Saturday, December 24, 2016

12 Days of Anime: Changing Thoughts on Adaptations

Hi y'all, sorry that these posts have gotten away from me so badly. As usual I've been busier than I'd like in the rest of my life and it's taken a toll on my blogging time. Honestly it's taken a toll on everything this year, especially my manga-reading and anime-watching free time. I've gotten pickier than ever about what I spend my time watching and reading and it's really made me reconsider how I feel about adaptations of works, both those that I've already seen and those I haven't.


Two titles in particular stick out to me. One is Orange, when I was struggling for time over the summer it was natural to put Orange on the shelf since I had already read most of the manga and therefore I'd be spending my time just retreading old ground (especially since I heard things about the production fraying at the edges). But when the summer and Orange ended I was left with a conundrum, should I continue the anime at all, should I only read the manga instead, and if I do both which should I do first? Thankfully both the anime and manga were well known enough that I could find folks who were familiar with both and I was able to get my answer, do the manga first and then the anime. 

Sometimes I don't have that much luck however. Also during the summer season I was casually following the reviews for Tales of Zestiria since hey it looked cute and we all know that's an admitted weakness of mine. All of the reviewers I followed however admitted that they hadn't played the original game so while they were enjoying the show, and it sounded like the show was making a few changes from the game (some good and some whose implications weren't quite clear in this first cour according to commenters), no one can tell me yet if I should watch the show instead of playing the game or try to play the game someday. I don't have much time for video games (they're even longer than anime!) so in this case yeah I really want to know if this is a one-or-the-other situation. Hopefully once the second cour wraps up in March then some fans will step out of the woodwork and either praise or decry the show and it's changes but until then I'll just keep an eye on those reviews I suppose.