#have to censor it so the white supremacists don’t start calling me slurs again

[twenty-qs]

Why are people so stupid about adaptations. There are good, bad, and mediocre adaptations. Bad adaptations do not mean “but this isn’t how I imagined it!” Bad adaptations mean you missed the point of the original, AND ALSO it’s a boring story. The ending of the Soul Eater anime was total garbage. The point of the original Soul Eater is that Maka conquers the isolating fear of ‘madness’ by confiding in others and uniting together (in the form of super cool shounen battle powers). That’s the whole concept of weapon-meister teams and soul resonance! The whole show is built around the idea that we are better together!!! But in the TV version, Maka conquers the supernatural embodiment of fear by…being…afraid? And secretly being a weapon all along? So she never needed anyone else’s help, as it turns out, and she wins the day by screaming a lot and then?? throwing a punch????

This ending commits the cardinal sin. Not by diverging from the manga, no. By being A BAD FUCKING STORY.

It’s totally fine in my opinion to change things. I find it interesting. Plus, maybe you’ll get a different demographic hooked onto the series, and now you have a whole new generation of fans of the original. It’ll be a sad day when the American TV industry turns into the anime industry equivalent of copying every popular manga panel by panel. Animators don’t want to spend their lives making someone else’s manga panels look pretty in motion. They want to tell their own stories too—why else did Soul Eater and the first anime version of Fullmetal Alchemist happen, after all? It certainly wasn’t to make money. It’s because the animation team wanted to HAVE FUN. Same with creatives in TV and film—that’s why they call them CREATIVES, not adaptives.

I don’t fault Studio Bones for going buck wild. I’d want to do the same thing, too, if I had the resources they did. They just happened to be bad at turning existing IP into original content, that’s all.

Adaptations that are also original are HARD. It’s a different beast from either creating totally original stories, or sticking to the script. Studio Bones has actually created several really good original anime, and is famously excellent at faithful adaptations, so it’s food for thought that they flopped so hard when they tried doing the middle path.

But despite the risks, I do want to promote people who try to take existing stories and make something new out of them. Because sometimes, even when you change things, you get a GOOD STORY. And a good story that’s a fresh spin on something is infinitely more interesting than just a good VERSION of the same old story. For instance, I have zero interest in watching the first season of the Last of Us. Absolutely nill. I’ve gone through that emotional wringer once via the game, I’m not doing it again. Same with the Jujutsu Kaisen movie. I was really hoping they’d add some original content in the adaptation, but no. Nothing. Just the same dialogue, plot points, fight scenes. Maybe a few cameos from upcoming manga arcs. I watched it in theaters with a friend, and couldn’t help but wonder why I bothered spending money on the thing. In contrast, I LOVED the 2022 Batman movie. Never seen a Batman so pathetic, and yet still telling a brilliant story about breaking cycles of revenge and violence. I eat that shit up with a spoon. And of course just look at the Umbrella Academy.

You know what a soulless cash grab really is? It’s sticking to the script.

#this is about the w*tcher #have to censor it so the white supremacists don’t start calling me slurs again #shut up shut UP it’s a mediocre story but I’m ENJOYING it #I don’t CARE that it’s not like the books #I’m NEVER gonna read the books just let me enjoy myself!!!!! #oh and also Mayfair w*tches #that show was fucking rad idk what you’re talking about