Anyone who has played video games long enough is aware of Hollywood’s success story in trying to turn the popular video game X into a feature film. They’re also not particularly good at making live-action versions of anime. I’ve long believed that there’s just so much more you can do (and get away with) when animating, except that filmmakers simply don’t understand the source material or core audience.

The fact is, gamers love seeing more of their favorite worlds and characters – especially when it comes to live service games. MMOs, long-running RPGs, hell… even MOBAs have huge universes full of locations and character rosters that we just don’t get to spend as much time with as we’d like. After all, the hero has to keep moving… saving other places and people and so on.

So of course we’re open to more ways to spend time in our favorite universes.

Of course the same applies to other genres too. You can see this in Grace’s articles about which anime she would like to see turned into MMOs or other types of games.

But the more I think about it, even though I’ve often thought, “Yeah, I’d play a game set in this world,” I think I prefer it the other way around. There’s something about extrapolating from an anime, a book, a movie, etc. and making a game out of it, especially a live service game. I’m not saying it can’t be done, or that it can’t even be done well. I just think it’s a little more difficult.

For one thing, the nature of storytelling in television format is different. It’s more concise. The characters and world are usually more strictly defined to fit the format. They tell a single story, so the world has only been defined to fit that unique narrative. It’s not impossible to work with and build the world from there, but it requires more work and… I’m not saying it’s easier to make mistakes, but it’s easier to create something that doesn’t match what long-time fans have imagined the rest of the world to be. (And no, you can’t read everyone’s fanfiction to see what they want. Legal issues arise from that.)

Live service video game universes, on the other hand… These are different, constantly evolving animals. Whether we’re talking about something like League of Legends or one of the many online role-playing games I play, there are a lot of stories we just haven’t heard yet. Whether it’s the story of a particular MOBA hero or how things are changing in a particular city that players have been away from for a few years because they were busy saving other people, there’s always something they’d like to learn more about.

There’s a reason why all animated short film companies like Riot, Kuro or HoYoverse are so popular. Admittedly, part of that is due to the music. The joke that these three companies are actually music companies that sometimes make video games didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. But the real reason is that we like to see more of our favorite characters and worlds.

In all three cases, these companies are out here creating one animated short film after another. Some are silly, some are sad, some are action-packed. They all give us a further insight into the world of the game, into the things that we don’t get to see as the main character.

As we all know from Riot and Arcane, their foray into the world of animated series worked out pretty well. And I attribute that partly to the fact that the series is an anime. As mentioned, they can simply do more. This is also because Riot is deeply involved in the process and doesn’t just pass it on and leave it to someone who may not really know much about the game.

I logged onto YouTube today to see that Kuro Games had released a teaser for a Wuthering Waves anime, Wuthering Waves: Elysium. Kuro decided to just do it himself and founded the animation brand Kuro Onroad. This could be because they’re overextending themselves, but I think it makes it easier for them to tell the story they want to tell and maintain the structure of the WuWa universe.

On the other hand, HoYoverse has chosen to work with established animation companies (although it does have its own anime division). A Genshin Impact anime developed by Ufotable was announced some time ago. We don’t know the status of this anime, but we do know what work Ufotable is capable of.

The company recently released a concept trailer for MAPPA’s Honkai: Star Rail. Again, they technically have their own animation studio, but you can’t blame them for wanting to work with such a well-known studio.

In all three cases, we’re not sure when we’ll get these shows or if we’ll actually get them. A lot can happen between now and then. But the fact is that I have more hope for an anime based on one of these games than I do for a game based on an anime that I actually like (which doesn’t end up being just another brawler, shooter, or something similar).

Still, Kuro did a good job integrating Cyberpunk: Edgerunners into Wuthering Waves. But this is also an animated series based on a video game based on a tabletop game, so that might be an odd comparison.