Time and time again great anime has been adapted into live-action movies only to fall short of its potential. Some examples of this include Dragon Ball Evolution and the Attack on Titan movies. Analyze why some of these movies fail and how some were more of a success. What are some obstacles when adapting anime into film? What would be needed for success?
Holy cow. Were some live action Anime actually successful? It seemed like one big failure after another. Interesting. – Adnan Bey9 years ago
You should also specify where exactly they were successes/failures, either in Japan, the USA, or elsewhere.
– Tanner Ollo9 years ago
(1) The attachment we create with an anime character cannot be replicated by humans. Their eyes, their lack of facial details, their clear-cut expressions, etc. (2) Not all anime live action movies, if any, have VFX teams like that of WB or Disney. So whatever happens in anime, like the AoT titan fight scene, is trimmed down in a live-action adaptation. – Abhimanyu Shekhar9 years ago
I think the transference of the "spirit," if you will, of anime - it's compositional energy, its ability to carry on nonchalantly as deathly serious events unfold, and other characteristics - is really what is lost when the medium changes from animated to live action. As you mentioned, I think the most recognizable example is definetely Dragon Ball Evolution. What come off as a highly masculine and ego-invested character developments (at least in the case of shonens like DBZ) become cringey and, frankly, stupid one-liners when performed by real people. Not to mention in the case of DBZ that entire characters can get rewritten entirely so that they're unrecognizable to the fanbase the movie should so obviously be pandering to if it wants to be successful. tl;dr- this is an interesting idea and someone ought to pursue it. – Dillon Raborn9 years ago
There were some interesting live actions that were known to be a huge success such as the Ruroni Kenshin Live Action series as well as the latest being Assassination Classroom. One terrible live-action that could have went very well was the Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai series, which told it's actors to not look at the original source material for the characters. By doing that, it impeded upon the movie's success because of the ignorance of the writers and producers for trying to make it something that the source material was not. If they stuck to the original premise of the series and the characteristics of each character, the movie could have been done very well! – Kevin Mohammed9 years ago