• Tag Archives Literary Adaptation
  • The story has been adapted from a miscellaneous type of storytelling work such as a short story, poem, picture book, or song.

  • The Huntsman Movies & GRIMM

    The first Huntsman movie, Snow White and the Huntsman, is as the title would imply more focused on Snow White than the huntsman. The movie features a particularly martial variation on the tale, going pretty heavy on action and gritty medieval atmosphere. It’s a solid enough adaptation visually speaking with the main flaws being the anticlimactic final confrontation and pretty much everything about the evil queen.

    Unfortunately, that queen plays a role in The Huntsman: Winter’s War as well… along with a second queen who’s no better. Not helping matters is that with Snow White gone and her replacement being even more aggressive than the huntsman, the work as a whole becomes overly action-focused. There’s pretty much nothing recommendable about it; if you want to watch Hemsworth in an action role Thor: Ragnarok would likely be a better choice.

    Also fairytale related, the TV series Grimm takes the trappings of a generic police procedural and crosses it with some Buffy-like fantasy elements themed on classic folklore. The ‘adapting ancient stories to modern crimes’ aspect works well enough, the problem is the whole metaplot with the inexplicable werewolf sidekick and transforming the protagonist from relatively normal detective into a supernatural warrior. Maybe the integration works better in later seasons, but after the shakiness of the first I don’t care enough to find out.


  • Grimms Notes: The Animation

    In a universe where an individual’s entire existence is dictated by a personal Book of Fate, only those rare few born with blank Books can stand against the insidious Chaos Tellers who rewrite others’ fate to spread chaos and despair across the land.

    A partly episodic action-comedy with a central fairytale theme and small amount of drama.

    More Information:
    aniDB
    Crunchyroll
    HIDIVE
    Wikipedia

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  • Grimm Douwa: Kin no Tori

    Every night one of the king’s golden apples goes missing. To catch the thief he orders his three sons to stand watch, where the youngest discovers that a golden bird is to blame and manages to knock one of its feathers off with an arrow. Upon seeing the feather the king becomes overcome with greed and sends the boys out on a quest to capture it… a task much easier said than done.

    A fantasy adventure with a large amount of cartoon-style comedy.

    More Information:
    aniDB
    Wikipedia


  • Otona Joshi no Anime Time

    A collection of stand-alone short stories focused on the lives of adult women.

    While all the episodes have slice of life elements, the first also has a bit of romance and drama. The second meanwhile features a strong cooking theme and is more focused on romance, the third is a comedy, and the fourth centers on family drama.

    More Information:
    aniDB (1, 2)
    Wikipedia


  • Random Movies & TV Shows

    On a whim I decided to check out some of the many, many non-Anime TV shows I’ve been ignoring for the past 12 years or so (along with a few movies as well):

    TV Shows

    • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – Everyone’s far too smug.
    • Almost Human – A very good buddy-cop action series. It’s practically criminal it only got one season.
    • Alphas – Not bad; the pieces are all there… they just don’t cohere into something greater. It’s serviceable and no more.
    • Andromeda – Eh. Everything about it screams low-budget.
    • Caprica – I don’t know what I was expecting really, but it wasn’t this. It’s an odd collection of disparate elements that don’t really work on any level.
    • Dark Angel – Deliberately avoided watching this in the past for no particular reason. Checked it out now and something about the atmosphere/tone/look doesn’t quite work for me.
    • Defiance – Reminiscent of Farscape and surprisingly good. Both expansive and structurally coherent with an engaging cast of characters. The third season however goes too far off the rails.
    • Falling Skies – Could do with less children and the protagonist’s constantly bemused expression is annoying. Those issues aside it doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be post-apocalyptic survival or hi-tech sci-fi.
    • Nikita – Huh. I wasn’t really expecting anything from this reboot, but it seems to capture the mood and tone of the 1997 version rather well (based on my hazy recollections from that time).
    • Sanctuary – Okayish. Kind of rough around the edges though and the episodic stories are all over the place… deliberately it seems.
    • Sherlock – More like a collection of movies than a TV series/mini-series. While they’re a bit ambling and the lectures are kind of dry (and it becomes more and more unhinged as the seasons progress), there’s some good banter scattered about.
    • Space: Above and Beyond – The sci-fi aspects here are almost incidental; a few visual tweaks and this would easily pass for a conventional war drama.
    • Stargate Atlantis – I don’t like how a random pilot suddenly becomes the hotshot ranking officer protagonist with zero transition time. Other than that it’s perfectly watchable, if formulaic and overly episodic.
    • Stitchers – Only took a look at this because I wanted to see what else the actress who played Claudia in Warehouse 13 was in. Curiously, it reminds me of a peppy Le Femme Nikita… which is surprisingly engaging.
    • The 100 – Remarkably well made post-apocalyptic survival… assuming you don’t mind young protagonists.
    • The Expanse – Pretty good. Reminiscent of Battlestar Galactica if that show happened to have police procedural elements.
    • The Last Ship – Starts out surprisingly similar to Stargate Atlantis, just with stiffer character interactions and far more engaging storytelling. Unfortunately it deteriorates once the focus moves to the government, with events seeming to occur for the sole purpose of artificially dragging things out.
    • The Magicians – Something’s off here. There’s a distinct air of contrivance, with events coming across as especially forced.
    • Threshold – Feels staged; looks awful.
    • Torchword – Doesn’t look professional in the slightest. It’s as though it were filmed in someone’s backyard with a camcorder.
    • Warehouse 13 – Brings to mind a cross between Bones and Fringe. A nice mix of episodic stories, overarching plotlines, and character dynamics… though the dialog can be cringe-inducing at times.
    • Z Nation – The camerawork is all over the place, which gives a distinctly amateurish impression.

    Movies

    • Autómata – Decent enough. Feels more like a TV miniseries than a movie though.
    • Dredd – A solid, entertaining action movie.
    • Green Lantern – There’s a lot going on here, most of it extraneous. The childhood flashback and related family drama along with the whole alien-autopsy subplot, for instance, could’ve been removed without losing anything. Aside from that the only notable aspect is the pretty great CGI.
    • Rogue One – Better than The Force Awakens, but the characters just didn’t grab me.
    • Sherlock Holmes – Good action scenes.
    • Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows – More madcap than the prequel. Which is a positive.
    • Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Average I guess? Neither the characters nor events are particularly interesting and it has the air of fanfiction.

  • Kaze no Matasaburo

    kaze-no-matasaburou-2016-title

    A young girl from the city transfers to a school in the countryside. The students there, most of whom are talking animals, suspect she may be related to a powerful wind spirit called Matasaburo.

    A short fairy tale-like story presented with picturebook visuals set in the modern day.

    More Information:
    aniDB
    Wikipedia

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