My thoughts on the Gantz movie. Let me show you them...
Andy bought the tickets last month and I thought I was easily going to be done with volume 16 by the time the screening happened. Nothing really turns out the way their planned. I ended up working my ass off (literally, my legs are kinda numb and my back is shot) since mid-December and just finished Gantz vol 16 (and Bride of the Water God #8 and Oh My Goddess #17) yesterday.
I was really tired and didn't want to go anywhere, but dammit, we already paid for the tickets. So we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out. I fortified myself with some coffee-based drink with a boatload of whiskey and peppermint schnapps and topped it off with a creme brulee. I was all good to go!
I really dug the big old commercial for Dark Horse's edition of Gantz volume 15. Yay!
And then there was the movie. Huh. Well, it looks awesome!
For the record, Studio Cutie does the translation, scripting and lettering for the Dark Horse version of the manga, so I'm pretty familiar with the story up to volume 16. Even though we own a dvd set of the anime, I've only seen a part of the episode with the Tanaka Alien and thought the pacing on it was dead-boring. It was lots of people standing around wondering if they should help the guy who's getting killed. That put me off of watching the rest of it.
So here goes...The books are way better.
Keep in mind the manga has the luxury of an ongoing series, where the movie does not. So they had to cut a LOT of stuff out for the movie. Like ALL of the minor characters. Butterdog. The panda. Lara Croft-chick.
And it was subbed dubbed*. T_T
Right off the bat movie Kei is different from manga Kei. Manga Kei is a complete turd who eventually changes into a sympathetic character. Movie Kei is an unremarkable guy with "no presence". Since time is short, the movie shifts the emphasis from Kei's growth from middle* high school ass to caring human being to his renewed friendship with old school chum Kato. Because really, there's only two hours in this movie. It rather takes the bite off of things and makes it seem a bit mushy.
They removed all of the sex from the movie (No absurd pre-teen foreplay with Kishimoto, no pity-screw from Lara Croft-chick). Because of this, it's inexplicable why the characters are a little more aged from the book. It looks like they're in university and trying to get their first jobs.
They changed Kato's motivation for being the noble thug. Rather than being admittedly "dumb" and psychologically abused by his Aunt, he now killed his father who was abusing his little brother. Because of his crime, he was "in juvy". I'm not sure how patricide=juvy in Japan, but okay. I've read general complaints about the police in Japan, so I'll give that one a pass.
It's all movie shorthand and it's okay because the medium is different. But there is no edge at all. No commentary on how self-absorbed people can be. And this is sad because it is half of the appeal of the manga. The violence and naked ladies were the crunchy outside and the satire was the creamy surprise in the middle.
They also changed the alien encounters a bit. Again, it's mainly to accommodate the movie format. I really enjoyed watching the Tanaka alien (and the child in that scene was faithfully portrayed like he was in the book; I was glad to see him go). And watching the fight with the Berserk and Ill-Tempered Aliens reminded me a lot of the fun I had watching a guy in a Godzilla movie stomping around and terrorizing people.
And oh yeah, this is one of TWO films. They put in a teaser that seemed to have NOTHING to do with the books. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
As a complete aside, a few months ago we were working on the script for volume 16 when we were asked to translate something the Gantz ball says on one of the pages asap. It turned out that it was going to be in the movie and the localizers wanted it to be consistent with the books. So I got a little but of a thrill when I saw the 100 point menu and saw our words up there.
The time-delayed interview with the stars was meh. Unlike the girls in the Mann Theater audience I'm not a huge fan of the stars. It was cute to hear the shrieking and the "awwww"s when the boys said something sweet. Outside of that I didn't think it was any BFD. However I would do this again if they have a similar event for "Space Battle Ship Yamoto". Although now that I think of it, unless they bring over the filmmakers, it'd probably be more of the same.
Now I think I'm going to crawl into bed and watch really crappy movies and make sure my sore throat doesn't turn into a full-fledged cold. It wouldn't surprise me if it did though. I tend to get really sick right after long drawn-out periods of high stress.
