This Week in Anime

Why Is It So Hard to Make Anime Into Live-Action?

Steve
That's damn right. What, am I expected to watch something animated for this column? That a baby could have drawn with a crayon? Puh-lease. We are serious art enjoyers who want that true grit that can only come from glossy 4K footage of the essential male ass.

A good live-action adaptation of anime? As was once spoken in legends? Yes, it's true. And, arguably, it isn't even the first time this has happened. Between their constant attempts to filch writers and actors for all they're worth, the Hollywood system has taken its fair share of cracks at anime and manga adaptations you could conceivably convince your parents to take you to see with minimal embarrassment. Unsurprisingly, these results have been mixed.

Everyone (i.e., producers) loves an IP until that IP is difficult to transpose into three dimensions on account of the relative ease with which a person can illustrate almost anything that pops into their imagination. Even with the advent of CG technology and fidelity, there are just lots of inherent qualities to manga and anime that are anathema to what works in a live-action production. That's not to say it's an impossible task, but it requires a lot of thought and care. You want to make something true to the original, but you also want to make something feasible to film and able to appeal to a broader audience. That's a thankless task! Especially if you get it horribly, horribly wrong.

Dragonball: Evolution is such a funny project to look at in retrospect. Dragon Ball Z got so popular it was considered normal to like it. This was already a huge, proven hit with American audiences. You don't fix what ain't broken! But oh, how they broke it.

I just watched it for the first time, and besides everything you mentioned, I have to emphasize that it's also barely a movie. I wasn't shocked when I saw the $30 million budget—it looks like it—but I was shocked the producers thought they could handle the Dragon Ball name like this. Maybe, with a few adjustments, they could have gotten away with turning this into an unrelated cheesy martial arts flick whose weirdness could have captured a cult following? But not when you're calling this guy Goku.

Oh, if you want more veiny reminders, I've got you covered.

What about Piccolo? Don't you like one-off Power Rangers villains standing in front of the worst green screen you've ever seen? That doesn't inspire cosmic terror in you?

With an utter misfire like that (I cannot stress enough how nothing like Dragon Ball this film is), it's easy to understand why so many of us approach these projects with skepticism. But Evolution isn't even where this all began. We got another live-action take on an anime classic one year prior. Except this one was made by people who know the rules for making movies. And then intentionally broke a lot of them.

And with good reason! I put it on just for the hell of it right before logging in to complain about anime with you, and I think it's even better than my fond memories of it. Leave it to the uber-nerd Wachowski sisters to take such a gonzo approach to cartooning up real life and make it work as well as it does. The last time I saw colors like this on the silver screen...was probably Barbie, which doesn't help make my point, but that's a good movie too.

Yeah, whereas Dragonball: Evolution tried pulling its story into the normalcy of a high school hallway, Speed Racer leans about as far as you can in the opposite direction, embracing and focusing on the hyper-reality of its source material. It's not a gambit that paid off well, financially or critically, but it makes the movie a great piece of outsider pop art that contrarian snobs like me can enjoy.

That's a point that comes up a lot—that presumed embarrassment. I think it's probably fair to say some of that is projection on the audience's part, and some of what inspires that feeling is probably just a product of a Hollywood system that naturally sands down the weirder edges of most of its products. But then you do see adaptations that seem to distance themselves as far away from their sources as they can, and you have to wonder.

Okay, Netflix's Death Note is weird for me because it is terrible, and I love it. The film feels like it holds active contempt for the manga, which you do not want from a high-profile adaptation of a beloved psychological thriller. But the manga is also highly goofy, so a part of me respects this irreverence.

It's so funny. Pure brilliance and I won't hear otherwise.

I'm not going to check the prior column we did on this to see if we already made this joke because we probably did, but the film would have improved tenfold if it had given us unadulterated mocap Dafoe in every scene.

