I recently saw this video,

, and it actually got me thinking a bit. What anime properties would be best in being ported over to live-action? And surprisingly, especially to me, one of the first thoughts I had was Log Horizon. Now let me set things up for you a bit if you aren't all that familiar with the series. Log Horizon is a trapped in a MMORPG setting story, already I can hear some of you groaning and reading to send me flack so let me finish, that takes more realistic approach than other series in the genre. Other entries in the genre like the .Hack franchise and SAO series, which are both not very good when you look at their settings mechanically, have a major problem in that they don't actually convey the breadth of the setting, this has mostly to do with the fact the bulk or entirety of the series focuses on a single character for the majority of the series's run. Log Horizon does a much more effective job of conveying the breadth of its setting by having multiple groups of characters that it jumps between in regards to episodes, giving a much larger sense of scale. Also, it doesn't make the mistake of having the characters trying to get out of the game's world from the get-go, they focus on making their living conditions more hospitable and saving the getting back home bit for an overarching narrative that the characters are slowly working towards, they need to know how they got there and what the mechanics and logistics of replicating the effect in reverse are. Log Horizon also helps things along by having each of its main characters, of which there are quite a few, have different strengths and weaknesses in addition to vastly different personalities. The first character we meet is Shiroe, commonly just referred to as Shiro through most of the series, who plays a class that's not well-suited to combat and instead better suited towards support with two other characters joining him as the first main cast early on after we get some establishment of his character. The two that join him first are Naottsugu, who plays a class well suited to being a Tank, and Akatsuki, who plays a high DPS type class, and forms a party with them in the early episodes. After offering to take on a rescue mission for the head of a guild Shiro's on good terms with we get to see more of the world and learn a bit more about some of the gear and abilities the 3 first main characters have, there was a part where they were learning how to fight in their new setting which was followed by a PvP party battle before this but that only acted as more of a primer for what would come next. After the rescue mission, during which they get another old friend to join their party, we actually get to see some of the lower leveled players and how they're experiencing the new setting. Unfortunately for these characters, they're actually being exploited by one of the guilds, something that doesn't sit right with any of the established characters we had contact within the prior episodes. After that whole mess is sorted out we get to follow some of those lower-level characters around as the main cast for a while. Instead of a massive spectacle of a fight, which is occasionally seen, most battles are actually shown in a more open fielded almost top-down strategic view, making the fights more about tactics and party dynamics than the closed spectacle of close up fights.

Now, Log Horizon primarily focuses on what is happening in parts of what used to translate to the Japanese server net, it's sort of explained in-series, with some of the episodes in the second season looking out to one of the other Asiatic servers to focus on another cast of characters. But very little focus is actually put on other nations, one of the characters in the second season is said to be from the American server net, with his background information (which can be read on the series wiki) stating why and how he ended up in his situation. However, this little blurb can be used as a stepping stone for allowing us to see just what was really on the US server net while the Japanese cast was going about their adventures. The series info actually goes in depth with what classes are available on which servers, this will allow a look at completely different, yet similar, dynamics than what is seen in the series proper. It could also be presented as an adaption expansion, especially since the series proper focuses almost exclusively on what's going on in Japan. I like the idea of seeing new characters in the same world with a slightly different setting. Especially since most of the information regarding these nations is limited to only what classes are where, it could help see more of the series's world in a bit of a new way. It could even be done as its own series, each one taking a look at different countries and how some of their players handle the situation they've been thrown into. There could be overarching world lore (which we get some establishment on in the series proper) to tie it all together, but for the most part, each live-action piece could be its own little focus.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms?

While it sounds interesting, live-action adaptations of anime don't have a really good track record, and that was long before the recent Netflix Death Note and is not exclusive to adaptations made in the US...

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True, Japan had been doing the anime to live-action adaption game for years before American filming recently started doing it, and only about a tenth of those had anything resembling commercial success. Most live-action anime adaptations, no matter which nation's filming groups are making them are outright failures. Mostly because they're more concerned with making something as close to a one-to-one translation of the source material with little regard for how to make necessary changes when translating to a new medium. Which is the point the guy who made the video made, some do well when changing mediums while others don't, regardless of how good the production really is. A series like Log Horizon, to me, looks like it could potentially do well in a live-action setting, mostly because the focus of the series being more about character interactions and other human elements while still having those fantastical elements that can potentially draw in a wider audience. While I think Akira would also make a good live-action adaptation doesn't mean it will. If they were to make a live-action Akira most of the cast, especially the main characters, would have to be of Asiatic descent if not outright Japanese, mostly because the setting of the whole thing is in a Dystopian style futuristic Tokyo known as Neo-Tokyo. You can't have a Neo-Tokyo with next to no Japanese, it ruins aesthetic the entire series is built on. You could say I'm a bit spoiled, seeing as I actually read the translated manga in its entirety before I ever saw the movie. And when that sort of thing happens you can't help comparing the works. Sometimes we go into "nostalgia mode" and everything in front of is never as good as the other work, or "critic mode" where we feel the need to critique the whole thing and thus ruin our experience of the work of our own accord, or "analytical mode" where we compare the two side by side and do break down of pros and cons of both in our heads during and/or after our experience and in doing so partially sour our experience of one or both pieces of work.

Most times, changes need to be made for the sake of the medium, and sometimes audience. Take the recent Death Note for example. Yes changes were made, but those changes were forewarned by the production staff before viewing and they outright said it's not the same story as from the Manga or Anime, it is, however, a similar story with different characters in different setting and the tone and characters were changed to better fit the setting, but the spirit of the original work is still quite noticeably there. Death Note at its core is more cerebral with the concept of contrasting worldviews about the same concept going up against each other. Why would Log Horizon work with the example I set up? Because it would still show exactly the same thing as the source material, just with a vastly different cast of characters that have a noticeably different approach to things. The primary protagonist of Log Horizon, Shiroe, is an intellectual that has earned himself a reputation that earned him some nicknames that make him sound more like an antagonistic villain than the awkwardly nice guy we come to see throughout the series, in a sense he could be seen as a representation of how some of Japan's young adults see themselves, even his subclass is built around being more of a support type character. Maybe in the American version with different characters the primary protagonist is playing the Pirate Class, as representation of how most Americans now see our old way of life robbing cultures of their identity and currently robbing itself of all its progress that occurred before the current administration, or one of the other warrior classes like the Guardian, as representation of how the US likes to present itself as a bastion of safety and security. Sometimes characters are just characters and just there to serve a need, but other times characters are a symbol of a notion or ideal or concept or particular view of the time they were created.