Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Why Is It So Hard to Make Anime Into Live-Action?
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residentgrigo
 Posts: 2623 Location: Germany |
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One Piece somehow managed to get a respectable live-action adaptation and the creators wanting to "break the curse" was a part of the marketing. I understand that no one wants to talk about the 5 superior Kenshin films due to the author but making 4 good sequels is a crazy feat. The first 2 Lone Wolf and Cub films from 1972 are hardly buried in the west. Shogun Assasin 1980 cut both, mostly film 2, into one and all 4 1972 films in that series are good. The 2 final releases from 1973 are just ok and at least film 6 is 100% original as the manga ended in 1976. A 7.7 and a 7.9 for film 2 on IMDb are nothing to sneeze at but are there older examples?: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068815/
The 1973 to 1976 TV show is also well-liked: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0227912/?ref_=tt_sims_tt_t_7 1973´s Lady Snowblood is a Tarantino favorite. 1971 aired Kamen Rider but it is only a parallel work to the manga. The 90s GTO show and film are more liked than the anime in Japan. Oldboy, the King of Kings, loosely adapted a manga so not just Japan can do this. Alita is set to become a trilogy, etc. Is it hard to adapt a Shounen action manga that doesn´t have a Japanese period setting? Sure. |
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Azure-Wind91
 Posts: 198 Location: South Carolina |
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"Goddamn Lamb Man." I see someone's been watching None Piece
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Tsulaa
Posts: 8 |
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What struck me throughout all of the episodes was the quality of the acting. I believed them, & with the help of the amazing sets, I found myself immersed. Every actor seemed "all in," it it shows. I had a blast watching it, & truly, sincerely hope there's more to come.
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4633 Location: New York |
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When you adapt something, I firmly believe that you have to change certain things to account for the medium. Even in prose to film. Jurassic Park didn’t have Jeff Goldblum make rambling philosophical speeches while he was high on painkillers like Malcom did in the novel, it would have ground the film to a halt. But they kept the spirit of the character there, and the end result was one of the most beloved films of all time, and increasingly diminishing returns in sequels.
One Piece changed some things, pacing was sped up, Luffy has a few more brain cells even if he’s still an idiot, and Ussop has a normal nose. But Tomorrow Studios spent a pretty penny to get across the spirit of what was on the pages of the manga, in settings, in the atmosphere of the dialogue, and in the characters. They didn’t rewrite scenes for the sake of it. They didn’t include filibusters or change the clothes all that dramatically. And the characters acted in a familiar way. It’s the spirit of the medium that must be kept, and OP kept it. |
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lealex
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I had a feeling this might be different from all the bad modern adaptations and remakes when someone like me, who's not a hardcore One Piece reader or viewer, saw the trailer and went "Hey, I actually want to see this one."
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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Way back in the early 90s, live-action Riki-Oh was a way better adaptation of the manga than the two-episode OVA.
I feel like live-action Devilman deserves to come up more in these discussions, because it is staggeringly terrible. |
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Sariachan
 Posts: 1507 Location: Italy |
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This isn't an anime made into live-action, but a manga made into one.
Anyway, imho it's had simply because people who adapt manga into live-action don't always understand, respect, and/or love the source material enough. The One Piece live-action isn't perfect, but is definitely made with understanding, respect (even admiration I would say) and passion--and it shows. |
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MesousaGaby
 Posts: 71 |
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What about the Japanese Death Note movies? It's funny that for a bad adaptation, everyone still talks about the American Death Note.
No one ever seems to talk about L: Change The World or Light Up The New World. |
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Beatdigga
Posts: 4633 Location: New York |
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The Riki-Oh film is pure schlock but can be entertaining bloodily schlock. It almost feels like a cosmic reaction to Once Upon a Time in China the same year being this much more highbrow, thoughtful attempt at wuxia. Devilman though, yikes. From what I understand it’s considered one of the worst films Japan has ever made, by any standard. |
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Avec ou Nous
Posts: 154 |
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If we include Japanese ones then there's plenty of decent/good ones, but I think the focus and discussion is always on American adaptions which have been universally bad. One Piece is probably the best one so far, but it's still far from perfect an does a lot of the usual trappings you see out of American adaptions. I was surprised how much of the silliness they kept in, but at the same time, felt some things were too far like Usopp's nose or Jango as a whole. |
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a_Bear_in_Bearcave
Posts: 551 Location: Poland |
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Like Sariachan noted, it was a manga adaptation. Many successful anime adaptation of western works are adaptation of books, like "Anne of Green Gables" or "Howl's moving castle" or as inspiration those "Lupin the 3rd" series. Adapting "Cowboy Bebop" to live actions makes little sense - it's already great and praised TV series, just one drawn rather than shot, so live action doesn't has much to offer anyway, it can - and did - only got much worse, because adapting folks wanted to improve somehow on greatness.
