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Blood Blockade Battlefront (TV) (all seasons).


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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 4:20 am Reply with quote
Episode 11

My personal response to the episode that spent half the episode recounting the childhood relationship of a set of twins, I thought it was beautiful. The episode did not have the usual wackiness of the usual BBB episode, but the style and Mary in general were so charming that I can't feel fault in it. I really felt for this sibling love. Rie Kugimiya's narration through such events as a courtroom with White as judge full of a court with sheep, loved it.

And Nyron, an anime absolutely does not have to follow its source material. You are suffering from standards or expectations that of what it is like based on that source material, and are failing to accept this project as its own thing. If White/Mary was never in the source material, then too bad, this entire season has been set up with Mary from the beginning. In some cases it is up to the anime to adapt from the pages everything, in others it is its responsibility to totally be its own thing. It can have bad consequences when perhaps they don't know what they are doing as they might just focus on one thing and for example shamelessly fill it with service and not get anywhere. But there is also the chance that show can create something.

For understanding the episode, I can mostly take it that the scene we saw Black (despair king) shooting White, I think it might have been more symbolism more than anything. Through dialogue it also seems that she really has not been okay as powers have been keeping her alive in way of her heart, which he just destroyed. Why the king has destroyed it? Some things point towards entertainment, but the bigger one I think is that he wants to die, that he is an immortal being who actually wants to finally be at rest. Also why he needed Mary to do it to Leo, so far he has been going along the lines that he never forced anyone to do something, maybe it is out of some sort of personal code of that thing.

My words at the episode in anticipation for next week. Can miracles happen?
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 11:15 am Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:

meiam wrote:
Then second half made pretty much no sense, why did black need white to be the one to steal the eyes? Why did he even need the eye? Why is he breaking the barrier?


By befriending Leo, White was the one who could get close enough to him to put that device on him.

Looks like he needed the eyes to see where all the barriers are to destroy them simultaneously.

With the barriers gone, the great collapse that was stopped before will resume. They haven't yet revealed exactly why he wants this, but it wouldn't surprise me if he did it for the lulz.


Not really, Black used his power to paralyze Leo, and Leo got close to Black a bunch of time and he's kinda of a huge wimp. He could have easily shove the glass on him.

Wasn't black part of the group who set up the barrier in the first place? Shouldn't he know where they are? Why did he need to break them all simultaneously?

They could have used the first half of the episode to explain this and introduce the guy possessing Black of which we know literally nothing. Instead we learn that Black and White are brother and sister if some people didn't know that yet.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 11:23 am Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
Not really, Black used his power to paralyze Leo, and Leo got close to Black a bunch of time and he's kinda of a huge wimp. He could have easily shove the glass on him.


She still got him in a position where his guard was down. Plus, we know the Thirteen Kings like messing with people for the lulz.

meiam wrote:
Wasn't black part of the group who set up the barrier in the first place? Shouldn't he know where they are? Why did he need to break them all simultaneously?


Black wasn't, his parents were. It wasn't necessary to break them all at the same time (one broke in a previous episode, and he destroyed White's after the others), but it sure is faster.

meiam wrote:
They could have used the first half of the episode to explain this and introduce the guy possessing Black of which we know literally nothing. Instead we learn that Black and White are brother and sister if some people didn't know that yet.


It's more than just that. We learn what drives White's character and why she'd be willing to go so far to set her brother free.
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Nyron



Joined: 16 May 2013
Posts: 161
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 11:35 am Reply with quote
Quote:
And Nyron, an anime absolutely does not have to follow its source material. You are suffering from standards or expectations that of what it is like based on that source material, and are failing to accept this project as its own thing. If White/Mary was never in the source material, then too bad, this entire season has been set up with Mary from the beginning. In some cases it is up to the anime to adapt from the pages everything, in others it is its responsibility to totally be its own thing. It can have bad consequences when perhaps they don't know what they are doing as they might just focus on one thing and for example shamelessly fill it with service and not get anywhere. But there is also the chance that show can create something. 


except that this adaptation is not only not following the source material, it's actively ignoring it, rewriting it, and replacing it with something that has none of the same themes, style, setting or characters. this is not Blood Blockade, this is the director using a great manga, one of the most original and fun ones ever written,as a tool to make something completely unrelated.

