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What the hell, I'm posting again.
I just (at long last) finished watching "Sousei no Aquarion" and it has to take its place as one of the best anime I've watched in years.
In other news, Newtype USA is folding next month, which almost seems difficult to believe. The American anime industry has gone from good times to bad times to a fairly parlous state in just a few years--I predict a serious dearth of freebies at Otakon this year, at the least. I don't think it's because anime is any less popular inherently--manga in America keeps getting stronger and stronger, at any rate, but hold that thought for a minute. I do, however, think that the anime industry has failed to adapt itself sufficiently to its audience. The American anime public is starting to get a lot more discerning, I think, as shown by the collapse of the "let's license every piece of crap we can" company ADV (which is why Newtype USA is folding, actually), and I also think that the cost of the DVDs is still depressing the market seriously. $20 for 4 or 5 episodes is simply not a good deal, particularly with longer shows like Bleach or even Blood+. I know people in the industry have to get paid, but seriously, drop the MSRP to $15. Or put 8 episodes on a $20 disc. There are quite a few shows I wouldn't mind owning in DVD quality, but there's no way in hell I'm going to pay new item prices, especially when the secondhand market is so cheap.
But, speaking of anime vs. manga, Answerman said something in his column last week that got me thinking. Answerman was saying in response to someone's question that he almost always prefers the manga version of any given property, since manga is a vastly richer medium than anime. While I enjoy anime quite a lot, and I always have, I think there's definitely a lot of merit in his words. In any given property I can think of where I've both read the manga and watched the show, the manga is always magnitudes better. Of course this is true for shonen schlock like Bleach (particularly after the first 25 episodes or so, when it lost that misty quality and Pierrot started subcontracting to Korean and Chinese animation slaves), but even Fullmetal Alchemist, which is probably one of my favorite anime ever, and an exceedingly well-done adaptation of an incomplete manga to a complete anime (though Winry gets screwed by the ending), is so much better in manga version that it's not even funny. And, if we think of my personal top 10 (and by "we" I mean "me"), most of the anime I like best are projects that were created as anime, not as manga first. I don't think that manga is any more rich of a medium than anime can be--I just think that adapting from one to the other inherently shaves off what makes the one great while not fully realizing the potential of the other. Manga are good because they were designed to be manga; they suffer somewhat in adaptation usually. But projects that are conceived of as anime first can be great.
To bear out my point, here's a top-10 list I just threw together. I could make a different top-10 list on a different day, but this one will do for now.
1. Revolutionary Girl Utena
2. Cowboy Bebop
3. Darker Than Black
4. Witch Hunter Robin
5. Paranoia Agent
6. Sousei no Aquarion/RahXephon
8. Blood+
9. Samurai Champloo
10. Code Geass
11. Fullmetal Alchemist
The Utena manga was developed concurrently with the anime, so they were both tailored to fit their respective arenas.
I just (at long last) finished watching "Sousei no Aquarion" and it has to take its place as one of the best anime I've watched in years.
In other news, Newtype USA is folding next month, which almost seems difficult to believe. The American anime industry has gone from good times to bad times to a fairly parlous state in just a few years--I predict a serious dearth of freebies at Otakon this year, at the least. I don't think it's because anime is any less popular inherently--manga in America keeps getting stronger and stronger, at any rate, but hold that thought for a minute. I do, however, think that the anime industry has failed to adapt itself sufficiently to its audience. The American anime public is starting to get a lot more discerning, I think, as shown by the collapse of the "let's license every piece of crap we can" company ADV (which is why Newtype USA is folding, actually), and I also think that the cost of the DVDs is still depressing the market seriously. $20 for 4 or 5 episodes is simply not a good deal, particularly with longer shows like Bleach or even Blood+. I know people in the industry have to get paid, but seriously, drop the MSRP to $15. Or put 8 episodes on a $20 disc. There are quite a few shows I wouldn't mind owning in DVD quality, but there's no way in hell I'm going to pay new item prices, especially when the secondhand market is so cheap.
But, speaking of anime vs. manga, Answerman said something in his column last week that got me thinking. Answerman was saying in response to someone's question that he almost always prefers the manga version of any given property, since manga is a vastly richer medium than anime. While I enjoy anime quite a lot, and I always have, I think there's definitely a lot of merit in his words. In any given property I can think of where I've both read the manga and watched the show, the manga is always magnitudes better. Of course this is true for shonen schlock like Bleach (particularly after the first 25 episodes or so, when it lost that misty quality and Pierrot started subcontracting to Korean and Chinese animation slaves), but even Fullmetal Alchemist, which is probably one of my favorite anime ever, and an exceedingly well-done adaptation of an incomplete manga to a complete anime (though Winry gets screwed by the ending), is so much better in manga version that it's not even funny. And, if we think of my personal top 10 (and by "we" I mean "me"), most of the anime I like best are projects that were created as anime, not as manga first. I don't think that manga is any more rich of a medium than anime can be--I just think that adapting from one to the other inherently shaves off what makes the one great while not fully realizing the potential of the other. Manga are good because they were designed to be manga; they suffer somewhat in adaptation usually. But projects that are conceived of as anime first can be great.
To bear out my point, here's a top-10 list I just threw together. I could make a different top-10 list on a different day, but this one will do for now.
1. Revolutionary Girl Utena
2. Cowboy Bebop
3. Darker Than Black
4. Witch Hunter Robin
5. Paranoia Agent
6. Sousei no Aquarion/RahXephon
8. Blood+
9. Samurai Champloo
10. Code Geass
11. Fullmetal Alchemist
The Utena manga was developed concurrently with the anime, so they were both tailored to fit their respective arenas.
