I consider the books to be canonical, honestly.
I can hardly sit through The Two Towers, extended or otherwise, without cringing constantly at nonsensical plot changes.
No, Faramir was not a moody nihilistic relativist who changes his entire outlook without any character development.
No, there was no alliance, and getting from Lothlorien to Helm's Deep in the span of a few weeks, with a full army, is physically impossible even if the army were already assembled. (This was only in the movie after a last-minute cancelled attempt to turn Arwen into a warrior; seriously.)
No, Treebeard didn't spend 2/3s of the book stalling.
No, Frodo did not offer a wringwraith the ring, even for a second. And if he did, there's no way he would've survived afterwards.
And on, and on...
Treebeard did spend what seemed to Merry and Pippin an interminable amount of time deliberating, including a full three days in agonizingly plodding discussion with other ents, and it is emphasized that this is THE defining character trait of ents. The shape of the interaction between the hobbits and the ents was of the hobbits becoming extremely bored and impatient. It is more important in a film adaptation to capture the feel rather than slavishly copy the book blow by blow. There is only so much screen time to go around, and the character trait has to be conveyed somehow while still moving the plot along. If the movie faithfully compressed the entire ent episode into its runtime, including the 3 day entmoot, it would be both incredibly boring, and spiritually less accurate because it would feel rushed and cramped.
And even changing characters somewhat but still having a development or purpose is arguably fine - it's the changes that aren't good in the context of the movie that are most baffling, especially considering the dedication shown in other areas of the films.
This is as silly as suggesting that Tolkien's work somehow tarnishes or damages nordic/germanic mythology. utterly ridiculous.
Strong feelings for an adaptation or a sequel can taint or enhance how someone feels about the source material even if the original was experienced first. For example, it's understandable if someone who really loved star wars before the prequels and disney acquisition found that they can't help but experience a sense of loss and disappointment while revisiting those original films knowing about midi-chlorians and how the franchise ended up.
The original works are unchanged, but in many cases the way we view and experience them isn't.
A general one. And if you think about that its sad that a story has to be rewritten in order to ensure maximal appeal to generate maximal profit. The story isn't rewritten for the screen, it's rewritten for the investors polluting the story with money.
But on the flip side the story reaches a large audience, perhaps larger than the books might have, though not in true form. Double edged sword really.
This is something of a newer phenomenon in the grander history of anime as an artform. Osamu Tezuka, one of the founding fathers of the modern anime industry, notably created the filler-heavy formats of yesteryear that were the dominant form of popular televised anime well into the 21st century. There are notable early outliers like Yu Yu Hakusho and Death Note, but most of the popular anime had their runtimes padded all to hell in order to continually cash in on the unpredictable zeitgeist popularity of their source material. This trend of creating manga-accurate adaptations was largely spawned during the mid-80's OVA boom (wherein many one-shot OVAs were functionally made as high-production-value advertisements for their corresponding manga), but it largely didn't make the leap to TV anime until well after the turn of the century.
It's hard to argue about 'a newer phenomenon' which is now closer to Astro Boy than our current time.
> most of the popular anime had their runtimes padded all to hell in order to continually cash in on the unpredictable zeitgeist popularity of their source material
You can't 'faithfully recreate shot-for-shot' an ongoing title, you would be out of the material way earlier than out of the runtime.
This is not even diving on the differences between the manga and the manga eiga.
Last I checked, the 2010s are closer to now than to the 1960s. This didn't become the norm until the 2010s. I called out Death Note and Yu Yu Hakusho as notable exceptions and did note the initial start of it in smaller OVAs. I guess if you're going from the earliest OVA that did this then your comment does make sense. I was thinking more in terms of when the trend to do so became dominant.
>You can't 'faithfully recreate shot-for-shot' an ongoing title, you would be out of the material way earlier than out of the runtime.
Right. The modern trend is to wait until a series is done, or at least until it has enough plot/action in the manga to cover a full season before entering production. Chainsaw Man was over before the first season of the anime came out. Demon Slayer finished around the time the anime started. This is a new-ish trend among big popular TV anime. So as I said, it used to be that anime would be produced while the manga was still ongoing and popular, which lead to filler as a much more common phenomenon.
>This is not even diving on the differences between the manga and the manga eiga.
By all means, feel free to split hairs. I was just trying to give newcomers a more zoomed-out view of the history of anime, but if you'd like to delve into details, have at it.
That was a quip to "trend of creating manga-accurate adaptations was largely spawned during the mid-80's OVA boom"[0]
> until it has enough plot/action in the manga to cover a full season before entering production
Yes, though this is still not universal and still things go south with anime-original titles (WEP is 10/13, sadly)
> it used to be that anime would be produced while the manga was still ongoing and popular, which lead to filler as a much more common phenomenon.
> By all means, feel free to split hairs
Yes, I don't object this, though I was thinking more in how the media does not/translate. I even re-read Kaji/Akagi first story from Tsuredzure Children as this is the one best examples of a media adaptation.
[0] Gokushufudō would be an extreme modern 1:1, btw
PS:
ah, read the sibling comment
imma in the bar RN, if you want a hear an opinion on that sweet cash - drop a note
FMA (2003) is a fun example of this not happening, where they basically wound up creating a custom ending to the series because they got ahead of the manga.
Right, so rather than stopping production on the anime until the manga had time to get ahead, most anime created filler to cash in on the popularity of the ongoing manga, rather than to try to make the most faithful adaptation. Nowadays it's more common for anime to halt production and release a follow-up season years later when the manga has gotten farther ahead.