アニメリメイクの考察
There are risks when you abandon the source material to write a new story,
especially if it's not as good as the original story. But there are also risks in just changing
the art and leaving everything else the same. And either way, I think it speaks to the value of
coming up with new stories instead of trying to just mine old IP over and over again.
Back to 2AM OTTACK! I'm your host Mayu, a born and raised Japanese non-Ottaku, and
I'm Sisqó, an American Otaku. In this podcast, we share reviews of anime and manga through our
distinct perspectives with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and language.
So Sisqó, you're a big fan of the original anime Ranma ½.
I guess there's no like really agreed upon title for this, but I always called it Ranma ½.
One half.
And sometimes I'd be like Ranma one half, which is like ridiculous. No one pronounces it that way,
but that's how I said it when I was a kid. You can just call it Ranma.
We talked about the revival version of Ranma in 2024. Now we have the new revival of this anime.
The original manga was published a year later from Manga Ranma through the same publisher
and the same magazine. That's Yaiba Samurai Legend. That's the English title.
And now we see more and more revivals of classic anime from the 90s.
It's going to be really funny if they try to revive Detective Conan while it's still running.
Yeah, it started in the 90s.
Yeah.
God, I remember when I was a kid, I started watching.
Yeah, it's super long running.
Super long. But Yaiba even started before that.
So today, I'd like to discuss the revival of popular classic anime like Yaiba.
Like, why does the classic anime remade? Or how do these 90s stories look
from 2025 perspectives? And should the original anime be just untouched and listed in our memory?
Before we start, we'd like to hear from you. If you have any comments about today's episode
or our podcast 2AMO Talk, you can use the comment sections on YouTube and Spotify.
We also have an email address which you can find in the podcast description.
『やいば』の概要
All right, so I want to introduce, or you can introduce, Yaiba.
So Yaiba is a story by, again, the same guy who created Detective Conan.
So it's got a really distinct visual style.
The main character is also little, like Conan.
Although he doesn't, you know, take any special chemicals in order to become little.
He's just a little kid.
His name is Yaiba. His dad is a famous swordsman.
They're training in the jungle.
They were hiding from a rampaging horde of gorillas in a bunch of bananas and got shipped to Japan.
But they happen to be from Japan originally anyway.
So, okay, it seems a little bit.
Anyway, they came back to Japan from their jungle training and moved in with the dad's old friend.
It's like basically the same plot as Ranma, actually.
That's what I felt, yeah.
Like the two dads know each other.
They like both train at Kendo.
The one dad brings his son back from his like training tour.
And the other dad has like a daughter who's kind of a tomboy and also does Kendo.
And they end up living in the same place.
Yaiba is really young.
So there's not the romantic tension that there is in Ranma.
Although there sure is for no good reason.
Anyway, he starts going to school with her.
And he decides that his rival is a guy named Onimaru, who's also in the Kendo club.
And he tries really hard to get Onimaru to fight him.
But Onimaru is like, you're a little kid.
I'm not going to fight you.
And then he finally torments Onimaru so intensely that Onimaru actually breaks something in his
house that reveals a secret area underneath his house that has a cursed sword in it.
And he takes the cursed sword and becomes like an actual Oni because the spirit of
Fujin, like a famous yokai slash Oni that exists in Japan, like takes over his body
Yaibaとエピソードの概要
and makes him basically just evil, right?
But also the power of wind in a sword.
Right.
Okay.
And then Yaiba gets like whooped by Onimaru at school publicly and goes on a journey to
find a similar spirit sword in order to fight back against Onimaru and discovers the Daijin
sword.
He takes that sword with its thunder power and now they're going to keep fighting.
Right.
It's pretty much such a like classic, like old time boy battle anime and manga.
Yeah.
Rivals, right?
Right.
And then the voice actor for Yaiba is Minami Takayama.
She is the original voice actor for Yaiba, which was made like...
Oh, damn.
30 years ago plus?
Yeah.
She did the voice and she is doing the voice for Conan.
