Adaptation, Take 2
I was just exploring the contextual cavities in the American anime fan experience and this train of thought occurred to me. Most anime on the market are adopted from manga, which is already a graphical medium. The change from manga to anime can be very straightforward, and it usually is.
From the perspective of a fan of a manga that is subsequently translated into anime, why would I be interested in it? From the perspective of a fan of the anime who is now posed the question about buying the original manga or not, why would I select “buy” instead of “don’t buy”?
When I say contextual cavities, I mean the missing bits of context that a Japanese fan has to think of in terms of their consumption experience, that I do not. Or we do not.
Is this why I am a seiyuu and anison fan? Take Negima! for example, the manga is long-running and has an established fan base. What does the anime add to the overall experience? I think if you are of a certain persuasion, lack of a better word, the allure comes naturally. But this is not always the case.
Taken in this context, that Dai Sato rant actually makes sense. It’s almost like “official” doujinshi in how some of these OADs or TV spinoffs are. Worse, good chunks of it isn’t even made in Japan, and it is Japan exploiting foreign laborers.
Of course, not all manga adopted into anime are like this. Sometimes it takes a life on its own. Miyazaki’s Nausicaa is a good example of two entirely different things, as if one merely is a branched snapshot build from the same software project suite and the other is an ever-developing baseline. They serve very different purposes.
Well, it goes back to some kind of subjective sense. We all have very different, wide variety of reasons that we buy some anime. We all have very similar reasons, too. In fact the only one thing I can almost say for sure is that all of us have more than one reason when it comes to buying a video of the anime that we like. Because we like anime for a variety of reasons. But when we weight these things, I believe a rational calculus rules; what we plug in as variables differ, but the net is similar.
In the aggregate, however, in the past 10 years the best thing that’s ever happened to TV anime and adapted anime is the lift from pulp fiction–the proliferation of light novel adaptations. I believe on the whole (and there are plenty of exceptions), the distance between a work of prose versus a work of cinematic presentation is large enough that it is tough to dismiss one or the other on the comparative basis. Now that doesn’t mean nobody do it; people do it all the time still, but it becomes a matter of seeing the forest for the trees. When the anime sucks, people will say it sucks. Not because they just wasted their time getting the exact thing that they’ve already read.
Of course, again, there are exceptions. And there are exceptions to the exceptions. Like Haruhi. But I think adopting light novels flips the manga adaptation model around so that more often than not, you end up with something new and different enough, something someone might end up wanting to buy. And it’s not because they’re the fan of the source material.
[Here's some more food for thought. Scanlation may hurt manga sales in English-speaking regions on a per-title basis, but has anyone considered it may hurt anime sales as well? Speaking personally I have foregone anime purchases because I found the manga to be superior in doing what I think is what I want out of a title. I suspect having the scanlation context to baseline your experience with a particular franchise restores that bit of missing context in your otherwise happy gaijin life, but it highlights the shadow of the upcoming anime adaptations, possibly making them less desirable. Well, I'm not saying it happens in a notable way even in the aggregate; who knows? And on the same note, an adaptation can go well with the source material even when the gap between them is small, so in essence cross-advertising between manga and anime works as planned, increasing a fan's likelihood to buy. Again, it's just food for thought.]
Sometimes I wonder how did anime become popular in America in the first place. It’s an epic display of the tail wagging the dog when it comes to examining franchise and marketing strategies.
[What about video games? Worse, what about visual novels? If video game adaptations suck and novel adaptations don't...]
Visual Novels have a host of adaption difficulties all their own. The main one is, of course, taking the multiple diverging paths and trying to fit them into a single coherent narrative. This almost never works. Only KyoAni’s Key adaptions seem to have succeeded so far.
Sometimes the producers recognize this and go down a single heroine’s path, relegating the other heroines to side characters. While this improves the narrative flow, it leads to angry fans of the original game who complain that their favorite heroine has been slighted. And angry fanboys are not pretty.
The omnibus format AmagamiSS is using is interesting, giving each girl a full route without mixing them together. I’m concerned about having only four episodes to tell each story, though. Since the series is still airing, I’ll reserve my judgement.
How about Higurashi and Umineko?
You are right that VNs have their own problems. In fact, it is so messy that I am not sure where to begin on that.
Those series are of a VN type referred to as “kinetic novels”. They don’t have any choices or branching paths; you just read them straight through like a book series, starting with Onikakushi-hen as the first volume. In theory, adapting Higurashi should be the same as adapting light novels.
And here I thought that light novel adaptations were one of the worst innovations in recent years, mainly because of how artlessly done they are. That said, I do think that it is entirely possible that they figure out that things like just because there is an endless text dump in the novel doesn’t mean that they have to just have a character delivering a monologue for 10 minutes.
