Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Anime Movies Chainsawing Hollywood Theaters
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IronWish
 Posts: 237 Location: Ukraine |
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What? A meaningful critique of CSM S1 artistic decisions instead of "But ma bright colors!" and "But ma silly faces!"? In this economy?
Besides MAPPA sucking ass, I liked S1 specifically for trying to do something unusual, instead of "let's recreate all iconic panels and fill the gaps with flashy animation". They chose specific vision, adhered to it, and result was mostly successful. How good or bad this specific vision was for CSM can be debated, hell, I agree with most points Lucas made in the column, but this is like, only the third time in three years I've seen such discussion being civil. Interesting topic glanced over a bit in the column about faithfulness of adaptations. Like, firstly, what does it even mean for adaptation to be "faithful"? Percentage of scenes recreated one to one? Blessings of original author? Minimized amount of "non-canon" stuff in it? Thematic and artistic coherence with original work? Secondly, does one prefer adaptations to be faithful or to be good? I'd like the latter, since, well, there is already 100% faithful version - original work, it can't be beaten by this metric. But I also know for a fact that overwhelming vocal majority of fans of anything put utmost importance on the former. I think most of such discourses nowadays are completely poisoned by fanbases being obsessed with idea of "canon". It permeates everything: what is a good translation, what is a good adaptation, what is a good sequel (and what even counts as one), what is a good remake (and whether they are all ontologically evil). And what I find interesting, is that whole idea of any work of art being created fully-formed in some ideal "canon" form is basically a side effect of most modern art being a commercial product which is sold to a wide audience. It's not really how it worked for the most of human history. |
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FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl Posts: 861 |
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I am of two minds on faithful adaptations.
On the one hand, I am always down for a more artistically unique statement. For whatever else the anime missed thematically it does not look like any other anime out there right now. That's not necessarily preferable to having the style and tone match the comics, but it's hard to say they didn't achieve their goal of having an anime that leans on visual conventions rarely seen in anime. I don't want to miss out on great possibilities, after all stuff like Ghost in The Shell varied from the manga in tones and visuals quite a bit from what I heard and that is seen as an all time classic. On the other hand, anime is a fan oriented medium and fans don't like when you touch their stuff. I don't just mean "fandom" fans that come online to discuss stuff, but normal people who get hyped about Demon Hunter and One Piece. We all know a fan or two that is too vitriolic about the differences between source material and adaptation, but even outside of that people don't like their favorite stuff being changed too much, those people are just the extreme version. There is a point things go past critique and you end up being an obsessive hater, but despite liking the CSM anime when I watched it I can't deny that there are things in the original that I completely missed out on. There are definitely times fan critiques are very on the money, and since you usually need to succeed in a different medium to be adapted in anime, there is almost always a preexting fan base with certain desires and expectations even for series not as huge as CSM. So my takeaway is that we should avoid being the type of obsessive fan who moves from critique to being a hater just because they touched the canon. Animators should have the final word on how they adapt material but in such a fan driven media. We can critique them after if it sucks, for example completely skipping out on the capitalist subtext does not seem like a minor change but one that harms the central message, but them having the ability to make those decisions is what makes animation such a special art form. Of course because it is such a fan driven medium and fan audiences are getting larger, that does make the safe thing for studios to adapt as faithfully as possible which might be why we have seen fewer and fewer anime take those major creative liberties. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2560 Location: Online Terminal |
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Philosophically, I think the argument to be made is that Zenshu exists because MAPPA did the Jump shows, and that further doing "mainstream" stuff and doing it in particular ways is how a studio is able to do fun stuff while keeping the lights on. Ryan Coogler doesn't make Sinners without making Black Panther first.
Pragmatically, ethics and law should come before philosophy. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 5295 |
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I'm with you on this point. I don't read manga, as I don't find it to be an enjoyable medium to consume. So when I watch an anime series based on an existing manga, I don't spare a whole lot of thought as to how faithful to the original work said adaptation is. My primary concern is how much I'm enjoying the anime, and season 1 of Chainsaw Man provided that in spades. It looked awesome, and I had a lot of fun with it. My main quibbles with it were some basic narrative elements that I'm fairly certain were in the original manga too. I don't mean this as an insult toward Lucas at all, but most of the complaints he made about the anime felt...pretty superficial? "They made Denji look too buff. They went in a different direction when adapting this one panel. They cut out a random line of dialog or two." I'm sure there's more there, but those elements alone don't do anything for me either way. And while it's an objective fact that MAPPA sucks eggs, I don't think there's ever been a moment in my life when I've thought, "Boy, the narrative themes of this fictional work are incongruous with the corporate practices of the production company creating it." Because boy howdy, if I went down that road there'd be a lot of other things on that list too. |
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dmanatunga
Posts: 126 |
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A lot of good comments on the nature of adaptations already.
