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Old 2009-04-09, 17:39   Link #78
Meatrose
Antihero
 
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Area 11
Age: 41
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gebs- View Post
I've noticed that those who came into the show after having read the source material didn't enjoy it as much as those that didn't. Granted this is a problem any adaptation has to deal with, I feel both the anime and novels should be able stand on their own and be analyzed as two different entities. Am I the only one who didn't feel like the excess monologues were necessary and would've lessened the overall mood of the anime? I didn't need the monologues to tell me who felt what as the show did an adequate job of doing so through its acute use of subtlety.
I don't know if my last post made you include me in this group of viewers or not, but I just wanted to say that I did not read the source material before watching the anime. I began reading the novels after having watched more than half the show, and I never read a novel until it had been fully covered by the adaptation. The only exception would be episode 19 as I finished the seventh novel before it aired.

Also, 7/10 is a very high rating coming from me. I use proportional comparative scaling when I rate my anime which means that every show that I see is compared to the best anime I ever saw (the 10s) as well as the worst anime I ever saw (the 1s) before I decide to which section of the scale this anime that I recently finished watching belongs. I'm also kinda strict and out of the ~450 anime productions I've seen, less than 20 got rewarded with 7/10 or higher ratings. My average rating is 4,1/10. Me giving Toradora! 7/10 points does not mean that I thought it was just "good", it basically means I'm praising it. It's in my "Top 5%" after all.

About what you said about the monologues; I also don't think that they're absolutely necessary. I love how Toradora! attempts to show the audience the difference between deep love and a crush without claiming that it's strictly impossible for a crush to grow into love over time. The anime made it pretty clear that Ryuuji and Taiga had much deeper feelings for one another than they had for their respective crushes, and did so pretty early in the show. Some things are definitely lost in adaptation though. Already in the first novel (= episodes 1 and 2) we learn that Ryuuji's heart tends to beat faster when he makes eye contact with Taiga, that he has to force himself to remain calm when he realizes he's going to get to touch her body while helping her with the stretching exercises in PE, that he's very aware of her warm body when he puts his hands on her back and the fact he can almost make out the outline of her underwear under her PE uniform. While standing behind her he even lets us know that seeing the smooth, white skin on her neck is enough to make one's heart race. The anime does not convey the characters' thoughts and feelings this well, as it would be impossible to do so. I still think that by implementing some of these inner thoughts they would have been able to add some extra depth to the main cast, and that would've made the show even better, especially since the best part about the show (in my opinion) was its characters.

The characters are incredibly important to me. They're even more important than the story itself. Don't get me wrong, the story is of course incredibly important too, but a great story is wasted if it revolves around characters you don't really care about. To get to know their inner thoughts means that we get to know them and their feelings to a degree that is more or less out of reach for an adaptation to a visual medium. This does not mean that the adaptation failed in any way. All it means is that books are generally far superior to movies and TV series in terms of character depth in my opinion. That's also why I never compare movies and TV series to books when I rate them, only to other movies and TV series.
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Last edited by Meatrose; 2009-04-09 at 19:57.
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