Have you enjoyed any Japanese anime that have diverged from the original source materiial?
| Just to make things clear before I begin, my observations are not about localization and dubbing changes or political controversy. It is solely about the stories themselves, how they are told, and how they may split from the original works. Please do not derail this into a thread about "woke shit" or "Localizer bad" as that is irrelevant to the questions and hypothesis being proposed. I had a bit of a strange observation that i have made in regard to how the online fandom (usually of Western fans) react to Japanese anime when they diverge or make changes from the original source material that they are based on. It seems generally online that many fans get more upset when Japanese anime make changes to the storyline compared to fans of Western film and TV. I have mentioned it before, but one of my other hobbies outside of Japanese animation is reading and watching media based on Western comic books. Unlike Japanese anime when they adapt stories, adaptations of Western comic books tend to take a lot more creative liberty and will reinvent old stories in new ways, or even tell completely new stories with these familiar characters instead of adapting pre-established comic stories one to one. Even films like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World which are regarded as being pretty faithful have some pretty big changes from the source and are still well liked. Meanwhile Japanese anime like Fullmetal Alchemist(2003) have faced a lot of criticism over the years for similarly making changes and diverging from the original course into something completely new. Fullmetal Alchemist is definitely one of the most prominent examples I can think of with a series going in a new direction causing controversy among fans even decades later. Many people completely write off the old show because of it not being a 1 to 1 adaptation of the (at the time) incomplete manga. By the end of episode 28, the 2003 series had caught up with the source material and had started to create its own original story with the familiar characters, as well as some new ones, tying in the existing manga material into a completely fresh new direction. The shift in plot didn't really feel all too unnatural either as the writers for the show cleverly were able to add in puzzle pieces to build up to this new conclusion by subtly reordering some manga events and expanding on them adding in new subplots that would become relevant again in the new second half of the show. Even if it didn't 100% replicate the manga because it realistically couldn't, the show was able to work around that and create something of its own that works as a great companion to the original manga as both series ask different questions about humanity and come to different conclusions from the same groundwork, making the two works feel as if they are in conversation with each other rather than trying to be exactly the same. Yet just because it isn't the original manga, it seems many are willing to overlook some of the qualities the show has and write it off as being "inferior" to the more accurate adaptation that came years later. Similarly, the Western cartoon X-Men and it's sequel X-Men '97 also adapted an ongoing comic to animation. However the show does not get the same level of scrutiny that Fullmetal Alchemist does for making changes. These cartoons have adapted classic stories from the books such as Days of Future Past, The Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Sagas, the Trial of Magneto, Inferno, Lifedeath, E is for Extinction, and Operation Zero Tolerance albeit with many changes and differences. Different characters are present during these events, stories that previously were unrelated have been connected together through a new plot, new plots entirely have been created, and there can sometimes be drastic changes. Yet when you compare how fans of Western comics react to shows and films like this that take elements from the books and remix them into new stories with familiar characters, they are much more receptive to it than fans of Japanese anime tend to be. This leads me in to my hypothesis. Could the reason that fans of Japanese anime are less receptive to adaptations that make changes be due to the nature of how Japanese manga is produced compared to how Western comics are? When you look at mainstream Western comics, it is a more collaborative and communal effort, with characters and stories being shared among multiple writers and artists across multiple generations, compared to Japanese manga's standard of a singular creator's vision. Even if a Japanese creator gives a studio their blessing to make changes or do something new, there seems to be much more risk in the fandom of a disconnect and I wonder if the fact most manga is a solo creation has anything to do with it. If you have any ideas or observations of your own on this topic and how you may see this relationship between source material and adaptations. I have also provided a poll just to see the general consensus on how many people have enjoyed Japanese anime specifically that has diverged from whatever its original source was to help gague an idea on how my observations hold up at least in this sample size of the MAL community. |
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| for sure anime fans are a lot of times source material purists like manga purist but there are some extreme cases of completely changing the story though like already spinoffs examples are gonzos anime adaptations from the 2000s they made up their own story and just use the characters from the manga lol |
| Adaptation is always a messy and violent process that requires a certain degree of freedom and interpretation to visualize what is essentially basic text or static images into moving pictures. And yes i enjoy Full Metal Alchemist (2003) a lot back in the day even the original ending. |
