Anime and Manga-ization, Manga and Anime-ization

Also, Movies and Novelization, Novels and Movie-ization

I've been meaning to write this post for ages, but never quite got to it. Anyway, I noticed one day that when I bought manga, I avoided anything that was based on an anime, but happily watched anime that was based on manga. Why? I wondered. The answer is actually both simple and complex. Simply, it's for the same reason I usually avoid novelizations of movies, but watch movie based on novels. Generally, novelizations are shallow retellings of the movie, while a movie based on a book has the potential to be something different, something . . . I don't know. Not every movie based on a book is good, of course, and many of them are quite dismal, but there is always the possibility that the director has made something good from the book (even if it is not the same thing that the book was). Novelizations are almost always a waste of time (can anyone think of any exceptions to this? I can't, but there must be some.)

But, as I said, there's a more complex thing going on. Why is it that novelizations (and manga-izations) are almost never as good as the movie (or anime) they were adapted from? And why is it that movies made from books have so much potential to be good (even if they don't always succeed)? I think it has to do with the relative amount of stuff that is in each medium. A novel is full of stuff. It has careful characterizations, intricate plot, all kinds of description. A movie, being visual, has much less of those things, and has to rely on less stuff to do the job (the amount of stuff not being related to how good the thing is, mind you--I'm not saying novels are better than movies, nor the other way around. They're just different).

When a book gets made into a movie, there is simply too much stuff to use. Things always get added in to movies, of course, which may seem to contradict what I'm saying, but usually the only things added are things that are necessary for the change of medium. The process, then, of making a movie out of a book is one of distillation. The creative team works to take the book and extract its most essential elements, and those are the things that go into the movie. On order to include everything from a written work in a movie, one would have to start with something much shorter than a novel--the novella is probably about the right length. At any rate, a good creative team working with a visionary director can make something quite remarkable in the process of making a novel into a movie. The result isn't always exactly the same as the book--it can't be, really--but it may be just as good.

Turning a movie into a novel, on the other hand, is a process of transcription. The writer attempts to take the movie and put every detail into the book, resulting in a simple retelling. Because it is rarely possible for the writer to add to the movie while novelizing it, the result also tends to be shallow. It's like listening to someone describe a movie to you, play-by-play, without you being able to see or hear the original. Theoretically, if it were permissible to add to the movie, a good writer might be able to create a novelization as good as the movie. I don't know if it's ever been done.

So what about anime and manga? The processes are similar, though manga is also visual. It's possible to take a manga series and turn it into an anime series through a process of almost direct translation--InuYasha makes a decent example, though some of the events happen in a different order (the ones I'm thinking of are all ones that don't really need to happen in any particular order for the story to make sense). Theoretically, it should be possible to turn an anime into a manga by a reverse process, and maybe it's been done, but I have yet to encouter an example (to be fair, I have been avoiding manga I know is based on anime).

A lot of anime--movies, especially--are created from anime by distillation, much the same as making a movie from a novel. Akira, for example, is a single two-hour movie created from a manga of six thick volumes. A lot was left out, but the movie was still really, really good. The few manga-izations of anime that I have read, on the other hand, were lacking in depth, characterization, etc. Just like novelizations. Cowboy Bebop (blogged somewhere back there) is one example. I'd probably like the show, but I found the manga skimmed too quickly over just about everything. I wanted more substance. More recently, I read the three-volume (three rather thin volumes) Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. The Gundam franchise is really big, and I wanted to check it out. I'd watched a bit of Mobile Suit Gundam Seed on YTV, and it was okay, but not really gripping (didn't make me a regular watcher like InuYasha, Cardcaptors and Witch Hunter Robin did). I almost didn't bother to read the last volume of the manga. Probably a fan of the show would have liked it; they could use it to remind them of the show when they weren't actually watching. I don't think the book would gain Gundam any new fans, though. There is almost no characterization. There is too much left out of background events (and even events happening to the main characters) for the plot to make much sense, or for the reader to really care about anything. I could say more, but my intent isn't to rip the book apart, only to use it as an example of why I avoid manga based on anime. I don't know why this series was done this way, though. There's no reason why a longer series couldn't have been done, with the missing things added in. There must be lots of material from the anime that was skipped over. It doesn't make sense--when you have less stuff to work with in the first place, why leave out even more? Anyway, I hadn't even finished book three when I listed the series on eBay. Tomorrow I'll be mailing them off to someone who will hopefully enjoy them more than I did.

