I am starting to notice this phenomenon among the fan group with regards to SOA’s story direction. Speaking about how it is adapted and the decision of its order of storytelling, this post will come from a person who didn’t read the light novel, I don’t have a clue on how it was foretold in the LN and how many of the plot elements was disclosed on the Anime adaptation. But it piques my interest to ask: Does it matter if the Anime is not after the original story?

The Case

The case in question, with a lot of LN folks complaining on the inadequacies of the studio in after the course of the story about the LN. The problem with the source material in question, is that it is also composed of one-shot/side-stories spread across the same world. Similar to Square’s plan of having the FFXIII universe tell different stories. LN novel fans are outraged by how much of the material is being rushed, or many of the elements missing that may so, answer the plot elements presented.

This episode kind of pissed me off, as a fan of the Light Novels. The time skip in the light novel is actually far larger than this, and it works.

Basically, in the light novels this episode was a flash-back, and it works in the context of a flash-back. I won’t spoil why the flash-back occurred, because it’ll show up later. The thing that bugs me is that this episode is so insignificant in the context of the story, that until they reached the room with the chest in it, I couldn’t remember a thing that was going to happen.

If they keep going with this nonsense, the anime really will end up terrible, and not living up to the hype fans like me have created. I’m hoping they skip forward to the main story with the episode and skip the silly side-stories, sticking to the story structure of the actual light novel…

psgels.net

There also numerous, similar complaints in previous episodes, like this entire blog post disappointed for not fully adapting, what supposed to be an important story for SOA.

Question

In turn, does the anime fail in general for not meeting the requirement set by the people who are looking forward to the adaptation?

It is not the Author who tells the story, it is the director who tells the story

For non-LN fans, we are not aware of the fallacies that the Anime has been doing on the source material. As for these type of audience, the criteria of judging the Anime only falls into factor if it’s entertaining or has a cohesive story that is connected or relative to the core story.

From what I read in some comments from fans who had read the LN, SAO is a compilation of stories. But its core story is all but common from each of them. So far, the first three episodes didn’t fail in that regard. Entertainment, which is a subjected term will factor next, as this is dependent on the expectations you set in the Anime. For me, the first two episodes serve their purpose in telling the grim situations the characters are in. It also has enough development to each character. The Anime didn’t suck in general, since I am not concerned whether there are elements that are  missing in the LN that should had been in the Anime.  It is not the author of the LN who is telling the story. It is the director and the staff responsible who are telling the story in Anime. I believe that we should watch this Anime as if we never read the LN and see on how it fares as a story, not by how accurate it is to the source material.

To conclude: I don’t think it is fair for us to judge the adaptation, because it doesn’t follow the source material properly. We have good cases like Sankarea that created a different direction in the series that made it more effective compared to its source material.

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