Differences Between Web/Light Novel Adaptations and Original Manga

[wandere]

I have been doing some comparisons recently, and realized that on some level, I think that web and light novels play by different rules from "conventional" manga. I'm talking specifically about Japanese wn/lns to be clear because Korean and Chinese adaptations tend to behave differently. For example, many web or light novels don't share the same tropes as say, an original (original meaning the story was originally made for the purpose of being a manga) shonen manga even though it might be lumped in with shonen (I understand that "shonen" just means "boy's" essentially but you get the point). I don't think I've ever seen the "ok let's buy some slaves" trope anywhere other than wn/ln-type isekai, nor have I really seen the "cheat ability" thing. Story arcs generally feel shorter, sometimes to the point of being more like self-contained episodes. Villains and antagonists are also often more one-off and not linked in any significant sense; it's very unlikely to have reoccuring antagonists unless that is itself a large part of the plot. A lot of these feel like the product of needing to draw in as many eyeballs as possible when you are one person in a huge crowd of competitors. To make one jump, I would even say to some degree that if you looked at manga and anime (maybe anime especially) and you removed all the wn/ln adaptations, that many of the negative things outsiders and some people within the space have to say about the mediums would be less prominent
(specifically if we're talking about the modern era, like the past 5 years).
The reason why I bring this up in the first place is because I was trying to figure out "why does manga/anime not feel the way it used to" for years, and I want to confirm if my conclusion is correct. I'm not saying that all light novels are slop; some of them are quite good and have been recognized as quite good; Konosuba, Overlord, Goblin Slayer, Re:Zero, you know the ones. That said, I still feel like they are somewhat bound to those tropes all the same.
So, I want to hear what other people feel are light novel/web novel adaptation tropes that they usually only see within those adaptations. It doesn't have to be shonen-type isekai, it's a vast space targeting all sorts of audiences. For my part I'll just throw in a few:
-Harem but one girl is the "legal wife"
-Goblins and/or orcs need to rape human women (and sometimes elves) to reproduce (by the way it's always specifically humans and elves; couldn't they do beastmen or something to spice it up?)
-Adventurer's Guilds, but the guild basically feels copy-pasted

 

[MrIncognito]

As you do not need art skills or even to impress another person, the barrier to entry to making a web novel is a lot lower than making a manga or even a light novel. So the space is inundated with trend-chasers and self-indulgent works. And even a self-indulgent trend-chasing work can resonate with a large enough audience to earn a light novel version and more.

If you're making an original manga or anime, though, you will have to contend with professionals who will probably want your work to have at least some small bit of originality.

Anyways, to add to the pile:
The very specific "everyone laughed at my skill but it turns out it's super strong" is mostly an invading trope from the novel sphere.

 

[undeed]

I agree to some extent.
I mean, in written media (novels), authors rely on the reader's imagination.
And to shape that imagination into something tangible and consistent across readers (so that readers can discuss it without any of them having a completely different interpretation), they need good wording.

From what I've seen, most of these "bad" novels are written by novice authors.
And to make their novels, as you put it—draw in as many eyeballs as possible— and as quickly as possible, they can simply use definitions and world settings that most readers already know by heart.
Because otherwise, the author would need 4-5 chapters for the introduction alone (or maybe even 10 chapters since the ln/wn chapters are quite short).

With manga (and anime), the mangaka can (and should) apply the rule of "show, don't tell," and they can condense several pages of the novel into a single page or even a single panel.
So the hook in manga is easier to digest.

However, to draw is exponentially harder for most people.
And nobody's perfect. There are mangaka who are really good at drawing but completely suck at writing.

Man, I really want to ramble on about this novel-manga-anime adaptations even longer, but it's 1 am here, and I have a meeting tomorrow morning.

If people think that the tropes in shonen manga (which are adapted from ln/wn) are so bad because they are all the same. You have no idea what shoujo fantasy manga is like.
In shonen manga at least you can have the variety of magic cheat power, power of water, power of fire, power of swinging dicks from your forehead or whatever.
Shoujo fantasy/villainess manga don't have that. So it's even worse
mostly stupid prince annuled engagement

 

[GipoScribantino]

