Ask John: What Are the Best Live Action Movie Adaptations of Anime?

Question:
I read your comments about the first DeathNnote movie and I agree with you. Just curious about what is your favorate live action adaptation of an anime? Additionally, which one do you think was truest to its source material?

Answer:
To provide an initial brief review, after watching the first live action Death Note motion picture, I commented on the AnimeNation Forum that I thought the film did an admirable job of condensing a significant portion of the Death Note story into a single, feature length movie. But the brevity of the movie displaced most of the film’s ability to generate atmosphere or give its characters personality. In other words, the film did the best job it could, but it’s forced to deal with too many characters and much more story than its running time can fully accommodate.

When it comes to live action film adaptations of anime or manga, there are more of them than I can ever hope to watch. Average American fans may be only familiar with a small handful of live action films based on anime or manga because very few of these films have reached official American release, or happen to be popular and successful enough to be internationally known. But in Japan, live action films based on manga or anime have been very common since at least the early 1970s.

Personally, I don’t believe that a live action film should be directly compared to its source material. Some comparison is justified, and in some cases unavoidable, but I think it’s vital to remember that a live action film is a different medium than a printed comic or animation. So a live action picture should be judged by the standards of live action pictures. In that respect, the quality I’m most interested in from a live action film based on a manga or anime is a respect for the source material, and success as an independent motion picture. In effect, slavish devotion to source material doesn’t necessarily guarantee an excellent film. More than simply copying a manga or anime with live action, I think a live action feature is most successful when it grasps the spirit and atmosphere of the original material and literally brings the essence of the source material into reality.

In my personal experience, no live action film has done a better job of capturing the spirit of its source manga than Toho’s series of Lone Wolf & Cub movies from the early 1970s. The infamous “babycart” films may have sensationalized the titular deadly baby carriage a bit much, but Tomisaburo Wakayama & Akihiro Tomikawa respectively literally embodied the fictional characters of Ogami Itto and his son Daigoro. Wakayama may have actually been a bit too taciturn compared to his manga counterpart, but his sense of resolution, his devotion to his son, and his resourcefulness were spot-on perfect recreations of the manga character. The films also deftly recreated the scenes and even some of the visual lyricism of the original manga with their methodical pacing, balletic swordplay, and intense, graphic violence. The Toho Lone Wolf films are, I think, the pinnacle of live action adaptations of manga because these films don’t feel like mere adaptations; they feel like they are the manga in cinematic form.

I don’t intend to compare the classic Lone Wolf & Cub movies with Ryuhei Kitamura’s sci-fi suspense picture Alive, but I do wish to mention Alive in the same terms. I’m not familiar with Tsutomu Takahashi’s original “Alive” manga, but even so Ryuhei Kitamura’s live action film based on it exudes a palpable atmosphere of manga chic. Especially the set design, lighting, and musical score for Alive create the impression of a cutting edge manga come to life. That impression is only heightened by the movie’s effects laden climax. Regardless of how faithful the Alive movie is to its source material, it deserves recognition as an outstanding “manga” movie because it perfectly captures the atmosphere of Japanese manga without seeming cheap, condescending, or silly.

My pick for best movie based on an anime (or actually, in this case, based on a manga turned anime) is a title which I’ve praised before, but which I haven’t yet seen surpassed. Ironically, it’s also not a Japanese film. The 1995 Crying Freeman movie directed by Frenchman Christophe Gans is reasonably faithful to the original manga and anime, recreating many scenes from the manga directly into live action. But more importantly, the film respectfully creates the atmosphere of serious, believable fantasy. The film is romantic, violent, stylish, very artificial, and at the same time very engrossing and natural. Christophe Gans has since proven himself a skilled filmmaker with Brotherhood of the Wolf, and proven beyond any doubt that he’s skilled at adapting Japanese narratives judging by his Silent Hill motion picture. Star Mark Dacascos is perfectly cast and perfectly acquits himself as a tortured soul trapped in the body of an exceptionally skilled and trained assassin. The movie expertly transfers the tone of the original manga into real human beings and real locations with intelligence and charisma. It’s a terrible shame that this highly praised cult hit still has never been officially released in America, despite being an American co-production.