Manga and anime are two very distinct genres and should be treated as such. The first and very prevalent example of this is pacing. I recently started watching Fate/stay night (2006) and it was incredibly difficult to get into because it was obvious that the first two episodes could have been easily condensed into one. I was just waiting for the story to start as I watched scenes that could have easily been cut without changing anything. Keeping all of the same character intros, all the same world building and character building; with slight tweaks to events (that don’t matter at all for the Ordinary World) and tighter writing, you could have easily cut that down to 20 minutes and it would have been so much more engaging. And that is just minor adjustments. You can do that at a large scale in the story as well. What people fail to realize is, although giving plot and characters time to grow is important, which is what manga excels at, a tighter script will ultimately help investment in those characters. If someone has a huge character moment but then it takes 6 episodes for their character to have another character moment, then by that time, I have already lost investment in that character. With manga, you don’t have to worry about this. Each chapter is created as its own thing so they can be dedicated to certain characters or story beats. With a cinematic medium however, where lines between chapters are blurred, all aspects of the story have to be moving at the same pace.
To give an example to what I mean, I believe Horimiya (2021) is the greatest manga adaptation when it comes to pacing. Although I’m glad it did happen, I really don’t believe Horimiya Piece was necessary at all. This is coming from someone who loves the manga to death and enjoys every chapter. I am so glad they decided to tell the whole story in one season, because with that time limit in mind, they could narrow the story down and cause a greater emotional impact. By picking and choosing which chapters were important: what they could cut and what needed to stay, they controlled the pacing. And it’s not like they only chose chapters that had emotional moments. There was plenty of filler in the show, but that filler was also especially chosen. By opting to choose filler chapters, they gave the characters time to breathe, and for us to both enjoy their shenanigans and let us see the fruits of their efforts. What’s the point of Miyamura growing closer with people if we don’t get to see their dynamics? It helps with pacing, with the themes of high school and with the overall emotion that is set later. By seeing their friendships, when Miyamura reflects on his life, we have seen first hand that he is in a better place and we get that emotional resonance.
Now Horimiya’s chapters are more episodic than most but you can take that principle and use it on more long narrative shows. By choosing which scenes are important, which can be condensed, which can be rearranged to match with other scenes and what can be dropped entirely, you create a more balanced, well paced, tighter and overall a lot more engaging story. You don’t need to match the manga one-to-one. You can add scenes, you can combine scenes, you can take out scenes entirely to make it more cinematic, and enhance the anime experience. That is what anime can offer that manga cannot. Manga can be planned out, but it is written chapter by chapter. Anime can be written with the whole picture in mind, and the whole story laid out for them. I don’t mind rewrites as long as they serve to enhance the story. The whole last episode of Horimiya, with the “what would life be like if that one coincidence didn’t happen”, was an anime original. And it was one of the best scenes in the show.
I’m not asking to ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ it and change the story entirely, I’m just saying that you can change the story to better fit the medium. A good example of this is fight scenes. You can’t show action that well in manga so when you have a medium that can, use it. Let me see better choreography instead of the still frames in manga. You can do that. That’s why I’m loving Wind Breaker (which is coming out by the time of writing this review). Because the fight scenes are shown to us. That was one of my biggest issues with Demon Slayer; we just didn’t get to see the fights all that much. What we saw were still frames of peoples faces and them explaining the fights instead of just showing us. I don’t need characters to tell me the enemy is too fast when you can just animate that and show me. I understand it’s necessary in manga, but you don’t need that shit in the adaptation. If you’re just going to tell not show, then why make it into an anime at all?
That is a good question: why are anime adaptations made at all? Pretending that it’s not because anime is run by talentless hacks who don’t have the balls to fund an original story, anime is the stories of manga with voice acting, movement, color and music. With these additions however, and the severe lack of proper funding, a lot of the detail that made manga so captivating is lost. I understand why people say the manga for One-Punch Man or Death Note was better. Because when you read the manga you see how much effort was put into every panel. The details of the drawings are incredible and by reading it, you have time to appreciate it, instead of with anime where those shots are gone in a flash. There are pros and cons to each medium. So a good adaptation will have a reason to be adapted. A reason where adding movement and music and voice acting will outweigh the loss of detail and make up for the difference in pacing. The adaptation has to add to the source material.
Two great examples of this is Love is War and Food Wars. Starting with Love is War, not including the dramatic music and superb voice acting, the amount of original visual gags that they added enhances the comedy so much that it improves the jokes of the manga. Like the cowboy standoff in the 20 questions game. The reason for making it into an anime was because by making it a more visual experience, you can add to the jokes. It’s not watered down, it’s enhanced. With Food Wars, I will admit, I have not read the manga. But I cannot imagine it working in any other way than cinematically. Food Wars works because it embraces how batshit insane it is. The operatic music, the over the top voice acting, the visual flares all create an experience so surreal that I cannot imagine just reading it. It would not have the same impact. To add to that, the presentation of food is very important to its taste. So to try to show off these insane meals without color just doesn’t work. Food Wars needed to be an anime because, although it might miss some detail on the food, the need to enhance the dramatic presentation is so much more important to the story and the aesthetic.
Not all manga needs an anime adaptation. Going back to Fable (yeah this is still a Fable review) the anime is just a watered down version of the manga. Sure the voice acting is good, but the details of the faces and the environment that made the manga feel so grounded is lost in the anime. And the voice acting just doesn’t make up for it. The music is forgettable, the fight scenes don’t play a huge role in the story and they weren’t even animated that well (due to budgeting). The addition of color doesn’t add much because it’s not important and there are animation errors. The movement is stilted and the lines of the face are so obviously drawn that we lose the realism of human interaction. There was no reason at all to make this adaptation. You have to look at the merits of the source material and decide what can be improved by adapting it. The merit of The Fable magna is how grounded it is. The characters are drawn realistically instead of stylistically. Nothing is fantastical and it is drawn and written in such a way to make you think this could happen in the real world (to an extent, it is pretty goofy at times). So if you were to adapt it, how would you do it? Well, I would drop some plot lines, choose to focus on certain characters, tweak the story and make a Live-Action movie. With a movie the themes and narrative have to be extremely focused. You lose the realism in the anime, but it would be enhanced through Live-Action. I don’t think it’s necessary, but that’s the only way an adaptation of Fable could work. What we got, and I see now that is what many manga fans have been getting, is a watered down version of the source material. I understand now what those people mean when they say ‘you should just read the manga.’ All because of the philosophy that adaptations should be one-to-one copies.
Though those people who say that shit could stop being petty assholes about it.
