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Rurouni Kenshin Live Action Movie

So while I was on my flight to China, I got the chance to watch the live-action adaptation for Rurouni Kenshin. I’m not sure of how I was thinking in my sleep-addled state, but I enjoyed the movie quite a lot. I’m not sure how it is for those who are not familiar with the series, but as a fan of the manga and anime, I’d say it was pretty good. For anyone familiar with the series, the movie is sort of a combination of the Jin-e arc and the Megumi/Kanryu arc. If you wanna compare to the New Kyoto OVA that I reviewed before, it’s a lot better in my opinion.

For those unfamiliar with the show, the story takes place in the Meiji era in Japan. It follows the swordsman Kenshin Himura, who fought in the Bakumatsu war as the legendary Hitokiri Battosai. Following the war, he vowed never to kill again and wanders the world as a rurouni (hence the name of the series). Looking at the movie as a whole, it seems very serious in comparison with the anime, but this is likely a result of time constraints. Many small things are altered in the story, but they don’t seem to detract too much from it. For example, the fake Battosai is Jin-e…stuff like that.

While I was watching the show, I felt like they were trying to do way too much stuff in one movie…what with the opium stuff, the battle against Jin-e, Kenshin joining the dojo, the fight with Sanosuke, introducing Yahiko…this constitutes quite a few episodes in the anime. However, I thought the fusion into a “single story” worked out pretty well. They were able to put in so many characters: Saitou, Yahiko, Sanosuke, and Megumi manage to show up. Very cool that they were able to integrate everyone.

I suppose I have a few problems with the show, but they may just be me. For one, they drop the whole “attacks with names” thing, only having Kenshin use SoRyuSen at the very end. Gatotsu is also used, but without the name given. I guess it’s to make the movie more “mature”, but it makes it lose some flair for someone like me. Still, I will say that it makes the fights seem a lot more fluid with the lack of pausing for a special move. Those fights just looked great. There’s also the thing with Kaoru’s appearance being off for the type of character she’s supposed to be. Also, I hated the character Gein (masked guy). I felt like he was supposed to be Aoshi, but failed.

Honestly, I’d say that this movie was definitely a lot better than I was expecting. I’m glad I had the chance to see it because I probably wouldn’t have thought to look for it otherwise. For people new to the series, it’s a nice combination of action (it’s got swords!), idealism, and a bit of romance. For people familiar with the series, there’s some new stuff there for you. Add in a nice soundtrack (I really liked the battle music for the fight in front of Kanryuu’s mansion) with ONE OK ROCK for an ending song. Works for me.

A Glance Inward

Dec 30th, 2012

by marthaurion.

8 comments

Out of laziness, I just pulled from my leftover screenshot stock.

Tomorrow marks the end of the first full year that I’ve written for this blog (I started in June 2011, so the year was already halfway done). I don’t like to do milestone posts, so I didn’t write anything for the one year mark. However, I’m low on content this week, so consider this a sort of make-up post for it.

How do people normally start for these things? I guess they start with how they’ve changed in the time that has past. I started the blog mostly out of a fit of boredom…I thought it might help with my writing ability and it was on a topic I enjoyed. In the beginning, I only had a few reviews and my posts were fairly summary-heavy, which is something I’ve worked to move away from.

I’ve kept to my style of screenshots for episodic posts and wallpapers for everything else. I moved to my owned domain…changed my layout a couple of times. My posts are a lot more structured, which makes it easier to keep up with the post count I keep (not sure how much that works against me). That about sums it up.

Things I could improve upon? I’m still fairly indecisive, so my opinions are usually easily swayed and likely very weak. But I dunno how I’d even go about changing that. I’m sure my website appearance is due for another rework, but that will come when I’m willing to put in the effort. I’m still low-confidence when it comes to this site too…I stop myself from advertising it because I feel it’s not good enough.

I really have no idea how long I can keep this up. Who knows what will happen…especially if I get a demanding job. I think the reason I’m so strict about not missing a day with my posts is that I fear that when that crumbles, the blog will be on its way to decline. Kind of funny when I think about it. Anyway…that’s all I got. Thoughts? (Note: this is actually the second revision of this post…the first one actually sounded pretty whiny. I hope I was about to get rid of that).

