I'm not crazy about the art design. First, the excuse that they want to hold a wider audience doesn't hold water. There's tons of anime/manga that have a retro and/or distinctive art style that separates them from the generic one they chose for Parasyte, and more often than not people accept them readily (in fact welcome the change from all the generic style and moe shit), especially because they give more uniqueness to the show. And oh look! Goutou looks almost the freaking same as the manga style. Why is it acceptable for him to retain the style but not the others, hmm? At least they're honest and don't trust a wide audience to watch the show without some generic anime designs.
Second, Iwaaki's art style is not some kind of shoujo style full of tiny little lines that would be a bitch to animate. It has clean and clear lines, with good proportions and looks unique. It does have a bit of an old style in it, but one just has to look at his current work, Historie, and see that the same style has improved while holding its uniqueness. They could've consider his current art as a basis for the designs.
Third (and maybe my biggest gripe), why the HELL does Shinichi look so radically different from the original?? Why does a character have to look like a nerd (with glasses, wtf) and go through a huge image change? Which is essentially him losing the glasses midway and look like a stoic/badass bishounen or some shoujo crap where taking off the glasses makes all the difference. What was great about Shinichi (original) is that he looks like a regular kid. No nerdy, no thug, just a regular kid. When he goes through certain situations, changes his hair a bit and "looks" stronger, he doesn't radically change his looks... but you can still feel he's "changed" in some way (here I praise the amazing art of Iwaaki, he's amazing at minute face expressions/changes and such). What's great is that to an outsider he just looks like a teenager messing with his hair to look more tough, it's a normal behaviour. This was subtle and didn't require the generic anime trope of "without glasses I'm totally different" crap, that's so overused it's insulting.
And by the way this is just a pet peeve of mind, but I really dislike the fact that there are so many female characters on the freaking promotional poster, at least one of those high schoolers are not main characters or even directly supporting cast (I'm looking at you, girl from the art club). Where the hell is Uda-san, Akirumo, the detective, the freaking DAD? Because those are hell of a lot more important. But no yeah let's put all the moe/sexy female characters we can think of on the first poster ever, our main audience are lowest common denominator otaku after all *sarcasm*
I get modernize like give them cellphones, etc. that's ok. The manga IS old after all. Some of those are inevitable and it's not hard to conform the story to include those changes.
And Aya Hirano is Migi. I... have no fucking idea. She's a good seiyuu, just I always imagined Migi to have a male voice, although on the more androgynous side. Let's see what happens, as long as she doesn't sound like I'm hearing Haruhi/Konata I'm ok. As long as the voices fit their characters, I have zero complaints on that department.
Animation at least from the trailer looks amazing, so let's cross our fingers they keep it up and don't censor anything. Or if they censor is just some bars so we can at least see all the gore in the DVD/BR releases.
I ranted a lot, and it might sound like I'm super angry, but it's usually just me venting a bit, so don't take it as if I'm only attacking please or totally opposed. I'm actually pretty optimistic about this anime, it looks like it's gonna be fun. |