You don’t need to be a great connoisseur of anime to realize that Japanese animation has its own aesthetic and a very particular way of telling its stories. From the visuals to the themes and the development of their narratives, they are styles that make perfect sense within Eastern logic, but that can cause a certain strangeness to Western eyes — especially for those who are not used to this type of language.
For this very reason, live-action adaptations of anime are always challenging. It is not enough just to put an actor to play that hero or heroine that you saw in the cartoon, but to balance the two languages very well to maintain fidelity without sounding exaggerated or, in the opposite sense, ending all the soul of the original content.
And let’s face it, there’s no shortage of examples of how easy it is to slide into a terrible live-action anime. Proof of that is this list that the Canaltech prepared with the 5 worst anime live-actions.
5. Cowboy Bebop
the series of Cowboy Bebop released by Netflix in 2022 came full of good intentions. With an identical look to the anime, recreating much of the vast universe of bounty hunters and even bringing in legendary composer Yoko Kanno to repeat the classic soundtrack, the adaptation had everything to recreate everything that makes animation a work of art. All that was missing was for the producers to understand.
This is the best example that a good adaptation does not depend only on aesthetic fidelity to the base material. Before putting the cosplayers on parade, you need a script that translates the story in the best possible way — and that’s where the series stumbled.
With significant changes in the plot and without giving weight to the past and the development of its protagonists, Cowboy Bebop has become something soulless and far removed from the anime that everyone loves. Not by chance, it was canceled in its first season.
If you want to kill yourself, Cowboy Bebop it is available on Netflix.
4. A Vigilante do Amanhã: Ghost in the Shell
Another adaptation that people didn’t understand when they saw it and that, even so, ventured to take it to the cinemas was Ghost in the Shell. The original anime is one of the great classics of the genre and brings a whole philosophical discussion about what it is to be human and reality itself — and which barely appears in the 2017 feature.
The film starring Scarlett Johansson was highly criticized by fans and accused of whitewashing — that is, replacing the oriental heroine with a white actress — but that is the least of his problems. The big defect is that it is this empty shell that leaves aside all the issues that the original had to focus only on visuals and action.
A Vigilante do Amanhã: Ghost in the Shell it is available on Glogoplay.
3. The North Star Warrior
Although it is a very traditional manga and a classic anime, the story of Hokuto no Ken (or Fist of the North Star, as it is also known here) has always been very bizarre. And this craziness of the post-apocalyptic world in which the hero uses a forbidden fighting style to protect the weak and innocent is part of the charm of the work when you take into account the context and the way it is presented in the original.
Now imagine when these elements are carried over to a live-action. That’s what we saw with The North Star Warriora 1995 film that manages to be eerily faithful to the anime.
And why is he on the list of worst adaptations? Because he decided to do it on a very low budget, which just highlights all the strangeness of the universe in question. So, as much as he did his homework very well when it came to taking the story of the hero Kenshiro to a world of flesh and blood, he can’t help but be trash.
The most curious thing is that it has a very interesting cast, which includes Malcolm McDowell, Alex from Clockwork Orange. On the other hand, it stars Gary Daniels, the king of bad movies and star of movies like Tekken, Blood Moon e White Tiger.
2. Death Note
Another Netflix gem — and this time, beyond any justification. That’s because the story of Death Note It’s very simple and easy to adapt. Unlike most animes, the saga of the student who finds a notebook capable of killing anyone who has his name written on its pages does not abuse the language exaggerations of the manga and brings a very serious tone that is very easy to adapt to live-action. .
Therefore, it is disrespectful what the 2017 film did. All characters are mischaracterized to a level that makes it impossible to recognize them and practically nothing finds an echo in the anime that has always been highly revered and was ready to be taken to the big screen. It’s a business that doesn’t make any sense.
Death Note is available at Netflix.
1. Dragon Ball Evolution
It’s impossible to talk about bad anime adaptations without mentioning the film that made Hollywood realize that bringing stories from these animations to the screen could be a mistake: Dragon Ball Evolution.
Dragon Ball has always been a massive phenomenon and it was only natural that the producers would grow an eye for the Goku saga to piggyback on that popularity. But things went so wrong that the feature is still a ghost that haunts adaptations of the genre to this day – in addition to having sunk the career of actor Justin Chatwin.
To tell you the truth, the idea itself already smelled like failure. The anime is very stylized within cartoonish aesthetics — just look at the heroes’ hair — and trying to take this into serious live action is something that didn’t work out.
the damage of Dragon Ball Evolution it was so big that the creator of the manga, Akira Toriyama, went public with explanations and said that he had nothing to do with it. According to the mangaka, he would have pointed out several times that the film was following the wrong paths and even pointed out some changes to keep everything close to the original Goku – and was summarily ignored.
The only good thing that came out of Evolution is that she got Toriyama back to work with Dragon Ball after years of the end of history. According to the author, he was so angry with the adaptation that he decided to write the script for a new film for the anime, creating the concept that we saw in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods.
Dragon Ball Evolution is available on Star+.
