‘Avatar’ Who?: ‘Another’ is a Fantastic Live-Action Anime Adaptation
I saw a tweet (several tweets) over the weekend that criticized a current streamer’s inclination to churn out live-action adaptations of popular animated shows while forgoing everything that made the original, animated iteration so popular. Picture it: a room full of executives looking at a touchstone piece of media, pondering how they could both remake it more expensively yet also, paradoxically, worse than ever. I’m not a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, so I’m not wading into that cesspool. I didn’t like it as a kid, so I’m perfectly content to concede Netflix’s new live-action adaptation isn’t meant for me.
There is, however, a nugget of interesting discourse within the muck, namely when it comes more approximately to the idea of adapting animated shows into live-action at all. To get a sense of that with a property I liked, I sat down and watched Takeshi Furusawa’s Another, currently free to stream on Prime Video with a RetroCrush subscription.
Per Prime Video: After a chain of deaths at a junior high school, new transfer student Koichi turns to a mysterious girl who holds the key to the dark mystery.
Tsutomu Mizushima’s P.A. Works anime adaptation of Yukito Ayatsuji’s novel Another is a masterclass in tension, arguably one of the strongest horror anime series of all time. It’s neck-in-neck with Higurashi When They Cry in terms of a shared capacity to terrify in animated form. Ayatsuji’s original novel was published in 2009, followed by a manga adaptation published between May 2010 and January 2012. Mizushima’s anime adaptation was released between January and March 2012, and Furusawa’s live-action was released in August that same year. Ayatsuji has even published subsequent novels, including Another 2001, a sequel, localized in December 2022. Please check it out—it’s terrifying.
Also Read: Underrated Horror Anime ‘When They Cry’ Is A Must-Watch
The Another lore runs deep, then, spanning countless media forms. And the timeline suggests Furusawa’s live-action adaptation was less about adapting the anime and more about adapting the novel. Yet, the novel was popularized via the manga series, winning over readers with its graphic depictions of Final Destination deaths and teenage, “we’re caught in a curse” ennui.
Animation is a filmic form, not a style. Form shapes the whole story, framing the writing, the way it will be shown. Style accounts for decisions made—shots, editing, audio—to support the form. That is to say, the decision to animate a given text isn’t made arbitrarily so. It’s a key creative decision, so stripping a text of a form so innate to its success doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me.
I’m not terribly versed in live-action anime adaptations specifically, but I saw Death Note, and while I love Adam Wingard, Death Note was, well… it was a movie. Margaret Qualley was in it and it’s great to see her anywhere. The ones that do it well look to replicate the style and fluidity of animation through a live-action lens. Speed Racer, Detective Pikachu, and even Netflix’s Alice in Borderland successfully adapted either anime or manga. They are, however, more outliers, less the norm.
Also Read: ‘Godzilla Minus One’ Roars New Life Into the Domestic Box Office
A similar constraint plagues video game adaptations. Animation isn’t just story, though like anime adaptations, video game movies often think the story is enough, not accounting for how form augments narrative, how one is innately tethered to the other. It’s why I think Doom is a more successful adaptation than The Last of Us, and why The Quarry succeeds with the inverse, making a game that feels like a movie.
Another successfully adapts the manga, keeping key characteristics that, while never quite as good, do a lot to reinforce its very existence. The first death, an unfortunate umbrella accident, is melodramatically staged in Furusawa’s adaptation. The end result remains the same, but the inciting circumstances change. It’s goofy, yes, but it was at that moment I was grateful to Another for endeavoring to be more than a beat-for-beat recreation of what came before.
The propulsion is copied, only truncated, but Furusawa’s Another wisely shifts some key deaths around. It even goes so far as to wildly rework the blood-soaked finale whereupon the survivors convene at a rural retreat, desperate to identify the Casualty and end the curse. It’s a ton of fun, really, and wisely leans into some of the source material’s campier, more macabre elements.
Also Read: ‘Godzilla X Kong: The Lost Empire’ Trailer Shows Our Best Boys Teaming Up To Save The World
Is it an ideal case study of how to adapt anime to live action? Mostly so. But, should anime even be adapted into live-action? Well, we’ve got Naruto on the way, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Netflix’s One Piece, at least, has been a success, so maybe the tides are changing. If they are, and if they’re going to be good, might I suggest the Ghost Stories English dub?
What do you think? What live-action anime adaptations are you a fan of? Be certain, too, to check out Another. The anime is streaming on Crunchyroll and the live-action is on Prime. When you do, let me know what you think over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
Categorized:Editorials
