Five Plus Points, Five Negative Points -- 9-10/10's

Aion

Time-Traveller
(My topic, C&Ped from MAL.)

This is a remixed version of a thread that was recently posted over in the manga section; a forum that's roughly as active as a graveyard.

Since I'm fully aware that most MAL users cannot comprehend the obvious, your mission is this: you must list five good AND BAD points about a title you've awarded a 9-10/10 score to. You can pick any title(s) you wish... providing you've given it a 9-10/10 score.

Simples, yes? With the above information, you have no excuse for failing to understand what you're supposed to be doing in my topic, and I'll point and laugh at you (virtually, of course) if you still require my expert guidance.

Also, there's one other, fairly minor thing that needs to be said: DON'T ******* TYPE A FEW WORDS AND LEAVE IT AT THAT. AT LEAST TYPE OUT A FULL, UNDERSTANDABLE SENTENCE FOR EACH POINT BEFORE POSTING, YOU (quite possibly) ILLITERATE ****!!!!!

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Now, with the pleasantries out of the way, I'll go first; leading by example:

Gankutsuou:

+1: It looks purdy. No, really - it looks sexy. The CG effect visible on the clothes and backgrounds looks wonderful... once your eyes adjust to seeing something unique. And the robot duels also looked rather sexy.

+2: It's based on one of the best, most in-depth novels of all time; one which has been stolen from time and time again. And, even though the anime is neither a full or faithful adaptation, it's still amazing in its own way; Gonzo having done a fantastic job.

+3: In spite of the Edmond Dantes in Gankutsuou only being half the character he was in the novel, his charisma still shined through. It was easy to see why Albert was so fascinated with him.

+4: The first half or so of the story is mostly build-up, and that meant I didn't 10/10 it straight away. But, once everything started to fall into place, the build-up made what happened pretty ******* amazing to sit through.

+5: Some of the tracks on the soundtrack are remixed classical pieces. That alone is worthy of a plus point... assuming the the small matter of track 18 being one of the most beautiful pieces of music in existence on its own isn't viewed as being enough, that is.


-1: In order for the story to be re-worked with a more mysterious edge, Albert was made into the lead in Gankutsuou. He was also given the IQ of a dog; constantly failing to see the obvious. He annoyed me.

-2: Due to time constraints, Dantes' past - which was covered with the first 300 pages of the novel - got crammed into a flashback that only lasted a few minutes. The prison section of the novel is probably my favourite part and, though the anime version of events wasn't bad, the lack of content did take away from Gankutsuou.

-3: Dantes' good side wasn't shown in Gankutsuou. Instead, only his 'evil' actions got time; changing him from being one of the best developed characters ever into being just another cool villain. It didn't bother me until I read the novel after the anime, but the difference between the two versions of Dantes is HUGE.

-4: Instead of Eugenie being a lesbian like in the novel, she got turned straight by Albert. And there was a cheesy as hell wedding rescue bit added in - it probably being the worst part of Gankutsuou.

-5: Though the anime only path Gonzo went on after episode 18 turned out to be quite good, the ending sucked as much as pretty much every other anime ending. Plot no justu was required for Albert to save Dantes' soul, and the final episode was a fairly dull epilogue.

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Death Note:

+1: Anime adaptations are inferior to the manga they're based on, nine times out of ten. Everyone and their cat knows this. But Death Note is different from the norm. Rather than it being a rushed, poorly executed attempt at cashing in on a highly rated manga, Madhouse actually attempted to fix the numerous flaws of the mostly disappointing second half of the story by fast-forwarding through it, whilst still retaining all the necessary information. By doing this, as well as being faithful to the best of Death Note - covering the first half of the story with around 25 episodes - they made the anime much more enjoyable than the manga, overall.

+2: Death Note was not made on the cheap. If the art consistency, artistic colour usage, 'camera angles' and all the rest weren't enough to tell you this, then the effort put into Light and L's little punching/kicking contest during the most poor section of the anime should've made everything clear. I mean, Madhouse even made eating a packet of sodding crisps epic through a combination of directing and over the top music - you can't say that about any other title!

+3: Mamoru put in a PERFECT performance as Yagami Light. I'd heard his voice before, it not remaining in my memory, but he truly became the character in the case of Light. In episode 36, my cheeks were tingling simply because of how excited Light sounded, and how well it came across that he was struggling to contain his laughter. And the 'evil laughter' in episode 37 was just AMAZING - it really did sound like Light was letting out all his rage and the feelings he'd worked so hard to hold within over the duration of the story.

