Being a Japanese product, it’s pretty obvious that manga will be adapted into a wide variety of Japanese media such as anime series, live-action films, etc. It’s also clear that America, with the largest film industry in the world, would also adapt various manga series. However, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some non-Japanese/American adaptations of manga since it feels like these are less well known.
While Japan had worked with other countries to coproduce film adaptations of manga, such as the Golgo 13 films and Lady Oscar, the first film that I’m aware of that adapted a manga without any involvement of the Japanese film industry was the 1990 Hong Kong film “Killer’s Romance” which was a loose adaptation of Crying Freeman. Amusingly, another Hong Kong film called “The Dragon from Russia”, which was also released in 1990, also adapted Crying Freeman!
Several more Hong Kong adaptations of manga were released afterwards such as Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky and City Hunter. However, a particularly notable example of a non-Japanese/American adaptation would be the 1995 Canadian-French coproduction of Crying Freeman. Retaining the original name, Crying Freeman was a more loyal adaptation of the manga than the Hong Kong films and proved to be moderately successful both critically and financially.
Easily one of the most critically acclaimed examples of a non-Japanese/American adaptation has to be the 2003 South Korean film “Oldboy”. While only a loose adaptation of the original manga of the same name, the basic premise of a man who’s been imprisoned against his will for years and is released one day without explanation is the same. The film was financially successful in South Korea, becoming one of the highest grossing Korean films of the year and received critical acclaim worldwide with a notable event being when it won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.
Since then, we have continued to see many other interesting non-Japanese/American film adaptations of manga such as the 2010 French film “A Distant Neighborhood”, the 2011 Singaporean animated film “Tatsumi”, the 2018 Chinese film “Animal World” as well as the newly released French CG animated film “The Summit of the Gods”. However, I’d also like to draw attention to some non-Japanese/American TV adaptations of manga as well. One of the most famous examples of this is the Shojo manga “Boys Over Flowers” which has been adapted into numerous live-action TV series by countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, China and Thailand. Additionally, series such as Skip Beat! and Hayate the Combat Butler have been adapted into Taiwanese live-action dramas and South Korea has adapted series such as Hana-Kimi and Antique Bakery into live-action series as well.
It’s truly fascinating to see so many adaptations of manga come from non-Japanese/American countries and I’m always fascinated to see how these stories are interpreted in different cultures. Let me know your thoughts on interesting non-Japanese/American adaptations of manga, which ones you have seen, which have been some of your favourites and least favourites, if you can think of any other interesting examples and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!
So which of these have been exclusively produced in America? Because all of these non-japanese adaptations mentioned here are titles produced/animated by countries other than America. Clickbait much?
If you look at the title, it clearly states “Non-Japanese/American Adaptations of Manga” meaning that these adaptations were produced neither by Japan or America.