Manga Remakes: Examples And Why They’re Rare

It is a fact that remakes are becoming increasingly common across numerous entertainment industries. From films to gaming to anime, it feels like remakes are becoming more and more prevalent, perhaps overwhelmingly so. However, it occurred to me the other day that there aren’t that many manga remakes. Therefore, I thought it might be worth looking at a few examples of manga remakes and why they’re so rare compared to other media.

Let’s start off by looking at a few examples. A notable example of a manga remake would be Captain Harlock: Dimensional Voyage. Written by the legendary Leiji Matsumoto, author of the original 1978 Space Pirate Captain Harlock, with the art handled by Kōichi Shimahoshi, Captain Harlock: Dimensional Voyage retells the story of the original manga while expanding on certain story elements and connecting more strongly with Leiji Matsumoto’s other series.

Another interesting manga remake is Pluto from Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki. Rather than remake an entire manga series, Pluto retells the story arc “The Greatest Robot on Earth” from the Astro Boy manga but makes significant changes. Being published in Big Comic Original, a seinen magazine, the protagonist was changed from Astro Boy to Gesicht, a German robot detective who is investigating a series of murders, both of humans and robots, and expands on the investigative aspects of the original story. Pluto was both critically and commercially successful although Naoki Urasawa later confessed that he was under a lot of pressure and stress when he made Pluto.

It’s also worth pointing out that One-Punch Man, a highly successful and popular manga series, is also a remake. One-Punch Man originally started out as a webcomic which was written and illustrated by ONE, a pseudonym. The webcomic proved very successful despite being quite crudely drawn and he was eventually contacted by Yusuke Murata, a well-known mangaka, who was a fan of One-Punch Man and wanted to redraw it as a printed manga. ONE accepted but has continued to publish his own webcomic, resulting in two different versions of the same story running simultaneously.

Now that we’ve looked at some examples, I think it’s time to discuss why manga remakes are so rare. In general, remakes are produced in order to make money off of the popularity of the original property. With regards to the examples we looked at, they have very specific reasons why they were remade in the first place with Captain Harlock: Dimensional Voyage being produced for the 60th anniversary of Leiji Matsumoto’s career, Pluto reinterpreting the original story for a different audience and One-Punch Man improving the artwork for a wider audience. Ultimately, it remains a mystery to me as to why there are so few manga remakes but the reasons behind the few that exist are quite fascinating.

Let me know your thoughts on my examples of manga remakes and why they’re rare, if you know the reason why there aren’t many manga remakes, your thoughts on the idea of manga remakes in general, other examples of manga remakes that you’ve found 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!