Isn’t a full recreation of the game required?
出典 : Amazon.co.jp
Basically, the original anime is required to be based on the original work.
However, in the case of video games, it is not so important to recreate the original work.
While anime and games have a high affinity with each other, the same subcultures have completely different characteristics, so if you put them closer to a game, it would be a bit harsh.
Idol training games often combine rhythm games, but they have little to do with the anime and revolve around the story of the adventure part of the game, such as the so-called “story mode” or “episodes”.
In the case of games, depending on the game, the development of the game may diverge depending on the player’s actions, and each player will be exposed to a different story at the beginning of the game.
It’s only natural that each player will have a different impression of the game, since they may not be experiencing the same flow of events, even if they are playing the same game.
Also, the dialogue in the adventure part of the game is different from the anime in terms of the pace of conversation since the game has a specification to show characters and voices at the same time.
The game is usually slower than the anime.
Therefore, if the game’s pace is reproduced in the anime, it will be a conversation drama that is different from the normal anime.
Furthermore, one of the biggest differences from the original work, such as the manga, is the amount of scenarios.
Unlike manga and light novels, most idol training games have individual episodes for each idol.
For this reason, the more idols there are, the more scenarios there are, and it is impossible to recreate all of them in an anime, even if it takes two episodes.
On the other hand, one of the characteristics of idol training games is that fans have a strong emotional attachment to the characters.
Inevitably, there is a strong demand for “this line should not be removed” or “this scene should definitely be visualized”.
However, if we try to take in all of the requests from the fans, the content will not be as cohesive as it could be.
Therefore, it is very important to choose the best option for this genre of anime, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the evaluation of whether it was a good anime or not is determined by this one point.
But that doesn’t mean that if you can make a perfect selection, you can make the best anime, but that’s not always the case, which is the difficult part of an idol training game.
If you make a video of each idol’s showpiece in an equal amount of time, the story will become like a collection of short episodes without much substance to it, and it will end up being rated poorly by the anime fans outside of the original fans.
Due to the aforementioned reasons, there are a lot of anime that are created for the fans of the original game, without explaining the settings or the relationship between the idols, because there are too many scenes that need to be visualized.
This makes it even more difficult to get high praise from non-fans of the original works, but it is also impossible to create something that will satisfy all the fans of the idols.
As a result, it is not uncommon for them to focus on “not offending the fans of the original work” as a defensive measure, and it is not uncommon for the work to be half-heartedly produced.
However, I don’t think the fans of the original works want that kind of anime.
It should be a highlight of each idol’s performance, the gap between the performances should not be too big, and it should be a work that is not just a big gap, but a work that makes sense.
I think these three things are what is expected of an anime based on an idol development game.
Summary
While anime adaptations of idol development games have had a lot of commercial successes, they’re also the easiest to get flack for.
But that’s why I hope they don’t take the easy way out and aim to make it good as an anime!
