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Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2009-09-18]
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I usually prefer the anime adaptations to be as close as possible to the manga they're based on, but I don't mind creative flourishes here and there. Though sometimes, it's obvious that the staff working on the anime don't know what to keep and what to cut.
For instance, in Death Note's anime, they kept a pretty meaningless scene between Misa Amane and Kiyome Takada where they have dinner. Meanwhile, most of the scenes in the manga of Near reasoning out Kira's moves are cut, making him appear to arrive at his conclusions magically. This is cemented by a scene where he's just staring at monitors, then the camera does this thing that makes him look like a psychic and he figures out who the other Kira is at the time. That said, I probably enjoy the first Fullmetal Alchemist series as much as the original manga, if not a little more. I still quite enjoy the new series, though. FMA is one of those special cases. |
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loka
 Posts: 373 Location: Pittsburgh, PA |
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market Soul Eater to the masses. everyone I know considers it the best shounen fighter. and that type of show sells well to the kids (or their parents/whatever).
advertise on tv. kids still watch a lot of tv these days. |
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ninjaclown
Posts: 199 |
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Manga or Anime. I'm not sure if one is necessarily better than the other, but I can definitely say for a notable franchise, the most noticable aspect will be the anime. Whether it be Bleach, Naruto or Haruhi Suzumiya, people will usually be talking about the anime first. I know firsthand since I've asked my friends the very same and even the occasional classmate who likes anime, and none of them are very into comics, western or eastern. They like it because with anime there is sound, moving pictures, when there are sound effects or dialogue you can hear their impact and emotion, and it is something you can watch yourself or with your buddies.
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zhir
 Posts: 353 Location: Nampa, ID, USA |
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Man, you made me want to watch LA Confidential, but I only have a crappy recorded VHS copy. I need to buy that movie.
Does anyone have any speculation as to which company was impossible to work with? Madman seems to make people use the Japanese version of the title a lot, but I can't think of any likely licenses made by them that everyone passed on off the top of my head. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I always find it tough to judge anime vs manga. Several of my all time favorite anime are based on manga and I vastly prefer the anime. The Ghost in the Shell manga is in my opinion essentially a rough draft with some good concepts that desperately needed some edits and fixes and a massive overhaul to the presentation before it became the masterpiece that is. Also, while the Trigun manga is solid, I totally prefer the anime because of the amazing job it does of drawing you in and introducing you to its characters in a very casual way and slowly dropping details that develop them and explain the back-story. The manga just dumps everything on you right off the bat. (The art isn't great either). I also maintain that the Hellsing manga can't come close to the level of style and atmosphere of the TV series. Yes, that's right. I said the TV series. It's better than Ultimate thus far. Also, I could go either way on Berserk. The anime of course has a bit more of an immersion factor but the art in the manga is so good anyway that it largely offsets.
The weird thing is that other than those, literally none of the anime I particularity like is adapted directly from manga. (Well, there's Akira but I haven't read the manga yet.) So I don't know. The stuff I've mentioned seems like it may be just the exception to the rule but I haven't personally read anything to support that. |
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iathomps
Posts: 68 |
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Interesting that Justin referred to Utawarerumono as a show that the Americans fought the licensors for a name change, lost, and got stuck releasing with its original name. Now, Utawarerumono is quite daunting to someone new you are trying to sell the show to, but maybe if ADV didn't pick such a stupid replacement name like "Shadow warrior chronicles", they wouldn't have been forced to keep the original name.
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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Anime and manga both have their strengths and weaknesses. Typically some aspects of a manga-to-anime adaptation are an improvement on the manga while other aspects are worse. Personally, I always like to both watch the anime and read the manga (if the manga was the original). You get the most out of it that way.
Still, regardless of what you're adapting to what, the original tends to be better than the adaption. So, in general, a manga-to-anime adaption will be worse than the manga. But an anime-to-manga adaption will be worse than the anime. It's very difficult to take a story from one medium and then tell it in another and be able to properly tell the original story while playing to the new medium's strengths. It's not an easy job at all. In addition, fans tend to think that any changes are bad, so there are plenty of fans that'll never be happy with the result even if it manages to be far better than the original. The one case where I would have to say that the anime was hands down an improvement on the manga was Ouran High School Host Club. That's not to say that the manga was bad in any way shape or form (quite the opposite actually), but there's only so much space in a manga chapter (even the monthly ones), and OHHS always seems to be straining that space a bit. The anime was able to expand on the manga material extremely well. And having the motion and audio (especially the audio) really helped bring more life to it. The anime manages to follow the manga fairly closely for the most part but adds so much to it as it does so that it's a definite improvement. It thus manages to avoid both the trap of following the manga too closely as well as the trap of diverging too much. |
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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Thanks Brian for taking my e-mail and thanks Justin for answering it. As someone who grew up with an overprotective mom, I can kind of almost relate to the industry.
