Perhaps it is not entirely a coincidence that the best known essay on the history of the landing of Japanese animation in Italy, almost half a century ago, is titled Mazinga nostalgiarogue nostalgia is in fact a significant factor in the many remakes, reinterpretations, suggestions that accumulate in these weekswinning the eye to the public, now abundantly adult, of what were then called Japanese cartoons and who today are for everyone “souls“, Japanese word that alludes to English animation.
As then, in part, and in part in a different way since then, it is a bit of celebrating anniversaries a bit of riding the wave of an evident trend. If at the end of the seventies in the advent of Japanese animation in Italy the opening of the schedules to be filled with private TV: a prairie to occupy, possibly without falling economically, today in the revival probably affects the recent and undeniable specific weight that is undeniable that Japanese comic and animation (manga And souls they are technically called) in the current publishing landscape.
You can see it in every large bookstore, but also in the Netflix offer: the one that until a few years ago was only a niche for elected enthusiasts (Nerd, in the jargon of the investigations) today fills entire bookcase shelves, even floors. A sign that there is a target, a potential audience on which to direct the arrow and center. The bet is not easy: Goldrake Grendizer uone million viewers the first evening in the early evening on Raidue a few weeks ago, he had already halved them to the second. A sign that it is rather complicated to make the center by satisfying everyone: the young, more experienced, but accustomed to a different taste may also not recognize themselves in the rhythms and themes of stories, which have become classic. Nostalgic adults may not recognize their heroes of the time in the changes of the remakes, a little because the heroes have changed, a little because the tastes of the current audience have changed, a bit because with the adult gaze the magic is perhaps not the same.
The fact remains that in a handful of weeks five bets are crossing in the world, after the experiment of Goldrake Grendizer uone concerns the live-action series Cat’s Eyeinspired by the animated series Cat’s eyesarrived in Italy between the eighties and nineties: the new version with flesh and blood characters is directed by Alexandre Laurent, scripted by a team of authors, including Michel Catz, Justine Kim-Gautier and Antonin Martin-Hilbert. Production was born from a collaboration between TF1, Amazon Prime Video and Big Band Story, with Newen Connect responsible for international distribution.
After debut on TF1 and TF1+ in France Cat’s Eyes It will be available on Amazon Prime Video, guaranteeing a global distribution to reach both historical fans and a new generation of spectators, and trap the news in these days that in Italy in the coming months it would take Raidue again.
Unlike the original set in Japan, the new series places the action of the three sisters, famous art thiefs, in Paris in 2023 where after a long time they find themselves.
If the theatrical musical, inspired by Kiss Me Licia, announced in Italy (Friday 21 and Saturday 22 March 2025 at the EcoTeatro di Milano (via Fezzan, 11 | 20.30) signed by Thomas Centaro, 40 years after the release of the anime in Italy, is partly history in itself , because like live action makes comparisons difficult with the actual animation Because too different in the genre (lurking the parody effect, think of the bad Lady Oscar of Demi, who made everything wrong starting with the unbearable physicality of the protagonist), Much more they lend themselves to comparisons and comparisons, enthusiasm and annexed and connected disappointments, the versions in animated films Hallo Spankin theaters in Italy from 13 to 16 February e The roses of Versailles, coming out in Japanese theaters these days, to celebrate the fiftieth of the manga of a real world cult object, arrived in Europe and in Italy in 1982 with the title of Lady Oscar. (To these two, very different classics, both much loved in Italy and now revisited, the two focus of the dossier connected, one already online the other coming in the next few days).
“There is definitely,” he observes Mara Famularo author for the essay mill, Manga dimension“The attempt to grasp the public of the former children of the eighties together and together that of today’s teenagers very intrigued by the world manga And soulsbut there is certainly another aspect, cultural, costume, the idea of also proposing to the public of the boys characters, now classic who have marked the imagination of their parents: the past time allows to evaluate what are the characters who have left their mark and who, in spite of the time they were made, have kept a modernity: I think of Rack Proposed in a new series on Netflix that lends itself, through a romantic story, to reflect on the theme of gender stereotypes, the same goes for Lady Oscar », a woman in a work perceived by her time as only male with all attempts to delegitimize of the case.
“The modernization in some cases,” explains Famularo, “it is also lent to remove the elements that mark the step, because too much children of the time in which they were written, to let the universal history emerge”.
We ask ourselves if there is no risk so, to betray the classics by rewriting or redesigning them: «The danger is not so much of distorting as much as this operation is doing badly trying a derauding re-actualization to wink at the commercial target of the 40-50-year-old fan service, that is, to lose the opportunity for a reworking truly up to par. Although the new products often enjoy the advantage of budgets that were not at the time of the originals, when often it had to be operated in economics. While today, in the middle of such a boom, the certainty of having a large audience allows you to spend more ».
Even if this as we will see, in the connected content, does not always collide with the guarantee of better workmanship, or in any case on the theme the opinions, even among experts, diverge.
