Adapting a manga. From the outside, it looks so simple: you just have to take a page and animate it accordingly. Yet practice has shown that a lot of series have trouble with this. Sometimes entire pages are omitted completely, or the writers think they’re talented and insert some boring inconsequential fillers. A great example of this is Hatenkou Yuugi. Oh, how I wanted to praise this series, but it’s an extreme example of how you can screw up manga-adaptations.
The manga had huge potential, but in the end the only thing that didn’t end up completely botched was the dialogue. It’s deep and detailed, but you can’t really praise the anime staff for it. They only literally copied the dialogue from the manga and inserted it. It’s just a matter of simple copying and pasting, and letting your voice-actors do the rest.
And really, it feels like the creators all went through a major divorce at the same time when making this series, because all other aspects are downright lazy. This series is a string of badly explained plot-twists. Heck, we never know why the third main character ends up travelling with the other two characters in the first place, characters like to god-mode themselves out of any problems and any substance outside of the dialogue has been completely removed.
To top that, the creators apparently found out very late that they only had 10 episodes to work with. The result is a very amusing but downright disastrous final episode that thunders through revelations at a speed of Mach 5 in order to be able to finish on time, and it still remains an ending that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I hope that future directors will use this series as an example of how not to adapt a manga, because it’s such a shame that another story with potential had to be ruined. This series remained enjoyable because of its short length and dialogue, but it could have become so much more.
Word. I cannot agree more with your analysis. Hatenkou Yugi is the classic example of “I wish it fulfilled its initial promise”. A pity it didn’t.
Psgels, I think the pages are omitted, not emitted. 🙂 🙂
The last episode was catasrophically bad, true. One wonders why they tried to make the series in the first place, if they knew from the start it would be only 10 episodes long and as a result the plot will be rather non-sensical.
Briliant dialogues and voiceacting, though, I am not sorry I watched the series at all.
Dude.
You really have to consider starting reading mangas.
Um the last episode feels out of place but well, I think it’s worth watching and the anime is pretty good if you haven’t read the manga before. At least I think it deserves more points if compared to something like Zombie-loan.
Interesting review. I just saw the first half of anime and your review makes me want to read the manga. ^^
Quote: “Heck, we never know why the third main character ends up travelling with the other two characters in the first place”
LOL, I was totally confused when the third guy suddenly popped up(I did not even know he existed). I totally agree with you on that part.
I’m thinking a second season is going to come out someday. I think they left the cliffhanger there at the end for a reason. 😛
The reason why everything seemed so nonsensical was that they mixed up the manga timeline COMPLETLY. Heat actually joined the gang in episode 8/9, which was originally in volume 2… I mean, hell, they did an amazing job at adapting the chapters in a way that this mixing-up remains fairly undiscovered, but the question remains why they couldn’t just stick to the timeline -_-
Judging from episode 10 though, there will definily be a second season – why else should they introduce a major character in the last episode, without explaining him any further?
(Hell, why will it take so long for volume 9 to come out…)
I seriously can’t believe you gave it 70 points. It deserves somewhere around 50-60. I have seen at least 75% of all anime ever made and read their respective mangas. This series, while not complete crap by itself, is a complete mockery of the actual manga.I saw all ten episodes once and will never see it again. However, i must give credit where credit is due. The music was good, the art could have been worse, and the voices, which could have easily been better, are at least bearable unlike the crap story. The one people who seem to like it are the ones who haven’t read manga and somewhat new to anime. My rating: 58/100 for those who have read the manga and 66/100 for those who haven’t.