Live-action adaptation does not always work

Do It Yourself!! (どぅー・いっと・ゆあせるふ!!) is an original anime that aired in 2022, with a parallel manga run (still on-going). I would put it under the "cute girls coming together to form a club and doing something together" category. In this case, as the title says, they are the DIY club in school, making their own stuff and eventually a treehouse.

Well, recently, a live-action adaptation of Do It Yourself!! started airing on Japanese TV. The title is DIY!! Do It Yourself!! (DIY!! -どぅー・いっと・ゆあせるふ-).

I recently wrote about Insomniacs After School's live-action adaptation and was somewhat critical about it. But still, it could work. I even gave my own thoughts about how it could be made to work.

But the live-action adaptation (I shall call it DIY!! from here) is... a very simple "no".

Why?

The main character, Serufu, is a clumsy, cute girl who keeps hurting herself accidentally. This makes for a lot of comic relief and running gags in the anime. And the anime uses a unique colour palette to make it very clear that this is a work of fiction with all the exaggeration. This makes it something that you can watch, laugh, and forget about.

But a live-action adaptation will suffer from two main problems. First, the "accidentally hurt herself" part is going to be very very difficult to act out without actually endangering the actress or others around her. But this is the central theme of the story so any watering down of this aspect actually weakens the overall story. It is funny when you see an anime character fumbling with an electric saw. But seeing a real person fumbling with a REAL electric saw... that is downright SCARY!

Second, a clumsy, cute girl can bring laughter in an anime, but when you see an actual girl looking like an airhead with the IQ of a snail, talking like a 5-year-old when she is supposed to be 15... it is just irritating. Annoying. Frankly, in the real world, a person like her would be in a school for people with special needs, not a regular high school. The character design and story works when it is an anime because everyone knows it is not supposed to be real. When when real people start to portray these characters, it just becomes unbelievable.

(There is also the part about the pig. In the anime, Serufu has a pet pig, and it is a running gag for the pig to shiver in fear whenever the family eats pork during meals. In the live-action adaptation, there is only a pig plush toy so another funny aspect of the story is gone.)

Bottom line: some stories just aren't meant for live-action adaptation.