2010-03-09, 03:21
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Link #1 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2010
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Scifi or Fantasy that would work as an Anime Adaption?
Purpose of this thread is to make either mainstream, classic, or obscure Science Fiction and Fantasy literature suggestions that could in your mind make a good Japanese Anime or Western Animesque adaption and then WMG the hell out of it and speculate what would make it 'work' for us.
I'm gonna start this off with the Dark Elf Trilogy and Drizzt centric Forgotten Realms novels in general. Now the Dark Elf Trilogy a summation can be found here http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...DarkElfTrilogy Firstly the art, Menzoberranzan is described as something of a cross between Moscow and the undersectors of FF7's Midgard, a large sprawling subterranean city with onion domes galore where its Los Vegas at night in terms of lighting 24/7 a bustling city of intrigue, deception, violence and well evil. Done right we really need an animation style with a gorgeous attention to detail, Drow cities are beautiful and yet deadly like the webs of spiders they worship a master piece of perfectionism (afterall Drow think they're perfect and spare no expense to achieve it). Voice acting depends, Salvatore's work is very wordy, Anime viewers tend to like wordy so this might work better with the intended audience being Japanese and western anime fans rather then say mainstream view but you never know. I generally viewed my 'mental voice picture' of each character as such (in english): Drizzt: Dan Green. Artemis Entreri: Eric Stuart Cattie-Bree: A welsh accented Wendee Lee Regis: Whoever voiced Pippin in Lotr though I could see Kirby Morrow working or maybe Dan Green again. Bruenor: I just tend to type cast Rhys Davis into this role and the role of every Dwarf ever until the end of time. Wulfgar: I generally picture Sean bean here. Jaraxle: Darren Dunstan, their mannerisms were kinda similar. Now note that I haven't watched very many dubs, I think Yugioh, ygo GX, Escafowne, Inu Yasha and Gundam Wing are probably the majority of all the dubs I've actually watched a major portion of and generally in each case preferred the Japanese for plot reasons but preferred the dub because they grew on me. Thus I'm left in a position where I don't have a wide list of availiable NA VA's in my head to suggest and while I generally prefer subs to dubs am not very well versed in Seiyu's (though I can recognize a few famous ones) and since I spend so much time reading the substitles I'm not really paying attention to the voices. For the actual Dark Elf trilogy we need: Adult (ish) Drizzt: Dan Green I like here doing his Yami Yugi voice, his Japanese Seiyu counterpart I think could make a fair Drizzt. Young Drizzt: Ditto, though to my ears for the Japanese any young adult Seiyu who doesn't flub his lines would probably sound good. Matron Malice: Need a deep voiced kind of female, like someone who sounds both female and older kinda of deep and can sound 'regal'. Briza: Described as broad shouldered and kinda tall so deep voiced again but with a sort of 'edge' to the voice, she was consistently mean and bitchy since she was often in Matron Malice's shadow. Maya Do'Urden: I haven't read the novels in a while so I don't recall her. Dinin Do'Urden: Kirby Morrow I think would be alright, Dinin didn't seem to be too distinctive in his dialogue. Vierna Do'Urden: Described as kinda cheerful and energetic generally nicer to Drizzt but totally dedicated to Lolth. Need someone feminine and soft spoken, in Japanese I'ld like Aye Hirano when not in total genki mode to be a good approximation, in english Amy Birnbaum seems decent, Wendee Lee and CrissVee I felt were a little too high pitched. Zaknakfein: Definately should be played by someone who sounds like an adult. Many many more. Key attention should be on Drizzt. Vierna, and the primary members of House Baenre, Grompth, Triel, and Quenthel Baenre as they recur ALOT in later novels and we want people recognizable in those roles that we will enjoy seeing again later on in even more badass roles. Though sadly Triel tends to be relegated to cameos in later Drow centric books. RA Salvatore puts alot of effort into well chereographed fight scenes, I think Samurai X (the name of the Kenshin prequel?) would be the nicest level of detail of attention. Like c'mon Drizzt is duel wielding two Scimitars while practically dancing around his enemies preferring while analyzing his opponents combat styles while intermitantly switching to his more berserker rage alter ego when times get desperate and has a giant panther campanion to maul people this defines cool in a visual way you WANT to see this and not "motion blur" tricks that make up the lazier portions of the shonen side of anime. This needs to be seen and shown and not 'implied'. Now for the Structure and Pacing: --------------------------------------------------------- You could probably condense the three books into a single movie if you focus on the action and do a healthy amount of timeskips but I think we have ALOT of possibility of Adaption Expansion here; lets look at my hazy memory. Young Drizzt: The circumstances (and hence exposition) of his birth, this shows in a single scene was Drow society is like, a society that is cutthroat and goes after their rivals with the aim of wiping out a House and its entire family without getting caught while at the sametime willing to sacrifice your children to an evil deity that you worship for power, bam. You know have an informed audience. You could probably show all of this plus the initial moments of Drizzt's training as a House page and show the initial dynamics of his family in 2-3 episodes where things get interesting is Drizzt as a adolescent: In this part is where we can get the most amount of adaption expansion this is where Drizzt receives his training to be a fighter (a what could have been moment precedes this where Drizzt would have been made to be a Wizard instead, however he shows is potential to be a fighter by catching 2 coins he flips in the air with both hands simultaneously to show his dexterity) and at some point enters the Fighter Academy where he goes through a process to win a non-lethal tournament against his rivals showing more insight into Drow society (as he gets betrayed by someone here during the tournament) and slowly climbs the rankings to be first place, you could probably expand this to take up to several good lengths episodes (kinda like the Chunin exams from naruto). And this is only about half of book 1, things can accelerate from here and finish the first season off with his leaving the House in exile after he can nolonger accosiate the evil of his family and Drow society with the nobleness of his own heart. Books 2 and 3 is where we come more into Samurai Jack territory with book 2 mostly dealing with the recurring malevolence and desire for revenge of his former House while he journeys and explores the Underdark seeking purpose, making a few friends and solves problems. Book 3 is him leaving the Underdark traveling across a good portion of Faerun until he finally arrives in icewind Dale and befriends Clan battlehammer. Both 2 and 3 could be expanded with written for the visual adaption stories to spread out the series, and to think that these are only three books out of around two dozen novels we could have enough material to in theory have maybe like 20 years worth of animated adaptions of it going from the Prequels first all the way up to The Ghost King from the Transitions trilogy. And to think of what else intersect with this, The Sellswords trilogy of the adventures of Artemis Entreri and Jaraxle! The friggin Cleric Quintent! The Awesome War of the Spider Queen which spans like Six whole books could be a adventure drama in of itself, all of it has huge potential. And I forgot to add, since it is Forgotten Realms don't forget the fanservice lots of good oppurtunities without going overboard. Except of course any adaption of anything to do with Elminster, the character was practically designed for over the top fanservice and the self insertion harem genre in general.
