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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Noblesse This Mess
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1032 |
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I have no informed opinion on Noblesse and I don't intend on having one because it looks about as exhilarating as watching paint dry, but I must comment on the RWBY comparisons because they're pretty unfounded, as it's no longer the kind of story you think it is. The series has seen monumental improvements since it's early days, with much more ambitious storytelling, more respectable characterization, and most astonishing is how much better it looks, thanks in part to the change in animation software (although they did struggle with the shift at first). Really, the only major stumble the show still sees from time to time is it's pacing. The early obsession with "rule of cool" at the expense of near everything else is rarely an issue now.
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The Anime Binge-Watcher
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4597 Location: New York |
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I definitely have to agree with the authors on one key thing.
Korean Webtoons, in addition to really liking to traffic in only a few genres (slice of life, high school battle, or medieval era isekai), love to just smash those genres together in an attempt to get as many tropes and escalation as possible. God of High School couldn’t have just been a fighting tournament anime like Kengan Ashura, we had to add Stands from JoJo and the Romance of the Three Kingdom characters from...a show besides Ikkitousen. The end result is a product that feels haphazard and very...immature for lack of a better word. It feels like a lot of 90’s Image Comics where they would cram together a lot of old ideas and make them more EXTREME. Only here it’s “add high school”. |
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whiskeyii
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As someone who was a fan of the Noblesse comic in its early days, I vastly preferred its silly slice-of-life shenanigans to when it tried to be "serious"; it was like a vampire-themed version of Saint's Young Men. It's a shame this adaptation turned out so messy instead.
Also also, even as someone who enjoys RWBY, I do not blame anyone who runs away from the early volumes or who doesn't want to stick around til season 6 just for the show to find its own feet. That's a heck of an ask for any story. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2108 |
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I've kept up with the show so far and don't know why. I don't like it. I don't hate it. It's just something to kill time I guess.
Between the shows Crunchy's done, Tower of God was great. God of High School was dumb, but made up for it with flashy fight scenes. Noblesse just kind of stands there like it's main vampire lead doing nothing remarkable, though I suppose like him we're just waiting for him to do something good because you feel like it's coming. 
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Themaster20000
 Posts: 871 |
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Just from the few Webtoons I've read,their amusing as little timekillers. They don't really have the material or creativity for a show. The bit I read of Noblesse,was so utterly generic. It's hilarious how they decided to continue off from the ONA from years ago,and assume people watched that before watching this.
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Madster
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All I'm getting at with these Crunchyroll Original Webtoon anime is that they have big budget fight scenes while everything else is thrown out the window. This isn't even coming down to negativity, the general consensus (from my own observations) is "Animation is great, story is subpar".
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R.Obliv
Posts: 31 |
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For me Noblesse was always at it's most enjoyable when it was just a gag series about characters hanging out - I know they're trite characters, but it just felt charming to read. The gag about "webcomics" in this column also kind of suited Noblesse, as the DNA of the series felt more in line with American webcomics than manga at times - mainly based around building to a gag at the end of the chapter. The fight scenes had some decent tension towards the start because it interrupted that, but within the context of the webtoon, the fights and plot were distractions to admittedly done-before scenes of supernatural characters shooting the breeze. Noblesse's run got worse as it went on as a result of the fights and the done-to-death plot taking center stage. The Anime is about as fine an adaptation as one could expect really. It truncates a few gags and character moments, but they'd probably drag the pacing of the episodes down. It may be the first Webtoon adaption with competent episode pacing and structuring throughout. None of GoH's inability to convey the passage of time, for example.
