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EP. REVIEW: Altair: A Record of Battles


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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 10:07 am Reply with quote
This is personally one of my most anticipated show of the season.

Pacing feels a little slow and is dialogue heavy but I enjoy it so far. They introduced quite a bit of characters so hoping the show will develop them more beyond just the main protagonists.

It also does remind me of Arslan somewhat.
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SnowCentaur



Joined: 04 Feb 2009
Posts: 69
PostPosted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 12:19 pm Reply with quote
Looking forward to watching this. I've been reading it for years, and it's one of my all-time favorite manga. Gorgeous, smart, well-written and mature (in the "not childish" sense).
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 4:50 pm Reply with quote
This show is off to a pretty good start so far. I hope it does a good job of portraying the Turkish atmosphere and elements as it goes on.
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Merida



Joined: 21 Feb 2012
Posts: 1945
PostPosted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 3:39 pm Reply with quote
As a manga reader, i'm still a bit underwhelmed by this adaption. It isn't bad by any means, but it kind of lacks the more mature feeling of the manga. Also, the manga art is really detailed and the anime can't quite seem to keeep up with that.

Every new episode has been an improvement though, so i'm hopeful that it'll continue on that path. Does anybody know how many episodes this show is supposed to have?
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Sat Jul 22, 2017 5:22 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Hooray for research!

Well, the mangaka was not a history major graduate of Toudai for nothing. The manga itself is not particularly "historically accurate", unsurprisingly given that it's fantasy, but even where it veers way off there's a point it's making. (The Empire's wildly different fashions are all based on various imperial periods, I wonder if the anime will understand this.)

As this is one of my favorite manga I was very worried after the choppy, badly paced episode one, and only slightly relieved after the better-paced but bad-looking episode two. Episode 3 was finally a step in the good direction - I hope the show will continue in this vein from now on. If it does I won't mind that the visuals are kind of pedestrian compared to the unique and impressive visuals of the manga.

Also, I really hope that this episode will finally lay the comparisons with Arslan senki to rest. I wouldn't mind them as much as I do if they were based on the Arslan novels, where Arslan's personality is actually not completely unlike to Mahmut's; but the change in tone and characterization that Arslan went through in the Arakawa manga and the TV anime made him and his story a complete opposite of what is happening in Altair. (To say nothing of how the two manga are in completely different weight classes when it comes to being intelligent.)

Merida wrote:
Does anybody know how many episodes this show is supposed to have?

It's two cours so 24-26.
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Pidgeot18



Joined: 19 Jul 2015
Posts: 101
PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:00 pm Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
Quote:
Hooray for research!

Well, the mangaka was not a history major graduate of Toudai for nothing. The manga itself is not particularly "historically accurate", unsurprisingly given that it's fantasy, but even where it veers way off there's a point it's making. (The Empire's wildly different fashions are all based on various imperial periods, I wonder if the anime will understand this.)


The anime, so far as I've seen, is not historically accurate at all. Quite frankly, the Ottoman Empire was never a small country facing down a large, powerful opponent. It began as one of the beyliks following the fall of the Sultanate of Rûm around 1300 (specifically in the region of modern-day Eskişehir), and quickly grew to reach the Sea of Marmara, cross the straits into Thrace and conquer Adrianople (now Edirne) by Murad I in 1369. The Ottomans took advantage of Balkan instability to conquer most of the Balkans over the rest of the 14th century, even setting their sights on Constantinople before the Timurids attacked them in the East--who ended up capturing the Sultan and provoking a civil war. The Ottomans recovered, and with victories in the Battle of Varna in 1444 and the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, completely ended the legacy of Christian kingdoms in the Near East for several hundred years.

