movie), but I never thought I'd see such a sleekly-produced live-action movie with giant robots beating the crap out of each other look so good. And then you've got Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim coming out this summer, which will probably add on to that trend of success. But how would Gundam ever work? Would it lose a lot of the political and military undertones if they just made it another CG-robot slugfest like Transformers? I find most Gundam shows to have a decent to large chunk of those qualities in the storytelling, but if Hollywood tried to make a movie or few out of that concept, would it be able to meet expectations? Probably not, unless you get really good writers to work on it. Hm.. and then you have samurai movies, but The Magnificent Seven apparently was a pretty good adaptation for the iconic movie it's referring to. Although, I've only ever seen Samurai Seven, but not the latter. And then they also announced that live-action Metal Gear Solid movie. But I personally think that had a very apparent Hollywood style to the story as is. It's just a matter of the production and casting. |
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter Exempt from Grammar Rules Posts: 4609 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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It's just advice- mainly about the thread title. If you noticed, he changed his most previous thread title from something like "My Least liked character in Pokemon." to "Least likable character in Pokemon?" and almost immediately got some responses and no one gave him (personally) crap about the thread's intent. Having an inviting title/ focus, helps get responses. It is a good subject but, considering his past of alienating readers, I continue to advise him to ask open questions. I probably should have sent it to him in a PM though. And while I understand and agree with the reasoning not to localize Thermae Romane, the others, although given reasoning, are mostly listed because he doesn't like them. If NBC's Revolution hadn't starting dropping so drastically in ratings then I bet CW would have tried to follow through with their initial plans to create a US TV series adaptation of Battle Royale. The trend seems to say to them that people don't want "Hunger Game clones"... disregarding that Hunger Games was probably inspired by Battle Royale in the first place. But if your main reason for not wanting an adaptation is
why Americanize any Japanese properties? Hollywood could also make their own magic battling princesses shows. The US has their own card and board games they could make into shows, why POkemon or Yu-Gi-Oh or Digimon? |
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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I think this is an ok question. I mean it basically boils down to what anime adaptation do you not want to see Hollywood do?
Well, for me anything that has white people playing ninjas or samurai. I remember a lot of bad 1980s movies with white people being trained to be ninjas or martial artists. So I don't need anything like Enter the Ninja or more recently Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai. In this vein I don't want to see something like Blade of the Immortal get whitewashed or anything with Samurai or Ninjas. Other stuff I don't want to see adapted? Not interested in them adapting Akira, I think it is too Japanese. Stuff I think they could eventually adapt? Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, Battle Angel Alita are some. I think the technology of film making has gotten to the point that some of these are now possible and they are not necessarily constrained by being too Japanese (no trips to hot springs). |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11296 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Yeah.. that still needs a little work. But a little editing here and there for wording isn't so difficult.
I disagree about him merely "playing the role of a samurai." Just like all the movies before and after it (Dances with Wolves, District 9, Avatar, and the like), they're stories of a person (essentially a westerner in a foreign land or human within an alien race) embracing a new culture while seeing the faults of their own, specifically stuff like imperialism, colonialism, corporate greed, etc. and all the other various corrupted people that can exist within these corporate/government/cultural entities that basically just bully people for their own personal gain. I find a movie like The Last Samurai to be more universally-themed and serving as a social commentary and war movie than just something Hollywood tried to make Asian. Anyway, as for stuff like Akira being adapted, the source material will more than likely have a very specific nostalgia to fans of the original movie. But it doesn't mean you can't take some of the influences from it to inspire a different interpretation. The main problem would be the actual production, subtleties in the writing concept, and probably the director who would need to have a particular vision for the right look. |
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Raftina
 Posts: 3282 |
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Does "Americanized" necessarily mean "adapted by Hollywood"? Hollywood is far from the only source of artistic creativity that has some American stamp on the style.
Take Tony K's fears about Gundam as an example:
The basic concepts of Gundam: giant robots destroying each other en-mass, racism, colonialism, human evolution, etc, are all present in the Supreme Commander series, with the Aeon and the Cybran presenting two brands of extraterrestrial human offshoots (the Aeon are more similar to Gundam extraterrestrial offshoots). While SupCom might not be a good example of storytelling, it provides a basic framework where a Gundam story might be told with the requisite action. In the hands of a more story-oriented company like Blizzard, an Americanized Gundam story may very well be told. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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Yeah. I don't want anymore Americanized anime movies either.
HOLLYWOOD, GET YOUR OWN FREAKING IDEAS.
Lol Apocalypse Zero, eh? I once talked to a guy at a con who had thousands upon thousands of anime DVDs. When I asked him, "So what's the worst anime series you've ever seen?" He mentioned that title with NO hesitation at all. 
I also see it mentioned a lot in every "Worst Anime" thread on other forums. I've seen some screenshots. It looks really hideous... |
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Tony K.
Subscriber Moderator Posts: 11296 Location: Frisco, TX |
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That's a very good point. Hollywood was just the first example that came to my mind because they have so many more available resources (namely, money). Video games, animation, and other mediums are also welcome if you anyone can think of any. |
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TitanXL
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None of them ever turn out as successful. 4Kid's Chaotic died a few years after it launched, and Kaijudo will probably follow suit in a year or two. Magic the Gathering got dwarfed by Yu-Gi-Oh pretty early on in Yu-Gi-Oh's career, which is astounding given Magic had like a decade head start. That and I imagine the industry won't allow for those shows to exist. Magic the Gathering would have to be severely dumbed down like the Yu-Gi-Oh's dub. such as removing all mention of death, violence, sex, and etcetera; and given Black cards pretty much revolve entirely around death, that would be hard to work with in the censors and portray an accurate representation of world, unless they start editing the cards down to follow suit. Just look at how censored the Yu-Gi-Oh cards are in America. Then you have length issues. Not many American cartoons last as long as those long-running series do. A true Magic the Gathering series would have to keep up with each new block that gets released every few months, running non-stop and incorporating that into the storyline. Given American shows take breaks and have seasons, they'd fall behind very quickly. Admittedly, Yu-Gi-Oh has the advantage of being an anime first and the card game is second, so the cards are based on the stuff in the anime, rather than vice versa, but still. It's more practical for companies to just license and Americanize anime that do all the hard work for them, than to make their own. As interesting as a true-to-the-material Magic cartoon might be, it's just unrealistic to expect it to happen. |
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