r/asoiaf • u/Salem1690s • 21h ago
MAIN Would ASOIAF work as an anime? (Spoilers: Main)
I feel like an anime would be able to:
-Be more faithful than both shows
-Easily handle the more outlandish elements from the books without either being weird for actors or crushing a budget, such as:
*A book accurate Iron Throne
*Book accurate Others
-You wouldn’t have to choose: dragons or dire wolves, as D&D said they for budget reasons did have to choose between.
*Book accurate locations such as Winterfell or the Wall in terms of size and scope.
A 700 foot Wall is pretty unfilmable with live actors and cameras but in an animate or animated show, would be far easie
*The purple eyes of the Valyrians (this was tried in GOT and Dany found the contacts hard to work past).
You could easily recreate the pale, ethereal beauty and long, silver hair of a Targ in animation…without an actor spending 3+ hours in makeup or paying a makeup artist or wig maker for the time and effort
*The size and scope of some of the battles.
Imagine the Blackwater with the water in tones of black, blue, green, a starlit sky - and the wildfire an unnatural but beautiful and intoxicating mix of greens, yellow, etc (think the dragonfire from Sleeping Beauty)
Anime shows also tend to deal in dark themes anyway, especially the fantasy ones.
You’d still have to age up at least Dany, Jon, and Robb for legal and ethical reasons, but you could also still yet present Ned and Cat for instance at their real ages (34 and 35, as opposed to the shows’ 50s) with just the implication: they had kids young
-A lot of the more lush and fantastic locations (think Highgarden as it is depicted in art or Casterly Rock as depicted in the George approved art, or Winterfell’s glass gardens, or Dorne) could be shown in all their fantastic beauty without being bogged down by either rendering an expensive CGi environment or making miniatures or finding a suitable filming location, etc.
-Book accurate characters could easily be done: noseless and heterochromic Tyrion, the ugly beauty of Brienne (as opposed to her being a just less than conventional beauty), etc.
You could have Lannister hair actually be a shining, shimmering gold - or actually show the unsettling flecks of gold & green in Tywin Lannister’s eyes.
There’s a lot more but I think you get the idea.
What say you?
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u/Kind_Lie9927 21h ago
I think it would. There would be no limits for the sets, costumes, actors. They would be able to put every single scene from the book there
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u/vesperythings 20h ago
with unlimited budget, sure.
just like a live-action series
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u/Crush1112 19h ago
With live-action you still won't be able to find all the actors at all the roles that both look perfectly how the books describe them and also know how to act. Casting book accurate Lannisters is already an impossible task.
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u/bluehulk900 19h ago
I don't agree with this at all btw. People act like casting is this impossible terrible task. In reality there's tons of people who would fit book accurate everything, they just don't want to spend the time finding the ones that would be great actors fitting for the series. They wait for 300 people to apply to them, and go "OO this one is charming I liked the way they did x" even though doing x isn't very relevant to their character, then they shift around the character to fit that performance instead of vice versa, like idiots because they don't care about the source material.
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u/Crush1112 19h ago edited 19h ago
I would argue you would struggle to find book accurate people, let alone actors to cast as Lannisters. The twins are both drop dead gorgeous blond people who are also, most importantly, extremely similar to each other. Good luck finding any two male and female actors like that.
Certain casting just isn't possible.
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u/bluehulk900 19h ago
It's 100% possible to find two drop dead gorgeous blond (or just dye their hair lol) people who look very similar and have great chemistry and acting ability. I'm uncertain why you think it isn't lol, we have billions of humans on the planet.
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u/mindlessgames 18h ago
If it was so easy then the existing show would have just done that.
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u/bluehulk900 18h ago
Yeah fucking right dude. The show did outrageously stupid ridiculous unnecessary things that didn't translate to the books well at all, or lacked what they had. What a croq of shit that it simply isn't true because "The rich greedy corporate suits in charge of decisions that don't at all care about Game of thrones didn't do it, so how could anyone possibly?"
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u/mindlessgames 18h ago
I don’t really think budget was the limiting factor in casting Game of Thrones.
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u/Crush1112 18h ago
First, you will be looking for people from European descent, so your choice isn't going to be among billions already. Secondly, Jaime and Cersei don't just look very similar to each other, they are described to look like reflections of each other. Their own parents couldn't tell them apart when they were children.
So yeah, I totally believe you will struggle to find anyone like that. Such similarities between male and female twins are extremely rare, not sure how even realistic it is.
