Adaptation Distillation: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Some adaptations take a complex character or situation and greatly simplify it, removing elements the producer believed to be unnecessary. This effect is more common when adapting from a long-running series, especially if it hasn't had a singular vision over the years.

 

Contrast with [[Pragmatic Adaptation]]: in a distillation, a complex story is simplified, without much substantive change. In a [[Pragmatic Adaptation]], the story is changed with the shift in medium. Also contrast [[Adaptation Expansion]]. When a story element is removed, but its ''effects'' aren't, that's [[Adaptation Explanation Extrication]].

 

* ''[[Black Butler]]'': The anime diverges from the manga very early in the series, having little material to work with at the time. This ends up with the entire cast being tame & simple, lacking the mangas years of character development. Grell has the most notable personality difference between the two mediums.

* The 2122-page ''[[Akira]]'' manga was condensed into a 120-minute movie by ending it 3/5 of the way through (the manga itself was not completed at the time), eliminating subplots and fusing several scenes together.

* ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]'' condenses the events of the first two volumes, in which Yusuke helps out spirits in stories completely unrelated to the battles of the later manga, into five episodes, all centered around the essential events; 1)Yusuke dies, 2)Yusuke finds out what he has to do to come back to life, 3)Yusuke helps his old rival Kuwabara, 4)Yusuke sacrifices his work toward resurrection to save Keiko and as a result 5)comes back to life. It also condensed the ending into a single episode (cutting out a lot of pointless stuff including an out-of-nowhere fight with human terrorists), and actually showed Yusuke's fight with Yomi to its conclusion (when in the manga, it abruptly stops at the end of Chapter 169).

** Also, the original manga ending had a lengthy explanation about how evil demons were a [[Vocal Minority]], humans had made them what they were, and Spirit World authorities had been brainwashing a lot of demons into committing crimes so that Spirit World could look good. This soiled the point of peace between humans and demons being established, as it made the demons look much too blameless. The anime cuts all this out, and both sides (humans and demons) are left much more even in terms of fault.

* This seems to be what ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood]]'' is going for.

** As an added bonus, it tweaks many minor things and event orders, which shakes things up and keeps it from being a precise retread of the manga, without disrupting the overall spirit and character of the manga.

* The manga adaptation of ''[[Breath of Fire IV]]''. Of note, this is a condensation of a 40- to 80-hour video game with a ''very'' large number of [[Fetch Quest]]s, two largely separate plotlines that don't interweave until close to the end, and [[Multiple Endings]] into a five-volume (and around 175 pages per volume) manga series. Just getting things sorted into a linear storyline was impressive in and of itself; even more impressive, they managed to incorporate both the Good Ending ''and'' the [[Bad End]] into a linear plot.

* ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]] [[The Movie]] First'', which took the first season, removed a lot of the less plot important bits (such as a huge chunk of the earlier episodes), cut out nearly all the secondary characters, made it more consistent with later seasons (The Staff and Cannon modes are now previously installed in Raising Heart, [[Early Installment Weirdness|as opposed to being forms that Nanoha thought up]]), animated a lot of the more important [[All There in the Manual]] stuff (Like the full backstory of Fate), and showed the entire [[Start of Darkness]] of Precia as opposed to just hinting at it, turning her from the one-dimensional [[Complete Monster]] of the series to a more fleshed out [[Tragic Villain]].

* The anime adaptation of ''[[Aoi Hana]]'' concentrates mostly on the lead characters, with the relationship between Fumi and Yasuko taking central stage. This leads to it having more focus than the original manga, since Shimura loves to introduce loads of extraneous characters with their own back stories.

* The first season of the ''[[Ah! My Goddess]]'' anime essentially cuts out everything that's not relevant to Keiichi and Belldandy's romance, with the exception of the Lord of Terror arc, and in so doing, manages to develop the romance farther than the manga has ever gone in 24 episodes (with Urd and Skuld each getting a side story to round out the season). When it was picked up for a second season, by contrast, they simply did a [[Compressed Adaptation]] of several manga storylines put together in no particular order.

