Strangely, American film and Japanese manga/anime have been developing a close relationship.
In 2009, Dragonball Evolution, based off of Dragon Ball, came out. Reviews for the movie had been mostly negative; however, Fox did make a profit off of it.
Recently, Warner Bros. plans to produce an American live action Death Note film, as it has signed Shane Black to direct the movie, which is not surprising as Warner Bros. Pictures Japan had successfully released three Death Note films in Japan.
Warner Bros. also plans to release a live action film of Akira. The script had already been written.
However, it’s not just U.S. companies remaking Japanese manga/anime into films. Warner Bros. Japan is producing an anime adaptation of the CW TV show, Supernatural. The anime will be made available in three installments on February 23rd, March 9th, and June 4th.
Here is the trailer:
American companies must believe that there is a market for anime/manga live action film adaptations for them to make these adaptations. However, who are they marketing to? Dragonball and Death Note both have supernatural elements to them, as Dragonball is about how in gathering all of the Dragonballs, a dragon will be summoned and will grant one wish. Death Note is about a young man who finds a black book that was originally owned by a Death God. Whenever someone’s name is written in the book, that person will die of natural means.
These movies do not really fall in the normal genre of action in American filmography. Do these entertainment industries find that there are enough anime fans in the U.S. for the adaptation projects to be worthwhile? I don’t think so.
Maybe the reasons fall into the same line of thinking as to why there are so many comic book adaptations being made, such as Watchmen, Spiderman, Batman, Iron Man, etc. They just make good, entertaining movies. In general, manga/anime have a vast variety of genres and really good storylines, which is why they have such a large following in Japan and the U.S.
With the popularity of anime-based Japanese films and comic-based American films, entertainment companies may hope that anime-based American films will have a large market.
With the popularity of anime-based Japanese films and comic-based American films, entertainment companies may hope that anime-based American films will have a large market.
OoOOo, after reading this post, i'm excited for the US movies to come out and to see how similar they will be to the original animes/and what differences there will be. I do agree that manga/animes do have good story lines in general, probably good enough to capture larger audiences, not just fan-based anime ones. It does depend on how well the US adapted films are marketed and advertised. However, I think anime cartoons have assimilated quite largely into American TV culture, with popular television shows like Pokemon (now playing on Cartoon Network) to Avatar: The Last Airbender (Nickelodeon) which are popular childrens cartoon channels to watch in the US. Making US films based of popular animes with cool storylines seems likely to bring good entertainment and a positive investment to me.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of people out there who would enjoy a film like Death Note. Sci-Fi lovers, for one, and all of those curious as to why many people love the manga/anime. I honestly don't think that the storyline will be as good as the one in Japanese. The styles and tastes of each culture is different. An example that can be seen are the adaptations of The Ring, Blood Cross, and various others.
ReplyDeleteI am quite skeptical on how enjoyable the film will actually be. Overall, it may turn out to be an OK film, but I doubt it will be something worth mentioning to others.