Northrop Davis - Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood: The Amazingly Rapidly Evolving Relationship between Hollywood and Japanese Animation, Manga, Television, and Film

Manga and
Anime Go to
Hollywood

Manga and
Anime Go to
Hollywood

Northrop Davis

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

www.bloomsbury.com

BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published 2016

Northrop Davis, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

Godzilla 1954 Toho Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.

This publication is not sponsored, approved or endorsed by Toho Co., Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Davis, Northrop.

Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood / Northrop Davis.

pages cm

Summary: The first ever look at how major Hollywood movies were adapted from Japanese manga and anime-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-62356-248-9 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-62356-144-4 (paperback) 1. Animated films--United States--History and criticism. 2. Animated films--Japan--History and criticism. 3. Film adaptations--United States--History and criticism. 4. Television adaptations--United States--History and criticism. 5. Comic books, strips, etc.--Japan--Adaptations. 6. Motion pictures and comic books--United States. 7. Motion pictures and comic books--Japan. I. Title.

NC1766.U5D37 2015

791.433409520973--dc23

2015018667

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents

I am very grateful for the generosity of all who helped with this book. First, I would like to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to my research assistant Austa Joye for her professional and untiring work on this project. She was an indispensable Jill of all trades with her deep knowledge of publication resolution characteristics for the books images and brilliant skills as a young person aspiring to become a mangaka (professional manga creator); and without her untiring professionalism I would have been in deep trouble. Second, thanks to Ashley Poston for the very large job of transcribing most of the interviews I conducted and for additional critical image work. A special thank you is due to Clint Eastwood for his generosity in allowing the use of photographs of himself in the book and to his attorney Bruce Ramer for facilitating that. And a very special thanks must also be extended to our University of South Carolinas wonderful and most supportive Vice President of Research Dr. Prakash Nagarkatti and Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, without whose very generous grants this extremely ambitious book would simply not have been possible.

I am very fortunate to have such strong and consistent support for my scholarship and creative production from other key persons in Carolinas administration as well, including Mary Alexander, Michael Amiridis, Anne Bezuidenhaut, Helen Doerpinghaus, Lacy Ford, Dawn Hiller, Sarah Livingston, Steven Lynn, Allen Miller, President Harris Pastides, Yoshitaka Sakakibara, and Tan Yethey have all been wonderful supporters in this cross-cultural journey I have been on. I would also like to thank mangaka Hirohiko Araki for approving the inclusion of his likeness and manga characters image, as well as to Kazuo Koike and Takao Saito for permission to publish photographs of them. And I am also especially fortunate and honored to have the opportunity given to me by all the absolutely brilliant star Japanese mangaka, who allowed me to reprint their wonderful work. And a heartfelt thanks to all my wonderful colleagues in Hollywood and the manga/anime industries at the pinnacle of these fields who assisted me in this endeavor. These include but are not limited to the amazing Michael Arias, Geof Darrow, Grant Hill, Roy Lee, Nobuo Masuda, and Robert Napton, both for their terrific interviews and also because they were key persons connecting me to others (as did Mikhail Koulikov and Matt Biliski). I would also like to thank the books other stellar interviewees for their candor and generosity, including Peter Chung, John Gaeta, Jason Hoffs, Joyce Jun, Yukito Kishiro, Joshua Long, Leiji Matsumoto, Syd Mead, Salil Mehra, Hikaru Sasahara, Eugene Son, Ken Tsumura, Shinichir Watanabe, and Christine Yoo. Masuda, Gaeta, and Arias were particularly helpful and generous in providing valuable additional information requested by me after their interviews. And Frenchy Lunning provided key guidance. I was also very lucky to have master manga/anime scholars Helen McCarthy and Fred Schodt as indispensable mentors who patiently gave tireless answers and wise advice in response to my endless questions.

I was also fortunate to learn the practices of academic publishing from Professor Evan Smith and Drs. Andrew Graciano and Vivian Sobchackas well as Ian Condry, who helped me get off to a great start with enthusiastic encouragement after reading my book proposal and sample chapters.

I am deeply indebted to all who facilitated images for this book, which are among the top manga/anime and American animation/comics characters in history. Elizabeth Ellis of VIZ Media was absolutely standout in this regard, as equally was Yoshimi Suzuki of Tezuka Productions, and I would also like to give special thanks to the extreme generosity of Japanese companies Bandai Visual Co., Ltd, Hakusensha, Kodansha (Yae Sahashi, Yuko Ogawa, and Ben Applegate), Shueisha, Spur magazine, Sunrise, Inc., Tatsunoko Production, Tezuka Productions, Toei Animation, Toho Co., Ltd., VIZ Media, and Voyager Holdings (Keisei Miayata). Equally, special thanks is due to American publishers Dark Horse (Carl Horn and Mike Gambos), DC, Funimation (Josh Kokurek), Last Gasp (Colin Turner and Ron Turner), and Vertical (Ed Chavez). I owe an equally big thank you to American networks and studios including Cartoon Network (Patricia Cottington and Barbara DeBuys), Disney Enterprises, Inc. (Maxine Hof and Margaret Adamic), Dreamworks Animation (Kam Naderi), Nickelodeon (Jessica Furer), and Photoshot/Collection Christophel (Katy Galli). Photos outside of my own are thanks to Deb Aoki, Amherst College, Stephen Fisher, Yoko Hayashi, James Henderson, Louisa Kwan, Bert Le, Mead Art Museum, Professor Samuel Morse, the Richard Templeton Photography Fund, Mary Robinson, Aldo Sarellano, Fred Schodt, Kaori Suzuki, Sayuri Suzuki, Shinichi Suzuki, Tokyobling, Tomohiro Kageyama, Ricardo G. Willems, and Ofer Wolberger. I am so grateful to Christopher Macdonald and Mitsuru Uehira, who were absolutely critical and extremely patient and professional in the image approval processand Chris went way beyond that into extreme generosity to this project.

I want to give a very thankful acknowledgment to Yoko Hayashi as my partner on several adventures described in this book and for kindly providing excerpts (and translations) of her interviews with several manga and anime legends. Robert Myman and Dan Stevens provided generous and important mentorly advice. My other research assistants, Amber Brown-Rodgers and Kat Feelings, made key contributions, as did the talented Jennifer Blevins, Courtney Diles, Gregory Goetz, Adam Griffey, Steven Greenbank, Nobuaki Hosoda, Manami Iiboshi, Mariko Koizumi, Shunko Muroya, and Matt Thorne. A special thank you to Mrs. Nakazawa and the memory of Keiji Nakazawa and for his great work and all that he stood for.