Apparently I feel like riling up the natives today, so here's a talking point for you, and one I actually believe: Katsuhiro Otomo's animated Akira is a clumsy and sloppy adaptation of a far superior manga that tries - and fails - to jam in more information than the film can actually contain. For that matter, for all of his raw talent - which he has loads of - Otomo has never directed a fully successful feature film at all.
Discuss. And while you're at it I'd love to hear some examples of adaptations - manga to anime, manga to live action, anime to live action, whatever - that you think are particularly strong.
Discuss. And while you're at it I'd love to hear some examples of adaptations - manga to anime, manga to live action, anime to live action, whatever - that you think are particularly strong.
I agree. I have always hoped that Akira would be remade as an animated mini-series and stick closer to the much better comic.
I really loved the two GANTZ movies (although I think some folks in this part didn't dig it). TRAIN MAN is another strong manga-to-film adaptation, while I couldn't get past the shoddiness and general sloppiness of the 20th CENTURY BOYS films to enjoy them in the least.
Blah, I don't really like drawn-out stuff. If there is too much stuff to cram into a film, directors should either cut some crap out or cram it all in anyway and be proud of the chaotic mess that ensues. Akira is definitely the latter and turning it into a mini-series would've hurt the material considerably. But I'm not big on series anyway.
As for great adaptations, Ghost in the Shell is probably the best I've seen. Improves a lot on the material given by Shirow.
Oldboy, Ichi the Killer, Uzumaki... i liked these
I disagree that AKIRA was that poorly put together. I wouldnt say it was excelkent, but I think, given the Japanese entertainment industry's long history of creating film adaptations and TV series from manga series that aren't even completed, and given the strange politics between the various branches of both the entertainment industry and inside of animation studios, I feel that Otomo did okay.
...but just okay. AKIRA really is mostly memorable for its visuals, which, good or bad, definitely says something about the story.
BTW... I thought Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex was a strong adaptation. I also agree that Old Boy was one of the best adaptations ever executed.
Too many volumes of manga story and too many episodes of series are a turn off for me. I started collecting AKIRA manga when it hit the shelves all slathered with color from EPIC comics but it just kept going and going and going... I didn't care for Otomo's pacing. Anything beyond about 26 episodes to resolve a main plot and I'm dropping out... Unless its just insanely awesome.
That said, I still don't know what the hell AKIRA was about and after 13 issues from EPIC, I really don't feel compelled to track down and buy the 19 phone-books of collected material and find out. I really like Otomo, but that's just too much!
"Otomo has never directed a fully successful feature film at all."
I don't even know where to start with that ludicrous comment. Have you seen Memories? Or are you just trolling for hits? That was his baby. Oh, and for the record, the guy has been shooting on film almost as long as he'd been drawing manga, though it was more of a pet project until Akira. And you cannot tell me his segments in Neo Tokyo and Robot Carnival were not brilliant. Hell, even his misfires like Roujin Z and Steamboy have more action and excitement than the average Bayformers film.
"Akira" is absolutely one of my favorite movies, warts and all. I find it visually stunning, with some of the best action in any animated movie before or since. I love the scope that extends beyond the story, the surreal turns and bizarre characters. Finally, it has one of the best and most unique soundtracks of any film I've ever seen.
Everyone's already mentioned the obvious adaptations. I really liked Tsui Hark's "Wicked CIty" and "Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance." There's a special place in my heart for "Guyver 2: Dark Hero," which in spite of itself had some good action and character design. And of course, there's "Fist of the North Star" with Eric Roberts...just kidding. Even I have to draw the line somewhere.
@ Daniel Zelter
It's just for hits, and it's not for the first time.
What struck me most when I saw "Akira" was the sheer amount of excess. It was long, it escalated all the way into apocalyptic levels, the artwork was awesome... It was shock-and-awe in a grand form, and I fondly remember watching the screen stunned and silent after it had finished. It was so far beyond anything I had ever seen that my mind blew a fuse.
But story-wise I never felt "Akira" was particularly hot, especially during re-visits. So... yeah, actually I agree with Todd. Otomo isn't that great a director, but his misfires are still awesome for their ambition, scope and rich imagery.
As for successful adaptations from light novels or manga to anime (series), I thought "Baccano!" and "Durarara!!" were very, very good. And somewhat more recently, "House of Five Leaves".
