Why the studios continue to make live action adaptations of the anime

When Netflix announced plans for a live remake from a beloved animated series, it was met with doubtful and even divided fans.

The solo leveling – which traces the rise of a Monster Hunter – is a classic story of the triumph of an outsider. Originally a Korean web novel in 2016, its popularity jumped worldwide after its transformation of an anime series eight years later.

Fans love it, but that only makes them skeptical about live adaptation.

“I have never had great experience with live action and I don’t see a future or need for them to exist,” said the Swedish fan Andre Denisson.

Anime has captured the imagination for decades now, but art, and its fans, have always seemed out of the reach of the studios of the consumer cinema.

Hollywood struggled to make live remakes, and yet his successor – streaming on demand – wishes to take the genre.

Why has it proved so difficult to put the living anime on the screen?

The live remakes are a “success”, explains Ander Guerrero, an anime fan based in Spain.

He fears that the CGI for solo leveling will not be able to do justice to the source material: “The anime is incredible mainly because of the combat sequences, which could be difficult to reproduce live.”

There are many of these moments in solo leveling, which takes place in a world where the survival of humanity depends on “hunters” – humans with special capacities – fighting and beating magical monsters that appear through mysterious portals, or “gates”.

The capacities of monster hunters are predetermined and cannot change. When we meet the main character, Sung Jin -Woo, he is “the weakest weapon” of humanity – but after an imminent death experience, he becomes the only one to have the ability to “level” his capacities.

History, and the rich sequences he depicts, even the favorites of not killed fans like Demon Slayer and One Piece to become the most watched series in the history of Crunchyroll, an anime streaming site for the public outside Asia, according to Sony, which has the platform.

Thus, fans are not convinced that Netflix can deliver what they expect.

Those who look at the live remake “will not get the same experience”, insists that Mr. Guerrero, who expects the result to be “a half -cooked story” where the points of the key intrigue will be missing.

Transforming the anime into a live action is a great creative challenge and a balancing act: on the one hand is a demanding fandom and on the other hand, an irresistible opportunity to find new audiences.

The casting and production apart, it is essential to understand the tone, explains Geoff Thew, who reviews the anime on his YouTube channel “Mother’s Basement” for almost 1.4 million followers.

“Things that work, spectacular and aesthetically, in the increased reality of animation do not always result in live action,” he said.

“The most emblematic moments of the original anime may not work in live action, but whatever the changes you make, these moments must still be recognizable for fans.”

Hollywood first adapted the anime to live action in the 1990s, but it did not go well.

The 2009 Dragonball Evolution adaptation was so ridiculed by fans of the emblematic franchise of four decades that the screenwriter felt obliged to apologize for years later.

A 2017 film inspired by the Japanese manga and the 1995 Ghost in the Shell’s anime film with Scarlett Johansson, was castigated for laundering and bombed – its losses would have exceeded $ 60 million.

However, Hollywood is determined to try again with several major ticket projects in progress.

Legendary, the production company of American films behind films like Dune and Jurassic World, will make a Gundam film, an animated military science fiction series on a giant robot that started in 1979. Sydney Sweeney is in final negotiations to play, according to the media.

The giant of the world content Lionsgate would have developed Naruto, an anime on a young ninja, an outsider that goes up to become the protector of the village.

“There is almost a desire now to do perfect live action, to determine in a way what the formula is,” explains Emerald King, an expert in Japanese culture at the University of Tasmania, in Australia.

Market size can have something to do with it.

The larger anime market, which also includes merchandising and music, was estimated at around $ 34 billion in 2024, according to Grand View Research, and is expected to reach more than $ 60 billion by 2030.

Netflix generally does not publish detailed viewers’ figures, but its latest data seems to confirm that appetite for anime increases.

In July, he said that more than half of his 300 million subscribers looked at anime and that gender was observed more than a billion times in 2024, a triple increase in the past five years.

“Watch Anime was like” for the crazy “when I was younger”, explains Parisa Haghighat, a 34-year-old fan of the United Kingdom.

She discovered an anime like Doraemon and Sailor Moon at school when she spent her summer vacation in Thailand.

She always looks at the anime, she says, although now “it’s more common and cool, so some people who made fun of me are watching him now!”

The critic Geoff Thew thinks that the pandemic played an important role in the “seismic change” of attitudes towards anime: “being locked inside, people had a lot of free time and not much to do except excessive television.”

For some, the anime is “a refreshing alternative”, explains Cathy Boxall, global entertainment manager at the Dentsu marketing agency. “The public finds that it offers emotional complexity, gender diversity and cultural specificity.”

Fatigue with Hollywood franchises has become a research factor.

One in 10 respondent from a Dentsu study said they were watching the anime because they were tired of the Hollywood tropes. In the United States, up to three out of 10 people watch anime when they want a Hollywood break.

So why bother with live adaptations, when the anime itself is so attractive?

With the anime available so largely, Netflix probably considers live remakes as a differentializer, explains Alex Cameron de Parrot Analytics. Regular observers may want to look at the original anime after broadcasting the action live-and it is a longer retention and commitment, he added.

Netflix also seems to learn from past errors.

Six years after the universally turned adaptation of Death Note, its live version live from One Piece, featuring an international distribution, won praise.

Although there are attempts for live action treatments to feel more authentic, Dr. King says that he needs a more thoughtful approach: “You can go too far while trying to be respectful and end up exotizing it.”

The cast and the crew should be “aware of the manufactured product,” he adds.

For example, One Piece, in its heart, is a series on pirates. “This allows them to interpret the text in the mind of the original. Without being a slave to adaptation, it is authorized to be free,” he said.

Will the live version of solo leveling reproduce the success of a room?

“The general tone of the series is comparable to a darker superhero film. If the fights are cool and sung Jin-Woo gets a few chances of being a hard to cook at each episode, the fans will probably not complain,” explains Mr. TheW.

Fans hope because the solo leveling will be led by a distribution and a Korean crew.

“It is a good way to maintain most of the heart of history – part of the Hollywood cast leads to the loss of small cultural shades or history, and it is sometimes the backbone of history,” explains Archie Moyo, a fan of Zimbabwe.

“I am enthusiastic about live action because it will present many more people in the world of solo leveling.”