Opinion: What Happens in Animation Should Stay in Animation

Since the creation of Émile Cohl’s short film “Fantasmagorie” in 1908, animation has stayed a relevant and popular medium for storytelling. Being able to convey anything from educational programs for toddlers to the deep and brutal effects of war to entire musical numbers filled with dancing animals and bright lights makes animation special; it’s extremely fluid and has no limits. Yet, because of its association with children’s television, many have a perceived notion that animation is simply for children and nothing more.

Even though this isn’t even close to the truth, getting people to sit down and watch an animated show or movie can be hard because of this, no matter how mature an animated work really is. So, what’s the best way to introduce more people to an entirely new category of works and fiction? According to Hollywood, you should just take the animated work at hand and reimagine the entire thing in reality.

This is easier said than done, and yet Hollywood hardly ever listens to the concerns regarding the adoption of a well-regarded piece of fiction. With that being said, what exactly is Hollywood not thinking about before jumping headfirst into such a project?

Those Adapting the Show Don’t Understand What Made The Original Work Special.

What makes an animated show special is entirely subjective, but there’s most likely something the original did viewers remember or immediately think of when reminiscing on certain aspects of the show. These could be the animation, the world-building, the character writing, or maybe even the music. Regardless, each of these is equally important to delivering well-written stories that viewers are sure to enjoy.

But when these aspects are tampered with or those adapting, the piece cannot capture the spirit of the original, the reboot already fails because they don’t understand the backbone that made the original work as well as it did. The entire time the viewers are watching an adaptation that doesn’t fully convey what the original offered, the more and more they’ll experience an uncanny valley like effect. Of course, you’re allowed to experiment with the source material and how you present it to an audience because it’s an adaptation after all. But as stated before, if the reimagined work doesn’t have a familiar essence, audiences won’t find joy in it.

Let’s look at the most recent animated show to receive a live action counterpart, Cowboy Bebop. The space western classic tells the story of the carefree Spike Spiegel and his loud, pragmatic partner Jet Black as the pair make a living hunting bounties and collecting rewards. Throughout their travels, they meet Ein, a genetically engineered, highly intelligent Welsh Corgi, femme fatale Faye Valentine, and the strange computer genius Edward Wong. The five of them embark on episodic adventures that unravel each member’s dark past little by little. This version is praised for its recognizable and amazing soundtrack, fun character dynamics, and overall uniqueness compared to other anime.

While some may disagree, I believe Cowboy Bebop had extreme potential to be turned into a live-action series; the episodic nature would work fine and the show doesn’t have any cultural boundaries limiting it from a global audience. The show seemed “western” enough for anyone to watch.

And somehow, the live-action version still wasn’t too great. Before I go any further, two things. One, there will be some spoilers mentioned for the live-action remake, so if you haven’t seen it and plan to watch it, skip this section. Two, even if I show bias towards the original show, blame the adaptation itself for that. A large amount of the show and its marketing material insists on revisiting and recreating iconic scenes and sessions from the original. Therefore, I think it’s only fair to look at it from a faithfulness angle since this is how the show promotes itself.

One of the big things I disliked about Cowboy Bebop (2021) is how Vicious and Julia are written. Vicious and Julia receive an expanded storyline that makes up a good chunk of Netflix Bebop’s additional runtime. This may seem like a good thing in retrospect, but rewriting these two characters shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Cowboy Bebop‘s stylistic and thematic aspirations. In the anime, Vicious and Julia are simply portrayed as shadows from Spike’s old life and the violence he tried to run away from. While Jet, Faye, and even Ed all find some manner of closure, Spike is the only thing that holds himself back from doing the same. Vicious and Julia are just symbols of that, being created using the long history of character tropes from crime and noir films. The anime trusts viewers to fill in the blanks themselves, allowing Vicious and Julia to be greater than the sum of their parts.

