BY ALICE FONTANESI
STAFF WRITER
From live-action movies to shojo anime, adaptations are one of the riskiest things a person can do. Despite what everyone says about adaptations, why do most of them suck?
First of all, changing the medium of an already existing piece of media can severely affect how the story is told. Stories that require a lot of dialogue usually end up as novels, but if someone tried to make it a graphic novel, not all of the emotions could be portrayed accurately since the author must rely on visual storytelling. Another issue that most people have with adaptations is the fact that certain things are changed for seemingly no reason. From changing the races of the characters to skipping a little detail, many agree that this is one of the major things that can ruin an adaptation.
Both the two Percy Jackson movies and the Avatar movie were plagued by this. They made major changes to the story, characters, and basically everything compared to the original source material. Annabeth’s design was changed, the Mist wasn’t explained, they made the central focus not Zeus’s lightning bolt, they didn’t even mention Kronos, and they even ruined the Lotus Casino. As for the live-action Avatar, most of the characters were white, a lot of information was missing, the humor wasn’t the same, and it was mostly just a million-dollar recap of the first season.
Some people also argue that if you disregard the original source, it can still be pretty good, but that is not the point. The point of an adaptation is to make a story in a different medium, and even if you disregard the source then the adaptation isn’t even that good on its own. Adaptations don’t have all of the context that is needed to tell the story, so they’re prone to having plot holes and badly paced storytelling.
Of course, there are some good adaptations. Most people can agree that the Harry Potter movies were good because they got all of the main points of the books, and they portrayed what was described in the books quite accurately. If we disregard everything that J. K. Rowling has said that changed the story, then we can see why the movies were a success. But the movies also barely carried any weight that the original novels did, so it mostly felt like an accurate recap.
The best kind of adaptations I can remember are anime adaptations. It’s well known that most anime are based on mangas, and while most anime do a great job of animating the story, most well-known anime are anime originals. They make some of the best adaptations because it is a much better medium to use than live-action. Mangas are black and white comics, so animating it instead of making people dress up is already a step in the right direction. The manga fans will recognize the story, and animating is much easier than making a live-action. You already don’t have to change character designs or their races since you don’t need to spend any of the budget on these..
Animes such as Toilet-bound Hanako-kun and My Hero Academia were successful thanks to how well they replicated the manga artstyle, and TBHK even won for best character design during the 2021 CrunchyRoll Anime Awards. Most anime are also serialized by episodes, so the pacing is similar to the original manga.
In fact, most stories would work as TV shows and anime better than movies. Despite how most books follow the beginning, middle, and end sequence, there is way too much information and detail in each chapter to cram into two hours.
Despite all of that, you can still easily ruin an anime adaptation by going original such as Tokyo Ghoul and the second season of The Promised Neverland.
So will adaptations ever become something that we can be proud of? Hopefully.