By Marquis Cooley | Reporter
When I saw the cast for the new live-action “Powerpuff Girls” series had been announced, I asked myself: Why do companies constantly feel the need to ruin animated shows by doing live-action adaptations?
Growing up, I was never a huge fan of “The Powerpuff Girls.” I caught an episode every now and then on Boomerang, but it was never something I seriously got into. Yet even I know it would be incredibly hard to make aspects of that show realistic, such as the iconic supervillain monkey Mojo Jojo.
This is the case with every live-action adaptation. There are certain things in cartoons, video games and anime that just can’t be accurately captured no matter how much CGI and special effects a company uses; things such as extreme facial expressions, the wackiness of cartoons, the power-ups and special moves in anime and video games especially.
Most of the time, companies don’t even care enough about the source material to actually get things right, or they use their “creative liberties” to make unneeded changes. This is how we end up with things like “Mulan” without the iconic songs and Mushu or the mispronunciation of names in “The Last Airbender.” Sometimes it’s so bad that it looks like nothing more than a cheap knock-off of the original, like the first Sonic design in “Sonic The Hedgehog,” any Netflix live-action anime adaptation and the notoriously awful “Dragonball Evolution.”
While there are a few exceptions that are somewhat watchable like “The Lion King,” there aren’t nearly enough to justify the amount that are released every year. Thus, companies need to stop trying to steal our money with these cheap imitations of animated masterpieces and come up with their own original ideas.
