Character styles - manga vs anime series

One of the things that makes or breaks a series for me is what the characters look like, the character style. It's not everything. I'll watch a series with a character style that I don't really care for if everything else is good. But just like in real life, first impressions go a long way. The first thing that attracts me to a series is the looks, followed by the music. And then what keeps me watching is a combination of music and plot. The final piece is how it ends, so that it's the overall product that determines whether I think it's a great series or not. But I will say, pretty anime is more fun for me to watch.

Anyway, a pretty large number of anime series have their start as adaptations from manga. And in

case you don't know what a manga is, it's the Japanese books that are being bastardized in the US as "graphic novels". (Yup. No, bias here!) Okay, okay, not to get off topic, many anime series are adapted from manga. This can be good or bad depending on a number of things, like: whether you've read and liked the manga and whether the series follows it or strays from it. Think of watching the most recent Lord of the Rings trilogy after reading the books. It's fine because it follows the books closely. Now think about the Eragon books and what the movies have done to the plot. So whether you like the manga or the series more is probably going to depend on which one you ran into first.

Another thing that can make you less than happy to have an anime series developed from your

favorite manga is if you really like the character style in the manga, and then it's totally different in the series. This works in reverse if you watched the series before discovering the manga.

I'm always intrigued that the characters in a series developed from a manga can look so totally different than the manga characters. I suppose it depends on whether the person who wrote the manga does the characters, or is involved in the character design for the series or not.

I classify (because in case you couldn't tell already, I love to sort things) these cases into four main types: 1) Close: the characters in the manga and series are so close that it makes no difference, 2) Different-okay: the characters are different between the two, but not enough to make it difficult to switch back and forth, 3) Different-disturbing: the characters are different enough that it's disturbing. If you're reading the manga and watching the series also, you have to make an adjustment and get used to the style when you move back and forth, and last but not least 4) Gyah!: the characters are so different that you can't tell which characters are which when you go from manga to series or vice verso. So! Those are my categories, from best to worst and here are some examples in each category.

In all the pictures on this post , the pics on the left are from the anime series and on the right they're

from the manga. or at least that's what I'm attempting to achieve. Sometimes when I push the "publish post" button, things end up not at all where I intended.

Close: Series/manga that fall into this category include Bleach, Inuyasha, Fruits Basket, Vampire Knight and Loveless. With each of these series, it's pretty easy to move between the series and the manga. There's not much feeling of disconnect and the characters are clearly recognizable.

Different-okay: These series would include D.N.Angel, Rurouni Kenshin, NANA, Death Note, Trinity

Blood and D.Gray-man.These are series that you can make the switch with a little hitch then you forget there's a difference.

Different-disturbing: Among these series would be Nabari no Oh, Fullmetal Alchemist, Get Backers, Natsume Yuujinchou and Ouran High School Host Club. These series not only make you re-adjust to the look of the characters, but sometimes you can't make the adjustment. You keep looking for the characters you've come to expect.

The different-okay and different-disturbing groups are sometimes not that clear cut. On any given day I might move series between those classifications depending on how recently I've watched the series. And no doubt there are people that disagree about which category a series/manga pair should fall into, depending on whether their favorite manga was made into an acceptable series or not. Myself, I tend to buy the manga after seeing the series, with some notable exceptions. I bought Trinity Blood, 07-Ghost and Vampire Knight without knowing they would be made into series. Generally though, I have more trouble adapting to the look of the manga than to the look of the series.

The final group is the worst. These are the 'try-to-guess-which-characters-are-which ones. Good examples of this type of series are Mahoutsukai na Koto Taisetsu Ni and Yami no Matsuei. The two bottom pictures are depicting the same two characters from Mahoutsukai. In a case like this you really want to ask the characters to wear name tags so you don't get confused. Yami no Matsuei is like this too.

Anyway, I've spent too much time on this, re-arranging pics. Hopefully they'll post the way I want them. (Yes, I know. I look at the preview. They don't always post where they show up in the preview.)

Juuni Kokki

Since I'm moving the Juuni Kokki picture, (can't have the blog get boring) I decided to talk about Juuni Kokki. The series is one of my favorites, and is both a great series and an incredibly frustrating series. I'll come back to that.