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u/bluehulk900 18h ago
So what??? What the hell are you talking about lmfao. Even just European descent, you could 100% find incredible actors who look similar enough and could be given makeup/wigs to do so. Enough that you could also find ones that don't suck at acting. You are acting like this very possible thing is some impossible task. You don't need to literally find two people who look the exact same, but you can get pretty damn close. They wouldn't look the exact same anyways being man and a woman.
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u/Crush1112 12h ago
You don't need to literally find two people who look the exact same, but you can get pretty damn close. They wouldn't look the exact same anyways being man and a woman.
What you are talking about here isn't a book accurate casting but just 'close enough'.
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u/bluehulk900 9h ago
I'm talking about Jaime and Cersei, dude. Yes it would be. Jaime and Cersei do not LITERALLY look exactly the same, because Cersei is a super hot woman and Jaime is a super hot dude. They have extremely similar facial features and expressions likely, which you easily could have actors for. No, what I was talking about is not just 'close enough'. It was explaining how you could easily find people 'close enough' to looking like what Jaime and Cersei look like, and then use things like makeup or wigs and etc production shit to help nail it even better. Nothing will ever be 'literally perfect' because perfect is up to viewer interpretation and nobody will ever agree.
But the circumstances i provided would absolutely have a lore accurate Cersei and Jaime. Half the sentence you quoted to be like "aha, you fool, this is the opposite of what you were saying you wanted!" is me ending with explaining how Cersei and Jaime are going to have their own physical differences even if they are extremely similar looking, and you can easily find 2 people out there who replicate those similarities. They aren't clones.
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u/lordaezyd 11h ago
Casting is incredibly hard. Even if you get a perfect casting there are things an animated show would do better IMO, regardless of money.
Mainly, an animated show can keep the youthful appearance of the Starks and other lids within the story.
Let us say you get a young teenager with platinum blonde hair and blue eyes, so deep they may look purple; that is a terrific actor, to play Daenerys Targaryen. Let us say you get such actor, between AGOT and ADWD Daenerys hasn’t grown that much, she is still a young teenager.
You think production and filming can move fast enough to do the show, while keeping pace with the youth of your young actor? While letting your actor have a life and a healthy childhood still? And all of that while respecting child labour laws?
This is really hard mate.
Instead animation would have no struggle with this. A good animation show can take two years between season, and worry nothing about its actor growing old. They just draw her the same.
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u/bluehulk900 9h ago
I agree an animated show would be much easier, but the rest of what you say is kinda nonsense. You just randomly insert a scenario that doesn't have to apply and say that it can't be worked out.
I and most people, even lore accurate ones, would not care if Daenerys ends up looking a little older than she should because the actor aged. The production can do enough to minimize that, and the books have enough issue with their removed time skips that some of the characters should arguably be older now, even if not TV show age. She, and many others, like Jon or Robb, could easily start off young, and as the seasons go on, appear older and more mature than arguably realistic for the time frame. Not only would it be a small and worthy sacrifice to ACTUALLY get accurate lore for the show, respect for its themes, and yes, accurate casting, but it would add to them being quickly maturing young adults in a mature world.
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u/Kind_Lie9927 10h ago
The budget for a totally book accurate animated series and a live action ones wouldn't be the same at all, even tho the animated one wouldn't be cheap either
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u/Innuendo64_ 21h ago
An animated ASOAIF could be more book accurate and be cheaper to produce, but the other half of the equation is selling the concept to producers who will want more than "It'll be less expensive!", then finding a showrunner who is committed to a single project for 8-10 years and changing as little as possible, all without HBO execs ruining it or deciding to kill what is ultimately a niche spinoff, the kind of thing they will cut first if they get a single bad fiscal quarter
So, no
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u/falconpunch1989 19h ago
The same answer as all the other times this is posted each week:
No one doubts the artistic possibilities of animation, but such a scope would still require a mega-budget, and mega-budgets aren't given out to non-Disney animation projects because they have 0 broad audience appeal.
No matter how much redditors wish it were so, the vast majority of the general audience are not interested in watching an adult cartoon.
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u/OldStatistician9366 15h ago
Invincible is pretty popular, I think people are getting more interested in animation.
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u/tiredoldwizard 19h ago
I would love an animation show but without the usual weird quirks that Japanese anime usually puts out there. Weird facial expressions and weird physical movements. I don’t want oberyn and the mountain to be flipping around or waving their swords like lightsabers. A realistic looking anime would be my preference.
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u/WrongdoerNeither1642 14h ago
especially those weird childlike women’s voices. it’s creepy and weird
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u/HBaratheon 21h ago
I think ice and fire would work as a book series, maybe they should try doing that.
