The same can be said for manwha authors and animators to an extend as well.
A simplified answer is: Supply & demand. Of course, when you get into the details, the answer is not so simple.
Continue reading “Why manga authors struggle”Category: News
I’ve had this thought for some decades. But I haven’t said out loudly.
So, let’s say that Mike really loves anime A. He, living overseas, torrents the series and watches it. He loves it so much that he even reads scanlation.
And finally he proclaims that he is a huge fan of the author’s work.
Continue reading “Fake fans”Hello, guys. After some consideration, I’ve moved my site off Blogger and have moved to WordPress. Blogger was just too barebone to move forward. Thankfully, old posts were able to be imported.
Now, for the new site, I am going to be doing two things.
- I will review old Korean manwha that I have in my comic room. I will probably do one or two reviews per month.
- Remember a novel I was writing? I still write that. I am going to have its own section dedicated to that. I’ve also done some 3D works to enhance the work.
I will gradually work on making the site look better in the upcoming days.
China virus is currently the hot topic in the world as WHO (A useless entity) has declared it a pandemic.
I’d like to talk about it a little as a South Korean.
In South Korea, the china virus isn’t a big deal and I can tell you why the infection rate has already flattened out.
For Koreans, wearing a face mask has been norm for several years. It is due to “micro dust” in heavy urban environment. It’s basically pollution + dust that get into your lungs and cause issues as you age.
Health officials have been raising awareness for micro dust for over a decade and it is norm for us to wear a medical mask when going out.
Therefore, when china virus hit the nation, spread was low. Most of people who were infected by the virus belong to a cult in a region called Daegu. Outside of that cult, almost no one has got it. Even if others carry the virus, it seems almost none show any serious symptoms.
There have been few who seemed healthy die from it but their number is low enough to call oddity.
As of April 2nd, those who are infected with corona virus are foreigners who have come aboard. S.Korea has never shut its air routes because it’d kill our economy. As the virus seems to affect elderly (and to an extend smokers) more than anyone else, it is perhaps better to let the economy keep going instead of putting heavy burden on working population by shutting everything down.
So, I agree with our government’s stance on not shutting everything down.
As long as you wear a mask, the risk of infection is very low. When Korean government told us to wear masks, we were already wearing’em.
I also believe Korean diet has a part in this as fermented food (kimchi) has proven effective against flu-like illness. SARS was an example.
I also believe culture has a part in this as well. Skin contact between Koreans is culturally minimal. We don’t shake hands or hug others. A kiss on cheek is almost never done even among married couples.
Japan’s anime industry has been doing remakes for a while now.
And, for the record, I am generally not against remakes because I do favor full 1080p over 480p and less. And Japanese anime industry generally know what they are doing.
Now, having said that, let’s talk about Legend of galactic heroes remake.
In the remake, virtually everything has changed. Character designs were completely changed. Plot was shortened, omitting minor events.
There have been good changes and, of course, bad changes. I hear its fan base is rather split, mainly on the shortened plot.
I can see why they’ve chosen to shorten the story. Attention span of today’s generation appears to be a lot shorter, and their aim for the remake is rake in money. Making it boring isn’t the best way to do it, I suppose.
However, it is Legend of galactic heroes. A legendary series on its own that deserves a place in the history of anime.
What I really wanted to see was them acting outside of the box and break the stupid 12 episode per season rule. I did not expect them to port everything but at the least I wanted them to break the 12 episode limit.
Legend of galactic heroes deserved a special treatment but the remake didn’t get that.
I do like the 1080p resolution and I can accept the character redesigns. I mean styles & trends change. A remake is generally aimed at a younger generation who find something too old fashioned to accept. Thus, I am willing to accept those changes.
What I do not accept is anime industry’s reluctance to break the 12 episode per season rule. They could have done 15 episodes in the first season for an example. They could have done 14 episodes in season 2.
But, no, they chose to adhere to a strict 12 episode per season and, thus, severely cut the story down.
That I do not like to see.
Anime I used to know have long vanished. That itself is perhaps fine. I mean, trends change. I am not one to long for the past and am quick to move on.
However, what I consider good qualities have been vanishing and are replaced by swallow elements.
Allow me to go deeper.