The other people above miss one detail: editors.
Independent webcomics do exist and in one way or another they have similar issues, but they are less in numbers than novels self-published on the web through Syosetu so they are often overlooked.
An amateur author uploading stuff on Syosetu rarely has a plan, it writes freely whatever comes to mind, story arcs come and go and foreshadowing is almost nonexistent.
When a light novel is adapted the people involved have to stay close to the original since it's the whole point. That means that any of the common problems inevitably make their way to the adaptation.
On the other hand if you go directly to a publisher, which is what "original manga" authors and writers not using Syosetu do, you will clash against the wall called "editor" who will make corrections, cuts and other adjustments to release a polished and "proper" (for a lack of better word) work.
Of course it's not all roses and for every good editor there is a bad one, but it is always better than taking a web novel raw.
Often web novels are first adapted to "light novels", which in this case it means an editor is appointed to fix the thing. There are many reports from editor themselves about this process and often it's a lost cause due to the evident lack of skills in the author, but the publisher has already made a contract and started the campaign so they either hire a ghost writer to remake what doesn't work or just give up, frame everything to conform to the final format, like splitting chapters in volumes and toss it to the presses with barely any correction.
I'm painting a bleaker scene than it actually is, probably, but the absence of an editor always makes a difference.

 

[Manko-sensei]

Novels, Visual Novels, Manga, Anime... after decades of copying each other one cannot expect any genuine work, so the "troupes" are just the audience it is targeted. I could add something more, but the thread is too focused on the same stuff as always.

 

[wandere]

I agree to some extent.
I mean, in written media (novels), authors rely on the reader's imagination.
And to shape that imagination into something tangible and consistent across readers (so that readers can discuss it without any of them having a completely different interpretation), they need good wording.

From what I've seen, most of these "bad" novels are written by novice authors.
And to make their novels, as you put it—draw in as many eyeballs as possible— and as quickly as possible, they can simply use definitions and world settings that most readers already know by heart.
Because otherwise, the author would need 4-5 chapters for the introduction alone (or maybe even 10 chapters since the ln/wn chapters are quite short).

With manga (and anime), the mangaka can (and should) apply the rule of "show, don't tell," and they can condense several pages of the novel into a single page or even a single panel.
So the hook in manga is easier to digest.

However, to draw is exponentially harder for most people.
And nobody's perfect. There are mangaka who are really good at drawing but completely suck at writing.

Man, I really want to ramble on about this novel-manga-anime adaptations even longer, but it's 1 am here, and I have a meeting tomorrow morning.

If people think that the tropes in shonen manga (which are adapted from ln/wn) are so bad because they are all the same. You have no idea what shoujo fantasy manga is like.
In shonen manga at least you can have the variety of magic cheat power, power of water, power of fire, power of swinging dicks from your forehead or whatever.
Shoujo fantasy/villainess manga don't have that. So it's even worse
mostly stupid prince annuled engagement

About shojo fantasy; definitely. A shonen ln protagonist might be limited by their skillset needing to inevitably be overpowered somehow, but in shojo ln fantasy, since the protagonist is oftentimes intended to require the protection of the male lead or leads it limits the creativity that can go into their characteristics so hard, at least in the bog standard shojo noble lady engagement broken fantasy. It basically whittles them down to 1. Single use ability to go back in time 2. Healing powers or some other form of ability that supports rather than could be used offensively in any way 3. In the case of a "fantasy" where it basically is just fantasy Europe with no magic, maybe they're really good at accounting, or cooking, or cleaning, or whatever, but something that would not prevent them from avoiding being kidnapped at some point. Same as shonen there's good stuff out there, but it's a few out of many.
And yeah I'm not saying manga is superior. I have web and light novels that are my favorites, although my two all time favorites are Korean and we're not talking about mahnwa right now. There are strengths books have that any visual medium doesn't, which can be why they're so hard to adapt on top of all of this.

 

[GipoScribantino]

Novels, Visual Novels, Manga, Anime... after decades of copying each other one cannot expect any genuine work, so the "troupes" are just the audience it is targeted. I could add something more, but the thread is too focused on the same stuff as always.

Every piece of modern fantasy takes tropes from J. R. R. Tolkien, especially creatures like elves.
Sci-fi is based on the works of Isaac Asimov and Jules Verne among others.
I could go on and on, the point is that as long as it's done properly there is no need to be original.
Web novels often lack this last aspect: they use tropes like any other author does but fail to deliver.

 

[Manko-sensei]

Every piece of modern fantasy takes tropes from J. R. R. Tolkien, especially creatures like elves.
Sci-fi is based on the works of Isaac Asimov and Jules Verne among others.
I could go on and on, the point is that as long as it's done properly there is no need to be original.
Web novels often lack this last aspect: they use tropes like any other author does but fail to deliver.