Me: Mom, can I go outside? Mom: Yes, but stay in the backyard where I can see you at all times. USA: Japan, can we release this show to Americans? Japan: Of course, but just make sure you check back with me so that I can let you know if what you're doing is OK or not. Now for this anime vs manga business. I, personally, wish anime directors wouldn't follow manga sometimes. I feel like they're trying too hard to regurgitate everything and that's how we get these abrupt, rushed endings like OHHC and Ai Yori Aoshi. I wish all anime would follow the guidelines FMA made: Follow the spirit of the manga and then just get creative. I mean, you're given a 26 episode time slot on an adaptation of a manga that's not done and you're telling me you don't have a better gameplan than "We'll follow the manga for the first 23 episodes and then rush the last 3 and say we ran out of source material so that people will understand."? I've read the AYA manga and I find it hard to believe that with 36 episodes they couldn't pace a show to where it ends with spoiler[Karou and Aoi getting married. Maybe even include the love making scene.] We all knew that was destined to happen, but for some reason they couldn't just make that part up since the manga wasn't done at the time. This is why I don't read the manga of shows I plan on watching in the future or was satisfied with because I feel I'll become one of those manga fans and just complain about everything. I only read the manga of shows I was unhappy with (AYA, Kare Kano, Princess Resurrection...). I think doing that makes me a happier anime fan. |
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Ai no Kareshi
 Posts: 561 Location: South Africa |
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I hate it when people start fighting over whichever is best between anime and manga. It's like arguing movies against novels – like Brian said, they are two completely different mediums.
Personally, I'm a lazy reader (and a fan of things that move and have sound and colour), so I'll stick to watching anime for the most part. If there's something I absolutely love something, I make a point of checking out the source material (manga, visual novel, whatever) if there is one, and even then there's not always a clear winner between the two (whichever is best is not what's important, after all). Also...
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Iritscen
 Subscriber Posts: 822 |
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Well-put. And there's also the larger issue of the decision to stage the show as ultra-melodrama. I found it bearable, but my tastes run towards melodrama to begin with. I imagine that many people found the tone of the show far too distracting to get immersed in it (or even unintentionally funny -- let's face it, we all lost it when Light ate that potato chip, before it was ever a meme). They apparently did the same thing with Prince of Tennis, which is why I'm sure to stick to following the manga.
I thought the art was fine, besides the fact that nearly every single action scene is nigh incomprehensible. Ahem. Having finally finished the Trigun manga, I can safely say that I prefer the much more concise animé adaptation. The manga kinda goes off the rails at some point after the deviation in story occurred between the animé and the unfinished-at-the-time manga. That being said, certain parts are more logical in the manga, such as Vash's Angel Arm not being based on his pistol. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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You have no idea how comforting it is to know I'm not the only one! I mean, I really like the manga (save for the completely anticlimactic ending), but Ultimate has really let me down. For starters, the music is nowhere near as good as that of the TV series. And it expands the "humor" in the manga into these long unfunny sketches rather than being just short humorous asides, which I guess is how I'd imagined them when I'd read it. But yes, you are not alone. When it comes to Hellsing, for me it's TV series > manga >>>>>> Ultimate. |
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DuelLadyS
 Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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And if the Japanese company (or the fans) weren't being stupid, they would've realize that dissapproving one bad name does not mean having to keep a Japanese name most Americans can't even pronounce. (Kudos to ADV for acknowledging that in their early ads.) There certainly were other options. I only note this becuase I recently lent my Utawarerumono set to my fiance... who asked me if he could borrow "Ko-ut-to-ra-mo... U-ko-tu-ra-mah... the one with the mask guy!" At which point I knew what he was talking about. (After watching it, he now calls it "U-ta-way-kay-loh-the-one-with-the-hot-animal-girls."  )
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pparker
 Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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A friend of mine, a wannabee scriptwriter, once wrote an adaptation of a excellent but obscure novel in hopes of interesting the reclusive author in an option. She did an admirable job, really. But it was the hardest thing she ever wrote, consuming much more time and effort. For most writers, I'm sure it's much easier to write original material where all the decisions are your own, none having been made for you. For all the reasons given, especially fan comparison to the source, I'm sure the process of bringing an adaptation to screen successfully is more difficult.
