Anime You'd Love To See Remade

Jacob Chapman

When it comes to material that's ripe for remakes, people are understandably quick to pick out stuff that didn't do so hot the first time around. Maybe the work suffered from incompetent production, messy adaptation, or just a poorly-timed inability to reach its true audience, but whatever the reason, these are the most common hallmarks of the shabby could-have-beens most in need of a revamp.

So of course, I'm compelled to pick Fruits Basket, one of the most beloved and popular shojo anime of all time, which was adapted nearly panel-for-panel from its source manga by a uniquely talented director, Akitaro Daichi. It has none of the major problems people associate with the need for a makeover, but the truth isn't that simple for me. The Fruits Basket anime doesn't "need" a remake from the world; I'm the one who needs a remake of the Fruits Basket manga.

The 2002 anime's visuals aren't my main concern, but they are the most immediately outdated part of the experience. Being produced in the early days of digipaint did Fruits Basket no favors, and I find its flat colors and jagged edges pretty hard on the eyes today, to say nothing of the barely-present animation. The manga's art starts out a little busy and rough, but becomes drop-dead gorgeous inside of several volumes, especially compared to the anime's somewhat garish designs. (You could fit the entire cast of Free! in Tohru's Olympic-pool eyeballs.) So yeah, the anime could absolutely stand to look prettier, but people remember Fruits Basket for its moving story and characters. Unfortunately, that's the part of the show I really want to see overhauled.

The Fruits Basket anime was a charming experience that did a great job spreading its vision of unconditional kindness and cute animal-boys to bookish tween girls across the globe. It's a lovely bowl of chicken soup. But the manga is like a ten-pound savory pot roast that sinks down into the pit of your stomach and fuels your whole body with its uncompromised raw emotional power. The anime is mostly composed of vignettes where sad things happen to the Sohmas purely because of their cursed circumstances, before Tohru sweeps in to cure their sadness with a smile. The manga follows up on these vignettes with the tempest of painful recovery the Sohmas would have to endure in the years to come. There's plenty of joy and happiness to be found in their relationships with Tohru, but there's also an authentic heap of fear, manipulation, jealousy, and hatred that comes back on themselves, their fellow cursed cousins, and even our heroine. Even unconditional love can't just make their trauma go away, and even Tohru doesn't have the power to talk them through everything. As it turns out, she has jaw-dropping skeletons in her own closet about her own parents, despite only ever describing them in the most angelic terms to others.

Unfortunately, the manga can't start plumbing these depths right away, opting instead to lure in the audience with more conventional shojo and fairytale tropes, which is probably what gave Akitaro Daichi the idea to soak his adaptation in perpetual twee whimsy, even during its most tragic tales of child abandonment. By the time the anime dumps all its undiluted angst into the finale, it goes too far and feels too overwrought for the circumstances. The manga showed more restraint, solace, and subtlety when telling all these same stories, and this more mature tone difference only becomes greater the further you read. The Fruits Basket anime is by no means a bad show (it's still pretty good, visuals aside), but it is one of the most striking examples I can think of for missing the spirit of a work despite copying the plot beat-for-beat.

It's like comparing The Hunchback of Notre Dame novel to the Disney movie. They're both good at what they're trying to do, but they're trying to do wildly different things.

Daichi has been frank about taking on Fruits Basket because it was heavily recommended to him, but also that he didn't personally understand its appeal and just tried to stay faithful to the plot. The original author Natsuki Takaya vocally disliked his adaptation and said a sequel could only happen if he didn't direct it. The two just didn't really get each other, and I would be ecstatic if someone who truly understood the core of Takaya's work could adapt it faithfully in spirit, even if they have to cut some chunks out of its 23-volume run to make it happen.

And hey, if nothing else, the original anime never got around to introducing the entire Chinese Zodiac! Don't you want to meet the Horse and the Rooster? They're gonna make you cryyyyy...

Lauren Orsini

I fell in love with the visuals of Pet Shop of Horrors before I could even enjoy its story. In 2001, I received the first three Japanese volumes of the 1995 manga as a birthday gift from a worldly friend. I pored over page after page of delicate, macabre art that was so evocative of the plot I couldn't yet read, in which a mysterious man named Count D sells the perfect pet to each lonely and desperate person who enters his shop. Of course, each pet has a Gremlins-style catch, and when owners fail to follow the rules, their encounters with the pets turn deadly.

