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Post by Darthtabby on May 13, 2013 19:03:13 GMT -7
The idea for this topic grew out of my thoughts on the portrayal of the tsundere lead heroine in the most recent episode of Hataraku Maou-sama. I ended up feeling it was comparable to the portrayal of Kaname in Fumoffu (though now that I've thought about it a bit more I'm not sure its a very good comparison). And that inspired me to create this topic. It seems to me that Kaname's tsun side is very exaggerated in Fumoffu and TSR. This isn't too big a problem in Fumoffu, since its a series of comedic side stories which I don't really consider properly canon (even though they are). It was one of several issues I had with TSR when I originally watched it though. I'd just finished Boku-Tachi's fan translation of Ending Day by Day and I found that Kaname came across as much more tsun in TSR than she did in Ending Day by Day. I don't know how closely Fumoffu follows its source material, but it kind of felt like some of the caricatured version of Kaname in Fumoffu ended up being applied to TSR's portrayal of her character. Then again, while its been a while since I reread the novels Season one was based I'm under the impression it played up Kaname's tsun side as well. At the very least a few of the stand alone episodes had her tsun side coming on a bit strong. Anyhow, it seems to me that anime Kaname's tsun side is exaggerated in comparison to novel Kaname's tsun side, and I wonder if this more extreme tsun side could have contributed to the issues some people have with her character. After all many anime fans haven't read the novels. To be fair, Tessa comes across somewhat better in the novels too. At the risk of being a bit politically incorrect, you could sum up the differences between the anime and novel version of Kaname and Tessa by saying that "novel Kaname is less bitchy, and novel Tessa is less catty." For the record, I like Kaname and I like her in large part because she's a tsundere, not in spite of it. I just happen to prefer it when her tsun side isn't too extreme.
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Post by Misha on May 28, 2013 10:15:08 GMT -7
I didn't really feel her tsun side was exaggerated in TSR. It really kept to the pattern - During the normal day-to-day, she's quite tsun towards Sousuke, since the normal day-to-day involves him blowing things up and threatening random people. It's played up for the comedy, which is why it's always so prominent in those times. It takes a major back seat during the serious moments, the only exception being when she found him on the streets of Hong Kong looking, as she said in the novels, "Like Sagara-kun, back in North Korea, not Sousuke." In that case, she beat him up the way she did because he had already ruined the moment - in her perspective - simply by having completely the wrong expression.
A lot of the extra tsun parts in TSR just plain weren't in the novels. They added a lot in order to flesh out a whole season and to fix the continuity errors that would have happened between it and the first season. Too much was dropped in the first season that directly lead into TSR that they HAD to add a bunch. Then there's Gates, who Gatoh had wanted to put into the novels, but didn't have the time or page space to include, considering EDBD, even with him dropped, spans two novels.
I don't know, me, personally, I find that her tsun is balanced well ^^ I actually don't like most tsundere characters, they get on my nerves. But Kaname's tsun is mostly kept to the comedic moments, and doesn't show up during the serious times. Or, if it does show up in a serious scene, it's because her character has a legitimate fear of intimacy. I think that's why I like her so much -- She's not tsundere just because, she has a real reason for it in her history. And the scene in ZSBM, when looking at an alternate life that could have been lead, she really isn't tsundere in the slightest with her mom still alive, which goes to prove that point even more. She's tsundere to protect herself.
As for the tsun parts in the first season, a lot of the time it got exaggerated were during the side stories that filled in the time between each major arc. It did get played up a little too much in comparison to the novels, at times, but not extraordinarily so. Same thing with Fumoffu, the anime followed the stories pretty closely, I think there were only a few small changes here and there, but for the most part, yeah, comedy moments bring out the violent tsun in her, and that's all that Fumoffu was, really.
I dunno, I guess it never really bothered me because it seems to be rather compartmentalized. If it was just thrown in at random, I'd probably hate it, but it seems to be aware of having its time and place.
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Post by Darthtabby on May 28, 2013 19:28:43 GMT -7
Hmmm, now that I went and reread a bit of the novel version of the reunion scene in Hong Kong it seems it was quite a bit more violent than I remember it being, so the anime may not have exaggerated quite so much. I could still have done without that gravity defying drop kick/face twister thing though. Its may be a funny scene but its also a fairly significant one, so imo it shouldn't be too ridiculously over the top.
I'm curious about what things were cut from Season One that would have caused continuity errors with TSR. I know there was a decent bit of stuff cut from the adaptation of Running One Night Stand (no big loss in my opinion, I consider that one of the weaker serious FMP stories in both novel and anime form), but I'm having trouble thinking of much that was essential to the ODBD/TSR storyline.
When it comes to tsunderes, a lot depends on how its handled for me. A lot of my favorite anime characters are tsunderes, but a fair number of them are relatively mild ones. Then again I love the heroine in Hataraku Maou-Sama, and she's got a waaaay over the top tsun side. But then she's a fantasy hero and the guy she'd super tsun towards is a Demon King she drove from her home world into modern day Tokyo.
