Sunday, October 24, 2010

[OAD] Yozakura Quartet: Hoshi no Umi


I don't know if it's because new ideas are hard to come by nowadays or people are just not satisfied with the original adaptions, it seems that these days, more and more manga adapted animes that didn't stay "true" the the manga are being remade into either another TV series or OVAs.

Having seen the TV series, but never read the manga, I can tell you that I liked the original Yozakura Quartet TV series, with exceptions of the ending--it is terrible, it doesn't make sense, and because of that, I think the whole series ought to be remade. So when I heard they're re-making Yozakura Quartet into an OVA series that supposed to "stay true to the manga", I was quite happy.

Then I saw the first episode of Yozakura Quartet: Hoshi no Umi.

My first impression? I was a bit shocked. They completely changed the art style that neither does it resemble the original TV series, nor does it resemble the manga--it's something completely new and wacky.

WTF?! If the illustrator of the manga has never done any TV work, then I could understand that production studio could have a slightly creative freedom when transforming the art from paper to the screen. But Suzuhito Yosuda (the creator of the manga) has actually done some pretty high profile design works for TV series before, specifically, he designeded the characters for Durarara! and guess what, they look very similar in style compare to the original Yozakura Quartet series. So I don't understand how could the production studio could just completely ignore the style of the original manga and make up some new art style that looks completely out of whack when they're supposed to "stay true to the manga".

Then the problem doesn't just stop there, I think due to the contribution of this strangely different art style, the entire episode feels wacky, whether it's the parts that supposed to be or not. At this point, I just can't seem to be able to take the story seriously any more, like I treated the original series.

I was hoping for something good, something better than the original series, but it shattered it. Unless they can pull off an extremely interesting story in next couple of episodes, I'm probably going to call this one a loss.

Current score: 79

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