Forum - View topicREVIEW: Bokurano
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1573 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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As expected of the master, studio GONZO.
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DmonHiro
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If you love the manga as I do, AVOID the anime. This isn't just my advice, it's the advice of the manga author. And I'm not kidding.
The anime, while inferior from the start (removing scenes, removing blood), takes a sudden nose dive around episode 14-15, and goes off on it's own story. And it's a bad story. Thank you again, Gonzo. |
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Halko
Posts: 107 |
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I have to say that this adaptation was a joke when you compare it to the original material. I had to stop watching out of disgust after a handful of episodes. It was just senseless what they did to the source material. It doesnt help that some of the staff said they hated the ending and decided to change it too. From what they were messing up as soon as i heard that i dropped it. I did hear they totally butchered and ruined the ending though.
This series was an absolute train wreck which is sad considering the manga is brilliant and i love it. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5504 |
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OK maybe it is a case that if you have read the Manga as you put it, you won't like the Anime, but if you haven't then watch Anime. I've heard the term, "The Manga is better" as a standard response from Manga readers for every Anime adaptation that ever gets criticised. |
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2267 |
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Pretty much this. Unfortunately, some of the kid's stories were truncated in the anime and there are some loose ends. The anime story felt more superficial, because we don't get to spend enough time with each of the kids to the same extent. To be fair, there are 15 kids and the show really doesn't have the run time it needs to deal with them in the same way as the manga, but I think they could have gotten away with reducing the number of kids while sticking closer to the manga. The mustache twirling evil characters? The scary people in the original manga were the ones that used logic to make their ideas sound reasonable. The mecha battles were far more interesting in the manga if that's what you were interested in. Oh yea, the whole thing with the Director saying he didn't like the manga, so he changed it in the anime.
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 you were probably 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 in the anime story with some of the stereotypical elements that get shoe horned in. The best part of the show for me was the OP song. I really like that song. All in all I found the show to be a little disappointing and again to be fair maybe I wouldn't have such a strong response if I hadn't read the manga first, but there are enough weak elements that I still wouldn't have given this an A- overall. So visually not strong, not enough background on the kids, some questionable plot choices, and some lame mecha battles. Its not an awful show, but I wouldn't be able to give it more than a B- imho. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18442 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Okay, so if you're a fan of the manga then you'll hate this. Since I will likely never read the manga, though, I'd like to see more feedback from people who didn't read the manga, or think they can fairly evaluate the anime as a stand-alone. What do those people think?
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DmonHiro
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Well, in this particular case, the manga and anime were running at the same time at one point, and the director of the anime has gone on record to say that he dislikes the manga, and will be making changes. As such, the second half of the anime is not the same as the manga, and the ending is completely different. Also, yes, the manga was aeons above in story telling, even if it didn't have a standard happy ending, the pos anime did. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2666 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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This was the same case with me when I saw (& reviewed) the Bokurano anime last November via Discotek's DVD release. Having not read the manga before hand, I found the anime to be excellent series overall, and having previously seen all of Matchless Raijin-Oh beforehand, which Mohiro Kitoh used as the basis for Bokurano's deconstruction, I found the numerous callbacks & send ups to that anime very cool & amusing. Even if the director didn't like Kitoh's manga at all, his product still felt extremely dark & fatalistic, which the manga gives off, at least conceptually. I'll definitely check out the manga one day, but considering the vitriol fans of the original material give the anime, this is definitely a case where the two products are probably best taken as more or less completely different series, rather than looking at them directly as the original material & its anime adaptation. |
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Bobduh
 Posts: 24 |
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This also applies to visual novels, light novels, and any western books/comics that get adapted into films or television series. Major fans of a work's source material are generally not going to be the most even-handed critics of its adaptation. You gain an emotional attachment to whichever work you engage with first, and fans will often want adaptations not to be their own self-contained works, but to echo the feelings from the source material that they already value. Thus any deviations from what provoked those initial feelings will come across as a "failing" of the adaptation, regardless of how or not it contributes to the success of the adaptation as a self-contained work. |
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One-Eye
Posts: 2267 |
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Sure and plenty of people will say "the book was better" about live-action movies too. Also some fans of original material will never be satisfied with any adaptation which we get. I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies (not the Hobbit ones) and the books, but there were some people who were up and arms about it. However, that doesn't mean that fans of the original material are always unreasonable, fanatical or wrong in holding up the original over the adaptation. Sometimes yes, the original is better (sometimes its the other way around). How much so is of course up to debate. The manga has its weaknesses as well. It is tragedy porn and if that's not your cup of tea (obviously it wasn't the Director's) then you may want to stick to the anime. I'm ok with adaptations being adaptations (notice I said they could have maybe cutout some of the kids in my first post?) and not strictly following every part of the original material, but if it maybe violates the spirit of the original work and it has some other weak elements to it then yea I'm probably going to say the original work was better for me. |
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Paul D. Atreides
 Posts: 128 |
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When I first heard about this anime I was told that it was so depressing that it made Evangelion look like a comedy by comparison. That made me quite hype, back then I was really into dark and depressing stuff so I figured this would be right up my alley.
