The dialogue in Index is Dumb and must be Prohibited
I was going to title the post 'Touma is Dumb and must be Destroyed' but I've come to the belated realization that I've been blaming Kamijyo Touma too much for my unhappiness with the Index anime. Too much crap comes out of his mouth but, hey, that's the sad duty being the main chara. Even so I enjoyed hearing him being killed twice in the Index-tan DVD special. Go Kaori and Stiyl!
I was forced to concede that this was not just a problem of shounen jive in one chara but a systemic series/source fault when a voice in my head (Sohryu Asuka Langley via Tiffany Grant) went 'This is ridiculous!' during my beloved Biri Biri's exchange with Touma on the Bridge of Angst. Salt was rubbed even more furiously into the gaping wound when I heard the voice of Eric Cartman go 'You guys! Seriously!!' during the Batting Practice 'battle' between Misha and Shizu-sama's chara.
Just when I thought I should have just listened to Evirus, the next episode puts the focus back on Biri Biri again. Argh, I do love her chara (needs MOAR yuri i.e. Kuroko glomping) and Kaori's enough to just barely hang on to the bitter end.
P.S. Oh and while I'm not the world's biggest Index fan, I've been even feeling a bit sorry for her. She's been so marginal that she hasn't even played Damsel in Distress for a while. All she does is whine when she does appear and chomp on Touma at the end of an arc. What's up with that? Couldn't the series have done more interesting things with a living library of All The Magic In Za World and she the ultimate weapon in the wrong hands? At least she could have been outsourced all that live commentary during the 'fights' and let the fighting do, you know, the fighting.
P.P.S. The new OP like not I do. Oh yeah, brings back memories of GSD's Wings of Words.
Related posts:
- Index anime poisoned by Railgun manga
- A certain series diluted, spliced and distilled
- The Kakoii of Misaka Mikoto
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February 1st, 2009 - 10:25
Novel to anime adaption… Never usually a great transition. Butchered narration, no inner dialogues, etc, to flesh out characters more or peak at their thoughts with every action and/or decisions. Of course, It all depends on the studio and director’s ability to breathe life on the source material.
Sadly, something JC Staff isn’t even capable of doing right (just look at their past track record). The two recent episode further proves so. God dammit, JC Staff.
But, yeah…that Touma…
February 1st, 2009 - 10:41
JC Staff has been doing well with ToraDora though, why?
February 1st, 2009 - 11:12
I meant Shana and ZnT, mostly.
I haven’t read the novels for Toradora yet, but just judging by the anime only, it’s real fine. Reading around, it’s been said that it could have been better since JC Staff did alter some things around and omitted stuff here and there.
Novel to anime, directly copying and pasting every word and scene is probably most not possible, I understand that. Especially for those with heavy narration and info of exposition… Making it a different show that closely follows is something directors aim for. And I suppose, that’s something they did with Toradora.
February 1st, 2009 - 11:43
The novels are just as bad, which is why the anime sucks as well.
February 1st, 2009 - 14:36
Corner, so JC Staff (or the folks working on ToraDora) have still Got It in the arts of adaptation. Or could it be some kind of issue with permission from the author restricting freedom of adaptation?
anon (hahaha, come on, you could certainly come up with a better nick than that), source material being bad does dispose an adaptation to be unenjoyable to most. But it certainly isn’t a necessary condition, much less a sufficient condition. I didn’t the Ga Rei manga or the SHUFFLE! game but their animes were more than ok.
February 2nd, 2009 - 01:49
That’s unfair criticism this time… the problem lies mostly in the source itself, as novel readers reassure me. If anything, then J.C.Staff stuck too closely to the source, and didn’t work it over
Personally, I’d say that while the show has some real pacing issues, particularly once Touma turns into Preacherman again, the technical animation execution is somewhere between excellent and breathtaking. At least I couldn’t name a single show which has as detailed and fluid nightly action scenes as this one. The kicker is that I like the characters and consequently have no problems waiting out the blaah parts.
Oh, about the OP: When I heard it for the first time, I hated it. After the 10th repeat, I’ve been mellowing up on it significantly. But that might also be caused by the interesting list of characters shown (even Last Order!)
February 2nd, 2009 - 09:47
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t? LOL Actually I didn’t mention JC Staff at all in the body of the post.
If there was an Index remake, how would current critics like it to be done differently? I’ve given a suggestion about using Index to voice over the explanation/exposition parts but that involves major reworking of the source material and it doesn’t solve Preacherman / Badly Played Paladin Syndrome. Heck, let’s forget about that and just do a straight manga-to-anime adaptation of To Aru Kagaku no RAILGUN!!
February 2nd, 2009 - 11:09
@Mentar
Not sure so there… JC Staff kinda just shit all over volume 4 with these latest episodes.
The only volume they did “okay” with was volume 2, with Aureolus. Most of the rest, they changed and omitted many things. They screw up quite a few scenes and made them nonsensical, throwing heavy exposition, cram and cutting about 50 pages into a single episode and of course, the show suffers from pacing issues. Although, the novels themselves are not perfect as it also suffers from a bit of repetition and Touma issues, but nothing near the level of the anime.
Worst of all, they toned and removed some bloody/gruesome parts, even explicit scenes. Those were really a charm to the Index series.
February 3rd, 2009 - 10:55
I guess I’m in the minority these days, but I generally still have a positive view of JC Staff. I did like Shakugan no Shana quite a bit, despite not living up to its full potential. Nodame Cantabile and Toradora rock. Luckily I skipped over all of Zero to Tsukaima, Nabari no Ou, and other recent flops.
Now Index…
- The dialogue makes my eyes bleed. Touma talks too much, and has little to no believability in his motivation to get involved in most of these conflicts.
- I constantly envision some random street thug putting a bullet in Touma’s head, it would really be that simple for someone to kill him.
- I loath amnesia as a shallow plot device, but I seeth with *murderous rage* when its a completely unnecessary shallow plot device as it is here.
- I only keep watching in desperation because of the great art/animation. Also Misaka and Kanzaki. Needs much, much more Kanzaki~
February 4th, 2009 - 03:06
You know, the fun thing in recent arc (eps 15-17) is the issue of Misha’s gender. Exterminatus Church aside, his(her?) uniform does somehow resemble Orthodox mantles, but legs are, lets say, suspicious. It should be also noted that Misha is absolutely male name, being diminutive form of Mikhail, or Michael. So, what should I believe? My previous experience (male) or Eclipse subs(female)?