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Live-action anime adaptations have varied in quality, with some leaving fans disappointed and others thrilling audiences. Live-action adaptations have the ability to reimagine characters and worlds in a way that appeals to a broader audience, bridging the gap between anime fans and newcomers. The best live-action adaptations stay true to the spirit of the original anime while offering new and exciting creative techniques to bring the stories to life.

For anime fans looking to explore the live-action adaptations of their favorite shows, there are plenty that have proven themselves worthy of watching. There are a number of fantastic live-action TV adaptations of anime out there to enjoy, but, as with any genre, some shows are better than others. What makes one adaptation better than another can vary for a number of reasons, including its quality and faithfulness to the source material. From intricate set designs to incredible performances, some are...

The “death game” sub-genre sees ordinary people fight for survival through murderous games, puzzles, and exercises. These heightened stories have become so popular because of their tendency to turn torture and suffering into a twisted form of entertainment — a concept that feels increasingly authentic with each passing year. There are dozens of anime that fit the murderous death game mold between Deadman Wonderland, Danganronpa, and Gantz. However, there are also a handful of series that specifically follow Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Squid Game’s example, where childish recreational games and activities become the competitive tools of these characters’ destruction. Kaiji, Liar Game, Death Parade, Alice in Borderland, and Btooom! all follow this model to some extent. As the Gods Will predates Squid Game by six years, but there’s fascinating crossover between these two death game stories. As the Gods Will is the...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Oscilloscope releases the film in select theaters on Friday, August 11.

An enormously poignant melodrama told at the volume of a broken whisper, Kōji Fukada’s “Love Life” represents a major breakthrough for a filmmaker who’s found the perfect story for his probing but distant style. In that light, it doesn’t seem incidental that “Love Life” is a story about distance — specifically the distance between people who reach for each other in the wake of a tragedy that strands them far away from themselves.

Inspired by the plaintive 1991 Akiko Yano song of the same name, “Love Life” introduces us to a domestic idyll that it disrupts with a deceptive casualness typical of Fukada’s work. The bloom comes off the rose slowly at first, and then all at once in a single moment of everyday awfulness.

Enormous personal events unfold throughout Kôji Fukada’s soulful Japanese drama “Love Life,” premiering at the Venice Film Festival: a marriage, a reunion, an affair and, most notably, a death. And yet the scale in which Fukada works — as both writer and director — is so deliberately intimate that immense experiences feel microcosmic, while tiny moments make a huge impact.

His heroine, Taeko (Fumino Kimura), is so self-effacing that it often feels as though she would erase herself if she could. Most of the time, she is able to look to others for meaning and definition; in her small, generic flat within a block of large, generic apartment buildings, she serves her in-laws, her husband, her son Keita (Tetta Shimada). At work, from a cubicle or a sidewalk, she serves as a social advocate, helping unhoused and otherwise disadvantaged strangers.

When she can’t find something to do, she lingers in near-immobility,...

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The apartment at the center of Love Life, Koji Fukada’s mellow study of grief and dislocation, is, like the film, compact and practical. A long table, surrounded by a narrow bench and various chairs, occupies the center of the living room. The kitchen is tucked in a corner. Near the entrance: a bathroom with a short tub, a sink, a toilet. Toward the rear: sliding doors leading to a balcony overlooking a hideous concrete lot; a bedroom on the right. Evidence of family life is everywhere: height marks etched into a wall, trophies, diplomas, a child’s drawings, books, clothes on hooks, shoes in corner.

Taeko (Fumino Kimura), Jiro (Kento Nagayama) and their 6-year-old son, Keita (Tetta Shimada), live in this unfussy space, and how they interact with it is one of the most edifying aspects of Fukada’s latest feature. With Love Life,...

Labyrinth Of Cinema, the final film by maverick filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi ; a love letter to the power of cinema will be playing on the big screen as it was intended.

The film will be released in New York at The Metrograph on October 20th, with a Los Angeles and regional release to follow in key theaters.

Labyrinth Of Cinema

Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi (House)

Cast: Takuro Atsuki, Takahito Hosoyamada, Yoshihiko Hosoda, Rei Yoshida, Riko Narumi, Hirona Yamazaki, Takako Tokiwa

The final film by Nobuhiko Obayashi finds the late director returning to the subject of Japan’s history of warfare following the completion of his “War Trilogy,” which ended with Hanagatami. On the last night of its existence, a small movie theater in Onomichi—the seaside town of Obayashi’s youth where he shot nearly a dozen films—screens an all-night marathon of Japanese war films. When lightning strikes the theater, three...

