live-action versions of anime

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usamimi
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by usamimi »

Any of the bootlegs on Amazon are from the marketplace, not from the site itself. Sadly, they don't seem very knowledgeable about that kind of stuff, I see bootleg anime dvds, cds, and merch being sold via the marketplace all the time. :/
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by greg »

I rented the Yatterman live action from Tsutaya and we watched it as a family while eating yakiniku for dinner.

Holy crap. This movie should be made the template for live-action versions of anime, manga, comics, cartoons, video games, etc. So we've been renting the old anime for a few weeks now, and my daughter loves watching it. I put it on the morning to drag her out of bed for school. She's even starting to sing along to the theme song, too. So, we finally watched it tonight, and it was fantastic.

Costumes nearly exactly like those in the show...check!
Puffy hats...check!
Singing and dancing...check!
Yatter-Wan looks just as you'd expect him to...check!
Absurd weapons...check!
Goofy-ass robots...check!
Impossible physics...check!
Dorombo gang's elaborate schemes to rip people off to fund their construction of giant, ineffective robots...check!

The attention to detail in this movie is great. So the Yamato live-action movie got it pretty close, but then they had to go and make Gamilus and Iscandar the same planet, make the Gamilans a bunch of weird monsters, etc. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. Well, this Yatterman movie doesn't try to fix anything. They keep things nearly identical to the anime, and expand on it. The movie feels somewhat episodic, the way the show went, but with a bit of drama keeping it together. Boyacky's goofy nose was actually a prosthetic the character wore, as is the piggy nose for Tonzura. Outfits are perfect, and even the way Gan and Ai flip their uniforms up into the air, have them turn inside out, and then magically dress again is spot-on! After their defeat, the Doronbo gang make their retreat on their tandem bicycle that also explodes in order to punish them. Even Boyacky and Tonzura's big outie bellybuttons are not overlooked, but have been replaced with some weird belts that resemble the bellybuttons. Doronjo still manages to end up undressed in various ways (no nudity, though), Yatter 1 (Gan-chan) fights with his kendama, Yatter 2 (Ai-chan) fights with her telescoping sword, Yatter-Wan's belly opens up to reveal the little dog robot drummers and out of Yatter-Wan's mouth comes an army of mini robots to attack... I could go on and on at how faithful the movie is to the anime. At first I didn't expect there to be any singing, but then the Doronbo gang started singing their theme song, I was shouting, "YES!" The Yatterman team sing their theme song too, all while striking their token poses.

I'm not familiar with the other Time Bokan shows at all. All I know is Yatterman, and without subtitles to help me get everything that's going on. In the movie, an archaeologist is possessed by Dokurobei, the weird skeleton demigod that bosses around the Doronbo gang. His daughter (who remarkably seems to be only a few years younger than him, but whatever!) comes to the Yatterman team for help. As with the show, the Doronbo gang is searching for fragments of stone skulls for Dokurobei (I guess it's to help him become all-powerful and take over the world or something), and the Yatterman team stops them.

The movie was hilarious! When the Yatterman team dispatches, Ai-chan uses an ETC card for Yatter-wan to enter the expressway. They hold onto the sides of the big dog robot with a smile, but halfway across the ocean, they are getting splashed with waves and looking rather tired. (As one would expect from riding on the side of a big robot dog from Japan to Egypt). At the end of the film, when the archaeologist's daughter is thanking the Yatterman team, she tells Ai-chan, "Thank you, Number 2-san" (Gan and I are referred to as 1-go and 2-go respectively). Ai-chan awkwardly says, "No, you don't have to add '-san'...It's just 'Number-2." The coda after the credits was styled just like a "tune in next week for the next episode" segment, which also featured the Yatter-Pelican!

My complaints? Well, while the actress portraying Doronjo certainly did a good job and looked the part, she didn't quite have the same amount of charisma as the anime version did. When she says, "Yatte oshimai," she just doesn't say it with enough oomph, for a lack of a proper word. She seems just slightly gentler than she ought to be. The other thing I didn't like was when Yatter-Wan's ant robots ("Ari ari ari ari!") were attacking the Doronbo gang's mecha, their mecha was somehow getting aroused by this and was even saying in English, "I'm coming!" Yatter-Wan was getting aroused by this too, and tried making out with the enemy mecha (which had big boobies with machine gun nipples, but that's not a far stretch from the original show because there was one that had boob-looking things on it). Then the mecha exploded, destroying Yatter-Wan in the process (oops, spoilers, but oh well). That whole scene was a bit bizarre. the rest of the movie was bizarre too, but in a good way since the original show was also bizarre.

So yeah. Fun movie. Check out to see if the fansub is available. If Whitesnake is right about it being released on DVD subbed, I'm definitely going to buy it! If only the Uve Bolls, Michael Bays, Andrzej Bartkowiaks, and other turdballs of the movie world could pay true homage to the original source material as this movie did. (And what the heck is Chris Roberts's excuse when he made that terrible Wing Commander movie? He's the guy who made the computer games and did a great job with big name actors when he made them, so how could he botch things up so much when he made an actual Hollywood movie?)
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usamimi
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by usamimi »

Is this the Yatterman movie that came out in 2009? If so, Discotek's supposed to be releasing it sometime this year in America. :D
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by greg »

:shock: YES! I will buy it! I don't see it yet on Amazon, but I will be buying it for sure! My little girl got a kick out of the movie too. It's worth owning!
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by usamimi »

Yeah, I'm hoping to pick it up, too! Even though I haven't seen it, I'm hoping that if it seems like there's enough interest, maybe they'll consider picking up some of the anime (Yatterman, Time Bokan, or otherwise.)

Edit: Oh, I just saw this on Twitter--the live-action City Hunter with Jackie Chan's coming out on blu-ray (bundled with another one of his movies) from Shout Factory: http://www.cityonfire.com/jackie-chan-d ... ut-factory
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by greg »

There's one more thing I forgot to mention about the Yatterman live-action movie. The original voice actors for the Doronbo gang make a cameo appearance in the movie. They were customers at the Doronbo's kaitenzushi restaurant that served enormous sushi (like, literally an entire squid on top of a huge mound of rice). The Doronbo gang in the movie said, "Haven't I heard your voice from somewhere before?" Boy, those three are definitely senior citizens now!
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by whitesnake »

Rumor, will Takashi Shimizu (Ju-On) direct a big budget live action version of Kiki's Delivery Service? Read more at http://twitchfilm.com/2013/04/grist-for ... rvice.html
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Re: live-action versions of anime

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I heard that it's still in such a "rumor" phase that most people are assuming it was a "late April Fool's joke". (I haven't even seen it pop up on any of the Ghibli news twitters I follow, and they're usually first to jump on that kinda thing.)

That might be kinda cool, though! I heard they had a Kiki stage musical in Japan at one point in the 90s, and I know in the UK they have a Princess Mononoke musical going on...so it is entirely possible!

Edit: Has this been posted yet? Live-action Gachaman movie set for August: http://www.gatchaman-movie.jp/
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by _D_ »

I think that has been posted before. I saw the trailer some months back. Budget constraints probably mean it won't have a lot of stuff outside Japan as in the original series. We'll have to check it out when it becomes available on disc. I'm still looking for discs from the original series. Thankfully, they seem to have gone down in price on EBay. I got quite a few sealed sets from a friend last year who was getting rid of his collection.
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Re: live-action versions of anime

Post by usamimi »

Oooh, looks like we finally got confirmation that the live-action Kiki movie is real! http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/20 ... ry-service

Sounds like it'll be more like an adaptation of the original novel than the Ghibli movie, though, so that might mean a lot of differences.
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