Whoever it was that said you'd never get a second chance at a good first impression clearly never watched a modern anime
reboot of a classic manga, I mean obviously
Because it's a really old saying and they probably died ages before Hayao Miyazaki even invented anime. But where was I going with this?
Oh, right. There's been a trend lately of modern anime. Totally revamping the classic manga stories
They're based on David productions take on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has been making small and sometimes huge tweaks to fix
inconsistencies in hero hiko iraqís original story since episode 1 while shows like parasite the Maxum and devil man crybaby have
fundamentally reinvented their respective source material for the modern age a new
adaptation can provide an opportunity to rethink flawed plot elements rework the pacing of certain story and character arcs and
Reinvent aspects of a series that might not have aged well or that might take away from its core appeal
It's unsurprising to see mapas 2019 adaptation of Osamu
Tezuka's d'Oro take this approach as well
the original story was an awkward attempt at dark fantasy with a strong dramatic premise shackled to the style and
sensibilities of the father of mangas older more kid-friendly
fare and it needed this kind of retooling to leave any kind of impact at all on
desensitized modern audiences
But even taking that into consideration it's remarkable just how thoroughly the series has been overhauled by director Kazuhiro of food of hoshi and writer
Yasuko Kobayashi who also wrote the jo-jo adaptation in case you were wondering it's not quite an adaptation
In name only it shares many concepts character designs and key plot points with tezuka's original but put them side-by-side
And the manga almost starts to look like a Mad Magazine parody of the anime
They're that different considering that d'Oro is overshadowed even by many of tezuka's own works
It's likely that many of you watching the new series haven't read the original book
so today I'm gonna highlight some of the biggest changes made to this new adaptation and break down how they fundamentally
alter
The story of d'Oro in my opinion for the better with spoilers up to around
Episode 7 if you're not yet familiar with either version
I highly recommend watching
Totoro on Amazon Prime
before watching this video because it is one of the best shows this season and I don't want to spoil it for you but to
give you a brief rundown the series follows Hakim aru a samurai whose body is made entirely of
prosthetics on his quest to kill the
48 demons who stole his original body parts when he was born as part of a power bargain with his father a feudal lord
He's accompanied on this quest by
dodo a skilled and resourceful young thief with a
Mischievous streak a mile long the anime changes nothing of this core premise from the manga, but it differs in
Practically every other aspect right down to its art style
Tezuka's original manga is gorgeous in its own, right?
But it seems to waffle from page to page on whether or not it actually wants to be taken
seriously by its audience the artwork though Moody and Atmospheric for its time still looks very
cartoony and flat with big eyed
exaggerated characters reminiscent of Disney cartoons and contemporary european comics like Asterix even its
Bloodiest action scenes have an air of slapstick about them and anachronistic humor
Like horse-drawn carriages having license plates of bounds the anime adaptation
holds on to the essential components of each character's design but drastically tones down their
exaggerated illustrative features and renders them with more delicate line work bringing the look of the show more in line with
Modern anime productions or at least anime from the 90s couple that with a muted color palette and more traditional
watercolor backgrounds and you get a show that feels rooted in the time when it's set with a
persistently dreary
atmosphere and enough
realism to make the monsters lurking in its feudal settings seem much more tangible and scary this change in style reflects an
Intentional move away from the relative simplicity of the mangas storytelling which can be felt from the stories
inciting incident onward in the manga Jackie Mario's father
Daigo is an egotistical and inhumanly cruel person from the get-go
knowingly selling his own newborn son to the demons in the Hall of Hell for power and killing the priest without a
Second thought as soon as he's seen while only thinking of how this power will benefit him in the new anime more complex motivations
And new underlying religious themes frame him as a more tragic
Sympathetic figure before he kills the priest who oversees the all of Hell for instance
He argues with him over the ethics of working with the demons
Reasoning that the suffering caused by the famine and disease afflicting his lands is too great to simply ignore or pray away
He sees the world around him as a hell that's already been abandoned by the Buddha
And in that light it only makes sense for him to reject Buddha's teachings in turn the situation outside
The temple is so dire that the priest himself echoes those doubts in his dying breath
Thanking Daigo for killing him before he lost his faith entirely while still
Fruitlessly begging him not to give in to evil and abandon his humanity
