After seeing the Japanese live action production of Space Battleship Yamato, based on the 1974 anime TV series marketed in the west under the title Star Blazers, I hope to never again see a Hollywood remake of any anime show. I know there are a few either in the works or rumored. The previous efforts by Hollywood to turn anime into big screen western entertainment, such as Dragonball Evolution were dismal failures on so many levels. Recent Japanese efforts, though, have more than proven that they have the technology to do their own projects as live action, and do them very well.

lthough I just watched the new Space Battleship Yamato, which brought this topic to mind, it was not the first film I saw from Japan to get me thinking in this direction. I believe that film was Casshern. That film proved to me that CG technology had finally leveled the playing field and made it possible for Japanese studios to turn their popular anime into live action properties, and not only do so with great quality, but without the whitewashing and westernization that is bound to crop up in a Hollywood version.

Other films that showed me the potential in Japan were the live action Death Note films and the two Gantz live action movies. The latter in particular really blew me away since I am huge fan of the manga and continue to follow it to this day. Certain sequences in the manga I though could not be brought to the screen without the kind of huge budgets only Hollywood is known to spend on a film. I was wrong. While Death Note is not nearly as VFX heavy, the fact that they were able to put in the "Shinigami" characters, without feeling the need to redesign them for the big screen as I am sure would have been done in Hollywood, made it clear to me that a new era for Japanese film was here.

I just watched the Space Battleship Yamato film earlier today. This film is of great importance to me because I was really sucked into the original 1974 series, though I saw the heavily edited english dubbed version Star Blazers. It wasn't until many years later, around university time that I saw the second animated film. You can imagine what it was like to see the sequence of the Yamato launching from the water, while that original theme song played, after not having seen the show in over a decade. Now, still many years later, I see this live action version, and again hear that amazing theme song and watch a realistic, live action Yamato launch from the scorched earth and fire the wave motion gun. It felt like I was a kid again!

Some things just shouldn't be transferred into live action. The Last Airbender live action movie proved that. Those things which can be transferred should be done by people who know and understand the material. I saw what Katsuhiro Otomo did with a live action Mushishi, and I loved that film. I hate to imagine what Hollywood will do with his magnum opus Akira, when they turn it into a westernized production, likely taking place in a future New York with mostly white characters. I equally fear for the live action Cowboy Bebop. I think I am relieved that the live action Ninja Scroll never got off the ground. I mean, how could Hollywood do it? Would they have an American or European hero wash up on the Japanese shore to take part in the story?

We all know that literacy has been dropping steadily in the western world in the last few decades, but this s isn't so much about whether or not people read Twilight or Harry Potter, it is really about reading on the internet. I, personally, prefer to read. I don't like to go to a website and be met with a link to a video. There are a number of reasons for this. One of them is that I may not always have my headphones plugged in and I don't want to play a video and attract the attention of everyone around. Another is that I just plain enjoy reading and like to digest information at my own pace. This is in relation to information, though, and not entertainment, where I certainly prefer movies and animation to books and comics.

This is not to say I have anything against video. I very much enjoy making videos and some things are certainly better demonstrated by video. If, for example, you wanted to learn how to draw, watching a video or a show like The Joy of Painting, will take you further than reading about it, even if the book has pictures. Learning 3D software by way of training videos serves far better than the manual in almost every case. There is no question that video is better for a number of things, but that's not what I am really talking about either.

With the partial exception of mainstream news, we have seen blogging and article writing descend into tweets and Facebook updates. We are seeing video pop up everywhere and it seems there is no one without a Youtube channel these days. We also have more people consuming online information via their smart phones or tablets. Everything is becoming instant and bite sized and few seem to take the time, or even have the time, to sit and read anything.

All of this makes me think about how I convey information here, and whether or not this site would be better served by aking the move to video. This doesn't mean going so much in the direction of the original Anigen, but perhaps something a bit similar, a way to disseminate the information, tools and techniques to readers, or viewers, and meet them where they are. If viewers would, in fact, rather watch a quick three minute video clip, than read a long and informative article, I would certainly prefer to make said video clip. In fact, I've been doing it already, as can be seen by the clips I do on the Japancast.net video episodes.

It seems that with the Youtube generation, there just isn't a lot of reading going on. The comics industry has been steadily declining and viewership on animated content has never faltered. Even comics in the digital realm, now revitalized on tablets like the iPad, are trying to add elements of sound and motion. What does that say about simple reading? Well, we all know there are different audiences for different mediums and the success of independent authors on Kindle shows that there are clearly people with no interest in mainstream books that will come out in droves for something more catered to their tastes. Still, that's not the internet, which is where we are now. It seems that video may rule the roost when it comes to web, mobile and tablet content. Am I wrong?