Posted by OP Sequence
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OP: 「Wonder Wars」 by Fujiwara Yuka feat. Area 11
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「敵は女子高生にお任せあれ！」 (Teki wa Mesukousei ni o Makase Are!)
“High School Girl Fights the Enemy!”
Suddenly, one of the webcomics I read has a 5-episode anime short series. Surprise!
Background
To me, Wonder Momo is a webcomic on ShiftyLook, a subsidiary of Namco Bandai I became aware of when The Adventures of Dr. McNinja creator Christopher Hastings began working on Galga for them. While I was primarily there for Hastings’ writing – seriously, if you don’t read Dr. McNinja you’re doing yourself a disservice, it’s amazing and hilarious to the first degree! – something about Wonder Momo caught my eye. The art, I think – Omar Dogan is a pretty talented guy, and it shows in both the comic and the anime. I read a lot of webcomics, and I fantasize about some of them being turned into anime – seriously, the day Dr. McNinja or Order of the Stick became animated is the day I lose my friggin’ mind – so imagine my surprise when one did!
The Details
Wonder Momo follows the story of Kanda Momoko (Fujiwara Yuka), a slightly ditzy high school girl who wants to become an idol. The daughter of the original Wonder Momo, she is one day given the Wonder Momo power orb by alien freedom fighter Glooder (Imaruoka Atsushi) and transforms into the superhero idol Wonder Momo in time to fight the invading Waru.
The Anime
The anime suffers from a simplification of the characters and plot. In the original webcomic Momoko was clumsy, yes, but she never felt this ditzy – she’d trip or screw up, but she didn’t seem as silly and vapid as anime-Momoko does. The plot is also put on the fast track, likely because they want to get some plot and character introductions in despite only having five 5-minute episodes to work with. That’s to be expected, but there were also pacing problems – some of what I said in the previous section wasn’t mentioned in the episode, such as anything about Glooder, and only comes from my knowledge of the source. All well and good, you don’t have to explain everything up front, but this smacked of “We’re not going to bother explaining” rather than “We’ll get to the alien dude in a minute, there’s a fight happening!”. Not particularly adroit storytelling, in other works. The seiyuu are all newbies too, which is fine except for how flat and uninspired Fujiwara Yuka’s performance as Momoko is. The animation is pretty decent though.
The Takeaway
It was a pleasant little surprise to see this animated, if only because the idea of one of the webcomics I read getting animated is so novel. In the end, the anime does leave something to be desired – they captured the art style of the comic without taking the essential spirit of its writing that made it interesting to read – but at five minutes and episode and only five episodes long, it’s not like it’s a large time commitment if you see something you like. So far I would suggest the webcomic over the anime shorts though. As is often the case, the source is a lot better.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go reread 8-bit Theater while I wait for new Misfile, Sinfest, and Order of the Stick strips to be released. Oh, and No Need For Bushido, and Manly Guys Doing Manly Things, and…
tl;dr: @StiltsOutLoud – Wait, the webcomic I’ve been reading is suddenly getting five anime shorts? Mind blown! #wondermomo
Random thoughts:
- Just kidding. I’ll go blog Mikakunin de Shinkoukei now. Onwards!
Check out my blog about storytelling and the fantasy novel I’m writing at stiltsoutloud.com. The last four posts: Unexpected directions, The market has spoken, I can quit anytime, so I don’t have to, and Admiration & those who try. My current combo counter: 26 days long.
ED Sequence
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ED: 「Picogram」 by Fujiwara Yuka & Komatsu Misaki feat. Tommy Pedrini
Someone mentioned 8-bit Theater? Gah, I miss that sprite comic, it was awesome! Have you read Atomic Robo by any chance?
Now regarding the episode… It wasn’t bad, but man, Momo’s voice is seriously grating. (might just be me though)
Atomic Robo is amazing! I love that series so much. It’s one of the few I keep rereading (and it’s the only American comic I actually follow/buy). Clevinger and Wegener are such a great team!
I hope to be able to write that well someday. Or rather, I intend to make sure of it >:D
Onwards-desu~!
They made a parody mahou shoujo anime of a webcomic that was parodying mahou shoujo anime.
RECURSION LOOOOOOP!
I suppose this could have been based off the original game that the webcomic claimed to be based off of instead, but that’s not as much fun to think about. :p
The plot is definitely based off the webcomic – it said as much in the opening credits. So it’s an anime based on a webcomic based on a game. Probably why I can’t like this as much as comics like Order of the Stick or Dr. McNinja…it’s three steps removed from truly original!
I will shift perspective a bit for now. I have absolutely no idea what you wrote in the first paragraph. I know no source of this, I don’t know who Omar Dogan is, I also don’t know why the hell Namco Bandai made this show, nor do I want to really know. I just downloaded it to check what it is…
..and bloody hell, that was the shittiest thing I’ve seen this year. The animation was not bad, sound too, but the story (?), half-dimensional characters, this whole “te-hee~~”, goddamn everything seem pointlessly ridiculous and ridiculously pointless. I wasted 7 minutes on that and was pissed off for every lost second. Maybe this is a service for some gamers, readers or someone else – then it might have some purpose, but as a standalone show it hit the bottom and asked for a shovel.
Two-dimensional, that’s what I was trying to say! Yeah, the characters in the source webcomic have more depth, but none of that is seen here. They even demoted Natsuhiko to a high schooler instead of the actual newspaper reporter he was in the source, for reasons. A shame.
can someone explain how this turn from a web comic into an anime?
ShiftyLook is a subsidiary of Namco Bandai that is trying to resurrect old Namco IPs. Apparently the Wonder Momo webcomic got enough traction that they tried to do this. But even with Namco Bandai backing the whole thing, I’m still pretty surprised this happened, which is why I wanted to talk about it a little bit.
Also I wanted to mention all my other favorite webcomics ^_^
It’s rather a surprise to me. Even the webcomic when I read it seemed rather niche to me, and I would think if you wanted an anime built from it to get attention you’d want to add more depth to appeal to people, not less. I suppose that could be a budget issue as well…
Well, whatever. I don’t actually have the interest to watch this series, you just caught my attention because I have a passing familiarity with the webcomic.
It’s not surprising that Wondermomo got an anime, being made by the Japanese and all, so don’t get your hopes up that other would-be webcomic could follow this kind of anime treatment.
I also see you have a refined taste in webco-
“Sinfest”
{OPINION DISCARDED}
Oh hey the first episode premiered in the MIDDLE of a season instead of the start of a season like the other shows! Odd. I’ll see what this is about.
*reads*
….uuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh………
http://www.shiftylook.com/comics/wondermomo/in-the-spotlight
Webcomic link here, in case anyone was wondering. Also check out ShiftyLook’s other webshows: Bravoman (just about done with its second season) and Mappy. They’re both great.
Also, this short has little to none of the character and personality of the comic, so you’d best just stick to that.
” if you don’t read Dr. McNinja you’re doing yourself a disservice, it’s amazing and hilarious to the first degree”
It TRIES TO BE hilarious, would be the rather more apt description.
Well, I think it’s funny. You’re of course welcome to disagree.
Read through the comic thanks to Stilts’ link, and I’m… Amused (yes, let’s go with that) at the liberties taken with original Momo’s backstory, which is hugely changed from the arcade games and even her most recent appearances in Namco x Capcom and Spiral Chaos (though the majority of the special attacks shown in the comic seem to be lifted from the Spiral Chaos incarnation).
That aside, I think it’s got a neat story and interesting characters even if it’s not being super faithful to its source material… Which is more than I can say for this animated version (thus far)…
She looks like Birdy.