Line #5 Main/IndecisiveMedium


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6	->''"My best guess is Creator/AngLee wanted to create the closest thing he could to a comic book, meaning the film literally has panels, speed lines, and elements of space and time overlapping each other. There's just one problem with that, though. If you're adapting a book, would you constantly put words all over the goddamn place? This is way too friggin' literal!"''
7	-->-- '''WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic''''s review of ''Film/{{Hulk}}''
8
9	A work in one medium, that heavily relies on the unique quirks of ''another'', different medium, as if it's trying to remind us all the time that the story is just adapted from another form.
10
11	It might happen because the original work is so famous that everyone will think about it in that format anyways: Literature/TheBible is a book, ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' is a theater play, ''Film/CitizenKane'' is a movie, ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'' is a series of animated cartoons, and ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' is a video game. If you are making an adaptation of these, your audience won't be fooled into believing that they are watching an equal version to the original, so you might as well stylistically remind everyone that yes, this is a mere imitation of the real deal.
12
13	Another cause might be that the original format influences the plot so heavily that it simply wouldn't work in the other format.
14
15	Yet, it isn't necessarily an [[MediaAdaptationTropes adaptation trope]]. Maybe the work is just heavily ''inspired by'' another medium, and this is why it may try posing as an example, without actually being adapted from it. For example, a television series that is [[ReadingIsCoolAesop all about how awesome reading is]] might have [[UnusualChapterNumbers "chapters" instead of "episodes", or an anime about video games might have "levels".]]
16
17	'''Common versions, with their usual traits:'''
18	* {{Literature}} to Animation and {{Film}}: Starting with a StorybookOpening, or keeping whole written passages from the original work.
19	* VideoGame to {{Film}}: Working the MultipleEndings into the story as parallel universes, or keeping gameplay mechanics like reliance on {{Plunder}}ing [[HealingPotion MedKits]].
20	* ComicBooks to Animation and {{Film}}: Dividing the screen into comic book panels, or keeping the onomatopoetic illustrations as effects.
21	* {{Visual Novel}}s to {{Anime}}: {{POV Cam}}s, maybe even with menu options.
22
23	----
24	!!Examples:
25	[[foldercontrol]]
26
27	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
28	* ''Literature/{{Oreimo}}'', as {{Visual Novel}}s are a recurring theme in its plot, had choice screens, a BadEnd screen, and at the ending of some episodes, still pictures imitating the style of [=CGs=] you get at the ending of a VisualNovel route.
29	* Every episode of ''Literature/{{Bakemonogatari}}'' begins with long written quotes from the original {{Light Novel}}s.
30	* ''Manga/{{Bakuman}}'' preserved its [[ShowWithinAShow manga within a manga]] in the anime adaptation as several minutes of showing still black-and-white manga frames, and reading its dialogues.
31	* In the ''VisualNovel/{{Clannad}}'' anime, some of the jokes based on gag options, were conserved as Tomoya having a random ImagineSpot about what option would he choose if this where a visual novel, and it was shown on screen with an actual scene from the original game. Also, there is this whole thing about the light orbs, that were basically completion points in the game.
32	* In the ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'' light novels, they would sometimes make it ambiguous as to whether [[UnreliableNarrator Kyon]] was thinking or speaking. In the anime, they keep the ambiguity by not showing his mouth when he speaks.
33	* ''Manga/KeepYourHandsOffEizouken'' is a manga about three girls who aspire to be an animation studio, which means the anime it was adapted into was actually truer to the spirit of the original manga ''than the original manga.''
34	* ''Anime/Persona4TheAnimation'' still keeps track of the main character's social stats during its eyecatches, despite the show obviously not having stat checks. This ended up being a really fun punchline when ''Anime/Persona4TheGoldenAnimation'' started... and showed all of his stats ''already maxed out right from the beginning'', quickly revealing that ''Golden'' would be, of all things, an adaptation of a NewGamePlus playthrough.
35	* ''Anime/RebuildOfEvangelion'' ends with a BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind, the first part of which HAS the Evas knock buildings around like they're light cardboard models, press against the painted background of the sky, step off the stage, and at one point [[spoiler: Gendo]] kicks Shinji clean through the wall, causing him to fall out into a backstage area. The Evas themselves appear to be motion-captured CGI models, so they move like people in suits instead of the agile and dynamic monsters they are in the rest of the movie. The whole sequence is meant to look like a {{Toku}} setpiece, like the ones that originally inspired Creator/HideakiAnno to become a director.
