I just finished the anime yesterday, so I really wanted to know how well they’ve adapted it into live action. If I’m being honest, they had the spirit but it felt like someone paraphrased the first 8 episodes of the show.
The stuff that I did like mainly consisted of the editing, set work, and the actors delivering on their script. Like one of the things that I really liked was when the LuT changed from being grungy to vibrant for when Akira realises that he no longer has to go to work.
My main nitpicks for the visual aspects on the other hand, some of the chase sequences felt really phoned in, and of course that CGI shark (but with Netflix anime adaptations, that’s to be expected).
I guess to a high degree, the film was faithful to the series. Mainly towards Akira’s character and some of the adventures he goes through.
They did have to gloss over some stories, and merge them with other episodes. So the episode where they meet Shizuka works with the Flight Attendants episode, but the execution of fusing the Aquarium ep with Akira confronting his old boss didn’t work when they had to rush the part where Akira gets gaslighted into being an overwork subordinate again.
In some cases I might understand these changes, like Ms. Ohtori being a home wrecker instead of a staff assistant who’s being taken advantage of by their boss, or Akira’s neighbours surviving after what happened.
But frustratingly, they rushed over Kensho’s goal of being a comedian and why Shizuka wanted to become a nurse - which heavily downplays the faithfulness of these characters in contrast to Akira. Not to mention that Kensho doesn’t even apologise and confess to Akira, and there were so many moments when I was waiting for it to happen.
This is the one anime franchise that I can see work in live action adaptation, and it’s a shame how close it was to being just decent.
I just finished the anime yesterday, so I really wanted to know how well they’ve adapted it into live action. If I’m being honest, they had the spirit but it felt like someone paraphrased the first 8 episodes of the show.
The stuff that I did like mainly consisted of the editing, set work, and the actors delivering on their script. Like one of the things that I really liked was when the LuT changed from being grungy to vibrant for when Akira realises that he no longer has to go to work.
My main nitpicks for the visual aspects on the other hand, some of the chase sequences felt really phoned in, and of course that CGI shark (but with Netflix anime adaptations, that’s to be expected).
I guess to a high degree, the film was faithful to the series. Mainly towards Akira’s character and some of the adventures he goes through.
They did have to gloss over some stories, and merge them with other episodes. So the episode where they meet Shizuka works with the Flight Attendants episode, but the execution of fusing the Aquarium ep with Akira confronting his old boss didn’t work when they had to rush the part where Akira gets gaslighted into being an overwork subordinate again.
In some cases I might understand these changes, like Ms. Ohtori being a home wrecker instead of a staff assistant who’s being taken advantage of by their boss, or Akira’s neighbours surviving after what happened.
But frustratingly, they rushed over Kensho’s goal of being a comedian and why Shizuka wanted to become a nurse - which heavily downplays the faithfulness of these characters in contrast to Akira. Not to mention that Kensho doesn’t even apologise and confess to Akira, and there were so many moments when I was waiting for it to happen.
This is the one anime franchise that I can see work in live action adaptation, and it’s a shame how close it was to being just decent.