Regrettably, authors from this medium don't even know where it comes what they're copying, for fantasy they started repeating Records of the Loddoss War, then moved to copy those who did that and in the end they don't even remember those novels nowadays. The same could be said about other otaku genres and the only things that keeps passing after decades are the quirks. I know you like to say that stuff about Tolkien, but don't forget that he simply plagiarated classical literature and authors from the first quarter of XX century (and not quite well, nobody cared about him until someone put money for it).

 

[wandere]

The other people above miss one detail: editors.
Independent webcomics do exist and in one way or another they have similar issues, but they are less in numbers than novels self-published on the web through Syosetu so they are often overlooked.
An amateur author uploading stuff on Syosetu rarely has a plan, it writes freely whatever comes to mind, story arcs come and go and foreshadowing is almost nonexistent.
When a light novel is adapted the people involved have to stay close to the original since it's the whole point. That means that any of the common problems inevitably make their way to the adaptation.
On the other hand if you go directly to a publisher, which is what "original manga" authors and writers not using Syosetu do, you will clash against the wall called "editor" who will make corrections, cuts and other adjustments to release a polished and "proper" (for a lack of better word) work.
Of course it's not all roses and for every good editor there is a bad one, but it is always better than taking a web novel raw.
Often web novels are first adapted to "light novels", which in this case it means an editor is appointed to fix the thing. There are many reports from editor themselves about this process and often it's a lost cause due to the evident lack of skills in the author, but the publisher has already made a contract and started the campaign so they either hire a ghost writer to remake what doesn't work or just give up, frame everything to conform to the final format, like splitting chapters in volumes and toss it to the presses with barely any correction.
I'm painting a bleaker scene than it actually is, probably, but the absence of an editor always makes a difference.

Yeah I didn't mention editors. That is something that comes to mind subconsciously but maybe not out loud; usually when I say "wn/ln" it is because I'm thinking of the sort of "pipeline" of web novels to light novels. You can actually see something similar in the West with say like, 50 Shades of Grey being a rewritten Twilight fanfiction, and although I'm not the most knowledgble about it the whole "Booktok" thing has plenty more examples I believe. I've heard that light novels often go through some sort of editing process, but as you said, some stuff is probably just unsalvageble and when it comes down to it the editor is just a person doing the best they can to make a potentially flawed work better.

Every piece of modern fantasy takes tropes from J. R. R. Tolkien, especially creatures like elves.
Sci-fi is based on the works of Isaac Asimov and Jules Verne among others.
I could go on and on, the point is that as long as it's done properly there is no need to be original.
Web novels often lack this last aspect: they use tropes like any other author does but fail to deliver.

Yup, hard agree. People have been stealing ideas from one another since the beginning of time; it's why civilization exists in the first place. But it's the implementation that's where things can go wrong. Taking an idea and reconfiguring it is one thing, but just inserting the idea is a whole different thing. From the web novels I've read, or experienced at least partially via osmosis due to manga adaptations, a lot of them do feel disjointed; kind of soulless. I watched Superman today and actually prior to that I finished Act I of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (I promise this is important to the conversation) and it made me think: How many of the web novels/light novels/litrpgs/adaptations of those things have I read that actually had good villains or good antagonists? Someone who was "fun" to hate as opposed to just wanting them to disappear as soon as possible?
A lot of the time, the antagonists of a light novel might be wronging a protagonist at the beginning, and we are told they are evil perhaps through their speech or through how characters later react to their actions, but...when the older brother in the count's family abuses the main character (his younger brother) because they're half siblings and the mc's mother was the maid and the father and mother shun the mc for being talentless and everyone in the entire household hates them for this except for one servant, yes this is framed as evil but...also isn't this just the world that the author has constructed? This is a world where a child in those circumstances would be abused, and in fact the older brother is perhaps even obligated to show them their place. When the party the mc is in abandons them to die because they're the weakest member, or otherwise just kicks them out of the party for being the weakest link, isn't that just something that a large percentage of the people in that world would have agreed with them on doing (well maybe not abandoning them but even that depends)? It's like...these are supposed to be villains but they don't go the extra step into being villains. They're too rational. Too logical. "I need to kick out the mc so I can have my harem of adventurer girls" you know that's fucked but it's too justified. The only reason why these people see any criticism within the context of the narrative is the protagonist finds their cheat skill and is now worth something. You do see what I'm trying to get at sometimes (generally in the good ones) but an antagonist needs to go beyond rationality; they need to go an "extra step" past a reasonable action someone would make in their situation. Which going back to taking an idea versus inserting it is the thing: You could have the girl who betrays the protagonist, the guy who wants the protagonist out of the picture so he can steal "their girl", you could have the guy who has 50 sex slaves in his basement and we first see on a throne made out of dead bodies. It doesn't matter; they just have the superficiality of evil without the actual evil. "This is just in their nature"; "This is just society"; It's kind of cynical to some degree? And to my understanding these characters are often representative of society; of the person who looks down on you for being of lower status and the like (usually that) and possibly people who don't really exist for the most part but doesn't really change that no matter how they try to reconfigure it you're not going to hit a Hisoka (HXH although I'm sure that's obvious) level of villainy if you keep antagonists to either one off characters or one dimensional characters (and not in the "they need a sympathetic backstory" way).
Sorry I just had to get that out.

