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branchandroot) wrote2010-05-16 07:52 pm
branchandroot) wrote2010-05-16 07:52 pm
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Yami no Matsuei, anime versus manga
So, I was re-reading and re-watching the first arc of Yami no Matsuei, and I have to say the differences are interesting.
For one thing, the manga actually has a totally different introduction: the pilot issue before the first arc. That introduces Tsuzuki in a considerably more serious and responsible light than the anime does. It doesn't play up his sweets-craving nearly as much, and it's made clear that it isn't just that no one wants to partner with a slacker like Tsuzuki--he's also the training wheels and counselor of the division, and all the new or unsteady transfers get sent to him.
It's also made clear that Tsuzuki, not Hisoka, is the one who's most willing to bend rules, to break into locked archives, to save people who should be dying, even if this involves lying through his teeth. And the division chief knows this good and well and condones it. Hisoka himself is presented in a businesslike and competent light from the start. The manga also did without the silly maneuvering the anime had to go through to make him drink one glass of alcohol by accident; the original drinking contest makes his resultant passing out and hangover far more reasonable.
The things that most caught my attention, though, were the differences in Muraki, and Hisoka in relation to him. The anime implies very strongly, right from the start, that a) Muraki wants to seduce Tsuzuki and b) Muraki raped Hisoka. The manga, by contrast, does not have any seduce-Tsuzuki moments in the first arc and states particularly that Muraki chose to use a wasting curse on Hisoka instead of "merely" killing him right then and raping him to make it look like a garden variety sex crime.
I actually have to wonder whether Muraki was intended to be a one-time-appearance villain. His madness is certainly presented in a straightforward fashion, far more simply than the eventual concatenation of his obsessions becomes; he is simply a doctor who despairs in the face of death and cracks. The mechanism by which he becomes able to absorb the spiritual energy and abilities of those he kills is never addressed, and there are no suggestions of the past he eventually acquires or that Hisoka has any particular fixation on his killer. Indeed, the manga presents Hisoka as already knowing he was murdered and fairly calm about knowing the one who did it.
All of which simply reinforces what I've always thought about the anime, which is that it's pretty and colorful, and the voices are nice, but it really isn't a patch on the manga.
For one thing, the manga actually has a totally different introduction: the pilot issue before the first arc. That introduces Tsuzuki in a considerably more serious and responsible light than the anime does. It doesn't play up his sweets-craving nearly as much, and it's made clear that it isn't just that no one wants to partner with a slacker like Tsuzuki--he's also the training wheels and counselor of the division, and all the new or unsteady transfers get sent to him.
It's also made clear that Tsuzuki, not Hisoka, is the one who's most willing to bend rules, to break into locked archives, to save people who should be dying, even if this involves lying through his teeth. And the division chief knows this good and well and condones it. Hisoka himself is presented in a businesslike and competent light from the start. The manga also did without the silly maneuvering the anime had to go through to make him drink one glass of alcohol by accident; the original drinking contest makes his resultant passing out and hangover far more reasonable.
The things that most caught my attention, though, were the differences in Muraki, and Hisoka in relation to him. The anime implies very strongly, right from the start, that a) Muraki wants to seduce Tsuzuki and b) Muraki raped Hisoka. The manga, by contrast, does not have any seduce-Tsuzuki moments in the first arc and states particularly that Muraki chose to use a wasting curse on Hisoka instead of "merely" killing him right then and raping him to make it look like a garden variety sex crime.
I actually have to wonder whether Muraki was intended to be a one-time-appearance villain. His madness is certainly presented in a straightforward fashion, far more simply than the eventual concatenation of his obsessions becomes; he is simply a doctor who despairs in the face of death and cracks. The mechanism by which he becomes able to absorb the spiritual energy and abilities of those he kills is never addressed, and there are no suggestions of the past he eventually acquires or that Hisoka has any particular fixation on his killer. Indeed, the manga presents Hisoka as already knowing he was murdered and fairly calm about knowing the one who did it.
All of which simply reinforces what I've always thought about the anime, which is that it's pretty and colorful, and the voices are nice, but it really isn't a patch on the manga.
no subject
I suspect that this approach is behind a lot of what makes the series interesting. She pretty clearly was making things up as she went along, and without a lot of sense that what she'd already done should constrain what she was going to do next. So she comes up with stuff that never gets fleshed out, that could mean a dozen different things, and then she forgets all about it and goes flying off in a completely different direction. It makes for a big, big universe, and in that sense I think it's actually more realistic than a tidier and less internally incoherent backdrop and storyline would be: after all, the real world is too big and too weird for us ever to fully wrap our minds around it.
no subject
It makes for a big, big universe, and in that sense I think it's actually more realistic than a tidier and less internally incoherent backdrop and storyline would be: after all, the real world is too big and too weird for us ever to fully wrap our minds around it.
It also makes writing fanfiction in her universe all the more interesting. *g*