Friday, April 01, 2011
I hope this isn't just an April Fool's prank...
I am a firm believer that, at least once in every anime/manga nerd's life, they decide to watch a live-action interpretation of their favourite animated/illustrated property. I recall my friend Sydney talking about live-action Sailor Moon back in college, and I remember sitting in a movie theater (perhaps a theater with Bleach cosplayers in it...) in Indiana and being tempted by a trailer for a showing of the live-action Death Note movie. I also consider hunting down the live-action Yankee-kun to Megane-chan and Liar Game sometimes when I get super bored, which seems to be happening a lot lately...
I'm fine watching live-action Japanese movies, like horror movies Pulse and One Missed Call, or that one time when I watched Suspect X on a plane trip, but I've never watched an adaptation of a manga or anime before. Maybe it's because here in America, these often don't go very well. (I guess here I should be fair and mention some of the successful Marvel films and how Dennis the Menace was alright). My guess, though, is that it actually has more to do with how little I care for real life and how hard it is to properly translate real actors into stylistically drawn cartoon characters. Since I'm linking a lot, I'll just say it is hard. But hey, dummy, you ask, why are you saying all this?
Hey, I was about to get to that. Maybe you are the dummy. Today I found out than an Arakawa Under the Bridge live action show is coming! It is an unfortunate day to find this out, because it could be an elaborate prank by someone in Japan who felt like observing our foreign semi-holiday. (As I write this and look into it, the existence of this show been confirmed in my mind, but as usual, I'm not going to go back and change anything.)
Arakawa Under the Bridge was one of my favorite shows of
last year. The art style was fantastic, it was creative, it was unpredictable and funny, and it still had enough of an underlying story to be more than just a collection of jokes strung through its unique characters. Also it left me wanting more. Conveniently, another one of my favorite shows of 2010 was Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge, its second season that also left me wanting more. So then I started reading the manga, and then I read Hikaru Nakamura's other manga, Saint Young Men, which I'm pretty sure is the best and most accurate depiction of what it would be like if Buddha and Jesus were roommates in modern Tokyo.
And now I will watch this show. I'm hopeful, because they seemed to not have too much trouble making adequately believable costumes for a short clips after the credits in each episode. As long as they put a little more effort into it, I think it could be good enough for me to watch the story of a succesful over-achiever moving into a homeless community all over again.
Labels: Anime, Arakawa Under the Bridge, Grossly misportraying the lives of the homeless, Live-action
# posted by Gug Lurge @ 8:10 AM 