36	* The anime adaptation of ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' keeps the use of colored text so [[LanguageOfTruth vital]] to the original VisualNovel by having the words literally manifest in the air when a supernatural creature speaks. It works... ok?
37	* In the first episode of the anime version of ''[[Anime/TheIdolmaster THE iDOLM@STER]]'', the Producer's lines are all subtitled and not voiced, leading several people to think that the adaptation of the game would be ''literal''.
38	[[/folder]]
39
40	[[folder:Films -- Animated]]
41	* ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse'' makes heavy use of comic-book style visuals, especially after Miles starts manifesting his powers.
42	* ''WesternAnimation/TheWilloughbys'': Downplayed, but while the movie is officially an AllCGICartoon, its visual style strongly resembles a StopMotion film.
43	[[/folder]]
44
45	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
46	* ''Film/{{Hulk}}'''s screen was divided into comic book panels for a scene or two.
47	* ''Film/RepoTheGeneticOpera'' appears to follow this trope, but the comic book panels were actually due to budget constraints.
48	* There's a lot of scenes in ''Film/{{Unbreakable}}'' where characters are pictured in door frames and such, to mimic the frame effect of the comic books that form an integral part of the plot.
49	* The Laurence Olivier film of ''Film/{{Henry V\|1944}}'' is purportedly actually a film of an Elizabethan-era performance of ''Theatre/HenryV''; at the beginning, we get to see some glimpses of the backstage. As the film goes on, it gets less and less theatrical, presumably corresponding to the audience's increased immersion in the plot.
50	* In Creator/KennethBranagh's ''Film/{{Henry V\|1989}}'', [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5dI65LvbrE The Prologue]] - which is about making theater magic by suspending your disbelief over the people prancing about on stage pretending to be the ''real'' Henry V, etc. - is said in an empty soundstage. Then at the very end: "Who, Prologue-like, your humble patience pray / Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play!" and he throws open some doors showing a production utilizing the hyperrealism of film.
51	* The ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' movie kept whole scenes in first-person POV, in tribute of the original game, that defined FPS.
52	* ''Film/ScottPilgrimVsTheWorld'' does this twofold: As a film adaptation of a comic book whose plot runs on video-game logic, it has quite a few video-game elements (scores, extra lives, enemies that turn into coins when defeated, and so on) as well as displaying most of its flashback scenes in the form of animated comic book panels and making extensive use of comic-book style onomatopoeia.
53	* ''Film/{{Watchmen}}'' has the "Rorschach's Journal" sections that narrate parts of the graphic novel as internal monologue in the movie.
54	* ''Film/FightClub'' is narrated by Edward Norton's character, to mimic the book's first person narration.
55	* ''Film/ThePrincessBride'' was presented as a movie about a grandfather reading a book to his sick grandson, echoing [[Literature/ThePrincessBride the novel's]] FramingDevice of annotations in which the "editor" recalled being read the book himself as a boy.
56	* ''Film/TheRoyalTenenbaums'' parodies this with chapters showing sections from a nonexistent Book of the Film, partly because the movie is inspired by Creator/JDSalinger's Glass family stories.
57	* ''Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy2005'' features several passages which are narrated or read from the guide to preserve jokes that are funnier for how they're described than for what actually happens and to capture memorable passages that can't really be filmed as scenes.
58	* ''Film/{{Clue}}'' is based on a board game where solving the murder is the point of the game and so, for obvious reasons, the solution is rarely the same twice in a row. When the film was first released, each showing of it had [[MultipleEndings one of three different endings]], allowing viewers to see the film twice and get a different solution to the murder each time. (The video release included each of the endings, with title cards between them with captions like, "Or this is how it could have happened...")
59	[[/folder]]
60
61	[[folder:Literature]]
62	* ''Literature/CreaturesOfLightAndDarkness'' by Creator/RogerZelazny has one chapter that's written as an epic poem and another that's written as a script for a play.
63	* ''Literature/TheInventionOfHugoCabret'' is a book about the history of film and was heavily inspired by the author's love of early movies; as a result, most of it is told in the form of pictures, with a FadeIn[=/=]FadeOut at the beginning and end, and only the bits where there are dialogue are rendered as text.
64	* The UK cover of ''Literature/MyBestFriendsExorcism'' is designed to look like a badly battered VHS cover, complete with "Be Kind, Rewind" sticker. The back cover blurb gives the impression of a novelization to an eighties movie that just happens to not exist.
65	* A recurring gag in ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' is to have descriptions include camera movements as different elements are shown/described.
