Tower of God Director Discusses the Challenges of Adapting a Webtoon

Crunchyroll is helping to break ground with Tower of God‘s anime, but there were a few challenges bringing the popular WEBTOON series to life. As the first in Crunchyroll‘s major collaboration with WEBTOON, Tower of God adapts SIU’s long running webcomic that already had a massive fan base long before the premiere of the anime. This places the Crunchyroll Original in a much different predicament than many anime adaptations since it’s the first of its kind, and director Takashi Sano opened up about how the series is brought to life with Crunchyroll themselves.

In an interview with Cayla Coats for Crunchyroll, Takashi Sano revealed some of the challenges adapting Tower of God into anime and opened up about what made it different from other major anime projects Sano had taken on in the past such as its already massive fan base from readers around the world.

When asked how he felt first reading Tower of God‘s webcomic, Sano stated “I found that it was deeply rooted in Korea’s social structure, so I felt I needed to make it a little more accessible to the general anime audience.” Surprisingly, when asked about whether or not WEBTOON was a more challenging medium to adapt than others, Sano revealed this wasn’t the case, “There weren’t many restraints. The production was overall quite easy.”

But there was a major difference, “The most novel thing about the project was that, because the title originated in Korea and was adapted in Japan, there was already a very large audience built in to it.” This had an impact on the character designs, “We conformed our visuals to the original work. I thought most fans of the original work would want to see the comic come to life rather than something totally original, so the staff and I were very careful about that.”

Sano revealed they took care in adapting the series due to that fan base, “…when it comes to Tower of God, we were careful not to lose the story or feel of the original work.
 I believe we can learn something from how international viewers respond to the adaptation of an original work through this series.” Sano ended with noting that fans should read the original webcomic alongside the anime for a fuller experience, too.

How are you feeling about Tower of God‘s anime so far? Is there anything that makes it immediately different as a WEBTOON series? What are you hoping to see from the rest of the anime’s run? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!

via Crunchyroll