Life’s Great Mysteries: Marth on Souls

Jul 26th, 2012

by marthaurion.

12 comments

While I choose not to believe in the existence of the soul, I can’t say I haven’t found it an interesting concept to ponder in my free time. Since this is potentially a touchy subject, I will start by saying that similarly to my time travel post, this is just my personal idea that may be right or wrong. I really don’t know. It’s simply what I have rationalized in my own head. I’m throwing out a theory, so if I see something like “You’re a bastard for insulting the beliefs of others”, I’ll be very upset because that’s very much not what I’m doing.

So what’s the plan? First, let me state that I believe that the existence of the soul is impossible to confirm or deny because the very concept of the soul requires that there is no physical evidence of its existence. I believe that the soul is meant to immune to the influences of the physical world, and thus the physical world shouldn’t be able to detect it. It acts as an anchor in a world where memories can be lost, bodies can become comatose, and personalities can change with the passing of time. Essentially, the soul remains constant through all of this. With that said, the rest of the plan is to explain this definition a bit and then I’ll go into the implications of this.

you look confused…

While there are varying interpretations of the word “soul”, I would say that there are a few common aspects. First, it is immortal. When a soul is “created”, it cannot be destroyed and it will never decay. Second, a soul is intangible. As I mentioned before, it would follow that there is no physical evidence of its existence and that no force that we can perceive should be able to manipulate it. And third, the soul acts as a form of identity…as in each person is tied to a single soul. Note that this is saying that we are unique in life, but not necessarily in death (an example being reincarnation).

Those three properties may seem to be exclusive, but I would say that they all stem from the idea of allowing our existence to continue indefinitely. Why do humans have a concept of a soul? I believe that the soul exists as a sense of security or comfort…an assurance that a person’s identity will last forever (hence the immortal bit). Why is a soul intangible? Because while our minds and bodies can be altered by our environments, something intangible cannot (I’ll explain this in a second). This creates the sense that in a world where minds and bodies are subjected the harsh forces of the environment, part of our identity remains constant. A clear way to say “this is who I am.”

Please note that I’m not saying that a soul and an identity are interchangeable. Let’s take the example of numbers. A number, being intangible, can’t be manipulated in any way through tangible means. We can combine them to create new numbers, but within those new numbers, the number remains (if I add 1 and 2, 1 is technically still a piece of 3). We can change the identity of a number, for example calling the number 1 “four” or something like that. Does this make 1 any different than what it was when we called it “one”? No, it doesn’t. That’s basically how a soul works. It is constant, and therefore humans choose to link their identity to it.

What does this all mean? Let’s look at Kokoro Connect and the idea of “soul swapping.” Normally I would try to say something like “they call it soul swapping, but they’re actually swapping _____”, but I really can’t with this show. The only way I can rationalize it is to say that their souls move to the new body, overriding the conscious mind of the new body. They don’t retain the memories of the new body, so they must be suppressed somehow. Also, they do retain some aspects of the subconscious of the new body (demonstrated with Yui’s androphobia), which rules out the possibility of simply switching brains. This does bring up some implications of connecting souls with the conscious mind, but that isn’t really my concern (because I’m trying to stay as general as possible).

Well, in the case of Kokoro Connect where the soul is being shifted around, this kind of soul allows the identity to remain constant. If Taichi and Iori swap, then whichever body contains Taichi’s soul is Taichi and whichever body contains Iori’s soul is Iori. This sort of distinction isn’t quite as clear in science. If we look at Aoki and Yui’s swap, what is the identity of Yui’s body? Aoki is technically the one in control, but it’s demonstrated that Yui’s mind still has some level of influence. There’s no part of Aoki’s brain transmitting androphobia, so it must be some remaining “piece” of Yui’s brain.

With two “half-brains”, which one could we use for identity? Say we copied Aoki’s memories on to Yui’s brain. Would we have then “created” a “new” Aoki that just looks like Yui? You could argue that Aoki’s memories generate identity, but then you could ask if amnesia creates a new person. Can you see how that can be a bit tricky? But I’ll leave the identity stuff up to the philosophers. It isn’t really my point. I’m just saying that this is the reason the soul exists.

So since that may have been confusing, let me make this clear. What you have just read is 1) what I think a soul is, 2) why I think the concept exists, and 3) why I believe it’s pointless to argue for or against its existence.

