F’ it, we’ll do it live! Thoughts on Live Action Adaptations.

By: Luiggi Cavanna

Lately, we’ve been getting a lot of live action adaptations of anime, and with that, fans worry if their favorite franchises are properly adapted. This past week, Netflix finally released the first trailer for its upcoming Death Note movie adaptation, and the fan base could not be more divided.

“Not my Light!” Cried millions of nerds.

Live action adaptations are a hit or miss, and fans are concerned for a good reason. We have a tremendous library of anime live action adaptations that are plain violations of human rights because nobody should be subjected to watch those monstrosities. Heck, not even Japan seems to be able to make movies based out of anime that don’t offend human sensitivity, I mean, do you remember Attack on Titan?

 I don’t have a joke for this, the joke is the movie.

I might be exaggerating a bit, but not even when the movie is not that bad, they still seem to miss the mark. Take for example Ghost in the Shell, the movie was ok but still did not meet the success that you would’ve expected from the franchise. To be honest, I don’t know who was the target demographic for this movie. The philosophy that was the core of the franchise was dumb down effectively alienating hardcore fans, and by giving us another revenge story Hollywood gave people “Robocop: now with tits edition”. The movie still looks good though, I guess it was all shell and not so much soul.

 “Now listen here Murphy or Mira or whatever your name is….”

That’s the main problem with anime adaptations, you can change all you want as long as the core, the soul and heart of the source material are still there. An adaptation is not doom to fail, sometimes they can even surpass the originals. We‘ve had great movies that were adaptations from something else, like how The Magnificent Seven was an adaptation of Seven Samurai, or if you wanna go with something closer to the topic, Edge of Tomorrow was an adaptation of the light novel/manga All You Need is Kill.

“Okay partner, where is my anime adaptation?”

I know we the fans can be difficult as well, we want our movie adaptations to be picture by picture, word by word the same as the source material. We have to understand that this is a different medium and some things might not translate so well into a live action adaptation, so some changes are needed. Actually, there’s some anime that just look like they will be impossible to have a live action adaption! I mean, imagine if there was a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure movie eh?

Oh, wait! There is one.

I’m not going to lie, I want to see that movie so bad! I don’t care that common sense dictates that it won’t work. With the seriousness that the characters have in conjunction with the wackiness of the world, the manly effeminate poses, and the wonderful contradictions that are JoJo won’t translate very well to a live action adaptation but damn it’s JoJo’s BIZARRE adventure! Bizarre is the damn name so we’re good.

I forgot that we were talking about this movie for a second there.

I want to talk to the fans of Death Note now. Listen, I know how you feel but let’s watch the movie first and then we can talk if it was bad or not. Let’s put aside the whitewashing thing and how you think ‘L’ isn't supposed to be black, this movie takes place in America so it kind of makes sense dude. I would definitely understand if the movie were to take place in Japan and Light was still white, I would be there with you but this is not the case. Besides…..

...Nothing can be as bad as this movie!!

What’s your favorite anime live action adaptations? What’s the worst one in your book? Want me to talk about one in specific? Let us know. Now I return to the deepest darkest corners of my dwelling. Goodbye, for now, my friends.

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