| Adaptations of original works to new formats, such as anime, films or television series, are fertile ground for controversy. When deciding to reboot a franchise or adapt it in a different way, creators face a delicate balance between satisfying loyal fans and attracting new audiences: Longtime fans, those who have followed a franchise since its inception, often have a deep connection to the source material. Any change in plot, characters, or tone can provoke a passionate reaction. This is because familiarity with the original work creates expectations and a sense of ownership over the story. When creators significantly alter the plot or characters, they can alienate these loyal fans. For example, filler episodes are a common source of frustration for fans. These episodes are inserted into the main plot of a series to extend its duration or give the source material time to advance. However, they often lack relevance to the main story and can feel like a distraction. Fans who have followed the original work may view the filler episodes as a betrayal of the original narrative and a waste of time. This is where an interesting dilemma arises. Creators sometimes argue that they should adapt a work to appeal to a broader audience, even if that means changing key elements. However, is it fair to sacrifice the original vision to please an audience unfamiliar with the source? Longtime fans may feel like they're being pushed aside in favor of a broader audience. However, new audiences can appreciate an adaptation from a different perspective, without pre-existing expectations. Ultimately, adaptations must balance fidelity to the source material with creativity and innovation. Fans can be critical, but they are also willing to accept changes if they are made with respect and consideration. The key is finding the middle ground that honors the original vision and appeals to new audiences without losing the essence that made the work special in the first place. |
   You and the rose are connected. Know the weight of your own life |
LSSJ_Gaming said: It seems generally online that many fans get more upset when Japanese anime make changes to the storyline compared to fans of Western film and TV. I see people complaining all the time about changes made to Harry Potter and Wheel of Time. |
| その目だれの目？ |
| it's not hard to adapt a manga when you have the story set up. Then again, adaptations have context and problems arise but it's accepted because it couldn't have been done better. So basically we have these points for when bad adaptations are accepted: - anime is planned for 12 episodes with no other seasons next - anime has a small budget and no time, this is known before the anime airs - the big shots don't care, they just wanna advertise the source so the anime will adapt only the important moments Now, if the director or some other staffer is an idiot and pulls shit from his own ass changing the spirit of the source in any way, then yeah, the adaptation is bad. Perfect example is Chainsaw Man, nakayama destroyed it because he hates fujimoto and hates anime overall, he also hates us, the real chainsaw man fans who helped the manga get famous. Others examples include oshii who destroyed urusei yatsura and ghost in the shell and that imbecile who destroyed devilman with his garbage animation and nonsensical changes. There is a special place for these people. |
    |
Reply to Lucifrost
LSSJ_Gaming said:
It seems generally online that many fans get more upset when Japanese anime make changes to the storyline compared to fans of Western film and TV.
It seems generally online that many fans get more upset when Japanese anime make changes to the storyline compared to fans of Western film and TV.
I see people complaining all the time about changes made to Harry Potter and Wheel of Time.
| @Lucifrost I'm not too familiar with Wheel of Time, but I do have some familiarity with Harry Potter from when I was a kid (I don't like it anymore for personal reasons, but thats besides the point). I have seen some controversy over changes from the books ,most notably that one line where it was asked calmly in the book but in the movie the guy was angry, but I don't remember much more than that since most cuts were ultimately due to pacing or trying to remove elements that would have caused problems on screen such as the whole "slavery is good actually" subplot from book 5. There are always people who will be a bit turned off by changes, but I definitely see a lot more people willing to watch films like any superhero movie that make major changes in the story compared to when Japanese anime divert similarly from their sources. It seems like in the eyes of most anime fans if a new adaptation that is more manga accurate comes out, no matter what, it supplants the original even if the original still had its own merits, while with Western film and TV people seem more willing to multiple interpretations of a pre-existing work even if they diverge. |
| This post is brought to you by your local transfem gamer goblin. Will not tolerate bigotry and will fight against "anti-woke" sentiment to make the anime community a safer place. |
LSSJ_Gaming said: Could the reason that fans of Japanese anime are less receptive to adaptations that make changes be due to the nature of how Japanese manga is produced compared to how Western comics are? I won't say you're cray cray, but my thoughts be headin' in a different direction. I think the reason some peeps are less receptive to any changes is simply due to anime being viewed as a "Japanese" art. They want to see an authentic version of Japanese culture, rather than a Westernized twist on Japanese culture. And I can sympathize with that. I can eat Americanized Aussie food at an Outback Steakhouse anytime, but that isn't the type of food I'd want to eat if I actually went to Australia. I'd want the real deal! And in the same sense, I can see people wanting their anime to be as close to the OG version as possible. By contrast, a Western twist on a Western show is still Western, so it doesn't feel like the new version is different in a cultural sense. |
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| FMAB is perfect, but it's a big exception. For the most part, making a good adaption will involve making some fairly significant changes, particularly in areas like comedy where the overall story is less important.. For one thing, television works very differently to printed media or games, so various things in the original will stop working and various opportunities will open up which the original didn't have. Also, people do their best work when making something they want to do, and what the director wants to do is liable to be different to what the original creator wanted to do. And then there will probably be things in the original which are generally agreed to be mistakes which really shouldn't be made a second time. I don't pay much attention to comics, so frequently I just don't know how an adaption will relate to its source meterial, but I do know for instance that Babbit in Kodocha, Nabeshin (the director avatar!) in Excel Saga, Dekomori in Chuunibyou are anime-original characters, that the mangaka of KareKano got most annoyed at the differences in the adaption. And then there are games like visual novels with non-linear storylines. I have pity for the media-illiteracy of the "adaptions must be faithful!" crowd. When I think of the idea of a television adaption of my favourite books, thoughts like "well, that won't work in a visual medium, that would have to be changed" come very quickly to mind. |
Reply to Lucifrost
LSSJ_Gaming said:
It seems generally online that many fans get more upset when Japanese anime make changes to the storyline compared to fans of Western film and TV.
