Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are So Many Live Action Anime Adaptations Terrible?
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5315 |
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But in my opinion the best anime and manga to adapt are the ones that cut the closest, visually, to what's already easy in live action. Stuff like Heroic Legend of Arslan, Bunny Drop, and House of Five Leaves. But nobody wants to adapt those because they're mundane. Bunny Drop does have a live-action Movie.
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2418 Location: Germany |
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The recent Blade of the Immortal and I Am a Hero are solid 7/10 films. Meaning that they are also some of the best life action manga adaptations of ALL time (the Kenshin trilogy easily wins) and even some of the best Japanese films of the decade. Which brings me to the main problem the home grown manga films faced for over a decade. The current Japanese film industry a shambles. They just can´t get film out of the door that rise above the level of a telenovela. Both production level and acting wise.
Hollywood on the other hand isn´t taking manga and anime films seriously as they just didn´t have that big hit yet that managed to turn everyones head. The 3rd act of Man of Steel proves that a near photo realistic life action DBZ film can 100% be made but you would need to invest 200+ million (and an additional 50% of the budget in marketing) to get there and no one is crazy enough to do it. That one hit film will come one day but till then we wait. Dito for videogame films. It would make more sense to make a premium cable/streaming (mini) series out of most manga/anime properties if you ask me. Just look at how much success DC and Marvel have on the small screen right now. So many shows! These are what i am waiting for. A Battlestar Galactica style Gundam show... One can dream, right? |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 276 |
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You have to watch the right anime adapations.
Incidentally there is a Bunny Drop movie... Live action manga and anime adaptations that I personally rate... Kamikaze Girls. the 20th Century Boys trilogy, the first two Death Note movies, Battle Royale, anything Takashi Miike has directed (I'm really looking forward to his Blade of the Immortal as the anime was kinda dull), and I love his Crows Zero movies, Yatterman was fun. Mustn't forget Oldboy. I also liked Ikigami Death Notice, Sion Sono's Himizu gained a whole other dimension in adaptation, while his Tokyo Tribe is insane. The first Azumi film was good. There's a Hong Kong made Initial D movie that's pretty good. K-20 Legend of the Black Mask is a decent comic book effects movie. Dororo was cheesy fun, as was the live action Cutey Honey. The Gantz movies were better than the anime. The Parasyte movies turned out pretty good. I haven't seen them but the Lone Wolf and Cub movies are considered classics, as is Lady Snowblood, and it seems the Rurouni Kenshin films will be too in years to come. |
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Codeanime93
Posts: 599 |
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The Initial D movie changed quite a bit from the anime and the manga, for instance Bunta was a raging violent drunk in the live action for some reason with an abusive streak. And Itsuki is made an even more flashier annoyance than he is in the anime or manga. That and there's only one Takahashi brother in the live action for some reason. Yeah I would disagree with it being a good adaptation. And I would figure making a live action version of Initial D would be easy but if you can't even get some of the character traits of people like Bunta down and insist on making them violent drunks. Last edited by Codeanime93 on Fri Feb 02, 2018 12:10 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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OjaruFan
Posts: 60 |
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I'm quite concerned about how the upcoming American live-action adaptation of One Piece is gonna turn out. The fantasy elements may be hard to pull off well in live-action.
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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If it comes out at all. Way to many adaptations have just lingered in production hell without any chance of seeing the light of day. It is suppose to be series tho so they at least have a better chance of doing it right. |
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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If you were making a movie out of a manga property and you offered anime fans an either/or vote between: 1) giving them a really shitty movie that follows the source material to the letter 2) giving them a really awesome movie that changes some things to make the story much more effective in film format I have a feeling that a lot of anime fans (especially the vocal ones) would rather fall on their swords with option 1 than actually watch a great movie that doesn't enslave itself to the source material. |
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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It doesn't seem like this Answerman has a connection to the reality of anime adaptations, containing the line "at worst, it ends up like the live action Ghost in the Shell: a bunch of pretty re-created set pieces that fans will recognize, stitched together into a story that's a hollow shell (sorry) of what came before" when Dragon Ball evolution is providing the header image. While the GitS adaptation wasn't great, it was far from the worst adaptation.
Id say the problem varies by region. The Japanese productions are (like the stage shows) incredibly low budget by Western standards (and are likely even cheap compared to anime movies) but are still corporate machine products, thus lacking the verve and personal takes of fan projects. Western productions are made without consulting any more material than the Wiki synopsis, and are thus made without knowing what it is about the franchises that are essential (or even basic stuff like setting or tone). You average American at least knows the reputation of most superheroes (that Storm is very declarative while Cyclops hates fun, for instance), so there's osmotic knowledge holding things together. I think that's why Speed Racer, an adaptation of a property that was on US primetime when much of the industry was watching, was so much better than other adaptations, even if it did fall to many of the issues of the directors and source material. |
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0nsen
 Posts: 256 |
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It's probably because the people that "get" anime are not interested in making live-action movies and the people that are interested in making live-action movies do not "get" anime.
Just look at the awful 2017 GitS movie. There was no reason that GitS couldn't work as a live-action movie, but they screwed up anyway. It wass rather predictable, just like it's predictable that Battle Angel Alita won't be a good movie. The way things are it's impossible to make a good live-action adaption of anime. And what's the point anyway? |
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Uter
Posts: 30 |
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I think this pretty much sums it up. Most of the people making movies at that level aren't anime fans; they're movie-makers. It turns out these movie-makers largely don't understand the works they are trying to adapt. DBE is the perfect example of this syndrome. The writer even wrote a letter about it. |
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Triltaison
 Posts: 723 |
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I appreciate the nod to the live action Speed Racer, there. I remember lots of people hating on that movie, but it captured absolutely everything about the original English dub for the show. It was flashy, made enough sense to get from point A to point B (but not necessarily a lot of sense in a practical way), the inbetween is a ridiculous excuse for action that defies physics but looks cool, and the actors were pretty well cast for each role. As a big fan of the series, it was darn near perfect to me.
I mean, this is a show that has a man on horseback whipping all cars as his idea of revenge and a ridiculously long car made of hundreds of pounds of gold that looks like a train competing in a race as part of a smuggling ring. Don't forget the brother who forces his sister to ride in the driver's seat as he rams her car via remote control into other cars and off of cliffs with the intent to kill their drivers. Oh, and he's piloting a helicopter while driving the car, too. As I recall, he murders several guys this way, is arrested, and is still offered a job at Racer Motors by Speed because the brother is a swell guy. The show is bonkers and I absolutely love it. The live action movie hit the nail on the head. |
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SailorPluto1313
Posts: 118 |
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I thought that Monster was still being pitched, but Del Toro just had to take a break while working on Pacific Rim Uprising. Here's hoping it will still get adapted, because he's the perfect person to direct it, and Monster is a masterpiece.
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4367 Location: New York |
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Is that live action SAO still happening? I could see the CW jumping on it.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5917 |
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Aside from the fact it could've easily had been labeled a Blade Runner knock off.
That's not predictability that's cynicism.
You're trying to adapt something into another medium to get more eyes on it.
A masterpiece with a few ridiculous twists and a needlessly ambiguous ending. |
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Lactobacillus yogurti
 Posts: 844 Location: Latin America |
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What makes some remakes suck is how the USA tends to whitewash and Americanize the source.
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