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starladyWhat 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.
The anime with which I think it compares best is "RahXephon," and of course I loved that show, so it stands to reason that I would love this one as well, though they were VERY different. Leaving that aside briefly, though, first of all the production for this anime was stellar all around--even when I thought the concept was stupid in the first few episodes, the amazing CG pulled me in (I've never seen mecha move so fluidly) and of course Yoko Kanno's music is, as usual, amazing, and it was used really well throughout the anime. To an extent unusual for Japan, I thought, the anime is very explicit in its focus on psychology and it discusses psychological (particularly Jungian) tropes and theories specifically at several points. Dreams are very important throughout, and the anime handles and presents dreams very well. I thought the characters were unusually well-rounded as well, and it was gratifying that most of them were given at least some individual screen time throughout the show. Also, the show just didn't pick out mythological names haphazardly; it was a fully imagined system and it made coherent sense. I particularly enjoyed episode 21, where the animators were content to completely mess with the visuals to convey the feeling of an alternate reality. And of course Apollo and Silvia were just sweet, and I really liked the ending (and that Sirius was able to redeem himself, and Touma was able to understand), although I hope a few of the specifics change in the OVA. There was even an explanation for why Fudo was so Zen all the time, and knew everything, and even Rena got in on the final battle. Well done. And, I have to say, some cliches of the genre are becoming clear. To wit:
1. If there is a battle between humanity and another species, the main character or protagonists will be revealed eventually to be part non-human in some way or another. Oh, the horror!
2. The commander of the mecha force will generally be all right. But the government agencies backing him will inevitably try to mass-produce a new type of weapon that does not require human piloting of the sort the commander's mecha task force has been doing. This leads to
2a. When said new type of weapon appears, it will prefigure the final battle.
3. The government agencies' representative will be a jerk. (At least in "Sousei no Aquarion" Jerome got his priorities straight in the end).
4. Past lives can be a real pain, for good or for ill (RahXephon went the other way on that one).
5. To save the world, one must unite with one's enemy.
6. After the world is saved, everything will change, and the hero will disappear or change in a very significant way (such that spacetime has been altered).
Thanks for playing, see us again next time. Somehow I don't think "Kidou Senshi Gundam 00" will be quite the same. But oh well, I hear it's cool.
1. If there is a battle between humanity and another species, the main character or protagonists will be revealed eventually to be part non-human in some way or another. Oh, the horror!
2. The commander of the mecha force will generally be all right. But the government agencies backing him will inevitably try to mass-produce a new type of weapon that does not require human piloting of the sort the commander's mecha task force has been doing. This leads to
2a. When said new type of weapon appears, it will prefigure the final battle.
3. The government agencies' representative will be a jerk. (At least in "Sousei no Aquarion" Jerome got his priorities straight in the end).
4. Past lives can be a real pain, for good or for ill (RahXephon went the other way on that one).
5. To save the world, one must unite with one's enemy.
6. After the world is saved, everything will change, and the hero will disappear or change in a very significant way (such that spacetime has been altered).
Thanks for playing, see us again next time. Somehow I don't think "Kidou Senshi Gundam 00" will be quite the same. But oh well, I hear it's cool.
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.