She did the original voice for Yaiba and the remake voice for Yaiba.
Yes.
Isn't that true for several of the people in the Danma remake also?
They also did the original voices?
Yes.
So, I mean, I guess that's cool.
Yeah.
But not Onimaru.
Not Onimaru.
He's a new person?
Yeah.
It's funny.
I don't know much about Yaiba or Case Closed, but Onimaru appears in Case Closed as himself.
With the sword and everything?
Sword like a shinai, yeah.
Well, not with a shinai.
Does he have the Fujin sword?
No, no.
He's like a regular high schooler and chill.
Does Yaiba appear in the Detective Conan stories?
I'm not sure.
I don't think so.
Are they set at different times?
It is like a multiverse thing.
Yeah.
I mean, some authors have that, right?
Where some of their characters cross over from one thing to another.
I'm pretty sure that's true for Fire Force.
I can't remember what Fire Force is set in the same universe as, but all those...
The movie that was like, What Is Weathering With You?
Is in the same universe as...
Oh, really?
Like, Your Name is in the same universe as that guy's other movie, right?
Really?
I think this is true.
Oh, I have no idea.
I remember something where at the end of the movie, the whole city was underwater,
and then in the next movie, the whole city was underwater.
And you were like, Wait, this is like a point of continuity between these two films?
Like, this is crazy.
So I can't remember which it is, but it's something like that.
Right.
Oh, OK.
Interesting.
So what do you think?
アニメリメイクの理由
Why do people keep making or remake 90s anime?
I don't know.
I mean, 90s anime does seem to me like it was a golden age in some ways of anime.
Like, really good anime got made in the 90s.
And so I understand wanting to return to that.
And I think there's probably a nostalgia piece
of people about our age who grew up in that sort of golden age.
I mean, like, I'm not sure if this is demographically true in Japan,
but in the U.S., my generation is the, like, baby boom's baby boom.
Like, my parents are boomers.
And they had me, you know, when they became whatever, middle aged, right?
In their 30s.
And I think, like, if you look at the demographic chart in America,
there's obviously like a big peak during the baby boom and then like a slump
where like not as many kids are being born in like the 60s and 70s.
And then there's like another little bump that comes at the end of the 70s
and the beginning of the 80s and then like another slump after that.
And so I wonder whether if that's true in Japan, too,
or if it's just the people who were kids when all of the really good
late 80s, early 90s anime came out are now like having their own kids
and feeling nostalgic for their own child.
Like, I think it's kind of the same thing with all the Disney remakes
where they remade every major Disney movie as a live action film.
I think that's the same thing, right?
Of recycling this old IP that they know people feel nostalgic about
ノスタルジーとリメイクの影響
by being like, you liked The Lion King, didn't you?
I bet you'd go to see it again,
especially if it was a quote unquote new movie this time.
Like, I think, I mean, that didn't work on me.
But, you know, I think that's the idea of doing these remakes with this timing
is trying consciously to appeal to people who are both nostalgic
for what they saw when they were kids and maybe also like a desire for security
to say we really want something that we know could be a hit.
Let's pick something that's already been a hit in the past.
And, you know, I mean, we see a lot of remaking of American,
you know, comics into movies over and over again.
Spider-Man's been rebooted at least three times.
Yeah, there's another Batman reboot happened recently.
I don't follow those things.
Well, I'm just saying like, yeah, yeah, I hear you.
But there's the same idea of continuously rebooting stuff,
particularly derived from graphic novel sources,
has been a thing in America for like a while now.
And so maybe there's some of that same impulse in Japan.
But do they have like any change in the story?
Yeah, usually in America, when you reboot something,
you use a different story than you did the last time.
OK, then that makes sense to me.
But like we watched it, not much, 2024.
Right.
And the story is the same.
Oh, yeah, it's like shot for shot the same thing.
I was kind of expecting something new.
Yeah.
But like the way of thinking is the same.
Yeah.
The way how characters behave is the same.