Cartoon Star Wars series can coexist with live-action Star Wars movies, by filling in the places left by prequel, but what would be point of remaking that cartoon as live action series? Both "One Piece" and ""Alita" are manga adaptations, not anime adaptations, which gives them chance to actually do something interesting instead of making live action of something that can already looks good on TV or cinema screen. Most Japanese live action adaptations I heard of are also adaptations of manga or books, quite often shoujo or josei, compared to anime adaptations which have too few shoujo nowadays. There is little point to adapting anime to live action, or live action to anime, especially since you'd most likely try to adapt something already popular because it's good, so you can most likely either make bad imitation, or actually try and do something inspired by source rather then adapted, but then you risk fans of source story not caring about your original story. And that's how Cowboy Bebop ended with worst of both worlds - close to source story yet mangled horribly. |
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dm
 Subscriber Posts: 1482 |
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Yes, the Ruroni Kenshin live action films are pretty good, though problematic now that the creator's proclivities are known.
The Japanese xxxHoLic is quite good with some visual brilliance in the sets (or maybe it has a terrible script, my Japanese is too weak to know). I'm wondering how some of the stage plays are. They have the advantage that one is willing to suspend more disbelief when viewing a play. |
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WatcherZer
Posts: 322 |
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When watching that all I could do was remember this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrvpjz3xe-0 |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1440 |
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That distinction seems shaky at best, especially since the live-action series includes quite a few references to the anime specifically - off the top of my head, Episode 2's flashback scenes has a version of "Binks' Brew" as part of the BGM, and there's two very specific uses of a instrumental version of "We Are" - the anime's most iconic OP theme. I think it's closer to say that the new series was pulling inspiration from both of the major sides of the existing franchise, rather than only the manga. |
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Allison Addams
 Posts: 120 |
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If we include Japanese, then there's plenty of terrible ones. Like, 97% out of the ones I've seen are bad, and I've checked out a good bit. And this includes Japan's Death Note adaptations because out of all the films they made, only ONE was actually good, and that was Part 2: The Last Name. The first Death Note movie suffers from the thing a lot of J-adaptations do where they try to be so faithful they just eff up the pacing and made a slog of a film to get through. Part 2 takes liberties with the material while still using similar story beats and that's what needs to be done. When adapting you need to take advantage of the medium you're translating to. L Change the World is painfully boring which is a shame. (the novelization however is very different and superior) "LIGHT Up the New World" is like terrible fanfiction. That flick was incredibly stupid. Deadass, I feel the Netflix Death Note is probably the second best Death Note movie because Japan's ones got worst. And when you take it on its own merits, it was still a moderately entertaining film that also had some decent ideas I could give credit to. I don't mind an adaptation wanting to do something a little different because if I wanted the same story I could just watch the anime or read the manga again. Like, if it had more room to breathe, gave the script some more polish, and maybe changed a few more things, there's a better movie in there. Instead of having Light be some pathetic, privileged megalomaniac loser with a god complex, their take on Light was having him as more of a disenfranchised youth. He's basically a school shooter who picked up a death note. You could use for some relevant sociopolitical commentary in a Death Note story taking place in the U.S. I also kinda like how the Misa stand in wasn't just some devoted to a fault cheerleader to Light that was reduced to nothing more than a plot device as the series went on, and was actually more of a foil to him. That dynamic is more interesting and you can read her as also essentially one of those serial killer fangirls that totally exist irl. So yea, while I don't think the flick is good, it's like ok at best and has ideas I can go to bat for that could have worked well. I do like the director and know he can make good movies. I enjoyed his horror work like The Guest and You're Next. Plus there is some nice cinematography on display in the flick. (I also though Lakeith Stanfield as L was just as good of a casting as Willem Dafoe because I really like that guy too) Windgard was maybe not the best choice for Death Note movie, but like, I can see they were at least trying to do something, and I can respect that. But maybe I'm also not very hard on the flick because the Japanese ones got so much worst. I kinda can't be. |
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