I think the thing for me on the Chainsaw Man TV adaptation comes from my general hope that the adaptation would let story reach a larger audience. I love the manga, but I know there are tons of people who don't really engage with the medium. My hope for the anime was for it to show how special Chainsaw Man story is and how it differs from the usual stuff you might get. And as far as I can see, that never really happened, with the anime not hitting the general reach popularity of Demon Slayer or JJK, or maybe even something along the lines of Frieren (which felt like a much more successful adaptation). And in personal sense, even though I can't adequately word it, it felt like the show was missing the kind of black comedy action humor that makes the manga so special. So while I can appreciate the artistry of the TV show, and how it was doing something different, a part of me is still sad that it didn't really seem to bring more people into what is actually a really interesting story on multiple levels. |
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Daidan12
Posts: 170 |
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Reze's sucess proves why S1 sucked and didn't meet MAPPA's economic expectations (the series will forever be popular thanks to the manga in spite of S1 misguided adaptation). '
The new duo of Director and Assistant Director explained perfectly why Reze succeeded, the staff loves CSM and they let them show it on the film, while on S1 they were tied to Nakayama's faulty vision, not even the VA cast were safe and they also politely dealt with a misguided direction. It isn't even THAT different from the work on S1 but you can clearly see how big the difference felt to the staff and the fans. Reze was the shot in the arm this adaptation needed and I hope we don't ever turn back to S1, let us move in with this new appropriate direction. |
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Top Gun
Posts: 5295 |
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This is where some of the discourse around this series starts to lose me (especially the nonsense in the post before this one). I mean as someone who only watched the anime, I thought everything you mentioned came through loud and clear. I thought it felt very unique, in everything from its overall vibe to its striking visuals, and the black comedy was definitely noticeable as well. I guess I'm just confused about what some people think it didn't do, or what more they wanted out of it, because I thought it was a fantastic viewing experience. As far as popularity goes, I don't know exactly what constitutes a "success" for the parties involved, but I do know that while the first season was airing I saw a ton of hype for it, lots of people talking about it, plenty of merch and fanart, basically everything that I'd associate with a popular series. Obviously it at least did well enough for MAPPA to have them produce a big-budget follow-up movie. If we're doing comparisons, Demon Slayer is a one-in-a-million phenomenon that I can't even attempt to explain, so I think we can safely discount that. But for the rest, Chainsaw Man is very much an R-rated series with a fairly nihilistic worldview, so by its nature it's not going to garner the same fanbase as a more mass market-targeted series. That being said the movie is doing gangbusters at the box office, so obviously there are a lot of fans out there, and I'd wager that a decent chunk of them were introduced to the franchise via the anime. |
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IronWish
Posts: 237 Location: Ukraine |
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I think you underestimate how much tougher sell for a casual viewer Chainsaw Man is compared to those three. Its B-movie sensibilities, Denji's personality an a protagonist, hell, even just its name and cover art - lots of stuff in it can work as a "filter" which can cause people to dismiss it as a "weird weeb shit". CSM becoming as popular as it is was already a minor miracle. And even as a manga it went way outside its original niche audience, you can tell it's true because jokes about Reading Comprehension Devil exist. I wish it all the success it gets, but some works of art are, indeed, quite special, and there is such a thing as getting too popular for its own good (Undertale is a good frame of reference here). I've seen JJK twitter discourse, I don't want this kind of popularity for CSM. |
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dmanatunga
Posts: 126 |
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I don't know if I necessarily agree with this. Sure Chainsaw Man could be said to be deeper and more complex than JJK or Demon Slayer, but it is also starts off as a fairly simple concept of a dude who becomes a Chainsaw monster and fights devils. Plus b-movies are something the general public tends to love, and I wouldn't say any of the cover art imagery is any different than JJK. Plus you have something like DanDaDan getting that success and it's 1st episode is arguably has much more "weird weeb shit" than Chainsaw Man ever does in the beginning. Also don't really agree with the things should remain niche view either. Especially given that popularity tends to determine anime budget. |
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IronWish
Posts: 237 Location: Ukraine |
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General public couldn't care less for B-movies though, that's kind of aesthetic that have lots of cultural cachet, but wouldn't bring in the viewers unless its a Tarantino movie. As for JJK vs CSM art - conventionally attractive anime people doing cool action poses vs laughing guy with blood-covered chainsaws for his arms and head. I get it, both you and I are invested deep enough to discuss this on an anime-specific forum, so these things feel equally normal for us, but they are not equally normal. And I don't think DadDaDan is more popular/successful that CSM, it's just that it doesn't have a loud minority lamenting how its adaptation is a crime against humanity. For example CSM S1 has twice as many MAL users as DDD S1 (and only 0.02 score difference lol). Even more impressively Reze movie, available only in theaters so far, has 100k users, while DDD S2, which streamed on Netflix (so pretty much anyone could've watched it) has only 200k. I know MAL is not the best metric to measure casual popularity, but there is some correlation with these numbers. Now that I think about it, CSM likely is more popular/well known than Frieren as well. Oh, and don't get me wrong, I never stated that I want CSM to stay niche, I hate gatekeeping of any kind. It's just that there are lots of good options between "niche cult classic" and "everyone and their mother has watched this, a.k.a. Demon Slayer level of popularity" |
