True Tears - Loose Adaptation Appreciation
True Tears is currently my favorite series from this season. It has it all – high quality animation, appealing character design, and even an opening theme by eufonius. No flaws to fuss about. However, none of those are its greatest selling point. True Tears is instead great because it is loosely based on its predecessor.
First, we need to define the term. What do we mean by a loose adaptation? It means the show has little or no resemblance to the original visual novel it is (supposedly) based on. To be honest, I am sure not what that means either. Our least reliable source, Wikipedia, states that even the story is completely different. Makes you wonder just what keeps it tied to the original besides the same title. Leave that thought aside though.
What we really want to know is why the loose adaptation works well. Certainly it is not a great idea all the time, but such approach is a refreshing way to revive the dying genre commonly referred to as harem. Take character designs for example. Although this does not concern everyone, a good number of us have grown tired of the unnatural hair colors in anime. Who cares if that is a tradition of anime? It does not even serve its original purpose any more. Modern anime has more quality and detail so it is no longer necessary to rely on hair color for distinguishing characters anyway.
Besides, not all of us are like Impz who favors female anime characters with green hair. We would rather see a little more natural hair colors in anime. Not pink, but brown. It keeps the anime feeling less childish and more in tune with reality. And speaking of reality, shows like True Tears receive the liberty to keep the story more believable. In other words, none of that silly supernatural madness found in just about any title coming from Key.
Of course, this does not mean every series should follow True Tears. More of them should, but not all. Too much, and this style will go bland just as well. With the right amount though, people won’t have to turn to a shoujo series to enjoy slice-of-life romance.
P.S. I wrote this in the car while coming back home. :P
My guess is that the two are completely different titles which happen to have the same name. I first saw the preview image of True Tears, back in 2007, and then when I saw this, it felt completely different. So, that’s my guess.
Yeah, that is what I thought too, but check the anime again. You would notice that it says La’cryma in the credit right at the beginning of the opening. That’s the same publisher of the game.
Whether a show is good or not has nothing to do with the looseness or faithfulness to the original work in terms of plot, characters, music etc. If it is to be a successful adaptation, what’s more important is that the show retains the spirit and central themes of the original.
Think about it. Every story is written with a “concept” in mind. Frequently this is a message that the author wants to get across, or a theme that the author thinks is important to illustrate. Everything is written around this concept. Take this out and you take out the heart of the show. No matter how prettily you dress up the exterior, 99% of the time the emptiness of the show will shine out in the end. Conversely, if the heart of the show is present, then changing the exterior makes little to no difference, because the new pieces of the puzzle will still fit in with the all-important middle piece. Of course, the actual quality of the jigsaw pizzle depends on the quality of the original concept.
It is why the Air movie was such a spectacular failure. It shares much of the same characters and settings to the original game, but the main theme of “memory” was not brought over. The writers tried to fit square pegs (characters and settings written with the original concept in mind) into round holes (the new concept). To draw another example from the current season, the first half of Shana S2 was so dismal not because it veered off in a completely different direction from the original plot-wise, but because this new plot had nothing to do with the central theme of Shana, which is straddling the line between normalcy and non-normalcy.
I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, so I can’t be certain, but the general impression I get from the Japanese blogs is that True Tears is based around the same themes as the original (hence keeping the same name), while writing in a completely different set of plot and characters. Undoubtedly this method has a far greater chance of producing a good show.