Juuni Kokki is based on a series of novels written by Ono Fuyumi. The picture on the right is an illustration from the novels and the picture on the left is the main characters from the anime series.

This series starts out with one of the stereotypical themes: high school girl gets transported to alternate universe where she must grow up and accomplish a quest. So the basic premise is common, but the details are pretty cool. The main character is Nakajima Youko, the red-haired girl in both pics. The alternate world she's transported to is one where there are 12 kingdoms (thus the title) situated around a central island. This small picture shows the world map. There are 4 island kingdoms out in the corners and 8 kingdoms ringing the central island with ocean in between. Each kingdom is ruled by either a King or Queen. One of the unique ideas in the series comes from the way those rulers are chosen. Each kingdom has a "Kirin". Kirin are holy creatures that can take human form but their normal form is an incredibly beautiful unicorn. In the two pictures at the top, the main kirin in the story, Keiki, is being ridden by Youko on the right and is at the top back on the left picture. The kirin choose the King or Queen for a country. Keiki is unable to find his country's ruler in his world so he comes to Japan and get her. Youko and Keiki get separated and she must make her own way and become Queen of Kei. That's the main story line, but the series is complex and follows multiple stories.

Another unique element in the series is the way babies are born. When a couple wants a child they weave a ribbon and tie it to a special tree. If their wish is granted, a child grows like a fruit on the tree at the point where their ribbon is tied. All creatures in the world are born from trees, and the kirin are born from a single special tree on the central island. That tree only bears fruit if a kirin dies so that there are never more than 12 kirin, one for each kingdom.

I believe that in the novels there is at least one story for each kingdom, but although the series may originally have had that intent, they stopped early. The kingdoms covered by stories include Kei, with Youko and Keiki and the kingdom of En, with En-Ou and Enki. The series starts the story of Tai and then ends before the story is finished. This is what I was talking about as incredibly frustrating. You never know what happens with Tai-Ou and Taiki.

Beyond that though, the series is very good. They manage to follow multiple story lines and connect people from various different parts of the world and keep a coherent plot. The tales that they finish are satisfying, not overly tragic or sickeningly sweet. I almost didn't watch it because in the first several episodes Youko is such a whiny crybaby it makes me crazy. Not one of my favorite character types. Obviously she grows up with the help of one of the characters I like best in the series, Rakushun. Rakushun is a half-beast. He's the mouse in the left picture. Half-beasts can take the form of their beast or of a human. They're born from the same trees as full humans but are discriminated against in some of the kingdoms. I like his character a lot. He's like a perfect friend, good-natured, kind, really smart but with a lot of common sense. And he expects people to be people. He doesn't expect people to be perfect.

Anyway, it's a good series and I recommend it.

Tytania - and character death

Tytania is a space opera. It's about a galaxy-spanning empire run by a single family, the Tytania. The five people actually running the empire are the Clan Lord and the four Dukes. The various star-systems which make up the empire have a certain amount of autonomy until they happen to have something the Tytania want, or unless they happen to run afoul of the Tytania. If either of those two things happen, the Tytania slap them down hard and take over the planet/star-system.

Naturally, given human nature in a dictatorship, there are many, small, poorly organized rebel groups arrayed against the empire, which have less affect on the Tytania than your average mosquito in a hurricane.

Enter Fan Hyulick, who is hired by a planetary system to fight the Tytania when they come calling. Hyulick actually succeeds in beating one of the four Dukes in a battle. The bad news is, that wasn't the intent of the planet government. They were simply wanting to have enough military presence to have some bargaining power. They immediately fire Hyulick, but to late to escape the wrath of Tytania.

Hyulick in the meantime becomes the focus of everyone in the universe. The Tytania alternately want him dead or tortured forever. The rebel groups wish to cash in on his victory and use him to further their causes. Most of the series is Hyulick's and Tytania's maneuverings around each other.

The series wasn't that bad. I always enjoy series with lots of good-looking characters and it kept me interested enough to watch the whole thing but there were some things I wasn't that fond of in it. For me, the major flaw was that the plot moved too slowly. In fact it almost didn't move at all. A lot of time was spent on the foibles, personalities and interactions between the four Dukes and various factions within the extended Tytania family. And Hyulick spent more time accidentally stumbling from one action to the next than he did purposely achieving anything. Plot-wise, the series was disappointing.

