(L) Cross Game

[Ermes Marana]

Spoiler for response to previous post, Cross Game spoilers:

Originally Posted by Blue-kun

First, regarding Wakaba's death, I don't think the anime did any worse than the manga. It's just a matter of adapting things to work on another medium. It's obvious you can take your time with a manga, since it'll be running for years and years. That's not true with an anime, so they needed a hook, something that would definitely get people back for the second episode. And what better way to do so than anticipating killing off a character which is presented as very likeable from the first to the last minute of the episode?

I can sort of see why they did it, but that doesn't mean it works. Getting to know and love Wakaba first makes it much more powerful, and allowed much greater ability to relate to Kou and Aoba. I always felt at a greater distance from the characters in the anime.

I think perhaps they intentionally wanted to tone it back, thinking kids might not be able to handle the original version. I know I got hit pretty hard, and had to stop reading it for a while.

Originally Posted by Blue-kun

With all things considered, the scene was handled very well, and again I must disagree: Using the ED for that scene was just a fantastic touch. Beautiful piece, fit perfectly, and actually helped people associate it to that tragic moment, which ended up improving the impact of other scenes later on a lot, like in the recap episode. Who didn't get teary-eyed at the time it played again?

I'm not saying don't use the music at all. The problem is they started it too early. The viewer needed some time for what happened to sink in first, and to experience it with Kou. Kou wasn't ready for that music yet, and I felt it created a wall between him and the viewer.

If they had waited until Kou says "Now I get it... I just have to cry" and THEN played the music, it would have fit perfectly.

Having said that, at least they gave a tiny bit of time before cranking up the sad, beautiful music. I have to give them some credit here, a bad adaptation would have really screwed it up.

And also, like I said, having read the manga first I couldn't get the full effect of the anime either. So I am biased no matter what. I believe the manga does it much better so I want people to read that first, but I'm not saying the anime was bad.

[Shiroth]

@Ermes Marana Blue-kun used spoiler tags for a reason. There will be people browsing this thread who haven't read the manga or seen the anime, so please use spoiler tags as well.

[ruurguy]

Responding to Ermes Marana.

Spoiler for Cross Game general spoilers:

I guess coming from watching the anime first had me on a different perspective but I though the first episode was brilliant from an anime perspective. I already liked Wakaba's character just from the 20 or so minutes before she died and not being familiar with any of Adachi's works before when she died I was pretty much shocked. I personally thought it was VERY effective.

Anyway, so are you saying that you actually liked the anime but just thought it didn't meet the standards you wanted for it? I suppose that's fair, but me personally, given I watched the anime first I thought it was great and well deserved of the awards it got, although I sort of defined 'drama' to be more serious like movies as opposed to say korean dramas which are more slice of life type things. I thought cross game fit more into the latter which is why I gave the drama category to House of Five Leaves and the Slice of Life category to Cross game. When you made the post and I asked for clarification it sounded like you thought the anime was just plain horrible which I couldn't agree with.

[totoum]

Spoiler for cross game:

I can sort of see why they did it, but that doesn't mean it works. Getting to know and love Wakaba first makes it much more powerful

Speak for yourself

I can't pretend to have seen the most anime in the world but still, I can count the number of anime episodes/movies that brought me to tears on one hand,that episode was one of them.So at least it was powerfull to me.

so they needed a hook, something that would definitely get people back for the second episode.

You could argue that Adachi or his editors had the same thought process since serialisation was timed so that the chapter of wakaba's death would be the end of the first volume of the manga,so that people would come back and read volume 2.

[Darkonus]

For those of you that loved Cross Game, Adaichi's new Manga is out, here is the info. http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=65659