As of this year there has been multiple announcements of anime to live action adaptations whether it be a film or a series. Prior to this year live action adaptations were mostly seen as an extension for highly popular anime. With how fantastical and exaggerated anime tends to be, for it to be turned into a live action film of all things would most likely end with either a hit or miss judgement based on not only the visuals of the film but how it the overall presentation of the film is from the adapted anime.
Prime examples of this aspect would be 2006 adaptation “Death Note” and 2015 “Attack on Titan”. On one hand “Death Note” did well on not only in portrayal of characters but on the tone and atmosphere as well, though not stellar, the film did well enough. “Attack on Titan” however did not do as well, in fact there have been a number of negative reviews on the film, from the pacing, to the CGI (Computer Generated Images) of the Titans to the portrayal of characters and overall did not satisfy the expectations of anime fans.
Now with news of different live adaptations to come out in the following year there will be a number of them to be judged having originated from high ranking anime and the following are the most likely to be carefully judged upon release
Telling the story of an alternate future where cyberization is the norm, “Ghost in Shell” focuses on Motoko Kusunagi, a major that upon a highly traumatic incident has been turned cyborg and in turn gets involved in rumours of highly advanced hackers able to gain control of cyborgs.
When the trailer of this adaptation came out there was much protest over the fact that actress Scarlett Johansson was set to play the protagonist Motoko. However, another trailer has shown that the people behind the film have also shown interesting uses of CGI and other special effects for the film.
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
A classic shounen anime for any anime fan “Fullmetal Alchemist Brother” tells the tale of two brothers, Edward Elric and Alphonse who during their youth in their attempt at alchemy resulted in a grave mistake and now they search for a solution all the while facing the dangers of their world.
With how highly popular this anime, the expectation level would most likely be high as well. So far only a teaser trailer has been released of the upcoming film and pure speculation is what’s left before a more concrete trailer is released
Set in a world where frightening flesh eating beings known as ghouls exist the story focuses on Ken Kaneki a college student who barely survived a deadly encounter with a girl/ghoul he had went with a date with named Rize Kamashiro. In the aftermath of his recovery from the encounter Ken finds that he has been turned into a half ghoul through an organ transplant from Rize. Now he is to learn to survive with his new status as well as his place inbetwen the human society and ghoul society.
Though there is no concrete news on the production of this adaptation there has been an announcement of a chosen cast for the film and from the backgrounds of the cast the film has at least a few good points to boost its promotion