Anime, the Japanese style of hand-drawn animation, is widely popular around the globe. Manga artist Akira Toriyama played an instrumental role in its widespread renown, as he gifted the world pieces such as Dr. Slump and Dragonball, the latter being his most popular work to date.
Akira Toriyama’s manga have been successfully adapted in the past. Dragon Ball was the anime that caught the imagination of the Western world. It has been subsequently adapted into cartoons and even a live-action film, Dragonball Evolution.
However, when Hollywood tried to wade into his rich world, the result left the artist extremely dissatisfied, and the film based on Goku’s life failed miserably. The creator, Akira Toriyama, increasingly expressed his disappointment with the way Hollywood butchered his carefully crafted world.
Why did Akira Toriyama hate Dragonball Evolution?
20th Century Fox took a chance on the anime and decided to bring it to the big screen in 2009. It did not go as well as they had wanted it to, and since then, Hollywood has gained an ill reputation when it comes to anime.
Dragonball Evolution was universally panned by critics and fans of the anime. Only a few fans were willing to cut the film some slack, but not Akira Toriyama. The artist was initially very excited at the prospect of a live-action film. He went so far as to ask the fans to let it stand on its own merit, but Toriyama was horrified with the finished product.
In a previous interview with Asahi Shimbun Digital, Akira Toriyama revealed that he was attached to the film adaptation. He added that the script could not capture the essence of his world, and even the content felt a little flat. However, his input and suggestions were completely ignored by the studio.
“I cautioned them, and suggested changes; but in spite of that, they seemed to have a strange confidence, and didn’t really listen to me. What came out in the end was a movie I couldn’t really call a Dragon Ball that lived up to my expectations,” said Toriyama (translation from Japanese via Kanzenshuu.com).
Why did Dragonball Evolution flop?
When the film was conceptualized, the studio treated Dragonball Evolution as a blockbuster, made on a whopping budget of $120 million. However, James Marsters, the actor who played King Piccolo, revealed that the production cost was around $30 million. Moreover, the film was shot in an abandoned jeans factory.
What happened behind the scenes was not the only factor that contributed to the film’s failure. As Akira Toriyama stated, the world was vastly different from what he had envisioned.
Some core features from the manga and anime were changed for the live-action version. For example, Goku’s backstory changed, turning the protagonist into an oozaru; he also went to school when, in the source material, Goku was uneducated. There were a lot of other changes too, and fans criticized them severely.
Since Dragonball Evolution flopped, Hollywood’s reputation for handling such stories with the respect they deserve has been affected. Hopefully, studios will do better should they attempt to tackle another one of Akira Toriyama’s works or any other anime in the future.
