Recently, the youtuber Gigguk released a video called "How to Fix Live Action Anime Adaptations" which goes into detail about making adaptations and, more importantly clarifies some of his perspective on source material in relation to adaptations. He did release an earlier video on the topic but I was never able to articulate why I disagreed with that video on a fundamental level because I wasn't quite certain what his point was. This video, on the other hand, spells it out pretty clearly and has allowed me to understand not only his perspective but my own perspective as well and I want to address why I disagree with his perspective by highlighting some of the key factors in mine.
For those who either don't want to follow the link or who saw both videos and don't quite understand what he's getting at, essentially his point is "Source material doesn't matter because it doesn't dictate the quality of the writing."
The short version of my response is "That opinion is missing the point." The long version of my response is the topic of this blog post.
In his video, he discusses the idea that in order to create a good adaptation, one thing that a lot of people don't understand is that the change in medium may mean that a faithful adaptation is not necessarily a good adaptation. To me, this highlights exactly why I don't think he or others with his opinion understand the reason the source material matters.
Essentially, this point highlights what I'm trying to get into. Namely that changing the medium of the story does not necessarily change the quality of the writing, simply how that writing is presented. And that's really the crux of the issue.
Every time I get into a discussion about experiences, it always defaults to two basic notions: it's just my opinion, and your opinion won't change how I feel. The operative words in that statement are "opinion" and "feel." The reason I say that is because those words are subjective, they have to do more with your perspective, world view, and code of ethics than it does with what actually happens.
At one point, I asked a more philosophically minded friend of mine what is the difference between fact and truth. And he stated fact is the reality but truth is how you interpret that reality. And this is a perfect microcosm for this debate.
The people who believe that the source material doesn't matter are of the belief that what they feel about it is more important than the quality of the story itself. Gigguk, the man in question, even says as much himself in one of his videos where the perfect anime is the same as your favorite anime because how you feel about it is more important than its objective qualities.
Of course not everybody may feel the same way as Gigguk. There may be people who believe that the source material matters even if they're more truth minded than fact minded, they may be more fact minded but still believe the source material doesn't matter, etc etc.
The point I'm trying to make is that while this does explain why they personally don't care about source material, that in and of itself does not mean that the source material doesn't matter, which is the assertion Gigguk makes.
Many people who believe the source material matters are of the belief that the author who came up with and made the source material has a better idea of what their story is about than the adapters do. This ultimately means, for many people, staying closer to the source material will result in a better product because that source material does not have the identity crisis that many adaptations tend to have.
Many people who agree with Gigguk's point like to call attention to the comparison of the 2003 Anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist versus the 2011 Adaptation of the same manga Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Here these people generally like to cite that Brotherhood is more faithful to the source material but the 2003 anime is still a good product and I don't disagree with that. The 2003 FMA anime is by far some of the best anime has ever produced. However, there's a problem with this line of thinking. FMA 2003 is an exception not the rule.
Many people I've seen that argue subjectivity over objectivity tend to point to exceptions and use that to justify saying the rule is outright wrong when that is not the case at all. To clarify what I mean, what these people are calling rules are actually laws.
The difference here is that rules are general, they're right most of the time but there are some who don't abide by it. Exceptions by themselves defy the rule and therefore don't represent it. Laws, however, are absolute. When someone discusses a law, that law cannot be defied. If there is something that contradicts the law, the law was not correct. If something tries to defy the law, assuming the law is accurate, there are consequences that are equivalent to the extent of the attempt.
In this way, the rule I'm trying to convey is that "Faithful adaptations are better on average than those that stray." FMA 2003 is an exceptional adaptation and an exceptional anime but that's precisely the point I'm getting at. It is EXCEPTIONAL. It defies the rule and therefore the only way it can justify its use in arguments like this is if the majority of the cases defy the rule, forcing it to change. However, the very nature of exceptions is that they are not majorities, they are minorities. Majorities do not reflect the whole either but the point is that if you have a rule, that rule applies to the majority and therefore may not always apply to what you bring up.
Examples of adaptations that fail in comparison to their respective source material are Soul Eater, Blue Exorcist, the 2006 Fate/Stay Night Anime, the Rurouni Kenshin anime, the Neon Genesis Evangelion Rebuild Movies, Negima!, and the Tsukihime movie just to name a few.
The problem with these adaptations is not that their stories are not faithful to the source material. The problem is that the writing in the source material is objectively better.
It's taken me a long time to get to this so I'm just going to state what the problem is with this misunderstanding. A lot of people seem to think that the presentation of the story determines the quality of the story, when this is not the case. The quality of the writing is the fact that I brought up earlier, it is the sequence of events that takes place, how well those events link to each other, and how much sense it makes for those events to take place in the order they do. How you feel about the events is the truth, it is the opinions and experience that you had with the story. That, right there, is not about the writing, it's about the presentation.
Let me give you an example. Let's say I were to take a fight from an anime, it could be any fight, in fact, let's go ahead and pick one that almost any anime fan may recognize as great, Isaac Netero versus Meruem in Hunter X Hunter 2011. I could take that fight, right now, in this blog, give you a play by play of how the fight unfolds, the reason these two characters are fighting, and the perspectives these characters have in relation to the fight but that by itself does not convey to you what you're supposed to feel during this fight, it simply tells you how things happened. The way you feel about the fight is much more influenced by the way you saw it, the sounds going on in the fight, the imagery, and in general how the fight stimulates your senses.
The difference is that the sequence of events I gave you may tell you what happened but the sensory stimuli are what influence how you feel about it. In text, when you read about the events, there's no sound, there's no feeling, and visual input is too basic to be of any help. People who tend to enjoy reading are much better at translating words into thoughts that then stimulate their senses through imagination.
Essentially, unfaithful adaptations are usually bad, not because they're unfaithful, but because the quality of the writing dipped at some point during the translation. The reaction that source material doesn't matter because the anime and manga are not the same is very indicative that they do not understand this fundamental aspect of the argument.
Of course a faithful adaptation may be worse than the source material because either the source material uses techniques that the medium of the adaptation can't use properly or simply because the adaptation doesn't use its medium for its strengths but, as I said, that's much more an issue of presentation than it is about writing.
Some writing is objectively bad no matter what medium it's presented in and no amount of sparkly animation or good drawing is going to save it. Others have such great writing that bad presentation will be a bad mark but not a deal breaker. However, in the majority of cases, writing is of such a quality on its own that the quality of the presentation will either save it or destroy it.
Obviously, the presentation and story want to work together as well as possible to make the best product possible and, when making an adaptation, changing the presentation can help aspects of the story writing that would've been hurt had the adaptation been a one-to-one transplant. However, changing the writing itself is the problem with most adaptations, not the way that writing is presented. Changing the writing can work out for the better sometimes and other times both are equal, but most of the time, changing the writing is a detriment.
The Too Long; Didn't Read version is, presentation matters to an adaptation but the quality of the writing is the real core of the issue. To say otherwise is missing the point.
Have a wonderful day.
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