The Byzantine Empire themselves were defeated by the Crusaders in the Third Crusade in 1204, and they fought a long struggle to regain their territory, reconquering all the land by 1261 (helped by Rûm being distracted by the Mongols). At this point, they tried regaining lands in Bulgaria and former to buff themselves against future Latin attacks. These efforts ended up being failure after failure, saddling the Byzantines with an untenable political situation and constant internal troubles from high taxes and Catholic/Orthodox religious problems* among other things. The civil war in 1341 ended up terminally weakening the empire--it became a vassal of the Ottomans by 1371

* Several Byzantine emperors figured that reconciling the Eastern and Western churches was the best way to secure themselves against outside threats. They were probably right, but such reconciliation would have necessitated caving into Western demands, which was very unpopular to the citizenry.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2599
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:47 pm Reply with quote
Pidgeot18 wrote:


The anime, so far as I've seen, is not historically accurate at all.


You are correct - it's more like the anime (and presumably manga; I haven't had a chance to read it yet) is using a few scattered facts from the author's knowledge of history and using them to create a fantasy world that is both unique and familiar at the same time. We much more typically see it represented as Medieval England with Dragons, so part of what I like about this series is its use of the Ottoman Empire as a base for its fantasy world.

Of course, speaking as Little Miss Way Too Excited About the Fork Thing, I can understand how the similarities could also be a major turn off for someone really well-versed in Ottoman history.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 5:30 pm Reply with quote
Pidgeot18 wrote:
SHD wrote:
Quote:
Hooray for research!

Well, the mangaka was not a history major graduate of Toudai for nothing. The manga itself is not particularly "historically accurate", unsurprisingly given that it's fantasy, but even where it veers way off there's a point it's making. (The Empire's wildly different fashions are all based on various imperial periods, I wonder if the anime will understand this.)


The anime, so far as I've seen, is not historically accurate at all.
[words, words, words]

Dude.

I'm not sure how to break this to you, but...

You DO realize that this is fantasy, right? Or did you not notice the weird-looking map, or the narration mentioning that the story takes place in the fictional continent of Rumeliana? This is not the Ottoman Empire, it's not Europe, it's not actual Earth history. Does the story take pretty much all its cues from actual Earth history? Sure it does, that's kind of the point. But it then does its own thing with it, including playing around with timelines, periods, fashions, etc., weaving a story that ultimately has little to do with actual Ottoman history.

It's great that you showed off your awesome history knowledge to us, but you might want to take a step back and understand what you're looking at, before the story expands its scope in a few episodes, to include other states... otherwise you'll be very deeply confused.
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Pidgeot18



Joined: 19 Jul 2015
Posts: 101
PostPosted: Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:13 pm Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
You DO realize that this is fantasy, right?


No, I'm a blubbering idiot who doesn't have any idea what the meaning of the word "fiction" is. Rolling Eyes I realize that's not what you said, but that's what it does feel like you said, particularly given that it wasn't me who was bringing up historical accuracy in the first place.
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Sun Jul 30, 2017 9:03 pm Reply with quote
A little Turkish lesson in regards to Episode 4. Being of Turkish background myself, I am quite pleased with the numerous words they've used thus far. The Japanese VAs aren't pronouncing them correctly, which I won't fault them too much for since the language has different rules for speaking vowels.

Göz means eye.

Kulak means ear.

Binbasi (not binbashi like the subs have it, though that's a clear way to show you how to pronounce it) means major, as in the military ranking.

Kara kanat means black/dark wing.

So in essence, göz and kulak in the episode means the eyes and ears of the spy network. Binbasi is the rank Mahmut was demoted to for failing as pasha. Kara kanat is clearly a title for Suleyman since his eagle has a darker coloration than the ones we've seen thus far.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2599
Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City
PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 7:14 am Reply with quote
Thank you, belvadeer! Please do let me know if you notice any other language-specific details - I love that sort of thing, and Turkish is not a language I'm familiar with.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 7:37 am Reply with quote
My first language has a lot of Turkish loanwords (as we spent quite a long time being occupied by the Ottoman Empire a few hundred years ago) but reading Altair made me realize that there are a lot more than I had known about. I never thought that common words like "sapka" or "balta" came from Turkish.

Pidgeot18 wrote:
SHD wrote:
You DO realize that this is fantasy, right?


