Last year I did a post about one aesthetic problem I have with most Live Action Fantasy TV shows of the last Decade or so. But there is also a narrative problem.
Game of Thrones had a structure that involved jumping around between various characters and plotlines that were not directly connected in any way yet apparent. And for Game of Thrones it worked, in fact that show's downfall seemed to begin when it started rushing to tie everything together. But the problem with so much post GoT Fantasy TV shows is emulating that aspect of GoT's structure.
I prefer my Fantasy Stories to be adventure stories, about one protagonist or group of protagonists on a journey, with the audience learning about the epic scale and lore of the world as they encounter it through those protagonists eyes. This is why The Hobbit, The Fellowship of The Ring, the Narnia Books, the first Dragonlance book, and most Fantasy Anime (Isekai or not) I'm a fan of work so well. And outside the realm of specifically medieval European style Fantasy I can add The Phantom Menace and A New Hope, even Star Trek when it intentionally or not starts to seem more Fantasy then SciFi, I think both Avatar The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra originally worked that way as well but I didn't watch them. It's also essentially how Fantasy Video Games like JRPGs wind up being structured.
Now some of the sagas I just referred to will eventually split up the main cast or even jump away from them altogether. But that's after doing a lot of build up, Peter Jackson's version gave us 3 to four hours before the Fellowship was broken, but the content of the book could have given us a full TV season with more episodes then a GoT season. Also cutting away to villains occasionally is a different matter.
I'm well aware that the Wheel of Time books are older then the books Game of Thrones was based on, and so fans of that franchise will be annoyed at me referring to it's new Amazon Prime TV show as the product of a post GoT trend, but it was largely my thoughts on how that show played out that made me start working on this post.
However I suspect the TV show is only doing what I don't like here because of the decision to cram 4 novels into one 8 episode season. The series splits it's initial party up at the end of episode 2, and it goes on to treat that split and their eventual reunion with a gravitas I do not feel was properly earned. How it feels in TV form would be like if the Fellowship of the Ring split up before they even reached Rivendell.
I've referred to the film Maquia as being the fantasy Anime that most resembles the Aesthetic I would want for an Animated film or series set in the First Age of Middle Earth. But I've also now watched 11 episodes of Record of Grancrest War, and I think in a weird way that Anime most resembles the Inklings ideologically. It's also another example of an Anime that handles this issue better then any of these American TV shows, it only spends any significant time away from it's main couple after spending a lot of time establishing them.
Isekai Light Novel Adaptations naturally focus primarily on the POV of the Isekaied protagonist(s).
Update November 2022: I have very mixed feelings on The Rings of Power series, most of what I don't like does come down to it forcing the GoT story structure on Tolkien.
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