Another thing I didn't like was the "token" character death of Lira, Hyulick's love interest.

I should probably explain my different classification of character deaths. I know what you're thinking .... dead is dead. *laughing* That's not necessarily true in anime, but that's beside the point. Character death can be more or less tragic, more or less satisfying, more or less emotional, depending on the 'class' of death it is. The worst possible death a character can suffer is the "senseless death". I'm using 'senseless' here to mean there was no possible reason to make it necessary to kill off that particular character, and usually the death is accidental. The series makers do it either just to have a character death or to 'tidy' things up from their perspective. I've already mentioned the example of Solomon in Blood+. Other examples include Dio in Last Exile, Michel in Macross Frontier and Third in Jyu Oh Sei. Toboe in Wolf's Rain can be considered a senseless death.

Slightly better than the senseless death is the "token death". Usually I consider it a "token death" if no one else in the series dies, but occasionally other minor characters die and the token death is the only death of a major character. Token deaths may or may not be senseless. Michel in Macross Frontier is both token and senseless. Maes Hughes is a token death, but he died for a reason and it wasn't an accident. Yamazaki's sister in PeaceMaker Kurogane is a good example of a token death. She's the only main character to die in the series (if you don't count the chief bad guy), and her death was borderline senseless. In Tytania, Lira is killed about half way through the series. Her death is not really a token death in that Hyulick does manage to kill one of the four Dukes as well as the minor Tytanaian lord who kills Lira. Her death just feels like a token death to me. They could have stiffened Hyulick's resolve without killing Lira.

Another class of death I hate is the "balance the karma" type death. The person has to die in the end to make sure all the karma is balanced out. I personally could care less about the karma. I want my characters to survive. Alex Rowe in Last Exile is a good example of this type of death. Jomy and Keith's deaths in Terra e seem to fit in this category.

Another class of death that's pretty common is the self-sacrificing death. These are always tear-jerkers, but they're more acceptable than other types because the death is usually for a good solid reason, and often someone else is saved. They are also usually far and away the most emotional character deaths. Keisei in Shikabane Hime is both a token death and a self-sacrificing death. Nuriko in Fushigi Yuugi would be the stereotypical death of this type.

Series that decimate their cast with multiple character deaths are also fairly common. X is this type of series. Casshern Sins also, and Chevalier D'Eon, Chrno Crusade, Fafner, Wolf's Rain, Samurai Seven, it's a pretty long list. Gilgamesh offed the entire cast.

I'm frequently amazed when I think about how far I've come from when I started watching anime. Like all Americans raised on Saturday morning cartoons, I never expected to be faced with character death. In fact, death is probably the major defining difference between "cartoons" and anime. My first experience with it was Nuriko's death in Fushigi Yuugi. I was so totally in shock. I could not believe that they had killed a major character, and in such a heart-wrenching way. I almost quit watching anime. Now I'm usually amazed if all the characters manage to survive the series, and believe me, those series are pretty uncommon. Get Backers pretty much did it, and with a sizable cast. Scrapped Princess and Heroic Age both did it, despite indications to the contrary. And of course series like Card Captor Sakura and Azumanga Daioh, generally everyday-school-life series don't kill off characters. Part of what makes or breaks that ending I'm always talking about is the number of characters that survive the series.

Oh! And about Tytania, I really didn't like the Opening song, although the Ending song was great.

Common Themes

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd talk today about common themes. There are a number of common themes to anime plot lines, and a lot of series fall into those common categories. That means a lot of anime have similar plot lines. In fact a unique plot line is the exception rather than the rule, and I keep an eye out for those anime.

One plot element that is very, very common is the female high school or middle school student who is transported to another time or world. What she does there varies between series. Sometimes she ends up as the last hope to save the civilized world, either the world she's been transported to, her original world or both. If she's not in a savior role, then she at least has some quest to accomplish. In the case of Inuyasha, the quest involved gathering the million fragments of a shattered round, magic-filled jewel in order to keep demons and humans from using it for bad purposes. Other examples of this type of anime are numerous and include such series as: Fushigi Yuugi, Juuni Kokki, Harukanaru Toki no Naka de, and Escaflowne. Occasionally it's a male student who's transported to an alternate reality and is required to accomplish something. Kyou Kara Maou and KIBA are examples of that.