This change helps us better understand why Daigo would make the decisions he does
Simultaneously it helps to highlight. Just how much the bargain with the demons really costs him the next morning
he's a changed man thinking only of his power not of his people just like his manga counterpart and
Laughing as he rips his own child from its mother's arms and casts it away to die
it really seems as though he's lost his humanity or
Sold his soul if you will this implies that his desperate ploy to save his people
Ironically turns him into the villain who will inflict untold suffering on them as the story goes on
But that's not the only ironic wrinkle that the anime adds to these events through some subtle changes in the scene. Where
Shikamaru is born the demon lightning that steals his body
Also breaks the head off a Buddha statue the old woman who's sent to drown him in the river
But ultimately puts him on a boat instead before being murdered by a badass Samba mantis samurai
Speaks in a way that implies that she's a devout Buddhist and there's also a Jizo statue
Right next to the spot on the road. Where dr
Jukai, slips and stumbles on akamaru's boat. The implication of all of this is pretty clear kaki
Maru is only able to survive the unfortunate circumstances of his birth through divine intervention
Which is pretty conclusive evidence that the Buddha had not in fact
Abandoned a ghost lands and that in turn he did not have to make the horrible
sacrifice that set the whole story in motion despite his doubts
The priest was right with Buddhist symbolism and artifacts continuously popping up throughout the series
This feels like an integral part of d'Oro story yet
It's all anime original these thematic changes transform the series from a mostly straightforward adventure into a nuanced
theologically charged
Exploration of man's capacity for both good and evil and this shift in focus has knock-on effects on many key
characters in the manga, dr
Jukai is just a kindly benevolent old man who takes taki Maru in and luckily has the prosthetic design skills
He needs to help him move around and who knows what cyborgs are for some reason. Like I said, it's a very
Anachronistic manga his appearance in the anime couldn't be farther from that goofy benevolent figure in the manga
He's a repentant war criminal who has devoted his entire life to charity in a desperate attempt to make up for his past misdeeds
Yet somewhat ironically that violent past that he's trying so hard to leave behind helps
yaki
Maru just as much as his medical skills do since that's what allows him to teach his surrogate son's
Self-defense against the demons hunting him introducing this moral ambiguity to Joo Kai's character makes his story much more
interesting in a vacuum and helps to connect it to the series broader themes and we see those themes extend to the supporting cast of
Other stories as well for instance in the manga the people of Lady bandai's village are all her
Unwitting victims losing all of their wealth to her avarice as they foolishly honor her as their Savior in the anime
They become her willing
co-conspirators luring passers-by into her lair to be eaten and
sharing in the spoils to enrich themselves
The demon may have coerced them into helping her at first, but it's their greed that drives them to keep it up
these ideas aren't all-encompassing but they inform a lot of the
Adaptations direction and play into what I'd argue are its strongest
Storylines the anime original side story of the jar ogumo from episode 7 also explores these themes
Albeit from a different angle in that storyline. Yah
Giro's kindness and Buddha like respect for all life convinces the spider demon
O'hagi to change her ways and expunges the evil from her soul
Which raises some doubts about the righteousness of kaki maru's demon murder road trip
Speaking of him as he's the story's central character. These new themes naturally have the biggest impact
how hockey maru's
portrayed if you've only watched the anime this might come as a bit of a shock but in the manga hockey mario can
Hear and talk from the very beginning
Okay
technically he can't his ability to see Souls is a
Full-blown sixth sense in the manga that also happens to allow him to read minds and project his thoughts into the heads of others
But functionally it means that he can create speech bubbles just like everybody else
And since he's able to talk from the moment
They meet he and dodo are able to develop a friendly albeit
Somewhat sassy rapport with one another in contrast the animes hockey
Maru has spent his entire life under a Helen Keller esque shroud of
Darkness possessing no senses until he kills a few demons and recovers his skin and ears
He knows the man who raised him only as a vaguely
reassuring blob of soul energy and Dorado as a slightly smaller more
Energetic and annoying blob and the little thief doesn't have a much clearer perception of him
even their first meeting is handled very differently across both versions the manga frames their first encounter from kaki maru's
perspective having him stumble upon Doh
doh-doh as an unknown child being
walloped by a group of thugs while the anime ships away from his perspective after the prologue to show us how daughterto
Operates day to day before they meet and explain why those thugs were getting so violent to begin with in this new?
