The Worst Live-Action Anime and Manga Adaptations

Next to video games, anime and manga are some of the most difficult storytelling mediums to translate into live-action. Where there have been many successes—Takashi Miike’s samurai flick Blade of the Immortal, Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel, Higuchinsky’s delightfully gross version of Junji Ito’s horror manga Uzumaki, the Wachowskis’ acid trip Speed Racer—there have been even more failures, especially when iconic Eastern stories are retooled to appeal more to Western audiences.

Because we’re both fans and haters, we compiled a list of the ten worst live-action anime and manga adaptations of all time featuring critical and commercial failures from otherwise storied directors, major studio flops based on beloved classics, and universally derided disasters that simply never should have been made. At least we’ll always have the (much better!) source material to scratch the itch — in these ten cases, you might as well just stick with the originals.

The 10 Worst Live-Action Anime and Manga Adaptations

Like video games, the complex storylines and exaggerated characters of even the best anime and manga out there can be difficult to translate to the screen. Here’s the proof...