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Post by Misha on May 28, 2013 21:34:41 GMT -7
Wraith is one of the big things cut out from season one. Tessa tells Kaname all about Wraith when she's on the TDD, so that episode in TSR where Kaname thinks someone is stalking her was to ease the viewer into the idea of Wraith. They also changed the fact that Dannigan and Nguyen were new to the team and had been hired and placed by Bluno just so Gauron would have help taking over the TDD. If I remember right, it was sort of mentioned at the end of the 3rd book, but not resolved, so in TSR, they came up with a different reason for hunting down Bluno (the tunnel communications).
I wish the first season had kept Eva and Yan, as far as I can tell, there was no reason to cut them except for laziness. The bingo scene I think would have been more amusing with the female pilot one of the top three to possibly win, but I guess they used Liam to make us feel sorry for him before he got killed? Same thing with the lockerroom scene when Kurz punches Sousuke, it was supposed to be Yan, one of their squadmates, but he was cut out of the ONS arc, and cut out here, too. I LIKE Yan, I think he's a great character, if rarely seen, so the fact that he was completely removed from the first season makes me sad. Ono-D, too, no idea why he was cut out from the first season of anime either, when he's supposed to be Sousuke's best friend at Jindai, NOT Shinji...
I dunno, while generally I agree the serious scenes shouldn't have much of Kaname's violence, I kinda felt it was needed in that one. She had to completely break the mood, part of her personal defense again. It was either that or break down then and there, as opposed to later, in the relative safety of the school. It worked best to break the mood for the viewer, too, I feel, but that's just my opinion. I always thought it was a very well done scene with no need for any changes (except kiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssss dammit! XDDD)
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Post by Darthtabby on May 28, 2013 22:53:27 GMT -7
I'm probably a lot more forgiving of changes made in Season One because I saw season one before I read the novels. That being said, most of those issues seem pretty minor to me. A bit awkward maybe, but not insurmountable.
With TSR, I think part of the problem may have been that I'd read Boku-Tachi's translation of ODBD just beforehand and was hearing really, really good things about the show. So I had very high expectations. And then I found I didn't like a lot of the changes, notably Gates, the yuri twincest, and the way the beginning was heavily padded. I think my ideal adaptation of ODBD would have been a shorter OVA production that was closer to the novel and didn't have all the padding.
To be fair, Gates taking Grouseaux's M9 hostage was vastly superior to having him take some random M6 that happened to wander by hostage. And that haircut scene was really well done -I actually seem to remember finding the novel version lacking in comparison when I read it again a while back. (Actually, does it count as rereading if I think I was reading the Tokyopop version of the scene rather than the Boku-tachi translation I'd originally read?)
Oh, an interesting note -both Tokyopop and Boku-tachi's translations indicated that the assassin who tried to kill Kaname emptied his magazine completely and had to reload. But if I remember correctly the translation of Approaching Nick of Time that I read seemed to indicate that his gun jammed (like what happened to the assassin in the anime). Assuming my memory is correct, I wonder if that was a translator who was too influenced by the anime, or whether Gatoh himself made a continuity error. (An in universe explanation could be that Leonard is an unreliable witness.)
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Post by Misha on May 29, 2013 10:20:54 GMT -7
I'm actually less forgiving of the changes in season one, but that probably has more to do with the overall animation of it. The animation isn't that great (I've seen a lot worse, but it really could have been better), the gratuitous panty shots annoy me even more now than they did when I first saw it, and the 4 anime-exclusive filler episodes NEVER felt right to me, long before I ever even heard of the novels, I always hated those ones because of the rampant OOC...
I saw TSR long before I'd heard of the novels, too, and while there's a lot that I wish they kept (the twins being boys rather than fetishized), I'm actually quite forgiving of a lot of the changes. I loved the addition of Gates, it's obvious that Gatoh had a hand in every piece, and I feel they cleaned up what continuity errors that would have been there from season one very well. I kinda like the additions at the beginning of TSR, 'cause it eases anyone who might be new to the series into it, which I think is important between seasons. You might have someone start in the middle, not necessarily knowing it's not the first season, so giving a bit of history the way they did I thought was well handled. I don't think it could have fixed the season one continuity if it was an OVA, not to mention it would have gotten a lot less exposure than the poor fandom already has, lol.
Ah, as for the gun jamming -- That does seem to be a continuity error on Gatoh's part. The B-T translation was done before TSR was even announced, so that translator could not have possibly been influenced by the anime. I checked the Japanese for both DBD and NOT, and in DBD, he runs out of ammo, in NOT, Leonard says the gun jammed. ...We can forgive Gatoh and say that Leonard is just a liar, right? XD I mean, considering he WAS trying to make a point to Sousuke, that Kaname has some kind of 'divine protection,' so I wouldn't put it past him to say it jammed, rather than that the assassin just sucks at counting his shots XDDD
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Post by Darthtabby on May 30, 2013 21:57:44 GMT -7
There are definitely some issues with season one (I'm not too fond of that glut of pantshots in Episode Six either, though I'm also curious to know why that particular episode got a ton and the rest of the series very few), but in general I think it did a lot of things right, and even improved on its source material in some places. Certainly I think it provided future productions with a solid foundation in terms of voice casting, music, and design work. And I actually like the season one art style, particularly the use of color in some parts.
Anyhow, this is probably getting a little off the topic of anime portrayals of Kaname's tsun side though. Although I wonder if we've kind of exhausted that topic. I'd sort of like to start a discussion on what makes a good tsundere character, but maybe that's a topic for another thread.
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