Ask John: Will There Be Any Dead or Alive Anime?

Question:
The Tecmo game Dead or Alive is very popular. Tecmo released Dead or Alive 2 for Dreamcast in America, a slightly upgraded version for the Playstation 2 in Japan, then another more upgraded version for the Japanese Dreamcast. My question is, if the game series is so popular, why haven’t they made an anime series or movie about the game its characters like they have with Tekken, Street Fighter and so on?

Answer:
I’m sorry to say that I don’t know why certain video game series do and don’t get anime adaptations. What may have something to do with it, though, is the fact that the track record for fighting games being translated into anime is uneven, to say the least. Virtua Fighter had a good television series adaptation while Street Fighter and Power Stone faired less well. The VG, Gowkaiser, Vampire Hunter and Fatal Fury OAVs were very good while the Street Fighter Zero OAV series is excellent. Fatal Fury and Street Fighter both had excellent theatrical adaptations as well. The second Samurai Spirits OAV series was very good, but I think I’ll get few dissenting opinions when I say that the Art of Fighting, Tekken, Toshinden and first Samurai Spirits OAVs were all awful. Numerous fighting games have excellent stories, and theoretically would translate well into anime, but have not been animated, including King of Fighters, Eretzvaju, Bloody Roar, Guilty Gear and the aforementioned Dead or Alive. Oddly, though, Tekken, which has perhaps the most story of any fighting game, was turned into an absolutely wretched two episode OAV series. As Dead or Alive continues to grow in popularity we may see it get an anime version sometime in the future, but right now I haven’t heard of any plans for a Dead or Alive anime production.