It was at first, but to be honest I began to get bored with it as it went along. Every episode felt the same: a side character becomes a main character, we find out about his/her troubled life, everything is resolved, then they fight, then they die happy. It became too predictable for me. It didn't help that I found some of the characters to be obnoxious, leaving me unsatisfied when their deaths were so peaceful. In the end, spoiler[the one character that remains is given a chance to get out alive and thus be able to live for his little-sister. But he refuses because he wants to finish what they started. That pissed me off! If you have a chance to live then take advantage of it, especially if you have a sister to take care of, you moron!] So, whilst I'm not sure if I would call this a bad anime, I wasn't satisfied with it. Now I have a question. The author of Bokurano is also know for creating Shadow Star Narutaru, which I've also heard is a very depressing manga adapted into an anime. I saw the first 5 episodes of it and I found nothing that was even remotely depressing. Could someone please tell me what I'm missing? |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Narutaru takes a while to get to the seriously grim stuff. If that's what you're looking for, going to the end of that series will be worth it although it also resolves nothing on a large scale and really just stops. |
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gedata
 Posts: 617 |
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Simply watch more and you'll get it. And then read the manga and you'll really get it. The manga is pretty much compulsory for completing the story since the anime on it's own is woefully incomplete. As in it doesn't have an ending so much as there's just no episode 14. I'm not sure how you couldn't find anything depressing within just the first few episodes. One of the main character's spoiler[suicidal tendencies are made bluntly obvious] for instance. |
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raytamer
 Posts: 8 |
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I never read the manga, watched it recently and I feel the exact opposite of the review personally. The animation didn't bother me at all and the thing that really displeased me along the whole way was the characters and pacing. I share a similar view to Paul's comment above. I knew it was highly regarded and decided to check it out. I enjoyed the first episode and the premise a lot, but the subsequent character arcs left me quite unpleased. Not only did it all feel like superficial conflicts with superficial easy answers and after some time it felt like most of it was to make them reach some sort of happy death. I felt like the series was trying too hard to bring a happier tone to something so dark. The only character I cared about in the whole thing was Tanaka. All the others felt like absolute robots to me (which was actually a good thing in some cases, but not in most). Surprisingly I actually enjoyed the ending. The plot twist and spoiler["happy???, but so inconclusive that no happiness will be enough to justify how all this suffering is still happening and nothing was really resolved"] overall tone was quite enough to seal it all in a better tone than I expected when it all got so lame after very few eps. Still I don't consider it a bad anime or a bad story, though my experience was really really really bad. Oh, but I really enjoyed the Opening Song, Uninstall. Last edited by raytamer on Thu Mar 31, 2016 12:10 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4157 |
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I read seven chapters of the manga and I'm not going anywhere near the anime. "15 kids of various ages and awesome quality backstory material... amazing, isn't it?... randomly gather together on a beach and find..." Adventure usually but not from this author; The kids find contrived death and death and... Well, I only read up to chapter 7 so I only know definitely about the two. People, towns, countries, planets, nope, he went for entire other freaking universes. You win, everyone dies and you die. If you lose, you die and everyone dies. C'est la vie. I mean, sure, death's going to happen anyway but at least let them hit puberty first, right? Should I explain multiverse theory here or do you want to take the author/alien's explanation as a given set goal/penalty? The whole premise as I eventually checked out had me shaking my head. How should I explain this: there's a an invisible and infinite number of alternate universes popping in and out of existence all around you so making it a personal responsibility doesn't change the eventuality of entropic destruction of any particular universe eventually... this is sounding familiar... though I guess you can sucker a couple of kids into thinking they can do something about it now... Is there an echo in here? Anyway, it's not how you live, it's how you die that matters... standing up usually in the metaphorical and occasional physical sense, he nailed that one in early. Ha, subtle! spoiler[First kid died as a test of the system and rules, just collapsing from a pat on the back.] And since this is the actual moral of this story, sorry, "story", gives me zero respect for this author. And then I read the plot synapsis for Narunaru Shadowstar...
That's what got me here. Interesting choice of words, "conviction". I'm guessing you're ignoring the other side of the coin, "How gullible are you?" Gullible enough to believe what some random alien with a silly name tells you about... This is nagging me, what is this reminding me of? -Note, I know what it is, I don't want to draw to comparison myself as it would lessen cheapen the other work which really is what is claimed and more- And inspiring? It inspired me to stop reading so I would kill any of the kids myself. I didn't want to become an accessory to the author's sick fantasies. In short, no, I'm not a fan of the manga. The anime changes the ending because the staff hated it? Shows that they're human beings in my estimation. |
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