Tokyo, 28 December, /AJMEDIA/
For as gigantic a Japanese pop cultural force as Nintendo is, it’s sort of strange that there’s so little in the way of anime adaptations of the company’s video games. It’s been decades since the anime and game industries in Japan began blending freely together, and you can find anime versions of popular game franchises from publishers including Namco, Sega, and Square Enix, but aside from the “Kirby” anime TV series and that weird 1985 “Super Mario Bros” anime movie, made-in-Japan Nintendo-based animation is pretty much nonexistent.
That means there’s a lot of pent-up demand for Nintendo anime, as shown by a recent poll from Japanese website Anime Anime. 1,609 participants were asked what console video game they most wanted to see an anime adaptation of, and five of the top ten, including all of the top three, were Nintendo franchises.
The respondents (about 60 percent of whom were women, 55 percent 19 or younger, and 25 percent in their 20s) made “Animal Crossing” their No. 6 pick, and coming in at fifth place was “Fire Emblem: Three Houses,” the most recent mainline game in the “Fire Emblem” series.
Surprisingly, “The Legend of Zelda” didn’t capture the top spot. Despite the vast ocean of “anime Zelda” and “Zelda if it were made by Studio Ghibli fan art projects that have been created over the years, “Breath of the Wild” only made it to number three in the ranking.
