Quick review: Otogi Zoshi

[telophase]

A couple of weeks back I picked up Otogi Zoshi, a manga made from an OVA apparently, when I made a manga run to the store. It's set in Heian Japan, and features a feisty younger daughter^[TM] who chafes against the restrictions of her social position and who idolizes her brother. Her brother is a military commander-type person and was sent to raze a village that harbored bandits. The few survivors of the village naturally have a grudge. One day the girl sneaks out and follows her brother, and starts a chain of events that theoretically lead to plot, but I'm not sure because I was so bored by all of it. None of the characters really stand out as unique, and none of them are interesting. I picked it up because: hey! Heian Japan!, but that's not interesting enough to carry the story. The art is inconsistent - some parts of it I really like, such as profiles, but the mangaka is incredibly inconsistent when it comes to things like head sizes, which can be seriously small, and it bugs me. I may flip through book 2 when it arrives on shelves to see if anything interesting happens or any of the characters gain personality beyond the broadly stereotyped, but for now: not recommended.

(I suppose I could use the new Vox account to post book reviews: you can easily post images of books from Amazon.com there.)

P.S. Watch this blog. I may have something to tell you in 24 hours or so. XD

Comments

[forvrin.livejournal.com]

The anime is fantastic. Or rather, half the anime is fantastic. The first 13 episodes make up the Heian arc, and just about everything about them is AMAZING SUPER COOL AWESOMENARY ALL CAPZ0rz!

ahem.

As for the second half of the series, it left me cold.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Huh. We have just started watching the anime series of Otogi Zoshi, which either starts later in the plot or has an alternate plotline. Feisty younger sister on a mission to save her brother by recovering the Shiny Plot Token from the Monkey Ninjas. Also court intrigue involving the Ministers of the Right and Left and Abe no Seimei, and a wandering dance troupe observing the corruption of the times.

Beautiful animation that I wish I had the technical terms to describe - actually, last night I was thinking that it'd be very cool to see an analysis of the visuals similar to the ones you did for the Saiyuki manga.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I just added it to my Netflix queue, to see how much better the anime is than the manga. :D

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

The actual anime is really good. I do agree with the above poster that the first 13 episodes are much better than the last half of the series, but I did appreciate what the creators were trying to do in the second story arc. (The first arc had great characters. The second arc had better plot, though it fell apart at the end.)

I didn't even realize they made a manga out of it. I mean, you could just read a book of folktales to get the background on all the characters. (Since that's what Otogi Zoshi is based on -- all the Japanese folk heroes.)

[forvrin.livejournal.com]

I just clicked through to the Tpop site. The art in the anime is leaps and bounds better than on that site. Its drool inducingly better. It makes me weep. Even the second arc is beautiful, but it is set in Tokyo, so doesn't quite have the same hold on me that the Heian arc does.

PS

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

The closest comparison I have of the Otogi Zoshi anime is that it's similar in storytelling style to 12 Kingdoms.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I get the idea that maaaybe in book 2, Feisty Younger Sister is going to set off to retrieve the Shiny Plot Token, but book 1 seems to be all setup, and not very good at that. The eight chapters or whatever say: Here's Feisty Younger Sister! She's feisty! See how feisty she is! Here's Idolized Older Brother! Isn't he cute! He kills people in a village offstage! Here's Disgruntled Survivors! See how disgruntled they are! Did we mention the feisty younger sister? And that's it. I kept hoping for foreshadowing or characterization or ethical dilemmas (the Older Brother being nice, yet slaughtering everyone at his government's command is the obvious one, but Feisty Younger Sister doesn't actually appear to be bothered by it) to be brought to the forefront, but nope.

Re: PS

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Hm. I bounced hard off of 12 Kingdoms, because I'm a character person, and I disliked every. single. character. in it. I saw the first 3 or so episodes, then decided life wasn't long enough to watch the rest on the off chance that it might get better.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

I watched about 2/3 of the first arc of Otogi Zoshi last year. I thought the animation was flat out stunning and the story not exactly my cup of tea, but definitely intriguing. I've currently got the rest of the series sitting in my Netflix queue just so I can find out how the damn thing ends. (Nevermind the fact that my queue is somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 discs...)

The manga sounds...a good bit more painful than the anime and I will be sure to avoid it now.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I could deal with dull story in the manga if the art were stunning *coughThreadsOfTimecough* but with the art as is ... no.

[mscongeniality.livejournal.com]

The first time I saw the anime was on a projection screen in the back room of my old anime shop. It looked just wonderful.

[sparkylibrarian.livejournal.com]

I'm going to AOL here on the first half of the anime. You must finish the first arc. It's amazing, there at the end. The first couple of episodes didn't hook me, but by the end of the first disc I definitely wanted to see more.

I haven't seen the last disc of the second arc... Netflix wasn't listing it, and I could go to my friendly local comic shop and rent it but... meh. The modern part lacked the awesome costuming. Except for the pimp guy. I liked the pimp guy for no good reason. *sigh* I guess I don't want to know how it ends.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Well, the first arc (the Heian era) of Otogi Zoshi does have the stronger characterization of the entire series. I don't think it's quite as strong in the second arc (the Tokyo era), but your mileage may vary.

FWIW, I did like 12 Kingdoms but it's not quite the same as Otogi Zoshi. I thought the arc of 12K had more plot than Otogi Zoshi's very, very standard and very, very unsurprising plotline in those first 13 eps. It's just the closest comparison I can think of. It's no Saiyuki or Naruto anyway.

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

I watched a good chunk of Otogi Zoshi recently. I usually ignore the anime that the man of the house rents from Netflix, but every now and then he gets something without giant robots, high school students or weird dystopian downer-fests. :D

So yes, like everyone else, I enjoyed the Heian part in general just because of the setting. (Um, and also because one character is a one-eyed bodyguard, but hey--we've all got our little obsessions.) Animation is very nice. Story was OK, with some actual mythology woven in (always a plus for me) though a little drawn out. I gave up on the modern arc one and a half episodes in; usually anime set in present-day Tokyo holds for me all the charms of giant robots.

MM

[baka-neko.livejournal.com]

The manga is terrible and is set as a sort of prequel before the anime. The original character design/concept for the anime though, was done by Shou Tajima, the mangaka who did MPD Psycho. Hikaru in the manga is nothing like the anime version.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

That is quite good to know.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

OTOH if you've ever lived in Tokyo ohmygod YES that's it that's Tokyo finally a Tokyo series that doesn't think the Tokyo Tower and Harajuku are all there is to Tokyo. Though of course the Tokyo Tower is in it.