Forum - View topicBokurano (TV).
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OtakuExile
 Posts: 202 Location: Neo Vegas |
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The manga was the way to go. The anime has a made up ending.
spoiler[Dung Beetle gets his human form back and continues on with the game elsewhere. In the end he got what he wanted at the kids expense. Which apparently has been going on for quite some time now.] The plot twists were great. spoiler[The trickery of Kokopelli having the group essentially sacrifice themselves for the sake of a game.] spoiler[The one time their mech ripped open the shield of their enemy , just to find a similar set of children in the same predicament.] That was awesome. spoiler[Finding out Dung Beetle was participating in all that for fun, and then continuing on to the next set of kids was amazing. You rarely see stories where the bad guys win.] That's what made it really stand out. |
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hipnox
 Posts: 143 |
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^very much this. This is one of the biggest weakness of the series (which i have no idea if its the manga too). total lack of support, completely nonexistent military support of any kind and very poor evacuation of the affected zones drag the series down a bit. Heck, after the third or fourth Enemy, you would have thought they evacuated the entire town and left the kids behind to fight. ON THE OTHER HAND...... spoiler[ Some of the other universes we saw actually had proper support for their fighters (military anyways). They where attacked by fighter jets, we see a peek of "activist" or support group manifesting their will to protect their universe and cheering for their local champion, and in one occasion they actually dug a hole in the ground of biblical proportions to aid their Acid spewing avatar. so, maybe its the protagonist world that just sucks...]
eh, no. As far as i am concerned, there is 1 major plot twist (the one Megiddo commented in his/her post ) and it is HUGE. there are 2 minor plot twists. the second being the one you mentioned (which is an interesting twist, mind you, and eventually leads to the much expected main explanation of what is really going on), and the first is the fact thatspoiler[ the pilots die after each battle]
its usually always this way, so im not surprised one bit[/spoiler] |
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Darc_knight
 Posts: 169 |
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untagged spoilers ahead(people who have not seen this anime/manga, don't bother reading my post)
I have a few questions. okay on episode 17 after the blonde headed papa's little girl dies(anko) in the arms of Kanju, Kanju has a vision of what he calls the masterminds. What is their significance? Why do they not get hurt or touched? Is episode 24 the last? or does the manga answer it? What was the significance of the death of Ushio's mother? Was her death by bullets more fitting for her since she was a mafia member's girl? or that her death didn't matter since she was inevitably going to die? How was this"game" originated? Whats its source of future technology? "Was the ending rushed?" or is this series simply as sick(meaning bad/twisted/downright wrong) as Gantz? |
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hipnox
Posts: 143 |
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*** WARNING / UNTAGGED SPOILRES ****
all this questions are left unanswered in the anime. idk about the manga i dont really feel that the anime is incomplete without this answeres because the viewer usually doesn't know more than the kids involved. I never expected the kids to find the truth behind it all, so i never expected to get answers myself. the truth is far beyond the reach of the characters involved and as such, beyond the reach o the viewer, but that's just me. |
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Darc_knight
Posts: 169 |
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thanks. I feel kinda ill after finishing this series with a bad after taste.
I wish i could get these answers, but i guess thats not happening. Ill read the manga for sure tho. |
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louis6578
 Posts: 1881 |
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Sorry for reviving such an old topic, but Bokurano is probably my #1 favorite manga. I'm curious to see what all the current people of ANN think of the manga and anime. I was personally disappointed by many things in the anime.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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I've never read the manga, so I can't comment on it. I know the anime changed a lot of things, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. I thought that the anime was interesting, although it isn't a show where I could watch a whole bunch of episodes at once, because after a few episodes, I stopped having a good time. When this show gets dark, it gets unrelentingly dark. I thought that episode seven, "Scars", was a fantastic stand-alone episode. If you are unfamiliar with this show, and want to know whether it is "your kind of thing", watch that episode and then see how you feel. |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5158 |
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Just for future reference:
Last edited by nobahn on Sat May 02, 2015 6:54 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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One-Eye
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I both read the manga and saw the anime a long time ago. I did collect Viz's manga releases and they are sitting on my shelf, but haven't gotten a chance to re-read the whole story. My memory maybe a little spotty, but I seem to recall feeling that the anime just didn't measure up to the manga and that wasn't just because I found a lot of it visually uninteresting especially the CG robots.
