When we think of Japanese television, most of us think of anime. It’s ubiquitous, and can often feel like Japan’s primary media export. But while there’s a few dozen anime coming out every season, that doesn’t at all mean it’s the only thing that comes on television.

RELATED: The 10 Best Anime Of The Decade, Ranked

No, every season Japan airs plenty of new series that are live-action. But they don’t just limit themselves to doing the same series every year like America. They often take popular manga and turn them into live, Japanese drama television series. Many of these have even been based on series which would become an anime later.

10 BARTENDER

A popular manga series by Araki Joh and Kenji Nagatomo, Bartender is a series about a talented bartender named Ryu Sasakura. Ryu owns the bar Eden Hall, where patrons find he has the uncanny ability to serve the perfect drink for any situation.

The series ran in Super Jump (and later Grand Jump) from 2004 to 2011, and was turned into an anime in 2006, though it only ran for a scant 11 episodes. The television drama ran in 2011 for only eight episodes though and started Masaki Kiba, a member of the boy band known as Arashi.

9 VIDEO GIRL AI

Video Girl Ai was a series from Masakazu Katsura that ran in Weekly Shonen Jump for a few years from 1989 to 1992. Another romantic comedy, Video Girl Ai centers on Yota, a young man with a crush on a girl who’s actually in love with his best friend.

Intending to cheer himself up, he rents a video from a store that happens to have special videos containing girls that literally come to life when the video is played. There, Yota meets Ai, a woman who promises to make Yota’s life better. Though a series from the early ’90s, Video Girl Ai received a live-action series that ran for two seasons in 2018-2019.

8 NODAME CANTABILE

Chiaki is playing the violin while Nodame accompanies him on the piano.

Shinichi Chiaki and Megumi Noda are a pair of university students who both aspire to be classical musicians. The two of them are total opposites—Chiaki’s a cocky perfectionist, and Noda is an eccentric young girl who learns her music playing by ear. One of the more popular romantic comedies based on josei, Nodame Cantabile was popular as both an anime and manga.

RELATED: The 10 Worst Shonen Anime Of The Decade, According To IMDb

But Tomoko Ninomiya’s manga series also managed to get a Japanese drama that adapted most of its story back in 2006, then a sequel series named Nodame Cantabile Shinshun: Special in Europe in 2008. If that wasn’t enough, they got a pair of sequel films in 2009 and 2010.

7 GOKUSEN

In Kozueko Morimoto’s Gokusen, Kumiko Yamaguchi wants nothing more than to be a teacher. But her grandfather is the leader of a yakuza organization, and with no other heirs, people within the group want her to become the next leader.

Kumiko tries her best to remain focused on her own goals though, including teaching a group of delinquent high school kids. While it did receive an anime series, Gokusen was far more popular as a Japanese drama. There, it received three television series from 2002 to 2008, and a separate film as well.

6 LOVELY COMPLEX

risa and atsushi from lovely complex

A shoujo manga series written by Aya Nakahara, Lovely Complex has a straight-forward enough plot. It starts with Risa Koizumi and Atsushi Otani—Risa’s considered too tall for her age as a high school girl, and Otani’s considered too short for a highschool boy. Initially, they try to help one another hook up with their crushes, but when that fails, eventually love starts to blossom between the two of them instead.

A live-action film released in 2006 which was popular enough to eve make it to the states subtitled a few years later, even though the popularity of anime and Japanese drama wasn’t where it is now.

5 NEGIMA

The Negima universe is surprisingly popular, though no one’s really sure what they want that universe to be. Writer/artist Ken Akamaatsu wanted the series to be about a boy wizard who eventually becomes a master mage while working alongside the classroom of junior high girls who become talented women working with him.

The anime wanted to lean into the harem-y elements of that. But in 2007 a live-action series emerged that had a different plot from all the different series that aired before it, and even used a girl to play as Negi, the lead role.

4 PRETTY GUARDIAN SAILOR MOON

Potentially the best piece of Sailor Moon trivia is that there’s not only a Sailor Moon live-action series, but it’s pretty much styled as a Tokusatsu/Super Sentai. The story is largely the same, with the Sailor Senshi standing against Queen Beryl while trying to defeat the Four Kings of Heaven.

RELATED: 10 Anime That Are Banned In Certain Countries

But there are some notable differences, including making a version of Sailor Mercury that’s actually being overcome by evil and making a fused version of Usagi and Serena known as Princess Sailor Moon. The series ran for just over 50 episodes from 2003 to 2004.

3 PATLABOR: THE NEXT GENERATION

Patlabor was brought to life as an anime back in 1988, and the universe was incredibly popular. Another giant robot centered universe, it was set in a near-future where major construction work was done with humanoid vehicles known as Labors. With the invention of these Labors, so came Labor crime, meaning police were given customized labors to deal with them.

The Patlabor universe had a series of films, a separate timeline focused on television that made up a big portion of the anime world in the ’90s. The live-action series, The Next Generation, is actually a series of films that follow the Patlabor animated movies. They aired from 2014 to 2015 as seven different parts.

2 HOLYLAND

Kouji Mori’s Holyland was a seinen manga which ran in Young Animal from 2000 to 2008, following the story of Kamishiro Yuu, a young boy who mastered a single boxing punch as a method to deal with being bullied.

While spending time on the streets getting into fights and honing his skills, Yuu runs into a number of people and organizations, while becoming known as the “Thug Hunter”. Though it’s never received an anime of its own, it did get a fairly popular live-action series in 2005 that ran about thirteen episodes, featuring former Kamen Rider and Super Sentai actor Hidenori Tokuyama as a lead character.

1 GREAT TEACHER ONIZUKA

It’s safe to say every mid-2000’s anime fan remembers Great Teacher Onizuka, the anime series about a former kid from a biker gang who grew up to become a teacher at a private school. The series ran for 43 episodes as an anime, but for about 25 volumes and five years as a manga. In the late 90’s, a rather popular live-action drama was made about the series, which only ran a short thirteen episodes before coming to an end even before the anime ever started.

GTO’s popularity is such that a decade after ending as a manga, they revived the series as a live-action again, giving it another two seasons with a new cast in 2012.

NEXT: The 10 Best Aniplex Anime, Ranked (According To IMDb)