This show is crazy. It’s complete purgatory. The creators here take a boy, give him convenient excuses not to die and then proceed to torment him completely, while also making sure that he doesn’t get insane. This is like taking candy from a little kid, only to repeatedly kick it in the groin afterwards.
The convicts are pretty much labelled as criminals and this gives the creators the excuse to pretty much toy with their lives, like a very persistent sadistic cat. This episode was just completely brutal: here the prison simply sends about sixty people on a obstacle course, and how many of them survive it? Five? And heck, if that wasn’t enough, convicts have to gather an ungodly amount of money every three days in order to be able to survive. If you just win one such race, then you’re only safe for three days. How many convicts are there in Deadman Wonderland anyway, for them to be able to kill off everyone so indiscriminately? Based on these rules you’d figure that 95% of the convicts just dies off in just three days.
So yeah, the balls of the storyline is the main reason I’m blogging this series. Sadistic prisons have been done before, but not this crazy. It doesn’t even matter that it doesn’t touch upon prison rape (at least not beyond threats), because there is more than enough wrong with this setting as it is. This kind of openly endorsed bloodbath.
And yet, this is a series in which a fourteen year old kid can knock out a former taekwondo Olympic medallist with a mere plastic ball. That’s one of the two main problems with this series: the creators needed to do something in order to prevent the main character to just die off after five minutes. Even IF he is special, he’s also weak, and yet some of the things he does are just meant to give the writers the excuse to remain on track. This total lack of build-up of suspense of disbelief is one of the two major pitfalls for this series.
The second pitfall? The length. Seriously, this needs a second season to really work.
As for Manglobe, I’m afraid to say that the animation still doesn’t live up to their usual standards. The animation is decent, but nothing like the standards they set for themselves, with a lot of still frames, uninspired character designs (for their standards of course) and the voice acting also could be better. It’s a show that can go anywhere at this point, sand I’m interested in where it’ll end up at.
Rating: * (Good)
To clarify, not all the prisoners have the three day deal, only the ones with death sentences.
Sorry, this comment is also censored as the several scenes of this episode.
It seems that the producers removed some crucial scenes and characters from the manga, which means that the manga plot will be altered to fit 12 episodes and will be probably given an anime-only ending. Oh ,and as a side note, in the manga, that muscle guy was just some random thug, not a famous Olympic medallist.
They made pointless changes to the story that gave more time to Makina and made Ganta seem even lamer, presumably to free up more time for the competition, and then they bailed on animating that part-way anyway, and mucked up the story to boot. I thought that was kind of lame of them, and I don’t even like the manga. If they’re trying to compress the story to fit it into their time budget, then wasting time and money creating a backstory and superfluous conversations for random evil prison stereotype guy is a crap way to do it. It comes off as them trying to save money on voice work.
I don’t recall it perfectly, but my recollection is that in the original story, Ganta actually figures out the pattern for the floor releases and tricks the dumb guy into falling. I don’t recall why exactly, but the guy lives and ends up in solitary confinement for cheating (he was sending his goons to try to kill Ganta, but Shiro protected him).
“The second pitfall? The length. Seriously, this needs a second season to really work.”
This is like the anti-bakuman in terms of adaptation.
They’re basicly taking extreme mesures and cutting out a lot of stuff.So you can expect major rage from manga readers.
Geez, after seeing this episode I started to hate this series. I was so eagerly waiting for the manga to be made into an anime and now I see that they remove essential characters and add unnecessary stuff, and as someone mentioned above, they are likely to prematurely end the show with a crappy ending. But I think I’m used to the fact that some good mangas get bad anime adaptations.
I completely agree with Sage; they took out a LOT of the stuff that actually makes this plot so wonderfully interesting. Ugh. I am disappoint.
Woah, so in the manga he figures out the tile pattern (it was confusing the hell out of me why his didn’t fall) and gets saved from the goon’s goons?
Damn it. What a waste they had to go into the goon’s backstory (a master Tyk Won Do artist who is easily “balled” over by Ginta) instead of explaining these things (or hell, even animating them well).
Ugh. And all this coming from a person who loves Gosick (me).
Cats are also cadets of masochism.
The prisons shows aren’t supposed to be that dangerous. Sadistic director just made the danger level to maximum, that’s why it’s like a slaughtering show.
It’s sad that this episode didn’t add the part with Ganta figuring out the floor pattern and it hadn’t emphasized the importance of the candy that much. I’m not surprised on the disappointment from manga readers especially if they’re a fan of the certain important character who got removed. I admit I’m not a huge fan of her but…
the changes still fit to the main storyline. I’m VERY pleased with majority of the changes. Yay Manglobe xD
Looks like they’re going to leave Azami out of the anime. In the manga, she is the one who explains some of DW’s rules to Ganta and gets picked on by Kazumasa in the locker room scene, which causes Ganta to snap right then rather than during the Dog Race.
She also plays an important role in the plot later on, so this probably means they’re going for an anime original ending. It’s disappointing, but maybe it’ll turn out to be good.
Kazumasa is just a regular thug rather than an olympic medallist in the manga, and Ganta tricks him into falling during the Dog Race after figuring out the pattern of falling tiles, which is much more believable.
It’s weird, I like the manga alot but even I am not TOO bothered by the changes being made. The thing about DW is that its concepts are great, so you can still have something on par with the manga even if lots of plot elements get changed. It’s nice to see that I may not actually know what happens next.
That being said, the manner of adaptation is questionable. Taking out important world-building just to develop the backstory of an insignificant side characters is the sort of attitude that can derail an adaptation, and in the process lose important features of the manga, whether this is intentional or not. Essentially you have an anime with a solid plot that can then become messed up in the hands of anime writers, and it just feels like a waste then. I have faith so far, but I hope the changes end at this extent.
The OP is great, though. Definitely my favourite of the season.
Azami…left out of the anime. . .
shes a VERY important part of the plot later on, that leads towards the Climax of the series…
Well at least I know I don’t need to waste my time watching this, I know its going to be crap.
DROPPED
it’s the second episode, and everybody said that a certain important character is out, they can change her first appearing, and i don’t mind at all, actually i barely understood her importance in the story until the climax point in the manga.
Well i didnt see her in the op.