If I recall right I think story wise the show lacked the level of horror and tragedy in the manga. The dread that these kids face when they realize that they are spoiler[human batteries to power the robot]. The drama is not quite as convincing. I think in part its because so much of it feels abbreviated. In the original manga I thought the kids background stories were much longer. It also doesn't have the level of cruelty that some of these kids suffer. I believe there was a fair amount they cut out from the anime. Its pretty tough to read some of the kids stories in the manga. I believe the director was on record for saying that he didn't like the original story and that maybe why it seems toned down for me. Because we don't get to spend enough time with each of the kids to really get to know them the anime felt a little more superficial. I think part of the problem was that there were so many kids to begin with that in order to do the story justice they would have needed more like 36 episodes instead of 24. To be fair that is tough thing to work around with the episode limit they had. Maybe they could have reduced the number of kids in order to give more background to a smaller cast? I think I felt the original story had some harshness and bite to it because it was a fate that was uncontrollable for these kids. It was like an act of nature or god and there seemed to be no escape. If you knew that spoiler[you were going to die and had only a few days or only one day to live how would you handle it and how would you use that little time left]? I think this gets a little diluted with the more stereotypical spoiler[evil dudes] being shoe horned into the anime story. When I re-read the manga I may revisit the anime again and see if I still feel the same way or if I find it more acceptable (sometimes you change your mind or a show grows on you). Edit: Weird, just as I was typing this up thread got moved and when I posted it I ended up being the only post in the thread. Had to delete and repost here. |
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louis6578
Posts: 1881 |
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If I may reiterate, I said that this is one of my favorite manga of all time. The anime was exceedingly average. They changed far too many things for the worse, especially making Dung Beetle into the Eric Cartman of anime, giving Kenji and one of the female pilots some forced romance 3/4 of the way through, and occasionally giving the Government more focus than the chosen pilot.
While the manga could occasionally get a little forced (Chizu's rape plot certainly had me rolling my eyes, and I never gave a crap about who Jun's mother was), the show had too many "epic" heroic speeches like when Kenji suggested that they fight for their own sake and everyone just sorta agrees. I was just sitting there thinking "What...? You're saying that they should take solace in the fact that they're dying for themselves? I think that dying for the sake of the Earth is more notable." The mech battles were so "meh" in the anime, which is especially disappointing when they were so inspired in the manga. In the anime, only the final battle took more than a few minutes (for some reason), while in the manga, quite a few of the later battles neared the 48 hour time limit. I don't think it helped that Gonzo animated this in such a forgettable fashion. I hear people say that them using clips from the actual show as their opening is some sort of creative choice. I considered it lazy. The only truly great thing about the anime is the opening and ending songs. I love them. Despite all my gripes with it though, I'd always recommend someone watch the anime and then read the manga, because it some how makes the manga seem even better by comparison. |
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Ghost_Wheel
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I can't compare it to the manga because I've never read it, but I really did love the series. What really struck me wasn't necessarily the tragedy of it, but the varied, rational, and interesting responses the characters had. Everyone dealt with the prospect of death in different ways; some needed support, some were self motivated, some were inspired by others and their sense of duty. Even more interesting was the way everyone decided to manage their time; taking care of unfinished business in their own lives, while doing whatever they could to gain leverage over the situation at hand. Really the only character I had a problem with was Ushiro. The show gave him close to main character status and he was by far the least interesting one. Dung Beetle was also fine, maybe he was better in the manga but he was clearly intelligent to some degree, just also sadistic and capricious. This combination is pretty scary in someone who has absolute power over you, it feels like you're getting robbed in the street by someone not stable enough to make coherent decisions concerning your life or well being.
