Anime on the Big Screen: Fancasting the Naruto Movie

I grew up watching anime, and seeing as I'm in my late 20s and I grew up in the United States, you can probably guess that my first venture into anime was in fact Dragonball Z. It was the common first step for many people as they ventured into the anime and manga world. Regardless of how you may feel about DBZ, it is a solid stepping stone for people to get their feet wet.

The premise of most action based anime is to watch the main character grow in strength and resolve and face any threat to the earth. Ultimately following a similar parallel to all the superheroes that we all love. Grow stronger and face anything that threatens those they love.

As I watched a wider variety of anime, I started wishing to see my beloved shows on the big screen. I thought it would be so incredible to watch my favorite actors portray the characters that I loved so dearly. Then it happened: Dragonball Evolution.

My heart hurt.

I was so excited, and then I felt as though my entire existence was thrown into a blender. How could my beloved first anime have gone so wrong? But, I pushed it into the recesses of my memory trying to convince myself that it was a fluke and that it could only get better, considering that at the time mainstream Marvel & DC had their own disappointing superheroes venture onto the big screen.

Yet through all this disappointment I still held onto hope and in the last couple months I've heard the rumors that another one of my most beloved Anime would get its own feature film. Variety reported at the end of July that Lionsgate had signed Michael Gracey to direct their live action rendition of Naruto. Gracey being a former visual effects specialist who has moved into directing, didn't immediately fill me with anticipation, but the more I've thought about it the more I've actually started thinking that this could be what I've been waiting for...if it honors the source material.

I am trying to remain positive for the potential of a Naruto film, and since I'm in a positive mood, I thought I'd take a stab at fan-casting the future movie's main characters. Then I came across these images from a live-action stage spectacular that hit the tour stage in March of this year and I knew that there was no fan-cast that I could create that would ever come close to this. So here is who I believe should portray the characters in the live adaptation (I am totally down with the movie being dubbed by the way).

Source: RocketNews24