[4Tran]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

However, there is also the consideration that so many anime works today are adaptions. The director, while not unimportant by any stretch of the imagination, is typically working with someone else's vision. Especially as it pertains to manga and light novels, the story's vision is theirs and not the creators. Typically when directors mess with a source material, we have seen less than impressive results.

I don't buy this argument because a large number of critically acclaimed movies are either straight adaptations or new takes on older material. I'm not even talking about obscure works either - Argo, the Life of Pi and Les Miserable were all nominated for the Oscar this year. In anime, many of the adaptations we're familiar with are aired on TV. Since TV has such tight budgets and schedules, it's not at all unusual for them to fail. Anime movies and OVAs would fare much better even if they deviate from the source material. The creative staffs of the latter simply have more money and time to iron out exactly what they want to do with the work.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

I will not deny though that your average review that you'd find on somewhere like MAL is complete garbage. They don't have any scope in their writing and don't understand how to structure a review at all. Their scope is incredibly limited, and most of the time they focus mainly on the characters and nothing more.

I'm not just referring to a standard review, but things like in-depth examinations of the language of film/anime and how scenes are composed. Here's an example from the film world: http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/a...ion_scene.html

This kind of material is almost non-existent for anime in the English-language world. The main exception is when Anipages writes something up or the very occassional piece like this: http://scenesofdespair.tumblr.com/po...-close-reading

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

I have no idea what you're talking about. *shot* But yea, I can't remember it very well at all.

It's one of those ultimate "should we be actually doing this to our audience?" moments. I hope that Kyoto Animation has learned their lesson.