Written by Danielle Carpenter Photo credit: AL SANYA https://www.deviantart.com/retro-robosan https://www.etsy.com/shop/RetroRobosan https://retrorobosan.tumblr.com/ https://twitter.com/alsanya
Another Side, Another Story The art of adaptation is a task more accurately equated with walking a tightrope than riding a bike. Translating ideas from one medium to another is never easy, though in many cases this process becomes a comedy or errors with corporate meddling and lazy decision making in order to make a quick buck. Changes that may seem minor are not noticed by general audiences, but fans or critical viewers will pick up on the implications being made. With every change comes a consequence, whether it be a large change or a small one. This is not to say change is bad. No two mediums work the same and changes must be made. Some changes, however, can be made in poor taste. The Kingdom Hearts 1 novelization is an interesting case study in this overarching discussion. The author adapting from screen to page is faced with the challenge of taking a visual medium and putting it into words, a task that can go south very quickly. How does one describe the random battles our heroes encounter or their linguistic forms of speech? How can one capture Donald’s raspy clucking? Another question to consider is if the text is competently translated for audiences outside of Japan? None of these tasks are straight forward or easy, yet that is how these hurdles are approached none-the-less. The Kingdom Hearts 1 novelization is at times quite competent in its execution but falters where it matters the most.. Though it certainly has charm, that charm does not extend to people who aren’t wearing the rose colored glasses of having played the game prior. Thus it works as a companion to those familiar with the game, but much less as a novel independent from its source material. Not everything is entirely awful here. In actuality, there is a lot of good being done in this novelization. The problem that seems to exist is that this momentum is not carried out. Great details at the beginning of the book are often dropped by the end. In fact, the entire end of the book reads more like a rushed book summary rather than an actual story. This makes the experience fall pretty flat which is unfortunate since the book seems to have a lot of great ideas yet doesn’t know what to do with them. The book clearly knows that a different sort of context needs to be applied in order to convey what is happening on the screen. The reader is exposed to Sora’s inner dialogue and his thoughts. Here we see Sora reflecting on things far deeper than in the game. For example, when Sora visits Wonderland, he reflects that he has never heard the word “trial” before. His life on
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ISSUE 3 | LEVEL STORY
