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Old 2012-07-06, 19:16   Link #20
Soliloquy
絶対領域に嵌り過ぎた。
 
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Trendy Backwater
Age: 38
Quote:
Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf View Post
Obviously, I enjoy anime, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it most flexible medium for storytelling. The best medium for that — "flexible" storytelling — remains the book. There is no need for special effects, no need for musical scores, no need for A-list actors. All you need is imagination — both from the author and the reader — and anything, literally anything, is possible.


It's an extremely observant and insightful movie about a bunch of kids, the core audience of most anime, and yet I have trouble imagining how the story could be effectively translated into an animated feature. A tremendous amount of the movie's charm comes from the superb acting of the precocious cast, as well as from the live scenes of Kagoshima, Fukuoka and Kumamoto. There is a great deal of nuance worked into the cinematography by veteran film-maker Hirokazu Koreeda that would necessarily be missing in an anime which, no matter how detailed, will forever be no more than a facsimile of the real thing, never a 100 per cent match.
You're right if I think about it, the book is the most flexible medium and from my experience, cannot quite become memorable by the time I finish the book. I admit, I wasn't an enthusiastic reader but I read a fair few to say there was only one book that I really love.

I guess in the end, I'm being a little subjective because for me the requirement to be something near-perfect is the characters. The novels have the advantage of creating the characters as many as the author wants and flesh them out but I found that too much flexibility can be a problem as there is a book with a lot of characters but in the end becomes a little too crowded to know who is who. When I finish the book, I lose the emotional connection with the characters to care what happens to them.

Also I want to say I was too hasty to decide that anime is the most flexible medium because I agree that some stories are meant to be told in a movie format rather than the animated feature. As you say there are certain things that can't be achived when it's animated. You are also right that the masterpiece is when this particular piece transcends all medium.

Allow me to say, films have one disadvantage that anime doesn't is the length that we don't get enough time to be invested in the characters. That's why I know there are good films but they don't move me enough. All the good films have great execution, brilliant cinematography and camera work but if the characters are lacking, I hesitate to call it masterpiece. If I think about it, there are a couple of films that I've seen managed to move me and great direction as well. Unfortunately, these works are rare to come by.

I think the big reason that I felt that films have somewhat inferior emotional connection is because I grew up watching films from America. All their focus is mostly on cinematography and special effects and rarely on the characters. For that reason, I guess I should just watch more foreign films.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Akito_Kinomoto View Post
Limit yourself to your own personal favorites for a minute. How many of them can you say you went in to for the first time expecting to actually like them enough to place them in your own personal hierarchy? And I'm not talking about the extended list either. I'm referring to no further than the top 5.
There are only a few, probably 6 or 7 that I can think of that I actually remember liking in initial impression. I can easily think of top 5 on the spot.
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