Animes have always managed to captivate and entice audiences. Despite their childish appearance, animes successfully articulate dark and interesting themes to the public. Dragon Ball, Deathnote, Pokemon and Digimon are all examples of brilliant products that have amassed cult like followers all around the world.
Live movie adaptions of animations, however are still cause of concerns. Despite the monumental fan following, it seems that entertainment studios don’t take them seriously. Entertainment companies consider them as foreign products and think that movie adaptions wouldn’t be able to have significant impact on the masses. Hence, such adaptions are normally constructed with a limited budget adding constraints on the production team to depict the anime elements in full detail.
There are still some reputed entertainment companies that have discovered this huge gap in the market. Warner Bros for instance is working on bringing the Fullmetal Alchemist to the big screen. Warner Bros is a studio that has an arsenal of wealth and if put to proper use the movie can be a success.
Recent revelations and reviews on the project so far have been positive. In early November, the director of the film, Sori Fumihiko allowed some fans to watch the film in Japan before the official release date. Most of the fans loved the adaption. Fumihiko regarding the issue said that “There were a lot of fans who understood the core part of the story and not the surface layer. I was very touched. The story Arakawa drew was made in Japan, but I realized I was feeling sympathy from all over the world. I will never forget the applause which happened after the movie ended.”
Which raises the question will we ever see a western adaptation for Fullmetal Alchemist? Recent anime adaptations such as Death Note and Ghost in The Shell have received a lot of flak because they deviated from the core concept of the manga and anime, with Fullmetal Alchemist though there is a good opportunity to break that trend.
Let’s hope that the response of the fans is as positive as it was now. We clearly need a major success for studios in this arena so that more movies will be made.
