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INTEREST: Mitsuru Adachi Can't Tell His Own Characters Apart


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skaly



Joined: 26 Jun 2006
Posts: 148
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 6:31 pm Reply with quote
Megiddo wrote:
Adachi is far more successful than you can ever imagine.


He's got the Touch.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
Posts: 2377
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:12 pm Reply with quote
Lord Geo wrote:
I'm sorry, but the Star System isn't an excuse for Adachi being unable to identify his own characters specifically. If anything, it shows that he uses the Star System poorly.

Tezuka used the Star System as a way to simply re-use characters he had already created & will create in the future in different ways. Tezuka purposefully gave them specific names & supposedly even kept track of how much they "earned", as if they were actual actors. Osamu Tezuka could tell his characters apart.

Masami Kurumada use of the Star System is a variant of Tezuka's method, in that most of his character designs originate from his first hit, Ring ni Kakero. That said, Kurumada still gives each of his leads some sort of way to differentiate between them. While a newcomer to Kurumada might understandably confuse Ryuji Takane with Pegasus Seiya or Teppei Takamiya, fans of his works can still identify them & Kurumada doesn't seem to have any problems telling his characters apart. Also, Kurumada tends to have his repeated personas "break character" with each work, making them somewhat differently from their predecessor (there are exceptions, of course). Now, to be fair, no-name characters & random villains might look exactly the same, but they aren't important enough to make it an issue.

CLAMP's use of the Star System is not as well known to me, so I can't really say how they use it, but I do think that they work off of a mix of Tezuka & Kurumada, using both repeated "actors" as well as repeated (but slightly altered) designs.


Tezuka repeatedly claimed to mistake his characters for each other a lot. There are some instances where character actually appear as themselves in other works, and sometimes they were easily distinguishable between series simply because of Tezuka's evolution of style, but then you have instances where characters have different names and roles and Tezuka would sometimes forget who he was writing and create accidental contradictions or character holes, or he'd refer to a character in one series as their name from another series to the public. Sometimes he made fun of himself for it. Sometimes, he would actually go back and fix things so he could hide his mistake. But he was certainly just as guilty of it as Adachi and CLAMP and even Matsumoto (Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999) and Ishinomori (Super Sentai, Cyborg009, Kikaiger), who all use their own version of the Star System concept.

As for CLAMP, their star system usage is actually based on the laws of their own fictional universe, coined by fans as the "CLAMP Universe." At first, there were slight hints that it existed, but only a few series ever actually crossed over or acknowledged it even remotely at all. Magic Knight Rayearth 2 (manga version) set up a key component to the universe, but it wasn't until Tsubasa that the CLAMP Universe was ever acknowledged by CLAMP themselves (CLAMP in Wonderland was never proven to be canon by CLAMP). Tsubasa also clarified actual laws of the CLAMP universe that are meant to stay consistent for past, current, and future works, such as "people cannot be brought back from the dead" and "coincidence does not exist--only inevitability." The only reason CLAMP might be able to tell their own characters apart is because they have multiple artists who worked on different series at different points in their career, so their distinction is much more clear. Adachi doesn't have anything like that set up.

I'm eternally fascinated by the concept of the "star system" in manga and anime, so I've done enough research on it to realize that these are pretty much always done purposely. Trying to claim that a manga artist is lazy or unoriginal just because they reuse characters or character designs is usually extremely ignorant. They do it because they want to. No one suggested it to them. They consciously chose to do it this way and they all have their own reasons. You don't have to like it, but "laziness" is often a very ugly generalization based on a lack of experience in the field. Same with "unoriginality." Some manga artists simply aren't as concerned with "originality." Doesn't mean their works are any less respectable or lazy.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:17 pm Reply with quote
Characters and settings in Shogakukan manga tend to look the most alike after awhile, anyway. I usually don't notice that problem with Shueisha and Kodansha manga.
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Shenl742



Joined: 11 Feb 2010
Posts: 1524
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:33 pm Reply with quote
A dozen of his lean characters from over a dozen different series all look the same. Honestly, I don't really care about the excuse, that's really ridiculous.
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TG72



Joined: 28 Jan 2011
Posts: 334
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:46 pm Reply with quote
Working my way through Cross Game right now. In the grade school arc, I mistook Aoba for Ko a number of times Anime dazed

The bottom line for me is the story itself. If it's a interesting, well-told story like CG I'll stick with it.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13540
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 8:02 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Short for "exported character", an expy is a character from one series who is unambiguously and deliberately based on a character in another, older series. A few minor traits — such as age and name — may change, but there's no doubt that they are almost one and the same. Often seen in different works by the same writer(s) or production team.


The tvtropes article of "Expy". This sounds like a serious case.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 8:19 pm Reply with quote
As a lazy character designer he totally deserves this humiliation. In Cross Game it was sometimes difficult to tell the lead male and female apart, which is just absurd.

Even his stories are facsimiles of one another.

Megiddo wrote:
Run along now scamp, Adachi is far more successful than you can ever imagine.