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2010-03-09, 03:49
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Link #2 |
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そんなやさしくしないで。。。
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: NSW, Australia
Age: 29
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Any sci fi that required CGI won't work too well in an well established franchise as an anime.
Mostly because the fans are too used to CGI being used. (Is talking about traditional anime drawing) The only "okay-ish" Halo:Legends short, for example, was The Package, but even then it was bleurgh. The others were good plot wise, but just didn't work as a drawn medium. |
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2010-03-09, 04:33
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Link #3 |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2010
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This confuses me, CGI 'cinematicish' shows to my mind like 'The Package' represent the Japanese videogame culture ie, what they and we expect from Japanese CGI games like Xenosaga or you know, Metal Gear Solid 4, or Final Fantasy Advent Children *cough*...
Those are essentially the pure CGI Anime that I think works well and is what we expect from Japan in those terms. Thus I feel a pure CGI adaption of quite a few scifi could work as styled by the above, for example Ender's Game would work beautifully, or heck! HONOR HARRINGTON that right there puts together quite alot of Anime tropes.
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2010-03-09, 05:14
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Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2010
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Quote:
It was done by Hayao's Miyuzaki's son and the style was similar so I liked it.
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2010-03-09, 05:35
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Link #6 |
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Banned
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Thessaloniki - Greece
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Well, the books were better as they usual are.
Anime Insider used to make many parodies of such a thing. They turned many western series to anime and twist the names around to make them sound funny. Flodo is fighting Salumanu for the possession of the Onu Ringu, while Alagoln summons the samurai ghost army to fight the Oni army, lol. Anyways, adaptations hardly look as interesting as the real thing. Think of all those animerican cartoons for example. They pretty much suck next to a similar anime. And they recently turned Wolverine to anime as well. Boy, it is obviously going to suck just by watching the trailer. |
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2010-03-09, 05:45
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Link #7 | |
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RUN, YOU FOOLS!
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Formerly Iwakawa base and Chaldea. Now Teyvat, the Astral Express & the Outpost
Age: 44
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2010-03-09, 07:26
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Link #8 | ||
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Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2010
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As for Western to Anime in the Lotr example you mention well... Not sure if you knew but thats usually because they literally don't pronounce those words the same way we do thats just how they pronounce it, l's and r's remember. Western to Anime adaptions can work and I'm pretty sure do, they just need commited people and generally show a willingness to show they care about the source material. Quote:
Some things and concepts do okay when distilled, however I am saying that for adapting the Dark Elf Trilogy I would much vastly prefer a straight adaption as people afterall want to see Drizzt fight and want to see his adventures and want it to be done in the Forgotten Realms as we know it, so yes definately a situation where a distillation would not be welcome. But thats because a strait adaption is what I want, the case with Earthsea was that I think Hayao's son was aiming for more of something loosely based to tell the story he wanted to tell while keeping true to the key points of the books as a whole, think about it, no gaurantee or extremely unlikely he could make a straight adaption of each book so the best option is to make something that mixes a bunch together.
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2010-03-09, 07:38
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RUN, YOU FOOLS!
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Formerly Iwakawa base and Chaldea. Now Teyvat, the Astral Express & the Outpost
Age: 44
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2010-03-09, 09:27
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Link #10 |
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Me, An Intellectual
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: UK
Age: 33
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There's a lot of books I'd love to see in anime form. An anime version of The Gentleman Bastards series would be cool. Or A Song of Ice and Fire series. Or the Realm of the Elderlings series. Or The Wheel of Time series. Or the Empire of Black and Gold series. etc...
Alas, i have no idea what would be taken into consideration when adapting except i know that The Wheel of Time series would benefit from a Compressed Adaption in certain areas. But I think maybe Eon Colfers books work out better.
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2010-03-09, 15:34
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Link #14 |
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blinded by blood
 Author
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Oakland, CA
Age: 40
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I was thinking that it ought to be horrible so that every member of No Mutants Allowed kills themselves in protest, and I don't have to hear their whining about how Fallout 3 isn't really Fallout.
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2010-03-10, 08:34
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Link #18 |
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そんなやさしくしないで。。。
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: NSW, Australia
Age: 29
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Based on another set of characters though? I don't think having ANOTHER series of the same events is exactly that smart. However, once you lose Harry, you kinda lose much of the action and intensity that the books have. :/ (refuses to mention the movies as they've cut a lot of stuff)
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