Animated and Live Action adaptions provide the advantage of having much larger audiences. My personal theory is that this is due to being televised instead of sought out and purchased like books. You'll see the same things with Super Hero comic adaptions in the west, the Broad Strokes of the adaption simply have a much higher rate of permutation among the audience, boosting sales and sparking interest in the originals.
For the record, the advantages of making an adaption over an original work include: pre-existing market/fanbase, pre-written plot, established character designs. Advantages for original work: no legal fees, no pressure to match original work, not having to fix dialogue timing from Talking Is a Free Action (which is even worse in a lot of written works).
edited 28th Jul '11 5:57:26 PM by Deboss
Fight smart, not fair.Remember animation is expensive I mean like 100k+ an episode. Why trust to an unproven story and characters when you can adapt an already proven and popular Manga or Light Novel which already has a fanbase there by almost guaranteeing a profit as well as boosting the sales of the manga its based on. (which is almost always a sponsor of said anime or outright doing the whole thing.)
Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!My understanding was that a lot of anime make their money primarily by selling merchandise. To sell enough merchandise to make a show profitable, you generally need to get the hardcore fans supporting you, the kind who will spend hundreds of dollars accumulating every last bit of merch. And if hardcore comic fans in Japan are anything like hardcore comic fans in America, even the slightest change made by an adaptation can set them foaming at the mouth.
..you might as well ask why the hell do anyone adapt anything. Why not just rewrite the plot for the LOTR and Harry Potter films in order to "create original stories for non filler purposes"? Because seriously, what would be the bloody point? If you want to take the characters and settings and create new stories from it, all well and good, but why should there be any problem at all with faithful adaptions?
It may have something to do with the fact that the story structure of western comics is different from that of manga. A manga is usually the project of one writer or creative team, while most ongoing Western comics routinely change hands from one writer to another. Being the product of one consistent creator means that manga are more likely to have a Myth Arc or a series of connected Story Arcs which are easily adapted into a TV series format, where the Story Arcs of Western comics tend to be shorter and more episodic (and more widely varied in cast, theme, and subject matter) and thus require more adaptation.
edited 29th Jul '11 7:52:13 AM by JoieDeCombat
Yeah, the continuity of major western comics work very differently from manga. Major western publishers set their comics in the same universe that goes on forever using Comic-Book Time. That kind of continuity isn't usually the best way to go for a TV series.
somethingAnd it's not like they write all new plots. Pretty much every long running instance of Spiderman has done a Venom arc.
Fight smart, not fair.@OP: I really just want to choke the stupid out of you right now.
The fanbase aside, what's the point of "stories for non-filler purposes?" If you're going to completely change everything, then why not just write an original story, with your own characters?
I, for one, would've loved the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime (which I will freely admit was good even thought it wasn't a faithful adaptation) even more if it wasn't the story of the Elric Brothers and it wasn't entitled "Fullmetal Alchemist". The first anime and the source material have very little to do with each-other, which makes the first anime little more than false advertising. Well made false advertising, but false advertising nonetheless.
edited 29th Jul '11 10:22:44 AM by KSPAM
I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serialManga and animes do sometimes have original adaptations but they're usually OV As or doujinshis and they're very explicitly non-canon. Heck Eva has a bunch of A Us and other adaptations out right now.
I think a lot of the difference between manga and western comics is due to the attitude to what is considered canon. For western comics, everything produced by the company can be considered canon while for manga/anime only the stuff made by the original writer(s) is considered canon. And fans love their canon.
Eh, I still think it would've been better as an original production.
I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serialI believe you people are getting backwards. It is not "why anime 'copy' manga/light novel/visual novel", but why "american cartoons don't 'copy' american comic books". The adaption being very close to the original work is not something unique to animes, after all. To my knowledge, most movies based on books tend to try to stay as closer as then can given the limited time frame (which means it will be very different, but not as different as, say, animated X Men is from comic book X Men).