I mean, I think there's a lot of nostalgia for that type of
cultural expectation, honestly, especially from like,
I don't know, more conservative people in the United States.
I don't know.
Again, I'm not sure about Japan.
But I think, you know, there's a real nostalgia for the 1980s
and for more, you know, more conservative,
older gender norms and stuff that seems to be
present in the overall culture.
And it feels like I mean, you know, we saw that in
Patekisetsu also, right?
That like there was this desire to go back to the 1980s
culturally in some ways.
Right.
But it's getting the point like this is not good.
It doesn't work in a modern world.
You know, like we used to be able to do this or get away
about doing this.
And they get the point.
Right.
But like Ranma, like, you know, fighting each other,
like hurting each other.
And they're not injured.
Right.
Like it's I like it when I was a kid.
I like it.
But like it's different.
So you liked Ranma in the 90s.
Totally.
Would you recommend Ranma to younger generation now?
Today?
Yeah.
I'm honestly not sure.
I think so.
I still like it.
I still think it's a fun story, but I do feel like some of
its appeal is kind of retro, you know, unless you're in
the market for an old kind of story.
I don't know if it's going to do it for you.
I mean, I guess I could ask the teenagers in the anime
club and be like, do you like this?
Is this cool to you?
And they'll be like, I think their reaction is going to
be, you know, I don't think they're going to love it.
I don't think they're going to think, oh, this is so good.
I think they'd be like, it's OK.
But yeah, I don't know.
Yeah.
So Yaiba, we've never watched or read Yaiba before.
It's new to us.
But the story seems very, like, based on the original.
Yeah, definitely.
Right.
Young people we know who have watched Yaiba seem pretty
into it.
Yeah.
He was like begging for it.
Like, can we watch it again?
It's like a boy battle anime.
I guess the fighting scene is like appeal for younger
generation, I guess.
But like, I couldn't help noticing a lot of stuff, especially
オニマルの苦悩
on the episode two, when Yaiba make all sorts of traps.
Yeah.
To Onimaru.
Yeah.
So that he can fight to Onimaru.
And it looked like bullying to me because Onimaru didn't
do anything.
He's a good kid.
He's a regular good kid.
But, you know, Yaiba kept, like, tricking him and made him
really mad.
Yeah.
And Onimaru was, like, so traumatized about it.
And he even had, like, scary nightmares about it.
Yeah, basically, like, a mental breakdown.
Exactly.
And he woke up in the middle of the night, started, like,
you know, practicing, like, kendo moves.
Right.
And then that's how, you know, he found the secret dungeon
underneath his house.
And he tried to, you know, use the power of the sword.
Right.
I think it was kind of describing that's how people go down.
Yeah.
I think it's supposed to make you sympathetic for Onimaru to be
like, oh, I get it why you would, like, choose this evil
power because he literally drove you insane.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think part of it is, like, supposed to be bad enough that
you sympathize with Onimaru's decision to try to use, like,
the cursed blade or whatever.
Right.
As I said, it could happen to anybody, right?
If you're, like, mentally that traumatized, like, you know,
you would want to solve the problem.
Again, I think you're right that the point of that episode is
to try to build sympathy for Onimaru's choice to get the
sword and make him seem not like a totally evil guy, but
rather as someone who was pushed, like, way past the point
of endurance and then made a bad choice about it.
Yeah.
So I feel, like, sympathy.
Like, I feel really bad for him.
Yeah.
I think that's on purpose, though.
Yeah.
I don't think you're supposed to see Onimaru as a bad guy from
the beginning.
I think you're supposed to understand that, like, Yaiba is
awful to him, and that's part of why he makes this evil choice.
But if I was watching as a kid, I wouldn't notice.
I'm like, oh, he's become a bad guy.
He, like, Yaiba has to, like, do something about it.
Yeah.
I wouldn't think about it.
So maybe you've changed.
Not that.
I guess I got old.
I mean, I have a feeling even for younger kids, it's supposed
to be an explanation of why he decides to become evil, as
opposed to, like, he's just an evil character, right?