… great now I am going to be thinking of something that isn’t a text dump, that is based on a light novel, in the past 10 years. I guess FMP Fumoffu sort of counts.
@dawningblue: I think the non-linear narrative style in those VNs are not too different than the multi-branching style of the other types of VNs. It’s doable…just a matter of if they’re willing to jump over that nonlinear narrative hurdle that Amagami is doing.
I don’t see the problem that jpmeyer is alluding to.
Bakemonogatari‘s text dumps were among the best parts! Katanagatari, less so, but it strikes me as a lesser work and one that is still done well.
Haruhi, I suppose — in the form of Yuki’s explanation to Kyon just what’s going on.
I haven’t paid close attention to the A certain … series, though I guess every story-arc in Railgun did have an explanatory monologue. I haven’t watched Shana nor Zero no tsukaima at all.
I’m trying to think of other light-novel adaptations with text dumps, and coming up short, though maybe my memory is just bad — not Yamamoto Yohko, Starship Operators, Kino’s Jouney. Not Seitokai no ichizon.
There was a text-dump “this is how this world works” recappy episode in 12 Kingdoms, true.
I think all those works are full of text dumps.
Maybe Yamamoto Yoko would be a good counter, but that is old.
Thinking about Kino more, I guess you’re right — Kino travels someplace, and someone tells her a story: text dump. I don’t remember anything like that in Starship Operators though.
Where was the text dump in Setokai no ichizon?
Seitokai no Ichizon is a story with a bunch of rants, internet forum style actually. It just has punchlines to make things a bit more interesting. In that case…well, you can only get what you get.
Starship Operators is much less of a text dump, yes, because it’s not a very character-driven plot. So maybe that is even better of an example.
I haven’t watched beyond the first disk of Moribito, is there a text-dump in that series?
Anyway, I agree with you that the trend for adapting light novels (or perhaps even better, full-fledged novels (time for me to trot out my wish for SHAFT to animate The Master and Margarita again)) is a good thing. Judging by the results, better than adapting bishoujo games.
Taking a cue from your post-illustration, text dump in Kara no kyoukai (might have helped)?
I think my favorite series of the past several years have been [light] novel adaptations. Indeed, they probably form a disproportionate fraction of my top-20 all-time favorites.
I can’t say since I gave up after 1 episode, but Moribito probably has its fair share of exposition, because that’s how the book is.
Kara no Kyoukai is more the illustration about why the anime is much better than the books :3
As to Arcu, I think it is self evident.
I’ve been watching light novel adaptions forever and have never considered that the dialectical relationship between the light novel and its adaption would be stronger than between that of anime and manga, for example. Probably because, most light novels are not available in English now. Granted more publishers are actively publishing light novels, the availability is still sparse in general.
I think Haruhi was a pretty good example of how I got something new by reading the source material after watching the anime (the sense of danger was of much greater prominence in the novel as compared to the anime), although probably not everyone thinks that way. That was at least true for the first novel. It also acts as a counter-example, as I am one of the few who read Endless Eight before the anime screwed it up, and found it to be one of the best short stories in the entire series (just behind Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody) thus far. I doubt anyone who had watched Endless Eight would be able to appreciate the novel form thereafter.
Endless Eight is kind of a rare exception :)
Well, yeah, basically there is more room to be interesting between two stories that are basically the same when the medium are very different. In a nutshell.
My immedieate thought for an anime based on a novel/novels that didn’t have a lot of text dump was Irresponsible Captain Tyler.
Honestly though, I don’t see a problem with a lot of exposition, as long as it’s handled well. Then again, I’m a hard SF fan, so I’m used to seeing text dumps far, far heavier than what gets used in anime.
I think the tendencies of the average anime-buying person is similar to yours, JEL. At least, we’re pretty forgiving when it comes to certain narrative devices…
“Taken in this context, that Dai Sato rant actually makes sense.”
Yes, this is I think the core of what Sato is really complaining about – I just think he just doesn’t communicate it very well. It’s not so much that certain works are not “serious” enough, it’s just that many works are just rather derivative and lack any sense of ambition or drive to expand the viewership.
As for adaptation issues, the classic difficulty is that there are certain tricks an author can pull with the written word that is a lot more difficult to handle in a full audio-visual approach. It’s very hard to capture ambiguity with animated visuals (let alone live action) – consider surrealist works like Kafka or Murakami.
I think part of what makes light novels easy to adapt and so very successful in adaptation is that they eschew a lot of literary tropes; they’re written in simple, easy to understand language. The medium and the telling of the story takes a backseat to the plot itself – the author generally doesn’t try to capitalize on the quirks of the medium.
Good point. Thanks for the insight about utilizing literary powers.