Another common plot device is the harem-type anime, where one guy is surrounded by several girls, all vying for his interest or favor or attention. Some hard-core examples of this type of anime include Shuffle, Maburaho and Rental Magica. "Hard-core" in the sense that everything and everyone revolves around the central male character. Much more subtle examples of harem-type anime include, surprisingly, ToAru Majutsu no Index and Toradora. ToAru and Toradora did a good job of hiding the fact that they were harem-anime by not focusing on the actions of the central male character to the extent that the story suffers. Nonetheless, basically Touma and Ryuuji respectively were surrounded by multiple girls who were interested in them. Reverse-harems are almost equally as common as regular harem-types. In reverse-harems obviously, the central female character is surrounded by multiple, usually very gorgeous males. Examples include Harukanaru, Ouran High School Host Club, Fushigi Yuugi, Pretear and Saiunkoku.

I've already talked about shinigami in regards to Bleach, but shinigami-containing series are also a common plot device. The series may be based around shinigami like Bleach is, or simply happen to have shinigami in them. Shinigami-related series include: Bleach, Yami no Matsuei, FullMoon wo Sagashite, Death Note and Kuroshitsuji.

Vampires are also an extremely common theme in anime series. Vampire series include: Black Blood Brothers, Blood+, Karin, Kurozuka, Nightwalker, Trinity Blood, Shingetsutan Tsukihime, Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase, Vampire Knight, Vampire Knight Guilty and Vampire Princess Miyu. Vampire series are probably among my favorite series, but that's because I've always been a little fascinated by vampire legends. Interestingly, in essentially all these series, the vampire(s) is the good guy. Well, perhaps not in Kurozuka, and Blood+ and the Vampire Knight series have both good vampires and bad vampires.

Sci Fi (science fiction) themes are common and probably more than half the time sci fi series are mecha series. Stellvia, Eureka Seven, The Third, Soukou no Strain, Soukyuu no Fafner and Sousei no Aquarion are all mecha sci fi, along with Macross, Gundam and Eva. There are also a fair number of sci fi series out there that are not mecha series, including Toward the Terra, Avenger, Jyu Oh Sei and Kurau. In general I like the non-mecha better.

Magic is another common thread in anime. And it's easier to list series that do not have magic in them than to list the extensive group that include some form of magic. Magic is extremely common and often makes me wish I had just a fraction of those abilities or powers. ToAru Majutsu no Index is a unique series in that it actually separates extrasensory perception (esp) "skills" from magic, claiming that esp is 'science' and magic is, well, 'magic'. People with esp skills of any sort cannot perform magic. Interesting concept.

Because there are so many similar plots in anime series, it's fun to find ones that are really different. Other "interesting concepts" that I've enjoyed along the way include: 1) Death Note: I hated L's death, but it's the first series I've ever scene where the main character is the bad guy in the series. 2) Moyashimon: a series about micro-organisms. Really. Absolutely unique. 3)Toushokan Sensou: Libraries have their own armies. Okaaaaay. Totally hard to swallow but a great love story and very fun to watch.

These are just a few examples of some of the series that fall into these categories, and I'm always on the lookout for new categories.

Yoko Kanno - the music

Yoko Kanno is far and away my favorite composer of anime music. I have a lot of composers that I like, but she tops the list. Her range of musical creations is just so amazingly broad! Cowboy Bebop was one of the first series I ever watched and she did the music for that series. She also did the music for Wolf's Rain, Escaflowne, Macross Frontier, Macross Plus, Sosei no Aquarion, Ghost in the Shell SAC, Turn a Gundam, Please Save my Earth and Darker Than Black. She also composed opening (OP) and/or ending (ED) theme songs for Record of the Lodoss War, Gasaraki and Cardcaptor Sakura. If you've ever seen any of those series, you can see what a wide range of music types she composes. I'm always amazed by the different sound of her pieces and her ability to change the feel of the anime by her music. She's just pretty awesome.

Another composer I really like is Kenji Kawai. He did the music for Seirei no Moribito (two of my favorite soundtracks), as well as for Sky Crawlers, and at least one soundtrack worth of music for Gundam 00, Higurashi no Naka Koro ni Kai and Otogizoushi. Recently he's done the music for Higashi no Eden.

