6 Hollywood Ripoffs of Japanese Anime and Manga (published on Gaijinpot)

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With superhero film series like Spider Man and Batman done and redone to death, it’s become a cliche to say that Hollywood has run out of ideas.

So what do you do when you run out of ideas? Get them from someone — or in Hollywood’s case — somewhere else. For many years now, Hollywood has been trying and mostly failing to adapt popular Japanese anime and manga for the big screen. Likewise, television networks and streaming services have followed suit trying to produce live action television remakes of the same. A good example of this would be Netflix’s live action series Erased.

Sadly, good examples of American live action adaptations are few and far between. Whether it be the difficulty of adapting stories between very different mediums or failed attempts to please both Japanese and American target audiences, it seems like Western production companies just can’t seem to get it right.

While good live action adaptations may be few, there are some gems out there that definitely deserve a watch. The films or shows on this list comprise three of the biggest failures and three of the most well-done Western remakes of popular Japanese anime and manga…