I prefer visual media myself and have read few manga. Nonetheless, I agree that it can go either way, and that the mediums are distinctly different. Love Hina manga beat the anime hands down. Azumanga Daioh animated was the winner. That's besides the facepalm ending missteps often seen when trying to wrap up an anime story mid-manga: Claymore and Kodocha (meaning S2) are recent ones for me. The case that fans can make for manga is it being the source. The artist who created the story is probably going to write a better story than someone adapting it, the "art" aside. I'm a story person myself, so the art almost doesn't play into my opinions at all. The adaptations that are successful don't slavishly follow the source, in my opinion. They are written and directed by someone of equal or better creative talent who can take that story and literally make it equal or better in film form. Being still more versed in live action than anime, I use the example of Sense & Sensibility. The movie does "follow" the book generally, but is also quite different. Both are just awesome works of art on their own, produced by comparable talents. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2353 |
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Light-novel-to-anime adaptations seem to have a better track record than manga-to-anime. Endless Eight aside. I'm also reminded of American comic-book-to-cartoon adaptations like The Spectacular Spider-Man, though there are obviously other differences there.
I've heard of two cases of the original director or something supervising a dub personally, Love Hina and FLCL. That, of course, covers a very broad range of quality, though I can't be sure about either. One case of a questionable translation that comes to mind is the name of the inspector from Monster. The Viz translation refers to him as "Lunge," but that's not a real name, whereas "Runge" is a reasonably common German name. I can't tell if that was Viz's fault or Shogakukan's. But whichever it is, Viz gets blamed for stuff like that. Also, obligatory links to the Adaptation Decay and Mis Blamed.  [/i]
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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I usually prefer manga because it is usually a more narrow vision whereas anime is often more of a committee. One writer vs a team of writers which can lead to continuity issues or just plain too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Some people are more visual & prefer anime. I knew one guy who refused to read manga because it's black & white which he couldn't relate to. I don't get the yaoi question at all. Do gay relationships work? Of course. There is no one relationship portrayed in yaoi really. We have the everything from the docile uke to the call-the-shots uke to scary ukes. We have semes who do everything their uke wants, worshipping the ground he walks on, to sleazy, been around, mean/cold semes. Unless the question is do gay couples really stick to one way or another which I thought was wrong-that they likely trade off, but I have heard from some gay guys they do often stick to one or the other (pitching/catching). And in yaoi we have seen more than once the uke in one couple can be the seme in another. As for how to define them-the seme is the boy/pitcher & the uke is the girl/catcher. Some yaoi the uke is very, very very much thinly veiled chick, while others manage to portray the uke as a more realistic male character, but the uke represents the female so the story is usually (not always) done from his perspective (yaoi is simple a genre of shojo after all). The uke dwells upon the seme's actions, has to come to the realization he loves the seme, worries if the seme really loves him or is just using him, etc to where I do wonder if gay guys really think all this because it sounds more like hetero romance drivel, not that that concerns stops me from enjoying my yaoi. Usually if the seme is the P.O.V, it is because the uke is the unfathomable one, but usually the seme, representing the male perspective to the female reader, is the subject of all the questions. (Does he love me? etc) I haven't seen any fans of Kyo Kara Maoh having any problem whatsoever with the title. I can see preserving the title in some way to appeal to the fans already aware of the title such as Haruka: Beyond the stream of Time. Yeah, lots of people protested it made no sense, but really, the Japanese title is pretty unweildy. I also have had issue with casting. Some dub studios put effort into it, but you have to admit we have had more than our share of dubs such as Maze where the dubbing group bragged if there were any similarities to the original Japanese dub, it was pure accident because they were proud to totally ignore the Japanese. (which is why Ran Chiki changed genders in the dub?) I like the effort the Japanese put into dubbing & would really appreciate more of it on this side. Funimation's wording of their dub just irritates me. It states "We are redoing this to suit us, tough luck bunnykins." To me, the effort they put into re-naming everyone in Case Closed is far greater than required. When Funi does well, they are excellent, but they still have their share of dubs that reek of the old CPM stuff. I'm seeing an "A cast" "B cast" sort of situation emerging where some titles get a lot of care & others just seem to be ground out because they licensed it. |
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