The east and the west have its specialties in the world of entertainment. Everyone has their preferences but it is undeniable what west can do and what the east can do. Its been shown time and time again that American movies can tend to have a better quality than that of eastern movies and for this argument, we are referring to Japanese movies.
While manga and anime seem to dominate the world of animation, cartoon shows and just overall 2D art from paper and pencil to the big screen, Comic book movies dominate the big screen.
That is right. Anime and manga are more popular when it comes to paperback sales and ratings for television shows. However, we have seen many times that the live action adaptations for anime and manga just seem to catch up. Movies such as Dragon Ball Evolution, the American Death Note live action, the Black Butler live action and many others just dont have the same quality as, lets say, Marvel and DC live action. From Spiderman all the way to Avengers. When it comes to live action, superhero movies do so much better.
This is a fact. The number dont lie and I will explain why. There is a reason why live action adaptations of anime dont do so well and have a shitty quality. Lets no include the whitewashed Ghost in the Shell live action. Directors in Japan have good intentions and they do their best but their live actions just don’t seem to do so well. Heck, their stage plays do so much better than their live action.
Have you see the Naruto stage play. I mean thats as good as any live action anime is going to get, for now.
So here we go.
Its All About The Budget
This might be heart breaking for some people but in order to make a high quality movie you need millions of dollars. and I do mean, hundreds of millions.
Let me give you an example.
The live action Ruroni Kenshin movie was made with $20 million dollars while the first ever Spiderman movie from 2002 took $130 million to make. Now we could argue that both have amazing stories and great quality. I mean the Ruroni Kenshin movie was absolutely incredible and the actor did a great job at portraying Batousai the man slayer.
American movie companies really take gigantic risk to bring these superhero movies to life. I mean they go head over board with their movies. Although it took $130 million to make the first Spiderman movie, they really did not use as much CG as we do now. The Avengers Infinity War took $200 million to make.
The Death Note live action took $40 million dollars to make and it sucked. (American version).
And by the way I am not just throwing numbers and dollars signs just from the top of my head. The things is that the bigger the budget the more the directors can do with the movie. Japanese companies dont really put a lot of movie into their movies. They put as much into it as they can but they dont take big risk like the American film companies do.
However, money is still no excuse. I mean with $20 million they could afford to make a Ruroni Kenshin movie and the most important part is creativity, yet money does help make the project more realistic.
I don’t know if its the fact that they just cant afford better special effects or if they are just so bad with live action adaptations that they really need to stay with anime and let American companies handle the live action stuff.
That being said, it does seem like only American companies can make these types of expensive movies since American companies have the money to spend. I mean check this out. Disney spend $255 million dollars on the Beauty and the Beast live action movie and in return it made a little over a billion dollars. American movies make their movie back five fold while eastern movies struggle a lot. I mean you really need to have the movie to make these types of movies compare to animation which only take about 4 to 5 million dollars. Then you have countries with really good economies such as China that spend $100 million dollars on the movie The White Hair Witch (good movie you should go watch it by the way). Maybe China should make the live action Adaptations.
The Cost of Anime
Its sad to say but anime is actually very cheap to make. Compare to hit TV shows from Nickelodeon like Avatar The Last Airbender and Invader Zim, those shows took $1 million dollars for each episode. Anime only takes $300,000 per episode, basically the salary of a small business CEO. That really fucking sucks. Japanese animators don’t get paid shit and that is why they commit suicide.
Its takes $4 million dollars for one episode of the Simpsons. That means with 20 episodes that $20 million bucks. God damn.
That being said, anime is cheaper yet the story is always better and the art and animation is always better.
This is one of the reasons why fans were glad that Netflix was producing their own anime. Hopefully Netflix pays the animators much more money so that they keep coming back to make more. (And that way they dont kill themselves)
Those anime that we love so much, its cheap to make and if they do put a lot of money into their anime what makes you think they will put money into their live actions. Thats just the way it works.
That is why American movies will continue to do better in the long run until the Japanese change their ways.