Mech battles were meh but that's mostly because they weren't very good CG and honestly I didn't feel they should have been much of a priority over the character drama. The government stuff, if it was an addition, I consider a pretty welcome addition (spoiler[well, except the whole "let's nuke the city and both robots" subplot at the very end, that was pretty crazy for absolutely no reason]). I think it was important for them to explore the effect this alien struggle had on the Earth as a whole, especially because it was even more futile and tragic for them than the kids. The kids had the power to change and affect the situation when the government could only send a couple military, gamble on research, and keep the people organized and together. As for the animation. Galap would know more about who was directly involved, but there were a few great moments in Chizu's episode, in the style of Ushiro running in the OP/his episode. You've got rational characters who would make decisions differently than I would, a well designed conflict that forces them into the volcano and fleshes out their decisions, and well imagined execution of the whole thing, so I'd definitely recommend it. I can definitely relate to something like the manga being really inspiring and feeling like the anime just didn't get it, but this interpretation definitely held it's own for me, whether it was as a shadow of the manga, or more likely, as some nonseparable combination of the old production and the people and execution involved in the new. |
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louis6578
Posts: 1881 |
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I feel like I know how good ol' Hope Chapman feels when she states why she loves FMA 2003 over Brotherhood now. To me, I'm the same with why I love the manga over the anime. I'd recommend reading just the first few arcs if you have the time. They delve deeper into the characters' actions. Especially with Kako and Jun Ushiro. Try it out and tell me if you feel it's an improvement. One thing I appreciated that the manga took out was, before Kokopelli's demo-fight, he looked at the empty chairs around him with a saddened expression before saying "Let's go" and starting his fight, giving not only subtle hints that Kokopelli wasn't what he seemed, but that this game wasn't what it seemed either. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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Wow, nice that this thread got brought up again; Bokurano is one of my favorite anime.
I don't really read manga, but I did look at this one extremely cursorily because I heard that the director of the anime put a lot of himself into it and changed things around, and I wanted to see how much of a difference there really was. What i found was that the manga was much more edgy and I thought a little overdone, whereas the anime seemed to have a much more mature take on things, focusing more on the characters' philosophies and reasoning behind their decisions rather than their emotional reactions to what was happening to them. Another anime based on a manga by Mohiro Kitoh, Narutuaru I feel has a similar tone to Kitoh's manga (I haven't read any of the Narutaru manga though). I thought Narutaru was good, but Bokurano IMO came out much better by tuning down the raw vulgarity a little and tuning up the more introspective and conceptual aspects. Andto this I credit the Bokurano anime's director Hiroyuki Morita. Since Ghost_Wheel mentioned that I know about some of the animation staff, let me talk about that a little: I like the general visual aesthetic of Bokurano, but I do think the CG mechs weren't captivating at all (and I'm not going to say more on that matter because I've previously talked at length about my views on CG). On the drawing side, Bokurano was among the first professional work for people who would become known as prominent 'webgen' animators (the term refers to the current generation of professional animators, and how many of them became known by sharing digitally drawn animations they made on the internet, and how from that community something of a stylistic movement emerged), people like Shingo Yamashita, Ryo-Timo, and Kenichi Kutsuna, in addition to an older animator they frequently associate with, Norio Matsumoto. This was also one of the first shows (the first being Noein as far as I'm aware) to have a lot of these guys at once and to feature their style as a major aesthetic. The animation in this show is much more low key than the super high energy stuff we usually see from webgen productions (Birdy Decode, Yozakura Quartet, etc.), ad I kind of like the fact that I can see something that focuses on the more quiet type of motions in this style. Shingo Yamashita is probably my favorite animator, especially becasue he's so good at so many things. He's most known for his extreme energy and looseness, but here the standout scenes from him were Chizuru and her teacher walking home together, and some effects and spoiler[Yoko Machi's facial expressions during the penultimate battle]. As for the story of Bokurano and why I like it so much, I think it's essentially because though its conceit is fantastical, at its core it's not fundamentally very different than our current state of affairs in the real world. That's the great power of a certain kind of science fiction (of which I'd consider Bokurano a star member): to be able to say something about humanity's situation and explore things in a way you really couldn't without using those metaphors. So how does this robot war relate to our state of affairs? First of all, I think this show is to a large extent about death. The way things currently are for us, everyone will die eventually, and we live in a civilization that loses every single