66	* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxyTrilogy'' makes a point of the fact that the Guide doesn't just display text, but '"began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice", an obvious requirement in [[Radio/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1978 a radio series]].
67	[[/folder]]
68
69	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
70	* ''Series/WonderWoman1975'' uses comic book panels both over the titles and for some transitions within each episode.
71	* The onomatopoetic "Biff! Bam! Pow!"s in the ''Series/Batman1966'' TV series.
72	* ''Series/TheAdventuresOfBriscoCountyJr'' had each episode broken down so that each act was a chapter in a pulp western. One episode even had a father (in-universe, mind you) reading one of these books to his son, in a manner not unlike ''Film/ThePrincessBride''.
73	* The credits of ''Series/TheCape'' show comic book panels coming to life.
74	* ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' portrayed itself as a comic book in television form, calling its episodes "chapters" and its seasons "volumes." The early scene in each chapter with the chapter title written on the landscape is designed to look like a Creator/WillEisner-style opening SplashPanel.
75	* ''Series/{{Wishbone}}'' does this in three separate episodes:
76	** It first occurs in "[[Recap/WishboneS1E04RosieOhRosieOh Rosie, Oh! Rosie, Oh!]]", the episode based on ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet''. Instead of Wishbone fantasizing about being a character in the story, as he usually does, in this episode he fantasizes about being an actor ''playing'' Romeo on stage. This allows the show to keep the downer ending without being actually depressing.
77	** In "[[Recap/WishboneS1E21TheCanineCure The Canine Cure]]", Wishbone imagines himself as Creator/{{Moliere}} playing Argan in ''Theatre/TheImaginaryInvalid''.
78	** In "[[Recap/WishboneS1E39RushinToTheBone Rushin' to the Bone]]", Wishbone imagines himself as a Moscow Art Theatre actor performing in ''Theatre/TheInspectorGeneral''.
79	* Post-ad break scenes on ''Series/IZombie'' start with comic book panels transitioning to live action.
80	* The 1980s ITV kid's magazine show ''Series/DoIt'' was set at the publishers of a kid's magazine, also called ''Do It!'' Transitions between the features were represented by the pages of the magazine turning.
81	* The ending credits to ''Series/{{Blackadder}} the Third'' are presented as a Regency playbill.
82	[[/folder]]
83
84	[[folder:Video Games]]
85	* ''VideoGame/AsurasWrath'' tries hard to present itself as a playable {{Anime}} (to the point that some of the DLC ''is'' just anime with QuickTimeEvents on top, ''VideoGame/DragonsLair'' style). This includes some rather unusual additions for a video game, like regular OnTheNext sequences and even {{Eyecatch}}es in the middle of each stage.
86	* ''VideoGame/OdinSphere'' is framed as a little girl reading a series of books about characters whose stories interconnect, so each character's tale starts with pages flipping and is separated into prologues, chapters, and epilogues. The 2d graphics are also a bit reminiscent of a picture book.
87	* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' was never a graphic novel, but the cutscenes are presented as a dynamic comic strip.
88	* ''VideoGame/{{XIII}}''. The whole game has CelShading to look like a 2D drawn comic book, onomatopoeic effects and speech bubbles appear during the gameplay,
89	* The sides of most of the stages in ''VideoGame/JumpSuperStars'' and ''Jump Ultimate Stars'' look like a stack of pulp paper, mimicking the pages of ''Magazine/ShonenJump''. Because of this, you can [[DieChairDie rip the sides away,]] allowing you to ring out your opponent. As your health goes down, you colors become more washed out as well, becoming greyscale when you only have a sliver of health. And, of course, the InventoryManagementPuzzle that uses actual panels from the manga to determine your lineup.
90	* In ''VideoGame/ComixZone'', an author get sucked into the comic he's drawing by his own villain, who then draws mooks for him to fight throughout the game. Fights happen within panels, along with all kinds of wall breaking.
91	* ''VideoGame/{{Anachronox}}'' has SuperVillain [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Rictus]] with a comic-book style intro and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVgUG3Jkdzc&t=2m49s narrator cameo]].
92	* ''VideoGame/SplitSecondVelocity'', which is set within a fictional TV series, is separated into episodes. Each episode begins with a {{Precap}} and ends with an "OnTheNext..." segment, complete with TV-style narration. There's even a logo for a fictional TV station in the top-right corner.
93	* ''VideoGame/{{Tyrian}} 2000'' displays an "INSERT COIN" message in its AttractMode, though it never was an UsefulNotes/ArcadeGame.