He's a multi-quadrillionaire? I thought only Eiichiro Oda earned that sort of dough.
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DCR



Joined: 01 May 2005
Posts: 99
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 8:28 pm Reply with quote
Damnit, I failed too. Got Uesugi and Kadomatu mixed.
But the Hi Atari Ryoko guy was more obvious, since he was designed in a more shojo manga-ish style.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 8:58 pm Reply with quote
Juno016 wrote:
Trying to claim that a manga artist is lazy or unoriginal just because they reuse characters or character designs is usually extremely ignorant. They do it because they want to. No one suggested it to them. They consciously chose to do it this way and they all have their own reasons. You don't have to like it, but "laziness" is often a very ugly generalization based on a lack of experience in the field. Same with "unoriginality." Some manga artists simply aren't as concerned with "originality." Doesn't mean their works are any less respectable or lazy.


I hope this part wasn't directed towards me specifically, because I never called Adachi unoriginal or less respectable. All I said was that he executed the Star System poorly, which is hard to deny. Did I use the word "lazy"? Sure, but that's only because it's hard to say that Adachi tries to challenge himself when it comes to designing characters. From what I've read of Adachi's work, when it comes to his characters they seem to only follow three different types: Boy, Girl, & Little Girl. And by "types" I mean "faces", because Adachi generally draws everyone's faces the same way, with the only difference being haristyle (and even that can be minor). Does he consciously decide to draw characters like this? Yeah, okay, but that doesn't automatically make it "not lazy". Still, Adachi knows how to draw & his art tends to look really nice, so I can forgive this flaw in his work.

As you mentioned, other people have used the Star System & had issues ID-ing characters later. Hell, Leiji Matsumoto might be the worst offender of poor & lazy Star System usage, because he literally only has one female design style; the only thing separating them are hairdo & any extra facial features (like Emeraldas' scar). That's not to say that mangaka like Adachi or Matsumoto are bad at what they do, because they definitely aren't, but varied character designs (or even a varied set of design styles) certainly isn't one of their strengths.
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skaly



Joined: 26 Jun 2006
Posts: 148
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:22 pm Reply with quote
TG72 wrote:
Working my way through Cross Game right now. In the grade school arc, I mistook Aoba for Ko a number of times Anime dazed

The bottom line for me is the story itself. If it's a interesting, well-told story like CG I'll stick with it.


Cross Game is one of my favorites of the past few years. It reads like the antidote to the Shonen Jump formula.
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Banjo



Joined: 13 Dec 2010
Posts: 779
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:29 pm Reply with quote
some artists consider X design is perfect for the main character/s. Usually their stories and personalities are similar so the artist feels such personality only fits such design. Non artist may say "then at least change hairstyle", well just like how artists prefer smaller eyes or bigger eyes and this type of nose and eyebrows or the overall facial lines, they also prefer hairstyles..
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Maidenoftheredhand



Joined: 21 Jun 2007
Posts: 2632
PostPosted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 9:33 pm Reply with quote
I LOVE Adachi but you can criticize things that you love. Not sure if I buy into the Star System method for him, he really could work on differentiating his character designs a bit.
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catandmouse



Joined: 02 Mar 2011
Posts: 212
PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 12:19 am Reply with quote
I think that more than the re-using the same characters, or that all characters now are cookie-cutter characters, I think it's about the artist's style.
For example, Natsuki Takaya kinda refined, or changed her art style about half ways through Fruits Basket, and has continued using that type of designs for her characters since. Yeah, they might have lost some of that "uniqueness", but I could easily recognize her drawings from other shojo artists.
Another example, Masashi Kishimoto's art is similar to that of his brother's, and I remember reading somewhere that people were calling Seishi Kishimoto a "copycat". They've come out and said i happens because they grew up drawing together. I don't think either of them consciously decide to draw similar.
Then there are some people that everything and everyone will look the same, no matter how vastly different.
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perroloco



Joined: 10 Dec 2008
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 1:40 am Reply with quote
From all the authors I have read that use the Star System, I think Adachi's characters are the only ones that I wouldn't be able to tell apart.

As it has been brought up Masami Kurumada uses the Star System too, but you can notice the difference between characters, though that might be because he usually designs characters with some kind of armor, e.g. Seiya wears the Pegasus cloth, if it's not Seiya then it would probably be Ryuji from Ring Ni Kakero, but even if all the characters were wearing no armor I think they would be easy to tell apart from each other.

http://es.tinypic.com/view.php?pic=dosxo4&s=5

Here you can see how his main characters have more or less the same design, but you can definetly tell them apart.
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vallum



Joined: 05 Apr 2012
Posts: 58
PostPosted: Wed Sep 17, 2014 6:18 am Reply with quote
Hoppy800 wrote:
if the mangaka cannot distinguish their own creations from the others they've created then how can the average fan tell.


Why would they need to? It's not like these similar characters are interacting with each other in the same story...

But yes, Adachi is too lazy, or somewhat limited at drawing. Razz


PS: I could tell Tatsuya from the other two. His hair is a little bit messier.
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