Why are western writers so utterly incapable of makinga faithful adaptation? Do they think they're above it? I've watched the arknights cartoon and it's beat by bit the story of the game like all asian adaptations, it's not impossible to do ffs
Saying "all Asian adaptations" is generous, considering how frequently we get manga to anime adaptations that people deem unworthy (
@Yousef mentions multiple examples in their first comment).
While I won't speak to why unfaithful adaptations exist, I'll say that I'd vastly prefer a unique adaptation than something beat for beat. If I like the source material, I don't just want it chewed up and spit back out at me in a new form solely to appease some nothing that things
need to be the exact same to be faithful. I want new interpretations on characters, I want to see something that feels authentic to the source material but takes liberties and shows me something fresh within an existing space. In a similar way to how comics spin their characters off into dozens of different runs that give new looks or interpretations to aspects of these worlds, I want cross media adaptations to do the same.
Of course, that comes with people debating on a case-by-case basis if something is authentic enough to the original to justify its differences, but that's ok. I'd rather have those discussions and have some people be disappointed by a new interpretation than just have the same thing but in a new type of media. That's worthless to me, I just won't care.
I'm glad that things like the live action Sonic movies are a brand-new spin on the series and characters even if I have issues with certain reinterpretations. I'm glad that The Lord of the Rings took liberties where it deemed necessary both to save time and to introduce some new elements throughout the trilogy. Sure, it didn't work out with The Hobbit, but that is clearly for a bevy of external reasons regarding studio meddling than anything. Controversial as the franchise may be, Harry Potter also benefitted greatly from taking several liberties with the movies. It cut out so much of Rowling's hack writing and shit worldbuilding that it managed to make something that in most people's eyes elevated the source material.
If someone doesn't want an adaptation to change anything, they just shouldn't adapt it in the first place. If it's fine as is then why bother when you could make something new?
I can't speak to Castlevania itself because I loved the first two seasons and then stopped watching. Not for any real reason and I've definitely intended to go back and finish it at some point but for now it just isn't high on my priority list. Maybe it will be an example of a bad adaptation in my eyes once I see seasons 3 and 4, but when season 1 and 2 already take their liberties with tone and such I don't think the issue is a lack of pure faithfulness to the source material but rather just bad writing in general.
The Halo TV show comes to mind for me, because in a vacuum I think *almost* all of its ideas are solid ideas for a reinterpretation of the series and from a presentational perspective it nails Halo's vibe more often than it doesn't. The problem is that the pacing and writing couldn't execute on those ideas.
In any case, maybe this counts as my first hot take in this thread, but I don't think a pure adaptation is good, because if you're gonna stick a talented team on a project for however long it takes to finish all so they can just regurgitate something we already have then that's just opportunity cost. I feel the same about remakes even when the remake in question is brilliant. It kind of strikes at the heart of most adaptations in that I just don't really care for them because the headaches surrounding people endlessly getting upset over something being canon/non-canon or faithful/non-faithful is exhausting. In an age where damn near all we get are remakes and adaptations, it's the same conversation every other day. I'll take a bad adaptation over a faithful one almost any day though because at least the bad one is interesting to talk about and had something new to say.