94	* ''VideoGame/AlanWake'' splits itself up into episodes complete with a recap at the start of the next chapter to make itself more like a TV series. The DLC game ''VideoGame/AlanWakesAmericanNightmare'' has a narrator just to drive home the similarity between the plot and a ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone'' episode.
95	* ''VideoGame/RockinKats'', inspired by {{Saturday morning cartoon}}s, depicts the game world as a television set, with the channels representing different game levels.
96	* ''VideoGame/EvilZone'' is a FightingGame whose story mode is presented as episodes of a TV series.
97	* ''VideoGame/HotlineMiami2WrongNumber'' makes several cinematographic references. The levels are called "scenes" and are divided into "acts". In the level selection menu, each level is represented by a VHS tape cover. Pausing the game causes a VHS-style pause effect to appear on the screen, and when the plot moves forward or backward a couple of years, a "fast forward" or "rewind" screen appears. And at the end of the "table sequence" cutscene (shown as an intro when re-playing the game after beating it), [[spoiler:Richard is shown activating a movie projector moments before the game starts.]]
98	[[/folder]]
99
100	[[folder:Webcomics]]
101	* ''Webcomic/MSPaintAdventures'' are presented as InteractiveFiction games.
102	** And as for ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''... It's styled as Interactive Fiction, originally ''was'' an InteractiveComic (although that has since stopped), is a webcomic that is in style is reminiscent of an illustrated novel, occasionally includes animated features involving sound, and less commonly involves actual games that range from simple {{Fighting Game}}s to RPG-style games revolving around interacting with various characters. ''Homestuck'' isn't just Indecisive Medium, it's ''[[SerialEscalation Schizophrenic Medium]]''.
103	* ''[[Webcomic/{{Morphe}} morphE]]'' is presented as a visual novel. For the most part this is a stylistic choice of presenting narrative and sprites in a way familiar to dating sims and lawyer simulators. It's when there are PixelHunt investigation modes and animated cut-scenes that the "comic" part starts to fall apart.
104	* ''Webcomic/{{Sonichu}}'' sometimes seems to treat itself more as a ''television series'', given its references to "episodes" throughout and how Chris is referred to as its "director".
105	[[/folder]]
106
107	[[folder:Web Original]]
108	* In 2006, ''Toys/{{Bionicle}}'' had these non-canon on-line animations that, similar to the ''Film/{{Hulk}}'' movie mentioned above, had shifting comic panels instead of normal transitions, adopted 3D ThickLineAnimation to enhance the effect, and were also a series of [[MiniGame mini-games]].
109	* ''Webcomic/{{Buildingverse}}'' fics (like ''Fanfic/OnlyADream'') have the tendency to reference the {{Art Shift}}s of the webcomics as "and the art went..." (all straight, [[SuperDeformed chibi]], etc.) in their text. Sometimes even other webcomic tropes, like talking about SpeechBubbles and such.
110	[[/folder]]
111
112	[[folder:Western Animation]]
113	* Disney's ''[[WesternAnimation/TheManyAdventuresOfWinnieThePooh Winnie-the-Pooh]]'' frequently featured the characters as illustrations in the [[Literature/WinnieThePooh original book]], complete with hopping between the pages and walking on the letters of the text. Unlike {{Storybook Opening}}s, this happened all the way during the story.
114	* ''WesternAnimation/WhereOnEarthIsCarmenSandiego'', a SaturdayMorningCartoon based on a video game: The characters are aware that they are characters in a video game, and often speak directly to the player. Also, each episode begins and ends with a brief live-action sequence of the Player sitting at his/her computer.
115	* ''WesternAnimation/DoraTheExplorer'' is supposed to take place in a 1990s computer game. It used to have things like mouse pointers showing on screen, but has since scrapped the "It's a game" concept.
116	* A minor example: ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' and its SequelSeries ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'' had titled screens that refer to seasons as a "book" and each episode as a "chapter."
117	* The opening credits to ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'' show the characters running through comic book panels. The ground (which turns out to be the logo) is a pattern of yellow dots suggesting the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Day_dots Ben-Day coloring process]], although it's also equated at some points with Scrooge's money (he swims through it like his PooledFunds).
118	* ''WesternAnimation/CodeMonkeys'' is very heavily styled after 1980's-era video games, complete with sprite graphics, status bars, and a pause screen for commercial breaks.
119	* ''WesternAnimation/KaBlam'' is a anthology cartoon show that's a comic book anthology InUniverse. The hosts, Henry and June, are seen moving between panels and such.
120	[[/folder]]
121

Context Main / IndecisiveMedium