Can I talk for a moment about visual storytelling, cause, I feel like itās something that a lot of adaptations forget about in lieu of trying to replicate their source material.
Itās a problem you see most often in anime derived from manga or light novels, but itās also present in movies based on YA novels, and you gotta know what Iām talking about, start on black, opening narration, fade in as the main character explains the world and environment. This works in a book since the reader canāt see anything, they need the specifics of the world explained, but it feels like the movies are just likeĀ āwell it worked for the book, itāll work for us right?
Iād say itās worse in anime, where characters will go on long internal soliloquies trying to explain their thought processes and complex emotions, which again, works for the manga, in a manga movement is very expensive, every single motion requires itās own panel, which takes up the artistās time, printed space, and a moment in the narrative, so itās important to only show what absolutely needs to be shown. But animation is different, itās all movement and the details are what sells it more than the dialogue.
The reason I wanted to make this post is because of one scene in One Punch Man that perfectly exemplifies how to translate a written thought process into visual storytelling. After getting punched to the moon (err, spoilers), Saitama has this thought process
and itād be easy to translate that entirely literally in the anime, Saitama crouches, has an internal monologue as he tries to figure out how much force he needs to put into his jump, and then he launches. Instead though, the scene is done completely silently, to sell the fact that heās in space, but the thought process isnāt removed, itās just show visually.
He throws a bit of moon rock to gauge the moonās gravity, then launches, itās a much more thoughtful approach to the scene and the audienceās ability to interpret visual information.
I just, really wish more adaptations realized the inherent strength of the visual medium instead of relying entirely on the source materialās structure and reliance on its own medium.
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