Live-action adapations often end up being poor-quality movies

The argument

It's no secret that live-action adaptations of anime are just terrible. From the infamous Dragonball Evolution to the nonsensical Attack on Titan movies, these films don't work out. No matter how many studios try how many films, the result is more or less the same. It has gotten to a point where some fans even dread new live-action releases. The biggest reason why this happens is because live-action anime is an oxymoron in the most real sense. The two media contradict and conflict with each other, such that what works for anime can't work in live-action. One can't recreate eccentric character design or unique animation in real life, because the whole point is that animation is what makes those things possible. Other tropes, like intense facial expressions and long speeches, just can't be gotten away with in real life. And the creative liberties producers take to fill these gaps make the original story almost unrecognizable to fans. Many have tried to make anime into live-action, with very little success. No one has truly cracked the code for how to make these adaptations work. Nonetheless, studios churn out adaptation after adaptation all the same. As a result, fans are overwhelmed with a glut of failed copies of their favorite anime.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It's simplistic to say that anime just can't be made into live-action. Some filmmakers have used anime-inspired techniques and story beats in very successful movies. The creators of The Matrix were inspired by Ghost in the Shell, and the creator of Black Swan based it on Perfect Blue. One can see very clear parallels between the anime and the films. These and other movies show how good filmmakers can translate the best of anime into the best of live-action. In addition, live-action anime are starting to pick up success. 2019's Alita: Battle Angel became a modest box office success for Fox; a marked improvement over its other adaptation predecessors. Alita can perhaps represent a new trend for live-action adaptations, and may be the first in a new series of great films. Only time can tell whether that will happen, but to dismiss the notion out of hand is unnecessary.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] "Fundamentally incompatible" is stronger than the observation supports. The features listed — stylised designs, exaggerated expressions, long speeches — are conventions of a medium rather than requirements of the stories told in it, and adaptation ordinarily means replacing conventions rather than reproducing them. The premise also treats anime as one thing, when it spans genres whose material carries over very differently. [Rejecting P2] A run of failures is evidence about the adaptations that were made, not about what adaptation can do, and the sample is drawn from the notorious cases. The counter's examples matter here: films that absorbed anime's techniques and story structures without being sold as adaptations have been widely admired, which locates the difficulty in how these projects were made rather than in any incompatibility of media. [Rejecting C] The conclusion draws a rule from a record. Taking every failure at face value, what follows is that these adaptations have been done badly — an argument for making them better, and the premises give no reason it could not be done.