 

[GipoScribantino]

Regrettably, authors from this medium don't even know where it comes what they're copying, for fantasy they started repeating Records of the Loddoss War, then moved to copy those who did that and in the end they don't even remember those novels nowadays. The same could be said about other otaku genres and the only things that keeps passing after decades are the quirks. I know you like to say that stuff about Tolkien, but don't forget that he simply plagiarated classical literature and authors from the first quarter of XX century (and not quite well, nobody cared about him until someone put money for it).

I do not disagree with you. In fact I believe we're saying the same thing.
Tolkien did the same as the Grimm brothers, but he (unfortunately) became the turning point of 20th century even if nobody liked him back then, while the Grimms are considered only when some nobody "revisits" one of their more famous tales, usually something which has a Disney movie.

Sorry I just had to get that out.

Don't worry, this is the good kind of discussion. In fact, I think your observations on villainy are correct, or at least apply to a lot of antagonists we see around nowadays.

 

[wandere]

I do not disagree with you. In fact I believe we're saying the same thing.
Tolkien did the same as the Grimm brothers, but he (unfortunately) became the turning point of 20th century even if nobody liked him back then, while the Grimms are considered only when some nobody "revisits" one of their more famous tales, usually something which has a Disney movie.


Don't worry, this is the good kind of discussion. In fact, I think your observations on villainy are correct, or at least apply to a lot of antagonists we see around nowadays.

I wonder if it's a result of the times. A lot less optimism to go around in general. Evil being considered the norm rather than the exception. Maybe one significant difference that a shonen manga from say, Shonen Jump has from like, Arifueta is that sort of perception of humans being innately good versus innately evil. It's partially a phillosophical debate but you can see it in all of those "mainstream shonen"; Luffy fights to save oppressed people; Naruto's village comes to embrace him despite the stigma associated with him; heck, my personal take on Hunter X Hunter is that it's about Gon being increasingly thrust into situations that a naive child never should have been allowed to be in by irresponsible adults until he straight up breaks, and that has a story arc about inhuman beings made for killing regaining their humanity and/or learning to be human. Meanwhile you have any number of isekai stories where "My whole class got isekaied and then ostracized/attempted to kill me for having a shitty ability". These are both supposed to both be "shonen" and it's not like there isn't space for both but that's just a straight up ideological difference. Not that you can't see the reverse sometimes; but I cannot think of a good example of a truly cynical shonen manga off the top of my head, although I can think of optimistic isekai.

 

[undeed]

I'm back
The discussion once again turned into the debate of originality, which, in my opinion, is rather pointless.
I for one, don't particularly mind even if the work is somewhat similar or seems like a copy in one way or another,
as long as it is not like just a straight up intentional plagiarism.
If the work is good, if it is better, and more importantly, if it makes sense, then I'm all for it.

It's entertainment media. All that matters to me is whether or not it's entertaining for me.
Be it a movie, music, novel, or whatever. Put a spin on it, and you can claim it as "an original take" or "inspired by".
Especially if that "copy" only takes like the world setting.
I can simply think of it as a story that takes place on the other side of the world, in that particular world.
Call it fanfic, sure. As long as it is good and not boring.

I mean, even in scientific publications where novelty is an actual criterion score for acceptance, we don't expect authors to create something completely new from scratch.
I've read a lot of manga that in my opinion are blatant copy of other works.
Some only have the same premise, some are very similar beat for beat.
But I try not to blindly judge them as copies or plagiarism.
Maybe they actually thought of it at the same time independently. Who knows.