Kaoru Wada is another favorite. Kaoru composed music for Inuyasha, D.Gray-man, Gilgamesh, Ninja Scroll, Samurai 7 and Casshern Sins.

I'm also especially fond of Joe Hisaishi's music, especially when it accompanies a Miyazaki Hayao flim. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Mononoke Hime, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea were all composed by Hisaishi. His music often has an almost religious feel. I especially like to play it when I'm driving through Utah and Colorado. It just seems to fit.

Beside favorite composers, I have certain soundtracks that I really like and play over and over and over and over. The Seirei no Moribito OSTs (original soundtracks) fall into this group, as do the two Blood+ OSTs, Jyu Oh Sei OST, Loveless OST, Macross Frontier OSTs, Mushishi OSTs, Bakumatsu Kikansetsu OSTs. Quite a lot of them really, but I love series soundtracks. My biggest difficulty is to decide what music to play, because I like them all. I actually end up rotating them so that I play all of them on a fairly even basis. When one of my favorites comes up though, it tends to get played more than once .... or twice.

I have way too much anime OST music to list it all here, or even list more than just my top favorites. I also like the Tsubasa OSTs, the Death Note OSTs, the X OSTs and Code Geass. Noir and Noein OSTs are great. See? Once I get started it's hard to limit the list. Probably I've even left out a favorite along the way.

RideBack - and mecha series

RideBack is a short series (12 eps) that I just finished watching. The story centers around Ogata Rin, a prima ballerina who injures herself and stops dancing. She comes across a club in the college she begins to attend where the members ride "ridebacks", which can best be described as mutant motorcycles. Rin discovers she has a talent for riding them, especially a red one called Fuego. In the course of the 12 eps Rin gets caught up in politics and involved with anti-government terrorists.

Two things I didn't like about the series: there was a token death, and I think I've made myself pretty clear on how I feel about token deaths. Why kill a character just to have a character death in the series? The series wouldn't have suffered if Suzuki had survived it. Secondly, there were a couple episodes filled with teenage angst, it's-all-my-fault. When the series is only 12 eps, don't waste them on angst, is my feeling.

Overall though, I liked the series. On my rating system, it's a maybe-buy-on-DVD (if it's ever licensed). The plot is decent, but what makes the series is the music and the 'ballet' movements Rin achieves with Fuego. The ending theme song (ED) is a great piece of music and the scenes with Rin 'dancing' on Fuego are awesome.

RideBack is a mecha series, but a mecha series done right. Which means the creators don't sacrifice characters or plot for the sake of showing off their mecha creations. There are tons of mecha series out there and I tend to avoid most of them. Examples include all the Gundam and Macross series, and of course the classic Neon Genesis Evangelion. All too often, the series creators are so busy showing off the mechanicals, that everything else tends to fall by the wayside or is just an afterthought. Reideen is a good example of that. I would say that a good quarter of every episode was devoted to watching Reideen's transformations and movements. The most recent Macross, Macross F, and Eureka Seven are good examples of mecha series done right. And of course, the music in Macross F is beyond awesome. Yoko Kanno of course. Her music is always spectacular.

Mecha series tend to have a couple of themes in common besides the showing off of the mechanical creation. One is that almost without fail a young, more or less clueless person has a true talent or skill at operating the most sophisticated and newest mecha-du-jour. So that person gets roped into whatever organization the mecha belongs to, and tends to become the last hope of civilization against some threat. Another common theme is a mid-series loss of ability or desire to pilot the mecha, followed by serious angst. This theme may or may not be present, but it's pretty common.

Besides the ending, things that make me decide whether I like a series or not, include PLOT and music. I like good looking characters too, but it's not an essential. I really liked Samurai Champloo, and I can't believe anyone would call those characters pretty. Of course beautiful series are easier to watch, but if there's no plot to speak of you get tired of watching them pose after awhile. And the back ground music (BGM) can really help or hurt a series. I guess I basically look at the overall package, which is why I can't tell until I've seen the end.

Bleach - 2 synopsis

A while back I found myself trying to explain the plot of Bleach to someone who had never heard of anime before, let alone shinigami. It was an interesting exercise, compounded by the fact that the person was trying not to stare at me as if I had lost my mind. So this blog will be a synopsis of the plot of Bleach, just in case anyone reading this hasn't seen the series.

