Death Note 2017

• "So, what did we learn?"
• "Anime sucks so hard that even white people can't save it?"
• "Eeyup. Pass me the heroin?"
• ~Standard Hollywood executive thought process.

edited 20th Sep '17 7:37:02 PM by TobiasDrake

"Maybe the lesson is to respect the source material more and have better casting?"

"GET OUT!"

They made American Seven Samurai work, why can't we do the same with animez?

I am so afraid for Battle Angel Alita.

Even thJapanese can't make good live action anime.

I thought the Rurouni Kenshin movies were good.

Every rule has its exception.

I actually liked the Japanese Death Note films, personally.

EDIT: I do think part of the problem with adapting anime is that Hollywood often wants to tone down the anime-ness of it. Dragon Ball Evolution is a great example of this. They're taking notes from the wrong films.

You want to see live-action anime done right, you have to look at films that aren't actually anime. Scott Pilgrim has an amazing fight scene between Ramona Flowers and Roxie Richter featuring anime physics, a giant hammer pulled out of a purse, and a whip-sword that perfectly manages to represent anime-style combat in live action.

I've also often said that the final battle between Neo and Smith in The Matrix: Revolutions is the best live-action Dragon Ball Z scene ever put to film.

edited 21st Sep '17 12:00:37 PM by TobiasDrake

x6

That mostly worked because they took only the bare structure of the story (Town frequently being attacked by bandits. They hire someone who can help them. Seven easily identifiable personality types. Build up to the confrontation with the bandits.) and reset it into a genre/time period where it would properly work.

I mean, you could theoretically take the same story structure and reset it in a Knight-errant time period with castles and etc.

But, it was also a different time and a different story. Death Note, and how it plays out, has kind of a very specific plot structure and very specific themes. It became an epic cat and mouse mind game where you're not even sure which one is the cat and which one is the mouse.

Also, in a day where diverse casting and repsentation is something that needs to be corrected in our filmmaking, trying to do the same thing just isn't something that's likely to work right now unless you pull it off flawlessly. I don't want to say its impossible, but it'd be difficult.

You know, I've heard plenty say that Mia is smarter than Misa and as I think about it, I wonder, is this really true? Mia is portrayed as being competent, but all of her actions just make everything worse. Misa, meanwhile, we at least see her act competently at times. We've seen her use good disguise skills as well as manipulation, such as during the Yotsuba arc. I can't see Mia being capable of doing anything Misa did during that.

Misa is less dumb and more too busy sucking Light's metaphorical dick in hopes of getting her hands on the real thing.

Yep. Misa's not stupid, just motivated by something that isn't as important to the narrative as Light and L's goals. Her goal is pretty simple. But it by no means makes her stupid.

Misa is impulsive and mentally unstable. The theory I've seen suggested is that the brutal murder of her parents pretty much stunted her emotional/psychological growth.

This leads to her doing things like going to see Light...right after he told her they can't be seen together. Also she did this RIGHT IN FRONT OF L, who promptly steals Misa's phone and that leads to a bad situation for both her and Light.

But in other instances, like with the Third Kira, her impulsiveness pays off. She also did try her best to cover her tracks when pretending to be Kira. But she was competing with a super-genius so she lost.

She's not stupid, she just lacks self-control due to being immature and damaged. It's why I've always pitied her more than anything. (Light's abuses don't help. As well as the creators themselves writing her off as having only a 3/10 in Intelligence)

edited 23rd Sep '17 3:14:52 AM by Nikkolas

That's why people associate her with Harley Quinn.

Regarding good anime adaptations Edge of Tomorrow is a good example. It can be done right is just that they don't put the effort. With Dragon Ball been the Quintessential example. I'm not a big fan of DBZ but I get why is so popular and why people like it, even as a casual viewer I like what I saw. They turn a story with comedy, drama and action about a superbeing fighting superpowered foes and turn it into a bullied angsty teenager in high school trying to get a girlfriend.

In this case they took a complex psychological thriller about two master minds in a global duel with complex philosophical questions into a bullied angsty teenager in high school trying... oh wait, I'm starting to see a pattern here.

What is it with Hollywood and angsty bullied teenagers?

edited 24th Sep '17 12:33:59 AM by Luppercus

Also I feel like perhaps they're picking the wrong anime/manga to try and adapt. Like instead of taking ones that very much have their Japanese-ness as part of the story, use some who don't, or that you have to whitewash a ton. Some examples:

-Black Lagoon-Where it has a very diverse cast, with only the main protagonist being Japanese. Heck even the manga's author has said that he prefers the English dub because he always pictured the character as speaking English when he's writing the manga anyway.

-Baccano-Again diverse cast, diverse settings.

-Fullmetal Alchemist-Set in a alternate universe version of turn on the 20th Century Europe (and especially Germany). And that aesthetic is a big part of the story.

-Hellsing-Set in Europe, features a mostly European cast.

-Cowboy Bebop or Trigun-Space Western's, diverse casts.

-Attack on Titan-Again has a very European-like aesthetic (and the character names as well) to it, and Mikasa being the ONLY Asian left around is actually a plot point even.

-Etc.

Or they could just let Asian actors play Asian characters.

Just a thought. Crazy, I know.

True. But at this point that seems like a distant possibility at best. No matter how many times it doesn't work, they never seem to learn their lesson.

As odd as this might sound, them not being Asian doesn't bother me so much as they just aren't the characters at all. I mean, if Hollywood is going to make a Death Note version in America, it makes sense to me that changes like that would be made.

I do feel though if you're going to make such changes, just make it an original story set within the universe or something. It creates less baggage.

Whitewashing was a symptom to a bigger issue, which is the execs didn't give a shit about the source material.

Pretty much the same with Dragonball and Last Airbender.

edited 1st Oct '17 4:31:05 PM by washington213

The Last Airbender was a bit weird. You had white Inuits, a black Tibetan monk, and the Japanese-like Fire Nation became Indian… Aang was pretty much the only character that looked his part.

That's because they cast their leads and then mapped the extras' ethnicities around them.

IIRC, Dev Patel was the only one who actually auditioned for his part. Katara was outright cast via nepotism.

Well, seeing as Goku isn't Asian, I don't know how you cast a Sayian. Dragonball Evolution had so many issues beyond whitewashing that I can't even get angry about that. It was never trying to be faithful, which is a bigger issue to me.

I don't feel characters should just be Asian if it's anime, though the workings of it varies story to story. Like, if I was dealing with Fullmetal Alchemist, I would shrug because it's fitting to the character - if you're trying to make a faithful adaption. Or with Attack on Titan, I don't feel you should have Asian characters except for those like Mikasa because it's there. This one I could get over it, but it just played roulette. Oddly, Black L bothered me so much more for some reason, despite the fact I am black. Still not sure if I should be offended by how they portrayed L or not as basically an angry black man...

Anyway, The Last Airbender example DID bother me because it outright was trying to be a faithful adaption.

edited 2nd Oct '17 2:05:36 PM by Prime_of_Perfection

Are the Japanese movies worth checking out? Thinking about snagging them off ebay. Found the trilogy for $10.

Well, 10$ is not much of a risk. >.> I haven't seen the L spin-off (I think that's the third film?) but the first two are decent if you don't mind a few cheap effects and a bit of overacting.

Oh, you mean L: change the WorLd? I saw it once, it was decent too I suppose. Or at least, from what I remember.