The one manga-based-on-anime that I did really enjoy (and I didn't realize the anime came first when I started reading it) was Neon Genesis Evangelion (I've only read the first four volumes as they're all the library has). The thing about this series though, as I discovered when I read the notes at the back, is that the writer/artist was deliberately fleshing out the story as he went along, adding all kinds of characterization and other detail. It shows that it is possible to make good manga adapted from anime, but it's necessary to add more stuff (as I hypothesized might be possible with novelizations).

Phew. That was a longer post than I was going to write. I hope it made sense. And I didn't even get to blathering about how Witch Hunter Robin is one of my favourite anime series now (if you're watching on Friday nights on YTV, be prepared for the story to take a somewhat different direction from here on. It gets really intense.)

Recent Reading

Now that NaNoWriMo is over, I'm getting back into my usual breakneck pace of reading (but I have to still make time for more writing than I was doing before NaNoWriMo). Here are the last few things I read before and during ye olde month of novel writing (not counting comics, which I'll get to in another post).

Fiction:

42. The Steampunk Trilogy by Paul Di Filippo. I blogged a while back about deciding to read some recent steampunk as part of my League of Extraordinary Reading (for those not in the know, that's my attempt to read everything mentioned or alluded to in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (not the movie), which is a monumental task, but one I am very much enjoying). This is one of the books my local library actually had. It reminded me a little of Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, though they're really very different books. Perhaps it was just the sense of having fun and experimenting with fiction, and the sense of history. Anyway, this volume is actually three novellas (I'm guessing, as I didn't do a word count). They're alternate history--sort of. The steampunk elements are there, but more-or-less in the background (which is where they should be, really). It's been too long, now, since I read it for me to make any really useful comments, so probably I should just shut up. It's a good read, and very fun, and the perfect thing for those who like alternate looks at historical figures and fiction that plays around with the past. Oh, and the writing was very good, too.
    
43. The Bookman's Promise by John Dunning. I think I made some exclamation or another when this book first came out. I adored the first two "bookman" mysteries, so I was really excited about this one. My first impression, though, was that it was not as absorbing as the others, that it was just harder to get in to. About halfway through, though, it really grabbed me and I couldn't put it down. Which isn't to say the first half was not good, just that it wasn't as gripping as the second half. But, hey, it's a novel about books, so it can't be a bad thing.
    
44. Hemlock at Vespers by Peter Tremayne. More mystery fiction, this one is a collection of short stories about Tremayne's character Sister Fidelma, and Irish religieuse around the time when paganism in Ireland was not long gone (or entirely gone, even). I started reading these mostly because I'm interested in Celtic scholarship, and Tremayne is the pseudonym of Peter Berresford Ellis, a well-known Celtic scholar. I'd read some of his non-fiction and was curious about his mystery novels. The stories aren't especially outstanding, but neither are they a waste of time. Basically, they're competent, and sometimes quite good, historical mysteries. I think I prefer Fidelma at novel length (though I don't consider Tremayne's novels to be high art either, just good, entertaining reads. And what more do you want from a fat mystery, anyway?)
    
45. Anno-Dracula by Kim Newman. Here's another steampunk novel, this time taking off from the question "What if Van Helsing et al had not defeated Dracula?" Like all steampunk, it plays with history and has fun doing so. I have to admit I was rather . . . er . . . frustrated with the quality of the copyediting, though. There seemed to be rather a lot of small grammatical annoyances and awkward sentences that could easily have been caught by a good editor. But, quibbles aside, this was a really good vampire novel. If you don't like vampire stories on principle, obviously you won't like it. I liked it well enough to sign out the sequel from the library (it's now waiting on my pile of library books for me to get to it). There's a third book, which I will also read, eventually.
    
46. Portugese Irregular Verbs by Alexander McCall Smith. I picked this up at Superstore, of all places. It's the first of a trilogy of slender novels, and I thought the writing was fun. It read more like a sequence of short stories than a novel, which is not a bad thing, necessarily (and maybe it was written as a series of short stories). The really odd thing, though, was that it read like a historical book (I thought it would have made fine steampunk with the right technological trappings), yet it was set in the present. Perhaps it's because the settings are old-world. I don't know. I'll probably read the others eventually. If it had had airships in, I'd probably have gone out to buy them right away (but I'm a bit mad for airships right now).