Context when introduced from Dodos perspective without the ability to speak
yaki maru comes off as a creepy puppet like
enigma only slightly less threatening than the demons and ghouls that he fights and the question of whether he'll emerge from his cave of
Sensory deprivation as a hero or a monster is one of the main sources of tension and intrigue within the show's
Overarching narrative I'd argue
It's the most compelling question in the whole story and it was invented entirely by the anime
The anime is first two-parter the story of the more eco song
Infuses these themes into one of the weakest parts of Tezuka's original manga
transforming it from a footnote in
Akamaru's backstory into an essential turning point in his and Dodos journey together in the manga Shikamaru
Recounts this story to Dorado almost immediately after they meet after meeting the blind monk on his way up a mountainside
He akamaru
stumbled into an
abandoned village full of war orphans and fell in love with a beautiful young girl named neo who provided for the kids by working as
A servant and it's very lightly implied a prostitute at a nearby soldiers camp
He was able to live happily with these kids for a while until one day a group of samurai
Showed up and slaughtered them while he was off training with his sword because they tried to stay in the abandoned village
After they were told to leave
Yeah, that's really it upon returning to the scene of this Massacre Hakim aru killed the samurai in a rage and felt his heart die
With me Oh leaving him an empty husk or at least that's what he tells dodo
All of this takes place over the course of just eleven pages
Which you can probably read faster than I just recap them the anime takes this skeleton of a story moves it forward into Doh
Doh-doh and kaki maru's adventures together and fleshes it out into something far more substantial
and meaningful
In the new version Hakim aru develops feelings for me o because after regaining his hearing her singing is the only sound in the world
That doesn't hurt his new ears
she
Meanwhile falls for him because he's gentle with her unlike the brutish soldiers and because he has the unique ability to see into her soul
Which reassures her that it's not tainted despite her fears about selling her body to make ends meet
This is far from the deepest basis for romance, but it's a hell of a lot better than the mangas
Hey, you're a girl. Who exists?
I love you in the anime Neos orphans become actual characters not just props and their deaths are a
direct result of the actions they take in the story not just a random bad thing that happens to them out of nowhere to make
us sad the kids have a
Long-term goal of starting their own rice farm and in order to buy the rice seed they need to make that happen neo works double
shifts at the camps of two opposing armies that results in her being branded falsely as a spy and props the samurai to
Massacre her surrogate family for revenge and likewise instead of just having gone off to train with his sword at a very inopportune
Moment Shikamaru isn't there to protect them because he's busy fighting a demon antlion
It's occupied the land that they want to farm something that he feels especially driven to do because it ate his newly regrown leg
Everything that happens to me. Oh and her family in the anime is a logical consequence of the steps
They take to better their own motton life, which makes it feel much more tragic and paints the animes world as being even more
Unfair and cruel than that of the manga where they were just killed out of nowhere for no reason
beyond that heavy emotional impact though this
Reinterpretation of mio storyline also provides a lot of fodder for kaki maru's character development
We and doe Toto see some of our first real glimpses of his
Humanity as he interacts with neo and the orphans but in the violent beastial rage, he displays after they're killed
We see the very antithesis of that will cocky Maru
Overcome this hardship and grow as a person or will hunting down demons and being exposed to the evil in the world as a result
Cost him the very humanity that he's trying to reclaim these two episodes
Provide ample evidence for both possible outcomes and put him at a very interesting crossroads
That just doesn't exist in the original story
It's not often that I can say this when talking about an adaptation
But I think that every change the anime makes here is really for the better
Mapa has managed to make each of the episodic stories
They've told so far stronger on their own than they were in the manga while simultaneously making all of them feel more
Interconnected and essential to the series core plotline. It's clear that this anime is playing the long game and looking at the other changes
they've made like adding cutaways to establish haki maru's naive and pampered younger brother to home aru early on and showing how each demon our
Heroes killed directly affects Dai ghozland. I'm very excited to see how they plan to pay off everything
they've been building up especially since the Douro manga doesn't so much end as it just kind of
stops and the team at mapa has a lot of
Flexibility in how their anime can conclude Totoro is quickly becoming the poster child for what?
Adapted anime can really be and what I want them to be and I know that it's a special case as a modern retelling
Released to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the original anime which itself kick-started the world masterpiece theater series
This is a rare project that affords its producers creative flexibility and the time and money
They need to develop their ideas properly most manga and light novel adaptations
Don't really have a chance to reinterpret their source material quite so radically but watching Doh
doh-doh has left me wishing that more would because it's taken a good story and
Transformed it into a truly great one at least so far. What do you guys think though?
Are you surprised by how different this anime is from the original manga? And for those of you who have read it?
What do you think of the changes?
They've made so far also
What do you guys think of this new less linear shorter approach to adapter die post your answers to all those questions
In the comments below and while you're down there
Don't forget to hit that subscribe button to catch more videos from me every week
This video doesn't have a sponsor but on the subject of retelling great stories
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I'm Jeff do professional shitbags signing out from my mother's basement
You