If you rip them out of that context, they just don’t work. Both Julia and Vicious seem almost like caricatures in Netflix’s version of Cowboy Bebop. In this version, Vicious bears no resemblance to his anime counterpart besides his role in the Syndicate and his hilariously awful wig piece. Julia is a whole other can of worms, with the show attempting to turn her narrative into one of empowerment. The result, however, is a colossal misfire and is “achieved” through bad writing. Even though there’s irony in the flashback episode standing out as the most successful one of the group (probably because it has the least to do with Cowboy Bebop), what’s featured in this episode is not remotely close to its best possible version. But at least here we can see the shadow of something with its own identity.

If you want another prime example of directors and Hollywood completely overlooking the core of a series, look no further than Ghost in the Shell (2017). Without mentioning some of the film’s most controversial parts, Ghost in the Shell (2017) failed to include what makes the series so beloved.

In the original Ghost in the Shell adaptations, the story explores different philosophical, deep, and complex themes through its setting and characters. While the movie adaptation feels like it would include the same because of its visuals, it blindly copies parts from the anime and manga without understanding their context or importance.

It feels as if Paramount, the production company behind the film, copied a few elements that fans of the original were familiar with in order to “appease” them. This shallow and flawed thinking shows that the minds behind the film were obviously lacking a real understanding of Ghost in the Shell.

Time and Medium Restrictions

Animation plays a large part in the overall telling of a story. It may just be a decision for works set in a world close to our own, but for those dealing with fantasy aspects and sci-fi, animation is the best route to go almost every time. Because we see animation as something separate from reality, unlike live-action, depicting talking animals, aliens, and entirely new worlds is no problem, since drawings are supposed to look cool and you don’t really question how things work half the time.

For some reason, Hollywood LOVES to adapt these sorts of stories for live action. Why that is, I’m not sure, but so much of the original charm and story is lost whenever this occurs.

Animation allows creators to show off not only whimsical aspects but also exaggeration. Exaggeration is an important part of animation because it’s not always easy to show and execute a perfect display of reality. Sometimes people’s emotions or thoughts feel big and loud, sometimes they feel like your limbs are being pulled in every direction. Regardless, a lot of these thoughts aren’t always easy to convey in a real-life setting, hence why it’s easier to describe your emotions through art or animation.

When these feelings or exaggerations are then taken to be interpreted into reality, they don’t always look or feel right. Take the Disney classic The Lion King. When made into a “live-action” remake (live-action is in quotes because the remake is NOT in actual live-action, but is remade using highly realistic CGI. Since it gives off the effect of being live-action, it will be referred to as such), Disney took all the life and soul from the original film by discarding the colorful and enhanced animation. To show the drastic difference between the two films, watch the “Hakuna Matata” sequence from both the original 1994 film and the 2019 adaptation.

In the original sequence, the actions of Timon, Pumbaa, and Simba are all silly; Timon files Simba’s nails, Pumbaa uses vines like they’re swings, and Simba shakes his fur free of all water in a classic cartoon manner. These individual actions give the characters so much personality and life to them, regardless of if these actions can be performed by the wild animals they’re portraying. Moving away from this specific sequence, all the characters of the same species are easily differentiable from each other and their designs all have something unique about them.

As for the 2019 production of The Lion King, it’s absolutely nothing like this. The realistic animation is impressive, but feels like you’re watching some sort of nature documentary the entire time instead of an animated musical. For the “Hakuna Matata” sequence, Timon, Pumbaa, and Simba aren’t doing much besides walking and eating grub with other animals. There’s no color or creative thought put into it and the animals look ridiculous when they sing because of how realistic they are. Overall, the reboot’s version of this scene can’t compare to the original and even if it was its own thing, it doesn’t do an excellent job of trying to be original.