It really does feel out of place to make a Noblesse anime now, the webtoon was generic but came out at a decent enough time where the long running shounen manga were taking all the oxygen in the manga scene. Something new that wasn't cancelled within a couple years was just comforting. Now there are plenty of fresh and interesting manga able to complete their desired runs, that are talked about and getting solid anime adaptations - Noblesse hasn't got a niche to fit within the anime industry at this point. Even among other webtoons it not got anything going for it: it hasn't got unique fights, a unique setting or a particularly compelling plot. It was just first out the gate on Naver, that shouldn't grant an anime really. Also in terms of Korean webtoons that would make a more interesting anime, those from the early 2010s with a more creative plot or better writing often didn't get as popular because they unfortunately lacked the art to carry fight scenes. Series that had weaker fights, and therefore a smaller installed fanbase to draw to Webtoons.com, would then get further hampered once official scanslations were released due to half-assed translations featuring, among other issues, misgendering, misnaming and confusing grammar, thereby creating a barrier of entry for readers - because you shouldn't need to check the comments to find out essential details the translation obscured. Without a significant fanbase, there's no incentive to produce anime even if they would be a more interesting product. Conversely, looking at new series from the late 10s, the romance genre has boomed on Webtoons.com, as opposed to more action orientated series I presume Crunchyroll would have been looking for, so there was little luck looking at new titles for an action show. The focus on romance comics is not a bad thing in any way, of course, and personally I have been really enjoying Lore Olympus on there (and it is currently being translated to Korean on the Naver sister site - the localization goes both ways which is nice to see), luckily I believe the Jim Henson company called that one for adaption. |
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1032 |
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Personally I'd argue volume 3 is the first season that I can wholeheartedly recommend with no real caveats (there are certainly good elements in Vol 2, but it's much more inconsistent). But otherwise, yeah, Vol 6 onward is where it starts off solid and pretty much has stayed that way since. It's just unfortunate that it doesn't mean nearly as much without the context and buildup of the prior seasons. |
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teferi
 Posts: 400 |
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Going from Spice and Wolf to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime feels like you had to lower the bar just to find another light novel adaptation to use for comparison. |
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Brand
 Posts: 1029 |
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Yes, I think Rai hanging out with the high school kids was some of the best content the series had. It was a shame they got pretty much written out but I guess there are only so many times they could get kidnapped. I feel after that point the series becomes a slog of fight after fight with terrible shonen jump power creep. Somehow I managed to finish it. I do like the author's current webtoon Eleceed which while still very tropey (superpowers, underground powerful groups, etc) he has managed to balance it much better this time and the characters get to be more fleshed out and fun. |
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zztop
Posts: 650 |
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Now that you mention romance-genre webtoons; I wonder when we'll ever get anime adaptations of those. Esp. the otome/shoujo isekai-fantasy ones. Some of the fantasy ones have been getting very popular as of late and are even being translated into multiple languages (Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, etc.). For example, Who Made Me A Princess, Monster Duchess and Contract Princess. Even the villainess-themed ones would be quite interesting given the more scheming, ruthless nature of their protagonists, such as Villainess Lives Again or Villainess Turns the Hourglass. |
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Stacycmc
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Well I definitely disagree, and think it's easy to comment how this isn't a good webtoon to adapt to an anime when you haven't even read it. Maybe save those 2 cents for when you know more about the 400+ chapter webtoon and not just a few episodes of the anime.
