For most people, this week’s release of Dragonball Evolution means nothing more than a masculine counter-part to the madness that will be The Hannah Montana Movie. They may have a passing familiarity with the source material and a cursory knowledge that it’s “based off one of them Japanese cartoons” due to the spiky hair synonomous with the animated genre and weird sounding names paired off with a white guy and five other vaguely Asian actors.

Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball series is by no means a work of genius. It’s a quirky retelling of  Journey Into The West that was meant to be a kid’s comic relying on a dumb-but-pure hero (Son Goku) who traveled with his friends —among them, a perverted shape-shifting pig, a perverted old man who was a martial arts master, and a genius inventor whose name was roughly “Bloomers Briefs.” Notice a trend? Toriyama was ready to end his MAD Magazine-esque pun-filled series when his publisher at Weekly Shonen Jump realized they had a hit—especially during a segment where Goku enrolled in a martial arts tournament to fight over-the-top fighters a dinosaur, a fat samurai and even a green demon named Piccolo. This would lead to the worldwide Dragon Ball Z franchise, credited for spawning every joke imaginable about anime for a Western audience.

It’s not that we don’t mind anime or manga being adapted, but when it is so carelessly handled by a studio and culture that can’t seem to distinguish between two different series–it’s just disappointing. Especially when U.S. production groups acquire live-action rights to make it a vehicle for Zac Efron. That said, here are five films we think justify the end and death of live-action adaptions–from Japan and the U.S.

Fist of the North Star

An ultra-violent look at a Mad Max wasteland overrun by hyper-muscular men whose merest touch can explode limbs, slice off digits and destroy buildings. The story follows Kenshiro, a master of Hokuto Shinken, as he travels the wastelands seemingly righting wrongs by blowing bad guys up with his fists. There would eventually be some shred of plot, but the series remains a cheesecake feast for gore-hounds and fighting nerds.

In 1995, it was turned into a live-action film directed by Tony Randel, best known for Hellraiser II and former V.P. of New World Pictures. This straight-to-video feature appeared to have been shot on only the finest soundstage in the San Bernardino Valley. Randel’s approach to the series boiled the entire plot down to what essentially was the first quarter of the manga, erasing subplots left and right before managing to make every character with an Asian name be European and every one with a European name to be portrayed by an Asian actor. After all, when you hear of someone named Kenshiro, you immediately think of Gary Daniels, yes? Worst of all, the series’ speed-blur action and steely faced protagonist was replaced with shoddy kickboxing, countless training montages and Chris Penn trying to rape a woman who could barely garble her lines.

Devilman
One of the definitive “anti-hero” series in animation, Devilman comes from Go Nagai, a manga creator whose work is littered with violence and intricately designed plots that were devoured by kids. In this, a pure-hearted and timid teenager named Akira unwittingly becomes the host for Amon, the Demon of War—hence transforming into “Devilman.”

The 2004 live-action film had many excited, since the original material is beloved. After all, Akira spends most of his time in a demonic state fighting mutated plants and other Gods. So naturally, firing up a Playstation and hitting “record” off a TV seemed the natural way to capture all the battles–especially the “open-ended” ending that makes jack squat unless you’re a fan of the manga (which has never been officially released in the States), or you managed to sit through an over-simplified retelling of the origin story that wound up winning the Japanese equivalent of the Razzies for “Best” Picture. Plagued by jump cuts and long, overly drawn out spiritual dialog that makes no sense, Nagai’s original penchant for violence was forsaken by director Hiroyuki Nasu to present CGI battles that would even make Roger Corman cringe in shame.

Detroit Metal City

Based on Kiminori Wakasugi’s manga, Negishi is essentially a dandy—preferring to listen to Swedish pop music and wear a bowl cut, and dreaming of being a fashionable member of the songwriter community. Of course, in reality, he can’t hack it and is forced to join by unknown means an independent Death Metal band, Detroit Metal City, and masquerade as Johannes Krauser II—a self-proclaimed demon from hell who raped his parents, murdered them and who is responsible for the hit single “Satsugai” (“Murder”) among others (“Death Penis,” “Grotesque” and “Demon King.”)

A 12-episode animated series and ongoing manga, DMC is actually extremely entertaining if you like the Adult Swim series Metalocalypse, This is Spinal Tap or might enjoy being immersed in a culture where fans do believe Krauser is real and Negishi routinely has sobbing fits since he can’t eat a parfait. It’s hard to figure out exactly where the film alters from the manga and anime, since it begins and contains sections that are shot-for-shot similar. Out of this entire list, the DMC film is the most truthful. And that’s where the problem starts, since the series is ongoing and focuses first on battling the world’s foremost Death Metal performer Jack Ill Dark–voiced by RIKI Takeuchi in the anime, and Gene Simmons in the film. It made two critics walk out after clearly getting the joke, but the film does something worse. It showcases that gag strips and shorts are funny, but stringing them together for a forced Three Act Structure takes all the charm out of the already-stretched jokes. It seems like director Toshio Lee realized around the 40-minute mark he needed a real plot and had to stop cribbing scenes from the manga. The final result? A parody of a parody that tries to have a moral message that isn’t ever in the manga.

Grave of the Fireflies
There’s any number of adjectives you could use to describe Akiyuki Nosaka’s original ode to World War II, which he admits to writing after watching his own sister starve to death after the bombings. It begins with the death of Seita, who is unceremoniously thrown into a pile of similar dead bodies; we then look back at the unfortunate circumstances that came upon him and his sister, Setsuko. The anime showcases the greed and mindset that came upon the Japanese people while being attacked and thrown out of their homes, but more so the horror of watching their own extended families ignore them and let them starve to death. Not to mention, in a bit of aside, this was originally released as a double-feature–with My Neighbor Totoro.

And then, there was this: a 2005 made-for-TV drama series that was supposedly made in accordance with the anniversary of World War II. Instead of focusing on the children again, it shifts perspectives to an original character–a cousin of theirs who watches her mother, the cruel aunt from the original work, turn from a sweet woman into the harsh and vicious person that drives the brother and sister away. This new version is told via flashback from modern Tokyo where this new character acts as the narrator rather than the original characters from the anime. It completely changes the ending of Seita and Setsuko, who was cremated by her brother and her ashes placed into a fruit tin that acted as the last symbol of their own dead mother, as forgotten children to a wistful remembrance of their aunt who threw them out.

Dragon Ball: The Legend Begins
The film clip above speaks volumes about why you should never try to make a guy named “The Turtle Hermit” flesh and blood. At least this isn’t in Dragonball Evolution. The fact that Evolution is dumb enough to have a villain named “Oozaru”–which roughly translates to Great Monkey in Japanese–as the big shock is not quite as stupid as the clip above, but it’s close.