Dragonball Evolution - Looking Back

[ArmenianPepsi]

Hollywood did have another shot with Edge of Tomorrow which I think was the only westernised anime/manga/light-novel property in recent years to be truly successful both critically and financially. Ironically, I think the source material for that movie being highly obscure in the West worked in its favour because there wasn't much fan expectation for it, so they could safely take liberties with it. When much more popular properties like Ghost in the Shell and Death Note started to be unfaithfully adapted and whitewashed for mainstream western audiences, that pretty much double-tapped any remaining interest in "weeb shit" for American studios that Dragonball Evolution had already tainted. GitS at least made some money back but I don't see any more anime franchises getting westernised recently.

I may not care for Death Note at all, but I feel genuinely bad for any fans who had to bear witness to Netflix's atrocity. Live action anime/manga movies are about as cursed as video game movies with their track record of being absolutely terrible, and it's kinda funny to think that they share quite a bit of similarities.

- The properties are being forced into a medium that just doesn't work for the world they exist in.
- Many times the studios working on the films know little or don't really care about the properties they are working with.
- Often you have a double whammy of low budget + bad directors at the helm.
- You'll have A-List stars, but they still can't bring the respective characters to life.
- The creators of the franchises are usually not involved.

[LoganForkHands73]

Hollywood did have another shot with Edge of Tomorrow which I think was the only westernised anime/manga/light-novel property in recent years to be truly successful both critically and financially. Ironically, I think the source material for that movie being highly obscure in the West worked in its favour because there wasn't much fan expectation for it, so they could safely take liberties with it. When much more popular properties like Ghost in the Shell and Death Note started to be unfaithfully adapted and whitewashed for mainstream western audiences, that pretty much double-tapped any remaining interest in "weeb shit" for American studios that Dragonball Evolution had already tainted. GitS at least made some money back but I don't see any more anime franchises getting westernised recently.

I may not care for Death Note at all, but I feel genuinely bad for any fans who had to bear witness to Netflix's atrocity. Live action anime/manga movies are about as cursed as video game movies with their track record of being absolutely terrible, and it's kinda funny to think that they share quite a bit of similarities.

- The properties are being forced into a medium that just doesn't work for the world they exist in.
- Many times the studios working on the films know little or don't really care about the properties they are working with.
- Often you have a double whammy of low budget + bad directors at the helm.
- You'll have A-List stars, but they still can't bring the respective characters to life.
- The creators of the franchises are usually not involved.

The whole attitude behind adapting them also feels very old-fashioned and patronising to audiences, treating us like we can only accept the premises of these crazy Japanimation stories when we have a white guy/girl in the lead and generally dumbing everything down to a ludicrous level. As I said, I don't necessarily mind the concept of culturally adapting these properties, there's nothing inherently wrong with changing the setting of Death Note to America, but you summarised the other main reasons why they're cursed to be rubbish 98% of the time.

[Planetnamek]

Hollywood did have another shot with Edge of Tomorrow which I think was the only westernised anime/manga/light-novel property in recent years to be truly successful both critically and financially. Ironically, I think the source material for that movie being highly obscure in the West worked in its favour because there wasn't much fan expectation for it, so they could safely take liberties with it. When much more popular properties like Ghost in the Shell and Death Note started to be unfaithfully adapted and whitewashed for mainstream western audiences, that pretty much double-tapped any remaining interest in "weeb shit" for American studios that Dragonball Evolution had already tainted. GitS at least made some money back but I don't see any more anime franchises getting westernised recently.

That film was based on a Manga/Anime? Wow I had no idea. Can't really blame Hollywood for the Ghost in the Shell adaption though as it was the film's Japanese production company that insisted that a white female be cast in the lead or the film would not ever get made period(also the creator of the anime said he was fine with the casting). I personally quite liked that film and it did have a pretty good in-universe explanation for the casting choice, also didn't mind the Death Note film that much.

I know there was talk of an Akira live-action film many years ago and i remember getting pretty pumped for that, shame it never happened.

You learn something new everyday, eh?

I wanna be clear that I personally don't actually mind the concept of Westernised or "whitewashed" adaptations. Every culture does it in one way or another, it's just a side effect of cultural translation. It helps that the original authors of both GitS and Death Note approved of the casting choices. Plus neither source material are so exclusively rooted in Japanese iconography that they can't be translated to other countries for fear of cultural appropriation accusations. In the past, Kurosawa's Seven Samurai being adapted into an all-American cowboy movie produced one of the best Westerns of all time, The Magnificent Seven, and more recently the American remakes of J-horror movies like Ring in the 2000s were very successful and iconic in their own right.

However, I can't blame modern audiences for being less tolerant of this sort of thing when Asian-American leads are still almost unheard of in Hollywood.

Funny thing about that is most of the people that I saw on social media that were upset over the casting decisions were white, didn't see all that many Asians that were particularly bothered by it.

[WittyUsername]

Video game movies seem to be starting to come around. The Sonic movie was doing surprisingly well before theaters got shut down because of the pandemic. As for movies based on manga/anime, eh. Alita: Battle Angel didn’t exactly do great business at the box office, but it does have a pretty passionate fanbase, and there have been campaigns made for a sequel, which is a lot more than can be said for DBE.

As for casting white leads in these roles, I’m assuming that probably wouldn’t be as big of a problem moving forward, given the current climate surrounding diversity in Hollywood. At the very least, if we were to get a new live action Dragon Ball movie, I could see them casting a Chinese actor to play Goku.

[Hellspawn28]

Live action anime/manga movies are about as cursed as video game movies with their track record of being absolutely terrible, and it's kinda funny to think that they share quite a bit of similarities.

I think you mean Western live action anime/manga movies. You have plenty of good ones outside North America such as:

20th Century Boys (2008)
Blue Spring (2001)
City Hunter (1994)
Cutie Honey (2004)
Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (2004)
Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice (1972)
Himizu (2011)
Lady Snowblood (1974)
Lone Wolf & Cub (1972)
Old Boy (2003)
Ping Pong (2002)
Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins (2012)
Riki Oh (1991)
Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
Tokyo Tribe (2014)

[LoganForkHands73]

You know, inspired by this thread, I just rewatched Death Note and properly watched it this time, and you know what... it's not awful. I mean, I had to severely mentally divorce myself from the source material but I managed to have a fairly fun time watching it. The pacing is atrocious at the beginning but after that, it's overall competently made. There's a strange mid-2000s edgelord charm to it.

[Planetnamek]

You know, inspired by this thread, I just rewatched Death Note and properly watched it this time, and you know what... it's not awful. I mean, I had to severely mentally divorce myself from the source material but I managed to have a fairly fun time watching it. The pacing is atrocious at the beginning but after that, it's overall competently made. There's a strange mid-2000s edgelord charm to it.

Agreed, as someone that never saw the original anime/Manga I judged it strictly on it's own merits and it was pretty good overall.