It seems generally online that many fans get more upset when Japanese anime make changes to the storyline compared to fans of Western film and TV.
I see people complaining all the time about changes made to Harry Potter and Wheel of Time.
| @Lucifrost For a reason. All the HP movies beyond The Goblet of Fire are a lertdown compared to the novels. The Halfblood Prince in particular got its soul taken away by the director. |
Reply to Catalano
it's not hard to adapt a manga when you have the story set up. Then again, adaptations have context and problems arise but it's accepted because it couldn't have been done better. So basically we have these points for when bad adaptations are accepted:
- anime is planned for 12 episodes with no other seasons next
- anime has a small budget and no time, this is known before the anime airs
- the big shots don't care, they just wanna advertise the source so the anime will adapt only the important moments
Now, if the director or some other staffer is an idiot and pulls shit from his own ass changing the spirit of the source in any way, then yeah, the adaptation is bad. Perfect example is Chainsaw Man, nakayama destroyed it because he hates fujimoto and hates anime overall, he also hates us, the real chainsaw man fans who helped the manga get famous. Others examples include oshii who destroyed urusei yatsura and ghost in the shell and that imbecile who destroyed devilman with his garbage animation and nonsensical changes. There is a special place for these people.
- anime is planned for 12 episodes with no other seasons next
- anime has a small budget and no time, this is known before the anime airs
- the big shots don't care, they just wanna advertise the source so the anime will adapt only the important moments
Now, if the director or some other staffer is an idiot and pulls shit from his own ass changing the spirit of the source in any way, then yeah, the adaptation is bad. Perfect example is Chainsaw Man, nakayama destroyed it because he hates fujimoto and hates anime overall, he also hates us, the real chainsaw man fans who helped the manga get famous. Others examples include oshii who destroyed urusei yatsura and ghost in the shell and that imbecile who destroyed devilman with his garbage animation and nonsensical changes. There is a special place for these people.
| @Catalano You sound like you just dislike Directors experimenting with the medium. I personally like the direction of all the series and movies you named so this is a purely subjective take. Also i don't think any of these individuals would make anime their job if they hated it. You are not entitled to an adaptation of your favorite manga/novels the way you envisioned it. |
| An anime adaptation of something should at least be faithful unless it's specified that it's going to have a massive change like a different ending or it's a spinoff or alternate version. I do empathise with manga purists because I myself read some manga here and there. To see your favorite manga turned into a 12 episode cash grab or advertisement with minimal effort put into it, anyone would be disappointed. But if the anime adaptation diverges somehow in terms of the story, characters, etc., and messes up what the original source is about, I don't think I'd enjoy watching it as much. It's up to the individual viewer, I guess. |
| If we're talking actual comic book nerd types and not just people who like fun action movies and shows, there are definitely fans who are less receptive to changes. Someone I watch on youtube for example said he hates the first Venom movie, not because it's a kinda meh movie that would have benefited from an R rating, but because it wasn't accurate to the Venom lore in the comics. I've seen similar complaints for the recent Spider-man games. And those are far from the only examples. Then we dive into other things, like the Percy Jackson movies. Those did so bad they scraped any plans for future movies and went with a series instead. |
| I don't know how you never came across the "the book is better" crowd for practically every film or TV show that was based on a book or book series. When it comes to comic books, comics just aren't popular at all in the US like they were multiple decades ago so there is hardly anyone to complain and their communities aren't as centralized and have been absorbed into pop culture. Most people do not read Western comics even among the ones that are fans of the Marvel or DC superheroes. People are more prone to prefer whatever they were exposed to first. |
traedMay 3, 3:53 PM
| I believe its a matter of audience, the adaptations of comics and books are generally done by studios intending from the start to take something relatively niche and bringing it to the much larger audience of streaming and/or cinema while anime is already fine with just the audience of general anime watchers. So long as, as you've shown with Fullmetal and as we all know with long-running series and their filler arcs, the anime doesn't catch up to manga the studio never will and never had the desire to change the story up to begin with. Therefore when they do change it in anime people don't like it generally cause its not the norm while with book and comic adaptation it is as there the studio is trying to make it more palatable to a wider audience. |
