What’s up with American versions of relatively obscure manga and anime? I’m not talking about already popular remakes such as the new One Piece live action, or even disasters like G-Saviour. Those are already famous franchises looking to expand to new markets, typically with the intent to sell merchandise. I’m also not talking about cut-up or redubbed shows such as Glitter Force or the original Voltron. Those are their own beast. Specifically, I’m talking about movies based on far more run-of-the-mill franchises. The three that come to my mind are AppleSeed Alpha, The Guyver (and Guyver: Dark Hero), and Alita Battle Angel.

Appleseed may be known as a good manga with several successful movie adaptations, but only to Japanese audiences. The 2004 Appleseed movie made almost all of its box office revenue inside Japan, with only a fraction coming from North America.^[1] This makes the decision to make an American-Japanese collaboration movie weird to me. I also doubt more than a dozen people knew what Guyver was before the first movie came out in 1991, and as far as I can tell both American movies only came out on VHS and LaserDisc with no Cinema release.^[2] 

Alita Battle Angel seems to be its own weird thing altogether; the manga sold well on release in Japan to its magazine’s target demographic (Japanese Salarymen)^[3] but made zero impact in the English-speaking world except for anime nerds… Such as Guillermo Del Toro, who told James Cameron about it, who then bought the rights to it and made a movie for it.^[4] This appears much less like a marketing decision and much more like a personal passion story, so I’m not going to consider it any further in this writeup.

So let’s laser focus on the two other examples: Guyver and Appleseed Alpha. I want to know if there are any similarities between these two releases, and what potential thought processes were for making English movies for series that, until then, only had an established Japanese fanbase. From now on, I will be calling these ‘American’ movies for ‘American’ markets for convenience, because the movies were produced in the United States.

A background of Japanese Movies in America

I don’t need to tell you that Japan and America haven’t always been best buds. Even before World War II, there was a (ineffective) boycott of Hollywood movies by major movie exhibitors, due to the passing of the 1924 U.S. Immigration Act which prohibited all Japanese immigration to the United States through to 1953.^[5] By the 90s, however, American culture was ingrained in Japan. American influence on Japan extended to movies, with American movies being highly popular.^[6] Bountiful racism continued to burden Japanese products and their reception in America, but Japanese products were now a part of American life and not an oddity.

It is interesting to note that both Guyver movies and Appleseed Alpha play down any Japanese influence, with the trailer for Guyver: Dark Hero not making any mention of its origin.^[7] Clearly marketers thought there was no value in this if the source wasn’t actually that popular or well known to begin with – or, perhaps, that knowing a film was based off a manga might prejudice some viewers. Instead the trailer focuses on the special effects, fight scenes, and gore. Similarly, Appleseed Alpha’s trailer makes no mention of its source and instead focuses on action scenes to entice the viewer.^[8] These movies were absolutely not promoted to the wider public as originally Japanese. So why would an American studio make a movie based on a manga at all? Through my research it appears that the answer is to look at this situation from the reverse perspective: Japanese companies owned rights to a manga, and saw a business opportunity which could provide both domestic and international profits.

The Guyver and Guyver : Dark Hero

From an article in Cinefantastique, it appears that Bandai and Hero Communications owned the rights to Guyver, and approached Screaming Mad George (Joji Tani) to do the makeup effects. He agreed on the condition that he would also be director, bringing on board American Brian Yuza as co-director.^[9] The film had already released in Japan by the time the article was written, with U.S theatrical and video rights still for sale. The sequel Guyver: Dark Hero (Alternately Guyver 2: Dark Hero) was a low-budget affair sold direct-to-video in the USA and in theatres as Predator 3 in the Philippines.^[10] Why? Why did this happen? Why would you do that? It feels like that should be illegal, right? Anyway…

The sources are somewhat unclear, but it appears that the companies who initiated the creation of Guyver were Bandai and Hero Communications. This means that rather than an American company wanting to make an adaptation of a Japanese product, it was Japanese companies wanting to make a movie with a Japanese artist who lived in America.

Appleseed Alpha

Appleseed was already an established movie franchise before Appleseed Alpha, but from what I can tell had basically no notability in America. As already noted, the 2004 Appleseed movie made almost all of its box office revenue inside Japan. 2014’s Appleseed Alpha was a collaboration between Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions and Japanese studio Lucent Pictures Entertainment. Lucent Pictures received $500,000 USD worth of yen from a fund to support international film production for Appleseed Alpha.^[11] Again, this is a case of a Japanese studio seeking to expand into the international market, and in this case with funding specificially to encourage international films. Also I’m sorry for using Anime News Network as a source, but the original link is dead.

Conclusion

I had come at my bewilderment from the wrong angle initially. I thought it was really weird that Americans would want to buy rights from random Japanese franchises just to make crappy B-movies. Instead a picture has become clear of Japanese companies seeking out mutually beneficial collaborations with American studios and filmmakers, sometimes in an explicitly funded encouragement of international filmmaking. These were opportunities to make profits on manga which had long since stopped being published, and for American studios were an opportunity to skip the ideas stage and work with already established stories. Despite how shitty Guyver and Appleseed Alpha are, I suddenly feel sort of charmed by their globality.