There are some "copies" that I think are actually as good or even better than the "original".
Who wouldn't want a remake of an axed story that had a great premise, but now done better.
Even I have tried to make a fanfic of a story simply because I wanted to fix a glaring plot hole in the original story.
(I even have one right now, but I'm waiting that story to be axed first, which I think is going to happen very soon)

 

[undeed]

Anyway, back to the "adapted from ln/vn vs original manga" topic.
I just got back from swimming in floodwaters and braving a thunderstorm, so my brain is a bit hazy right now.

I tried to come up with an answer, but I couldn't find any good ones other than the ones already mentioned.
I checked my database, but turns out, there aren't many manga adapted from novels that I read before the year of 2010.
Even in anime there are only a few that I watch.

So unless novel reader before 2010s said otherwise, maybe it's not about the "adaptation" per se,
Maybe it is simply about the popular tropes. That's just how it is with popular stuff.
Tropes come and go over time to suit the tastes of the current audiences.
Just like summer blockbusters, we had the "macho muscle man" trope in the 90s, the "retired assassin" trope in the 2000s, and the "girl boss" trope in the 2010s.

I guess, when the goblin slayer scene exploded, and they got away with it, everyone was just like "let's do that too"
(or maybe it was the editor who said that)
I mean, that trope already existed long before the likes of goblin slayer, it just wasn't as popular.
Like in Berserk, Ubel Blat, Devil Devil, etc.
Just like we still have the tsundere trope nowadays, but it's not as popular and as abundant as it was in the 90s.
The "adventurer's guild" trope already existed in manga like Monster Hunter Orage in 2008
The "class got transported and tried to kill each other", I guess... something like Eden no Ori?

 

[wandere]

Anyway, back to the "adapted from ln/vn vs original manga" topic.
I just got back from swimming in floodwaters and braving a thunderstorm, so my brain is a bit hazy right now.

I tried to come up with an answer, but I couldn't find any good ones other than the ones already mentioned.
I checked my database, but turns out, there aren't many manga adapted from novels that I read before the year of 2010.
Even in anime there are only a few that I watch.

So unless novel reader before 2010s said otherwise, maybe it's not about the "adaptation" per se,
Maybe it is simply about the popular tropes. That's just how it is with popular stuff.
Tropes come and go over time to suit the tastes of the current audiences.
Just like summer blockbusters, we had the "macho muscle man" trope in the 90s, the "retired assassin" trope in the 2000s, and the "girl boss" trope in the 2010s.

I guess, when the goblin slayer scene exploded, and they got away with it, everyone was just like "let's do that too"
(or maybe it was the editor who said that)
I mean, that trope already existed long before the likes of goblin slayer, it just wasn't as popular.
Like in Berserk, Ubel Blat, Devil Devil, etc.
Just like we still have the tsundere trope nowadays, but it's not as popular and as abundant as it was in the 90s.
The "adventurer's guild" trope already existed in manga like Monster Hunter Orage in 2008
The "class got transported and tried to kill each other", I guess... something like Eden no Ori?

This exploration to me isn't really about "why do people do the popular thing"; the answer to that is simple. Because it makes money. Because it gets as many readers or watchers as possible. That's obvious and that's often where we stop at when thinking about these things. My question is more things such as "Is there a distinct difference between the web novel/light novel reader group, the manga reader group, and the anime watcher group?" and "If that is the case, how identifiable are those differences and how does it possibly shape what is created in that medium in the future?"
For example, one thing I find interesting is that there are some similarities between Booktok and that group of "light novel fans", despite one group being largely women and one group being largely men (I say this more in a Western sense, I can't speak for the East). They both get hate for a variety of things; from the trope-y, "tag-based" nature of their medium of choice (fanfiction and YA novels for Booktok, webnovels and light novels for LN readers), to the books they highlight having too much inane romance, smut, or "problematic scenes" (I'm not opening that can of worms) in them, to simply tearing apart works loved by that audience for being poorly written or otherwise terrible. Regardless of this, regardless of the fact that many manga and anime fans hate the shit out of the influx of adaptations they consider a detriment to the mediums, that many movie fans hate the shit out of YA novel adaptations (in particular romance) that hit theaters or streaming, they just keep getting made.
Because someone out there likes them enough for companies to think they're worth publishing and worth adapting. There are of course connections you could clearly make between light novels and manga/anime; to a degree they definitely share some common traits like similar art styles (although you could argue that it's less like they have similar art styles and more like light novels generally share the same artstyle which then get converted into manga, causing us to feel like this fits into the anime/manga aesthetic), but to some degree, I think they are their own breed.
As a friend has often told me: "VRMMO anime usually have no idea how a video game or mmo is supposed to work". This is a known fact, but web novels don't imitate manga and anime in large part; they usually imitate other web novels. At some point you no longer are reading a narrative written as a love letter to gaming, or manga, or anime, or etc., but reading a web novel by someone who loves web novels.
Yes, tropes exist in multiple mediums. Does that mean that there still can't be a particular flavor depending on the medium? I would say no. I'm going to stop here and then continue with a different message just to cut it into pieces a bit.

