Adaptation Spotlight: The Legend of Snow White (Shirayuki no Hime Dentesu)

A few months back I decided to embark on a little project wherein I would re-read some favorite classic stories and compare them with their film and television adaptations. The first subject I decided to write about was Snow White, as I have always enjoyed fairy tales, especially the Brothers Grimm. My first editorial discussed several of the film versions of the story, but there was one major adaptation I decided to leave out, for I realized that this version would need to be given its own separate piece, simply because I had so much I wanted to say about it. The topic I have chosen for today is not a film, but an anime series. Actually, to be specific, it is an Italian-Japanese animated series (which I'll admit, I don't see too often,) and as of recently, it is one of the most intriguing adaptations I have seen thus far in my little endeavor, so much so that I felt that it merited its own analysis.

However, to put my opinions for this series in perspective, I will make reference to one other version of “Snow White” I have seen, which is called “Grimm's Snow White.” This film, which I did not reference in my previous post, had a number of issues which I felt hindered it. First and foremost, I felt that, despite being called “Grimm's” Snow White, the film diverted much farther from the source material than I think it should have. My issues don't, however, stem from the fact that it differs from the original, so much as I felt the film was doing it to needlessly “intensify” the main story, and attempt to make it more “epic” to the audience. However, in the process of doing so, the film resorts to many cliches and tropes that plague fantasy films, to the point where what might have been a film of some substance, simply becomes laughable, pointless, and trite.

What I mean is that in this film, Snow White's wicked stepmother, rather than just being a woman filled with hatred and envy for her daughter's beauty, is also a power-hungry woman who desires to harness an ancient power known as the Viridian Flame. This is her dominant character trait in the film, so much so that her vanity and jealousy becomes almost an afterthought. At one point watching it, I began to wonder why they bothered to include it at all.

What I am saying is, in this film, the Queen is stripped of the one thing that made her so memorable and so timeless in the realm of literary canon, to reduce her to a stereotypical power-driven maniac who is easily forgettable as a villain.

“The Legend of Snow White,” on the other hand, while obviously having made changes to the general story so as to make it span the length of 52 episodes, is different in that it is an adaptation where the changes made support, and even enhance, the overall themes of the story, rather than simply conjuring up overused and atypical plot elements that strip your characters of anything that made then unique or interesting.

“The Legend of Snow White” follows the traditional course of the fairy tale. This show depicts Snow White as a gentle, pure soul, who throughout the beginning of her life with the Queen is tormented and harassed by her. The Queen even at one point sends away her dear friend and nurse from youth, Molly, while the King is off at War, leaving Snow White completely alone to deal with the Queen's cold and cruel attitude towards her.

When Snow White flees after the Huntsman, (in this series named Samson) spares her life, she comes upon the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs, who are all given unique and charming personalities and individual skills that come into play later in the series. Throughout the course of the show, the Queen makes many wicked attempts at her life, more characters besides the dwarfs are introduced, and the show consistently manages to keep the focus on the main core of the tale, while at the same time managing to be highly imaginative and incorporate a lot of other great elements into the overarching plot. One of my favorite characters was a character never in the original story named Jack, who befriends Snow White and later realizes that instead of being a human, he is actually a Forest Imp who, according to the Queen, is an evil creature who is meant to help the Queen destroy Snow White. However, he rebels against her wishes and continues to help Snow White and in the process of doing so discovers that he is the Prince of the Forest. He embraces this new identity, as he returns to live in the Forest at the end of the show. He was a very interesting and likable character, whose presence served to add extra tension to the overall plot.

Above all, the thing I loved most about this show was its respect for the source material, not only in that it stayed true to what was there, but almost everything it did to divert from what was there only served to enrich the central story further. A great example would be that the Prince in this version is not just a stranger who initially is merely captivated by Snow White's outer beauty, but they actually get to know each other during her days at the castle and become close friends. He becomes a main character who constantly serves as a protector of Snow White, frequently risking his life to defend hers. Their relationship is done far better than I initially expected it to be done, and it added a depth to their story that the original fairy tale never could claim to have. The Prince does not even encounter Snow White until after she has eaten the poisoned apple. His infatuation with her is based solely, and unarguably, on her appearance alone. Even the dwarfs, when you think about it, immediately took to Snow White simply because of the fact she was beautiful, and nothing else.

I should make it clear at this point that this section isn't being dedicated to criticizing these questionable elements of the fairy tale, but rather it is to help emphasize just how well-crafted the adaptation was based on the limited nature of its source material. Characters and relationships had to be invented where virtually none of any substance had previously existed, and the one thing that struck me was just how out of its way this series went to create a strong and lasting friendship between Snow White and the Dwarfs, even down to having particular episodes that focus on her and one of the dwarfs having to face a problem together by themselves, and end up learning far more about one another by the end of the episode.

This show, I felt, sought to be something far more than a simple paint-by-numbers adaptation of the fairy tale for children, but also to be an engaging, heartfelt, and highly innovative approach to the story that could manage to stand on its own even if you have no previous history with the source material. In respect to other anime adaptations of children's stories and fairy tales, (and believe me, there are far more than you'd think,) I think this show has set a great example to follow, and I can only hope that other animators out there have noticed it and paid it the respect it deserves, because in my book, it is one of the greatest television length adaptations I have seen yet.