So here am I, trying to keep myself up on anime news in case there’s anything that needs to be covered over here on the blog, when I realize two things. 1) Damn, the news these days is just “this anime is canceled, that anime is delayed” on repeat. 2) Wow there’s a lot more live action stuff that I thought. I’m not really in the live action game, I’m still reeling from the Death Note movie you see, but I thought live action was reserved for the Big Boys. I figured you had to be amazingly popular both in and outside of Japan to warrant a live action, but I was simply misinformed. There’s all kinds of live action content being produced… and man I’m not a fan.

I think we all know why Western adaptations of anime into live action stuff sucks. Because it’s all about the money baby! Who cares about pacing, just try to shove all of Death Note into one movie (that wasn’t even excessively long or anything) and let’s see what happens. Oftentimes the adapters don’t really give a shit about the source material as long as it generates a ton of revenue. This leads to most of Hollywood movies based on anime becoming trash and not reflecting the source quality at all.

Dafaq, how are you gonna make an anime about making anime into live action? That's criminal.

But let me be honest, every time I see a live action production based on an anime I get a bit turned off. It doesn’t matter if the shit was made in Japan with directing oversight from the original creator himself 24/7 on set. I think anime has an inherent ability to boost your suspension of disbelief due to its nature to transport you into another world. If I’m watching a movie, there has to be a ton of good CG and acting to make me believe “wow, this is really another universe” since the world looks so, well, like our world. Contrast that with anime which looks nothing like reality, so after a few mere seconds of watching it feels like I’m in an entirely different universe and I don’t know the rules yet of what can and cannot happen, thus I’ll suspend my disbelief quick as fuck. Let me show you what I mean.

See those pictures? I can’t help but feel like my bois look retarded. Yowamushi Pedal is a hype biking anime where the over-the-top character personalities lead to crazy moments and races, but you quickly get the feeling of “this is another world where people think biking is the best shit of all time” the way biking is portrayed in this anime. It’s the same deal as how in Yu-Gi-Oh! the entire world operates around a children’s card game. It makes no sense, but you can write it off as “but that’s just this anime world tho”, suspend your disbelief, and get absorbed into the shit anyway. The same goes for character designs. As long as the design fits the artstyle it won’t look too out of place since it’s anime. But when it’s real people? God the hair colors look so unnatural. Look at my man’s face in the bottom left with the green hair. What the fuck kind of face is that? LOOK at blue hair boy trying to be serious with that dumbass haircut. And I mean no hate toward the actors, it’s simply so obvious to me that they’re trying to mimic the anime, but in real life none of that shit looks as good. It’s like if three kids tried to pull off acting like Ed, Edd, and Eddy. The way those characters are drawn and animated simply expresses their over-the-top emotions and styles in ways not possible in real life. So every time I hear an anime is getting a live-action adaptation of any kind, I never get excited about it. It’s missing the life, the animation that made those characters and their world different in the first place.

Have you found a live-action adaptation that you enjoyed as much as an anime? Are live-action adaptations good and I’m just missing something? Go live and leave a comment below!