No, I'm a blubbering idiot who doesn't have any idea what the meaning of the word "fiction" is. Rolling Eyes I realize that's not what you said, but that's what it does feel like you said, particularly given that it wasn't me who was bringing up historical accuracy in the first place.

Except, it wasn't me who was bringing up historical accuracy in the first place, but the reviewer? All I said was (italics added now):
SHD wrote:
Well, the mangaka was not a history major graduate of Toudai for nothing. The manga itself is not particularly "historically accurate", unsurprisingly given that it's fantasy, but even where it veers way off there's a point it's making. (The Empire's wildly different fashions are all based on various imperial periods, I wonder if the anime will understand this.)

So I don't really get what you were trying to get at.

As for the episode, I'm glad that the pacing seems to be stabilizing - the next arc is the one that sets the larger plot into motion and introduces the core main cast, so hopefully it's going to be handled well.

Only... I'm rather worried about the rampant and completely pointless changes the anime is making to the dialogue. Pointless, because from what I can see the changes are not done with the intention of better pacing, it kind of feels like the anime is not trusting the viewers' intelligence to understand what's going on, so the writing is trying to make everything very obvious and "familiar".

For example when Suleyman asks Mahmut if he hates Zaganos, in the manga he kind of grits his teeth for a while and eventually grinds out ".........a little...." - but Suleyman gets it nevertheless, which is a good indicator of how well he knows Zaganos, and how well he can handle him. But the anime has Mahmut actually explaining what his beef with Zaganos is, which is not only feels a bit condescending at the viewers, it's not even entirely correct - since Mahmut's core problem with Zaganos is not that Zaganos humiliated him that one time! The complicated feelings Mahmut has for Zaganos are actually brought up later on, so it's not just a throwaway thing.

Or there's the kulak dismissing the Rot Orm squad leader because she's a woman - this never happens in the manga, and for good reason. It's not like the world of Altair is a shining example of gender equality, but someone good enough to serve as Zaganos' spy should be very much aware that the female Rot Orm assassins are nothing to sneeze at, and that there is at least one famous female soldier in the empire who is as formidable as the best guys (Lelederik). It literally makes no sense, to bring up Eleanor's gender in this situation, even as an insult. To compare, the dialogue in the manga here is along the lines of "don't underestimate Halil pasha's former flagbearer". And this is not even a character we see ever again, so it's not like there's any characterization reason... The only reason I can think of is that the writer didn't think the viewer would remember the character mentioning that he used to be Halil pasha's flagbearer, so he changed the line to something more generic.

So I'm a bit worried about what the anime is trying to do here. Over-simplification and arbitrary changes are rarely a good sign. I hope they'll stop here.
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Mon Jul 31, 2017 8:30 am Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
Thank you, belvadeer! Please do let me know if you notice any other language-specific details - I love that sort of thing, and Turkish is not a language I'm familiar with.


Sure thing, I'd be happy to. It's very interesting to have an anime that borrows so heavily from my culture. : )
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#844391



Joined: 09 Sep 2015
Posts: 517
PostPosted: Sun Aug 06, 2017 11:46 pm Reply with quote
So, finally got around to watching this series and have gotten up to ep 3 so far. It's pretty enjoyable and I like how the MC doesn't simply come out completely on top and ends up having to learn some rough life lessons, there are too many shonen protagonists who make decisions based on emotions and end up getting away with it with no consequences so it's nice to see this series break the mold.

I do hope he doesn't rely on the eagles too much to get him out of a bind, . Iskandar has saved him, what 4 times so far? I was ok with him using the mutton in ep 1, taking down the thief wasn't that big a deal, but having Iskandar bring in a flock of eagles to carry away the tent felt a bit far fetched, not to mention Iskandar helping him out in the fight with the one eyed guy. This feels like lord of the rings where you just need to bring in the eagles to solve all the problems.

But aside from that I'll definitely be continuing with this.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23667
PostPosted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 5:25 pm Reply with quote
Anybody know what is going on with this show? From what I can see, episode 4 was the last one to be made available on July 28.
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