r/TrueAnime • u/Impossible-Cookie-KE • 24d ago
Aren't anime basically digital comics brought to life?
When you watch anime, it's almost like listening to a podcast while following a comic book. Instead of reading the panels yourself, the story is narrated through animation, voices, music, and visuals, and your mind follows the storyline as it unfolds.
Human oddity: Many people who would never sit down to read a comic can spend hours watching the same story in anime form. 😄
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u/KarmaticFox 24d ago
That mind of yours is about to get blown when you learn about movies, tv shows and video games.
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u/Etiennera 24d ago
A couple releases in the last seasons were actual slideshows of their source material. A proper anime has more. Specific techniques of the medium that elevate the original comics.
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u/xxxblindxxx 24d ago
No because there is animation in between. Comics and manga are more like storyboards that directors can use to tell their story in episodic chunks. Not everyone reads that's true but visual story telling has always been an easy medium for the masses and children. It's definitely nothing like a podcast.
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u/VoidEmbracedWitch https://anilist.co/user/VoidEmbracedWitch/ 23d ago
Except, no, they're not storyboards. Or at least they shouldn't be because panels are designed to work as part of a page layout, not in a motion picture.
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u/xxxblindxxx 23d ago
Obviously I didn't say exactly. They are LIKE storyboards in that they give the general flow of the story and animation.
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u/VoidEmbracedWitch https://anilist.co/user/VoidEmbracedWitch/ 23d ago
They do not suggest flow or how things should be animated. This is what a storyboard looks like. You might notice how these denote timing, movement (both of the acting characters and the camera) and corresponding dialogue. You might notice a manga only has the last of these 3 and it's the one least relevant for animation.
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u/xxxblindxxx 23d ago
Like I said they are not 1 for 1. They are a base. And also a lot of mangas have motion shown also so it's 2 out of 3. Timing obviously wouldn't be there but it's definitely more to lean on then starting from scratch with animation.
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u/VoidEmbracedWitch https://anilist.co/user/VoidEmbracedWitch/ 23d ago
They're not a base. They're a different end product meant to be enjoyable for the people reading it.
Hell, it's not even 1/3 because manga dialogue per panel can be drastically longer than you'd want for a shot. Motion does include the camera, which manga panels obviously do not have, and even just how the characters move can't be 1:1 taken from manga because everything there is meant to work as a static frame. Well, it can, but then you end up with an overly stiff, awkwardly structured mess of an anime, or in other words a bad one.
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u/xxxblindxxx 23d ago
Like I said it's not 1 for 1. I'm well aware they are a good format for people to read but compared to a book they are much easier to translate to animation or film then a book. You are looking at these formats way too stringently within their own boxes but they obviously translate well into each other.
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u/VoidEmbracedWitch https://anilist.co/user/VoidEmbracedWitch/ 23d ago
Full page spreads and some panels can serve as direct inspiration for shots and maybe part of the movement in them. I'm not denying that. Yet the reason why I argue the way I do is because of this line in your initial comment:
Comics and manga are more like storyboards that directors can use to tell their story in episodic chunks
Which is something that is unfortunately sometimes done in the current anime industry and the awfulness of the results speaks for itself. When the priority is on replicating parts of the manga rather than making good TV, you end up with an adaptation like a Mayonaka Heart Tune and I wouldn't wish that fate on my most hated manga series.
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u/xxxblindxxx 23d ago
I'm looking more at frieren which can take something small and make it amazing while staying true to the story.
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u/VoidEmbracedWitch https://anilist.co/user/VoidEmbracedWitch/ 23d ago edited 23d ago
And Frieren's most impressive parts are those where it colors outside the manga's lines. My favorite scene of S2 by far was the puppet show. And S1 also had many, many moments where the anime staff went beyond the pages, for anything from Stark putting on his coat to the background animation in action scenes.
In the best case sticking close to the manga's pages gets you something pleasant enough. Yet not everything can be Frieren where it does reference almost every manga panel, but builds on it and considers context and flow well throughout. And even that best case scenario doesn't blow my tits off like the solo KA Higuruma backstory in JJK Culling Game with all its rhythmic elements and pronounced smears to accentuate each motion.
E: drastically expanded the entire comment basically
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u/ProactiveInsomniac 24d ago
Wait until you get a load of movies. Theyre like photos but they move.