NieR: Automata's Anime Has a Lot to Live Up to

gamerant.com:

NieR: Automata, 2017's JRPG hit,is receiving an anime series in celebration of its fifth anniversary. NieR: Automata is 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, the NieR: Automata anime has 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's anime has some hurdles to overcome, and will hopefully buck the trend to succeed.

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There are many potential issues that arise when translating 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 4 heavily 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 of NieR: Automata, so an original story would not cut it.

Anime