+4: The soundtrack is, by some distance, my favourite soundtrack. When Death Note was still airing, way back when, I was actually more excited by each of the three soundtracks becoming available to download than I was by the release of the latest episodes. Some people have moaned to me about the chanting and whatnot being over the top, but I thought it made the exciting bits FAR more thrilling. Many months after finishing Death Note, I STILL listened to the soundtrack on a regular basis, and even now I still listen to some of the tracks when I'm bored.

+5: When being negative about Death Note, a number of people have mentioned that it lacks character development; that the characters start and end the same. But what these people don't realize is that one of Death Note's strongest points is that there weren't any flashbacks explaining why Light was the way he was and did what he did. Light, quite simply, was a guy with more smarts than the vast majority of people and an equal amount of selfishness. He viewed himself as superior to the rest, was bored with everyday life and didn't let the rights and wrongs of society hold him back - that's all. There are many people similar to Light around, and many people who are selfish. A traumatic childhood (which would've taken away from his character, rather than adding anything) isn't a requirement for being a self-absorbed git. Many people can relate to/understand Light BECAUSE there was no attempt to make him into a sympathetic character.


-1: Even though Madhouse improved the last half of the story considerably by rushing through it, it still wasn't on the same level as the first half. I can't ignore the fact that L was replaced by a soulless, younger version of himself. The introduction of Takeda and Mikami did make me like the last half a lot more, but Near never went away.

-2: Madhouse could remove some of the content, but they weren't willing to go as far as to re-write the story in order to cover for the failings of the author, and that left the second half with some bothersome holes. The first issue I have is the way Mello went from 'I'LL WIN NO MATTER WHAT; EVEN IF IT MEANS KILLING OTHERS!' to 'I'M GOING TO DO SOMETHING TOTALLY POINTLESS, GOING AGAINST MY CHARACTER BY DOING SO, IN ORDER TO UNINTENTIONALLY HELP NEAR AND GET OUT OF THE WAY!' After the whole mafia business, the author clearly had no clue what to do with Mello, and he ended up getting discarded as a plot device. Not good writing.

-3: There was a lot of Death Note swapping towards the end, which resulted in Mikami going to the bank to get the 'real' Death Note in order to assist his God. What you have to ask yourself is this: instead of risking getting the full Death Note, why didn't Light instruct his servant to keep a piece of the Death Note himself? If he had, then the Death Note swapping fuckery wouldn't have mattered. The author was really struggling to come up with a way for the story to end how it ended, I guess...

-4: Madhouse did a wonderful job. Seriously. Aside from the bizarre short diner scene at the end of one of the earlier episodes and some foot rubbing business, it was as close as I'll ever to get to seeing a perfect adaptation... BUT, right at the end, Madhouse ****** up by having Mikami *somehow* do something very gory with a pen and Light go on some kind of marathon in an attempt to make him into more of a sympathetic character. WHY!? By doing so, they removed the last twist of the story and made Ryuk seem like a nice guy... when he was supposed to look like evil personified. The people in charge of the Death Note anime MUST have been Light fangirls, and they probably also stroked themselves whilst reading LightxL porn.

-5: I did not like the episode where Matsuda played the part of Solid Snake, or the episodes around it. At all. I highlighted the second half of the story as being a negative, but I only ever considering dropping Death Note when Matsuda got his own little comedy episode. At the time, Light had become one with his inner woman, and Death Note just wasn't interesting me. I'm so glad the series returned to being epic shortly afterwards!
 
Pretty much agree with everything you said about Death Note, though I have to add to your pluses that I though the dub was also one of the best around. I'm not going to get into a subsvdubs war because those never end well, I just go with whichever I prefer, which tends to be subs, but i really liked the DN dub, especially Brian Drummond's Ryuk.

Ok for my picks...

Trigun

+1 Vash. He's just a great character, a gun-toting pacifist who is at once a genius and completely mad.

+2 Deviations from the manga. Trigun is one of the cases where I think deviating from the original source works a lot better. The manga got progressively more stupid and hard to take with each passing chapter, the difference in Wolfwood's origin being especially jarring, but the anime manages to make a very compelling stroy whilst retaining the elements that originally made the manga so successful.

+3 The insurance girls. Another anime-manga difference, they show up a lot more in the anime and provide great companions for Vash, Milly being slightly dim and Meryl being the "straight-man". Their relationship with Vash is also developed much more conclusively than in the manga, where it ends on a rather stupid note.

+4 Wolfwoods Death, it was handled in spectacular fashion and in a way that made it indirectly Vash's fault, again as opposed to the manga. In doing so it creates a great burden for Vash to bear over the next few episodes, not only because it was indirectly his fault for not being there, but because his ideology was to blame. If his no kill policy hadn't begun to affect Wolfwood, he wouldn't have died, but also if Vash had killed Caine the Longshot,he would have been able to go and help Wolfwood faster.