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Upcoming Releases

3 great Japanese films available to pre-order Hanagatami

Out July 6th

In 2016, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult Japanese film House (Hausu) was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Despite not much time left, for what was supposed to be his final film he adapted Kazuo Dan’s 1937 novella Hanagatami, his passion project 40 years in the making.

In 1941, as Japan prepares its attack on Pearl Harbor, 16 year-old Toshihiko (Shunsuke Kubozuka) leaves his parents in Amsterdam and moves to the seaside town of Karatsu where his aunt Keiko (Takako Tokiwa) cares for his ailing cousin Mina (Honoka Yahagi). Immersed in the exquisite nature and phenomenal culture of Karatsu,...

Three upcoming Japanese films from Third Window Films are now available for preorder.

Hanagatami

Out July 6th

In 2016, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult Japanese film House (Hausu) was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Despite not much time left, for what was supposed to be his final film he adapted Kazuo Dan’s 1937 novella Hanagatami, his passion project 40 years in the making.

In 1941, as Japan prepares its attack on Pearl Harbor, 16 year-old Toshihiko (Shunsuke Kubozuka) leaves his parents in Amsterdam and moves to the seaside town of Karatsu where his aunt Keiko (Takako Tokiwa) cares for his ailing cousin Mina (Honoka Yahagi). Immersed in the exquisite nature and phenomenal culture of Karatsu, Toshihiko befriends the beautiful, Apollo-like Ukai (Shinnosuke Mitsushima), the contemplative Kira (Keishi Nagatsuka), the ingenuous Akine (Hirona Yamazaki) and the brooding Chitose (Mugi Kadowaki) as they all contend with the war’s inescapable gravitational pull.

If there is a theme that often reappears in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s oeuvre, it is the impact of war. While this theme was already present in his very first full-length feature “House” (1977), which has to read as a symbolic expression of the destruction of the A-bomb, it seems to have become a more urgent matter for him in the last couple of years. “Kono Sora no Hana”, a narrative he directed in 2012, concerned the bombing of Nagaoka, and “No No Nanananoka”, which he made two years later, handled Japan’s wartime responsibility.

With “Hanagatami”, a project Obayashi abandoned 40 years ago to make “House” instead and his third anti-war movie in a row, he once again underlines his personal motivation to carry out the dream and philosophy of the late Akira Kurosawa: to achieve world peace with the power of the cinematographical narrative. This time, by adapting Kazuo Dan’s...

Takashi Miike's As the Gods WillSTORY70%ACTING65%DIRECTING75%VISUALS80%POSITIVESEqual parts of slapstick comedy and gory violenceGreat adaptationMiike's presenceNEGATIVESObviously not for the mainstream audience2016-04-0973%Overall ScoreReader Rating: (2 Votes)83%

After long years of a plethora of failed and mediocre projects, it seems like we are finally experiencing an era where the anime and manga adaptations are actually becoming great films. “Parasyte“, “Assassination Classroom”, “Rurouni Kenshin Trilogy” are just a few of the examples of the particular tendency, and if not for the awful “Attack on Titan” adaptation we would be talking about an absolute phenomenon.

One of the reasons for the phenomenon is Takashi Miike, who has taken on a series of the nonsensical and violent ones (“The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji“, “Ace Attorney”), producing films in a fashion that only he could. “As The Gods Will” is a distinct example of the fact.

The film does not lag one bit,...

Takashi Miike's whacky gorefest As the Gods Will (Kami-sama no Iu Toori) topped the weekend box office on its bow, taking $1.55 million (￥180 million) from 133,900 admissions at 318 screens. Hollywood fare struggled this week with no big openings and The Expendables 3 dropping down to sixth spot, while Dracula Untold fell to eighth. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, which is performing well in other big Asian movie markets, is released in Japan on Nov. 22. As the Gods Will is a manga adaptation starring Sota Fukushi and Hirona Yamazaki as students at a high school where all manner of Miike-

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Name and focus changes for every section, which are now all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

The ninth Rome Film Festival (Oct 16-25) has revealed a diverse line-up including the Italian premieres for potential awards contenders including David Fincher’s Gone Girl. the world premiere of Takashi Miike’s As the Gods Will and Burhan Qurbani’s We are Young, We are Strong and European premiere of Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind, Toronto hit Still Alice and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

This year for the first time the award-winners in each section of the programme will be decided by the audience on the basis of votes cast after the screenings.

Each section has changed name and focus for 2014 and are all competitive, resulting in the festival’s structure being “slimmer’.

Italian comedies Soap Opera and Andiamo a Quel Paese bookend the line-up.

Full line-up

Cinema D’Oggi

World premiere

• Angely...