Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Yeah, but that's mostly because they mess around with the plot and characterizations, trying to "improve" them and failing to understand that, when something is popular, you want to preserve as much of it as you're able to, most importantly the spirit of it above all. It's not that changing things is bad, it's often needed, but it only works when the changes are in favor of keeping something's spirit intact over superficial elements.
It's not unlike the way a lot of superhero movie failed due to the creators doing things like ripping out the heart of what the characters were about or redesigning everything for a "realistic" look that doesn't fit the material. As I said, if they don't mess up too much with the story, characters and effects, then it could be successful.
After all, it might be less common, but there have been successful adaptations of anime and manga, even in the west - "Speed Racer" and "Edge of Tomorrow" are good movies, and "Alita - Battle Angel" would have been too if it wasn't so obviously just the first half of a movie. It's just harder for anime/manga properties to be adapted well because there's less fans of them (that is, people who like the stories and understand where the appeal of them comes from) among the people that have the power to helm a western adaptation than there is for western superheroes. And that's really just a matter of time - anime is younger than superhero comics by about fifty years or so, meaning that the good movies of today are the equivalent of the first good superhero movies, like the original Superman in 1978. So, considering Iron Man started the boom of "good superhero adaptations" in 2008, that means we have perhaps thirty years to go before good anime/manga adaptations by western authors become the norm, rather than the exception.
Of course, the One Piece adaptation could well be one of the exception, as I mentioned. Visually they seem to be in the right place, but that's always the easy part with anime/manga - the characters have distinctive looks and there's an industry specialized in replicating those looks, professionals just need to copy that. The plot, characterization and especially effects is where it'll raise or fail. To be seen is where those will fall on the spectrum between awful and astounding.
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