It's like new cooks taking a recipe and mixing it up to create a similar, but not the same, but still tantalizing dish.

Yes! I feel like that's the sign of a good adaptation - inevitably you have to condense and cut things, or change aspects of the original to work with the strengths of the new medium. The challenge is making it work as a good example of the kind of media it's been adapted into *and* keep the essence of the original, and it sounds like this is doing a really good job of that.

I'm really looking forward to more!