* ''[[Dragon Ball Kai]]'' cut out a lot of the [[Filler]] that plagued the original ''Dragonball Z'', reducing it from 194 episodes (through the end of Cell Games Saga) down to 97.

* The manga adaptation of [[Code Geass]] ''Lelouch Of The Rebellion'' simplifies and compresses the series' main storyline in eight volumes and removes most of the less meaningful subplots or characters. It also removes the giant mechas and the action sequences that accompany them entirely, which was probably done because that works ''much'' better in animated format than it would on page.

* The ''[[Trigun]]'' anime is significantly distilled from the original manga. For instance, the anime doesn't even feature Livio as a character, and many of the Gung Ho Guns only get a few minutes of screentime, or are replaced entirely. To be fair, though, the production of the anime began partway through the manga's lifetime, and since about three print issues can be squeezed into a single aired episode, it quickly [[Overtook the Manga|outpaced the source material]].

** To be more specific, the first season followed the manga explicitly, minus a few characters and plots that had to relevance to the fair portion of the manga adapted to that point, and could have been easily used as a jumpoff point to switch to the manga save for the omitted details. The second season is [[Overtook the Manga]] incarnate, to the point it has no ties to actual canon save a few characters (and even they deviate from the manga by quite a bit) and essentially non-canon in all respects.

 

* ''[[The Punisher]] MAX'' is an example of distillation, although it's arguably just a set of "hardboiled" crime stories with only Frank Castle (and an Ennis take on Castle's backstory) to make it "Punisher," which works very well. (In "The Slavers" though it works ''too'' well, especially when you see the [[Downer Ending]].)

* The entire ''[[Ultimate Marvel]]'' line of comics.

* ''[[All-Star Superman]]'' is intended as Adaptation Distillation of the Golden and Silver Age Superman, and it's widely regarded as doing a great job at it. [[Alan Moore]]'s run on ''[[Supreme]]'' does the same thing (albeit with a Superman ''analogue'').

 

* All of the film and animated versions of the ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' comic book series have involved considerable amounts of Adaptation Distillation.

* ''[[The Last of the Mohicans]]'' is an extremely distilled version of a very long and rather complicated novel. Omitted portions include redundant portions where the women are captured and quickly freed, a deranged white man at the Huron camp, a shooting contest, and Natty Bumpo disguised as a bear. The changes generally streamlined and improved on the novel.

* ''[[The Hunger Games (film)|The Hunger Games]]'' shortens how long [[Deadly Game|the actual games]] take, and a few scenes/flashbacks are cut due not being a first-person narrative (on the other hand, [[Adaptation Expansion|others from outside the protagonist's scope are added]]).

* ''[[Dredd]]'', though not based on any specific [[Judge Dredd]] story arc, does a good job compresses elements from various parts of the verse into a rather cohesive whole while remaining much more faithful to the comics than the 1990s adaptation.

 

* William Goldman's ''[[The Princess Bride (novel)|The Princess Bride]]'' claims to be "the good parts version" of an earlier novel by Simon Morgenstern, turning what was a digression-laden, politics-heavy slog into a fun action-adventure story. In fact, Morgenstern and his unabridged novel are entirely fictitious. This setup allows Goldman to lampoon such authors as Victor Hugo and his ilk. [[The Princess Bride (film)|The film]] distills the story even further, into its purest essence.

** Speaking of 40k, the novelization of ''[[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior]]'' is viewed as much better than the game it's based on (a [[Halo]] clone with 40K trappings [[So Okay It's Average|at best]]), delving into Tau culture and characters and giving the [[Heroic Mime]] a backstory.

* Thomas Malory, in ''[[Le Morte d'Arthur|Le Morte Darthur]]'' distilled an enormous mass of wildly contradictory Arthurian legends into a book that is often regarded as the definitive Arthur story.