its like if I said that I was going to adapt Pokemon into an anime, and then made the story aboutbeing a stockbroker where the Pokemon and any familiar characters only appear vaguely in the background sometimes.[/code]
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15433
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 11:54 am Reply with quote
Nyron wrote:
its like if I said that I was going to adapt Pokemon into an anime, and then made the story aboutbeing a stockbroker where the Pokemon and any familiar characters only appear vaguely in the background sometimes.[/code]

At least Ash/Satoshi would not be in it right? Also maybe not entirely correct as the Pokémon anime actually does change a great deal from the games, and does not really follow the same characters or I think plot. Origins which was closer pretty much told a totally different story to fill its own set of OVA. You could say that there is a reason in the difference in having to make a story for the medium of an anime series, and it explains what is happening here.
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
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Joined: 14 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 12:26 pm Reply with quote
Nyron wrote:

except that this adaptation is not only not following the source material, it's actively ignoring it, rewriting it, and replacing it with something that has none of the same themes, style, setting or characters. this is not Blood Blockade, this is the director using a great manga, one of the most original and fun ones ever written,as a tool to make something completely unrelated.

its like if I said that I was going to adapt Pokemon into an anime, and then made the story aboutbeing a stockbroker where the Pokemon and any familiar characters only appear vaguely in the background sometimes.[/code]

It's called artistic interpretation. There are countless examples in media, be it film, anime, comics, books, etc, where one product does not follow it's original source material. Sometimes just a little and sometimes by a great deal. I find too often people get too stuck in the mud with their expectations that every adaptation of a material be exactly the same and all follow the exact same path and have the same end result. Many people seem incapable of taking 2 different versions of a product as separate entities.
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Nyron



Joined: 16 May 2013
Posts: 161
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 3:42 pm Reply with quote
I knew I shouldn't have used Pokemon as an example. Pokemon was not the point of that post.

Psycho 101 wrote:
Nyron wrote:

except that this adaptation is not only not following the source material, it's actively ignoring it, rewriting it, and replacing it with something that has none of the same themes, style, setting or characters. this is not Blood Blockade, this is the director using a great manga, one of the most original and fun ones ever written,as a tool to make something completely unrelated.

its like if I said that I was going to adapt Pokemon into an anime, and then made the story aboutbeing a stockbroker where the Pokemon and any familiar characters only appear vaguely in the background sometimes.[/code]

It's called artistic interpretation. There are countless examples in media, be it film, anime, comics, books, etc, where one product does not follow it's original source material. Sometimes just a little and sometimes by a great deal. I find too often people get too stuck in the mud with their expectations that every adaptation of a material be exactly the same and all follow the exact same path and have the same end result. Many people seem incapable of taking 2 different versions of a product as separate entities.


I think you misunderstand the situation here.
Flowers of Evil was an artistic interpretation of the manga.
FMA2003 was an adaptation that used the characters and themes to form its own story that ultimately still felt like an interpretation of FMA (except for the interdimensional nazis and all that garbage).
Pokemon was an adaptation of the games where they took a basic premise and built a whole episodic adventure about it, creating characters and settings as they went, but was still ultimately "a kid on a monster-collecting journey."

Blood Blockade Battlefront is an action series about the daily lives of Libra as they face some of the biggest and most abstract threats to come from the nexus of insanity that is Jerusalem's Lot. It never delves into exposition or flashbacks, and much like Mad Max, it builds the story and characters by showing, rather than telling.

That's not a hard premise. "It's Hellboy mixed with Seinfeld."
You can muck with that a bunch of ways, though that's not really the point, since this series is already incredibly unique, artistic and well-defined.
Whereas Aku no Hana was boring and generic, FMA was unfinished, and Pokemon was an 8-bit RPG with barely a story to speak of.

This episode was about two children who live on a farm struggling with their psychic powers.
None of the main characters were there, even though this series is about them.
It didn't take place in the setting of the show, the most important part of it.
It was all hamfisted exposition about characters who are more normal than Leo (and Leo is supposed to be the most "normal" one in this setting. It's the whole premise of his character.)
Their story is just Leo's backstory lazily copy-pasted.

