Akira was, obviously, the launch off point for Anime in the west, and the movie was great. But later on I read the Manga, and they were so much richer than the movie. It seems like a 12-episode Anime would be perfect for Akira. And it would probably be successful, because everybody knows/loves it.
20th Century Boys is a bit... odder. I've read the Manga twice, and I know that there's a live action film, but the work seems so much better suited to Anime. I don't know how it's held up -- certainly no one on KIA2 mentions it. It's also not great -- the build up is fantastic, but the denouement is... odd.
Just wondering if there's a reason for this, or if it's just an historical quirk.
A lot of anime, regardless of how much quality is put into it, is treated as a promo for the manga the work is based on.
Which makes sense given that unlike the West, there is still a culture of going to your local store and buying a physical copy each week. It used to be a lot rarer than it is nowadays to get a sequel or spin off serialisation, just ask those poor bastards in the No game No life community...
No one wanted to follow the Akira film. Its held up as a literal masterpiece and cornerstone of media, and anyone who attempted to re-adapt it would have to stand under that shadow. The only person willing to take that risk would be the type of slimey loser that couldn't ever measure up.
Look at Berserk. The 97 anime is hugely lauded, and because of that every re-adaptation has basically been mocked and laughed it even when they don't flop. And then people immediately go back to the original after the novelty runs out. Its a walking example of how a big shadow like that can easily ruin a work before it even releases.
As for Akira, it would also suffer with the fact that its main cast are basically hard coded into people's minds. Expanding on it would show different versions of those characters that would make people absolutely hate it. Tetsuo is far more sympathetic in the anime than he is in the manga, to a point where it would absolutely change how you view the movie in retrospect.
20CBs plot ending was very meh. The author should stick to non implicitly supernatural stories like monster
Yeah... it was super-meh. The build-up was great, though.
Monster is a fantastic Anime/Manga.
The build up was a bit too long. It kept going oh here’s the truth, no it’s not the truth, here’s the truth for real, nope. It repeated this so much that when the truth finally came out it was kinda disappointing along with the ending
Akrika was concise and built for film. A series would have dragged it out too long and ruined the pacing. Movie was perfect, dont fuck with it. Anything that gets fucked with these days gets ruined.
The film was a crude abbreviation of the manga from what I can recall of reading it decades ago.
I'll agree that we ought to leave well enough alone and don't really want to see it revisited by the demons of the modern era.
Akira was directed by the manga creator. We will rarely get something like that.
In what way?
Sailor Moon, Akira, Dragon Ball, and Speed Racer created the anime space in the western mind.
If you were a kid in the 90s, maybe. If you are older, no.
Having grown up in the 80s... no one knew about Anime, and then came Akira, and then many people knew about Anime.
Edit: Oh, and G-force, but we didn't really think of that as Anime. It was just cool.
Voltron was big in the west before Akira.
More people knew about Robotech and Voltron than Akira in the 80s, especially since Akira wasn't released in the US until 1990.
Macross?
Totally, Robotech was way bigger in the 80s.
Just looked it up -- seems really cool.
I grew up in smalltown Canada. Even with 'cable' our choices were really limited.
Dragon ball was out at that time in canada and I watched it before akria came along.
Astro Boy aired on NBC in the 60s in the US. And Voltron as others have said was big before Akira. Latin America didn't get into anime until Dragonball and Saint Seiya.
i'm still a bit bummed Nausicaa didn't get a full adaptation series
I'm more salty about the fact that Miyazaki got away with only writing four volumes of it and didn't even have to tell a complete story in order to make his movie. The movie was also shit compared to the manga rendition. It is paradoxically some of his best work but also his laziest/sloppiest.
Live action film trilogy actually.
Question: why do we need them? Why do we need to make film adaptations of stories that are perfectly fine enough on their own? Why do we need to treat everything that isn't a movie or a TV show as a lesser art form and as the first draft for the so-called masterwork that those two mediums are?
Anime is usually just an advertisement for the original book / video game.
Akira wasn't the launch point of anime in the US, and honestly, the film was lackluster to me. Great animation, crappy story. I didn't like a single character in the film.
There are a lot of reasons why Akira didn't get a series; the film didn't really do well in Japan outside of otaku circles, and given its budget, that didn't help.
Not sure why 20th Century Boys didn't get an anime other than it looks to me less appealing to younger audiences given what the anime looked like at the time it was released in theaters. Plus with 2 live action films made it would seem like a step back to make an anime series.
I guess you could do Akira, but the animation would have to be on par with the film or everyone would complain. That'd be one expensive production.
Also, most anime adapts slop. I'm not sure if there's production capital and broadcasting room for other stuff.
Anime adapts are just the Japanese version of 80s cartoons. Seasonal marketing budgets for manga/merchandise.
He-Man and Transformers sucked pretty hard too if you don't have nostalgia for them, but they did their job and created a media empire and sold a shit ton of toys.
90% of anime are just doing the same thing, but for manga and all the various figurines/posters/whatever. We just don't have access to most of that in the West, so it loses the immediate hype value its meant to have.
Yeah, I guess that's true. I loved Hunter x Hunter and FMA:Brotherhood etc as Anime, but they both lacked the richness of the animation in Akira the movie.
Cybercity odeo 808 is good. Vampire hunter d. Same artist.