Life’s Great Mysteries: Marth on Time Travel

Jul 12th, 2012

by marthaurion.

21 comments

After reading a recent post from Yumeka, I wanted to write about my own theory of time travel, in a sense rewrite the comment I made. Let me preface this by saying that basically everything here is pure speculation. I simply look for an explanation that has the fewest inconsistencies…it could be totally wrong for all I know. Time travel is a topic that is often rife with paradoxical scenarios, so I just try to address as many of these as possible. Also, this is a purely theoretical interpretation of the concept with no considerations to the practical implications of actually creating a device that can achieve it (I don’t really care about black holes and whatnot for this).

In general, there are two broad interpretations of time travel. First, there’s the idea that time is immutable, so any trip back in time would have already happened. In this scenario (let’s call it the “constant theory” of time), it’s impossible to change history because whatever you do should already have happened. The second case (let’s call it the “variable theory” of time) is simply the opposite, where going back in time creates a new timeline with an altered future. Each case has a subset of cases with minor differences, but for the most part, all theories of time travel will fall into one of these categories.

My idea is a subset of the variable theory of time, so let’s look at the constant theory first. This is a hypothetical scenario that a friend of mine proposed in a random Skype conversation. Say you’ve been offered this choice: you could gain Jedi powers (he’s a huge Star Wars fan, can’t you tell?) or gain access to a Delorean like the one in Back to the Future. My friend asks “why can’t you just pick the Delorean, then travel back to the past to tell yourself to pick the Jedi powers?” Well, according to the constant theory of time, a second “you” would appear as you’re making this brilliant plan to tell you to go for the Jedi powers.

In order for the constant theory to hold, you must somehow be stopped from choosing Jedi powers because doing so will change history. But in this scenario, the choice is a result of your will, so there really isn’t anything stopping you from just changing it. It’s almost as if some personification of time itself has to stop you. Granted, the whole scenario is a bit much, but even in popular media, it seems like there is some unknown force that makes the protagonist repeat the actions from his past (almost like everything is too convenient).

For example, when Kyon goes back in time in Haruhi and when Harry Potter uses the Time Turner, they are both instructed not to do anything that could cause a temporal paradox because of the horrible consequences or whatever. But what exactly is it stopping them from just doing whatever they want? What’s to stop Kyon from taking the younger Haruhi to a police box rather than help her sneak into the school? What’s to stop Harry from just pushing his past self off a cliff? I don’t know about you, but I have trouble accepting something like “time will find a way to maintain everything.”

This counts as time travel, right?

Now that I’ve successfully rambled for a bit, let’s get on to my own theory (let’s arbitrarily call it “Y theory”). The basis comes mostly from Steins;Gate: the concept of an infinite set of timelines (I say they’re parallel in Y theory whereas Steins;Gate has branching of lines to account for alternate futures). In Y theory, it’s almost like a time traveler is moving across dimensions rather than moving forward or backwards in time. So let’s say you wish to travel back to the year 1934 at some specific date and time. Rather than moving yourself backwards in time, the idea is that you somehow move yourself to a nearby parallel line with a universe that is identical to your origin, but has only reached the year 1934…theoretically possible in an infinite number of lines.

That’s the core of the idea. Notice a few things:

Obviously, this idea stems from the many-worlds interpretation by Hugh Everett from quantum physic. Basically, it’s a theory that for every universe, there exists an infinite number of universes for all possible scenarios within that universe, and it’s a theory I’ve always liked.
In Y theory, you can change the future, but only in the destination timeline. It doesn’t change the events that have occurred in your point of origin (the idea being that you can change, but you can’t undo).
You’re going to a timeline where the events up to 1934 have occurred, but that doesn’t mean that the events after 1934 will occur. This idea assumes that there is no encompassing force governing time, so there is no “hard drive” holding “history data” for events after 1934. This may make little sense going backwards, but it makes a lot more sense going forwards. If you travel to a timeline in a future year, then returning to your timeline doesn’t ensure the events that you have seen because you’ve only seen one of the possibilities.
If you wish to believe the idea from Steins;Gate of determinism of certain events, that’s perfectly fine in Y theory (I think they call it an Attractor Field). The thought is that if you travel to a line within a certain divergence factor of your origin, events such as a person’s death will always gravitate to a certain point in time despite a difference in events leading up to the death. Although, Steins;Gate attributes this to a converging point in the world lines, it’s fine to think of the same idea happening in parallel lines.

