Source: @Tencent Comics, World Style Feature

Introduction

As the forefront of the FMCG industry, the ACG industry has always been known for keeping up with the times and iterating rapidly. But in recent years, with the success of the live-action movie "Rogue Kenshin" and the animation of "Parasite", a series of classic works that have been buried in the depths of the brain circuits of the otaku have regained their former glory, enjoying the special treatment of old wine in new bottles, and earning a lot of moving tears and fiery banknotes. So, what is the reason for this phenomenon of "old trees giving birth to new sprouts"? This has a lot to do with the current phenomenon of "script shortage" in the ACG industry, especially in the animation industry. Today, let me analyze one or two about this.

The cause of the script shortage

There is a shortage of scripts, as the name suggests, that is, the supply of scripts is in short supply. As we all know, whether it is animation or film, the foundation of its composition is the script, otherwise it is a tree without roots. Especially in terms of animation, although there has always been no shortage of excellent original works in the industry, in general, more animation works are still produced based on existing excellent scripts, that is, the so-called "adaptations".

There are two advantages of adapting works: first, there is a story and character foundation with a high degree of completion, and the content is guaranteed; Second, the original works have generally been verified by the market, have a certain audience, and have a guaranteed income. Japanese animation works have a long history, but in terms of the form of adaptations, they are nothing more than manga adaptations, game adaptations, and novel adaptations. Comic adaptation is the oldest and most enduring way; The base of game adaptation is not large, although there is no shortage of excellent works, but on the whole, it cannot jump out of the icing on the cake; In recent years, light novel adaptations and animations have become popular, and a number of excellent works such as "Catalogue of Forbidden Books of Magic", "Dragon and Tiger", and "Persona of the Headless Horseman" have indeed emerged...... But after less than a decade of growth, there is a clear slowdown.

At the same time, the adaptation also has many drawbacks, the biggest of which is aesthetic fatigue. After a batch of classic light novel resources in the early days were squeezed out intermittently, the adaptations in the past year or two have gradually increased, although there have also been powerful masterpieces such as "Sword Art Online", but there are also more embarrassing products such as "The Invader of the Sanping Room" and "The Correct Use of Dogs and Scissors" to accompany the prince to read. The days of light novels as a box office panacea are over.

The reason for this is that such novels are relatively strict and repetitive in form, and the routines are similar to each other, coupled with too much emphasis on character building, which makes most novels lack storytelling. Simply selling characters is a reasonable means of animation business operations, but once it is used too often, making readers feel bored and boring, even if the quality of the product itself is acceptable, it is powerless.

But of course, manufacturers will not sit still, one way will not work, so they change their thinking, it is at this special time that they set their sights on the classic old works that have been forgotten by most people, and the younger generation even knows little about them.

Old trees bloom, a panacea to deal with the script shortage?

When it comes to the work "Parasite", whether at home or abroad, I am afraid that only a few fragments of memory can be found in the minds of post-80s and older readers (in Japan, it is the Heisei generation ago). The manga of "Parasite" was serialized from 1990 to 1995, although it won the 17th Kodansha Manga Award in 1993 and the 27th Nebula Award in 1996. Although the rather terrifying dismemberment of corpses and distorted shots of the human body in the work satisfied some of the curious requests of the ignorant teenagers back then, the ethical connotations of the story may have long been thrown out of the sky by young readers along with the poor printing quality of pirated books.

Of course, the mixed flavors in "Parasitic Beast" are not the focus of this article. It is undeniable that excellent plot schedules and deep thinking represent a characteristic of the manga industry in the early years of Heisei, that is, the characters are all in the service of the story, and the author's creative focus is to tell the ups and downs of the plot through the guò brush. At that time, the vast majority of good manga artists had a dual career as script writing and drawing, which was completely different from the trend in the anime industry, at least most commercial light novels and manga works in the past decade, which focused on character building. There is no doubt that the importance of character creation is because the character itself is more intuitive than the plot, easier for readers to directly experience and feel, and at the same time, it is also closely related to various peripheral products and easy to transform (a cute girl can easily transform into figures, pillows and other character goods, but the plot? At best, it can only stimulate the desire of otaku to buy DVDs).

But this creates a dead end, because if an animation work (including movies and other forms) does not have the support of a good script, it is true that it can play the character card to fool some cute dolphins to cheer for the scene, but what if it continues like this for ten or fifty works? The overly commercial environment has long made the type of character that the audience prefers more stereotyped, which is nothing more than tsundere, sick, natural, queen, eldest lady and other familiar categories, compared to the ever-changing story, in fact, the variability is really low, and it will naturally get tired after watching it for a long time. It is precisely because of this that when the management finds that the once-noisy light novel adaptation cannot withstand the long-term verification of the market, and the comic industry, which is a traditional resource base, lacks enough new works, it will naturally turn its attention to the classic old works that are deep in the pile of old papers but have not yet been thoroughly explored.

