Mine to live-action adaptations has always been tepid. This is primarily caused by the fact that they’ve rarely been successful before. So to speak. Look at Netflix’s adaptation of The Notebook of Death. Sometimes, anime and animation cannot be transferred to live action without losing essential details and beautiful visuals.
But last year’s success of the live-action adaptation of One Piece showed that this genre is not dead and can be enjoyed by viewers. One Piece garnered 18.5 million views in the first four days after release and was an obvious success. It remained to be seen if it was a one-off fluke or if it was an approach to how anime could be transferred to live action without failing.
The key is here
The key has been found, and One Piece was not a happy accident. Rather than the opposite, live actions could be a new approach to relaunching successful projects. Some would say it’s just a continuation of the “use the popular” trend, but it’s also a great opportunity for the entire industry. Many people don’t like animation, even though there are often great stories behind it. Live-action adaptations in this way don’t so much attract older viewers who are already familiar with the original but expand the audience.
I’ve re-watched Avatar probably six times in my lifetime, and it’s one of the animations that is great for the visuals and the great story. Although it seems simple enough, it has a lot of dilemmas and a lot of room to make the viewer think.
But I wasn’t always able to get my friends involved, many of whom refused to watch this animation because it’s… animation. Yes, it’s true; many consider this content “childish.” But I’ll have no trouble convincing them to watch the series. After all, how is this different from superhero blockbusters?
I don’t know for what reason, but in the past, creators of live-action adaptations have failed to do the most important thing: shorten the story to fit it into a tighter timeline. While anime or animation is cheap to produce each episode, live-action is labor-intensive and expensive, so you usually have less time to tell the story.
In the adaptation of The Notebook of Death, the main thing that anyone who likes the original fears is that the plot was made pointless and silly in favor of the script. I won’t spoil it here, but that’s exactly what happened.
Avatar doesn’t step on that rake, striking an outstanding balance between copying the original where necessary and coming up with its ideas to help cut down on the timing. Right now, it’s working.
Not everyone is happy
Of course, as always, fans of the original will find a reason to remain dissatisfied. One such dissatisfaction was the slight change in Sokka’s character, which became less sexist. The change rather benefited the character. In the original, it was more of a misunderstanding, through which they wanted to show that Sokka is trying to be a leader, even though he doesn’t always succeed. So his attitude towards his sister and other female characters was more of a defensive reaction (though certainly not healthy) when he wanted to show his “leadership”. But it made the character a little more repulsive. It seems to me that the adaptation fixed that by finding other ways to show that he’s a “wonnabe leader”.
