For The Great Gatsby: It'd actually be interesting to see that, if only because the American Dream is such a huge part of the book.
edited 12th Jan '11 11:55:40 AM by Scardoll
Fight. Struggle. Endure. Suffer. LIVE.Neil Gaiman's work would be cool to try in Anime. They've already done movies out of his stuff before.
The trick is finding a work that would please the Japanese as well as Western civilization. Maybe Gordon Dickson's Childe Cycle? John Dalmas's work would have a leg up, especially his "Regiment" series, since the major religion in that has some Buddhist feel to it.
I also second the Posleen war series and even "Into the Looking Glass."
^HELL! YES!
The story reminds me of a Studio Ghibli movie anyway.
edited 15th Jan '11 11:09:57 AM by eX
Originally, Gaiman wrote the mini series for the BBC and everything he had to rewrite, he instead used in the book.
edited 16th Jan '11 1:12:29 AM by eX
I always thought it would be funny to see a horrible, Adaptation Decay'd anime of Harry Potter.
I'm feeling strangely happy now, contented and serene. Oh don't you see, finally I'll be, somewhere that's green...Flashman could be interesting. Rousing historical adventure, beautiful women, and the most despicable yet lovable anti-hero around. I think a Japanese studio could pull it off because they have less pressure to be as politically correct.
Muthafuckin' Malazan Book Of The Fallen, bitches.
Studio-wrecking budget, multiple seasons, and everything - the action, the melodrama, the freaky-awesome settings - taken even further Beyond the Impossible than it was already. It would be the essence of anime distilled into one glorious, bloated, Madhouse-produced magnum opus.
You know you want it.
edited 19th Jan '11 9:59:24 PM by Iaculus
What's precedent ever done for us?Not another one of these threads! There's basically an exactly oppositely arranged one in the Manga/Anime section!
So anyway, my obligatory list, or whatever.
Flora Segunda, so much. It's a weird, genre-busting (sort of...I'm tired and not nearly coherent enough right now) fantasy set in a sort of alternate-universe mid-to-late 19th century California (sans rest of U.S.) with magic and very complete gender equality, a military dictatorship that is itself under the yoke of their southern neighbors, which are essentially the Aztec Empire with a crapload of powerful mages, among other things. It subverts and averts so many tropes and would probably confound any adaptation by mainstream western sources, but it's nothing many of the Japanese studios couldn't handle, and has the potential for beautiful visuals. As much of a cop-out as this sounds like, I think we could do worse than to give it to the Code Geass team of Goro Taniguchi+CLAMP and see what happens, though the heroine isn't exactly CLAMP-skinny by any stretch of the imagination...but they could probably handle the visual richness and decadence and evoke it in a similar way as they did for Geass.
Also, Sabriel.
And also, yes Larklight would be great, but while we're talking Phillip Reeve, how come no one has mentioned the Hungry City Chronicles/Mortal Engines Quartet! Another thing that would probably decay less than if adapted by westerners because the Japanese would be more accommodating to some of its tricker elements.
Flora Segunda | World Made By Hand | Monster Blood Tattoo ^You should read these series.
Yeah, that could be a problem. In fact, one of the biggest problems, because it's been commented on many times that it doesn't seem like any American visual depictions of her are capable of showing her properly either, for a number of reasons. I guess it depends on how much the production team was willing to overcome the general Japanese trend and just do her accurately. And if they couldn't, it's a shame, because there's so much amazing stuff visually in the series that would be well-served by some excellent animation, stuff that might be quite costly to the point that Hollywood would be wary of it for a feature film.
I just get the feeling that some open-minded Japanese director would be more willing to depict Hester properly than studio people in Hollywood...her appearance is one of the surest targets for good old Executive Meddling that I've ever seen. But I'm no expert on any of this, I'm just throwing out guesses and opinions...
Flora Segunda | World Made By Hand | Monster Blood Tattoo ^You should read these series.Just... to get this off my chest:
- The Phantom Of The Opera The Anime. I think it would be great to see it expanded upon, and somehow anime seems like a good medium. They could do plenty of flashbacks to the Phantom’s past, use amazing background music, anime is used to romantic tension so it would play out the Will They or Won't They? longer and add some character development in the mix. Also, the characters that get cut off the other adaptations could have a chance of having their own episode.
- The Godfather Anime. Its one of those books you'd like to see in visual media, but the movie sadly left some subplots/characters out. It could be serious and dark seinen. May be true to the original or they could swap the Italian mafia for the Yakuza.
Obviously Harry Potter. Less obviously the 1632 series by Eric Flint and others. I mean, seeing an actual 21st Century American town land smack dab in the worst war in European history until the outbreak of Big Mistake Number One - just how cool would that be? I wanna see an incarnation of Gustavus II Adolphus, Rex Sueciae charging onto the field of Breitenfeld and pummelling the crap out of his enemies with the best field artillery of the seventeenth century.
edited 3rd Jun '13 2:35:32 PM by TamH70
Perdido Street Station would make a good anime I think. Enough creepy monsters and fantastic ideas in the city to inspire the artists. Plus New Crobuzon would be a wonderful blend of weird and Nightmare Fuel on screen, perhaps even more so than the book.
The Black Magician Trilogy. When I was first reading them, I kept thinking "this would be perfect for a shoujo series".
Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!

Gravity's Rainbow as done by whoever did Excel Saga.
no one will notice that I changed this