Reviews & Features Discussion

[Spark Of Spirit]

Also, glad I never heard of Isuca before. Sounds like everything I dislike about shonen in this one. Though I'm pretty sure that image is from another show. 

No, it's from Isuca.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I actually love Digimon Adventure Tri so far. The funny thing is that I agree with most of the criticisms in the article, but feel that they are a lot more minor than the article makes them out to be, especially the stuff about character development when we've definitely gotten about as much as you could fit in four episodes with this many characters (and let's not forget that there are still twenty episodes left).

I also never noticed that the reception was that mixed. I've personally seen a lot of Digimon fans who really like Tri so far, and maybe just a few who aren't that hot on it, and absolutely no one who outright hates it (especially compared to Adventure 02), but then again, I haven't specifically been browsing around for people's opinions on it.

As for Hunter X Hunter, I pretty much agree with everything that Dr. Insomniac said in his article. And to be honest, I'm not nearly as frustrated by the wait between chapters as everyone else is, since seeing how the story concludes has always been the least interesting thing about this series to begin with. It's always the conflict at hand that's most interesting.

[Lord Dalek]

Oh man... did this season suck.

[Dr. Insomniac]

*puts on Artful Dodger hat* But sir, where's the Norn9?

[Lord Dalek]

*puts on Artful Dodger hat* But sir, where's the Norn9?

Nobody signed up to do Norn9.

...for obvious reasons.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Masamune Shirow....  I guess I'll go back to hoping for a Tank Police series again as unlikely as that will ever be. Looks like he's lost his mind here.

But yes, this was about what I expected from this season. A whole heap of nothing. Spring can't come fast enough.

[Foggle]

Masamune Shirow....  I guess I'll go back to hoping for a Tank Police series again as unlikely as that will ever be. Looks like he's lost his mind here.

Masamune Shirow is like the Mark Millar of manga IMO. Great at ideas, terrible at execution, and a bit of a creep to boot. He should have at least let Rikdo write the script when he hired him to do the art - then it would at least have had good dialogue. Oh well.

It's worth nothing, though, that Rynnec's opinion of the episode was much more favorable than mine.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'm starting a new feature comparing the anime version of Flame of Recca to the manga.

Introduction's here.

Though it might take me awhile to get this done. I haven't re-read or re-watched the entire series in years, so these installments will mostly be on a strict comparison between chapters and episodes. Still, currently doing the one for the first episode already shows quite a few differences.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Great write-up so far. We had discussed this concept before, and I've been wanting to do similar pieces for Dragon Ball and Full Metal Panic, myself, but this is a great look at how not to do an anime adaptation of a good manga. Bakuman is another example of a weak adaptation, as well.

I always liked how the manga for FoR did a good job of combining many of the elements found in many classic 90's shonen manga, but also melding them together so well to make it feel like its own thing.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Bakuman was such a disappointment. That first OP was an obvious sign that they plain missed the mark with the whole thing.

Thanks for the comments. I've been re-buying the FoR manga since it's so cheap nowadays and have been slowly rereading, and Crunchyroll adding the anime made it the perfect opportunity to start this feature. There are a lot of differences between the manga and anime, but they've never been compiled before. I'll try to do it here as best I can.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Flame of Recca episode 1!

Even in this first episode there were a lot of differences to note.

[Foggle]

Cool! I don't know anything about Flame of Recca, but I support this.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Nice, I've been waiting for this. I'll get to it before bed tonight.

I'm thinking of doing a similar type of article for Dragon Ball, but not for the whole series, of course. Instead I want to compare key scenes between the manga and anime, and highlights how the episodes with less talent behind them fail to convey the outstanding humor, pacing, and fluidity of Toriyama's artwork.

Your comparisons between both versions also remind me of a recent Mother's Basement episode about Erased, though in this case it was about how good directing in the anime actually enhanced and improved upon a scene from the manga.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Episode 2! Suffice to say, I was not impressed with this episode.

I'm not sure how long episode 3 is gonna take me to do, but I'm not looking forward to it. They turn Mikagami into a moron. You'll see why whenever I finish it up.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Episode 3 is done.

This was the worst episode so far. How not to do an adaption. It's still more mediocre than bad, but man does it butcher the original material.