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「生命」 (Mitama)
“Life”
One to go? Hard to believe.
I still can’t quite complete the mental connection confirming that Arata Kangatari is down to the final episode. It seems so utterly absurd on the face of it when watching the anime, and the most incredible thing is that I still don’t really have any idea of what Satelight is going to do to wrap this up. If I hope anything about the anime, I suppose, it’s that it gave viewers at least some notion of why the manga is as good as it is. There’s a very well-conceived, complex and interesting premise at work here, with some amazing world-building and superb art.
As to whether that’s been accomplished I’m the wrong person to answer, but from my perspective I think Yasuda-sensei has managed to put together a pretty entertaining series. The visuals are probably as big a disappointment to me as the curtailed story – the character designs are fine but there’s little of the lush beauty of Yuu Watase’s art here and the animation is pretty low-rent. Even now, this close to the end, the anime is still hewing more closely to the story than I would ever have imagined – the Yorunami battle was actually quite faithful (most of the changes came in the buil-up last week).
In truth I don’t think Yorunami’s arc is one of the more compelling in the manga, and I wouldn’t have minded seeing it skipped in favor of greater focus on Arata in Tokyo and on Akechi and Kannagi. Yorunami’s Mommy-obsessed storyline is pretty standard even in the original, and it didn’t even have Kadowaki’s presence as a wild-card to spice it up a little. I think you can see even in this episode that Kannagi is a much more intriguing character, and we’ve just barely begun to scratch the surface with Akechi – I quite liked his scene with Kadowaki this week, because it shows us that Kadowaki is a truly dedicated psycho if nothing else, and that Akechi is someone who can really respect a good grudge.
It’s frustrating to think just how many interesting elements of this story are never going to see the screen. I’m not sure now why Satelight even bothered to tease Arata’s story as much as they did, because he hasn’t even appeared in two episodes – despite the fact that we now have a very dangerous Harunawa running around in Tokyo – and it’s hard to see him getting more than a minute or two in the final episode. I would imagine that will focus mostly on Hinohara battling with Kadowaki, though whether they’ll give us a definitive result of any flavor I wouldn’t even hazard a guess. I expect we will see some sort of "ending", but I find myself hoping it’s very open-ended because I don’t see any way to do otherwise without completely losing credibility.
Preview
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What happened with their noses today? Do animators miss Kaiji or Akagi?
I see Yuu Watase is trying to copy off Clamp by having people rip out their eyeballs for fanservice.
Heh, if you think Clamp invented that imagery you need to broaden your horizons a little.
Go for the eyes Boo! The eyes!!!
This chapter was rushing, I guess the same for the ending -.-
I was a bit irked when the scene showed that Akechi basically shoved his eyeball into Kadowaki’s socket even though his eye was still there, until I read that Akechi actually gouged Kadowaki’s whole eye out THEN put his inside. Pretty sad that they sensor it, but oh well.
Actually, I don’t really find the series that entertaining really. I picked it up because I read in your blog that the manga was pretty good, but I just can’t shrug of the feeling that as much as the series does have its own unique elements, it comes off as your typical cliche adventure series. In my opinion, it’s like an RPG game; you add people to your party, and kick some bad guys’ ass along the way, fighting monsters and not give up. I don’t find Arata’s resolve to be that strong either. I mean..I just don’t see what makes this series so different than others till you compliment it so highly. I do plan on reading the manga after it ends, but I’m still a lil sceptical about it.
Hope you could enlighten me with your thoughts on this story (be in manga/anime) in general. 🙂
I’m rather thinking “Thank god it’s almost over.” The closer this series gets to the end the more it seems to fall apart.
I just feel like this whole series has been a shame. Decide to animate this manga and then cheap out in every possible way. Visually it’s pretty weak, never liked the voice casting for Kotoha, and the story is unraveling as they desperately wanted to set up a forced Arata vs. Kadowaki showdown at the end.
I’m not saying Yorunami’s arc was good in the first place. It was fairly weak, but he was a decent “first boss” for Arata to take on. Maybe it wouldn’t have been the most powerful way to go out, but forcing Kadowaki on this just seems ridiculous. But I suppose following the source material would lead to a cliffhanger ending that would have people clamoring for a second season that this anime will never spawn.
On a lighter note, I think Akachi literally thought Kadowaki was so annoying that gouging out his own eye to make him go away was preferable. Just diluting his character down to “Wah, wah, I wanna win, I wanna win!” Which character was turned into an infant in this episode again?
Agree with you with Kadowaki. He is annoying in that you think his reasoning is a bit shallow, but the guy gets wayyyy more depth in the manga than he does here. Here, he’s as three dimensional as cardboard.
And yes, I agree that the Yorunami’s arc was probably the most standard of the 12 Shinsho, with Kasuga, Yataka and finally Akachi/Kannagi’s stories upping the ante each time.
They seem to be having an anime-original fight next week that I doubt will decide anything, and then they’ll probably leave the rest open-ended. I have a feeling like they won’t even go into the rest of Akachi’s story and just leave it as a “We’re coming for you” end. Which would really suck since they’ve built up Akachi’s character already only to have no time to do anything with him.
Another anime adaptation that doesn’t do the manga any justice, bites the dust in one more episode.
Yorunami’s arc was the best in the manga, but it was at least decent. That’s not the case for how it’s handled in the anime -_-.
Disappointed that the other arata’s life in the other world has taken a backseat this entire series. Tbh the events taking place in the magical world are so boring and tedious to watch sometimes. And whatever happened with that guy who switched with Kadowaki? Did he go to the normal world to try to kill the arata from the magical world? Seems like they completely forgot about that.