I have a bookshelf full of only manga (actually, it's overflowing at present) in my room. Kenshin, X, Card Captor Sakura, Lineage, Slayers (duh) and RG Veda all sit on that shelf. Some of my friends envy that shelf as much as if the guys from all those manga were actually sitting on that shelf, but some of my friends think that it's a bunch of wasted money. Three mangas can buy one animation video CD (albeit an illegal copy - -;). Why buy paper when you can see them moving in color? And so the debate goes - animation vs manga, manga vs animation.

::introduces new soapbox - old one was destoyed by the Dragon Slaves from the Dera/Demeter debate::

 I read a ridiculous article in "N" magazine this month (names changed to protect the idiotic) about how the manga version of Eva was better than the animation. OK, anybody who agrees with that, raise your hand? ::looks around:: that's what I thought. Eva is a graphic, very real animation. I really don't see how anyone could think the manga better. I could understand if someone liked the manga version of Sailormoon better than the anime version. (considering the fact that Tuxedo Kamen is a total jerk in the anime - -;) But I mean, things like Slayers and Eva that are all action do not look very good on paper.

 OK, I really am rambling.... not to mention making myself look stupid. ^^; But anyway. I usually prefer the manga, just like many people who are in their right minds prefer the book to the movie. Anime drawings are not as ... how shall I put it ... detailed? as manga drawings, and the storyline is sometimes lost and almost always changed. I nearly fainted when I watched MKR as anime. It was ruined!!!! I can live with the pictures - CLAMP pictures are hard to make into anime (although X and CCS were pretty good). But they totally rearranged the story to make it longer and added more characters that I did NOT like at all. ::growls:: ::soapbox creaks with feeling:: ::calms down::

 Another reason I prefer manga is that most of the anime I watch (on TV, not through illegal copies ^^;) are subs. Don't get me wrong, some of the subs are great. Translating Japanese to Korean is not as hard as translating Japanese to English - we have a lot of words that come from the same Chinese letters. And there are plenty of good voice actors in Korea. But the damn subs are always EDITED!!! Slayers was full of holes (mostly fighting scenes) and Sailormoon was worse (the transformation scenes). And Wedding Angel Peach! Not only were the transformation scenes edited, but the translation itself was very weird. Any words or sentences about love and dating between girls and boys was edited and changed if at all possible. In CCS the scene where the teacher gives the student he's engaged to (which is REALLY strange, considering she's in fourth grade, but that's another story) an engagement ring is completely gone. And so on and so forth.

 So the conclusion? Animes based on manga are almost never as good as the manga, but animes that come before the manga (like Slayers) are always better. ::steps down::

::tries to make sense of the last sentence::

PS - the writer was not under the influence of any drugs while she wrote this, but was a little woozy after buying two Zelgadis and one Kenshin keychains at the Seoul Animation Festival. - -;

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