Anime Review: Venus versus Virus
- Thread starter JoshV
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I had a much more negative reaction to the series, but that's primarily because it grossly deviated from the manga in a number of nonsensical and utterly unnecessary ways. It's interesting to hear the viewpoint of somebody that hasn't read the manga.
Yeah, as I understand it, the manga was very different, particularly regarding the relationship between Lucia and Sumire. I kept reading that this was supposed to be a Yuri series, but the anime has next to nothing in the way of romantic attraction between the two main characters. I mean, there's sub-context, but sub-context is always subjective, so it doesn't count in my opinion.RollForInitiative said:
That said, I tend to prefer it when an anime deviates from its manga roots. Generally manga series can go on for a long while, and if an anime tries to follow the manga on which it's based to the letter, you tend to get shows like Naruto and Bleach, each over 200 episodes long and notorious for their 60 to 100 episode long filler arcs. I much prefer a series that is written from the start with a specific and conclusive ending in mind. That's one of the reasons I liked the original Fullmetal Alchemist series so much; it deviated from the manga halfway through and never dragged on like it was stalling for time.
I never read the manga, but I did watch the series and I still didn't like it much. There was the abrupt ending, but on top of that there were the bloody flashbacks. I'm pretty sure one episode flashbacks to the same scene 4 times over and I don't think it was too often that a flashback didn't just repeat a scene from another flashback without really giving any new insight. Really, way too many of these for such a short anime in my opinion...
I do like what that doll did with the pocky sticks toward the end though. If there was some closure that definitely would have made up for the obscene number of flashbacks.
I do like what that doll did with the pocky sticks toward the end though. If there was some closure that definitely would have made up for the obscene number of flashbacks.
This is one of those points where I both agree and disagree, contextually. To clarify, I agree that the lengthier manga tend to translate into anime rather horribly for the same reasons you've stated, and I don't generally find them enjoyable to watch.JoshV said:
However, I greatly dislike deviation in a shorter series as the deviation is almost always universally lower quality than the original work. The changes often feel contrived, poorly thought out, and more often than I'd like are detrimental to the overall story the author was telling. It's rare that an anime is better than the manga version - assuming we're still talking about shorter series - although it does happen from time to time. To me, Venus versus Virus definitely felt like a step down in comparison to the original.
This is the fun thing about opinions though; everybody has one. =)
Nothing could possibly have a more overused flashback sequence than one of the Samurai X OVAs. Not only did they use the flashback over and over and over again, it didn't even reveal anything new.Rodger said:
I have to say this sounds a bit to much like bleach. And I only watch that show for it's action scenes, I would like to say that I'm continually impressed with these reviews, and maybe when someone reviews something super excellent I check that out.
Yeah, the first three episodes had me going "Ok, so... this is Bleach. And D. Gray-man. And half a dozen other anime series."black lincon said:
It does deviate a bit from that initial premise once it gets going though, and the characters are very much different from what you see in either of the shows I named.
From what you said I assumed it was more character based. I knew it was different, but when you were explaining how everything worked, I was comparing everything to bleach(as I've never watched D. Grey-Man) but I guess that's just a general theme and it really matters more where you take it. in bleach they took the action route while sacrificing really interesting characters, while this series sacrifices the possible action to capitalize on the character development. Now, do you think that given more time(say another 14 episodes to make it a 26 episode series) they would have made a truly excellent series?JoshV said:
I just didn't like this because of the "random quests" feel that went throughout the anime. The last act got me depressed because all the characters seemed underdeveloped and I started to question why everyone was doing what they were doing at the end.
I'm not really sure. They really would need to up the budget though--the low quality fight scenes were more of an annoyance at the beginning of the series, but towards the last few episodes where there were a lot of fight scenes (at least for this series, anyway) it really began to wear on me.black lincon said:
As for whether the story could be better... I don't know, I felt the story was pretty well fleshed out by the end of the twelve episodes. They may have been able to focus more on some stuff that was glossed over with more episodes, I suppose, but I think the whole virus hunting thing would begin to get repetitive after 26 episodes.
Of course I would've like one more episode with an epilogue.