A reader submitted question today! “Are original Anime properties a better bet or adaptions?”
With the amount of anime that I watch, it’s definitely an interesting question because it does get you to look at things a bit. In a way, this has evolved a lot over the years because some of the source material has changed in its approach so that it’s not as drawn out as it used to be, such as the old Dragon Ball Z kind of mentality.
When an anime series is green lit, it usually comes from a few sources; it’s either adapting a manga, a light novel, a gaming series/multimedia project or it’s a wholly original work.
Each of these have their own traps as you can expect and their own positives.
For the longest time, the majority of shows tended to be adaptations of manga series, which was problematic because of the chapter-narrative-structure of the books and that a lot of those adaptations were done where the book had no closure arc at the moment or was just getting started. When you’ve got a couple of volumes out, unless it’s a really dense work, you’re likely just animating the setup aspect of the series. And while that can be light and fun, it’s often afterwards that the really good material comes and it’s rare for a series to get another shot at things once the first series is done and over with for a number of reasons.
I’ve shied away from manga adaptation anime series in the last few years because of this, but also because it seems like a lot of the manga being adapted are even more formulaic than they used to be. I’m sure there’s a touch of nostalgia in there, but I also tended to go more towards manga that weren’t adapted in general since they were josei series, certain seinen works and the like. I know why which shows are being adapted, but they keep hitting the same problems as mentioned before. It’s all prelude and no payoff.
Around the time that I started to wean off of those a bit, we started getting more light novel adaptations, which is a good thing in general. These tend to provide some form of structure/closure to each volume, even if they’re part of a larger ongoing series. You can get a beginning, middle and end+cliffhanger that will leave you wanting more. But if the cliffhanger is never resolved, you still largely had a decent story to work with. Unfortunately, as that market boomed and we saw more adaptation, we started to see more of the manga style structure side come into it, which has made some of these lose their appeal. The one-off novel adaptations tend to be the most intriguing ones for me, such as From the New World, but I’m also a sucker for really well done ones like Sword Art Online and what I’ve seen so far of Log Horizon. They simply provide a different narrative because they’re not trying to entice readers on a weekly basis and are looking at the bigger picture for each novel.
With the multimedia and gaming works, they tend to be a bit more like a blending of the manga and light novel worlds in that there’s previously established material or a larger project and vision at work and you can get neat stuff in distilling it down with creative teams not directly involved. But you also have to adhere to things. With visual novels, that’s where you can find some fun things that take chances, but a lot of them is dependent on the creative team and if they’re willing to rock the boat.
Original series are more uncommon and there tends to be, for me, a lot more interest in them. Especially if you have a creative team that has worked the mines before on the adaptation route and are wanting to break out of that box and make their own mark. There’s a greater interest in these works simply because they’re more unknowns than anything else and you can’t be completely sure where it’s going to go. You can make educated guesses though, because…
…. anime is safe. And has been for a long time. Original properties do tend to take more risks, but they balance it out against the potential of creating more, which is understandable. It’s one of the reasons that I wish anime studios and teams would start working outside of their comfort zone and begin adapting more foreign works to try and bring something new to the table. There’s a lot of talent that can be localized in story form from around the world that could allow the studios to reach new markets at that. There are any number of science fiction, crime and drama novels that would make for very engaging anime series. I’m curious to see how it will go in the next few years if we see more foreign investment, ala now Netflix is doing things, if they start commissioning shows based off of properties they gain the rights to. It’s probably a pipedream, but I’m hopeful for some kind of shakeup and risk taking every season with shows to do something unconventional. And that usually comes out of original productions, which is why I tend to favor those.