➤ 3D is killing anime
I think it was around year 2015 when I began to see 3D being used more and more. 3D effects go far beyond that but entire anime scenes being replaced with 3D is becoming more common.
Again, that itself is fine but anime being rendered with 3D is often interior and you can easily tell (at least I can) 3D scenes from hand drawn scenes.
The benefit of 3D is that it saves time. A computer (or a cluster of computers) will generate all the moving parts. How convenient it may be, hand drawn anime will always be superior.
➤ Style is gone.
The days of each anime looking different is gone. Most anime series look very, VERY, alike. There is no good that can come out of this trend.
This is my current biggest issue with anime. It is never a good idea to steamline styles and ditch creativity.
➤ Boob and skirt physics
Nowdays, anime studios appears to be spending too much efforts in breast physics.
&
Gone are the days where girl skirts obeyed gravity and physics. Nowadays, anime girl skirts completely defy gravity and physics to hide their underwear from showing.
In older anime, girls didn’t tend to wear micro skirts. Thus, they had no problem with waving clothes.
Nowadays? Anime girls wear impossibly short skirts. A certain useless Goddess doesn’t even wear her underwear.
I should make it clear that I am not dying to see their underwear. I am simply pointing out a rather bad trend from modern anime.
One: Girls don’t need to wear micro skirts.
Two: They don’t have to add so much physics to their boobs.
➩ Plot length
Anime plot is not something I am complaining here because I am finding about the same amount of anime I find interesting as I did back in 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.
Compared to the older days, anime plots are far more diverse now. That’s a good thing.
However, I must point out that the recent thread of short “seasons” is not helping. I cannot invest in a series for long enough to be attached before it ends at 11 or 12 episode.
Now, this trend has merits for anime studios. If a series fails, their losses won’t be as big as when anime studio used to have 26 and more episodes.
At the same time, short seasons kills momentum. A series can succeed over time. Some manga do start slow and build up momentum later.
Such manga are discarded nowadays for anime adaptation due to exactly that. A short season will be a failure and anime studios are not willing to risk a failure with a long season (26 episodes).
Anime studios nowadays are too business-minded.
At the same time, I must also point out that the younger viewers are often quite impatient. If they don’t enjoy the first and perhaps the second episode, they quickly discard such anime.
➤ Grand Blue: I smiled a lot while watching this and I am someone who smiles seldom.
➤ Hai to Gensou no Grimgar: Among a lot of recent “guild life” anime, this was the best I’ve seen or at least the most realistic.
➤ Konosoba: Another “guild life” anime. An overall comical, and enjoyable, anime. Though, that invisible underwear is a unique concept.
➤ Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii (Love is hard for Otaku): This one barely made the cut on the list. Though I felt it was overall an enjoyable series.
↲ Goblin slayer: This anime is not on the list. But I will mention one thing about this anime. This is the only anime I’ve seen where the main character goes into berserk logically. No super powers or whatsoever, he berserks logically.
Hello, people. I haven’t posted a thing for about half a year.
And I am not here to talk about scanlation. I am done with that stuff. I want to talk about anime adaptation of Piano no Mori.
It’s a manga series which I’ve been following since year 2000 and having realized that there have been an anime adaptation only recently, I downloaded the two seasons (total 24 episodes) and watched it.
Not sure how I’d rate it. But it wasn’t good. Piano no Mori as manga was an excellent series. Personally, I’ve never felt that Piano no Mori was a good series for anime because it deals with a highly subjective subject: music.
And I felt that, if it were to be made into anime, the music part should largely be ignored and instead focus on Kai’s relationships and his ordeals.
The anime chose to focus on music instead and I think that’s why I didn’t like it because I have absolutely no idea how to grade classical piano.
Very large part of the anime talks about how the music is wonderful and whatnot and there I was, twisting my head thinking what in the world they were talking about…
It simply did not connect.
I’ve packed up the entire webtoon and it can be found at the old project page.
With that project done, I no longer have any active project on my plate. This is pretty much it for my scanlation venture.
There are hundreds of good webtoons still out there, completely untranslated but I no longer have the desire to work on them.
There won’t likely be any further releases/updates now.
Next update will be the last episode for Kumiho.