Which he's not.
They kind of go to pains to be like, he's a little bit
obsessed with being the best, but he's actually not, like, a
terrible person originally.
And then, like, it's the evil spirit making him be bad later.
I got that sense.
But I agree that, like, watching Yaiba set up all those traps,
I was like, Yaiba's kind of terrible.
This is, like, way past the point of, like, what's okay for,
like, anyone to do for any reason.
Right.
And I don't think it's meant to make Yaiba seem terrible.
But in the same way that we watch Home Alone and don't think
Kevin McAllister is, like, a murderer, right?
Which is, you know, a lot of those traps would kill people
if you actually used them.
And I mean, you know, your self-defense, like, man is
castle, home is his castle.
Like, there's, you know, I guess it's called the castle
doctrine.
But I think it's more that, like, from the perspective of a
kid, especially if the people on the receiving end of the
prank don't seem to be really badly hurt, that makes it okay
to have done something, like, pretty heinous as a prank.
And so I think that's why younger people might not see
Yaiba as, like, a bad guy for doing those things.
Right, right.
I've never watched it, but you watched a little bit of
Urusei Yatsura.
Yeah, I watched a decent amount of Urusei Yatsura.
アニメリメイクの評価
And then the new one, new version, too?
I watched a couple episodes of the remake, yeah.
And how was it?
It was weird.
I like Urusei Yatsura a lot, but I think some of its charm
comes from being a product of its era.
And this is true of the new drama remake also.
It's like, they don't really make sense.
And they didn't try to update them enough for the modern day
to make them different stories.
So you're watching an old story with, like, these bare minimum
concessions.
And, like, the concessions are all in the wrong place.
It's not like Ataru is, like, a slightly more enlightened guy,
right?
That's not his character.
Like, he can't be that.
He's still, like, a womanizing creep.
But, like, that character doesn't make sense in a 2020
show anymore.
Like, there would be so many social consequences for being
Ataru Moroboshi in 2025 that, you know, you're kind of like,
what?
Right?
But then they've, like, erased all the nipples.
Same as in Nama, right?
Where it's like, okay, so, like, you needed to bow to the
censors on this, but, like, not on this other stuff.
Like, is this an update or a remake or neither of those
things?
And what it actually reminds me the most of is video games.
So video games get remade all the time with, like, marginally
better graphics, but no other changes.
And if you never played the original, playing the remake is
better than playing the original because the original's
graphics are now atrocious by our current standards.
And so, you know, playing the remake is, like, fine, nothing
wrong with it.
But if they don't update the story and you play to the
original, playing the remake is not that exciting because it's
exactly the same thing as it was the first time.
And I think you run into some of the same problems of, like,
the story doesn't necessarily even make sense divorced from
its original context some of the time.
And some stories hold up better than others, right?
Chrono Trigger is an absolute classic, doesn't matter what
era we're in.
Like, you know, but other things, like, I think Danma and
Urusei Yatsura didn't make sense as modern shows.
They could have tried harder to update it, but it would have
required changing the story.
And at that point, is it even really still the same thing
anymore?
Or is it something really new and different?
And we'll never know because they went for pretty straight
remakes.
Yeah, that's how I felt for when we watched the live-action
version of City Hunter in 2024.
Those characters dressed like, you know, back in, yeah, old
days, like, which the 80s?
Yeah, like trench coats.
And then, like, even the hairstyle looked very old.
But it's set in 2024.
So I was like, did the time travel?
Or what happened?
Everybody else besides them look like modern people, but not
them.
Like, I was so confused.
Yeah, it's weird.
I mean, I don't necessarily really like remakes that do
update stuff.
I'm thinking of the Bubblegum Crisis remake.
So the original Bubblegum Crisis is Bubblegum Crisis 2032.
And then the remake was like 2040, because it wasn't that
much later.
I think it was probably only made like a decade after the
original or something.
And the remake's not anywhere near as good as the original.