To finish up, I want to specify something that differs from what Steins;Gate proposes in order to cover some inconsistencies. When Rintarou travels to the past in some parts of the show, he basically overwrites the Rintarou of that past time period and takes his place. While this idea makes for a very entertaining show and it follows the logic of the show (sending messages back), I feel like it runs into some issues. For example, what happens if you travel to a point in the past further back than your birth? There would be no “you” to inhabit.

Would you inhabit someone else to make up for it? If so, what are the parameters for who it must be? There would likely be plenty of ancestors available. What if the only two ancestors available are both comatose and will awaken later and fall in love? In my theory, a time traveler is moving to another dimension, and is thus “an outsider,” an extra person in that dimension. So if Rintarou traveled in the way I have outlined, he would go back and be a second instance of himself (which he does later in the show).

And that’s basically it. Marth’s theory of time travel. If you were able to follow all of that, then great! Let me know what you think. If something isn’t explained well enough, let me know in the comments below and I’ll see what I can do to help clear things up. I have a lot of fun thinking about these sorts of things. Sure hope it was entertaining…

Aniblog Tourney Thoughts

Jun 12th, 2012

by marthaurion.

12 comments

Since I have basically no chance of making it past the third round and have made it as far I wished, I’ve decided to post my thoughts on (or maybe I should say problems with) the aniblog tourney rather than advertise. I know that these types of posts have been everywhere, so I’ll try to make it worth your time. Blah blah circlejerk or ramblings about vote manipulation or vote begging…none of that here.

Personally, I believe that asking a friend for a vote is perfectly fine because the tourney has no restrictions on participants and the rules say something to the effect of “vote for the blog you’d rather read.” I’m fairly certain my buddy would rather read my blog than my opponent…simple logic. That aside, let’s look at things a bit more analytically…keep things objective. Sorry…this is gonna be long.

My first qualm with the aniblog tourney is pretty basic, but it is something that doesn’t seem to have disappeared with the new voting system…a relic of my AP Statistics class in high school. Polls should always have a random ordering for the choices. Given two choices (and in this round’s case, four), it’s much more likely for someone to pick the first one given no strong feelings for any other choice. It’s not really a big problem to implement this sort of thing, but it does a lot. Don’t believe me? I ran the numbers. In the first round, 62% of the blogs who won were the ones listed first.

Yes, I understand that the posts have the headers for each matchup that say “XXXX vs. YYYY”, but that isn’t an excuse…it just sounds like laziness to me. Does that even have to be there? Even if it does, I think it still might be helpful to have them below the poll rather than above it so that the first thing a voter sees isn’t that ordering.

A view of my own stats page. The weekends are the darkened columns.

Next up on the docket is something that I actually pointed out to someone before the tourney started, getting the response of something to the effect of “oh, it won’t be a big deal…” Time frames. Each match appears for two days, with new matches going up every day. People have stuff to do, and internet traffic reflects that. Typically, more people are online over the weekends than the middle of week (Wednesday/Thursday), which skews samples.

Even if you ignore that, there comes the issue of motivation. Four matches go up on one day, or in this round’s case, one match of four blogs. It’s just not possible to research every blog in every matchup with new ones coming each day. And even if someone had the time, where’s the motivation? Why not just wait for the next set of blogs? With how long the tourney has dragged so far, it hardly seems logical to use an argument of keeping interest in the event.

Let’s take a step back and talk about some smaller things (and by that, I mean things that I don’t feel like talking about for a full section individually). First up, participant selection. The organizers created some rules for qualification (no photo blogs, no translation blogs, etc.) and then proceeded to ignore them. Nothing more to say on that.

Next, settling ties. Rather than do something like create a tiebreaker round, the organizers choose to allow both blogs to advance. I think that’s just unfair to punish the next round blog, which actually had nothing to do with creating the tie. For a similar reason, making the tied blogs auto-lose is also unfair (but is arguably less unfair).

An example of poor seeding.