 

[wandere]

Ok so second part: I'm going to establish what I feel is oftentimes different between wn/lns and manga even when they might share a similar trope:
Adventurer's Guilds: An Adventurer's Guild, when they show up in a shonen manga (i.e Fairytail), often feels more equivalent to an association of likeminded individuals. The most clear example of this for me is Fairytail where there are rival guilds as antagonists but within the guild they are all allies. You might also consider the Hunter Association in Hunter X Hunter a sort of Adventurer's Guild; once again narratively it's a quirky bunch of extremely dangerous people but there still is a unified if differing per person vision; the concept of striving for your dreams and ideals. They share more DNA with the Demon Slayer Association in Demon Slayer, or Heroes in MHA, or ninja villages in Naruto.
In web and light novels, if there is an adventurer's guild, they are often a very loosely associated group of what you might call an anything from an odd job agency to mercenaries-lite. You could say that if Fairytail is more like a company with W-2 workers (for people who aren't American that means you're an official employee of the company with a specific salary), Adventurer's Guilds in light novels are usually more like contractors, with some exceptions. Lots of freedom (for the most part), and no especially cohesive structure among the contractors, beyond perhaps a certain culture. You can see any number of inspirations for this, from what I assume is D&D to Content Creators (in particular streamers) and perhaps the idea of "work flexibility" in general. The desire to reach the highest rank is oftentimes less a matter of ideals or dreams and more a matter of proving the world wrong, reaching the top, or becoming rich. Generally, there is only one Adventurer's Guild, ensuring that poor treatment may continue regardless of where the protagonist goes. They might be bullied for not being a high enough rank, or there may be adventurer's abusing their power to harm others. Saying that, adventurers oftentimes are the antagonists, if not potentially the entire guild.
The Class Gets Transported to [Place]: The first thing I think of is Battle Royale, but I have never actually read or seen any of the iterations of it. Similarly to the last one, I think that this premise within manga often shares dna with things that are not the same. This isn't exactly my wheelhouse because I have seen way, way more of the "class gets transported" stories when it's a light novel adaptation.
I would say a big difference I believe I've seen is the level of violence. I feel like if this is the premise of a manga you have an 80% chance of it involving large amounts of death, sexual assault potentially, etc. The one that's in my head is that one with the island of giant insects which I avoided for obvious reasons. I can think of things that are similar which would be part of my point, like Btoom for example; oftentimes from my unclear memory these are about the darkness of humanity and the depravity of humanity when laws go out the window, as well as how people can overcome despite that. They could also just be murder porn. That too.
I can't remember the name but there's that one about the class being transported to a farm where elves raise humans to be eaten. Yeah that's basically what I mean. Addition: Post writing the second part of this,I feel like there is usually a bit more integration of the protagonist into the rest of the class, even if things go south really fast. Also, despite all the classmate infighting, the core of the story is usually not classmate vs classmate, it's classmates vs whoever got them into this situation and/or is trying to kill them. The infighting is generally kind of a backdrop or tragic when they need to unite to survive.
In web and light novels, I have read a lot more of this premise via wn/ln adaptations. For starters, the class is usually kept around as part of the cast for an extended period, even if they kill off a few people. There is often more of a spirt of cooperation, or if not cooperation, collectivism. In many cases they have not been dropped into some wilderness but a kingdom, someplace safe or "safe". The class often is divided into a social hiearchy or otherwise groups, generally the "popular kids" (athletes, gyarus, yankiis, rich kids, cute girls, basically anyone the writer feels contempt for or perhaps narratively the protagonist feels contempt for) and then the "losers" (otaku, "plain" girls, weird kids) and lastly the protagonist who is probably a loner. If a fall into chaos does occur, it usually is from the beginning and related less so to a social power disparity and more because of a literal power disparity (It's kind of weird how the shitty popular kid characters get all the best powers, isn't it?). It is very much classmate vs classmate as the primary conflict in most cases (if not for the entire story, initially), or possibly protagonist vs classmates + whoever sent them there who the classmates are cooperating with.
Well that's my take at least.