Fashion is such a strange and varied creature isn’t it? I mean, one persons opinion of a garment can seldom be viewed as normal. While there is most certainly fashion staples, like the humble t-shirt and the every evolving jeans. We are for the most part all very individualistic about our own styles and just how lowly we regard other peoples clothing choices. I myself rip off girls who wear gladiator sandals all the time, but I’m sure my cartoon character t-shirt style wouldn’t sit well with most.
There is however an even more delicate line that needs to be closely scrutinized, especially in our day and age with global insecurity and lack of understanding. I’m talking about religious fashion.
Doesn’t it annoy you when Hollywood gets hold of a fantastic book, but then does a piss-poor job of actually translating the flick across into a motion picture. It vexes me to no end!
The interesting thing is that it’s not only with big budget movies that grand mistakes are made.
I’ve found that in many circumstances anime fails to do a good job of making manga into a worthy transformation of the original. It’s frightening just how often manga plot, characters and even story length is twisted and watered down.
What is strange is that 3 manga that I have commented on in the past have been converted poorly from manga to anime: Berserk, Gantz and Blame.
Berserk is an epic seisen manga that has been running for absolutely forever. Its styled in a very “Dungeons & Dragons” vibe, that has a hard hitting fantasy story base. I absolutely love this manga! The characters are classic, the storyline is heavy and dark and there is no shortage of twists and turns in the plot.
Strangely enough I only got into the manga only after I watched the anime version. Look, the Berserk anime wasn’t horrible, it had its moments and definitely sucked you into the main character Guts’ world. However, when I read the manga I was shocked to find out that they had left out many of the important story segments as well as characters, not to mention that they had chopped the storyline down and left the anime series on a MAJOR cliff hanger, which is never fully resolved. I remember raising my eyebrow and wondering what the hell was going on…the whole series had been epic and then a seriously confusing ending.
I cannot understand why they chose to edit the storyline the way they did with Berserk, it was perfect the way the manga had done it to begin with. Perhaps the biggest problem was taking a manga that was already so HUGE and trying to chop it down and turn it into a series that may never continue. However, now I hear rumours that they will be making a second series, which will show us how the ending “works” and the adventures past the cataclysmic ending. I’m looking forward to seeing the series because I want to know how they merge and continue the story that they over-tweaked.
