Film scholar Thomas Leitch once described the central paradox of the remake: audiences expect it to be “exactly the same as the original, yet better than the original” — two demands that are almost impossible to satisfy simultaneously. This tension is compounded by a business-versus-art paradox noted by Japanese film scholar Kyohei Kitamura in the 2017 anthology The Creativity of Remake Films: while remakes reduce commercial risk by leveraging existing IP, they simultaneously take on the artistic risk of being judged against a beloved predecessor.

These ideas have become newly relevant following a wave of social media debate about remaking Mobile Suit Gundam (機動戦士ガンダム), the 1979 series that launched one of anime’s most iconic franchises. The argument goes that the animation quality of the original — a product of its era — has been a barrier to winning new overseas fans, and that a remake could broaden the series’ global reach. This is a widely acknowledged challenge; it was even part of the impetus behind the manga Mobile Suit Gundam THE ORIGIN. Yet the word “remake” covers an enormous range of creative acts, from reboots to re-imaginings, and its definition has only grown more fluid as media has diversified.

Classifying Remakes in Anime

Leitch proposed four categories of film remakes. Anime critic Ryota Fujitsu adapts these into a framework better suited to anime:

1) Re-adaptation

This breaks into two sub-types:

• Classical source inheritance — returning as faithfully as possible to the spirit and content of the original source, especially when earlier anime adaptations had strayed far from it. Examples include the theatrical Haikara-san ga Tooru (2017), the theatrical The Rose of Versailles (2025), Captain Tsubasa (2018), Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai (2020), and Urusei Yatsura (2022).
• Update — retaining the core premise while adjusting details and story to suit the times. GeGeGe no Kitaro, Cyborg 009, and Lupin III fall into this category. The more a series is updated, the further it tends to drift from its source.

2) Revision

The overall narrative is left intact, but visual and audio elements are reworked. This includes retakes added to home-video releases, music replacements, and selective shot-by-shot redrawing — as seen in the theatrical Mobile Suit Gundam films and parts of The Ideon: Be Invoked. More extreme examples are the 1998 special edition of the Mobile Suit Gundam theatrical cut, which rebuilt the entire soundtrack from scratch, and GHOST IN THE SHELL 2.0, which replaced certain cuts with 3DCG and recolored the entire film.

3) Copy

A shot-for-shot reproduction of a prior work. In anime, individual scenes are occasionally recreated in homage and inserted into new works, but no complete shot-for-shot remake of an entire anime exists. The most famous film example is Gus Van Sant’s recreation of Hitchcock’s Psycho, which philosopher Slavoj Žižek called “not a simple failure but the greatest failed masterpiece” — because the closer the imitation, the more paradoxically the differences are thrown into relief.

4) Homage

Anime frequently contains individual scenes that pay tribute to earlier works, but there is no anime equivalent of Brian De Palma’s sustained, career-long dialogue with Hitchcock.

These categories are not mutually exclusive; real works typically blend several at once.

Case Study: Space Battleship Yamato 2199

Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2013) illustrates how a remake can weave multiple approaches together. It updates the original 1974 series to meet contemporary standards of realism while simultaneously striving to preserve its classic appeal. Over time, it develops its own narrative logic and arrives as a fully realized new work of 2013 — functioning not just as a remake but as a critical engagement with the original through the act of remaking.

The Gundam Remaster Project: What Will It Be?

If Mobile Suit Gundam were to be remade, the primary goal would almost certainly be “classical source inheritance.” Yet even a faithful reproduction cannot escape transformation: the shift from a 4:3 to a 16:9 aspect ratio alone changes every layout; the density expected of background art is entirely different from 1979; and audio formats and realism benchmarks have moved so far that the sound design would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. The result, however faithful the intention, would inevitably be a new work judged by today’s standards — the paradox Leitch identified playing out in full.

It has already been announced that a Gundam Remaster Project is in development to mark the franchise’s 50th anniversary in 2029, though no details have been revealed about what form it will take. Taken at face value, “remaster” most closely resembles the “Revision” category described above — a commercially significant milestone project. Whether the two paradoxes at the heart of every remake will cast their shadow over this project, or somehow be sidestepped, remains to be seen.

---

About the author: Ryota Fujitsu (藤津亮太) is a Japanese anime critic born in 1968 in Shizuoka Prefecture. His books include 「アニメ評論家」宣言, チャンネルはいつもアニメ ゼロ年代アニメ時評, 声優語, and プロフェッショナル13人が語る わたしの声優道. His most recent work is ぼくらがアニメを見る理由 2010年代アニメ時評. He teaches anime courses at various cultural centers and hosts a monthly live-stream on “Anime no Mon Channel” every first Friday.