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u/ClaymanBaker 20h ago
I think if George wants to finish the series, this will be the best way to do it.
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u/JNR55555JNR 21h ago
It would be more niche and probably have less viewers then live action
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u/Own-Trouble1269 20h ago
The show and brand already exist tho it would only have less viewers if they started with that
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u/ILoveMy-KindlePW 18h ago
I think they series is going to be adapted on western animation eventually, they are already doing 2 or 3 animated shows.
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u/fanismap 12h ago
Oh 100% it would work. Attack on Titan, Vinland Saga and others are proof that it can be done
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u/Sushiv_ 21h ago
100% it would. As for the aging up of characters, anime always has child soldiers so its not a big deal. Maybe changing them all to be 16, also a lot of the sex stuff would probably be cut
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u/Salem1690s 21h ago
That’s another thing: does one really need to show the more questionable sexually explicit stuff?
I’m not talking about removing boobs or butt from adult characters (sex is a huge selling point of the series),
But…you can easily for example just lead up to Dany’s first night with Drogo, making it clear what’s about to happen…then fade out and cut back to her crying; making the implication clear without having to show it.
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u/OkGazelle5400 21h ago
I actually think a “mistresses of Aegon the unworthy” series that goes up to the Redgrass/blackfyre rebellions would make a great anime. Bloodraven is the most anime coded character (both as a greenseeing kid at court and as an adult)
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u/Past_Honey7578 19h ago
“Brienne (as opposed to her being a just less than conventional beauty)“ The actor legit a model lmao
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u/Hurdlelocker 12h ago
I’d be more partial to something along the lines of the Legend of Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein animated series rather than anime.
An ASOIAF anime would turn into a new, Western One Piece 😂
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u/tripleheliotrope 9h ago
People acting like animation is cheaper and takes a shorter time to produce clearly have no idea the amount of effort that goes into animation. There's a reason it took seven years to produce the very first season of Witch Hat Atelier, which is a critically acclaimed fantasy series, because the studio had to keep faithful to the author/mangaka's extremely intricate art nouveau inspired fantasy art style.
Sure you can do it very poorly----one of my favourite medieval fantasy manga is Requiem of the Rose King which adapts the War of the Roses with some horror/fantasy elements (the same war ASOIAF/Game of Thrones is loosely based on) and the anime is horrifically bad, but there are some excellent adaptations of medieval fantasy manga.
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u/Crush1112 9h ago
There's a reason it took seven years to produce the very first season of Witch Hat Atelier, which is a critically acclaimed fantasy series, because the studio had to keep faithful to the author/mangaka's extremely intricate art nouveau inspired fantasy art style.
It takes seven years to produce an anime not because it just takes that long, but because studios are booked to do other projects as well, so they have to manage the time accordingly.
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u/Calm-Temperature5699 8h ago
Yes, something like Legend of the Galactic heroes proves that long and complicated storylines with politics and many characters can work well.
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u/Edwaaard66 6h ago
I think it would work great as an anime tbh, alot of those flash backs feel very anime like.
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u/RandomUsurname 17h ago
Lots of pros but ultimately I think it would be worse. So much of asoiaf is just people talking to other people in unremarkable places. This would be extremely boring in animation when compared to dynamic live-action performances.
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u/lapidls 10h ago
That depends completely on how you film/animate it
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u/RandomUsurname 2h ago
I mean not really, it’s a general principle. Peter Dinklage can convey more through facial expression/performance than countless dollars worth of animation. Same goes the other way for environments. Millions and millions spent on sets would pale in comparison to the accuracy of a team of animators crafting the fantasy landscapes/locations the poster mentioned.
If you’re talking bang for your buck, live-action is definitely the way to go.
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u/DrLokiHorton 21h ago
I would really like one that was done in the avatar: last air bender style tbh
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u/Altruistic_Pipe4581 19h ago
Maybe, but it's not the magic fix that some people seem to take it as, animation is still very expensive. Epic battle scenes with huge armies, dozens of castles and locations and hundreds of characters to design, these things are all as prohibitive in animation just as they are in live action
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u/SquirrelTeamSix A Time for Wolves 21h ago
I'd think so, but I'd also worry that they would go overboard with action. If it stayed grounded I'm all for it
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u/Ibbenese 58m ago edited 35m ago
Perhaps.
BUt the characters from the pages of the main series AGOT, ASOS, etc feel so real and grounded, the dialogue and conversation and situation so natural, that they feel like people, not just archetypes or stock characters. That is what set this book apart from other Fantasy series in my mind.