Non-Fiction:

52. Living Fossil: The Story of the Coelacanth by Keith S. Thomson. Okay, this is my favourite kind of non-fiction: a well-written book that makes science and natural history interesting and alive. Plus, it's about coelacanths. Coelacanths are cool. Not long after I read this, I happened across Daily Planet (weekdays at 8 on the Discovery Channel), and they had a story about a Canadian team planning to take a BC-built sub to east Africa to attempt to tag coelacanths with those new gadgets that record info and transmit it by satellite (I think). Used to be, you had to catch the fish--and probably kill it--to get the info. The team is mostly made up of people who recently used the devices (not the sub, though) to study Pacific salmon populations. Anyway, like I said, science is fun, coelacanths are cool, and this book is a very readable history of their discovery and study.
    
53. Airship Saga by Lord Ventry and Eugene M. Kolesnik. This book, I am not so enthusiastic about, despite my recent fascination for airships (related, no doubt, to my steampunk obsession). While there was some truly interesting information and some great stories from old guys who actually flew airships, it was necessary to wade through an awful lot of really boring stuff to find it. There were a lot of old military guys writing in their military report style, things like: "We flew x number of hours on such-and-such a day in this direction, but didn't sight any submarines." Pages of it. But I was determined this book would not defeat me, and I read the whole thing, including all the overly-long picture captions. And I'm glad I did, because there really was some good stuff in there amongst the boringness. Some great photos and diagrams, too. (Someone wanna get me an RC airship for Christmas?)
    
54. Nabakov's Blues by Kurt Johnson and Steve Coates. More science, but butterflies this time. Did you know that Vladimir Nabakov (author of Lolita, among other things) was a lepidopterist? He wasn't considered much more than an amateur at the time, since he hadn't much training and was best known for his writing, but he did some solid science on butterflies. This book is about Nabakov as butterfly scientist, and especially about the work he did on a group of butterfiles called "blues." A great deal of it was also about more recent work on these butterflies that filled in the things Nabakov was unable to study, and showed just how good his science was. The book wasn't quite as exciting or readable as Living Fossil, but was still very good. (Shall I say it? Butterflies are cool.)
    

Phew. More to come soon, as I'm almost through a book of short stories. Plus there's a tonne of new graphic novels to blog.

I'm Done, I'm Done!

50,395 words. I wasn't sure there were that many in the story, but I found them, and now they're all in order. Until I revise it, that is. Now, to go collapse until January.

48,444

Wrote 1826 words. TV now.

New Fey

Page 6 is up. See satyr pheromones in action!

Lookit How Early It Is

Just about to tick over to 8pm, and I've already written 1844 words (for a total of 46,618). I've posted the latest bit to my NaNoBlog, and updated by NaNo Profile with my wordcount. Now to pee the dog, watch some tv and prepare some form of notes for using when I talk to Ryan's class tomorrow (which I should have done ages ago) (I have been preparing in my head).

Going, going

So I wrote 1731 words today and am now at 44,763. By tomorrow, I'll have passed 45,000 and left it well behind. Of course, last year, I was almost completely done my novel at this point, and was well past 50,000 words. Oh well. Different year, different novel. Still not sure there are even 50,000 words in this one.

Back in Time

In case you checked my NaNoBlog this morning and were startled to see that I didn't write anything yesterday, never fear. I was actually finished by about 9:30, only we were in the middle of a power outage (yay for battery power) that also took out the cable, so I couldn't post anything. And by the time the power came back on just before 11, I'd forgotten. So I've just posted yesterday's words, and back-dated the entry to approximately when I finished last night. I wrote 2060 words to end up with 43,032 total. The end is very, very near, though. I'm not sure I can hack out 7000 words of denouement. But we shall see.

Peach

I've discovered, in my experiments with green streaks, that my hair--which is a very dark walnut brown--bleaches out to a really peculiar pale orange. (In case you are wondering, I'm re-doing the green in my hair--and bleaching the bits that grew out since I did it last--and not turning myself into a blonde.)