Fortunately, the Pet Shop of Horrors miniseries came to America shortly after I discovered the series, and I wasted no time securing a DVD. But imagine my disappointment when the embellished gothic art style was replaced by cheap animation, a lifeless color palette, and ho-hum voice acting. It's no wonder it only got four episodes! The DVD was soon discontinued, but Sentai re-acquired the rights to sell it in the US a while ago, thankfully at a price that reflects the… value of the content.

I can't recommend the DVD that turned Pet Shop of Horrors from a richly illustrated and thrilling bestiary into a B-movie horror flick because, in the years between my birthday gift and now, I fell in love with the manga all over again in English this time. Tokyopop acquired the rights for all 10 books—41 chapters in all—in 2008 and I immediately devoured them, (much like these gorgeous and misunderstood pets devoured so many of their unfortunate owners). Tokyopop eschewed the beautiful book jackets and expensive cardstock from my raw copies, but retained the incredible art and story. I discovered that the plot was far more nuanced than a look at the untranslated manga or this old miniseries could indicate, continuing the thread of D's escapades with Leon, the Los Angeles cop who is convinced Dee is trafficking drugs. (If only he knew the truth was so much more disturbing!) There's beauty and gore in these stories, but there's also heartstring-tugging drama and even comedy. Of course, good luck getting your hands on the manga today because, well, Tokyopop.

Pet Shop of Horrors is a manga that risks being lost to Western fans forever, with only a bizarre, bland little 4-episode TV series to uphold its legacy. This cannot stand! Pet Shop of Horrors needs the richly imagined remake it deserves. I think it'd be a great candidate for the Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo digital layering treatment, to give it the colorful and ornamented look the manga has. Really, any studio that takes it on would be wise to take a cue from Pet Shop of Horrors cosplayers, who have brought the manga illustrations to life far more accurately than the dull series managed. Edgy and horrifying, but at the same time humane and hopeful, Pet Shop of Horrors has a story that will certainly still resonate with anime fans today. It just needs an equally intense remake to match.

Gabriella Ekens

While reviewing the latest Fate/stay night anime adaptation this past fall, I was preoccupied by the question – is there any way to adapt the visual novel in a way that contains all three routes? For those of you who don't know, the Fate/stay night visual novel consists of three routes in which the protagonist, Shirou, pursues each of the three leading ladies. Taking place over the same span of time, the three routes are mutually exclusive, containing a different set of events, character alliances, and revelations. However, Fate/stay night's thematic narrative only emerges when the three routes – Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven's Feel – are played in sequence.

On the surface, Fate/stay night might not be something that you think we need more of. It's already had two full series animations (Studio Deen's from 2006 and Ufotable's from 2014), as well as a film planned for some time this year. By all accounts, we have too much Fate/stay night already. But here's the rub – each version only adapts one of the routes. As a result, they're each necessarily lacking around 2/3rds of the story's content. Many characters (Caster, Gilgamesh, Sakura, etc.) only get a proper ending in one of the three routes. In the other two, they're these weird, vestigial narrative appendages that suck up time to little purpose or outcome. So the question becomes – is there any way to combine the three routes into one story where every character gets their most dramatically appropriate outcome?

Basically, the challenge is to shove a non-linear story into a linear medium. I think that's possible, although it would require some creative rejiggering. I think the key is Archer – as the future Shirou from a failed timeline, he's the glue that holds all this together.

First, I'd take the fan theory that each route's Archer is the previous route's Shirou and make it canon. Start the story from the events of Unlimited Blade Works, telling the Fate route in hindsight as Archer's backstory. End Unlimited Blade Works with tragedy (Shirou doesn't learn his lesson about not taking the world's burdens onto himself, becoming Archer again) in order to begin Heaven's Feel. Then tell Heaven's Feel from Archer's POV so that the entire show has a consistent protagonist. Archer in Heaven's Feel is Shirou from Unlimited Blade Works. Compared to UBW Archer, HF Archer understands his younger self better. This Archer's influence allows Shirou to finally break free from his toxic delusions about heroism, ending the time loop. In this way, all three of Fate/stay night's timelines could be adequately represented in a linear story that has the same thematic trajectory as the visual novel.