* Subverted by ''[[The Sandman]]: The Dream Hunters'', a book by [[Neil Gaiman]]. In the introduction, the author claims it's an attempt to take various elements of various retellings of a certain preexisting Japanese myth, and bring them together in a logical, complete way. It apparently works as the thing turns out great, and the illustrations by [[Yoshitaka Amano]] are beautiful to boot... of course, as it turns out, the preexisting myth didn't so much exist at all, which is pretty much standard for Neil Gaiman.

 

** One specific example: They based the Patrician on his later appearances (including Wuffles), instead of his eventually rather contradictory appearance in the actual early books. The "Machiavellian Vampire Flamingo" Vetinari was introduced approximately at the same time as the name "Vetinari". In fact, if it wasn't for [[Word of God]] saying that it was just badly written, people would still be arguing whether it was supposed to be ''the same Patrician or not.''

* The J-Drama form of ''[[Hana Yori Dango]]'' managed to compress thirty-six volumes of manga written over a period of eleven years into a much smoother story, combining characters and editing plot arcs as necessary.

* [[The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries]] cuts most of [[The Hardy Boys]] book series' supporting cast. The Hardys' mother, Laura, is dead, and the boys live with their widowed father and Aunt Gertrude, and the only friends from the books that show up are Callie Shaw and Chet Morton — and Chet, only in two episodes. In second season, the series is distilled even more, with even Aunt Gertrude and Callie getting cut.

 

* Parodied with the ''[[That Guy With The Glasses|in 5 seconds]]'' YouTube videos, which cut down the targeted film to its most important points. The quality varies somewhat widely from video to video though. This may represent an inadvertent [[Deconstruction]], as some basic biology knowledge will tell you that it is unhealthy to remove ''all'' the fat from the body.

** A lot of [[Rule of Funny]] goes into those, so it's hard to really call it "distillation", in the traditional sense.

* Some of [[The Abridged Series]] out there can do this, not just successfully (or unsuccessfully) turning the story into a comedy but also greatly simplifying the story.

 

* Parodied in the ''[[GURPS]]: Goblins'' RPG sourcebook; a sample adventure includes "The Abridged ''[[Macbeth]]'', With Just The Witches and the Fighting". The entire script is one page long.

 

* When Edna Ferber's ''Show Boat'' was made into the famous Broadway musical in 1927, it wasn't common at all for such long and convoluted novels to be made into musicals. The result still ran very long for a Broadway show, and so has been subjected to various levels of Adaptation Distillation in all revivals (and in the 1936 movie, the only faithful film version).

* The play ''[[Auntie Mame]]'' is an Adaptation Distillation of Patrick Dennis's pseudo-autobiographical novel. To quote Patrick Dennis:

{{quote|"Not every episode of my book is in the play. To get them all in - not that every one would be worth dramatizing - would require passing out box luncheons, blankets, and tooth brushes to a rough-and-ready audience of slavish theatre-goers weaned on Eugene O'Neill and the Ring Series. But an astonishing number of the episodes in the book ''are'' in the play; enough so that the casual reader is convinced that every word of the novel has been translated to the stage. If that isn't catching the 'spirit' of a book, I don't know what is."}}

* Victor Hugo's original ''[[Les Misérables (novel)|Les Misérables]]'' novel contained, among other tangents, a lengthy retelling of the Battle of Waterloo. Many critics agree that you can skip this section of the book and pretty much miss nothing. The [[Les Misérables (theatre)|extremely popular musical adaptation]] removed such elements and focused on the core story and characters. Sadly, it did also lose a lot of character development, and a bit of the plot.

* Herman Wouk distilled his novel ''[[The Caine Mutiny]]'' into the play ''The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial''. A made-for-TV version of this play directed by [[Robert Altman]] appeared in 1988, but the more famous 1954 film version is a very different distillation of the novel.

 

== Theme Parks ==

** ''[[The Little Mermaid]]: Ariel's Undersea Adventure'' takes the approach of focusing entirely on the film's songs, though coming at the cost of Ursula gaining mostly [[Offscreen Villainy]].

