1 Upcoming Live-Action Anime Adaptation Risks Being Worse Than Dragonball Evolution

Summary One Punch-Man's comedic tone is hard to nail in live-action due to its unique blend of superheroic subversion and comedy.

One-Punch Man will struggle to stay authentic to the original manga & anime, risking the loss of character focus and depth.

Despite concerns, the script rewrites by Dan Harmon and Heather Anne Campbell offer a silver lining for the live-action adaptation.

The upcoming live-action One-Punch Man could risk repeating the same mistakes that sunk Dragonball: Evolution if it doesn't successfully adapt the original story's distinct tone and character focus. In adapting Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball franchise for Western audiences, the live-action Dragonball: Evolution lost much of the vibrant and unique fun that has long defined the franchise. It's one of the most infamous examples of this trend in movie and TV adaptations of anime by Hollywood, but far from the only one.

This tonal discrepancy has been a problem for several anime movie adaptations and is one that fans of One-Punch Man have been wary of for the upcoming Justin Lin-directed film. Despite the talent of the filmmakers involved (including the two exciting writers brought on to rewrite the script), One-Punch Man has a very specific tonal balance that needs to be replicated if the film wants to be a successful adaptation. It's a particularly tricky one at that, which fuses a satirical approach to a well-trodden genre to a serious character melodrama.

Related Casting The Live-Action One-Punch Man Movie: 9 Actors Who Would Be Perfect These actors are ideal choices to play Saitama, Genos, and the other iconic roles in the highly anticipated One-Punch Man live-action film.

One Punch-Man's Comedic Tone Will Be Very Hard To Nail In Live-Action

Millions Of Dollars In Special Effects, Only To Be Blown Up By A Punch

One-Punch Man's tonal balance makes it a naturally tricky story to adapt for the big-screen. Created by the manga artist One, One-Punch Man focuses on a world of deadly superheroes and supernatural powerhouses, where the Hero Association protects the world from dangerous threats. This typical superhero tonal layer is subverted on every level by the titular character, an unassuming and perpetually bored new hero named Saitama who is on the lookout for an actual challenge after he becomes strong enough to destroy anything with one punch. It's a modern riff on superheroes that purposefully removes any tension to the action.

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The typical superheroic imagery and inspirational archetypes are undercut for comedic effect. Instead, the massive world-threatening monsters and villains are reduced to smears in sudden bursts of violence from One-Punch Man. All of this is countered by characters like Genos, with the comedy coming from pairing the serious melodramatic superhero character against a bored Superman. The animated nature of the series allows it to be naturally big and broad in a way that's been difficult to bring to live-action, with massive budgets on monsters transformed into a sudden punchline. Even that subversive element isn't the real tricky part, though.

One Punch-Man Will Struggle To Stay Authentic To The Original Manga & Anime

Compressing A Show's Worth Of Drama Into A Film Means Cuts Are Coming

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The goofy and action-packed elements of One-Piece Man hide a surprisingly introspective tone, with the characters struggling and growing in grounded ways. Finding that tone balance was always going to be had for a live-action adaption, especially one that seeks to compress all that deceptive character development into a feature-length run-time instead of a long-running show. That's what separates One-Punch Man from other sardonic riffs on the superhero genre. Compressing the story and universe for a film will likely cost some character focus and depth. A worst-case scenario would be adapting One-Punch Man just on a surface level.

Dragonball: Evolution tried to fuse the distinct elements of the franchise with a more traditional high school adventure narrative. Arguably more faithful adaptations like Death Note and Cowboy Bebop replicated the looks of the original anime but failed to replicate the personality that elevated the original shows. The clear outlier is Netflix's One Piece, which maintained a distinct goofy flavor and charm to the original story. Even then, One Piece had a longer run-time and still needed to compress several elements of the original series. A One-Punch Man film may struggle to make that work in a feature-length run-time.

Related 8 Live-Action Anime Adaptations That Actually Respected The Source Material Live-action anime adaptations can be hit or miss, but the most successful ones tend to respect the source material that they’re based on.

One Punch-Man's Rewrites Are A Concern (But There's A Silver Lining)

Rick & Morty's Tonal Juggling Act Gives One-Punch Man's Rewrites

Custom Image by Nick Bythrow

The latest news about One-Piece Man's live-action adaptation does inspire some cautious optimism. Rick & Morty co-creator Dan Harmon is reteaming with former Rick & Morty writer Heather Anne Campbell to rewrite the screenplay for Justin Lin's upcoming One-Punch Man. Rick & Morty has a similar consistently snarky and unflinchingly brutal approach to a sensational genre as One-Punch Man. Moreover, Rick & Morty quietly explores heavy dramatic topics with the Sanchez family amid the entertaining chaos. If that kind of keen character perspective is replicated for One-Punch Man, the film may retain a vital element of the manga.

Still, the project remains a tricky beast The fact that the film requires a high-profile rewrite at all indicates how hard it is to bring this universe to the big-screen. One-Punch Man thrives in the middle-ground between serious character introspection and over-the-top action spectacle. Trying to compress any of that into a more traditional structure, as seen in failed anime adaptations like Dragonball: Evolution, will likely result in failure. It's on Harmon and Campbell to turn out a script that grounds all those elements together well, breaking One-Piece Man away from the faults that typically haunt Western anime adaptations.