Archiving a Comment: Why Isekai Light Novels Have Terrible Adaptations?

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(Edited)

The Isekai genre is extremely popular, but it's also one of the most hated genres for non-fans. I can understand some of the hate, but as a fan, I thought a lot about the appeal of these stories and the reasons most of Isekai anime feel like "generic content."

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This is a reply to a video called "Why Are Isekai So Popular? The Sad Truth" by Cofku.

The video had many fair points from someone who doesn't enjoy this genre of anime, but understands the appeal. These stories are Power Fantasies, and offer a type of escape from reality you can't find anywhere else.

So I was glad while watching the video, and this was my comment.

Finally, someone that understands that these clone main characters aren't copies of each other. A lot of them experience the same things, but all of them react differently.

Even if a few of them are shaped by their past lives, (something that I wish more of them had,) all of them are shaped by their experiences in the story.


Kirito: The most cloned Light Novel protagonist!

I think one of the problems with Isekai, is that most of them are hard to adapt well in anime form.

Unlike Manga, the writers of Light Novel are only limited by their descriptiveness so they can get crazy with the details. Their release has more pages than a manga release so they can get patient with the pacing.

Anime details are costly, and uneven pacing is dangerous in that medium. The anime has to cut stuff, and when considering the cost it's easier to cut the finer details that make these novels unique in the genre. (Imagine Mushoku Tensei anime without all the budget spent on world building... Wait that's just ReZero... Imagine both without the budget spent on the emotional scenes.)

That way of adaptation leads characters to have more of their Archetype traits and less of their unique ones... It's even worse when the anime cuts everything but the harem from an isekai novel (like the way Smartphone Isekai was adapted) because it's the cheapest & most immediately appealing part of the story.

~ Thanks for Reading ~

P.S: If you liked my take on Isekai you might also like my story "The NFT Isekai: In Another World With My NFTs."

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17 comments
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These are a lot of fair points. I read the SAO light novels, sometimes they do more justice to the character's presentation by words than what appears on the anime. Like some internal monologues give more perspective to what the character really is but we just see their facial expression which tells us limited information. It's the medium of presentation that makes a difference on how the story is perceived.

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The internal monologues are what makes most of these novels interesting, yet the anime versions skip them... Kirito doesn't feel like a generic hero in the Light Novel because his thought process is there, most of his conflicts are internal, but these monologues will hurt the pacing, so I think the directors did the right thing by skipping them.

Have a !PIZZA with !LUV for your input~

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I was planning to write a long post about Light Novel adaptations, honestly I'm not a fan of them although there are a few that I like.

I don't think it's the fact light novels have too much details that's the issue, but the way these details are conveyed, novels have the advantage where the writer can narrate everything and not worry about presentation, when you turn that into a visual medium without a creative team, it becomes full of scenes of characters sitting around and info-dumping, but most of this info adds nothing to the plot, it's like taking long paragraphs of lore from a wiki page and cramming it into the main series.
For example some shows over-explain magic elements while having no battle system established beforehand, what do I as a viewer do with this information?

As for why Light Novel adaptations feel generic, honestly this applies to a lot of modern anime regardless of their source material, it's just there are too many Light Novel adaptations (specifically Isekai anime) being released every year, that they have a high number of generic shows, but on the other hand there are many unique ones.

Also, personally I don't like the idea of generic protagonists that were made for the sake of self-insert for escapism, I get why they're popular, but I never found any of them relatable so they don't work for me, and without that they're just boring and forgettable.

In the end, we can go on about why a whole genre is good or bad, but it all comes down to personal preference.

I haven't seen the video you're talking about, this is just my take on the matter.

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I agree... A lot of Light Novels are not written in a way that can be animated well. In my opinion, they should stick to their ways, because it benefits from the imaginative powers of words.

I don't think it's the fact light novels have too much details that's the issue, but the way these details are conveyed,

But if you're going to make anime out of a Light Novel, you have to be creative, and most of the time they don't have the budget to do that. Did you watch 86 Eighty-Six?

That's a great example of anime that takes a Light Novel and make it work really well in anime form. Haven't read the source, but fans said they changed a lot from the novel and they're happy with the result.

I think we'll see a lot of Light Novel-based anime that do that in the future.

!PIZZA !LUV !LOLZ

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(Edited)

Oh man, yeah I watched 86 and I disagree with you, I have many issues with this show and had many arguments with its fans.
Honestly I just wrote my two main points about it here and then deleted them, because I don't know if you're interested in having this argument, so tell me if you think it's worth the time.

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Hmmmm... Let's just agree to disagree then.

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Alright, I'm both disappointed and relieved 😂 I like starting arguments but I usually end up regretting it.

Any other examples of good adaptations?
Also, have you watched Isekai Ojisan? It's pretty good.

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Haven't yet... Waiting for the season to finish:

Isekai Ojisan?

I think you watched all the good LN adaptations I know, they're actually a few.

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(Edited)

Oh I see, I think the only LN adaptations that caught my attention in recent years are Mushoku Tensei, 86, Ascendance of a Bookworm, and Isekai Ojisan.

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