one of its members, including our greatest individuals, like Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Niels Bohr, Marie Curie, etc. All of those people are completely gone forever, and our civilization kind of just deals with it. We pass the torch on to our successors, and try to get our affairs in order before we cease to exist. Just like in the show, Sometimes we get a little warning before we die, and sometimes not. It’s never at a good time for us; aren’t we always doing something? Always busy? Always waiting for all that’s got to be done tomorrow? How do we try to prepare for death: the one big certainty, the one big uncertainty? The best we can do is try to put our affairs in order before we’re gone, and again, like many things, sometimes we’re able to and sometimes we aren’t. And just because our life is going to end doesn’t make it meaningless. It’s all about what you do with your life, how you try to affect the world. I really like how the show doesn’t sugarcoat the death thing at all, giving us platitudes and death apology like “death gives meaning to life.” Or anything like that. The characters acknowledge that what’s going to happen to them is bad, and they deal with it. As for the war aspect, I think that's pretty on the money as well. The children are essentially like conscripted soldiers, and even aren't that much younger than conscripted soldiers in our world. The robot tournament isn't that much different than our wars in that it's one population seeking to gain an advantage at the expense of another, and the individual soldiers are forced into this conflict and do not control the motivations of those who organize it. That goes for people on both sides. So that leads to people are being killed who are not evil, and not in the wrong, and the people who kill them are not evil and not in the wrong themselves. That's the real tragedy of it, isn't it? Does your victory seem righteous when you realize that your enemy is no different than you are? The reason I’m ok with the focus on the characters' traumas and home situations is that they’re not all behaving stupidly because of them and just sitting there ruminating about it: on the contrary most of the characters actually learn from their experiences and use what they learned going into the future. The show really respects its characters, and makes them not into mere victims of their circumstances (both directly related to the robot war game and otherwise), even though a lot of things really do seem to trap them extremely harshly. Most of them still maintain their sense of agency and self-efficacy, despite the helplessness of their situation with the robot war and the classical societally perceived helplessness of their individual life situations. This work is not something like the things that are critically acclaimed in literature, such works that lament the human condition, and sing sickened praises of our supposed helplessness. Like all in my time (and hopefully this situation improves for our descendants), this show knows the reality of things like chronic illness and death, and it does not depict them as artistic or tragically beautiful; they are just bad. They destroy our best things, and those losses can have long-term repercussions. Many people consider this anime to be extremely bleak and depressing, and while I definitely don’t disagree with that sentiment, I also find it to be surprisingly uplifting. I think it’s saying that you may feel like you have no choice or no influence sometimes, but you do. Your choices are your own, and you affect the world more than you think you do. This life is only as good as you make it. I really appreciate the connection between the pilots and their chairs. I personally think that the inclusion of the unique chairs to each pilot is brilliant. Most people have a chair that is theirs personally, or they spend enough time in to have a meaningful connection with. And there are a lot of different forms that chairs can take (think of your own The Chair. Is it a Big Red easy chair? A Big Black wheely office chair?). What does the form of someone’s chair say about their identity? I think it can say quite a bit. I feel like the same thing with clothing is known pretty well on a conscious level; we all know that what we wear affects people’s perceptions of us, and know that what others wear affects our perceptions of them. If someone wears a crown, we identify them as a king. Many people have probably thought about this. But have they thought about the fact that if someone sits on a throne, we identify them as a king? Probably significantly fewer have. It seems to me that taking their personal chairs would make the pilots a lot less comfortable than impersonal seats. It seems like it’s Koemushi saying “I own your identity.” Though he may make a mockery of everything they value, and take their ultimate fate out of their hands, he does not own their identity. Yeah, at the end of the day, I say this show is one of those things that really goes somewhere conceptually and thematically. It's really stellar. Last edited by Galap on Thu Mar 31, 2016 5:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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louis6578
Posts: 1881 |
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I hate to sound like I'm disagreeing with your opinion, because I'm not really saying Bokurano had a bad anime. However, the anime certainly didn't delve deeper into the Pilot's mindsets than the manga did. I'd recommend checking out Kako, the girl who Kenji got a sudden weird crush on in the anime (I forget her name, but trust me when I say that she was handled poorly in the anime), and Kenji's arcs in the manga. Just skip around until you find them, and compare them to the anime versions.