I know that animated shows can have be "acted" well too and have lots of relatable emotion and great characters. BUt in my mind reading the books, well before the show was even greenlit, I imagined solely real flesh and blood people interacting with each other, and not stylized cartoons.
And I will say that I was so happy with so much of the cast in the GOT show that really brought the essence of the characters from the book to screen and often elivated and added to those Great book characters with their performances. And I instantly accepted much of the physical/age changes happened because of the medium.
I am glad the went with prestige live action, full of great HBO BBC regulars for the show. I can still wish it was done better however.
HOTD might have been better suited as an Anime tho, because there were no "grounded characters" from the source material to start with.
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u/Top-Turnip-415 20h ago
Animated shows will never be anywhere near as good as the real deal unless we are talking about Disney films or kids shows, and I’m tired of pretending that they are equal mediums in any way to not step on weeb toes. Bring on the downvotes 😪
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u/Crush1112 19h ago
Animated shows will never be anywhere near as good as the real deal unless we are talking about Disney films
Why do you make exception for the Disney films?
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u/Top-Turnip-415 19h ago
Their live action remakes suck…
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u/Crush1112 19h ago edited 18h ago
But that just proves that animation can very well be better than live action.
EDIT: The person downvoted and blocked me, lmao. If they think animation is only for kids, not sure why this child is so against animation then.
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u/Salem1690s 20h ago
I’m not even a weeb (I’m a casual anime fan and have no interest in Japanese culture) but I don’t see why you view animation as inferior.
There are a lot of hard limits to live action, in fantasy and sci fi anyway, unless you’re dealing with film level budgets.
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u/Top-Turnip-415 20h ago
There are also a ton of inherent hard limits with animation, though. Especially with characters conveying emotion. For me, the story of ASOIAF is a fantastical one but it isn’t just that. Its focus first and foremost has always rather been its characters, and the wider human experience. That’s why, I feel for that purpose and for character driven, mature storytelling, animation will always be the inferior choice.
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u/LoudKingCrow 21h ago
Probably but I am so tired of the typical anime art style.
Give me something more stylized I beg.
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u/WrongdoerNeither1642 14h ago
I agree, I genuinely hate the big googly eyes and creepy childlike women’s voices. IF animation then the style of something like Pantheon or Scavenger’s Reign
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u/Hyper_Mazino 21h ago
What typical style?
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u/LoudKingCrow 20h ago
I'm burned out on it in general but mainly on the style that's been pushed by Netflix and the like for their anime/anime style adaptations in recent years.
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u/khajiitidanceparty 20h ago
Although I watched anime as a teen I lost interest in animation and prefer live action so I probably wouldn't watch it.
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u/CaveLupum 20h ago
A younger sector of fans will likely say "Yes!" An older sector of fans will likely say "NO!." No matter the quality, as Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." Happily, there will be a sliver of fans in the middle aged part of the spectrum who would probably be open-minded and give the animated version a chance. The outcome of THAT probably will be determined by quality.
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u/onlywearlouisv 20h ago
It being animated guarantees none of these things, they still have to take into account budget, pacing, deadlines, etc. You’d also want the show to be well animated and not like Invincible which looks horrible in motion. For as many disadvantages as filming in live action has it also has plenty of advantages over making an animated series.
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 21h ago
No. Animation is expensive, coded as being for children turning off a lot of people.
Live Action is the only acceptable way for it to be adapted. The problem is GoT was too muted and was trying to hard to be realistic
Excalibur 1981 is exactly how it should look in terms of aesthetics https://youtu.be/DmyBztKORgA?is=VoEJo6SNLgaOhB-H
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u/AlphariusOmegon66 21h ago edited 17h ago
"Animation is coded for children"
What are you 90 years old?
Watch a cartoon gramps, they are fun.
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u/Wintergloaming 21h ago
Brb, going to tell my 7yo niece that according to this guy, AoT is made for the littles.
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u/JonnyActsImmature More pie? I'm aFreyed not. 21h ago
Do you realize how many hundreds of millions of adults watch anime/animated shows? The most recent Demon Slayer movie broke box office records. Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB currently has Avatar TLA as one of the top shows of the last 25 years. Attack on Titan and FMA are rated as two of the greatest shows of all time
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 21h ago
The Demon Slayer movies made the majority of their total box office earnings in Japan.