 

* ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]'': The story mode is basically the plot of the first three games condensed into one, while cutting the fat away. While there are changes (some quite major) because of the Timey Wimey Ball, most of the stuff that happened in the old games still happens in this one.

* Arcade game manufacturer [http://www.globalvr.com Global VR] lived on this trope by making arcade games that are distillations of Electronic Arts games. Examples include [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5237 Madden NFL], [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5714 EA Sports PGA Tour Golf], [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5927 EA Sports NASCAR Racing], and three [[Need for Speed]] games: [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=4976 Hot Pursuit 2- which was rechristened "Need for Speed GT"-] plus [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5806 NFS Underground] and [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=6041 NFS Carbon] as well. They've also done distillations of UBI Soft games as well- witness [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5807 Paradise Lost, a rail shooter based on Far Cry] and [http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=5994 Blazing Angels.]

** Subtle ways? It's like they took the plots and put them in a blender. It's less cutting out and more with everything happening at the same time things go much faster, though not everything happens as you would expect with everything interacting.

*** ''[[Super Robot Wars Z|Z]]'' deserves special mention because the less important plot points and events were put back in the Special Disk expansion. The main game was so crowded not everything would fit.

* Those who have played both the original arcade version of ''[[Gradius]] III'' and its SNES conversion typically regard the latter to be superior, save for the much greater slowdown, and a much more forgiving challenge.

* ''DJ MAX Portable'', a PSP version of the ''DJ MAX Online'' series, found itself becoming its own subseries; while the online versions died off (though a new version, ''DJ MAX Trilogy'', is slated for release this month), the ''Portable'' series spawned 4 additional titles, one of which is the first American release in a line of previously-[[No Export for You|South Korea-only]] titles, and even said Korea-exclusive titles have Japanese- and English-language options, which shows that Pentavision recognizes its international fanbase (and probably didn't have enough funds to make non-Korean releases until recently).

* When Sega developed ''[[Fantasy Zone]] II DX'' (the System 16 version of ''Fantasy Zone II''), they took the multi-screen concept of the original and simplified it into a dual world concept.

* The games in the ''[[Batman]]: [[Batman: Arkham Asylum|Arkham]]'' [[Batman: Arkham City|series]] have essentially taken the different forms of media that Batman and his world have appeared in, selected the best bits from each one, glued them together, filed the edges down and then cast the player as Batman. It's generally considered one of the key reasons the games have been so successful.

 

* The [[The DCAU|DC Animated Universe]], from ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'' to ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', was generally of this kind.

** A more specific example would be the [[Dark Knight Returns]] segment of the episode "Legends of the Dark Knight", which perfectly encapsulates Miller's style and the tone of the book in five minutes of animation. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoZLPwRCjcQ watch it here.]

** The prior Batman show, ''[[The Batman]]'', also managed to get some of this trope in, the show's treatment of [[Magnificent Bastard|Hugo Strange]], [[Evil Is Cool|the Riddler]], [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Poison Ivy]], and especially [[Tragic Villain|Clayface]] are among some of the most well-regarded things in the show.

* ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]'' manages to do this, using older characters like Dick Grayson as well as more recent ones like Miss Martian. The show also gives modernized redesigns to some of the campier DC characters. Like ''The Brave and the Bold'', ''Young Justice'' also uses numerous shout-outs and mythology gags, as well as a few nods to the [[Young Justice (comics)|90's comic book of the same name]].

* ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]''. It adapts the broad strokes of the original Spider-Man comics while bringing in characters, plot elements, and designs from the more recent ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' comics and the popular live-action ''Spider-Man'' film series, making a cartoon that is recognizable to both older and younger fans.

* ''[[The Legion of Super Heroes]]'' cartoon brought several outdated costumes and looks and made them sleeker and more futuristic. For example, Bouncing Boy newly sports spiky hair and goggles and his limbs disappear when he bounces, which looks a lot less ridiculous.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Abridged Series Tropes]]

[[Category:Media Adaptation Tropes]]

[[Category:Derivative Works]]