As for the original "Ghost in the Shell" movie, I think it's flawed and also tries to cram too much into its (short) running time, but I love that movie with all my heart and would choose it over "Akira" any day. But I do not have to choose as I can have both. And I am grateful for that, as they are of that most rare breed: not entirely successful films which are nevertheless total and utter masterpieces.
I always had a love for Akira for it's great visuals and design, that is until I read the entire series through Dark Horse. The only single thing that still shines from Otomo's film is it's animation. The manga is WAY richer in terms of character development, imagery and tells a much better story. In terms of other manga adaptations, I'd have to go with, not in any order,From Manga to Anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Berserk, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Tekkon Kinkreet and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. From Manga to Live Action would be Toyoda's Blue Spring, Miike's Crows Zero and Kitamura's Azumi.
I disagree that it's sloppy or clumsy. I think it's a pretty impressive effort to get across as much as it does within it's 2.5 hour run time. Is it flawed? Yes. Is the manga better? Yes. But the artistry on display, technical skills like the use of ramping long before Zack Snyder would abuse it, the music... And fuck it, frankly the themes are ambitious enough that discounting it as simply eye candy seems a bit... Obtuse maybe.
People already listed quite a few great adaptations (or at least ones I have a soft spot for, like Steve Wangs' Guyver 2) but I'll throw Miyazaki's Nausicaa manga into the pile. He started it before the film, and finished it about ten years after, but it goes in really interesting places the film never does. And it's scope is tremendous.
Also, it's kinda a shit film but I really enjoy it anyhow... Stormriders was originally a long running comic. And getting Sunny Chiba as their villain was a masterstroke of casting.
It's hard to write off a film that did so much to propel the medium forward as being clumsy or sloppy. On a technical level Akira is still one of the most impressive films I've ever seen, but I admit it does have issues in the story department -- most of which become more apparent when you read the source material. I still love the film, especially since watching it again a few years ago rekindled my interest in anime.
It's not as good as the manga, therefore it sucks.
With all it's beautiful visuals, stunning designs, thought provoking concepts, adept social commentary, and not to mention it's importance to cinema, and you guys slam it completely because of it's crammed plot?!
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[It's so damn long nobody's going to read it!]
AKIRA is a mess but it's a beautiful mess. I love it(but I don't think it's holy and untouchable) because it is a mess. I'll come back to that later.
When we try to assess whether Otomo's animated AKIRA is a clumsy and sloppy adaptation of a far superior manga that tries - and fails - to jam in more information than the film can actually contain, we'd better take a close look at the chronology of the animated feature's development, just to be fair.
The animated feature was released in July 1988. It had been in development/production/post for roughly 3 years during which Otomo continued the manga series on the WEEKLY YOUNG MAGAZINE magazine with occasional breaks here and there due to the increasingly more hectic movie schedule. He stopped the manga from the Apr. 20 1987 issue to the Nov. 21 1987 issue completely. The April 20, 1987 issue is the episode in which Kaneda and Kai go off on the motorcycle trip down the subway structure. So it wasn't so far from when Kaneda reemerged in the story, falling from the sky. Obviously Otomo had to concoct an ending to a still continuing story there, that might explain the cluttered-ness of the movie.
Now let's see when he started writing the screenplay for the feature. One of the AKIRA promotional books says it was June 2, 1986 Otomo locked himself up in a hotel room to start writing. That was around the time when the US fleet coming to offshore Neo-Tokyo episode was published on the YOUNG MAGAZINE periodical, suggesting Otomo had just arrived at the beginning of the more complex last 852 pages of the AKIRA saga. Greater in scale, more complex with more characters and subplots.
I'm a big fan of AKIRA and I love every episode, subplot, character and arc. But I think it was inevitable for the feature AKIRA to drop everything that happens in the second half of the saga. And as the editor pointed out, I guess the first half was still too much to jam in to tell a fluid narrative in a feature-length movie.
And as a result the movie is a mess but so is the manga. And they're both a beautiful mess. The impact of AKIRA movie(for me, at least) was how it defied all the conventional and tested (particularly Hollywood) formula. It was exploding with a PUNK/ALTERNATIVE attitude and that's what made it special, not the neatly wrapped, smoothly told narrative or easy-to-identify-with characters. Besides, the plots too internalized to comprehend are what the Japanese movies are about most of the time. For a movie, any movie, to be called AKIRA means it has to follow the attitude the original had. They won't get that name for their movie by merely trying to duplicate the story and/or subplots. No, sir.
