What makes a bad remake of an Asian anime, manga, live action or kdrama by Rebekah Walton

Despite what people like to say online, it is not ''whitewashing'' the said story. It is perfectly fine to make all the characters white, chocolate, Hispanic, or Eskimo. That should not change a good story.



A good story is a good story that story should be able to be told outside of the borders it was put in for the story. Despite the fact that Shakespeare was put in olden days in England, I can think of plenty of good ways to make a modern version of these stories.

 Putting them in a different culture does not automatically ruin the story. Pride and Prejudice can be modernized, just because they haven't done a good version yet does not mean they can't.


 Why do we only have this ''whitewashing'' rule for the USA? This seems like hypocrisy, if any other country made this remake we wouldn't even blink an eye if they did this. In fact, I can prove it.

 Let me use some examples to prove my point.

Itazura Na Kiss and remakes

I have watched almost all of the remakes made of this manga and anime. When this story is remade in every country, no one is arguing that the characters are not Japanese and thus the story can't be any good. No one even cares. In fact, several people argue that the best story was the Taiwanese version, did this contain any Japanese at all? No, it did not. Now, you might argue something like this well there are all Asian so it shouldn't matter. (And if you said that you are stupid). I know you are going to say well Chinese use Koreans and Thais in their dramas and don't even blink an eye. (That is entirely true, but you are kind of missing the point.)

(All the guys on these covers are Korean, but the drama is Taiwanese and Chinese respectively.) (Although, now due to THAAD, they are not hiring as much Koreans to do Chinese dramas now, but they still use Thailanders. In fact, the sequel of My Amazing Boyfriend now has a Thai actor instead of the korean guy last season.)


First off, that's China not Japan and it's mostly because it does not matter if they can speak Chinese at all in their dramas, since their dramas are all dubbed over.

Second off, really now you are telling me that it only matters because they are all Asian, but, that's not true I bet if another country had an entirely black cast for these remakes no one would even care. So, you are only holding America to these random standards. Also, The Magnificent Seven was a sucess in the states and it was based off the Japanese movie, ''The Seven Samurai.'' Not to mention the Korean movie,'' "Il Mare'', was made into a movie called, ''The Lake house''. And another Korean movie is going to be remade by Gaumont, the movie called ''Train to Busan'' if they remade it with Tom Cruise no one should even blind an eye. If you want to watch one with Korean guys go watch the Korean movie.

In fact, here are some more examples: Full House and She was Pretty remakes

The remakes were made in Turkey and I hear by most they were okay and pretty good and it had nothing to do with ''Whitewashing''. Here is a link to web page about several Turkish remakes:
http://azade-ruh.tumblr.com/post/150153578252/turkish-korean-tv-dramas

Now, on to the next issues people say are the problem with bad remakes.


Changing the story or details of a story. All of the remakes of Itazura Na Kiss changed something, otherwise you would just be watching the same thing with a different cast and in a different language. They changed the story to fit their culture. Some details were changed a lot and others were left entirely in tact. They got the essence of the story and understood why people loved it and thus were able to get it right.



So, what makes a bad remake is changing a story so significantly that it cannot be recognized as the same story, characters, or sometimes going into direct opposition of the story. The point of remake is to make the story better not change the story so that we lose what made the story good in the first place.

Everyone knows that the reason the BOF remake failed in American was not because of ''White washing'', but rather because of the lack of money and the change of actors  every episode plus, a really badly made script that caused Boys Before Friends to fail so badly:

The main girl actress changed three times throughout the six episodes filmed. And the main guy changed twice.

http://dr-myri-blog.blogspot.com/2014/02/boys-before-friends-hostage-episode.html

That is why Death Note (2017) failed not because of ''whitewashing'' or being set in America or even the details of the story being changed, but rather because they did not understand what truly made the series great.

Full house American version (My Best friend’s ex-girlfriend) movie by Daniel and Rebekah Walton

This is a summary of the movie which my brother and I decided to name:

My Bestfriend's Ex-Girlfriend. Please tell us if you like the idea, I think it fits very well with the essence of Full House.

Characters:

Main Girl: Allison 

Main guy: Andrew

Sister: Chloe

Sister's boyfriend/Husband: Josh 

Best Friend: Mark

Ex-Girlfriend/stylist:Kira

Allison Quinn is a scriptwriter with no other job. Her dead father gave her a house. She has brown hair, and is extremely nice and caring. Half-sister(Chloe) with her boyfriend(Josh) trick her into going to Italy, saying that they won a trip and cannot go, she can go. 