Two-sided, the pros and cons of restarting old works

The concept mentioned above is a little abstract, and the author intends to talk about the pros and cons of the old tree flowering in the classic old work in relation to the specific works.

First of all, let's take "Parasite" as an example. When a classic work of the old era is reborn in the current era and adapted into an animation or movie, the first thing that needs to be faced is nothing more than the following two problems: the restoration of the atmosphere of the original work (mainly reflected in the art style); Does the plot need to be drastically adapted? Or is it the greatest respect for the original?

Although it seems that the main thing depends on the attitude of the animation producer, the main thing is actually down to the audience's acceptance. After all, most of the old works are rooted in the era in which they live, and they will more or less bear some imprints of the times in terms of aesthetic taste. Although it is often said that classics stand the test of time, ACG is a fast-moving consumer goods industry after all, and for the vast majority of readers, they will not have the patience to face the overly thick "Showa-style" graphics and empathize with them, just as you can't force a post-90s audience who is used to watching Gundam Seed and 00 to be happy with the ancient graphics and simple color scheme of 0079.

"Parasite" was serialized in the early 90s of the last century, and since the time background is "modern", the story naturally reflects a lot of the social style of the early Heisei era. For readers who have read the original comics, the newspaper that the male protagonist's father does not leave when he eats, the flat and biased hairstyle of the male protagonist, the short hair of the female protagonist in the style of a female director, the plaid shirt worn by young people, and the standard airplane head of the gangsters...... These symbols all reflect the bits and pieces of Japan in the 90s. Of course, there is no problem with this kind of portrayal of real society for works of art that are already projecting reality, but after many years, what kind of presentation does it need to be rearranged into animation?

The zuò group gave the answer with actual behavior: the medium of daddy's news reading was changed from the newspaper to the iPad, the girl's hairstyle became a more fashionable cute style, the plaid shirt was gone, replaced by the current popular young people's dress, even the gangster who combed the plane hair became a hipster wearing a velvet hat, and more importantly, the characters all used mobile phones......

This change of "Parasitic Beast" is a very reasonable attempt, avoiding the audience's preconceived sense of discomfort in the scene and the intuitive image of the characters, and instead using details familiar to the general audience to enhance the substitution. Despite this, there will be a difference in atmosphere from the original, but for the work "Parasite" itself, the focus is on telling a story with twists and turns rather than a social phenomenon, and the content of the story itself is not particularly closely linked to the background of the times, so no matter what time and space it takes place, it is still convincing.

Readers who are more interested in Japanese entertainment culture may know that the recent Japanese drama "Young People 2014", which brings together Satoshi Tsumiki, Eita, Yu Aoi, and Masami Nagasawa, is not only a Japanese drama to commemorate the 55th anniversary of Fuji TV, but also a tribute to the Japanese drama of the same name in 1966. During the filming process, "2014" completely reproduced the social style of the year, from the scenes to the props, and even the way the characters got along with each other was the same as 50 years ago, but the result was: the ratings plummeted to below 8% from the second episode, and the audience said that the environment in the play was too retro and lacked a sense of substitution, and various didactic dramas across the ages made people feel a sharp increase in time. In connection with "Parasite", if the animation producer Zuò Fang is also the same as the crew of "Young People 2014", based on the romantic feelings that transcend the era, completely reproduce the style of the times in the comics, I am afraid that the animation of "Parasite" will be abandoned by the current otaku who have been brainwashed by multiple waste cuteness and other popular elements at the beginning.

And the second problem, the adaptation of the plot, is much more complicated. After all, the atmosphere is only a superficial factor, and the impact on the works that play the plot card may not be fatal, but the plot direction is the lifeblood of this type of product, and it is the cornerstone of the original work to earn word of mouth.

Some people may say, wouldn't it be nice to adapt it to the plot of the original work? Anyway, a work like "Parasitic Beast", the comic book award, the Nebula Award, and a bunch of them, the plot has long been verified by the ISO quality international certification, and it should be completely OK to copy it directly, right?

Of course, the truth is not so simple, the old tree blooms a lot more details than the new adaptation needs to be taken into account. First of all, although classics can transcend eras, they are bound to be constrained by the times, and the classics of 20 years ago may be both content, creative, or both. In the case of "Parasitic Beast", in the early nineties, the right hand gave birth to a heterogeneous creature with independent consciousness is undoubtedly a cross-era innovation, unprecedented, in the eyes of readers, full of freshness, fashionable value bursting, but after 20 years, works such as "Bird by Your Side" have long been further exerted of this idea, and also come with a variety of other attributes, and now look at the "Parasitic Beast" male protagonist Shinichi on the right hand that can change freely, chattering things, At least creatively, it can't give readers enough impact.

