American Anime Movies That Should NEVER Be Made!!!

Hi. Since Dragonball: Evolution and Priest dropped a whole new pile of fertilizer on the prospects of there ever being an actually good American live-action movie based on an anime or manga, I thought what I'd do is a list of potential titles that genuinely could be done right out here. But first, I figured we should tackle some of the ones that don't stand a snowflake's chance in Hell in August of being made into a even a decent American movie! Oh sure, alot of fans would like to see them do a movie based on this hot new martial arts anime starring so-and-so up-and-coming young Disney-spawned actor or actress. But could alot of these movies ever really get made in a way that wouldn't have every otaku in the country ready to attack FOX with torches and pitchforks? F*ck no! So here's an itinerary of titles that Hollywood needs to stay the hell away from...

BLEACH
Sorry, no. I know the idea of a hardass-but-caring highschool kid who can see dead people, and somehow ends up as a part-time soul reaper might sound appealing. Now, this might work in America if they left out all the Soul Society stuff, where all the shingami are just a bunch of punk-ass samurai who only seem to really care about whose the baddest mutha with an "enchanted sword". If it was mainly just about Ichigo and Rukia fighting ghosts and demons, it could fly. But put in all that unnecessary Yu Yu Hakusho shit, and it just becomes another Dragonball Z wannabe.

DRAGONBALL Z
Yeah, I know. They're already scripting Dragonball: Evolution 2-Saiyan Boogaloo. WTF?! If you were like me and saw the first movie online(this is about the only time that I'd advocate video piracy)instead of wasting a dollar at the $1 theatre a week after it premiered in the U.S., you'd know that a Dragonball Z followup is a complete waste of freakin' time! There are people out there starving in the streets, and you wanna waste good money seeing a shitty sequal to a shitty movie? The only way this would work if it was a made-for-video or Sci-Fi Channel original movie. At least that way the special effects would be consistant with the obsurd premise. If Japan decides they want to do an all-Japanese version of DBZ, then okay. Other than that, FOX better stay the f*ck away!

NARUTO
Forget it! No f*cking way! Drop it, boy! Drop it! There's been so much fan praise for this series, which is somewhat justified since it does have a great concept taking place in an all-ninja universe, despite the infinite number of filler episodes. However, there's no way that this would translate into an American movie. First of all, the premise of training youth to be lethal killers and assassins would never go with your average bible-thumping midwest families, unless the kids were brandishing hunting rifles. Any whiney little blonde kid who keeps going around saying that he's going to be their supreme dictator would get the living tar slapped outta him every given minute. Plus, all the chakra horse-hockey would just go over our heads, and the ninjas defy logic by not wearing black or bothering to cover up their bright pink hair when the go on covert operations. Barring that, it'd just be some lame-o cosplay sketch.

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION
Here's one that's been waiting to get off the runway for a while now. The history is that the American distributor of the anime TV series, ADV Films, decided to spearhead a live-action movie base on it(even though they couldn't even afford the license to the actual Evangelion anime movies!). They're currently in talks with Gainax(FLCL, Gurren Lagann)to get the rights to do the movie, and have gone as far as getting concept art from WETA, the New England production company that did Lord Of The Rings. There's several reasons why this won't work as an American production. One is we simply don't give enough of a crap about giant robots to do a whole movie about them. Transformers was a merchandising vehicle thrown together with several different anime series models. Aside from The Iron Giant(which on its own was largely inspired by Gigantor)there's been no real attempts at approaching anything even remotely "mecha". Another reason it wouldn't work is because of the overwhelming religious overtones. You thought there were people uptight about The DaVinci Code? This turkey would've had the Mel Gibson lobby forming lynch mobs around the theatre. The main reason is though is that no way in the world could they ever get this done in a single movie. With like seventeen angels to whack coming at them one at a time, this would have to at least be a trilogy to do it any real justice.

ONE PIECE
Oh! An anime about pirates? Is Johnny Depp available? Bitch, please! First off, this anime is really more about "sea adventurers" than pirates. They hardly ever do anything pirate-like, instead of looking for the One Piece(of which they have no f*cking clue as to what it is!). Also, nearly everyone in it has somekind of cursed fruit-induced mutant superpower like stretching, or a completely off the charts fighting ability like using three swords at once. It's a good show for young male viewers(aka: shonen), but this all takes place in an alternate parallel universe with all pirates, like Naruto is just all ninjas. It's just to hard to craft this into something that would be tangible enough to hold any water for an American movie. Plus the style of comedy and action is just so over the wall for us gaijin.

POKEMON
What? Are you f*cking serious?! Do you honestly think they'd consider doing a live-action flick about this dated kids show? Um...YES! For one thing, the fact that something is a dated kids show didn't stop them from making movies of Transformers, He-Man, and G.I. Joe. The other is that despite being around for a while, Pokemon is still a popular series with both new and old anime fans, plus kids who just watch it on TV. Not to mention that the card game and video games are still one of the most enduring franchises in the last decade. You can bet someone in Hollywood was thinking kids would eat this up like salsa-flavored crack, and that Spielberg would've sold out to it big time. God knows that they'd have kids from 90210 as Ash, Misty, Brock, etc., and all the Pokemon would be profoundly shitty CGI abominations.

SAILOR MOON
We've all heard rumors back in the 90s about Geena Davis being involved in a movie of this, and more recently Emma Watson. Hell, they even said Joss Whedon was going to be directing this a couple of years ago! Of course the anime TV series had been instrumental in swaying over thousands of American fans to anime, and is pretty much the single most popular "magical girl" series in the entire world, but there's so many reasons why this crawl out here. Mostly because it's too Japanese. How do you explain why they are wearing sailor-type outfits with wonderfully short skirts? Which if you didn't know was taken from Japanese schoolgirl uniforms. Another is magical girl stuff, at least the anime version of it, doesn't really work out here to well. In the five minutes it takes the Sailor Ganstas to transform, the monster would've gutted them alive! Not to mention, our magical girls either kick ass on a superninja level, or have godlike powers from just wiggling they're nose. It's also difficult to work all five girls meeting up and discovering their past lives in a single movie, which you could do, but would look so rushed to fit in. The other thing is that all the actresses they'd have playing the Sailor Chickas would be around 21 instead of 14 like in the anime/manga. Even Japan couldn't work out doing a live-action film, although they did a halfway good TV series.