And if you asked me, would I rather watch the full-on
remake, you know, Bubblegum Crisis 2040, or would I rather
watch a modern animated version of the original story?
I'd probably pick the original story.
There are risks when you abandon the source material to write
a new story, especially if it's not as good as the original
story.
But there are also risks in just, you know, like changing
リメイクとオリジナルの価値
the art and leaving everything else the same.
And either way, I think it speaks to the value of coming
up with new stories and trying to instead of trying to just
mine old IP over and over again.
I'm watching Free Run in the anime club, and it's a much
better story than if they remade Record of Lotus War or
something.
You know, it's worth it to try and come up with a new story
that reflects the times that we're in instead of just being
like, well, as long as I had before, let's just put it back
out there.
And, you know, and I like Ranma, and I love Urusei Atsura,
like, but it's weird to get this sort of hybrid product
that's a time capsule and new paint.
But it definitely gives you some attention.
Like, I used to like these, like, animes, and now it's
becoming new.
Like, I'm so excited.
I want to watch how it goes.
Yeah.
And then after you watch, you kind of feel like, why did
they make Frozen 2?
Like, you know, why?
You know, there's a sequel for everything.
I mean, whatever.
At least the sequel is a new story.
Can you imagine watching Frozen 1 15 years from now?
Same story, just new graphics or something.
You'd be like, what?
Right?
Yeah.
So I don't know.
I mean, like, I actually really didn't mind the updated
Ranma.
Like, I liked a lot of things about it.
I think I liked it better than I liked the updated Urusei
Atsura.
Not that I didn't, you know, I mean, there were things about
the updated Urusei Atsura that I liked, but it wore its age
even worse than the updated Ranma.
And the Yaiba, I mean, yeah, it feels still kind of dated in
terms of, like, what it's all about.
But it's not really a lot worse than, like, other things we
have right now.
And I never saw the original, so I'm not really comparing it
to the old one in the same way.
And maybe that's, like, the more fair way to approach all of
this is to ask people who are seeing it for the first time as
a remake, what do you think?
But I wonder how those are being received by other people who
didn't see the originals.
Yeah.
All right.
Maybe it depends on the remake or original anime.
I feel like some should just stay or, you know, not remake
and then just, like, keep in a memory.
Yeah.
Or not feel like they need to be faithful to the original.
Like, I'm trying to think of, like, other anime from that era
that I would want to see remade.
Right.
And, like, I would be really down for a version of Demon City Shinjuku,
for example, which is an OAV from the old days.
And I don't think they really, like, do OAVs as a thing anymore.
I can't remember the last time I saw, like, a one-shot anime on
Netflix that was only, like, 45 minutes to an hour.
Like, I would really like that story, not a one-to-one remake or
retelling of the same story, but, like, another story set in that
same story's universe could be really cool.
And I feel that way about, like, a lot of things, right?
Like, I don't think remake—I'm like, this is me having watched, like,
the 80 Vision, you know, ad reel recently.
But, like, I remember loving Devil Hunter Yoko.
That definitely wouldn't work as, like, a update, same story, new art.
But it would be really cool to reinterpret that story in a 2025 way
and, like, have that character exist and, like, see where it goes
without needing to remain faithful to the original story.
I was expecting something more for 2024 Ranma because,
you know, Ranma can change the gender.
Right.
It's, like, it's got to be a good, like, topic to talk about in this time.
Yeah.
But it was—
And they didn't use it at all.
Kind of, like, missed the opportunity, I feel like.
アニメリメイクと懐かしさ
Yeah, I mean, I think, like, the challenge there is, like, who would write it, right?
Right.
Would Rumiko Takahashi, like, come out of retirement or whatever and, like,
update her own story? Or would other people, like, you know,
totally change the characters and make them different?
Like, I think it's hard to do that with old IP.
But all the more reason to, like, embrace writing something new and different and,
you know, and seeing sort of where we're at right now.
You know, like, talking about this, like, it reminded me of our road trip in Mississippi.
You wanted to take me to this steakhouse.