5+ Legato and the Gung ho guns. Once again a superior anime version. The GHGs are great in vareity and all worthy foes, except E.G. Mine. Legato is also a fantastic villain, a cold, calculating servant of Knives. His power is that of telekinesis, unlike in the manga, where it's explained as being thousands of threads which he uses to control people, which is frankly retarded. Admittedly TK being due to his having Vash's arm isn't much better but it's less inherently stupid. The GHGs also have no real backstory in the anime, which makes them less relatable. On the one hand having sympathetic villains can be good, in Trigun it only served to make them less threatening, and often they's undergo a heel-face-turn before death. Sometimes you just want villains to be villains.

-1 Towards the end Vash's "I will absolutely not kill anyone" gets pretty tiring, you kind of want to just punch him by the very last few, but at least it's character consistency.

-2 Some of the episodes can be a little hit-and-miss. Early on there are a lot of "character study" type stories, some of which make for good entertainment, some don't. The little plot of land where plants still grow being one of them. It wasn't badly done, just wasn't particularly enjoyable.

-3 Knives, despite being THE main villain behind everything, pretty much doesn't do anything and isn't even seen for most of the show, popping up in only a few episodes, leaving Legato to be the main villain of the piece.

-4 Uses flashbacks and stock footage a little too often for my liking. Indeed the last episode features a great deal of recapping and I can't count the number of times that scene where Knives blows off Vash's arm appears.

-5 The whole plant thing is never really explained properly, as it is in the manga. However, since this led the manga way off the rails this could be a good thing. All the same I feel that how exactly plants were created is something that should've come up, I mean they are people essentially, that just happen to have lots of weird powers, they generate electricity somehow but it's never really cleared up
 
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Most smart people tend to agree with me. So, from this point onwards, I consider you smart. Aren't you happier with yourself now?

I actually liked the little I heard of the DN dub. I watched 1-8 dubbed on DVD, and I liked all but one of the voices. L, Ryuk and Naomi's voices were all nailed by the English peeps. The only thing that bothered me, and made me want to switch over to the JP track, was Light sounding like a fairly average American fella. His English voice wasn't bad, but Mamoru became Light to such an extent that it's almost impossible for someone else to compare, and that's a big problem since Light has all the major lines.
 
That-Bastard-Bad-Guy-Aion said:
Most smart people tend to agree with me. So, from this point onwards, I consider you smart. Aren't you happier with yourself now?

I actually liked the little I heard of the DN dub. I watched 1-8 dubbed on DVD, and I liked all but one of the voices. L, Ryuk and Naomi's voices were all nailed by the English peeps. The only thing that bothered me, and made me want to switch over to the JP track, was Light sounding like a fairly average American fella. His English voice wasn't bad, but Mamoru became Light to such an extent that it's almost impossible for someone else to compare, and that's a big problem since Light has all the major lines.

I know precisely what you mean, but for some reason I just dug Brad Swaile as Light. I think it's because his voice evoked that kind of perfect hnour student voice which Light uses as his outward appearance and yet still had a fevered slightly unhinged edge when things didn't go his way. But Mamoru's laugh is ridiculously awesome. Swaile's squeaks rather lamely at the start (of his final laugh anyways, his previous laughs were pretty good)
 
137 views... and no other posters besides myself and the bird-person. This is why I don't bother taking this forum seriously - there are too few people with a high enough level to warrant me being serious. Instead, I save myself for the harem I'm going to form on MAL.

Bird-person: My memory is hazy, to be perfectly honest, but I don't recollect disliking American Light's voice. It was more a case of his voice just not having the same range as Mamoru's and, possibly simply because he was limited by not sounding Japanese, not having the 'IT' factor that made Light's Japanese voice sound special to my ears.

This Amazon review might reveal more about what I thought about the dub, back when I checked out the first volume:

After seeing that Play had dropped volume 1 back down to £4.99, I couldn't resist ripping the seal off my copy (which I also paid £4.99 for) and going on a mini-marathon. I'm currently slooooowly re-reading the manga, so I'm in 'Death Note mode' at the minute.

The anime was as amazing as ever. I just sat through all the episodes on the first two DVDs, also watching all the extras, and I never once felt like I was forcing myself to watch old material. The fact that I can re-read and re-watch Death Note again and again without feeling bored says a lot about the quality, especially when you consider how much dialogue Death Note has. It truly is an all time classic, one that should be talked about in 100's of years like The Count of Monte Cristo.