Break’s over…on to another topic. Let’s talk about seeding. I’ve been in a lot of Starcraft 2 tournaments, so seeding isn’t new to me. It makes sense. If the first round consists of about equally matched pairings, it’s unfair to the higher level players, who have a chance of losing while a lower level player has a chance of advancing. In the example above, the platinum level player gets by with a game against a silver player (near the lowest level), while the two masters players (the near highest level) are pit against each other.

There was an attempt at seeding by placing participants from the first tourney in later rounds, but absolutely no semblance of effort in the first round. As a result, first round matches were littered with both extremely close matches as well as complete one-sided roflstomping. Heck…use Alexa or something for all I care. As long as it’s standardized in some way.

I’ll end on something I noticed with the new voting system. The great new system that will make everything better has decided to put vote results up on the voting screen. Before, people would have to click to see results prior to voting, which means that it could be avoided unless you just wanted to see them first.

Now, they’re just there and will subconsciously affect the decisions of everyone, not just those that want to be influenced. The rich get richer, and it’s even more so with this new system. Arguably, this isn’t the biggest deal, but that would frankly be why I put it at the very end.

Well…that was quite a lot of stuff. For those of you able to make it through all of that information, congratulations. At the end of the day, most of this stuff is based on my perception, and I likely don’t know the full story (although am I really asking for much?). For example, I don’t know how they really approached seeding because it isn’t shown like the first tourney. Let me know if I missed anything…hope you didn’t find this too boring. And finally, good luck to anyone still in the tourney!

Returning to China

May 14th, 2012

by marthaurion.

8 comments

Awesome Berserker pic has nothing to do with the post. Why is it here? Because I can.

The time has come once again for me to embark upon the arduous journey to China in order to visit my family. I’ll be leaving on Wednesday and will be staying for a month in Shanghai. For added fun, my brother and I will be stopping in Japan for three days. So far, my plan consists of: Akihabara. Sounds pretty solid (HELP ME!!!). While this sounds all fun and whatnot for me, what does it mean for you as a reader?

Well, my posting pattern will likely change. I can’t say for sure because I don’t know how my situation will be in China, but what will likely happen is that most things will be pushed back a day or two. It’s also possible that I drop shows to help with time. That’s just how it is with the Great Firewall of China. It’s not that I won’t be able to access my blog…more that I might have troubles with downloading the anime.

Either way, I will try my best to maintain at least one post a day…I just hope you all understand that when I visit my relatives, I often go to places without an Internet connection. And I don’t know if you’ve ever tried watching anime on a netbook, but it’s probably the most frustrating thing in the universe. Media Player Classic is stupidly processor-heavy…I really should find an alternate solution. Anyways, here’s hoping I don’t pick up any weird fetishes in Japan.

Aniblog Tourney Round 2

May 9th, 2012

by marthaurion.

8 comments

Vote for me here!

After somehow making past the first round by seven votes, it’s time to start up again with round 2. Same deal, basically…too lazy to type it all up again. This time, I’m up against Nigorimasen, so once again give them a look before making a vote…preferably for me, but for whoever you feel is better (while you’re at it, you should also give a vote to Feal over at EmptyBlue because he’s awesome).

So once again, let me put up some stuff to help out with the navigation of my blog. Out of general laziness, I just copied the stuff from my first post with some minor modifications. Also, a second thing…I made a Rubik’s Cube video for today as well to give you something to look at (also because it’s kinda the thing that makes me different). Not my best showing, but meh…I’m out of practice.

If editorials are your things, most of mine go under the label of Life’s Great Mysteries…just the name I came up with for my take on things. They’re just the musings I have when I sit alone in a room in front of a computer. I also put a lot of work into a post about my reviewing process.
I also recently organized all of my reviews into a page so that they can be found more easily. A note about my reviewing style…I’ve been toying around with different systems, and I don’t have a set style yet. You can find them here: Reviews
If you’re bored and curious about me, I answered AceRailgun’s 50 Questions as well.
I’m one of those guys that’s just kinda around. I’ve even appeared in a podcast with AceRailgun and Yerocha. I was a guest on the Anime Afterlife Podcast too once or twice.

The Ideal Anime/Manga Cast

May 8th, 2012

by marthaurion.

