What Are You Reading?

[gunswordfist]

Stupid PS3.

One 'mo anime comparison. In the anime, Anji stopped Usui from killing someone and it was later revealed that Usui didn't fight him because Anji would lose but still be able to injure him iirc, so it wouldn't have been worth the risk. In the manga Usui just says he won't force Anji to kill anyone (and no civilian is present) and just walks away. I wonder if this means their gap in skill is much wider in the comic.

Seeing Kenshin use his experience as hitokiri to figure out Shishio's plans was great but him knowing Shishio was going to be on a merchant ship was too farfetched. Watsuki could have left that part out and Kenshin just finding the ship with steam coming out of it would have been fine.

I love how Sano shined during the whole ship sequence. He goes on to get undermined by the arc's main villain and then Shishio gets a big surprise when he sees Sano is skilled and blows his ship up.

[gunswordfist]

I actually have the anime's music and voices play in my head (On the next episode of Rurouni Kenshin dun dun! )

I remember back on tv.com how stupid Avaitor's disregard of the show was.

I had no clue KF worked on HXH. (still need to watch that) All this talk makes me want to rewatch the anime version of the Kyoto arc.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I like the anime as a decent adaption. I think they made the first arc drag a bit too much and I wasn't pleased with some of the fights (the Soujiro Vs. Kenshin fight is my favorite in the manga) but as a whole it was pretty good when it followed the manga. Everything after Kyoto in the anime was just a waste of time and didn't touch on any of the themes in the manga, but everyone already knows that.

That doesn't mean I dislike it (though I do after Kyoto), I just don't like it nearly as much as the manga.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I love the Soujiro vs Kenshin fight in the anime. It keeps all of the intensity of the manga version and has great background music on top of that. I don't see that as an inferior adaptation of the fight at all.

I don't know, I think the anime pretty much nailed the Kyoto arc, at least for me. I can agree that the mini-arcs in Tokyo were a big step down from the manga, as was the terrible 3rd season of filler, but as far as I'm concerned the Kyoto arc is terrific in the TV anime. Personally I would love to see a proper adaptation of the entire RK TV series from start to finish with Furuhashi as the head director. I think it would be great.

The thing about Furuhashi that I've noticed is that, at least with shonen series, he seems to do a great job of adapting material that already exists and makes it work at its best in anime form, even if a few changes are made in the process (nothing that totally defies the original work, though). However, he completely drops the ball when it comes to producing original material of his own. The perfect example is the Samurai X OVAs, in which he directed both of them. Trust and Betrayal was an excellent adaptation of the flash-back of Kenshin's past in the manga. Meanwhile, the less said about Reflection, the better....

[Spark Of Spirit]

I dunno, I haven't seen the anime in a long time, but I do remember enjoying it enough. Maybe I'll watch it again someday to refresh my opinion of it.

Did Furahashi really direct the post-Kyoto episodes and Reflection? Man, there's an obvious reason why this guy isn't a writer.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Did Furahashi really direct the post-Kyoto episodes and Reflection? Man, there's an obvious reason why this guy isn't a writer.

I'm not sure if he actually directed any of the post-Kyoto episodes. If I'm not mistaken, he was mainly an episode director for Rurouni Kenshin, so he directed key episodes rather than the whole thing, but its very possible that he did some of the filler episodes. I'd have to research that to be sure about it, though. He did definitely direct reflection, though, which leads me to believe that the guy is brilliant at adapting good material that is already there, but terrible at any original material that the anime writers come up with.

In that regard, though, he was never credited as a writer for Reflection, so I don't know if he actually came up with the story for that, but then again, I hear that directors in Japan apparently take on certain responsibilities that differ from the definition of a director as we know it in the west, so maybe he did write it. Either way, Reflection blew, and his "directing" can certainly be blamed for that, among other things.

[gunswordfist]

Read The Walking Dead Volume 17 last night. Ugh! I saw it coming. One of my top two favorite characters got killed His death scene was horrific and kind of laughable because it was so horrific. I cannot wait until the new main villain dies, that bastard. Did I mention that his intro was kind of laughable?

Read Wolverine Get Mystique this morning and started Wolverine And The X-Men Volume 1 a minute after that. I need to go and finish that comic.

[gunswordfist]

Read volume 13 of Rurouni Kenshin. Oh so Anji and Usui did have a staredown. It was just revealed after the kyoto fire story.

I was wondering if Anji was the third strongest member of the Juppongatana and got the answer like a page later.  His backstory was brutal. I was actually surprised by that head squishing. I hate how they made it seem like Tsubani (sp?)wanted to jump his bones at every turn in the anime.

I'm also liking the Juppongatana more and more. I like the inner group dynamic and how they don't act like a bunch of hollow henchmen.

[Avaitor]

My local comic book shop has been kind of weak with their Avengers back issues, only having theirs go as far back as the 300's, but they've recently acquired a buttload of issues, some dating back to single digits. I got a couple of the Korvacs-era issues (160-170's) for $2 each, and I'm hoping to earn some more money to get some of the older ones.

