Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is one of the highest-rated movies of 2024, which unfortunately didn’t translate into major sales success. The film was a flop at the box office, and even its quick release on video-on-demand wasn’t the big smash the film needed to become a lead. Despite this failure on the big screen, there was another possible path that could have been much more successful.
At one point, Furious was planned as an anime series instead of a movie. The idea had much more logic, as it could have built on the universal push that anime as a whole is currently experiencing. Likewise, a “Mad Max“Anime was already a huge success at the time, so the template was there to make the film an even bigger success in animated form.”
This series has already proven that Mad Max can work as an anime
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The Mad Max The film franchise debuted in the late 1970s and reached its peak with the 1981 sequel. Mad Max II (also known as The Road Warrior or Mad Max II – The Road Warrior). This entry solidified the tone and scope of the franchise going forward by focusing on the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the estate and featuring all manner of brutal thugs and murderers, all equipped with ridiculous amounts of spikes and leather. Since its release, this film has inspired and influenced countless other films. This includes a now-iconic anime series that is, in many ways, just as legendary as the film series that inspired it.
Fist of the North Star by Buronson and Tetsuo Hara began as a manga in the early 1980s and was later adapted into several anime and films. The story is set in a post-apocalyptic version of the 1990s (the then-future) where a nuclear war has wiped out the world and many of the survivors are left to scavenge for their daily bread. One of these survivors is Kenshiro, a man who is the last student of the deadly martial art known as Hokuto Shinken. After being brutally betrayed by his friend Shin years ago, he crosses the country to be reunited with his long-lost love Yuria. Along the way, he befriends street urchins Bat/Bart and Lin, both of whom show the dwindling innocence in the world and how harsh things have become for the next generation. Brutal, gritty, and very different from many of the more “colorful” anime/manga franchises of today, Fist of the North Star is often mentioned in the same breath as the dark and brutal Berserker.
During the development of the series Buronson and Hara were inspired by Mad Max Series for the setting and sound of Fist of the North StarOther influences were the film Blade Runneras well as other manga and anime such as the legendary Cyberpunk series Akira and the equally post-apocalyptic despair of Violence JackThis was actually something like a circular effect, because the Mad Max The film series may be based on elements from Violence Jack. It is still considered a classic that is loved by many, Fist of the North Star proved that a Mad Max Anime could work just fine. The same goes for a spin-off prequel based on Furiosa, as a medium beyond cinema is the perfect place for such a side story.
Fist of the North Star (1984)
- Release date
- October 11, 1984
- Creator
- Yoshiyuki Okamura, Tetsuo Hara
- Pour
- Akira Kamiya, Shigeru Chiba, Teiyu Ichiryusai, Tomiko Suzuki, Kenji Utsumi, Takaya Hashi, Yuriko Yamamoto
- Main genre
- action
- Seasons
- 4
- Authors
- Hiroshi Toda
- Directors
- Toyoo Ashida
Anime is currently the most popular
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Since the mid-2010s The anime medium has become bigger than ever. This is mainly due to certain shows, with the revival of the medium’s international popularity possibly due to the release of Dragon Ball Super. Since then, several other anime titles have become big hits, namely Shonen works such as My Hero Academia (whose manga recently ended). One-Punch-Man is a similar title that has had success in both media, and that is without even mentioning the popularity of the so-called “Dark Trio of Shonen” in recent years. These are themselves quite similar to Demon Slayerperhaps the biggest anime franchise in recent history.
In addition to Shonen, there are also comedies and slice-of-life stories such as Spy x Family And The Quintessence of the Quintuplets have struck a chord with mainstream audiences, and to a lesser extent shows like My favorite dress and the fantasy series Freeze: Beyond Journey’s End. Even the mecha anime genre, largely considered one of the more esoteric in the medium, has made inroads with entries like Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch of Mercury Expanding the audience of this franchise. Overall, anime is more successful than ever, and just about every series that comes out becomes a hit. Given this precedent, the release Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga as an anime, it would probably have made a much bigger impression. If the series had been well made and even emulated the more complex art of Tetssuo Hara with stunning animation, the tentatively planned Furious Anime would have easily appeared on the radar of most viewers.
In fact, it would probably have pleased Mad Max fans from before, while also attracting those who were mainly into anime as a whole and had no connection to the George Miller film franchise. It’s not like something like this is unusual either, especially when it comes to Western properties being translated into anime. The Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Series (based on the recent Cyberpunk2077 video game that itself is derived from a tabletop game franchise) has been widely praised, with many pointing out that the anime has revived interest in the game iteration, which had a rather rocky start. An anime version of Furious could have done the same for Mad Maxespecially since even the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road was itself anything but a great success. This could have laid the foundation for George Miller to finally Mad Max: The Wasteland afterwards, but given the low interest in the Furious Film, that is highly unlikely.
A Furiosa anime would have been more profitable than the film
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On the whole, Anime production is comparatively one of the cheapest ways to realize a storyAllegedly Cyberpunk: Edgerunners The production of Anime only cost 3.4 million US dollars, which is actually an outlier for the industry. After all, Demon Slayerwhich is praised for its visual appeal, reportedly cost $80,000 per episode for the first season of 26 episodes. That equates to just over $2 million, while the Demon Slayer The film was made on a budget of $15 million and ended up grossing just over $500 million. This series is also known for having some of the best animation out there, so the fact that it is still so inexpensive compared to western animation and live-action films speaks volumes.
Given this precedent, it is very likely that even with a budget that pays animators a salary closer to a Western production, a Furious Anime would have been a much better choice than a live-action film. The actual film grossed $172 million at the box office, which was only a little more than its $168 million production budget. An anime television series or film would have likely cost less than a quarter of that and would have done without the public embarrassment of box-office irrelevance. Another caveat is that in animation, the age of the actors is not a factor, so Charlize Theron could have reprised her role as Furiosa. It might have even increased the franchise’s notoriety, rather than likely ending it on a rather bad note. As things stand, Furious is a critically acclaimed triumph that unfortunately failed to find an audience, and abandoning the original plans for an anime likely cemented that fate.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
The origin story of the renegade warrior Furiosa before her encounter with Mad Max and her merger with him.
- director
- George Miller
- Release date
- May 24, 2024
- Pour
- Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Webber, Angus Sampson
- Authors
- Nick Lathouris, George Miller
- Main genre
- adventure
