Maybe I’m an old person, but I feel like one of the weakest ideas for a show or movie is a remake. It’s like, you can’t find anything new to do? The reasons to do remakes I can see (outside of just money chasing):
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It’s been like 60 years and no one remembers. This is the weakest.
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You do a interesting twist or change(The various Sherlock Holmes in modern day, redoing in a different language, doing a live action version).
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The previous adaptation was completely off the rails and considered bad.
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There were shots that you just couldn’t do in the past due to less technology.
For the recent Trigun, and now Spice and Wolf and Rurouni Kenshin - were the previous anime’s way off the source material? I don’t think Spice and Wolf was, I haven’t read the source for Trigun or Kenshin. If not, I’m struggling to see why anyone who was interested in these would wait to see the “new” version versus just watching the existing one RIGHT NOW.
For those of us who watched the existing version, why would we want to waste time on re-watching the same story when there’s other shows that are new, either to everyone or at least to us? I guess in my limited time to watch a firehose of entertainment (heck, just in Anime, forget about shows like The Witcher, various Star Trek, books etc), tell me what I’m missing by just skipping these and remembering the stuff I watched 15-20 years ago?
Heck, I even tried to watch the live action movies of Kenshin, and while the first was interesting enough, I was also kind of just like, oh yea - this scene now. And never watched the rest because I know the story.
OTOH, I recall these being enjoyable enough that I watched Trigun and Kenshin several times, bought the translated light novels for Spice and Wolf (though I did peter out around book 11).
The new Trigun has top-tier action due to using a totally different animation technology, so that one at least makes some sense.
I didn’t know they were redoing Spice and Wolf. That one was even made in the HD era, right? Weird.
I’d rather see a remake of something like the original Mobile Suit Gundam since the animation quality is kinda rough and it’s from the 70’s. Hell, they could just continue adapting Gundam The Origin and it’d be an amazing retelling.
If you consider life action adaptations as remakes, aren’t most animes just remakes of manga or light novel stories?
But yeah, if I already “consumed” one version of a show/movie/series, I will probably skip the newer one as well, especially if the new version has no interesting twist or change. Though I do like to watch remakes together with friends and family, who are new to this franchise. (if the reviews are good)
As for Trigun, the remake seems to be completely different from the old anime. That’s why I plan to watch the Trigun remake as well.
The original Spice and Wolf anime never finished and the last episode came out almost 15 years ago. I liked the original, but I don’t remember enough to watch a new season that continues where season 3 left off 15 years ago. A fresh remake, where the studio can use their modern tools as they wish, makes the most sense here.
Remakes and reboots in animes are still quite rare though.
Yea, I mean the point is unless they’re doing more than 2 seasons, the new one won’t finish either. There’s like 17 books and a spinoff book series also.
One other reason remakes tend to get made in any medium is that the original’s storytelling methods (dialogue, cinematography, art style, acting style, whatever) are very much of their time, and this can turn off younger audiences who have different expectations of the stories they consume. I don’t know how true this is generally or how justified it is in individual cases, but it’s another factor. It doesn’t help the case for the shot-for-shot remakes like sailor moon (at least from what I’ve seen of it), but I think it explains a bit for trigun (again, from what I’ve seen of it). I’m on my way to becoming an Old as well, and it’s a little hard to accept, but the younger folks sometimes look at media that we enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) and it feels viscerally old to them.
(Also, I can’t let a conversation concerning rurouni kenshin go by without feeling it needs to be mentioned that the author has been convicted of possession of cp)
I get stuff might look old, however I also kind of doubt that’s as big a deal as some people make out. I really enjoyed many “old” shows, and movies as a kid, and the look was just part of the style. Then again I also liked old books so… I guess I am also reminded where a lot of recent attempts to update a story for modern sensibilities was controversial at best, and rarely that good a movie or show.
And you’re right the shot for shot remakes make even less sense.
Then you have the very questionable idea with Kenshin to go out of your way to make the author more money. I liked the original story, and would not support banning or putting it in a vault. But to choose to do more business and raise the profile says something unsavory about the people making the current show. Makes it easier to let that one just be my memories.
Kind of hard to say, theres probably not a general reason as it’s different for each remake. It could be trying to bring modern popularity into an older franchise like what happened with JoJo, completing the source material like with Fruits Basket, or even taking things in different artistic directions like in the various Ghost in the Shell adaptations.
I’ll check them out because they are familiar properties that I enjoyed and it’s been over a decade since I’ve watched either franchise. So it will be a nice refresher. And it might surprise me with some high quality in the way that the Fruits Basket remake did.
At the end of the day just watch what you want though. If you don’t watch it chances are you’ll hear from others if theres differences or a reason to check it out.
I can’t speak of the other remakes and animes. As a hardcore sci-fi fan and fan of the original Trigun, the new Trigun Stampede is an amazing experience. Not only does it provide so much lore and world building as a prequel to the original anime, it’s also just a really different take to the original Trigun. The story is more bleak and darker, the characters feel so much more realistic, and the whole thing really takes time to flesh out how they became the way they are. It’s an amazing experience and it’s quite clear from the interviews of the team (particularly the Trash Taste episode with the producer) showed that they really put a lot of care and attention to the world before making this remake. I completely believe that this is how remakes should be done and how they can contribute to an already existing material.
