Do you realize how it works when you're adapting a weekly Manga into an Anime series? They didn't make a bad adaptation. Believe me, I have seen bad adaptations. My current favorite thing ever (Umineko no Naku Koro Ni) just last year got one of the worst Anime adaptations I've seen in my life. And that was coming from something where all the source material (the first four story arcs, which is what the first season was based on) was finished, available, out there. When you can't get it right even then, with all the material right in front of you, and try cramming 4 novels into a 26-episode series whose DVD's are selling so poorly the chances for a second season covering the final 4 arcs are very slim...yeah. They ruined characters by cutting half the content that established them (and in a story where people are dropping like flies every arc, they come off as nothing more than cannon fodder), created plotholes that could have been avoided by simply consulting the source material, misrepresented the relationship between the hero and rival character which is pretty much the most important part of the series to watch develop, left out entire scenes that are essential because this is a mystery series and you can't expect people to solve the mystery without some of this information, and when it came down to the final two episodes, they wasted the penultimate episode on something that could have been covered in a 10 minute scene...and had to cram what would have needed 2 full episodes to be adapted perfectly, at least 1 and a half to be done adequately, into the worst finale I've witnessed in my life. Yeah, the second-to-last episode was fantastically adapted, but the scene it was based on didn't need to be. There was far more important material to cover in the finale, and if they had used their time effectively, some of what they crammed into the finale could have been used in the second-to-last episode. The popular fan theory is that they realized no one was buying their shitty DVD's and decided to screw with the fans one last time before the series ended. And there's a fanmade doujin animation of the final scene out there that absolutely dwarfs the actual Anime version. That's beyond sad. Dear Lord, it was awful.B wrote:Or they could've made a good adaptation in the first place?LeprikanGT wrote:If ONLY Kai was around, we would lose SO much of the show as a whole.
That is a bad adaptation. Dragonball is not a bad adaptation, it's a standard adaptation.
Incidentally, if you're ever interested in checking out Umineko, if you didn't gather from my above paragraph, please do not watch the Anime...read the novels, or at least the Manga, which is is a good adaptation. But dear Lord, avoid the Anime like the plague.
The Dragonball and Z Anime are not bad adaptations. They did the best they could creating padding content to keep the series from catching up to the Manga, which ran a new chapter every week. Look at what happened to FullMetal Alchemist; it caught up to the Manga so fast, they had to take the story in an entirely different direction from the Manga, and you end up with two completely different series'. While it may have been pretty cool to get that for Dragonball (and then we'd have the 'Brotherhood' adaptation now with fresh animation based on the Manga now instead of Kai...yeah, yeah that would be pretty badass...), the standard for adapting a currently-running series is to make sure you add material to it so it doesn't catch up to the Manga. You need the author to write his story before you can animate it, but you still have a business obligation to fill those TV slots every week. Filler is kinda the only option. We could argue until we're blue in the face over how some filler is so good and some of it sucks, or how they should have done more filler episodes and less 'let's stare into each others' eyes for 20 minutes' filler...yeah, it'd be nice if all the filler was on par, but with a series so huge, you've got a ton of different animators and writers and whatnot working on it. Expecting consistency is a bit much.
Still, I prefer Z to Kai, because as some others have said, Kai isn't 'a better adaptation of the Manga' (ala FMA Brotherhood), it's a chopped up version of the original series. I don't see this as a new series that matches the canon better. I see it as a butchered version of the original Anime, which was how I got into Dragonball. I miss a lot of the content that was there when I got into the series. If I want the original version, I will read the Manga. I don't need Kai. The only purpose of Kai is that FUNi is finally producing an accurate dub for the series. If not for the dub, Kai wouldn't even be worth a second thought for me - and indeed, it wasn't, until the dub started airing. I knew about Kai since it was announced, I knew what it was, and I didn't care. Why? I already have a complete Anime and a complete Manga of the series, and if I want to see either version, I can access those. Why the Hell do I need an abridged (as in, the original definition of that word) version of the Anime? The Anime is the Anime, and the Manga is the Manga. Kai is pointless unless you want to watch an accurate English version of Dragonball. Toei only created Kai to make more money, and I don't think fan response to it (though I don't keep up on these things seriously, correct me if I'm wrong) is very significant in Japan. Kai had no reason to exist. The only reason I'll acknowledge that it does is that now, I get to follow the progress of FUNimation finally doing a dub for my first ever Anime obsession right (for the most part).
). And losing Kikuchi's track. Even if I ignore the chopped-up lazy nature of the series, those are two other things that I was perfectly happy with in Z that are now different. I liked the original vocal track. I liked the original music. So, if Kai is just using the same footage as the original, cutting some stuff out, and changing what I like...why...can't I just pop in a Z DVD and fastforward through the parts I don't wanna watch? Like I said, if the footage was different, and this was truly a redone and reanimated adaptation of the series, I'd feel differently about it. A Manga-accurate DB Anime would be awesome, even if it meant some sacrifices in the VA and music department. But without new animation...and with the old animation being censored...and this, and that, it's just...ehhhh...why bother?
