Discussing anime adaptations of visual novels

Vincentdante said:
So it's fine for Fate to get a faithful Anime but not Higurashi? Ok fine
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As you're obviously baiting me to answer that question, here we go again I guess.

First, I have never said Fate has gotten a faithful adaptation, not in a 1:1 way at least. If you look at my replies hitherto I've done nothing but argued that those adaptations isn't "perfect" either. Not that they're bad or good as such, but they aren't 1:1 adaptations. Indeed, I've tried to present my view that there is no such adaptations.

Second, here are the assumptions I'm basing my reasoning on:

1) There exist a hard border between anime and VN mediums, due to them being very different in structure and employ completely different ways of narration. Due to these differences, both these mediums have different strengths and drawbacks according to the fact that they are so different to each other.

2) Due to there being these inherent differences, any jump between this border between them is going to have ramifications on the experience being transmitted from one medium to the next, as this experience will have to now be presented in a different way of narration and in a new form. This will likely cause stuff being lost in the process or stuff that "worked" in the original medium doesn't work in the same way anymore (a F/SN example would be, how Sakura's hand is described as being "bruised" or something to that effect in the VN while you in the anime clearly can see that she got an edged out command spell)

3) As each medium have different strengths and drawbacks, some experiences is easier to reconstruct in a new medium. A VN with a lot of fight scenes is easier to adapt into anime as those scenes translate well into motion and offers improvements by adding fluidity and "pulse" while a text heavy and atmospheric VN (for example) will have a harder time at being properly adapted as text can be creative and more informative in a way nothing "tangible" can be. Thus, it's not strange then that F/SN can have fairly faithful anime adaptations, Higurashi can have less faithful anime adaptations and something like Subarashiki Hibi I'd say is outright impossible to adapt with any shred of "faithfulness" even with limitless resources.

The sum of all this is that I don't see being "faithful" as necessarily a good quality on its own when I'm judging the anime. I'm more interested in whether I like the story and narrative presented rather than "how is this part compared to this part form the VN?" or "does this part capture the exact same feelings as this part from the VN?". If it works, I'm completely fine with differences, simple as that. You see the anime only arc as being a sign of the VN being "butchered", I see it more as a shrewd way to "realign" itself to the VN's story when the story gets derailed due circumstances most likely caused by the anime medium as such. All in all, I found the Higurashi anime good and enjoyable, not as an adaption of the VN, but as an anime by itself. I'm very well aware this experience probably deviates a lot from the VN and that stuff gets left behind, but I see it as an inescapable part of these types of adaptations and, once again, if the narrative works (which it did for me and a lot of others, as seen in the MAL ratings) I don't see why I should hold it against it that it's not exactly the same experience as the VN.

That's it. I'm leaving this discussion now. Good day to you.
 
Afherlan said:
You see the anime only arc as being a sign of the VN being "butchered", I see it more as a shrewd way to "realign" itself
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I know you didn't intend it but this is the best descriptor ever for that arc. How amazingly meta.

Yeah I mostly agree with what you say. Problem is that Higurashi's VN was basically an anime to begin with and they still couldn't retell the gosh darn story correctly, case in point I would love hear anime only person try to explain to me what that Bernkastel bit was about. Anyway it's not as bad as the Umineko anime, which probably is unadaptable anyway to be fair. And the new Anime (which we suspect to be a sequal to the VN) is very good so far :)
 
Rui said:
I agree that this was spiralling way out of hand for the bargain discussion thread so it's now its own topic (feel free to continue or let the matter drop according to your personal preferences).

R
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Thanks for this. Since we have our own thread I will go into a ton more detail.

Higurashi's anime adaptation removes and rewrites way too much content from the VN. It's not a bad anime adaptation overall, I would rate it as fine or average as it's still entertaining. But it goes through events at neck break pace without fully exploring what's actually going on. My brother was anime only watcher so I saw through him how incomprehensible some scenes were as the context got skipped and he asked me to fill in the gaps. That is a sign of a poor adaptation. The anime also keeps some random parts of the VN without any of the previous explanation (see my bernkastel reference above)

The Anime only arc was basically a mish mash of deleted scenes thrown together in no particular order. I call it the frankenstein arc over at my discord for this reason. It was made at 07th's behest as it was needed to provid some context for the upcoming answers arc to actually make a lick of sense.

Honestly like I said the anime is fine, I watched it all, I enjoyed it, I laughed at the bits it quite literally changed because I guess the director thought Shion wetting herself was better than feeling remorse and guilt. It was servicable but I wouldn't recomend it to anyone over the VN personally.
 
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