13 comments

So what’s going on here? This was something concocted by Yerocha over at Shades of Grey, and I’m joining in to give it a shot. Basically, the idea is to form a cast of characters…seems simple, but holy crap is it tough to deal with an open-ended prompt. It has never been my strong suit, but I want to try. I wasn’t sure how to approach something like this. I don’t exactly research tvtropes or anything, so I decided to go with chess pieces for my cast. My original ambitious goal was to create a cast for each color on the board (which was almost successful), but I don’t want to bore people with a tediously long list of characters. So let’s just keep it simple.

Rook

Traditionally, the rook is depicted as a castle, a defender of the fortress. In practice, the rook is an incredibly powerful piece capable of locking down entire files, so I see it as a more long-ranged specialist. Basically, I see it as a piece standing at the walls, taking out enemies as they approach.

So for this, my choice is Train Heartnet from Black Cat. With his insane vision range and experience as an assassin, he’s definitely a solid choice for a long-ranged specialist. He can even bust out a railgun if he needs to finish the fight quickly. He can probably fend off incoming attacks fairly easily with his Orichalcum gun Hades too.

Bishop

Ignoring the religious implications of the piece, the bishop is capable of slipping diagonally through the board and cleaning up, so I see it as an assassin type or just a sneaky type (I’m going to hell for saying that >.>). In chess, a bishop can glide across the board if you’re not paying attention and seal the game.

So introducing our bishop, Shiki Ryougi from Kara no Kyoukai. With her trusty knife and the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, Shiki can kill basically anything instantly, making her perfect for slipping through defenses and taking everything out. I don’t know if there’s anything she can’t cut down to size.

Knight

The knight is fairly straightforward piece. It acts as a loyal warrior out in the heat of battle, so I’d label it a close-range specialist. In the game, the knight is an incredibly versatile piece, able to gain great strength from good positioning and support. This piece also has one of the most limited movement ranges, hence the close-range thing I said before.

This honor goes to a personal favorite, Hajime Saitou from Rurouni Kenshin. Saitou fits versatility like no one else, having trained with his signature technique Gatotsu to the point where he needs no other techniques. But he’s not just any killing machine, he strictly adheres to his own personal code of Aku Soku Zan.

Queen

This is a tricky piece. The queen is basically the ultimate piece in chess, a powerful combination of bishop and rook.

It’s hard to find a character as overpowered as the queen, but my choice goes to Arcueid Brunsted from Tsukihime. Able to come back to life even after having her lines of death cut, she’s basically the closest you can get to immortal. She can also make basically whatever she imagines come become reality. Hard to be more overpowered than that.

Black King

The king is another one of those simpler pieces. As the weakest and the most important piece on the board, the king is typically seen as the strategic head of the game. Although lacking in power, the king has the leadership to lord over the other pieces.

A pretty obvious choice for me. No one suits the king better than Lelouch vi Britannia of Code Geass. A strategical master, Lelouch can easily use every piece to its fullest potential to get to his goal. But being smart isn’t enough as the king. Lelouch also has the charisma to give his orders and strategies meaning, making him a dangerous foe. And if that doesn’t work, he’s always got the Geass to help him out. The character was practically designed to embody the king.

So that’s what I got. Just for completion sake, I want to point out that I also thought of using Shichika Yasuri as a knight, Sumeragi Lee Noriega as a king, and Hei as a bishop, but as I said before, there’s a point where the number of characters just becomes excessive. You may also be thinking “you left out the pawns, Marth!” That was also intentional…the pawn is a weird piece for me. I could probably think of a few characters that would work, but the role just seemed too demeaning for me to pin on anyone.

Also, if my list was cool and you want to see more, or if my list was lame and you want to find a better one, you should check out the others who have decided to participate in this. You could probably even make a list for yourself.

Aniblog Tourney Post

Apr 25th, 2012

by marthaurion.

6 comments

Vote for me here!

Well, it seems the time has come for me to step up to the plate in the Aniblog Tournament. Honestly, I’ve been kinda looking forward to this. Mostly because I want to see how well I can do…but also because I just love a good competition. Plus, I have extensive experience in these sorts of situations. Let’s see…get picked last for sports teams…lost in the class president election in high school…hmm, maybe not.