In order to make the experience a little different, I watched my DVDs with the American dub instead of watching it in Japanese. It has a very high quality dub, one of the most impressive dubs I've heard in fact. L's voice actor nails the role, keeping his voice emotionless yet not making the character come across as inhuman. Naomi Misora, a character who doesn't have much screen time but has a lot of fan love, also had a voice actress who was able to fit the sombre role to perfection. Nearly every other performance was also very good, Ryuk's voice actor being able to match the Japanese voice actor when it comes to creepy laughter.

...However, there was one problem with a performance, and it was one I expected would be an issue before watching - Light's voice actor. He didn't do a bad job but his voice just didn't seem fitting for the self proclaimed "God of the new world" known as Light Yagami. He sounded like no more than an above average American. And, like with the performance of JYB as Lelouch in Code Geass, Light's English voice actor was unable to change his voice from caring and kind to harsh and evil, instead keeping his voice at the same level throughout. I feel the character designer in one of the extras summed it up when he spoke of how hard it was for him to draw Light because there's "Black Light" and "White Light" in the manga. To be fair to the American voice actor, he never had much of a chance when Mamoru had already put in one of the best voice acting performances ever in the Japanese version.

The video quality is also fantastic. My TV isn't good enough for me to say the transfer is flawless but it certainly matches up to the DVD-rips I have sitting on my hard-drive. There were no obvious video issues at all, with even the subtitles matching up to the Japanese dialogue and not just being dubtitles.

As for the extras, I'm very impressed what Manga are selling for so cheap. There's an interview with the English voice actors of Light and L, as well as interviews with the director and character designer. There was also an insightful and amusing episode 7 commentary session where Naomi Misora's English voice actress spoke her mind and showed her colourful personality. The best of the bunch was the interview with the director and character designer - They both revealed that they were fans of the manga before working on the anime, and that explained why so much effort had been put in to being faithful to the source material AND making improvements where possible. It would've been nice if the extras had been longer but I'm not complaining when extras are so hard to find on anime DVDs.

I now find myself very tempted to spend £8.99 on volume 2, even though I already know every detail of the story. I think I'll wait until volume 3 drops to £8.99 and get them together so that I'll be able to marathon the first part of the Death Note story in one sitting. While I think many Death Note fans will be annoyed by Manga switching to single disc releases from volume 4 onwards, I strongly recommend volumes 1-3 and can find no real negative that should stop people buying them.
 
I hate having to follow a structure, especially when writing something for fun, hence my decision to not even attempt to write something.
 
Jayme said:
I hate having to follow a structure, especially when writing something for fun, hence my decision to not even attempt to write something.
Your original post was too long for me to read at the office. migth try again later.
 
Look, this is quite simple. Light is not Light without Mamoru. Because Mamoru is Light. Light with another voice actor is simply referred to as Dave. My view on why this is so:

What sold me on this escapist journey was not the cliffhangers or the sumptuous animation, but Mamoru Miyano's incredible incarnation as Light. He evokes just the right balance of charisma and pure evil. Take this line for instance: 'Then, behind the fact that deserving criminals are dying of heart attacks, I'll gradually start killing off people who cause problems for innocent people, through illness and accidental death... Then I'll have created a world filled with those I've judged to be kind and hardworking.' In the universe of crackpots, this speech is nothing remarkable. However, when Light says it, I start to believe that taking the world on this collision course to hell would be the most invigorating accident I've had since Jackass. His performance is infectiously gleeful, as though he really had started to go mad in the recording booth and the tape just happened to catch him talking. When Light cackled, I cackled too; when he became angry, I froze. Even if Light is the bad guy, Miyano makes him so convincing, it's difficult not to root for him.
 
Now, to actually contribute something relevant:

Hajime no Ippo - rated 9/10.

1) It's characters will rock your world. I do not just mean you will like them, but that they evoke intense loyalty and empathy. I rarely knew who to root for. They are, in all sense of the word, AWESOME.

2) It features some of the best action/fights I've seen anywhere. Not necessarily because the animation is great (it's okay), but because the way they are presented will make you throw yourself out of your chair, screaming like a loon as though you could make any difference to how they progress. To quote from my review: All fights come complete with spectacular effects - rings of smoke, torrents of wind, claustrophobic closeups - to grab the senses by the scruff and haul them through a powerfully kinetic experience. The action is so absorbing that when a rib cracks, viewers are likely to feel it.

3) The opening and ending themes rock. Check out 'Tumbling Dice', which I had to listen to three or four times on repeat every episode.

