No Anime Needs Live-Action
There seems to be a trend of taking anime and turning them into live-action films or TV shows. While, on paper, this seems like a good way to bring in Western audience members who have stigmas against animated shows, anime live-actions rarely work out due to several common problems. Some of these problems are due to studios trying to save money and others are just issues inherent to anime.
Only One Piece Has Done It Right
While stage plays, also technically live-action, are usually done quite well by offering a unique version of the story, most anime live-action films set as a TV show or movie don’t work out well.
The only exception to date is the anime live-action of One Piece. There are a few reasons why it did so well, but the main one was that the team behind the live-action were fans of One Piece and made a great effort to treat the series well and represent it as authentically as possible. They also had a high budget of a little over $17 million per episode, which is relatively unheard of.
Death Note Deserved Much Better
For many anime live-action remakes, that’s not the case. Often, the live-action version dramatically deviates from the original storyline, only recognizable thanks to character names and, sometimes, settings. The live-action Death Note is one example of how dramatically the story can be changed when going from anime to live-action.
An Attempt To Appeal To Western Audiences
The Netflix Death Note anime live-action tried to appeal more to Western audience members by changing the setting from Kanto in Japan to the United States. This created quite a few changes throughout the story, but there were also changes to character personalities and the rules of the Death Note itself.
And it’s not just anime-live actions that fail, but almost any adaptation from a cartoon to a live-action, such as Avatar the Last Airbender, that has had both a movie and a TV series live-action adaptation with fairly poor results.
Live-Action Versions Change Characters, Locations, And Entire Plots
While most of the above can be blamed on the studios just trying to make a profit, there are further issues with anime live-actions that make them a struggle to do right even if a team takes great care with the story. Characters and their personalities are a pretty prominent example. In many anime, characters get their personality from dramatic movements and exaggerated movements.
Unfortunately, these behaviors, while amusing and fitting in anime, don’t translate to anime live-actions well. Instead, they come across as poor acting and a bit cringy. However, by not including these dramatic behaviors, a lot of the characters’ personalities are lost.
Can’t Match Animation With Live-Action
Another is the balance of bringing in new fans while also appeasing old fans. An anime live-action has to be easily understandable for those who haven’t watched or read the source material, and for those who have never watched an anime and don’t understand certain common themes or jokes.
Sometimes, this means much of the original needs to be changed or explained. However, these changes in anime live-actions are often looked down on by original fans. While with TV shows, the story can be drawn out to explain everything thoroughly, movies often have to compress hours of story into less than three, which means much of the story is missing.
For these reasons, it’s best for studios to not make anime live-actions. They often upset new and old fans of the franchise alike, and usually mean a loss of income. Right now, until technology improves and adaptations don’t cost an arm and a leg to do right, it’s best to leave anime as they are.
