Do Manga to Anime Adaptations Have the Best Track Record?

Every kind of media has been adapted into at least one other form, if not more, throughout human history.  I suppose it's part of that "wanting what we don't have" mentality.  We take books and turn them into movies, make videogames out of movies, turn games into graphic novels, and any and all variations we can think of.  One thing is never just one thing anymore.  If you want to experience something like Lord of The Rings, you have the books (of which there are now multiple versions), the films both live action and animated, plenty of games across different platforms, plus any others I'm sure I'm missing.  Now, I'm not going to ask why this is because it's kind of obvious.  Money.  The books were popular and sold well, so translating it into other products is a safe way to make more money off the IP thanks to it already being an established seller in the first place.  Like it or not, it's not a mystery and there's not really much that can be done about it.  So rather than waste everyone's time going over that, why not look at the quality of these adaptations?  Which are the best, generally speaking, and how can they improve?  At least, how would they improve in my opinion, but for the most part I think everyone can agree that adaptations largely fall short of their source material.

Let's start with the big one: Film.  Turning things into films seems like the most popular and common way adaptations are done here in the west at least.  I can't think of a single media that hasn't been translated into a film.  Even music has been strung together into narratives like with Across the Universe.  Again, the question of why is obvious and unimportant.  Movies make a lot of money, or at least they used to.  So, quality wise, how do they hold up?  Personally, I think that's too big of a question to give any kind of conclusive statement on as a whole.  Films have been adapting things for longer than I have been alive and I couldn't' possibly have seen even a fraction of them.  I can, however, point out what people have been saying for years regarding film adaptations and expand on that idea.  Usually, not always, a film adaptation is taking from a work that is either longer, more dense, or both than the structure of a traditional film allows.  Even if you know nothing about story structure, and I'm by no means saying I'm any kind of expert, most people have at least heard of the three act structure.  Most narratives follow it, but the medium they're in can drastically change how they look.  A novel of over one hundred thousand words could spend longer than an entire film's run time on the first act alone, not to mention series of books which, each one having three acts but also serving as an individual act in the larger scope of the series.  Games can be even stranger.  They can be written in the three act structure, but player input can extend, contract, and even alter how they play out.  All of this is to overstate the simple notion that films have to cut a lot out from their source material in order to function.  To be fair, that can sometimes be a good thing.  More isn't always better, and trimming unnecessary or extraneous things can make a tighter, more focused story.

By this point no one should be surprised when a book is turned into a film, even a series of films, and find that a lot has been left out.  For some reason people still are and are quick to point out everything missing from the original material, but that's touching on another subject I want to write about later.  The point is, films have to cut.  Okay, so how are films doing with that?  From my perspective, not great.  Games get almost universally butchered in this translation.  Unlike other mediums, for some reason games get translated in a few different ways.  The first is the obvious.  An attempt at telling the game's story in a film.  Makes sense, right?  What's strange are the other ways.  Another tactic is to just take the name of the game, the premise, and maybe a couple characters, but otherwise making a completely original story.  Think the  first Resident Evil film.  They use the name, zombies, and a mansion (for about 10 minutes), but never even comes close to trying to retell any story from the games.  The second is mixing up the story from the game with original plots, or even elements from multiple games, into one.  Again, think later Resident Evil movies where characters from multiple games show up in a weird mashup.  The problem in this case is that no film goes all or nothing in regards to the source material.  They know they can't retell the entire story of a game, even ones with relatively short narratives, in full in the time frame of a single movie, so they seem to go with these half measures that don't satisfy anyone.  Instead, why not just take the name of the game (that's really all studios care about anyway) and create a completely original story within that universe?  As long as it is marketed as such, people who love the game won't feel like the film is betraying the games because it isn't intended to actually be the game.  Not only would it help quell the fans that way, but it would also free the writer and director up to not feel beholden to living up to what the fans expect.  As long as they don't break any of the universe's rules, or create any inconsistencies with the game's story, then they can pretty much tell any story they want.

I bet you didn't expect for this post to go on so long before even mentioning manga and anime based on the title, and to be fair, neither did I.  So, rather than exhausting ourselves going through all the permutations adaptations can have, let's cut to the point.  Are manga to anime adaptations the best?  I'd say yes, but will also admit that I've read very little manga.  However, looking at comparisons and reading/ watching comparisons, I see way more positive than negative impressions.  On a surface level, art style can be matched to be essentially identical to the original drawings, no matter how outlandish or flamboyant, and even specific panels can be recreated.  The iffy area arises when talking about story.  For long running manga, which are very likely to get these kind of adaptations, there often comes a point where the anime will outpace the manga and be faced with a choice.  Either create filler content, where nothing of consequence happens for up to dozens of episodes in order to give the manga a chance to get ahead again so they can resume the story, or just continue the story based on what came before and hope for the best.  Think of shows like Naruto and the original Full Metal Alchemist respectively.  We can't forget that this happens, but at the same time should realize that finished work that gets adapted, or remade like FMA: Brotherhood, are about the best adaptations in terms of sticking as close to the source as possible.

The key, I feel, in why manga to anime does so much better than everything else is not inherently tied to the two mediums being similar.  Sure, that does work to its advantage, but I think the more important aspect is the format.  Shows just have way more freedom than a film to make a faithful adaptation.  We can even look at manga that have gotten both anime and film adaptations and see how the films are universally looked at as weaker.

Saying anime to manga adaptations are the strongest is only an argument I can make because all adaptations are trying to do the same thing in drastically different formats.  If each medium played to their respective strengths then comparisons between an anime, movie, book, game, or whatever wouldn't really be applicable.  Or, you know, we could just create original stories designed to fit in the medium being worked in.  Wouldn't that be crazy?