It's been too long since I worked on my collection.

[Avaitor]

So I think I'm going to send Linkara a request.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I finished reading Slam Dunk. MMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN was that a fucking intense climax! Now that's how you end a manga. So many long-running series unfortunately succumb to weak pay-offs, but the ending to the last match in Slam Dunk really had me on edge the whole time. It was a good ending that both felt rewarding and realistic, in that Shohoku won their game against Sannoh, but at the cost of basically wearing themselves out to the point of not being able to make their way any further into the championship (also Sakuragi downright couldn't play after that game because of his spinal injury). So, in essence, they did manage to beat what many considered to be the best High School team in the nation of Japan, but still didn't win the championship due to facing them early in the tournament.

Now, as good as the ending was, this is actually one of those manga that didn't overstay its welcome and I actually wanted to see more of when I was finished reading it, which is always a good sign of how good something is. That said, its probably best that it ended on a high note, and the author was smart to move onto other things.

So, now I started reading Vagabond just because its by the same author. Its....pretty slow so far, but I guess I should have expected a very different tone from a more historical manga, as opposed to the hyperactive nature of a shonen sports series. Its also jarring to see just how different in tone this manga is from this previous work. Won was a light-hearted and fun shonen, whereas this manga so far seems to be more of a dark and more subdued samurai story (with plenty of blood to boot).

[gunswordfist]

Read 20th Century Boys vol. 1 and Rurouni Kenshin vol. 15.

Yep, Soujiro vs Kenshin is better suited for manga. I'm at the start of that bout.

[Avaitor]

That's one of my favorite parts of the whole manga.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I finished the Hunter X Hunter manga up to it's current point, recently. Awesome stuff, way better than the Yu Yu Hakusho manga on the whole in terms of consistent art quality. None of the arcs are Chapter Black level in terms of story perfection, though, but I think Chimera Ant is one of my favorite manga arcs of all time now, (Yorkshin was awesome too, but as a whole I felt more invested in the characters' survival in Chimera Ant, and because the art in Chimera Ant was really epic at times).

Not sure what I'm going to read next. Probably Rurouni Kenshin, since I've been wanting to get into that series for a while now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I finished the Hunter X Hunter manga up to it's current point, recently. Awesome stuff, way better than the Yu Yu Hakusho manga on the whole in terms of consistent art quality. None of the arcs are Chapter Black level in terms of story perfection, though, but I think Chimera Ant is one of my favorite manga arcs of all time now, (Yorkshin was awesome too, but as a whole I felt more invested in the characters' survival in Chimera Ant, and because the art in Chimera Ant was really epic at times).

Well, personally I thought YYH was great up until the end of the Chapter Black arc in the manga (the Three Kings arc was awful, though). The anime was a really good improvement over the manga in general, though. Its one of those rare anime that takes the source material and both faithfully adapts it and even improves on it in certain areas. As for Hunter X Hunter, I think its Togashi's better manga on the whole (though this is yet another case where I prefer the anime to the manga, in this case the 1999 version), but YYH is more of a personal favorite of mine (and in that regard, I'd say the anime version of YYH is better and more consistent than HXH).

At any rate, I'm a huge fan of both series. Personally I found the York Shin City arc to be my favorite in HXH. Its the most consistent in quality, tone, and theme, and it is paced perfectly. The Chimera Ant arc is certainly Togashi's most epic arc in terms of scale, and on the whole I do really like it, but I had a lot of issues with certain aspects of the arc. I could go into detail about it at a later time, but I'll just say that my biggest problems were the inconsistent pacing and narrative (as in, why did we suddenly get a narrator explaining everything for the entire 2nd half of the arc?), as well as how the ending kind of felt dragged out. That said, I still do really like many aspects of the arc, so the good definitely outweighs the bad for me. The only arc of HXH I really don't care for is Greed Island, which just felt kind of off, and has the misfortune of being stuck smack-dab in-between 2 MUCH better arcs (as many issues as I have with Chimera, it was miles better than anything in Greed Island).

Overall, though, HXH is one of my favorite shonen series. It has the disguise of a simple, light-hearted shonen series on the exterior which causes a lot of people to assume that its just generic, formulaic stuff, but it evolves into something deceptively dark as the series progresses, and not in that way in which it seems like its trying too hard to be edgy, but it does so in a natural way that just feels pretty damn unsettling in how well it actually works out for this series.

Not sure what I'm going to read next. Probably Rurouni Kenshin, since I've been wanting to get into that series for a while now.

I'd highly recommend it, myself. Just keep in mind that you might not dig the beginning. Its kind of generic and somewhat bland material that doesn't properly emulate the good writing and characterization that the series is capable of. If you make it up to the Kyoto arc and beyond, though, then you're in for a real treat, I'd say.