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FishLion
Crazy Fangirl Posts: 861 |
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I agree with this part, especially because massive popularity can come with downsides. The more popular something is the more likely it is to attract outrage. I think that may be just a thermodynamic law of media criticism, but when something as popular as CSM flubs it in the eyes of fans it becomes part of the discourse for years. Then you have stuff like Demon Slayer where the popularity is controversial and there is non stop conversation about whether it is or isn't worth the hype for long after the anime ends. So while on the one hand more eyes on a property means more merch, budget, and seasons of a show I love and I do want more people to enjoy the things I love, I do often have the best fan experience when something has middle levels of popularity where people know about and love to discuss it but it isn't so popular that too much conversation happens online and makes you sick of it. |
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IronWish
Posts: 237 Location: Ukraine |
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I call it "Monogatary zone": while being one of the load-bearing series of 2010s, it has very limited presence outside of anime-centric communities. |
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dmanatunga
Posts: 126 |
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I don't think that the issue is that the anime can't be an enjoyable experience for people who have watched it. It has a lot of good things about it. But you wouldn't necessarily expect an anime to be so divisive for an adaptation of a property that was very well regarded in the manga space. It seems that there was something about the anime that caused it to not completely connect for a chunk of the folks that love the manga. Like personally, if I were to badly articulate my feelings, I felt the pacing was off for the first season. While the show looks great and has a very cinematic feel, it also focuses a lot on the quieter moments in the series and stretching them out. But for me, a lot of the fun in Chainsaw Man is the juxtaposition of how within a single chapter you can have a incredible action set piece or serious moment, that then just jumps to someone doing or saying something completely dumb in a very punk way. The anime of course has the same comedy moments, but for me, the pacing between them makes it feel more one off, then an integral part of the story. I'm not saying that Chainsaw Man wasn't a financial success. Just that it didn't necessarily have the level of success you would expect out of a manga with such a passionate fanbase. Even MAPPA CEO, said they felt unsatisfied by the reaction. And I think it is hard to argue that MAPPA didn't think it would be a huge hit. You don't really do a new ending for every episode for something that you think will just remain niche. animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2023-05-18/mappa-ceo-reflects-on-financial-performance-of-chainsaw-man/.198194 |
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dmanatunga
Posts: 126 |
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I don't think we have the same definition of B-movie. If you are restritcting to pulpy Tarantino type film, then I would agree. But if we are talking about action/horror B-movies, I would say the general public used to be very big fans of the genre. As for now, it is hard to say as non-horror tends to not get made as often because most stuff is just big budget IP stuff. And ultimately, I don't think the B-movie aspect to general audience because this mostly about people who consume anime. Like there is nothing about the aesthetics of JJK and to some extent Demon Slayer that speak to it as something that the general public would like, but obviously they are huge properties for people who watch anime. Also this whole imagery of Chainsaw Man turns off people is something I don't really buy either. A lot of anime gains popularity these days through cool moment clips that shared across TikTok to get people to give a show a shot. And hard to argue that the Chainsaw Man manga isn't full of those types of moments. Plus, other than Denji, most of the Chainsaw Man season 1 cast is arguably conventionally attractive. Even ignoring the loud minority, there seems to be a decent amount of manga readers who didn't feel the adaptation did the source material justice or was missing some crucial factor that made the manga special to folks. And if you ignore animation disasters, that hasn't really been the case for any fairly popular manga (JJK, DanDaDan, Attack on Titan). I'm dubious on using MAL numbers on general popularity. It feels like a biased sampling. Also, if you look at drop off, the numbers from Chainsaw Man Season 1 to Reze Movie is huge compared to DanDaDan Season 1 to Season 2. Granted, movie just came out, but also unsure if the number is likely to grow any decent amount over time. And maybe popularity isn't the term I should use. Maybe I'm view more as popular reception. I think for things like DanDaDan, Frieren, JJK, Demon Slayer, etc., the adaptations met or exceeded the level they had from their source material fandom. For Chainsaw Man Season 1, I'm not sure if that was really true. |
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1415 |
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When I watched the anime, I hadn't read the manga yet, and I came away sort of unimpressed. Like, it was pretty good, but it felt "off" even to me. And I think what you're getting at with the "quiet" moments is part of it - it's not something that inherently sets me against any story, but that one part with Himeno walking around her apartment with super overdone animation still sticks out to me as a big "Huh? Why??" moment. The best way I can sum it up is: It all feels very pretentious. I'm reluctant to even use the word, but that's what it boils down to - a very self-congratulatory feeling work in service of a story which, up to that point, still amounted to "demon death man kills a lot and people die a lot". |
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