Graphic Novel Adaptation - Akira & Persepolis
The last two features we watched in class were adaptations of graphic novels. Persepolis coming from a two part source material and Akira from a manga spanning across about 2,000 pages. I'm curious to see what people think about animations role in adapting these types of graphic novels. Is it the already established visual style that makes it easy to set it in motion? Or maybe the complex narratives themselves (especially Akira going over 2,000 pages of material) that require as freeform a medium as animation to express complex political themes?
Personally I have always seen the graphic novel as an infinite ground for complex narratives and longer arching character developments. Which is why Akira as an animated film feels a bit like a condensed version of a long story, but the problematic bit is that animation feels like the best grounds for adapting this source. My other question (for those familiar with the source material) is if Akira works as an animated film condensing it's narrative or is the behemoth of a graphic novel it's adapted from is unadaptable?
Personally I have always seen the graphic novel as an infinite ground for complex narratives and longer arching character developments. Which is why Akira as an animated film feels a bit like a condensed version of a long story, but the problematic bit is that animation feels like the best grounds for adapting this source. My other question (for those familiar with the source material) is if Akira works as an animated film condensing it's narrative or is the behemoth of a graphic novel it's adapted from is unadaptable?
There is something about the experience of reading a graphic novel that almost demands to be adapted. A huge part of the art form of comics is finding ways to indicate and imply motion with a still image, right? Kind of the ultimate application of "the movement takes place between the frames".
ReplyDeleteIf a graphic novel artist does a good enough job of communicating the motion that they want, the reader starts to see a sort of animation in their head anyway as they read. So it makes perfect sense to me that people WANT to animate comics all the time.
Any sort of adaption usually involves a lot of condensing and interpreting. It's a big part of what makes that process so difficult. I do think any time you move from one medium of art to another, something gets lost. Animating a graphic novel can take away from some of the power of the individual frames, and it definitely changes the pacing. But it can add things, too. I think the ability to put music, color, and a very specific sense of speed into Akira really elevated certain moments and added to the atmosphere. But you do have to sacrifice some of the complexities of plot. It's a trade-off.
Bringing graphic novels to life through animated movies are such a unique experience because the reader of the novels already have a very detailed depiction of characters and monsters and reincarnating the movements of the characters in animation, especially when the style resembles that of the novel is something very fun to watch. On the opposite end of the spectrum are graphic novels that are adapted in live action, the Walking Dead for instance, which made some changes to the source material but was overall well received. However, live action adaptations of Junji Ito's works, of which there have been a lot, never quite work to capture the horror and suspense of his stories; but if there were animated they bight be better captured.
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