The history of film is a history of people missing easy layups. Let's hone in on something as fundamental as casting; 2017 was quite the banner year for white people playing Japanese characters. Not in the sense that this was the first time it had ever happened, because, lol. But in the sense that these complaints finally gained real traction in the age of social media. To the point, for instance, that Paramount bigwigs were blaming Ghost in the Shell's box office underperformance on it.

I will be honest with you: I haven't seen it, and not even my professional obligation to this website was enough to spur me to change that. On the subject of what works as a movie, Ghost in the Shell already has a perfect 1995 anime film that many people consider a paragon of the entire medium. The decision to do a similar take on the franchise in a live-action format feels all the more egregious.

At least we only had to wait a couple more years to cycle through another live-action adaptation of a classic cyberpunk manga, only this time it was surprisingly pretty decent. It's probably because it had more rollerblading robots.

It's a bizarre choice! And like the Wachowskis pushing the saturation slider until it broke, I like that Alita runs with it. It gives the film some character, even if it is an uncanny character.

I don't have a ton of affection for the Avatar films, but if James Cameron wants to use them to bankroll more bug-eyed Alita entries, you will not find me complaining an ounce about those big blue people.

My face when remembering Netflix Cowboy Bebop.

I still don't get it. Anyone can look at the anime and identify it as an extended love letter to a hodgepodge of classic film genres and tropes, which would seem to make a no-brainer transition into live-action. But the show is one colossal tonal misfire comprising countless smaller ones. It takes itself seriously to the point of comedy in some spots. Its actual attempts at comedy largely fall flat. Not even Yoko Kanno's music salvages much of the Cowboy Bebop feel. Only Vicious' constant mugging makes me feel anything.

I know I wasn't looking forward to it! I'm still a One Piece neophyte, so I didn't have much of an investment in this show, regardless of its ultimate quality. Color me surprised, though, because somehow they did indeed pull off the story about a guy whose literal superpower is his ability to turn into a stretchy physics-defying cartoon character. I had a great time!

Right? I was compelled to see the next episode when I finished one. It wasn't anywhere close to the dirge-like experience of forcing my way through Cowboy Bebop. The cast and script combined to generate a good dose of moment-to-moment fun and momentum and an overarching sense of progression as Luffy discovered new locales and allies. It felt like a real TV show. It's wild.

The animatronic transponder snails are so good. It's the kind of detail you'd expect most production nowadays to throw to the computer VFX artists, so having a tactile prop did a whole lot for me. Along those lines, I was impressed by all the actual sets they built.

But to your other point, the importance of the earnestness of the whole production can't be understated. I had a tweet go semi-viral over the weekend just because I observed how Garp shows up in this hat without a single Marine making a single quip about it, so I guess I'm not alone in feeling that, either.

The Straw Hat crew still exchanges banter and snide remarks between themselves, but nothing feels like it's stretching over the fourth wall to pat the scriptwriter on the back. The show finds its joy elsewhere, usually by reveling in the inherent absurdity of its setting. Some bits and characters get left out, as there have to be when you're adapting something as sprawling as One Piece, but for every omission, there exists another moment or image that I never expected the live-action to go for.

Who at Netflix keeps ripping the shirts off of pasty boys with long, flaxen hair?

I refuse to talk about sexy clowns for the umpteenth time in this column, so I will redirect my question to find out who gave Mihawk his transponder snail Bluetooth earpiece.

They gave his collar those little curlicues, too. And there's a surfeit of small touches that add up to a lot throughout the season—many of which I'm sure I missed. While there are plenty of other more important clues that the showrunners genuinely cared about this material, attention to the minutiae is the most fun to pick up on.

Same! I picked the manga back up a few weeks ago before the Netflix series dropped, and I was already having a good time with it, but between that and now, this show exceeding expectations, I'm feeling the love for Luffy and his band of weirdos. And ideally, that's what live-action anime adaptations should strive for. They should stand well enough on their own, but ultimately, they should also kindle or rekindle interest in the original work. While live-action may be an easier sell for a larger swathe of the general audience, cartoons and comics are just as rich with their own idiosyncrasies. You just gotta get to know 'em.