LSSJ_Gaming said: When you look at mainstream Western comics, it is a more collaborative and communal effort, with characters and stories being shared among multiple writers and artists across multiple generations, compared to Japanese manga's standard of a singular creator's vision. I think this is definitely a factor. It does feel like "this is my own interpretation of the character and the arc" is a much more acceptable comment when it comes to Hollywood comic book movies/shows, since there are so many interpretations out there already. Another thing about film and TV adaptations in the West is that they have historically been driven by a completely different industry and a different group of creatives. Comic book artists and publishers have been so far away from the Hollywood executives, directors, writers and actors (not so much now, I think), so adaptations have always ended up feeling almost completely different from the source material. So over decades, the audience and the comic book fans just got used to it (some kicking and screaming all the while), and they just felt grateful if the movies/shows bothered to stay even roughly close to the core idea. I don't know too much about how Anime and manga industries work, but it looks like those two are more closely connected money-wise and work more closely together. So traditionally the adaptations tended to follow the source material more closely in Japan, and that set the expectations for the audience over time. More generally, the "faithfulness to the source material" becomes basically a non-issue if the adaptation is good in and of itself; if people love the changes and pay money for them, what's the issue? Even if a few people complain about "faithfulness," it gets buried in an avalanche of praise. The only problem is that the changes often make things worse... |
Reply to LSSJ_Gaming
@Lucifrost
I'm not too familiar with Wheel of Time, but I do have some familiarity with Harry Potter from when I was a kid (I don't like it anymore for personal reasons, but thats besides the point). I have seen some controversy over changes from the books ,most notably that one line where it was asked calmly in the book but in the movie the guy was angry, but I don't remember much more than that since most cuts were ultimately due to pacing or trying to remove elements that would have caused problems on screen such as the whole "slavery is good actually" subplot from book 5. There are always people who will be a bit turned off by changes, but I definitely see a lot more people willing to watch films like any superhero movie that make major changes in the story compared to when Japanese anime divert similarly from their sources. It seems like in the eyes of most anime fans if a new adaptation that is more manga accurate comes out, no matter what, it supplants the original even if the original still had its own merits, while with Western film and TV people seem more willing to multiple interpretations of a pre-existing work even if they diverge.
I'm not too familiar with Wheel of Time, but I do have some familiarity with Harry Potter from when I was a kid (I don't like it anymore for personal reasons, but thats besides the point). I have seen some controversy over changes from the books ,most notably that one line where it was asked calmly in the book but in the movie the guy was angry, but I don't remember much more than that since most cuts were ultimately due to pacing or trying to remove elements that would have caused problems on screen such as the whole "slavery is good actually" subplot from book 5. There are always people who will be a bit turned off by changes, but I definitely see a lot more people willing to watch films like any superhero movie that make major changes in the story compared to when Japanese anime divert similarly from their sources. It seems like in the eyes of most anime fans if a new adaptation that is more manga accurate comes out, no matter what, it supplants the original even if the original still had its own merits, while with Western film and TV people seem more willing to multiple interpretations of a pre-existing work even if they diverge.
LSSJ_Gaming said: It seems like in the eyes of most anime fans if a new adaptation that is more manga accurate comes out, no matter what, it supplants the original That's not true either. https://myanimelist.net/anime/18041/Rozen_Maiden_2013 https://myanimelist.net/anime/14751/Bishoujo_Senshi_Sailor_Moon_Crystal https://myanimelist.net/anime/52093/Trigun_Stampede https://myanimelist.net/anime/50613/Rurouni_Kenshin__Meiji_Kenkaku_Romantan_2023 |
| その目だれの目？ |
This almost feels like a trick question:
As a rule of thumb, I tend to like small changes that don't deviate from the main thing (If done right), but other than that I consider myself a "Source Material Purist". |
| I think the way western series change is a testament to how collaborative each party is every step of the production process even if you look at the writers of some works, they draw inspiration from each other and eventually collaborate. It's almost like the opposite in Japan where every stage is more about delegation than collaboration almost like an automatic process so adding extras would slow the efficiency of the systematic production. |
Reply to Lucifrost
LSSJ_Gaming said:
It seems like in the eyes of most anime fans if a new adaptation that is more manga accurate comes out, no matter what, it supplants the original
It seems like in the eyes of most anime fans if a new adaptation that is more manga accurate comes out, no matter what, it supplants the original
That's not true either.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/18041/Rozen_Maiden_2013
https://myanimelist.net/anime/14751/Bishoujo_Senshi_Sailor_Moon_Crystal
https://myanimelist.net/anime/52093/Trigun_Stampede
https://myanimelist.net/anime/50613/Rurouni_Kenshin__Meiji_Kenkaku_Romantan_2023
| @Lucifrost That is fair. I completely forgot about some of these adaptations existing |
| This post is brought to you by your local transfem gamer goblin. Will not tolerate bigotry and will fight against "anti-woke" sentiment to make the anime community a safer place. |
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