On second thought, let me just go through each character's arc in the anime and manga and give my opinion of each one in... the manga's order. Just to make sure I'm not being too biased, I'll even say what I liked about the anime's arcs even if I didn't enjoy them as much as the manga's. Kokopelli's arc was largely the same in both versions, though the manga had that one part where he stares at the empty chairs, as if to say that he was remembering his comrades who piloted the robot before him. Still, I can't fault the anime for leaving things out because of time constraints. Waku's arc was mostly the same as well, though I admit that the anime putting his funeral in the next episode and showing how his death affected everyone was a nice touch. I give the anime an edge here. Kodama... eh. He was okay in both versions too. I think that most of the beginning arcs were good either way you watch/read them. It wasn't until the later ones that the anime started slipping up. Daichi's arc was one of the better ones in the series. I loved how it showed a fear that, no doubt, came to many of the pilots' minds. How would their family handle the death or function without them? He planned to take them to the amusement park one final time, but his battle happened a day earlier than expected. The way that he died protecting the amusement park, only for his siblings to be disappointed by his "abandonment" of them made this ending a rather bittersweet one. Alright! Nakama's arc is the one with a noticeable difference. She made costumes for them since the beginning, before she knew the truth behind the battles, as a sign of friendship. Knowing that she'll be next, she's running out of money to make her costumes. In my opinion, the anime adding the scene with her and her mom hanging out in the bar always baffled me. I never understood what the point of it was. If she was starting to realize how much her mother meant to her and found that as a reason to fight, then it should have been made clearer. The manga concludes her arc with the bullies who antagonized her becoming better people after her death, which says a lot more to me than the anime's vagueness. Finally, Kako's arc, which I believed was handled infinitely better in the manga. In both the anime and manga, he attempts to force himself upon Chizu, realizing that he doesn't have much time left and might as well "not die a virgin." I loved the concept of a person who didn't have the bravery of the other children, and in the anime its pulled off well enough.I just liked how in the manga, he backs off of Chizu after she pulls a knife on him. In the anime, she gets invited to the aquarium and rejects Kako, which I found to be incredibly insensitive considering that the two were living under a time limit. In the manga, Kako makes his intentions to have his way with her clear when he enters the house, but in the anime, he's more sympathetic at that point, so it came across as mean spirited. I loved the part just before he pilots the robot, where he has a self-satisfying dream about beating and killing all of the people who wronged him and getting to live through the battles. Of course, like every dream, one has to wake up eventually to face reality. His cowardice, to the point of hoping that the military can defeat his enemy without him having to pilot and die, and making Zearth run from his enemy, was just done better than the short run that the anime gave him. In my opinion, they had no excuse for changing this part up, since the manga already had these chapters out when the anime was adapted. Chizu's arc. I admit... there's a lot wrong with this arc in both the anime and manga. It's my least favorite part of the story in general. Basically, she fell for a teacher, the teacher dates and betrays her (in both versions, though in a different way) and later dates Chizu's sister, during Chizu's battle (directly after she killed Kako, inadvertently in the anime, purposefully and without empathy in the manga) she tries to murder this teacher. The change is that in the anime, the teacher posted pictures of the two having sex online while in the manga, the teacher tricked Chizu into being gang-raped. While both are certainly worthy of scorn, I believe that the manga had a less petty reason for her rampage of revenge, but it's forced in both versions. She abandons her quest for vengeance when her sister gets in the way of her killing the teacher. I found this to be a rather pathetic ending and would have actually sympathized with Chizu killing the damned teacher. I mean, she ends up dying to save him and his universe, so she had every right to go for revenge. Moji and Maki's arcs were both good in the anime and manga. Not much to complain about there. The revelation that spoiler[they're fighting people from other worlds and taking entire universes with them] is handled well. Kirie's arc. While it was a legitimately shocking twist that his first opponent committed suicide, I never got why the anime made it so that his depressed mother was what made him not want to fight. It seemed forced that his father coming back to his