Tons more movies and television shows are guilty of having characters and fantasy aspects that don’t carry over too well into animation. In Cowboy Bebop (2021) (spoilers!), Edward’s 1 minute appearance at the very end of the show has been laughed at countless times all over the internet because of how bizarre it feels. In the original show from the 90s, Ed was a very animated kid with noodle-like limbs she would constantly wave around. Her entire character clearly took advantage of the fact she was animated because of her boisterous personality and actions. Although Eden Perkins’s Ed seems to have the same mannerisms and speech as her animated counterpart, it’s practically impossible to do without being awkward. Ed’s personality and movements rely heavily on the animated environment around her, where a big personality can be matched with equally big movements that are unrestricted. Therefore, Ed doesn’t work as well in a live-action adaptation.

Another major problem with translating animation into reality is time restrictions. Most of the time, animated tv shows have hours of content made for television. Adapting, say, a 24 episode show that’s roughly eight hours long into a two-hour movie is not really going to go over well. In those 24 episodes, a LOT can go down, and that 8 hour runtime is needed to tell a complete story.

Cramming 8 hours of content into 2 hours will cut out or water down important elements. Sometimes, these important elements are crucial story plots, character development, or even the thing that made the original so special. Hollywood has somewhat been avoiding long-running series for a while now, but that may be changing.

One Piece is highly praised for its fun cast of characters and extremely thought out world and story. But there’s one major issue: the show is over 1,000 episodes long and is still airing and being published in Weekly Shonen Jump. This insane amount of content easily turns many people away from the show, but those who’ve watched it all believe the show needs to be that long to tell a fulfilling narrative.

As insane as it may sound, a One Piece live-action series produced by Netflix is already in the works, with the main cast announced on November 9 of this year. The cast seems solid, but there’s two major concerns fans have regarding its production. The first is how all the power ups and abilities are going to be represented in the show. I mean, the main character is made of rubber and within the main cast there’s a talking reindeer, a cyborg, and a skeleton. CGI can work, but there’s no guarantee it’ll look good.

The second concern is how the entire story will fit into a live-action format. One Piece has been running for over twenty years, and I doubt the production staff will commit to adapting all 20 years’ worth of content. This leaves two options: one, they cover all story lines until a certain point or, two; they attempt to shorten the story and cut content out. This second option will not go over well with fans.

One Piece is an ongoing story where story points stated 15 years ago are still being connected to modern day plot points. Cutting stuff out will not only ruin a viewer’s experience, but could also cause confusion or eliminate the core of what makes One Piece so beloved. There’s not much to report on exactly how this will all play out in the end, but it’s an extremely risky move. If Netflix has struggled to adapt shorter stories than One Piece into 10 episodes, I’m not sure what it has in store for this enormous storyline.

Fans Don’t Want It

Although I can’t speak for everyone, a majority of animation fans don’t see the need for live action adaptations of any work. Whether this is because it dampers the original source or because some special effects don’t translate well into real life, I’m not sure, but it’s almost a proven fact.

According to a poll conducted earlier this year by a company called Viviane, owner of the Japanese streaming service One Screen, and reported on by Yahoo Japan, 1,000 people were asked which series they’d like to see adapted by Hollywood into live-action next. Even though the options included current industry hits like Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Naruto, and My Hero Academia, 456 votes went towards the “None” option. The second most popular option was Demon Slayer, which garnered 60 votes.

Statistics and surveys aside, with all the reasons stated above, I could see why tons of people who enjoy animation don’t want any sort of damper on its reputation. As of right now, the original animated work is always better than whatever it gets adapted into. Sure, there’s always those brief glimpses of hope for an adaptation, like the original creators of Avatar: the Last Airbender (2005) being called back to work on the upcoming live-action remake of the iconic show or Yoko Kanno being asked to compose new music for the Cowboy Bebop (2019), but sometimes they don’t go anywhere or aren’t enough they carry the show.

With the announcement of multiple new live-action projects, I worry about how they’ll turn out. There’s a chance they’ll be good, but with their length and fantasy content, I can’t help but be weary. Hopefully, one day we’ll receive an amazing adaptation of these wonderful bits of animation, but until Hollywood can understand what it takes, I’m afraid we’re stuck with mediocre and bad remakes for plenty of years to come.