The irony of a critical community: do elitists dream of electric moeblobs?

[ScumbagYoshii]

Eh, source elitism can get annoying, but I think often times reading a source does offer perspective on the work that's been adapted. After all, it is an adaptation.

But as a whole, a lot of source elitism can get really ridiculous considering there are some critically acclaimed adaptations out there that people probably don't even think about all that much (Haibane Renmei, Ghost in the Shell, Kuuchuu Buranko, Tatami Galaxy, Paprika, Howl's Moving Castle). The same can be said with movies (Blade Runner, 2001 Space Odyssey, Jaws, Jurassic Park, the list goes on...). Obviously I don't necessarily like all of the above, but they're pretty well known and considered very good by a lot of people.

For me, personally, do have my fair share of moments when I think an adaptation just completely eviscerates the source material (Ender's Game) and replaces it with a heaping pile of garbage, so I probably would go out of my way to tell people to just read the book if they watched the movie. :/

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by all_flying

I just wanted to ask, where did this 'moeblob' word came from?

I recall it first being used widely to refer to Asahina Mikuru in 2006's Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi.

[Traece]

Originally Posted by ScumbagYoshii

Eh, source elitism can get annoying, but I think often times reading a source does offer perspective on the work that's been adapted. After all, it is an adaptation.

But as a whole, a lot of source elitism can get really ridiculous considering there are some critically acclaimed adaptations out there that people probably don't even think about all that much (Haibane Renmei, Ghost in the Shell, Kuuchuu Buranko, Tatami Galaxy, Paprika, Howl's Moving Castle). The same can be said with movies (Blade Runner, 2001 Space Odyssey, Jaws, Jurassic Park, the list goes on...). Obviously I don't necessarily like all of the above, but they're pretty well known and considered very good by a lot of people.

For me, personally, do have my fair share of moments when I think an adaptation just completely eviscerates the source material (Ender's Game) and replaces it with a heaping pile of garbage, so I probably would go out of my way to tell people to just read the book if they watched the movie. :/

My only experiences with Source Elitism are Sekai no Senki (Banner of the Stars), xxxHolic, and The World God Only Knows (KamiNomi). The majority of changes from the source to the animation were mostly details that weren't relevant, scenes that really couldn't have been fit in. It's always stuff like that, and I see it all the time. Sure, there are times when people pull out the source card and have a legitimate complaint because a scene that actually sounds important was cut, but most of the time this is not the case.

TWGOK especially fell victim to complaints about the cuts from the source material. A bunch of side characters that were between arcs got cut in favor of focusing on plot, and source elitists went nutso. It didn't help that TWGOK is based on going from heroine to heroine, so every fan of a cut heroine shook their fists menacingly (myself included, but not quite so verbally). At the end of the day though, those side stories offered very little in the grand scheme beyond some very mild character development, which was more or less made up for (it doesn't help that the skipping was actually acknowledged in the anime via flashbacks, thus implying the growth from previous events).

At the end of the day though, most of the source material that isn't quoted verbatim is better off for it. You will never be able to 1:1 a LN, and doing that for a manga is similarly difficult. I've always felt that anime offers a more succinct story, and that's why I've read a whopping two mangas, and one light novel series. I love anime because of the way it allows the portrayal of these stories. The animated medium, however, does not allow for the lengthy descriptions and dialogues of LNs and to a lesser extent manga. Any anime that does very quickly gets slapped with infodump criticisms.

[all_flying]

Do you ever watch HOTD or Death Note? That was some example a (pardon) stupid director just slapping manga panel into the storyboard.

I can't wait the day when that director (sorry, I don't want to remember him exist), gets his hand to adapt an LN. Maybe he would just slap the LN text into the working script.

[ScumbagYoshii]

Originally Posted by Traece

Any anime that does very quickly gets slapped with infodump criticisms.

Just to touch on this point, I think that's a bigger problem with anime and the way they write their stories as opposed to a problem with source adaptation. There's just not enough showing and too much telling in a lot of anime.

Even Fate/Zero, which is probably one of the most fantasy series to have come out in a while, had a very lackluster first episode of pure exposition. Yes, these are very in depth universes that require some understanding to grasp some of the more complex mechanics, but that still doesn't excuse the presence of very heavy infodumps that could have been presented more artistically.