What I mean by “the point of adaptations” isn’t “the point where adaptations start sucking”, but more of like “what is the point of adaptations?” After all, regardless of how good or bad an adaptation will be, you’ll always have the grassroots insisting on the superiority of the original. The fanbase is fickle and insatiable, which means most, if not all of the discussions will result in a discordant clamour of “YOU NEVER SAW HOW BRILLIANT THE MANGA WAS”, or “YOU’RE BIASED BECAUSE YOU READ IT FIRST”.

Which brings me to two shows, both brilliant manga in their own domains: Bokurano and Claymore. I thought it’d be a good opportunity to review the anime for both seeing how they’re both based off a manga; furthermore, I’ve only read the manga for Claymore, and only saw the anime adaptation of Bokurano. So I have two questions:

What can be really constituted as perception bias? How should an adaptation from its source material, be it a visual novel, manga, or light novel, be truly judged? I find these questions to be of utmost relevance especially in this Autumn season for the top-tier, or at least what I perceive as the fandom perceiving as top-tier anime, i.e. Clannad and Shana II, happen to be adaptations too.

Note to self: watch the damn thing as soon as it comes out. This would’ve been up way earlier had it not been for the other series I’ve been trying to sit through. See previous post for details. Also, there’s a spoiler after the cut — hell, just assume all Bokurano posts from now on will contain spoilers. It’s that kind of anime, the type where something happens every episode.

Maybe watching this while waiting for Triad to sub StrikerS (yeah, I prefer Hallaoun and Raging Heart, thanks) won’t be such a bad thing after all. Episode 2 of Bokurano was, as TJ Han put it, definitely one of the top 5 WTF moments so far. Yes, that link’s also a spoiler, and no, this goes before the cut. Click at your own risk.

“TH- THIS IS MY CHAIR! IT WAS MADE FOR ME!”

So I presume this is going to be like Evangelion, but with more character development? Hold on, this is NGE we’re talking about here. As long as the monologues aren’t limited exclusively to abstract images and there’s none of that ‘intelligent’ symbolism I guess I’ll survive. But I’m serious about the character development bit. 15 characters, and what- 24, 26 episodes? If there’s going to be like one death per fight I’m still wondering how they’re going to go about the other 9+ episodes. Mecha filler has never been a high point for me.