meta: Adaptation
2019
'Rashōmon': The Post-Truth Condition October 7, 2019
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's story, and Akira Kurosawa's movie, have endured to tell us something about the nature of truth in a time when we can hardly trust the words we hear in our own heads
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'Princess Jellyfish': Girls, Be Ambitious! August 5, 2019
A sly treatise on gender roles and presentation, wrapped in a screwball romantic farce and delivered with great affection
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'Alita: Battle Angel': She, The Ultimate Weapon February 17, 2019
A prime case study for how a film can be an fine adaptation of beloved source material, while also being breathless, overcrowded, and tangled as a story
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2018
'Illang: The Wolf Brigade': Defanged November 19, 2018
Jee-woon Kim's live-action adaptation of Mamoru Oshii's 'Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade' is passable on its own, but doesn't come close to the primal shadow-play sorcery of the original
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'Bleach' (2018): Kid Janitor Of The Spirit World September 19, 2018
A dialed-down take on elements from the first major story arc of Tite Kubo's long-running shōnen actioner, it's no classic but no disaster either
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Let's Film This Again: 'Vampire Hunter D' September 17, 2018
Yes, it's been done before, but the possibilities of all-new adaptations of Hideyuki Kikuchi's long-running gothic-Western-punk light novel series are wider than ever
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'The Book Of The Dead': Illusions Of Life August 6, 2018
A classic historical novel, in English for the first time, has a dazzling stop-motion animated adaptation to go with it from one of Japan's masters of that art
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'Maborosi': The Unanswerable Question July 27, 2018
Hirokazu Kore-eda's debut feature, twenty years on, remains an ominous and poignant masterwork
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'A Silent Voice': Children Of Lesser Gods June 27, 2018
A gorgeous adaptation of the acclaimed manga, and a story with a hard moral question: Who gets to be redeemed?
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'Mary And The Witch's Flower': From Neo-Ghibli, A Quasi-Kiki May 18, 2018
The freshman effort from ex-Ghibli creators Studio Ponoc at first seems like a riff on 'Kiki's Delivery Service' or 'Harry Potter' territory, but has morality rather than magic on its mind
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'The Life Of Budori Gusuko': One Against Nature April 9, 2018
Kenji Miyazawa's fantasy about human beings at the mercy of the natural world receives a flawed but still immensely impressive adaptation, by way of a director who did great justice to his 'Night On The Galactic Railroad'
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'Gintama' (2017): The Fact That Elizabeth Is Played By A Guy In A Suit Is A Feature, Not A Bug March 17, 2018
Fans, this is about as on-target an adaptation of 'Gintama' to a live-action production as you're going to get -- but everyone else, don't walk in cold
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Kon Ichikawa's 'Kokoro': The Wretched Hearts Of Men March 9, 2018
Kon Ichikawa's 1955 film version of Sōseki Natsume's classic novel adapts it with fidelity, intelligence, and just enough changes to be stimulating
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'Blade Of The Immortal': Die Another Day March 1, 2018
A great manga-to-screen adaptation, a good-to-great Takashi Miike picture, and a slightly overlong and ragged samurai flick, in roughly that order
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'Fullmetal Alchemist' (2017): Ed And Al, In Miniature February 23, 2018
Further proof that some anime-to-live-action adaptations need to either be done at the right scale or not done at all
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2017
The 'Silence' Of Shusaku Endō, Masahiro Shinoda, And Martin Scorsese November 7, 2017
On two film adaptations, entirely dissimilar but equally fascinating, of a Japanese novel about the persecution of Christians in Tokugawa-era Japan
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Victor Santos's 'Rashōmon': Edo Noir September 25, 2017
A clever and inventive retelling of three classic Japanese samurai-era tales, channeled through detective-noir sensibilities
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'Death Note' (2017): D.O.A. August 28, 2017
This isn't 'Death Note'; it's barely Cliffs Notes
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Gō Tanabe And The Hounds Of Love(craft) August 3, 2017
If the rest of Gō Tanabe's manga adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft's horror classics are as good as this first volume, we're overdue for seeing more of one of manga's thus-far hidden treasures
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Welcome To The Desert Of The Real: The Live-Action 'Gintama' And 'Bleach' July 11, 2017
There's always the chance the live-action 'Gintama' and 'Bleach' movies will be good, but right now they appear to embody the deadliest, most literal sins of such projects
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How The Future (Of Western Live-Action Anime Adaptations) Can Be Female June 28, 2017
'Ghost In The Shell' fizzled, but there are tons of other worthwhile anime/manga titles with strong female leads that could be adapted excellently for English-speaking audiences
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They're Going To Film This (On TV): 'Cowboy Bebop' June 8, 2017
A bad idea? Maybe not -- in big part because Cowboy Bebop doesn't have nearly the same number of obstacles to live-action adaptability as other shows
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'Wolf Guy': Bark At The Moon May 30, 2017
A truly strange specimen from Sonny Chiba's filmography, and an illuminating early example of how manga adaptations were a perfect fit for 1970s exploitation cinema from Japan
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Netflix's 'BLAME!': Killy Walk With Me May 22, 2017
Recast into a two-hour movie, Tsutomu Nihei's metamorphic cyberpunk hellscape manga emerges all the more as a graduate of the 'Mad Max'/Man With No Name school of drifter/loner heroes
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Little Miracles, Done Dirt Cheap May 8, 2017
Hollywood doesn't need blockbuster-sized live-action anime/manga adaptations. Here's some projects that could work on modest, manageable budgets, are easy to adapt, and could win over Western audiences handily
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