4) The plot is 76 episodes of filler-free, action-packed glory. This is the best shounen show I have yet watched bar none. Think Kyoto Ark of Kenshin but for 76 episodes. Yes, you heard me.

5) It has hilarious penis and wet towel jokes that parody the inherent 'gayness' of boxing.

Flaws: (I'm struggling here, thus resorting to the tried and tested nitpicking device)

1) The animation is not top-notch for its era (2000-2002) but you won't notice because, when the fights get going, the presentation of the moves and just... God! Maybe I should mention the character design for Ippo is ugly.

2) It sticks to the traditional sports anime narrative structure (underdog makes it big via series of staged contests).

3) There are no meaningful female characters. And I only remember three minor ones in the entire show.

4) At 75 episodes, it's too short.

5) Er...
 
HUNTERxHUNTER
Rated: 9/10

+1: Director Furuhashi pulls no punches in injecting his own flavour into this anime adaptation: he takes the characters, fearlessly, and pushes them in directions that threaten to subvert expectations set by the manga--yet he pulls this off with remarkable success. In putting his own spin on proceedings, Furuhashi realises Togashi's world with remarkable proficiency, breathing into it a near-peerless style of direction in the domain of Shonen Jump anime adaptations.

+2: The art-style is, doubtless, inconsistent in the anime's early stages--but it's never static, nor is it uninspired or bland. Furuhashi weaves into Togashi's framework some impressive visual cues--a bleeding moon being a favourite--and the use of cels, themselves dark, casts an eerie shadow over the events transpiring in the show. An apt simulacrum for a maturely realised story.

+3: The soundtrack is typical enough of the composer, but it is magnificently diverse, exploring the Hunter world as confidently as Furuhashi himself. Where some composers yield soundtracks too afraid to take a spin on a manga artist's work, HUNTERxHUNTER possesses a score that enthusiastically sounds out the deepest corners and nuances of Togashi's comic. It is, at times, typical of a childish jaunt--but it's when these frivolous pieces are played off against more sinister compositions that HUNTERxHUNTER makes subtle nods to its ambiguous and compelling nature.

+4: HUNTERxHUNTER has filler, but it is some of the most expertly executed filler ever produced. As suggested in +1, Furuhashi does not adhere so stringently to the source material so as to to fear disrupting it: Kurapika's effort at murder is shown here to have devastating psychological repercussions, and these are shown with haunting detail; he becomes physically gaunt, later coming to face with the ghosts of those he has felled. For a character whose resolution seemed steadfast, exhibiting this fragile dimension to his character--something the manga only perhaps slightly hinted at--took a lot of nerve, yet the director pulled it off with aplomb.

+5: Unfamiliar casting choices. HUNTERxHUNTER has its renowned actors and actresses--few today will be hard pushed to deny they recognise Gon's voice actress of NARUTO fame, and Yuki Kaida will be familiar to Prince of Tennis fanatics--but some voices are unusual, and haven't made their presence quite so pronounced in other works. Killua's voice becomes Killua's voice precisely because so few will be familiar with it from elsewhere. The voice-cast become the voice-cast of HUNTERxHUNTER--and you will grow to love them as that very cast, not because of recollections of their previous work.

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-1: The sound effects are painfully dire, and wouldn't be out of place in the first Smash Bros. game.

-2: The execution of the Greed Island arc. Shifting directors perhaps exacerbated the problem; they began to exercise more restraint, and felt more inclined to showcase the less sinister dimensions of Togashi's world. Colours become vibrant to the point where HUNTERxHUNTER looks decidedly average and unimpressive; it becomes comparable to most other Shonen Jump adaptations.

-3: Weakening source material has consequences on just how good the anime adaptation can be. The Greed Island arc shows off some disastrous character designs and some dubious plot-points.

-4: While HUNTERxHUNTER is dark, the anime adaptation does neuter some of the manga content--and some of this neutering is not altogether unnoticeable. Some efforts to skip around death and dismemberment are employed early on and later in Greed Island--some may even arouse suspicions in those unfamiliar with the manga.

-5: The series had to employ OVAs to finish--and while this isn't inherently a fault of the anime, the consequence was the ability of the director to condense the story into a neat number of episodes. The first OVA--while strongly directed--didn't feel the need to take the time to flesh out Togashi's original work in the same way Furuhashi did, and the product is, therefore, somewhat disappointingly close to the manga--though some stylistic furnishings still exist.
 
Aion it could just be 'cause people find it hard to find negative points about their top-rated titles. I'm not sure I can think of much bad to say about "Perfect Blue" that would constitute something I personally have a problem with, I'd just be stating why I think others might not like it.
 
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