One reason, I assume, is that the most famous american comic books are old. An story that worked 50 years ago, for the readers of 50 years ago, may not work today, so some changes need to be made. Furthermore, the sheer amount of individual story lines these comics can have is enormous. Some of the most interesting ones, the ones the viewers want to see animated, may be separated by years of lesser stories, so the adaption need to mess around so they can fit what the viewers expect in a single adaptation (which out making said adaptation 500 episodes long). As if this is not enough, even though american comic books have the annoying tendency of evolving in circles, things change over the years. Sometimes the beginning is way too different of how the series become famous. To not alienate the current viewers, a change in tone need to be made. Finally, the many retcons may confuse what is the 'truth story' in a comic book, anyway.
To summarize, American cartoons adaptions will need so many changes from the original comic books anyway that is much simpler start thinking everything from sketch, instead of keeping patching up so it can be as 'faithful' as possible.
So, there is nothing weird in how anime and manga do things. But, instead, in how american cartoon and comic books work.
edited 30th Jul '11 10:12:25 AM by Heatth
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Well, there's also the fact that what works in a comic doesn't necessarily work so well in animation. It's not as much of a problem with manga, which often use a very cinematic style (though even then Talking Is a Free Action can make some scenes look kinda odd when animated), but American comic books (particularly those older than a decade or two) often have more in common with novels than with movies: lots of narration, entire scenes described with only a few words and a single panel, stuff like that. Stories told that way are gonna require more adjustments when you change them into animation or live action, and if you've already given up on adapting the story scene-for-scene, why not try and improve some other stuff as well.
To add to that theory, I guess it's also due to american cartoons trying to reach a younger audience.
Anime is often toned down from the manga in terms of fanservice and violence, but the reason they do that isn't to appeal to a wider audience, but to obey broadcasting standards and/or convince audience to buy their uncut DV Ds.
American cartoons, from what I gathered, is a bit more affected by Never Say "Die" than anime usually does.
Now I don't have too much experience with the cartoon and the comic, but I clearly remember some pretty violent stuff happening in the X-Men, like Wolverine being torn in half and Wolverine stabbing non-robot enemies. But in the animated series? Wounds everyone take are almost always from energy weapons, and victims of Wolverine's claws are almost always robots.
I only remember one character dying in the X-men cartoon, and he died off-screen...in the first episode...and no one really cared that he died because he was a character made specifically to die in just the first episode...and everyone forgot about him afterwards.
Same goes for the Spiderman animated series. Spiderman never accidentally killed his first girlfriend. And the closest the animated series got to a scene like that is Mary Jane falling into some sort of portal. And just like every other american superhero cartoon...ALL firearms are non-lethal laser guns, when I clearly remember seeing actual guns and people dying by guns in comics before.
In conclusion...............I forgot where I was going with this.
edit: oh I remember now, american cartoon generally tries a lot harder to appeal to a younger audience, so they often change story and aspects of the story to be more kid friendly or something. How many people actually died in Bat Man The Animated Series compared to the comics?
edited 30th Jul '11 8:22:39 PM by Signed
"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."That's a good point about how many comic book storylines would need major plot details written just to satisfy TV censorship standards. But I would like to point out that anime does try to appeal to child audiences; it's just that Japanese parents are more comfortable with their children seeing violence and death on TV than many American parents are.
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Nice point both o you.
So, even though with 3 different set of theories, we all agreed it is the american cartoons that fall off the standard by not 'copying' their source, not the animes.
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I don't agree. The target demographic of an adaption anime is almost always the same as of its source. It is just that animes targeted to older audiences are just not as common. I really can't remember an animes that changed the original's target demographic. Unlike american cartoons.
edited 31st Jul '11 3:58:04 AM by Heatth

I remembered that about shortly after posting that. But that's still generally not on the level of what happens to those western adaptations
edited 28th Jul '11 5:53:29 PM by Hylarn