Intermittent Roulette — Anime Edition

ShadowMonkey said:
@Mikochondria
Finished Akira. Lots of people shit on everything about the Akira movie but the animation because of the manga being longer and more complicated, but I feel like they should be compared as completely different stories (which they are), rather than calling the film a "failed adaptation".
While the story is very simplified and shortened in the movie, one of the big pluses is that it massively cut down on not only the unnecessarily long, constant politics and military talk in the manga, but also on the boring, Americanized "people shooting each other with guns" type of action that's prevalent in the manga.
Does the manga have a better and more fleshed out story? Yes. But I feel like the movie is more of a spectacle. And while I usually prefer substance over spectacle, I feel like Akira should be more of a spectacle, since I don't think of it (anime or manga) as a remarkably interesting or thought-provoking sci-fi. For that reason, I'm also glad the movie focuses on the psychological horror aspect.
The music, voice acting, and animation (I love 1:37:31 to 1:37:37 and the toy scene with all my heart) are all amazing, of course. Otomo's art was not only perfectly translated but also improved upon, imo. Otomo has said in an interview that with the movie he set out to leave a series of pictures in people's brains, rather than making an alternative to the manga, and I think he greatly succeeded in that.
All in all, although I gave both an 8, the anime is definitely a stronger 8. And while objectively the manga might be better and more complex in the long run, the film is a much more consistently entertaining experience, while the manga is way slower and has a lot of padding, and most of that padding isn't even too interesting, so when you get to the interesting parts they don't feel as gratifying as pretty much the entirety of the movie.
I see you had a similar opinion.

I nominate Pale Cocoon

Gwathgor said:
Uhm, well, so I finally watched Omoide no Marnie from second round, only over a year later xD It's probably my favourite Ghibli movie so far, although the ending let me down a bit.

And I nominate Seikaisuru Kado.