Disclaimer Stickers for Science Textbooks

Hee hee. Look at these textbook disclaimer stickers. It's funniest if you read them in order. (Link via Bookslut.)

Phew!

Just topped 40,000 words. Yee-haw. The end is nigh! Etc, etc. I wrote 1875 words today and am at 40,972 words total. And it looks like I might be able to squeeze 50,000 out of this book, after all. Maybe. This next week will tell, obviously. Now something to read, and bed.

Today's Words Brought to You by the Spirit of Vancouver Island

Er, yes, I wrote most of today's quota of words on the ferry to Vancouver. Long story short, Sue now has a new foster dog--a lovely little brindle lurcher girl. Anyway, words. Things get more gruesome in kentaur-land, and I wonder if this can still be a YA novel. I wrote 1980 words today (could have pressed on to 2000, but I really want to eat something, drink something warm and stare at the tv for a little while before bed). I'm now at 39,097 and will pass 40,000 tomorrow. The end will soon be in sight (I hope).

Not a Bit

Not a bit of dialogue today, that is, unless you count and owl saying "whoo-hoo," in which case there is one hyphenated onomatopoeic word of dialogue. My heroes are alone with their thoughts and their fears, on a cliff overlooking a lake (each on a different part of the cliff). Tavie doesn't even have his horse. The first day is almost over, but there are two more to go, plus the nights in between. They have water and fire but no food. Oh yeah, and Tavie's still blind.

Writers are mean to their creations sometimes, but if we weren't, nothing important would ever happen in our fictional worlds. Anyway, I wrote 2040 words (yee-haw, more than 2000 again), and am now at 37,117. That's 12,883 left to go. At least. And only 10 days. Phew.

And I'm Done

Well, for today, at least. 35, 077 words. Not too bad, I guess. Now for that book and my nice, warm bed.

Bleah

I managed to get to 34,074 words before I started to watch tv, but now I'm ready to climb into bed with a book and I still have about 750 words left to go for today. I knew I should have started this afternoon . . .

In Which we Learn of Satyr Pheromones

Fey: Fleeing Arcadia, page 5 is now up. And yeah, they probably didn't call them "pheromones" in ancient Greece, but I figure if satyrs have really powerful ones, they probably had a word for 'em.

2000+

Yes, for the second time I managed more than 2000 words in a day. Today it was 2230 words, for a total of 33,159. Woo hoo! Today my characters experienced the legendary mead hangover and got violently ill as a result. And before they could recover, I made them cross a really big, dangerous river (called, incidentally, the river of woe). Then one of them--the one who's currently blind--fell off his horse, got swept away and had to be rescued. But he did get to ride a centaur, and how many humans can say that?

3/5

Writing felt a bit easier today--maybe because I got 600 words out of the way before dinner, so it didn't seem like such a huge task later. I wrote exactly 1800 words, and reached 30,929, which is just over 3/5 of the way there. Phew! I'm on target to finish the 50,000 by November 28, but I'm still not sure this little book is going to last that long. I just got my main characters stinking drunk to buy some time (though it turns out there's a good plot-related reason for them to drink until they pass out, so it's not just filler). It ocurred to me that drunkeness is probably not a really . . . proper . . . thing for a YA novel, but then again, the characters will have such nasty hangovers that they're not likely to ever do it again (oh yeah, mead gives THE worst hangovers). Plus there's the fact that they're soon-to-be shamans, and getting even a little drunk is a Very Bad Idea for shamans in their world. Anyway . . .

Oh Yes

Caitlín R. Kiernan:

Writers accumulate books the way that knick-knacks accumulate dust. And writers accumulate knick-knacks, too. Or at least I do. They look good sitting on the shelves in front of all those goddamned books.

Time Travel

Phew! Today was the first day I damn near decided not to write, but to make it up the next day. I was so tired when I came time to sit down and work on Kentaurs. But write I did, and got to 29,129 words--almost all before midnight.

Then, when I posted the latest bit on my NaNoBlog, I noticed the timestamp was wrong. Somehow, it was posting an hour in the future. So I went in an back-dated it to the right time. Of course, it could just be that I and my house (or my clocks, anyway) time-travelled an hour into the future and Blogger has it right after all. (Looks like the timestamp for this blog is wrong, too. I wonder how long that's been going on?) Oh well. Nothing like a little time travel before bed.