If you look at episode 2, it took plenty of liberties but was ultimately a very faithful adaption of the source chapter. That is Blood Blockade.
Watch it back-to-back with this episode. If you Sharpie'd out Leo here you wouldn't even know it's the same show.

You can't call something an artistic interpretation when it's not even the same thing coming out the other end

I know it's hard to convey, since I'm probably the only one in this whole thread who's read the manga, but it's wonderful because it's the exact opposite of what you normally see from Japan (aka this episode, and White's subplot as a whole)[/b]
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 4:06 pm Reply with quote
Sorry, but your argument still boils down to "It's not the same as the manga so it sucks!"

There's nothing inherently wrong with this episode not being like the others. It's a backstory episode that takes place before Hellsalem's Lot was even a thing. Like it or not, the twins are key players in the plot so them getting a backstory episode is warrented.

The king of despair falls under the "big and abstract threats" you mentioned so yeah, it still keeps in line with the premise of the show. This threat is just more developed than others.

Besides, there has never been a Nightow adaptation that followed the source material. So you should have expected this.
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Nyron



Joined: 16 May 2013
Posts: 161
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 4:44 pm Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
Sorry, but your argument still boils down to "It's not the same as the manga so it sucks!"

There's nothing inherently wrong with this episode not being like the others. It's a backstory episode that takes place before Hellsalem's Lot was even a thing. Like it or not, the twins are key players in the plot so them getting a backstory episode is warrented.

The king of despair falls under the "big and abstract threats" you mentioned so yeah, it still keeps in line with the premise of the show. This threat is just more developed than others.

Besides, there has never been a Nightow adaptation that followed the source material. So you should have expected this.


it's like talking to a wall
read the manga
the fact it was a backstory episode to begin with is a problem. The fact he's such a boring character is a problem. The city is the show. Libra is the show.
Imagine if they came out with a Metroid game where you don't play as Samus and it isn't a horror/adventure game, but was instead a squad-based party shooter with a completely different art style. That's what this is.
(oh wait they did, and it has a few thousand people petitioning for it to be undone)

Even looking at this series objectively without consideration of the manga, what we have here is an incredibly disjointed series where 90% of the cast got no development with a style/tone that flipped around constantly. From the start, this Black/White thing felt bolted on.

And Black is not an abstract threat. He's a generic as **** bad guy. Paper-thin. Feels like he was written by a 10-year old.

Gungrave was a faithful adaption of the original story and characters, and it was also amazing. It also took the Pokemon route and made a very solid story out of a very basic premise.
Trigun is a faithful adaption if you know anything about the manga at all. It took an unfinished series and some notes from Nightow and made a story very faithful to the themes and setting, even if it was a watered down demo of the manga.
you don't know what you're talking about
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 4:59 pm Reply with quote
Nyron wrote:
read the manga


No. I don't care what the manga does. We're talking about the anime, and the anime wants to do its own thing within the setting of the story. It should be judged accordingly.

Nyron wrote:
Imagine if they came out with a Metroid game where you don't play as Samus and it isn't a horror/adventure game, but was instead a squad-based party shooter with a completely different art style. That's what this is.
(oh wait they did, and it has a few thousand people petitioning for it to be undone)


I didn't realise Metroid Prime Hunters was so hated.

Nyron wrote:
And Black is not an abstract threat. He's a generic as **** bad guy. Paper-thin. Feels like he was written by a 10-year old.


Black isn't the threat, the King of Despair is. And he's the same as Femt and Aligura so I don't see how they are any better.

Nyron wrote:
Gungrave was a faithful adaption of the original story and characters, and it was also amazing. It also took the Pokemon route and made a very solid story out of a very basic premise.


Grave didn't fight an alien head at the end. Your argument is invalid.

Outside of some boss battles very little was in the game. The bulk of it was anime original, and all backstory to boot.

Nyron wrote:
Trigun is a faithful adaption if you know anything about the manga at all. It took an unfinished series and some notes from Nightow and made a story very faithful to the themes and setting, even if it was a watered down demo of the manga.