To start out, Bleach is about shinigami .... a whole society of shinigami. You can't watch anime for long without running across shinigami unless you only watch mecha series. Shinigami are also known as Soul Reapers. They are non-human, supernatural beings who collect people's souls. Depending on the series, they collect the soul either before the person dies (thus causing the death), immediately after the person dies, or at some time after they die. In Bleach, the shinigami not only help the dead person's soul "pass on" to a community called Soul Society, they also protect the souls from souls that have gone bad, called Hollows.

Bleach's story line is centered around an orange-haired high school kid named Kurosaki Ichigo who can see, hear, touch and just generally commune with ghosts (and shinigami), and a small female shinigami named Kuchiki Rukia (wearing the grey school uniform in this picture). Shortly after the two meet, Rukia is injured protecting Ichigo and his family. In order to save everyone she attempts to transfer some of her shinigami powers to Ichigo. Ichigo takes them all and then must act as a shinigami in her place while she recovers. The catch to this plan is that giving a human your powers is a felony in the Soul Society. Other Shinigami come and retrieve Rukia to the Soul Society, and Ichigo is left for dead when he tries to stop them. Rukia is sentenced to be executed for her crime.

Ichigo is helped by a "shop-keeper" named Urahara who supplies goods for the shinigami in the real world. Urahara and his 'employees' get Ichigo back on his feet and teach him to fight. Then Ichigo and his three friends, Inoue Orihime (orange-haired girl), Ishida Uryuu (guy in white) and Yasutora Sado (also known as Chado, tan guy in pic), and Urahara's friend Yoruichi (who wears the form of a cat) enter Soul Society in order to save Rukia. This first arc covers the first 65 or so episodes and is very well done. The Soul Society has it's own pecking order, and most of the action centers around the doings of the 13 Protection Squads and Ichigo-tachi battling their way past these guys. These 13 squads are led by Captains and Vice-Captains, and Bleach manages to balance a huge cast of characters, most of whom have distinct personalities. The cast in Soul Society includes the 13 captains and vice-captains, various other shinigami and various non-shinigami characters.

So this is the plot line until the mid-60s episodes. Then you discover that the execution of Rukia is a small part of a much, much larger plot which is the main story line of the series. This larger plot started back over 100 years previously, and it's the larger plot that is interrupted by filler arcs when the series moves too fast.

The captain of the fifth squad is a shinigami named Aizen Sousuke. Aizen intends to be the supreme ruler of all existence, and it is his complex and convoluted plan which splits the shinigami in Soul Society and turns the society pretty much on its head. Aizen manages to stay multiple steps ahead of everyone in his plotting and maneuvering and that still seems to be the case out to 213 episodes now. When their plotting is uncovered, Aizen and his two traitor captains flee to Hueca Mundo (the world where the Hollows live) and Aizen starts creating a Hollow Army, led by 10 Espada (Hollow with greater than captain-level spiritual power) and multiple Arrancar (also Hollow heavies). Aizen's ultimate intent is to destroy Ichigo's home city in order to get the power necessary to create a key to get to the King of Soul Society to destroy him and become the supreme evil overlord of all creation. <--- my words. In the process of accomplishing this, Aizen-tachi kidnap Orihime and Ichigo-tachi follow him into Hueca Mundo. Four shinigami captains also follow them there. Ichigo-tachi and the 4 captains are then trapped there by Aizen who departs to the real world to destroy the town.

At this point the plot diverges to 100 years ago to show everyone the start of Aizen's plotting, and the reasons behind Urahara's real world existence and the existence of another group (called the Visored) who are about to show up on the good guys' side. It's at this juncture that we get another filler arc. And not just any filler arc, a Don Kannonji filler arc (my LEAST favorite character).

So there you briefly have 212 episodes of Bleach plot. I couldn't really do the plot justice in this amount of time, including all the character interconnections and various battles and interactions. For example, the shinigami captain who arrests Rukia is her brother Kuchiki Byakuya. Or Aizen murders his Vice-captain who adores him. Well she actually ends up living but isn't really sane after that betrayal. But anyone who wants the details should really watch the series. One of these days maybe I'll figure out the eps that are filler arcs and post it here so anyone can just watch main plot line story.