Aoi Bungaku - Kokoro 1 & 2
Since these were aired back to back, I figured I should discuss them together.
Kokoro was written by Natsume Soseki, and is Japan's best-selling novel of all time. This story was directed by Shigeyuki Miya, whose direction credits include Buzzer Beater, a sports anime I've never heard of (the synopsis says that it follows humans playing against aliens in the near future), this story, the Supernatural anime, and Blood Lad.
The first half is a straight adaptation of the novel. The pacing feels a little hurried here, but the story survives intact. Even after seeing this, it's a story I'd like to read. The protagonist, Sensei is well-off and intelligent, but aimless and insecure. His relationship with K, an imposing, determined, and impoverished spiritual aesthetic that he takes into his lodging, has a lot of dimension to it. When K begins to fall for the landlady's daughter, Sensei feels betrayed by someone he thought he knew, but he doesn't have the emotional force to change anything. K's morals turn out to be more flexible than Sensei thought, but he's also determined to follow through on what he sets his mind to, and he bristles under the thought that someone as well-off as Sensei can try to keep his only desire from him. The character drama is compelling, even if K's exaggerated size is sometimes a little too on-the-nose.
This was a shot I liked. Contrasting Sensei speaking in the shadows with K out in the sun was a nice way of showing their different perceived moral states.
I love how umbrellas are used in this shot. It makes the significance of Sensei stepping aside even clearer.
The second episode, on the other hand, is insulting. For some reason, Miya thought it'd be a good idea to "retell the story from K's perspective". To emphasize the change in perspective, he changes the season. The first episode is set in the summer, and the second is in the winter. The brighter, more colorful palette of the first part changes to a colder, flatter blue. I thought that part, at least, worked.
Here's one example to show the contrast.
Everything else was worthless. The only commentary it provides on the original work is to make painfully explicit aspects that were already clear enough for anyone remotely attentive (Shocking News! K is not a villain!). Beyond that, it completely betrays the characterizations that made Soseki's story so great. K becomes some tortured Romeo, with none of the poise that made him so admirable. Sensei turns into a passive-aggressive asshole, his eyes hidden behind Gendo-glasses. The characters become polar extremes, when before they were human. I
really don't like it.
Ooh, look at him! He's so mysterious! Clearly he's just a dick!
I'm struggling to find a parallel in my head for what this is equivalent to. I haven't even read the original book and I still feel insulted on the author's behalf. Maybe, to use an anime example, it'd be like retelling Aku no Hana from Nakamura's perspective, except Nakamura acts incredibly insecure and goes home and cries alone in her room, while Kasuga pushes her to do mean things, except he still has his friends and his books and portrays nothing but confidence the whole time. It's not subverting shit. It's just replacing the characters with worse characters, and the themes that arise from exploring their emotional states with nothing at all.
In this episode, this scene just felt embarrassing.
I'd take No Longer Human's technically brilliant slog over this tripe.
Real shame since I liked the futuristic setting. But I did start Hunter X Hunter and it's awesome! I like it a lot better then One Piece, it has good amount comedy, action and bit of darkness.