The Nobles concept is vastly different than most ANY other vampire series, so claim it's unoriginal just because there are some elements common other anime, seems a joke, especially since that same line could be said about, well every single other anime on the planet if we want to grab at straws. The comedy in this series is fun and provides a good mix between some truly jacked up @#%$. Later on when more vampires come into play and more of the situation between the nobles and Raizel and well everyone else is revealed it just gests more an more interesting. It also felt you based this review off the first few episodes and just totally ignored the last two episodes, which actually dive more into this story of this series. Well, at least aside from your comment about Frankenstein and how you compared him to normal humans stating how the Nobles must not be all that since Frankie beat them, which well just confirms even more, that well, you don't know much at all about this series do you. Seems you even like to overlook some really obvious signs just to make your degrading points (as clearly Frankie is NOTHING like most humans, that's only been noted quite a few times throughout the series already). I'd highly recommend this series, especially if you don't like all seriousness or like a bit of serious mixed with your comedy. This series is just getting started, and they've only started to scratch the surface of the story, so just hang in there and don't be so hasty to make a judgement, especially on the webtoon which you haven't even read. *** Also, I haven't read God of High school, but didn't mind the anime. BUT, you got it wrong again when you downplayed Tower of God. It's highly unique and just gets better and better. People need to learn to appreciate build-up in a story, as this webtoon is truly interesting and the story / characters are great the more you learn about it all. The first season really needed to be 24 episodes, but again, if people actually let the story be told and be patient, it will be well worth it. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Well, fans of this, and RWBY, and anything else that "gets better later on, just be patient" need to understand that's a tough thing to convince people to do, and it's not because they're dumb or uncultured. There's a ton of creations out there, more than any mortal being has time to absorb. I mean, just look at all this stuff on Webtoon. 30+ series for every day of the week. On a single aggregator site for a specific genre of webcomic. Sturgeon's Law dictates that most of them aren't that great--or just not something you'd personally like--and in most cases you can get a decent impression from a small sample at the beginning. Perhaps, a small percentage of the time, that first impression could be wrong, and investing more time would pay off. But when you can instead spend your time on something you enjoyed from the start... why wouldn't you do that? In general, I'm skeptical that anyone ever actually grinds through the early chapters of a story they don't even like to get to a good part that they've only heard about, unless their friends drag them forcefully into it. Even people who say "well, the beginning kinda sucks" probably still enjoyed it themselves, but are downplaying it to convince people who just don't like it to stick with it anyway. Which... doesn't actually work. A strange situation. Anyway, the only webtoon I'm following is Mage and Demon Queen, but that one is probably too LGBT to ever get animated. That'll be my plug for the thread, anyway. And no need to read multiple chapters to decide whether you like it. |
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R.Obliv
Posts: 31 |
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While I somewhat agree that a lot of webtoons like to spend longer on the buildup to key events as they lack time and page constraints of traditionally published manga and manwha, and this has not translated well to the anime adaptations due to time constraints, ToG has major pacing issues after a point because SIU never tried to make his work more concise. In my opinion, and only mine, it has never been as compelling as Untrustworthy Room through to Workshop battle because the slow pacing killed any momentum following the strong first half of season 2 and forced SIU to rely on an increasing number of power ups to allow the story to actually progress. They spent so long on that damn train and the payoff is never as interesting as the build up. Furthermore, for a series that also seemed to imply some moral grayness at the start, its become remarkably black and white, with anyone the heroes face being comically evil, until they change sides, in which case suddenly they're completely noble, or their psychopathy is played for laughs. So much time in modern arcs is building to a bait-and-switch or betrayal that the actual arcs suffer and become a slog to read through. You can cut out half the data floor and lose nothing. A lot of webtoons have pacing issues - something even western webtoons such as Unordinary have carried through. There is also a pattern of webtoons never knowing how/when to end - Noblesse, Girls of the Wild's and GoH have all suffered from artificially dragging things out long past the point readers have lost interest, which then makes you more aware of how little actually happens every week, kind of showing why cancellation can be a good thing in shounen manga. Hell, Kubera, the Korean webtoon I most enjoy reading overall, took 3 chapters for the inciting incident to occur and has come under fair criticism of not being fun to read weekly because it often takes too long actually getting to places (in part this was because the author had no assistants and so was writing, drawing and coloring a weekly release solo, meaning shorter chapters). I just found the payoffs really satisfying when they do happen and more than that, the world it builds, even in the early chapters, was interesting enough to make it worth a read. "There are no villains, only victims" is a good tagline for a high fantasy story even if it is not entirely true. However the pacing is such an issue that I can understand it's limited appeal (second lowest release on a Monday).
I think "it get's better" is a bit of a semi-functional defense for these series, but it should come with the caveat "but if you're not enjoying it as you're reading/watching, it probably won't get better enough." |
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