The movie spends like the first 10 minutes with the guys ass-kicking on the super-conductor motorcycles across Neo-Tokyo and the last 10 minutes demolishing it. That's what the ANIMATED AKIRA, made with the best 1988 anime technology they could afford and with the distinctive sensibility, was about. The genius of Otomo in the manga was how he captured the action in a most dynamic series of frames with still images. And in the animated feature, it was how he animated it, and animated it he did! That's what it was about. Now in 2011 what can be done to the same old story would be radically different, and I hope the filmmakers find a damn inventive way to adapt it.
My list of successful manga-to-live-action adaptations that I can think of in 5 seconds:
Fumihiko Sori's Ping Pong
Nobuhiro Yamashita's A Gentle Breeze in the Village
Shusuke Kaneko's Death Note
Toshio Li's Detroit Metal City
There are more but I can't think of them all now.
Otomo adaptation maybe is faulty, but nowhere near the train wreck we can expect of a Hollywood adaptation.
No idea why Akira is consider a mess, the story reflects very well the chaotic nature of the whole thing. I know is a usual nerd argument that "if you can't adapt hundreds of books from the manga into a 2hrs movie it sucks" but...that's a silly argument.
As for strong manga adaptations, Oldboy and Ichi the Killer are the obvious examples. The later being just miles away better than the original material in every sense.
Katsuhiro Otomo's animated Akira is a clumsy and sloppy adaptation of a far superior manga that tries - and fails - to jam in more information than the film can actually contain. For that matter, for all of his raw talent - which he has loads of - Otomo has never directed a fully successful feature film at all.
That sounds like slamming to me. Of course, written only to annoy his readers instead of sharing some thoughtful opinion about it after the tongue lashing he received after his last "opinion" piece about AKIRA. What exactly does he mean by "fully successful" anyway? In my mind, and I would assume most people's whether they liked the titles or not, would believe that AKIRA and STEAMBOY were successful. If success does not equal making good money and having more favorable reviews than not, then what DOES it mean?
Todd writes and wines about how we "elitists" need to "get over it" and stop bitching about AKIRA remakes and what have you, but every time I come on here, Todd has something snarky to say about it all in some article. I think he's the one with serious AKIRA issues.
No matter how it's sliced, the film version of AKIRA has major gaps in it. is it entertaining? Yes. Is it beautiful? Yes. Is it coherent, making sense in it's own universe? Not really. It can't be. This is a film that is best appreciated by those who have read the entire manga. that said, I love it and get lost in it quite easily. The giant teddy bear scene still gives me goosebumps.
I think we all need to remember to "speak" to each other here like we would in the real world too.
If we agree that AKIRA is a clumsy and sloppy adaptation of a superior manga, doesn't that argument in itself make the idea of a Hollywood adaptation lacking the one thing Otomo's original had going for it - style - a monumentally bad idea?
C'mon, now, Todd... ;}
I find it interesitng when this goes the other way; Have yall seen those recent Marvel Comics Anime on G4? That whole project yielded some....interesting results. Defnitely some good lessons learned from that experiment.
I think generally speaking, the biggest problem was that the basis of all the characters was lost in translation,so to speak. I think the japanese idea of a cavalier billionaire playboy comes off a little different from the Tony Stark americans know. Specific to the show, the shoehorned approach ("Tony stark goes to Japan"
Wolverine was interesting because the comic canon provides the perfect reason for a japanese crossover. It still came off a little wierd. In this case the Japanese brooding hero isnt quite the same as the ornery wanderer americans have known for decades.
With Blade, that one just sucked (dur hur); It was like a japanese style action horror anime, but not at all reflecting the bad motherfucker Blade that americans know (i.e. the persona Wesley Snipes created which totally redefined the original character) It ws a "Blade" story in name only (why did he have a samurai/sentai super finisher??).
I think the X-men story worked the best. Being the most adapted book by far out of marvels creations, it was a far more familiar thing to see an animated show which picked and chose from various elements of the comic continuity into its own distinct amalgam. Wheras X-men has been derided for (d)evolving into a glorified soap opera, that element works perfectly with the japanese sense of heavy melodrama. The aloof mourning cyclops is exactly like the sullen reluctant heroes of many Shonen, but it totally makes sense in the story's context (Jean is DEEEEAAAADD). I look forward to future projects like this, provided they learn from these mistakes.