Of course, the devil is in the details here. How do you make Saber's story satisfying when her trajectory over the three routes is a slide into despair and corruption? How do you take Gilgamesh out of the story gracefully when the third route chucks him to the side in such a humiliating manner? How would you do justice to all three of Shirou's romances? Thinking about this, I can see why it's never been tried. It'd be a supremely difficult adaptive balancing act. But that's also what attracts me to it  - I look at it like an intellectual and artistic challenge, a puzzle box waiting to be solved. The reward would be the most powerful version of Shirou's story ever presented onscreen. The Fate/stay night visual novel loses 2/3rds of its power when transplanted into a linear medium, but I think that it'd be possible to recover that through careful narrative engineering. Kinoku Nasu is ambitious in how he constructs his stories, and while the Garden of Sinners film series matched the scope of his sprawling light novel series, Fate/stay night has yet to see its equivalent in anime.

Theron Martin

I am not a stickler for an anime adaptation staying slavishly loyal to its source material, partly because I usually find the way that it deviates interesting enough to douse any complaints I might have about the changes. Hence my pick for this subject, the 1993 OVA series Battle Angel, is based much more on how there was a broader and deeper story to tell than what the original anime version got into.

The original two 29 minute episodes are a greatly condensed version of the first two tankoubon of the epic sci fi manga GUNNM (aka Battle Angel Alita in its English release). The manga's next story arc wasn't yet complete at the time of the episodes’ production, so that was all that could be done then. While those two episodes do capture the basic essence of the story, they skipped a lot of material which could have dramatically fleshed out the character and world-building without encumbering the storyline too much. The second episode in particular also felt rushed in the part of the story it did choose to tell, and its ending did not capture a full sense of the depth of Gally's reaction to the episode's climactic events. Also severely curtailed by the OVA was the distinctiveness of Gally's combat style, although mediocre animation is equally to blame for that.

The original proposal that James Cameron made for a live-action version emphasized the Motor Ball arc which dominates the 3rd and 4th tankoubon (by American release), and I agree that truncating the first two volumes to allow for a bigger chunk of focus on that element would be a fine way to go for an anime or live-action movie. The end of that storyline would only take eight or nine TV series episodes to properly cover, however, so some content from the later stages would have to be included to make a full TV series. Hence my recommendation would be to expand the first two volumes out to 4-5 episodes total, use another 3-4 to adapt the Motor Ball arc, and then fill out the remainder of a 12-13 episode first season with a trimmed version of the Barjack storyline. Sure, it would be nice to take time and carefully adapt everything, but in a practical sense there's a lot which could be trimmed without crimping the overall story much.

I further recommend using a second 12-13 episode season to adapt the follow-up manga The Last Order, with the content of volume 9 of the original series dumped entirely to allow for the transition. Yes, its 18 volume length suggests that it should have a 24-26 episode season all on its own, but frankly, that series drags in the manga. It gets too invested in hugely detailing character backgrounds, draws out some fights, and has some characters in it which could be dispensed with entirely without harming the overall story. Ruthlessly trimming it down to fits into a 12-13 episode series would be a blessing if you could find the right director to do it.

Lastly, get a studio and director who actually understands sci fi action scenes. Not sure who I'd recommend here, but the manga was one of the all-time great sci fi action series, and any new anime production should reflect that more than the run-of-the-mill original effort.

Nick Creamer

There's obviously an inherent degree of presumption in saying Clannad needs a remake - after all, the show already has a relatively recent and highly popular version animated by one of the industry's premier studios. But speaking personally, Clannad never really worked for me, in spite of how much I appreciated some of its foundational ingredients. And while the current Clannad works fine enough as a faithful adaptation of a visual novel, I just don't think it's a very good show.

There are a number of compromises inherent in adapting a multi-path visual novel into an anime. In a visual novel, each individual path can stand alone without compromising the integrity of any other; the accepted mechanics of the medium basically make these parallel lines come across as natural. But in a linear storytelling medium where the viewer has no agency, things are different - you either have to fold stories into each other, frame your show as a series of vignettes, or do the most common thing and have your protagonist simply run through one story after another.

Clannad chose the third option, and in the context of a romantic drama with some very specific central themes, I think that choice basically hobbled the show. “Clannad the story” is about Tomoya finding joy in life through Nagisa, his friend/girlfriend/eventual wife. Then tragedy strikes, and Tomoya is forced to come to terms with loss, the process of which eventually brings him to a fuller appreciation of life and even peace with his once-hated father.

Clannad the anime is only one-third about that - the rest of it is Tomoya durdling around in a series of small woman-saving arcs, where he does everything from teaching a genius girl that her parents actually loved her to reuniting a woman with the ghost of her dead boyfriend, who now lives in a cat. Clannad's small arcs not only muddle the power of the core narrative and make Tomoya into a harem cliche, they also just aren't very good stories. Jun Maeda has a number of weaknesses as a writer, from his predilection for helpless female characters to his repetitive sense of humor and tendency to swing for tragedy before he's earned viewer investment, and I think a ruthless revision of Clannad could downplay his core failings while also clearing up Clannad's fundamental narrative.