You've been telling me for years, like, how great the steak was.
And how was it this time?
Well, I'm going to be fair and say I got a cut of steak that I have not had before,
but it was not what I wanted.
Right.
And I think, for sure, some of it is just, you know, things can't be as good as we remember them.
Right.
More like, you know, dress up our memories, right? We gild them and make them look better.
But, like, the point there is just, you know, I went and it was fine,
but it was not the way that I remembered it from when I was a kid.
I mean, you know, it was bittersweet.
Like, on the one hand, maybe we just got unlucky.
Maybe things have changed in the interval.
Like, it's hard to really say why.
Maybe my memory just was better than it actually was at the time.
Maybe it was, you know, a feature of other things.
And so, you know, you can't step into the same river twice.
You can never go home again.
Some of those, like, things, right?
Yeah, it was a bummer.
刀の定義
Okay, let's do word of the day.
All right.
Otaku, word of the day.
Today, why don't we do yaiba and katana?
Okay.
Okay.
Can you explain?
No, katana is just katana.
It's a specific type of Japanese sword, and it references the entire sword.
So the hilt, the pommel, the, you know, the hand guard, the blade, everything.
Yaiba is just a blade.
So it's the part that is the sharp part of the sword.
And usually there's like a not sharp part that goes inside the hilt.
That's like attached to the hilt in the center.
That's as much as I understand.
Do you know how to write in kanji?
They're the same.
What?
No.
Does yaiba have a little slash on it?
Yes.
Okay, I did know that.
Yeah.
I just forgot.
So katana and yaiba look really, really similar, except yaiba has one extra stroke.
Going the other way.
Going the other way.
Yeah.
That's yaiba.
Okay.
Yeah.
And it just means blade.
Basically, yeah.
Okay.
That's it.
I think that's it.
It's not actually that complicated.
I don't really understand why kimetsu no yaiba is a yaiba and not a katana instead.
Cooler.
Yaiba sounds cooler.
Katana.
I don't disagree, actually, but I always felt it weird that it was the blade of demon slaying,
but then they're literally all katanas.
Nobody's using a tanto in kimetsu no yaiba.
Nobody's using a naginata or anything else that has a yaiba but isn't just a sword.
Yeah.
I think that how it's read in Japanese sounds cool.
Yeah.
Well, so I have a question.
If you have a European-style sword, does it still have a yaiba or is yaiba only Japanese-style
swords, only blade for that type of sword?
It could be just for a Japanese sword.
Yeah, I get that sense, too.
But the yaiba is a component of the katana.
The sharp part.
The sharp part, yeah.
Yes.
The metal part.
Anything else you'd like to add?
I mean, I was really trying to think of other things from the 80s or 90s that I would like
to see come back again, but I think it's true that no matter what it was, I would want it
to be different.
アニメリメイクの考察
I don't really want the same thing to get made again.
Although I think it probably depends a little bit on the actual story that's being remade.
I actually think, aside from maybe some of the fan service, Bubblegum Crisis aged really
well.
But it's like a feminist show.
It's about four women.
I mean, actually, I think Nene probably didn't age that well.
I think she probably comes off looking kind of bad.
Some of the characters, I think, would come out looking more or less the same.
And it's set in the future.
So there's some wiggle room there, I think.
I think anything that got remade, I would want there to be a twist in order to make
it worth watching again and to not have it be exactly a one-to-one, the same type of
thing.
And I think ironically, you know, Kowloon Generic Romance, which is about nostalgia
and is in a very 90s style, but is a brand new story, is a much more compelling thing
to watch than actual remakes of stuff from the 90s.
I agree.
So that's my final thought.
All right.
Thank you.
エピソードの締めくくり
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
If you liked this week's episode, please give us good reviews on Spotify and Apple
Podcasts, or like and leave a comment on YouTube.
Make sure to subscribe and follow 2AMOTAK and 3AMOTAK.
It'll keep us making more fun episodes.
See you next time for more 2AMOTAK.
Peace.
