NieR: Automata,2017’s JRPG hit,is receiving an anime series in celebration of its fifth anniversary.NieR:Automatais loved by fans for its over-the-top action and larger-than-life set pieces, but also for its bleak story and complex lore that takes multiple playthroughs to even begin to understand. As a result,theNieR: Automataanimehas some high expectations to meet.
Video games and anime seem like a match made in heaven — playing through the adventures of an anime, or conversely watching gaming icons in an animated series, is always a treat for the fans. However, the relationship between the two mediums is not always a clean one. Translating video games to anime, or vice versa, usually results in some problems.NieR: Automata’sanime has some hurdles to overcome, and will hopefully buck the trend to succeed.
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The Problems When Moving Between Video Games and Anime
There are many potential issues that arise whentranslating IPs between games and anime. Maybe a video game’s story is not as interesting when it is not supported by gameplay, or maybe anime games are not as highly polished or mechanically interesting compared to other games on the market. More often than not, the largest problems come down to pacing.
For instance,One Piece Pirate Warriors 4heavily abridges the 1000+ episode series into a mindless beat-em-up — its story is impossible to follow without prior knowledge of the series. A good solution is to create an original story based within the anime’s world, like another game in the series,One Piece: World Seeker.This solution only works when bringing anime to game, though. Fans are expecting a faithful recreation ofNieR: Automata,so an original story would not cut it.
Anime series based on video games heavily suffer from pacing issues as well.Persona 5is typically a massive 80-100 hour game,but thePersona 5anime serieshad to truncate the whole story into a mere 28 episodes. While 28 is still a large episode count, many of the smaller but important story details were lost. It is a concern thatNieR: Automatawill suffer the same fate.
While not nearly as long asPersona,the game still takes around 40 hours to complete — not to mention that it is a sequel to 2010’sNieR,which is about the same length and isvital to understanding the full story. Arguably, the world ofNieRis more complex thanPersona’s,so fitting it all into an anime series is a mammoth undertaking.
The Two Sides of NieR: Automata
NieR: Automatais a hard game to classify. One can look at it as an over the top, action packed adventure, withcombat as intricate nowas when it released in 2017. Someone else can viewAutomatasolely as a tragic story — a commentary on today’s world where the main characters deal with issues darker than what most other games cover. In order to be successful, the anime will have to perfectly balance both sides of the game. Lean too far into the action, and fans will demand more story. Too much story and viewers will demand more action and complain of slow pacing.
Whatever the case may be, longtime fans ofNieRwill have to make their final judgments when the show releases. Hopefully the task is not as impossible as it seems, and the anime lives up to its laudedNieRname.
NieR: Automatais available now on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.
