Forum - View topicREVIEW: Buddha: The Great Departure
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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Well, this is depressing.
 Anyone disagree with his review? I love Buddha and was hoping for a strong adaptation.
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wandering-dreamer
 Posts: 1733 |
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Oh dear, I've read the manga and this really does sound rather bad. It's not the easiest story to adapt but it really does sound like this could have been done much better.
And, since you didn't mention it, how was the voice acting? Was that at least alright or do you have no real comments on it? |
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GWOtaku
 Posts: 678 |
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I'm starting to see a trend where moderate-to-good reviews talk about this as a standalone product while moderate-to-negative ones tend to spend a whole lot of focus panning it for all the ways it isn't the same as the manga. I'm not sure this is really very useful. Yes, a certain amount of faithfulness should be expected...but complaints about this rabbit scene, about the style, about a lack of levity? I can't find much meaning in these things. Perhaps it works in the manga, but does it make sense for this movie to risk awkward and unnatural mood whiplash just for fidelity's sake? More to the point, well, the core story essentially IS serious. The light stuff is content Tezuka added in. If you're going to adapt this and tell this fictionalized account of Buddha's life.....well, yeah, you're going to hit on the big things, the serious things, the "real" things.
That still leaves the pacing and narrative problems, which are worrying to see asserted. That may all be right & I won't know until & unless I see it. But it's rather striking and depressing to me how a non-trivial number of people can't get past the reality that by necessity putting this to film demands an adaptation of the material and not a panel-by-panel reconstruction, or something very close. In any event, I'll get into this story eventually. I adored Jason Thompson's column about the manga. If the movie is brought over in a year or a little more, great...otherwise I guess I go for the books. |
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Psycho_Despair
Posts: 376 Location: East of Eden |
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We need to revive Tezuka, to do justice on this film!
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sepherest
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That's disappointing to read, I almost went down to New York to see it at the Asian Film Festival. Guess I'll just stick with the manga.
How come the rating for the dub is a D without even mentioning anything about it in the review though? |
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Toriko36
 Posts: 205 Location: Hoboken, NJ |
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I was actually debating the same as to go into the city to see the film at Japan Society as well, I guess according to this review, glad I didn't pay the $13 to see it. I also had no idea this was the 1st of 3 films for this work for art. Guess I will be waiting to rent it or pick it up from the library if a North American company decided to license it. |
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jsc315
 Posts: 925 |
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Well considering how great the manga is it's very hard to. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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That would be because I accidentally put the "D" in the "dub" box instead of the "sub" box. It's fixed now. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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The best adaptations are those that can both stand on their own and can be enjoyable by fans of the original work. The Harry Potter movies are examples. This movie makes itself clear that it's basing itself on Tezuka's work, so I'd imagine a story closer to his interpretation of the Buddha tale than the original one.
That being said, it seems bewildering to put the events of the second book concurrently with events of the first. I haven't read the manga yet, but would it have been possible to begin with the second book to avoid confusion from audiences who begin with the movies, then once everyone is familiar with there being a Buddha movie, make the second movie be a prequel explaining the events leading up to his birth? I'm sure there'd need to be heavy rewriting, but I'm also sure it'd result in a more solid narrative and much fewer chronological errors. |
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gerbilx
Posts: 138 |
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I agree with GWOtaku. The review would be better if it honed in on what makes this objectively, universally bad, rather than disappointing relative to the manga.
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khaos1019
 Posts: 93 |
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I think he honed in on what was bad. The pacing was rushed, the music was bland, there were inconsistencies abound in the story, and the animation was lacking at certain points. I haven't seen the film, but the reviewer was pretty clear about what he didn't like about it. |
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Fletcher1991
 Posts: 514 Location: Long Island, NY |
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Someone needs to review the movie that never actually read the manga.
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Julia-the-Great
 Posts: 328 |
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I don't get all this backlash about the reviewer comparing it to the manga. It was stated why people who haven't read the manga shouldn't see the movie because it's badly paced, confusing and lacks levity. I haven't read the manga, and I understood that perfectly from the review. What's your problem?
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Apollo-kun
 Posts: 1213 Location: City 7, Macross 7 |
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I'm about to actually sit down and watch this, and I would like to say that I can sort of see where the critic here is coming from in regards to faithfulness to the source material. Adapting Tezuka to animation is no easy feat, and it takes a masterful rewriting and reimagining of the original work (see: "Metropolis") for a good movie to be made out of it. That being said, I think that taking the film for it's own merits and how it stands independently of the source material is what's most important in a review, and I didn't see too much of that going on here. However, I'm not going to bash your opinion namely because: a) I haven't actually seen the film yet; and b) It's your opinion and you're entitled to it. When I watch the movie this afternoon, I will comment again (if anybody still monitors this thread) and compare and contrast with your opinion.
All said, though, it was a good review! |
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 11448 Location: Frisco, TX |
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Sorry, but the shelf life of Talkback threads is only a few weeks. 11 months is necroposting. If you'd still like to discuss the article with a fresher take, please use the Anime forum, instead. Thanks.
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