So my recently completed *cough* *cough* "review" of ReZero was uploaded
and oh was it a literal minefield of comments and opinions.
I have not had a comment section this heated since I've done a video on Sword Art Online
(which is always guaranteed to set off a bomb shell).
On one side you had your usual group of hype anime haters,
finding it difficult to even fathom how such a show got so popular.
On the other side were the die hard fans who deflected any criticism thrown against it
and some were lost in the middle, where the people were like "Yeah, it was alright".
But the one thing I constantly notice on the side that were defending ReZero
was the continuous reference to the source material to counter any criticism that was made;
"This guy dismisses the point of the largest story."
"Every problem he had gets answered in arch 4 anyway."
"Are you an absolute idiot Gigguk? You're criticizing the narrative when it's just the prologue.
The Prologue!!!"
Which, after hearing all that I could only think one thing...
"Here we fucking go again"
See, ignoring the fact that a prologue that lasts 25 episodes already has flaws in its narrative structure,
as longer stories have been able to set up a narrative in a much shorter time
and that longer prologues that have existed before, like Berserk, are essentially self contained stories with their own narrative
and that there is absolutely no indication at all that this is just a prologue.
Please don't make this an argument about whether ReZero is a good prologue or not,
I did like the show guys, I'm just trying to make a larger point here.
The bigger issue here is that people are using the source material to excuse the criticisms of an adaptation
and honestly, this isn't the first time this has happened
and by God won't it be the last either.
We see this alot with adaptations that are yet to be complete
or source material that is just really hard to adapt like, Oh you've guessed it, the Fate franchise
The grandaddy of this entire debate.
See, whenever I've seen someone criticize either one of the Fate adaptations,
it's almost guaranteed to trigger a plethora of fans of the visual novels it was based on,
either we were watching it wrong
or the criticisms we had were never really true because they were addressed in the visual novels
and we should have really read the visual novel before watching the anime
because that's the only real way to properly experience it.
And while Fate is definitely the easiest example I can think of,
this way of thinking is scattered across many different anime franchises.
The peculiar thing is that anime is the only place that I've really seen the source material brought up as an actual defence to the adaptation
as I definitely don't see this as much in other mediums,
for example, we don't see the Watchmen comics used to cover up any faults it's movie had
or any other film adaptation for that matter.
Hell, we don't even see anime used as an excuse for bad anime adaptations because that's exactly how they're seen
just a bad adaptation.
Outside of anime, it seems more widely acknowledged that an adaptation is more separate from the source material
and is judged independently.
We see the words "based on" and we immediately accept that whether this be a good adaptation or bad adaptation,
it should be judged based on its own merits
and that's the way it should be.
Every medium has different strengths and weaknesses
and you'd be dumb to think that a complete one on one adaptation would work for every story in every medium.
What's important, in my opinion, is that the adaptation contains the essence of the source material.
Lord of the Rings is a great example of this as for the critical and commercial success that it was,
huge chunks of the original books were cut out,
honestly leaving the films as an incomplete picture of Tolkien's entire universe
Yet it didn't matter because it worked as a stand alone piece in the medium that it was in,
regardless of what it was based on.
For this to happen the source material must be viewed as a completely separate piece of work
in over words: Irrelevant.
This is not to say that we ignore the existence of the source material at all.
But when judging an adaptation, it is important that we look at both pieces of work individually and not as a whole.
So why does it seem like anime is treated differently to other mediums?
Well anime is also a unique medium in this sense as it is more used to seeing one for one adaptations,
since with the history of anime productions (which is adapting manga stories),
the manga it was based on is almost used as a complete storyboard
and anime has evolved over the years with this principle.
Because of this, the majority of modern anime don't even adapt the source material all the way to the end,
due to the anime production cycle these days.
Unlike with American TV shows, which usually get some kind of ending when the network cuts it off
or movies (which only really adapt things that are already complete),
the amount of anime which only gets one or two seasons with open endings, never to be seen again, is vast.
We're forced to judge the adaptations we have because, well,
we have no guarantee that we will ever see more of it.
But this does beg the question of whether these kinds of adaptation are truly standalone
or more of a complementary piece to the source material,
an extension of the original body of work.
See, as I mentioned before with movies and a source material being judged entirely independently,
a lot of the times anime adaptations can just be a part of a bigger whole.
As I mentioned with Fate/Stay night
(an 80 plus hour visual with multiple routes and a nonlinear narrative),
it is very difficult/nigh-on-impossible to create a faithful adaptation where you get the same experience as you do reading the visual novels.
The same can be said with incomplete adaptations like ReZero (so far), though to a less complicated extent.
So, with all this in mind, should we think of think of anime as just an extension of the original body of work?
No. For me, to think that would be to undersell anime as a medium and their subsequent adaptations.
There's so much more to judge when it comes to an anime adaptation;
you have animation, art, voice acting, music, cinematography and so many more elements that blend into a product
that warrants it to be judged by it's own merit.
We have good adaptations and bad adaptations
and even if we don't get the complete story,
it's still the anime's job to give you some sense of closure at the end of the season, even if it's not the true ending.
This is why endings like the original Berserk anime are so detested
because they left us right in the middle of a fucking arch.
This doesn't even take into account anime original endings because like them or not,
they are their own separate thing and have been shown that they can work.
You know, at least once.
Going back to the Lord of the Rings example, you don't need a complete adaptation for it to work,
you just need an adaptation that works in the medium it's being presented on
and it's not the source material's job to cover up any faults the adaptation had,
it's the adaptations job to make sure it works in the first place,
for example, if this season of ReZero is just the prologue,
where is the indication in the adaptation that this indeed is just the prologue?
Plus if we couldn't properly judge something until the entire story is over,
that would mean that like 90 percent of anime would be unreviewable,
"I mean how can we properly judge it unless it's complete yet, guys?
There's still like 400 volumes of manga left to adapt,
you wouldn't possible know if it's good until you've seen absolutely all of it."
In the end, what this is about is fans wanting others to share their experience they had with a certain franchise
and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
I've been on both sides of the fence for this one;
both as an anime only watcher, watching a so called "awful adaptation"
and the fan trying to defend the franchise because an adaptation did not live to what I wanted it to be.
Inevitably, we will always be more connected with the medium we first experience the story in
and when someone can't see the entire picture of what you experience because of a shoddy or incomplete adaptation,
we feel the need to defend the experience we had.
So can we all just, for a moment, take a step back
and see that adaptations are not the source material,
different adaptations can have different experiences that are judged entirely independently.
So if someone criticise the adaptation,
they aren't criticizing your experience or the thing as a whole,
it's just simply what they saw
or maybe they just have a shitty opinion like me.