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NEWS: Deadline: Lee Isaac Chung to Direct Hollywood Remake of Makoto Shinkai's your name.

Banjo wrote:

no thanks, anime looks better.

How do you know the live-action version will look bad, despite the fact that neither a promo image or a trailer has been released yet?

OjaruFan2 wrote:

Banjo wrote: no thanks, anime looks better. How do you know the live-action version will look bad, despite the fact that neither a promo image or a trailer has been released yet?

Why are we animation fans if we're to prefer Live Action? Anything that the actors can't do will just be computer graphics,a form of animation, trying to copy live action.

Usually you remake something if there is something 'wrong' or needs updating in a film. Why wold you need to 'update' an animated film within years of its release? The premise is clear "Animation is looked down upon" and that is not one that I or some other anime fans wish to support.

"I like this...but I can't be proud of it until there is a live action version" is a mindset I have long outgrown.

I am also actually heartened to see that the Japanese rights holders have requested a "Western interpretation." The only aspect of this story that is specifically Japanese is the part about Mitsuha performing religious duties (and work-arounds for that could be managed readily enough) and rest is a broader concept that crosses cultural boundaries, so why force the issue by trying to be perfectly faithful?. Put this in the hands of a director familiar with handling interpersonal stories (which it sounds like they've got) and I can easily see this working.

I wouldn't say that Mitsuha's religious duties are the only specifically Japanese thing about the movie... I think Your Name became a super mega hit (as opposed to simply just a hit) was that it managed to touch the collective Japanese PTSD re: 3/11, with the sort of sentimental melodrama that tends to be very popular with mainstream Japanese audiences. And this aspect would be extremely difficult to replicate for a mainstream, non-Japanese audience who 1. don't have the sort of visceral reaction to domestic disaster movies Japanese audiences still had at the time, and 2. are not really into the kind of melodrama Your Name represents and does. So "westernization" is pretty much the only way to make the story feel familiar and relatable to a more general western audience.

SHD wrote:

I wouldn't say that Mitsuha's religious duties are the only specifically Japanese thing about the movie... I think Your Name became a super mega hit (as opposed to simply just a hit) was that it managed to touch the collective Japanese PTSD re: 3/11, with the sort of sentimental melodrama that tends to be very popular with mainstream Japanese audiences. And this aspect would be extremely difficult to replicate for a mainstream, non-Japanese audience who 1. don't have the sort of visceral reaction to domestic disaster movies Japanese audiences still had at the time, and 2. are not really into the kind of melodrama Your Name represents and does. So "westernization" is pretty much the only way to make the story feel familiar and relatable to a more general western audience.

I was referring to Japanese in a cultural sense. PTSD over 3/11 is specific to an event, rather than Japanese culture. Also, I never saw the story so much as a melodramatic one as a sentimental one. (Sentimentality is a Shinkai staple, after all.) Emphasize this as a teen romance of star-crossed lovers (which this basically is) and it'll sell to Western audiences, especially teen ones if marketed right.

And if that's "Westernization" of the story in your eyes, well, that's not a problem, is it?

Frankly, people are too paranoid about this.