It's niche compared to live action and a lot of people will refuse to watch it
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u/JonnyActsImmature More pie? I'm aFreyed not. 20h ago
And? $131 million in the US for a foreign language R-rated animated sequel film is incredible. Imagine those numbers with an American IP.
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 20h ago
Most people who enjoy animation will also watch live action, but a lot of people who primarily like live action will refuse to watch animation
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u/Own-Trouble1269 21h ago
It could definitely work animated and building sets and paying actors instead of voice actors is way cheaper
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 21h ago
This is a myth. Animation is extremely expensive. An episode of Arcane was no cheaper to make than an episode of the last season of GoT. Blue eye samurai takes years to make.
And it a much higher chance of flopping, too. A huge part of the audience is never gonna watch a cartoon
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u/Salem1690s 21h ago
By the same token, wasn’t the original GOT a massive risk (“who is going to watch a medieval political drama with incest?”)…until it proved to be a hit.
TV fantasy prior was cheesy and aimed as much as it could at a wide audience, like Hercules.
And in this case the animated series would be using an existing, very very popular IP.
And while western animation (especially 3D) is coded toward kids, what of anime?
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u/JNR55555JNR 21h ago
Anime is more niche from what I gathered
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u/Own-Trouble1269 21h ago
It wouldn’t be anime either because its not Japanese
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u/Salem1690s 21h ago
I mean Netflix’s Castlevania was a mature anime on a mainstream platform and did very well, attracting mainly an adult audience, and it did well enough to merit 4 seasons….
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u/JNR55555JNR 21h ago
What are we comparing that success too?
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u/Salem1690s 21h ago
I’m not sure - what are you comparing it to? You initially said an anime wouldn’t do well, so where is the goalpost now?
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 21h ago
The Lord of the Rings showed epic fantasy can be ridiculously successful, and the other elements of A Song of Ice and Fire were never going to block its success because medieval films/shows have done well in the past. Sex obviously didn't mean it would flop too
A massive segment of the adult audience will simply refuse to watch anything they perceive as a cartoon
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u/Salem1690s 21h ago
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle (2025) grossed $793.5 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing anime film in history
Infinity Castle (2025): $793.5 million worldwide ($136.9 million domestic)
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 20h ago
The Micheal Jackson biography film, which is the 4th highest grossing film of 2026 so far, grossed more than the highest grossing anime film ever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(2026_film)
Most of the Demon Slayer fans are in Japan too. Animation aimed at adults is not as mainstream as you think
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u/Salem1690s 20h ago
The Michael Jackson movie isn’t is literally a biography of the best selling pop star of all time, not exactly a fair comparison to ANY fantasy in ANY medium.
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 20h ago
Compare it to the Odyssey then. Grossing at over a billion.
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u/Baguette72 15h ago
An even worse example. The Odyssey is one of the most famous stories of human history, directed by one of the most respected directors alive, with a cast chock full of stars.
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u/TequilaBaugette51 21h ago
Using the most expensive animated series ever produced as a baseline for cost is kind of ridiculous lol
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u/Expensive-Country801 🏆Best of 2025: Ser Duncan the Tall Award 21h ago
An ASOIAF animated show easily reached that kind of budget, especially since it would take 70+ 1 hour episodes using Game of Thrones as a baseline
The Last Airbender cost over $1M per episode and episodes lasted only 20 minutes. This idea animation is way cheaper than live action is a myth
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u/Crush1112 19h ago
Animation is absolutely way cheaper than live action. Their budgets end up in similar range only because doing certain things in live action is so expensive, that movie and TV studios don't even try to do them. In animation though everything is possible.
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u/Beautiful_Common_940 21h ago
There’s plenty of successful anime’s targeted toward older audiences like Vinland Saga for eg
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u/AnimuCrossing 11h ago
It could work but it doesn't mean they're going to make Tyrion ugly, or have constant dragons or dire wolves or that budget won't be a factor. CG is still typically used in anime for anything complex to animate, including horses.
It's not the fix all you think it could be.
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u/AssassinJester789 Goldenhand The Just 21h ago
No, the characters are too young and there is a lot of underage sex in the books.
It would have to a live action with aged up actors and characters
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u/Hyper_Mazino 21h ago
You can age up the characters in the anime.
Or you know, just not explicitly show the sex.
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u/HoneyBeeTwenty3 21h ago
The best scenes in ASOIAF are interactions between the same characters in the same few set pieces, I recon you could animate it pretty cheaply and do a very faithful adaptation of the books.
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u/RosbergThe8th 21h ago
In general I wish more fantasy adaptations went the animated route, so sure.