Anyway, I felt it would be a good idea to have a post like this to keep people in the loop. Plus everyone else has been doing it, so I figure I’ll just follow suit. Before I continue, I ask that you check out my opponent over at Riyoga’s Ramblings and check his stuff before making a decision in this vote. Of course, I’d prefer if you chose me, but there’s no reason we can’t be civil. The link for the vote is above, but I’ll put it here again just in case.

Now, let’s continue on with me, shall we? Basically, I started this blog in a bit of a random moment, and I just kinda stuck with it. I don’t give all that much thought to my writing style…just do what’s natural. For the most part, I aim to be pretty lax with what I say and try to be regular with my posting. Most of my stuff is episodic coverage of airing shows, but I also write reviews and the occasional editorial. As for where to find this stuff:

If editorials are your things, most of mine go under the label of Life’s Great Mysteries…just the name I came up with for my take on things. They’re just the musings I have when I sit alone in a room in front of a computer. The protagonists one is probably my favorite. I also put a lot of work into a post about my reviewing process.
I also recently organized all of my reviews into a page so that they can be found more easily. A note about my reviewing style…I’ve been toying around with different systems, and I don’t have a set style yet. You can find them here: Reviews
If you’re bored and curious about me, I answered AceRailgun’s 50 Questions as well.
I’m one of those guys that’s just kinda around…I’ve written some stuff over at my friend Wanabrar’s Blog. I’ve even appeared in a podcast with AceRailgun and Yerocha. I was a guest on the Anime Afterlife Podcast too once.
Final note: I solve Rubik’s Cubes if you think that’s cool.

So I hope you’ll consider throwing a vote in for me in the tourney. It’s my first time participating, and I would greatly appreciate any support.

Life’s Great Mysteries: The Weight of Knowing the Story

Apr 18th, 2012

by marthaurion.

20 comments

So the question for today is pretty simple. When it comes to watching anime, how much does knowing the story affect how you perceive the show? Most specifically, I want to look at first impressions of a show. For example, you’ve read the manga or played the visual novel and you’re finally seeing your favorite manga/visual novel in anime form. The general consensus I seem to see is “the manga was better.” But let’s take a look into why that is the case and what we can conclude from that.

The simplest explanation is disappointment when it comes to personal expectations regarding the anime. I’ve read some blog posts about Medaka Box and I often see people who have read the manga saying something to the effect of “the characters didn’t sound the way I expected.” Stuff like that. While I don’t often have the opportunity to watch an anime after already completing the manga, I feel like I don’t run into this sort of idea when it does happen (like with Bakuman). Is my perception just different? Maybe I’m not thinking hard enough when I’m reading the manga. I wonder if I just accept the anime as the true adaptation, regardless of my own perception of the story.

While this explanation works pretty well with manga, how well does it hold up with games or visual novels? They have the benefit of voicing (and the characters even have color). Video games even have moving characters. I guess it’s just that the animation isn’t as good for when the anime comes out? I don’t usually notice those things, so how could I really comment on it? I thought that Persona 4′s anime adaptation was great. Even if you take out the RPG in the story, it was still fun to watch. However, game adaptations usually run into problems when they become anime. Taking out the battles or the level-up system seems to lower the effect of the show. But it seems weird to me if an RPG’s main selling point is the story.

In fact, I might argue that this perception of original into anime happens in reverse. Take Code Geass as an example. It’s no secret that I loved that show. But reading the manga was just a disappointment. Possibly because of all the things they changed or skipped. Is that just how things are? Is it that we will always be disappointed by what we see second? Or is it just that any adaptation that a company makes for a franchise will never be able to live up to what was originally created?

So maybe the problem just boils down to the difference between creating a story and already having the story. I guess just having the content already there and being forced to work with it is so restrictive that it naturally decreases quality. Maybe adaptations are just doomed to failure from the beginning and some truly talented people will be able to manage a good adaptation.

The question that comes from all of this is what does this all say about how we approach anime? Should we constantly avoid the manga until we finish the anime so that we have a “pleasant surprise” after we watch the anime? Or should we cut anime altogether and just read manga all the time if there is one available? My personal approach is that I avoid manga while a show is airing (that’s why I haven’t continued reading Tasogare or Sankarea now that I’m following them). When the show finishes, I will start reading (like I’m about to do with Mirai Nikki).

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