What if: Gate: Thus the JSDF fought got a US adaptation

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Depending on what movie rating this could end up as, specific characters would have to be changed. I'd say get an actress that's young looking, can be charming and not token to the cast. If this was HBO, we could get away with using recent star power of actors. I can imagine Maisie Williams be Rory. She can definitely look young for the part. Though the real life prop of Rory's halberd needs to be smaller to be manageable

If this was an HBO series, we could get away with sexual content to an extent and even blood guts and gore without much approval.

I'm really entertaining this idea based on how the anime was really lackluster when it came to portraying the action and violence.

Thinking about this again, I think you missed my point about Rory. She's a bit of a cultural in-joke among the Japanese. Her name "Rory" is an actual name in English but it's also a pun on how looks like a "goth-loli" girl (i.e., a young woman who wears Gothic Lolita fashion and looks younger than 18 years of age) and yet is a demigod who's centuries old and ends up wanting to lose her virginity to Itami. The "moral guardians" in North America wouldn't hear of this, and the casting agency would probably end up casting an actress who is the same age as Itami's actor, losing some of the references behind Rory Mercury's name. That's the current wave of censorship for you.

Of course, if all you want is better action sequences, then that's easily done with the right director and funding, but then you might end up with fans of the original work who complain about the story being changed or condensed in a way they don't appreciate.

[Excalibur]

Originally Posted by Mazryonh

Thinking about this again, I think you missed my point about Rory. She's a bit of a cultural in-joke among the Japanese. Her name "Rory" is an actual name in English but it's also a pun on how looks like a "goth-loli" girl (i.e., a young woman who wears Gothic Lolita fashion and looks younger than 18 years of age) and yet is a demigod who's centuries old and ends up wanting to lose her virginity to Itami. The "moral guardians" in North America wouldn't hear of this, and the casting agency would probably end up casting an actress who is the same age as Itami's actor, losing some of the references behind Rory Mercury's name. That's the current wave of censorship for you.

Of course, if all you want is better action sequences, then that's easily done with the right director and funding, but then you might end up with fans of the original work who complain about the story being changed or condensed in a way they don't appreciate.

I thought so too. Thinking how an Americanized version would take away about of the original point of the story. The actual book was very nationalistic for Japan and even the writer wrote off why America didn't get involved in an actual attack on Japan by a foreign power. The defense treaty would been used regardless and we'd see a combined JSDF and US military presence in the story but there isn't.


I'm sure if this was adapted for America, they'd make it a satire of US military involvement in foreign lands as a negative instead of moral superiority of the Japanese military is portrayed in the Anime and book.

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I thought so too. Thinking how an Americanized version would take away about of the original point of the story. The actual book was very nationalistic for Japan and even the writer wrote off why America didn't get involved in an actual attack on Japan by a foreign power. The defense treaty would been used regardless and we'd see a combined JSDF and US military presence in the story but there isn't.

I'm sure if this was adapted for America, they'd make it a satire of US military involvement in foreign lands as a negative instead of moral superiority of the Japanese military is portrayed in the Anime and book.

It's not uncommon for these kinds of stories to ignore or downplay American involvement. If you look at the wiki page for Brotherhood of War, a film based on the Korean War, only the North Korean and South Korean forces get much of a presence in that film despite the UN and ChiCom involvement. I don't know if you can call that "patriotism," but leaving viewers/readers with the impression that "it happened on our soil and we did all the work" isn't hard to find in this kind of story.

There's another reason Rory Mercury is a Japanese in-joke. "Rory" to them is pronounced more or less the same as "Loli," because they don't make much of a distinction between "L" and "R" sounds. So the pun (that Rory is a loli-type character) doesn't work much outside of Japanese.

As for what the "moral guardians" would say about characters like Rory, more especially if she were put into a live-action adaptation, I advise you to check out the passage from this article where a former Vogue Editor-in-Chief received a firestorm of protest about putting a model on the cover of a 2007 Vogue issue, photographed in a treehouse.

If that gets real-life people reaching for their torches and pitchforks, I don't know what Rory Mercury's plot elements, including what she planned to do with Itami, would provoke if they were more well-known.

[Spartan198]

If there were to an American adaption, I'd bet my last dollar that Rory is cut completely out of it.

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by Spartan198

If there were to an American adaption, I'd bet my last dollar that Rory is cut completely out of it.

It might get made anyway if someone sees it as a way to stir patriotism, either American or Japanese. The author is a right-winger, and there is still nationalist sentiment in Japan. Is this video from Japan a cheering section for a fictional army (from a live event for Fate/Zero), or actually from a Japanese nationalist rally? If you didn't know what was going on you might not know the difference.

Also, remember how the Battleship movie had a Japanese character working with the American Naval forces? Someone might want to try that again with a live-action adaptation of this light novel too.

Can't disagree with you on Rory's potential for controversy though.

[Excalibur]

Most likely, they will probably combine all the female characters into one generic one to save casting and the low attention span of the general American audience that can't keep track of everyone.

[Mazryonh]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Most likely, they will probably combine all the female characters into one generic one to save casting and the low attention span of the general American audience that can't keep track of everyone.

Low attention span? Isn't Game of Thrones one of HBO's biggest hits in a while, with a very large cast of characters? I think the general American audience can in fact handle a cast that large if they're invested.

But now you've got me thinking that the only trace of Rory in such an adaptation, since she's a politically-incorrect character, might just be a one-off shot of Rory's gothic lolita costume hanging in the closet of Itami's ex-wife to highlight "weird Japan" in a brief cameo.