And where's your proof that Nightow isn't behind the creation of Black and White and gives his full aproval of how his story is being handled?
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Nyron



Joined: 16 May 2013
Posts: 161
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 5:34 pm Reply with quote
Vaisaga wrote:
No. I don't care what the manga does. We're talking about the anime, and the anime wants to do its own thing within the setting of the story. It should be judged accordingly.


The anime is bad from an objective standpoint so I don't know what you're trying to prove. The reason it is bad is because it has a fanfic nailed onto it. If you had any knowledge of the manga we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Quote:
I didn't realise Metroid Prime Hunters was so hated.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGu3Xe1uUUg

Quote:
Black isn't the threat, the King of Despair is. And he's the same as Femt and Aligura so I don't see how they are any better.


please don't play pointless semantics
Femt's maniacal "two halves of a demon plan" and Aligula's giant, evolving monster car are far more interesting than Black's "lol what am i doing" plan, and both of them are stronger characters, and neither of them are the main villains anyway. So yes, they created a character who is by far less interesting than the villains we already had, and made the whole plot about him. I don't know why you don't see this as an issue.

Quote:
Grave didn't fight an alien head at the end. Your argument is invalid.

Outside of some boss battles very little was in the game. The bulk of it was anime original, and all backstory to boot.


the story was about Brandon getting revenge on Harry from start to finish, and the anime built on their relationship.

BBB having hamfisted backstory is a problem because it defeats the main storytelling mechanic of the series. Do you even know what "show, don't tell" means?

Quote:
And where's your proof that Nightow isn't behind the creation of Black and White and gives his full aproval of how his story is being handled?


I've read all of Trigun and BBB front-to-back multiple times. They are my favorite manga. There's a good chance Nightow gave them a sentence like "there are twins, one is a "ghost" and the other one is one of the 13 kings, run with it." and nothing else. The way these characters are being presented is absolutely nothing like Nightow's style. It feels more like Kyosogiga (which I honestly think is a pretty bad show) where bland characters and story elements are presented in a convoluted way.

Nightow would never ever give two characters the same backstory. That's some Naruto-tier ****.

The Vash vs. Legato scene at the end of Trigun. That was Nightow, and came years before that confrontation happened in the manga. Same with a lot of events in the latter half of the Trigun anime.

Gungrave's writing was very different from Nightow's style too, but it was actually done well and supported the source material.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 6:45 pm Reply with quote
Nyron wrote:
The anime is bad from an objective standpoint so I don't know what you're trying to prove. The reason it is bad is because it has a fanfic nailed onto it. If you had any knowledge of the manga we wouldn't even be having this conversation.


Objective, you say? It's pretty clear the fact you read the manga is colouring your perspective. That's the only reason why it feels like a fanfic to you. To me who has no knowledge of the manga that impression doesn't exist.

Nyron wrote:


Huh, I guess that's what I get for not following E3.

Nyron wrote:
BBB having hamfisted backstory is a problem because it defeats the main storytelling mechanic of the series. Do you even know what "show, don't tell" means?


Of course I do. In this episode they showed us White's backstory. Ergo, there's no problem.

Nyron wrote:
Nightow would never ever give two characters the same backstory. That's some Naruto-tier ****.


Vash and Knives had the same backstory.

Also it's called drawing parallels between characters. Leo and White have been through similar stuff and it's what helps them connect with each other. And even then their backstories are hardly the same. Leo didn't grown up feeling inferior because he didn't have a super power, nor did he give us using his power so his sister would feel better.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jun 21, 2015 8:34 pm Reply with quote
The review of the episode Hope gave it an A+, there was a lot to like in this episode, it was not shallow.

In my opinion the main theme in Blood Blockade Battlefront is it is when the strange/paranormal collides with the normal/everyday. It was pretty well represented in this story about twins where one had powers and the other did not, where their parents were both normal shepherds and paranormal savers of the world.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2015 9:34 pm Reply with quote
Wonder how long we'll have to wait before we get the finale...

In the meantime the latest NewType character poll is out and White made it to #10 on the female list. People tend to hate anime original characters so it's nice that she's been well recieved.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 04, 2015 4:36 am Reply with quote
Weren't we supposed to get the finale on Saturday? What happened to it this time?
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