mother was what made him see that the world was worth protecting. I think the message would have been more powerful if he found a reason to die for the sake of this world even if his mother remained depressed. The manga gets points for having him meet with the other pilot face to face and realize that his world was worth protecting for reasons that are up to the reader's interpretation. Then again, the anime gave him one of the few noteworthy fights in the whole show, though it was only worthy of note for how quickly it went. This arc was good either way, though I can't stop hating that mafia dude that the anime threw in for comic relief. He's unnecessary. This isn't a complaint about Kirie's arc so much as a complaint about the anime in general. And as we get to the last 1/3 of the story, the changes become more and more infuriating. Komo's arc. In the manga, the theme of music plays a heavy part in her arc as she admits that ever since she found out about her imminent death, she's felt more in tune with the piano. Her opponent backs out of the fight upon seeing her face and she has to find him. The reason that seeing her face makes her opponent not want to kill her is because she looks just like his daughter, who was killed by people of his world due to the collateral damage that a previous battle caused. After luring her opponent to a piano recital of her's, it's clear that he's given up on his own world, but this recital will decide whether or not he gives up on our's. Convincing him with her music, Komo's father shoots the opponent after he decides to die for this world, leaving Komo's dad feeling as though the bullet, in a strange way, took his daughter's life. I found the set up of her manga arc to be one of the better ones. IN THE ANIME however, she's not the protagonist of her own story arc. Who is? Her father, who is a congressman in this version. It focuses more on him trying to get the truth of Zearth publicly known which results in him getting killed, revealing one of my major gripes with the anime version. It focuses too heavily on the government and politics rather than the children themselves. Another one of my favorite manga arc's was Anko's. In the manga, she wanted to become an idol and there's some comedic moments where Dung Beetle teleports in on her when she's practicing acting like an idol. It's revealed that her father, who she loves dearly, is a newscaster who distances himself from her. There's even a small moment where she wonders if anyone will remember her after she dies. Her father comes onto Zearth with them, only interested in his daughter after finding out of her involvement. Despite this, he shows that he genuinely cares for her, and she shows some extra heroics by pushing Maki out of the way of some acid that leeks into Zearth's cockpit. In the end, Anko gives a message to the world, recorded by her father's camera, stating that the pilots of Zearth have been protecting this planet, and that even though some of them may have caused damage, they were trying their best. She dies right afterwards, content that she could be famous like her father and earn his love and respect. This was one of the more beautiful stories in the whole manga. I especially loved how it showed the way that Anko wanted to be remembered after she died by the man whom she respected and loved more than anyone. IN THE ANIME... her dad is a journalist working with Kanji's mom to save the children from their contract (which is an annoying side plot made up by the anime which we all know is going no where because there's no way out of the contract. It's annoying, tedious, and takes time out of the actual story that could have been used to make compelling short stories about children coming face-to-face with their own mortality. You know? Like the manga did correctly). Her dad resigns after an affair with a famous model... which is kinda weird. Anko cries pitifully over being the next pilot, when Kanji comforts her, leading to the two falling for each other (in what is perhaps the fastest instance of realizing love since Princess Peach falling for the first person who rescues her). After her battle, she dies in Kanji's arms, smiling at how her character in the anime is depending on his emotional support to do anything... ERM... I mean, smiling at their true love. Aw... (Bite me.) Kanji's is one of the more interesting in both versions, though the manga is still leagues ahead. At least I don't hate this one for the anime, and I consider that since this arc was nowhere near started in the manga at the time, the anime actually had to wing this one. It's a respectable effort. While the arcs are both engaging and interesting, Kanji's manga fight is one of the best, if not the best mech battle in the series, being one of the few to near the 48 hour time limit. I admit, Kana never really had her own arc in either version. She never pilots in the anime and amounts to very little outside of being Ushiro's punching bag and the girl who we're supposed to feel needs to be protected above all else (Basically, she has the same role that Clementine had in Season