What can I do? Do you want to change the settings? Of course not, if even the key setting of the right hand is changed, Mickey will no longer be Mickey, and the parasitic beast will no longer be a parasitic beast. Changing the setting of the original work too much can be summarized as a current popular saying - "Duheism" (note: simply put, how to make it convenient, generally used to mock the lack of discipline of the screenwriter of the work), although it is convenient to expand the story, but it also loses the original essence of the work, and it becomes inferior and like chicken ribs. Examples of failures in such adaptations will be mentioned later, so we will not expand on them here.

"Parasite" has taken a relatively safe path in the handling of the adaptation. That is, to retain the main content of the original work, but to carry out "pruning" in some details, for example, on the premise of not affecting the direction of the original story, the character's personality will be revised in detail according to the aesthetics of modern audiences, so the male protagonist will be weaker than the original comic in the early stage (and it is the kind of weak character suitable for the book), the character of the female protagonist has also become a lot softer, the cute point has been improved, and the portrayal of conflicts between some characters has been strengthened, and at the same time, the advantage of animation "moving" is used to increase action and fight scenes, Improve the rhythm of plot evolution and the proportion of literary drama and martial arts...... In fact, these are common means of adapting animation, after all, the carrier of the work is different, and the form of the table must be changed - but for the adaptation of classic old works, these changes will be more crucial, requiring screenwriters to analyze the various components of the original work in detail, retain those that can be easily accepted by the audience today, and then remove some of the content that is not in line with the modern market and transform it, but in the process of transformation, we must pay attention to maintaining the overall atmosphere of the work, so as to avoid being scolded by the original party. It's a little complicated when you think about it (wry smile).

In addition to "Parasite", there is also an adaptation of a classic old work that has become a topic of discussion recently, that is, a live-action TV series adapted from the manga "Rogue Kenshin". Unlike "Parasite", "Rogue Kenshin" was already popular in its manga serialization era (the second half of the 90s of the last century), and was adapted into several versions of the animated work. But the live-action film project was launched only after the first decade of the 21st century. I believe there is no need for the author to repeat how classic this work is, but after many years, this "Rogue Kenshin Kyoto Fire Chapter" actually exceeded 3.2 billion yen at the box office in less than a month, which is not a big myth for the Japanese film market that is now in a state of flux and extremely sluggish. In this regard, many critics jokingly said that "Japan's three-dimensional films still have to rely on two-dimensional themes to save them", and from this point of view, the Japanese film industry, like the animation industry, has also encountered the problem of "script shortage". When the major scriptwriters are helpless in the face of the dismal box office market, a work adapted from the classic "old" comics is born, and it is difficult to say whether it can become a strong agent for the industry, but it does point a way out for the general lack of scripts in the industry.

There are no absolutes in everything, and in the face of "script shortage", mining resources from classic old works is also not a panacea that can be effective. Behind successful examples such as "Parasite" and "Rogue Kenshin", there are also bloody counterexamples that are alerting the world (kryptonite x eyes). The Japanese drama "Hell Teacher", which was launched in October 2014, is also adapted from the classic comic of the same name from Japan at the end of the last century. As a leader in monster battles + popularizing monster common sense + undisciplined meat selling works, the comic version of "Hell Teacher" also has a good popularity and reputation, but as soon as the live-action version of the makeup photo comes out, there is a lot of grief on the Internet at home and abroad, why? Just because of the poor character restoration that is not even as good as the cosplay level, it has already made the fans of the original work vomit blood three liters in terms of skin, and the audience who has not seen the original must have already retreated when they saw this nondescript character modeling.

If the makeup photo is just the outer skin, the specific internal situation is unknown. After the actual broadcast of the TV series, the bitter readers with tolerance (masochism) psychology actually watched an episode as a test of the waters, and it is estimated that they will even vomit bile. Rotten to the point of incomparable makeup, pompous and vulgar acting, inexplicable background changes, and annoying character building...... This TV series simply magnifies the shortcomings of current Japanese dramas infinitely, abusing the audience's endurance alive, and mocking the public's IQ by the way. The script is not enough for classic works? It's not that simple!

The script shortage is not accidental, but it is by no means long-lasting. It is an inevitable product of market choice, and it is a special phenomenon that the animation and film industries have entered a low period. On the one hand, it can allow the overly impetuous market to get a certain amount of time for self-reflection, and it can objectively review the current situation of the industry, reflect, and independently correct some of the phenomena of swarming and adapting; On the other hand, it can also activate and diversify the market, so that readers and viewers can have more choices.

epilogue

Adapting old classics is just an attempt, and as it stands, it has been a bit of success, but it's not a panacea. In the future, the phenomenon of "script shortage" will inevitably continue to appear from time to time, and it is conceivable that the means to deal with this phenomenon will become more diversified. In any case, it's a joy for the majority of homestays to watch the industry continue to innovate and change the direction of animation and film markets - who doesn't want to see more new gadgets? This may be the biggest positive effect of the "script shortage".