Forum - View topicREVIEW: Black Cat DVD 5
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Invader_Spooch
 Posts: 96 |
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Wow, this review was pretty damn harsh.
While I understand people's complaints about the show's originality from a premise standpoint, I feel that many people really miss the series strongsuit, which is the endearing character relationships. Many series of Black Cat's ilk tend to neglect having the characters form meaningful relationships, and focus purely on teh fighting. I feel that Black Cat does a good job of making you care about the main characters, so that the conflicts that arise from the main storylines (Creed's bizarre pseudo-sexual obsession with Train, and Eve being drawn back into functioning as a bioweapon) hold more emotional clout than most other "shonen series". These characters care for each other, and they band together as a bit of a make-shift family when push comes to shove (which is a refreshing change of pace to most series that mainly focus on romantic relationships). I can totally see people not having this show click with them, but I feel that more often than not, reviewers tend to be a bit harsh towards the show for strictly being mediocre in most areas, and their animosity towards it is amplified by having to watch drivel all the time for the purpose of reviewing it (causing them to come off as a bit jaded, which is understandable, hell, I would probably be the same way). |
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Weazul-chan
 Posts: 625 Location: Michigan |
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he two main problems with the Black Cat anime are the pacing and how they stray from the manga.
the manga meanders more, it builds the relationships between the characters and the developments to plot and characters both. the manga also has a lot of fun playing about with cliches, whereas the anime only leaves them as cliches. really, they could have kept the alternate timeline and still have made the whole thing work if they still played about with the cliches like the manga did. the anime, as a whole, just left out too many of the things that made the Black Cat manga such a fun series to read and made the characters so endearing. honestly, Black Cat just isn't the same when you take out things like the "sibling rivalry" between Eve and Train when Eve decides she wants to prove SHE'S the better partner for Sven. the little things like finding out how badly Train sucks at first person shooter games just make the manga all the more fun. sure, the characters are all pretty much cliches no matter what, but there's a difference between messing around with the cliches and just letting them stay flat cliches. (and I still honestly believe that they should have left off that entire bad trip induced Eden arc at the end and just expanded the main plot better) |
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Invader_Spooch
Posts: 96 |
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Well, as someone who watched the anime first, I feel that as an initial outsider (ie no knowledge of the manga) it did a good job of making me care about the characters within the first batch of episodes (epecially after episode 4).
I can see what you're talking about in terms of having to abridge a long-running series, but I actually thought that for the most part, they did a good job of making it short and sweet (though I do admit, post-Creed finale content felt a bit rushed). |
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Weazul-chan
Posts: 625 Location: Michigan |
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I started reading the manga in late 2001, but I approached the anime open-minded. after all, it's not as fun to know exactly how something is going to turn out before you watch it. I honestly think the anime could have been great, or at least significantly better, even with a lot of the continuity changes IF they'd kept with the original intended run of 52 eps and a minimal amount of new stuff had been inserted. they'd have enough time to leave in some of the cliche playing that way.
I could see the reason for adding the ep with the plant Taoist, they needed to give Train and Eve time to adapt to their new lives and show us how it was going. however, the insertion of the ep with the Saya lookalike and the insertion of the Eden arc, especially so, made no sense to me. the Eden arc has no parallels in the manga, drama CDs, video games, or even (based on what little info I've been able to dig up) the sequel novel. the Eden arc just seemed to me to be something pulled out of their ass to divert attention and full effort from the main storyline. I will readily admit the anime did do some stuff better than the manga: the added screentime for Saya made you feel for her character when she died in a way the brief flashbacks in the manga couldn't for one. overall, tho, too many things were left out, and I'm not just saying that because my favorite fight scene from the Island arc got cut. I'm ready to forgive almost anything with the anime, tho, so long as the anime brings about enough Black Cat goodies for me to collect. I've already got most of the ones from Japan that aren't too rare (even the puppets). |
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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Having just watched the last volume I will say that my favorite episodes were the first few. Then introduction of the series seems to take on Sven's point of view which I enjoyed compared to the shift towards Train. The dual/rival plot structure of the first DVD really worked well with me. The series' highest moment for me has to be when spoiler[Saya is killed.] The final shot used in the ED credits really gets me sad each time I watch it. After this point of the series it seems to degenerate into a typical Shounen Jump series, complete with cabal of villains and final boss. Despite this typical resolution I still enjoyed this series, but overall felt that Speed Grapher managed to handle the surrogate father to genetic anomaly super girl plot better,
I really love the OST for this series. Saya's song is one of the most memorable tunes (along with Lacus' Seed song) in anime. The second ED song is very fitting and such a contrast from the loud first ED song. |
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