Ask John: Why Are There So Many Live Action Adaptations of Anime Lately?

Question:
Sailor Moon, Evangelion, Witch Hunter Robin, Cutey Honey, Dragon Ball. What’s up with all the live action? Any reason for what seems to be a boom in popular series moving to real life programming? Any others that I’m not aware of? It seems odd to me that these series, all of which were or are popular in the American market, are making their way into another level of reality.

Answer:
Honestly, I think it’s largely just coincidence.

If we consider the live action film adaptations of manga and anime in the works or about to be released we find that Evangelion, Witch Hunter Robin, Dragonball, Blood: The Last Vampire, Lone Wolf & Cub, Kite, Ninja Scroll, Lupin the 3rd, and James Cameron’s rumored Gunnm are all American productions. Kekko Kamen, Pretty Guardian Sailormoon, Cutey Honey, Tetsujin 28, Devilman, Sky High and Casshan are all Japanese productions. It’s relatively easy to guess that the sudden boom in American produced live action adaptations of anime and manga has been caused by the recent increase in the awareness of manga and anime in America. Anime and manga are only now beginning to become recognized enough in America to have mainstream commercial potential as theatrical films. And naturally Hollywood, one of the trend-setters in American culture, is one of the first entities to begin adopting pop-culture Japanese art into American film.

I’d say that the sudden appearance of numerous Japanese live action adaptations of anime and manga is actually neither sudden nor unusual at all. There are a countless number of live action Japanese television shows and movies based on anime and manga ranging from well known examples like the GTO and the Sailormoon TV series to adaptations not frequently recognized as such including Ichi the Killer, Alive and Sharkskin Man & Peach Hip Girl to virtually unheard of (outside of Japan) live action versions of manga like Battlefield Baseball, Blue Summer, and Hotel Hibiscus. Japan has been quietly and consistently producing live action versions of manga and anime for decades. I suspect that since American society is only recently becoming more conscious of what’s going on in Japan’s film industry, the recent awareness that Japan is producing a lot of live action versions of manga seems like a new trend when, in fact, it’s not a new trend at all.