Clannad had two full seasons, but my Clannad would not - it would cut the series in half and just excise characters like Fuuko and Kotomi altogether. Essentially the first half of each season (where the show just rambles in self-contained arcs), would be cut, while preserving the characters like Kyou and Tomoyo, who actually have a dynamic with the leads outside of “needs to be saved.” Give Nagisa more consistent screentime and a fuller personality, and prioritize both her positive presence in Tomoya's life and his counterbalancing feelings about his father. Maintain and emphasize the adult slice of life sequences both before and after tragedy - living out hard but happy days as a newly married couple, struggling to connect with an estranged child. More than anything else, these segments are what make Clannad unique as a show and Kyoto Animation excel as a studio.

And finally, don't sabotage the ending through a magical “it made sense in the visual novel” contrivance. Clannad is a story about growing up, and that involves both accepting loss and growing into the person you want to be. Perseverance, honest work, and people lifting each other up are all emphasized throughout Clannad, and a fairy tale ending only cheapens those themes. Don't take back the earlier tragedy, but also don't kill off Ushio for bonus tragedy points - have Nagisa's consistently mentioned connection to the hospital actually give Tomoya the strength to get Ushio there, tying off both their arcs and letting Tomoya become the person he wanted to be, someone who was once defined by his desire to be unlike his father, but who is now fully his own man.

This version of Clannad would admittedly be a very different show, and I'm sure it would make many fans of the visual novel furious. But personally, I think there's a great, thoughtful drama hidden in Clannad that would actually be stronger for its lack of loyalty to the source material. And surely making even more people appreciate the story's core strengths is a goal worth aiming for.

Amy McNulty

Considering how much I enjoyed Please Save My Earth's early ‘90s OVA series, the fact that I'd like to see it remade may sound odd. While these episodes are fluidly animated and set the stage for a truly epic tale, the entire series is essentially one long prologue to a show we'll never see. They tease a compelling story about reincarnation, revenge, ESP, and alien scientists, only to leave the audience hanging. They introduce characters who stay with you long after the series is over and hint at mysteries that aren't fully answered—and then flash quickly through some scenes of events yet to come at the end, like that's supposed to explain everything.

Based on a 21-volume manga series (not to mention the two sequel manga series that came out in Japan many years later), the anime adaptation covers roughly the first eight books. It's decently paced and not terribly confusing, but a story this complex can't be told in six half-hour installments. Regrettably, when Viz originally released the anime in the U.S., the manga had not yet been translated, much to chagrin of fans who were eager to see what came next. (Luckily, the manga was released in English in the early ‘00s. The physical copies are out of print, but the series remains available in digital form.)

Taking its length into consideration, the anime does have a decent, if inconclusive, ending. The OVA primarily focuses on seven-year-old Rin, the reincarnation of alien scientist Shion (one of seven alien scientists sent to observe Earth who was later reborn in Japan) and what drove him to become so full of hate. The anime ends after exploring the only time in the orphaned Shion's life when he was truly happy: the days he spent with an adoptive father who loved him despite his difficult behavior. Unfortunately, his adoptive father (and beloved adoptive giant cat) died, and Shion went back into the (alien) orphanage system, never again really knowing love until he met Mokuren, a goddess-like scientist for whom half the crew was pining.

The series ends on a warm, fuzzy note, but so much is left untouched. The anime makes it seem like Mokuren and Shion were madly in love—and they were prior to their deaths. However, the manga reveals that at one point, Shion actually raped Mokuren, which puts a very different spin on a romance that transcends time and space. The battle between Rin and Mikuro, an ESP-user from Earth, is never fully finished, nor is Rin's goal of blowing up the moon base via the Tokyo Tower sufficiently elaborated upon or achieved on-screen.

For years, I've longed to see Please Save My Earth get a remake, ideally in a two-cour or even year-long format. Unfortunately, I doubt many studios are clamoring to re-adapt a shojo manga that ended over 20 years ago. Still, a number of shojo bigwigs (including Naoko Takeuchi, Bisco Hatori and Arina Tanemura), cite the series as one of their foremost inspirations and the second sequel series is still being published, so nostalgia may ultimately help this series find new life.