Could ‘Creed III’ Be The Hollywood Film That Finally Gets Anime?
Is that a glimmer of hope, I see?
Anime and Hollywood have always been strange bedfellows but the box office success of Creed III, directed by anime fan Michael B. Jordan, offers writer Lia Kim a glimmer of hope.
Hollywood’s abysmal grasp of anime was a defining feature of my childhood. It was an oddly lonely feeling, sitting in my room deeply invested in these bright-haired anime protagonists — only to see the art form widely mocked through Western eyes.
Any time anime caught mainstream attention in the West, the results were almost always cringe. And Hollywood’s attempt at adaptations certainly didn’t help. I know we all agreed to pretend that 2009’s Dragonball Evolution never happened, but taking one of the biggest TV shows at the time to make one of the worst movies ever? It pains me to this day.
But what is that glimmering over the horizon? Michael B. Jordan, star and director of Creed III, talking about the heavy influence he drew from… anime? Is this real?
How Exactly Did Anime Influence Creed III, A Sports Movie About Boxing?
In an interview with IndieWire, Jordan revealed how his love for anime shaped the fight scenes in Creed III. “I love the themes of anime, culturally, what they say about the bonds of friendships, betrayal, revenge, promises,” he explained. He’s not wrong: one thing anime loves to explore is betrayal. There isn’t a meme literally called ‘Top 10 Anime Betrayals’ for nothing. “They just achieve a level of action that live action just sometimes doesn’t give you,” he added.
In another interview with Polygon, he listed examples of friendships and rivalries, including Naruto and Fullmetal Alchemist, which informed the relationship between two main characters in Creed III, played by himself and Jonathon Majors. That’s what convinced me — someone who knows very little about Rocky or Creed but a lot about Naruto — to immediately find out when Creed III hits cinemas (the answer is now).
The film is the latest instalment in the Rocky franchise, and is currently breaking box office records, both as the biggest opening for a film in the Creed trilogy and for any sports movie, ever.
Why This Feels Like A Big Moment For Anime
Over the past few years, I’ve seen more and more anime titles crop up on Netflix, like Demon Slayer and Haikyuu, and it’s been oddly cathartic — I had a similar experience with Korean shows like Physical: 100. Witnessing the shift of something considered by the West to be ‘foreign’, and therefore ‘weird’, to being respected and understood, never gets old. (The West doesn’t have to like it, of course, but as an anime fan in Australia it makes all the difference.)
Once it was on Netflix, I could officially bug my friends to watch an anime right there, no excuses! (Very few of them listened to me, but that’s a separate issue.) Disney is getting on board too, snapping up the highly anticipated Bleach reboot. And no one can convince me otherwise that the Oscar-nominated Puss in Boots: The Last Wish isn’t an extra chapter of Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer disguised as a Dreamworks feature. I will die on this hill.
they turned puss in boots into attack on titan https://t.co/fDbYYKg273
— kordell (@lledrook) January 8, 2023
But a Hollywood sports film directly citing influence from anime feels a little different. Rather than popular anime becoming more accessible, it’s paying homage to the medium itself. Frankly, I’d gotten pretty tired of anime constantly being reduced to its worst stereotypes and was content to enjoy it away from mainstream attention. But if Creed III is any indication, there’s clearly room for anime-influenced films that can translate to box office success. And with Michael B. Jordan on our team? The sky’s the limit.
This is opinion piece is written by Lia Kim, a writer and producer at Junkee. You can follow her on Twitter at @kimliaa_.