Quote:
Originally Posted by relentlessflame
Well, the basis upon which these statements were being made was the sales figures for the first two DVDs averaging at around 9,000 copies/volume, which is widely considered to be "sequel-worthy". One of the better-selling shows of the season, so far.
Of course, I don't think that our personal judgements should be affected by sales figures. I like a ton of shows that were exceptionally poor-sellers, even ones that were largely seen as "critical successes" around here. That's no different from any mass media, really -- there are a lot of factors that affect sales. But when people make blanket statements bashing the production staff or posing questions like "How could anyone like this stuff?", I don't think that's fair. Why can't we assume that the people buying the DVDs legitimately like the show? Is the fact that other reasonable people might see things differently so threatening to our point of view that we have to pre-emptively paint them as less worthy of consideration? ("Ah, they're just sheep who'd buy anything; they're not discriminating, discerning patrons like we are..." Yeah, I'm so sure...) That's what gets me, anyway. Hate the show with a passion, but respect other people's right to enjoy it is what I say... Certainly, that goes both ways, though.
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If the Japan DVD sales are sufficient to justify another season, I guess thats what the fans want. But to me --- its like taking on, for example, the LOTR franchise and then saying, "meh, we'll go do our own original stuff!" Most people I interact with or read about (in or out of Japan) like adaptations of material to at least be true to the spirit of the source material allowing for the constraint of the medium.
I wasn't trying to call the fans idiots .... but when I see an adaptation of something I've read and at some point I can barely tell where the idea came from: I judge the
production team accordingly. If you've ever seen a series called "As Time Goes By" (British series), they portray this sort of thing quite satirically when a character who has written an autobiography gets an offer to have it filmed.
And in this case, it certainly looks like the production team figured the fans would put up with their "re-invention/re-direction" of the story. If that's what they want - great, though it seems quite a few fans here are distinctly unhappy. In my case, having not read the manga - I can only judge what I've seen. Out of the first third and now just about last third of the series I've seen, the humor just is a lot more MISS than HIT for me.
... and yes, I have a fair handful of series that I think highly of that were apparently financial failures since there was no follow-through on them. So it goes...