One of TWD video game). In the manga, while she pilots and has her little arc, it's overshadowed by Ushiro's (annoying) arc about finding his mother. In the anime, Machi doesn't really amount to much outside of a typical "I regret going along with this" villain who tricked the MCs into making their contract, revolted in the end against the big bad villain Dung Beetle who is just pure evil evilness in the anime, and piloted to make up for it. In the manga, her arc is one of my favorites. While she spoiler[doesn't pilot due to being killed before she can,] the fact that she and Ushiro go from house to house, visiting the families of the pilots (including a fake pilot who lied about his involvement with Zearth to get on the news) is heartwarming. Heck, I even found her little crush on Ushiro to be sweet, and I'm not the sort of guy who goes for romance. Her spoiler[early death] was a shocking twist, making Ushiro's time to pilot draw nearer than expected, as he would have to spoiler[take over for Machi's expected battle]. In my opinion, this story is far better in the manga. Finally, Ushiro himself. I admit that I hated his little thing with wanting to find out who his mother was, and in both versions spoiler[he doesn't find out until she's dead]. Ushiro's arc, however, is one of the most interesting in the manga, and in the anime... the kinda force it to be seen as interesting. In the manga, he was one of the two uncontracted characters along with Machi and willfully enters the contract when everyone else dies, leaving no one to protect Earth. You can see him worrying about his battle as it draws nearer, and Dung Beetle tries to calm him down (because he's an actual character who developed into a friend of Ushiro's in the manga instead of being evil, bad jerk man like he is in the anime, where he is evil, in case I didn't make that clear). Ushiro has one final conversation with his father, who is still coping with Kana's death, when the conversation is cut short by Dung Beetle teleporting him to his "Away" game. He wins the fight, but before he can finish his opponent, he opens the cockpit and finds his opponent using his own Dung Beetle to teleport to a different part of his world, causing Ushiro to use Zearth's lasers to kill every last human on this Earth in order to kill his opponent before the 48 hour time limit destroys both worlds. In the end Ushiro has to personally murder every person on that Earth, causing him to vomit and have to finish of some people who are only half-dead. After his victory, he reunites with his friends in some sort of afterlife, moving on together with everyone getting along despite what differences they had in their lives. Ushiro has grown from a sister-beating bully to a brave hero. In the anime, Ushiro doesn't evolve so much as he suddenly starts acting differently for the sake of the plot. With Dung Beetle gone, apparently he doesn't need to go to an Away Game to demonstrate to another universe how to fight. Instead, he wins his (30 hour long) match after reconciling with Kana, using methods that his fellow pilots employed to win. It's fairly well done for what the anime staff had to work with, but I greatly prefer the manga on this one. Finally, Dung Beetle. While he's a jerk in the manga and finds the kids' suffering to be amusing to some extent, he still gives them advice and listens to their requests. He even shows concern for Ushiro in the end, offering him to get changed during his match after her vomits on his clothes from having to murder dozens of millions of people. In the end, he becomes the new Kokopelli and recruits kids from another universe only to pilot Zearth in his human body and die to protect the Earth that our MCs protected and died for. In the anime, Dung Beetle is just evil. Not in a compelling way or a fun way, he's just evil. The anime even shows us a flashback where he's antagonizing his fellow pilots during his universe's own struggle to pilot Zearth, and after he became an instructor to other worlds, he antagonizes them and forces a mother to watch her daughter pilot the robot and die. Dung Beetle, in the anime, also has control over which kid pilots next, and often decides based on who he thinks will be the most fun to watch break down, or who has annoyed him the most. The last straw is when he tries to force Kana into the contract... because he's a jerk. I don't know why the anime thought it was a good idea to make a villain out a Dung Beetle. There was an antagonist in a story that needed none. This should have been about the kids struggling with whether or not their world was worth dying for, not a story about politics, the government, or Good vs Evil. I think that the manga is less obsessed with emotional manipulation, and more focused on showing the mindsets of these kids. I don't understand why people say that the manga is too dark, when in truth, it's dark for writing's sake, while the anime is dark for the sake of making you feel hateful towards Dung Beetle or sad because kids are dying. edit: removed quote for length |
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