-----------------------
*ETA--Now you see, THAT is a sign of how tired I am. Yeesh.
I was really tired and didn't want to go anywhere, but dammit, we already paid for the tickets. So we treated ourselves to a nice dinner out. I fortified myself with some coffee-based drink with a boatload of whiskey and peppermint schnapps and topped it off with a creme brulee. I was all good to go!
I really dug the big old commercial for Dark Horse's edition of Gantz volume 15. Yay!
And then there was the movie. Huh. Well, it looks awesome!
For the record, Studio Cutie does the translation, scripting and lettering for the Dark Horse version of the manga, so I'm pretty familiar with the story up to volume 16. Even though we own a dvd set of the anime, I've only seen a part of the episode with the Tanaka Alien and thought the pacing on it was dead-boring. It was lots of people standing around wondering if they should help the guy who's getting killed. That put me off of watching the rest of it.
So here goes...The books are way better.
Keep in mind the manga has the luxury of an ongoing series, where the movie does not. So they had to cut a LOT of stuff out for the movie. Like ALL of the minor characters. Butterdog. The panda. Lara Croft-chick.
And it was subbed dubbed*. T_T
Right off the bat movie Kei is different from manga Kei. Manga Kei is a complete turd who eventually changes into a sympathetic character. Movie Kei is an unremarkable guy with "no presence". Since time is short, the movie shifts the emphasis from Kei's growth from middle* high school ass to caring human being to his renewed friendship with old school chum Kato. Because really, there's only two hours in this movie. It rather takes the bite off of things and makes it seem a bit mushy.
They removed all of the sex from the movie (No absurd pre-teen foreplay with Kishimoto, no pity-screw from Lara Croft-chick). Because of this, it's inexplicable why the characters are a little more aged from the book. It looks like they're in university and trying to get their first jobs.
They changed Kato's motivation for being the noble thug. Rather than being admittedly "dumb" and psychologically abused by his Aunt, he now killed his father who was abusing his little brother. Because of his crime, he was "in juvy". I'm not sure how patricide=juvy in Japan, but okay. I've read general complaints about the police in Japan, so I'll give that one a pass.
It's all movie shorthand and it's okay because the medium is different. But there is no edge at all. No commentary on how self-absorbed people can be. And this is sad because it is half of the appeal of the manga. The violence and naked ladies were the crunchy outside and the satire was the creamy surprise in the middle.
They also changed the alien encounters a bit. Again, it's mainly to accommodate the movie format. I really enjoyed watching the Tanaka alien (and the child in that scene was faithfully portrayed like he was in the book; I was glad to see him go). And watching the fight with the Berserk and Ill-Tempered Aliens reminded me a lot of the fun I had watching a guy in a Godzilla movie stomping around and terrorizing people.
And oh yeah, this is one of TWO films. They put in a teaser that seemed to have NOTHING to do with the books. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
As a complete aside, a few months ago we were working on the script for volume 16 when we were asked to translate something the Gantz ball says on one of the pages asap. It turned out that it was going to be in the movie and the localizers wanted it to be consistent with the books. So I got a little but of a thrill when I saw the 100 point menu and saw our words up there.
The time-delayed interview with the stars was meh. Unlike the girls in the Mann Theater audience I'm not a huge fan of the stars. It was cute to hear the shrieking and the "awwww"s when the boys said something sweet. Outside of that I didn't think it was any BFD. However I would do this again if they have a similar event for "Space Battle Ship Yamoto". Although now that I think of it, unless they bring over the filmmakers, it'd probably be more of the same.
Now I think I'm going to crawl into bed and watch really crappy movies and make sure my sore throat doesn't turn into a full-fledged cold. It wouldn't surprise me if it did though. I tend to get really sick right after long drawn-out periods of high stress.
-----------------------
*ETA--Now you see, THAT is a sign of how tired I am. Yeesh.