Anime Series' that got big budget remakes/re-tellings in film format

[bhayes82]

SDF Macross got retold as Macross Do You Remember Love

Fist of the North Star (season 1 -3 ) got retold in a film format

Escaflowne series was retold in film format

Lensman (reverse actually, the film got retold as a series with same characters)

Dragonball Z is getting this treatment in both directions (retelling certain story arcs in film format and vice versa)

i'm not counting gundam cause gundam just does compilation films not total remakes. infact i feel the Zeta Movie trilogy should've been a total remake and would've worked better as such.

but was was this the norm in the late '1980s ??? I'm only aware of a few series that got this big budget retilling treatment

[Seto Kaiba]

but was was this the norm in the late '1980s ??? I'm only aware of a few series that got this big budget retilling treatment

That kind of movie project was, and still is, quite unusual.

Compilation movies have always been the norm when a TV anime does well enough to justify a movie. That was the industry norm as far back as the 60's when Mighty Atom (AKA Astroboy) released a compilation movie that was cut together from the existing TV animation.

A TV anime with explosive popularity could expect to get an all-original film made as a sequel to, or spinoff of, the TV series like the Urusei Yatsura movies, Lupin III films, or Dragon Ball Z movies.

Then there's this rare breed where, instead of telling a new story, they went back and redid the story of the TV series with all-new animation to do things with the story that they couldn't do on a TV budget. For Macross, it was to up the detail level and show the Zentradi as more alien. For Fist of the North Star, it was taking the brakes off the ultraviolence.

[Mafty]

It's kinda a shame that Gundam doesn't have more big budget retellings like Macross (though the original story comes close in the later part of the trilogy) although I'd heard that Tomino wanted the Zeta Trilogy redone, but there wasn't enough budget.

For another example the kinda obscure Panzer World Galient had a retelling OVA a few years after its early end.

[Underrated GM Custom]

The Escaflowne movie seemed more like an alternate universe than a film remake to me. Similar to how CLAMP's X - TV series is wildly different than the X - Movie including a different ending.

I didn't know Tomino wanted a full remake for Zeta, there's some really beautiful animation in A New Translation, in particular the parachute scene with Amuro.