Chloe sells Allison's house, because Chloe is pregnant and needs money. Josh is an idiot. Chloe has job but, he does not. Allison signed a contract to give them a loan because she knows her sister and boyfriend need money. 

Allison signs it at the bank, she rushes in late and she wasn’t there for the meeting, then she leaves to Italty.

 Her purse is stolen while she is in Italy. Her half sister did not book the hotel for enough days, and she does not have money anymore because her wallet was stolen. She is drunk on the plane, and she sits in his seat, and Andrew Holt ( actor main guy) does not care and lets her have the window seat. She is wandering around in Italy and she meets his best friend. 

She goes to see a particular spot in Italy from a movie. The bestfriend(Mark Woods) is at the pasta place, and pizza she eats at. They stand in a line and she causly talks to him in line and he knows the movie scene the place is from. They bond over this and talk about other movies, they exchange phone numbers. He is a ceo of a film company and she is a scriptwriter. We should not know till she arrives, that her house is sold. She spends the night, and after the next day sight seeing, then they ask when she is going to check out.

 She is confused and calls her sister. Her sister does not answer, and her purse was stolen so she can’t pay for  the hotel. She sees Andrew at the hotel. It’s the weekend, so, the bank is closed. She claims that she was staying with his best friend Mark and Mark broke up with her here and her stuff was stolen and she did not have a way to get money and she can’t leave till a few days later.

 Andrew lets her stay in his hotel suite. Then they go home, after she gets a new passport and cancels her credit and debit cards. She goes home and finds the sold sign at her house. She goes inside and all her stuff is packed up.

 She calls her sister and she can’t get a hold of her. She contacts the bank, and they say you signed the papers, so the house was sold. Someone bought the place and she has to move out. Andrew is there moving into her house because he bought the place.

She tells him because he is moving in. Andrew offers her a job as a maid in the house. She has prior experience and she lives as maid in his house. He goes to a party and she comes because she is a scriptwriter and wants to get one made into a movie.  Backbiting first girlfriend who use to be his stylist(Kira) comes to the party and she states he is still in love with her and so he kisses Allison to prove he is over Kira. 

Kira did confess offhand to Mark because she thinks she is so hot. The cameras of course get all this and then they use Kira to find out information on Allison. Media claims they are engaged to be married. So, Allison starts getting job offers, Allison decides to go with Mark Wood's company.   Andrew is making another movie and Allison is the scriptwriter. Allison is the main scriptwriter. Andrew still thinks they(Mark and Allison) are exs and he finds it weird they are not awkward around each other. Chloe never does show up again.

So they proceed with their pretend engagement. Allison goes to meet his estranged family. They have a funny awkward kiss scence with the family to prove they are engaged (classic).The family is boring and awkward and she gets up and she breaks into random singing. The father starts to laugh and the ice is broken. Allison helps the estranged family grow closer.

Mark as ceo of the film company  pays for their (pretend) honeymoon. So, they get married and go on the honeymoon. Afterwards, Andrew tries to get a divorce assuming that Allison is still in love with Mark , and hands her divorce papers and tries to fly away. Allison runs to the plane flight Andrew is going to get on and they make up. Allison then tells Andrew she was never Mark's ex girlfriend.

 So, this is my first collab of many with my brother Daniel. I will be working on my novel called:When Tails go Wrong

So, this maybe all the collabs I do till the end of November. But, I will work on more in December.

American Versions of Korean Dramas? by Rebekah Walton

Instead of talking about the ones that have been previously made.....Boys over Flowers I am looking at you....I decided to list a few I think would be interesting as American Tv shows. (Yes, I know Boys over Flowers kdrama is a remake.) Anyway, I will list a few and then be writing a series of posts on each kdrama as an American remake. What I think they would change and why? I will be asking for help for these posts and I will ask for advice from my siblings and others. These will also include kdramas which are already remakes of other Asian dramas.


So here is the short list for now: (I will increase this later)

1. W-Two Worlds
2. Full House
3. Playful Kiss (Itazura Na Kiss   )
4. To the Beautiful You (Hana Kimi)
5. Bring it on, Ghost
6. You're all Surrounded
7. High School-Love on
8.The Heirs( I could imagine definitely an American remake from this)
9.Bride of the Century
10. Heartstrings
11.My Girlfriend is Gumiho (propably sort of like Teen Wolf)


So, that's the list so far.