One of my earliest posts criticized the Black Cat anime for cramming too much material in to too few episodes, as exemplified by its superficial development of Flora-chan, a dinosaur brought to life by advanced cloning techniques. I finally got around to reading Black Cat in its original form of matter. As expected, it was markedly more fluid and cohesive.
That thing that happened to Train finally came back to bite him in the ass.
Now I know why Anibus got only five seconds in the anime: he never existed in the manga. As much as I love seeing a finite list of progressively revealed elements completely outed, I respect an author who doesn’t feel compelled to make up filler elements and give them each a token appearance just so the audience can feel gratified in filling out its Pokédex.
Another welcome improvement over the anime is that the manga didn’t shove a huge Garden of Eden metaphor down your throat. You’re merely teased about it from time to time and left to deep throat it on your own if you swing that way.
My only major problem with the manga is its shounen whitewashing, particularly during the final arc. The good guys, who avoid killing at any cost, defeat an entire band of megalomaniacal evildoers through some combination of believing in themselves and convincing their enemies that being bad is bad. A little skill-based murder wouldn’t hurt.
I can’t even remember what Black Cat is all about except that the male protagonist is an assassin turns good guy and then the good guys defeated the bad guys.
So, basically, you do remember what Black Cat is all about.
Wow Baka Raptor! You reading Black Cat was a little unexpected,I guess it’s because of the good impact the anime had on you is it?
I’ve been thinking of starting with Black Cat manga as well…since there are rumors of the author mentioning he setting up a sequel (while actually he’s doing some fanservice ecchi manga >_>)
But really,if you can read Black Cat,then you should really read 20th Century Boys.I am sure you already acknowledge the greatness of Naoki Urasawa from Monster (which I saw inspired by your post btw)
And yeah,Liar Game IS brilliant!Good reco.
I could see a Black Cat sequel happening. It’d be an excuse to bring in the rest of the Numbers.
I’ve heard of 20th Century Boys. That’s usually all the inspiration I need to watch/read something.
Same as kluxorious. I can’t recall much of the anime other than I liked it (didn’t love it, but liked it). I’ll probably check out the manga since manga is almost always infinitely better than the anime.
>>I’ll probably check out the manga since manga is almost always infinitely better than the anime.
Post forthcoming.
Fuck I wish I thought of that post first…..meh.
I’m most pissed off that you did a post about food in anime before I could. I still get hungry whenever I see food and want to write a post about it and then remember: Fuck. Baka-Raptor already did it.
Fuck.
The focus was going to be on a certain circumstance that the anime almost always does better. Chances are your post won’t overlap much with mine, should I ever get around to writing it.
I always thought the ending of the Black Cat anime was rather bizarre. It gives the impression of being a rush-ending but the last 3-4 episodes or whatever were actually filler. It would have been paced much better if they just ended it where the manga ended.
It makes no sense!
It’s all a metaphor that ties into the Garden of Eden somehow.
It has been a lot of time since I watched this, but is it strange that I remember only about Eve, Kyoko and the white cat?! :O
Not if you also remember Rinslet, Sephiria, and the Black Cat.
God, but I loved Black Cat. It makes me depressed that the artist/writer’s next work was some s***** harem-comedy piece of unfunny fetishized crap that practically destroyed his personal life.
I agree about the end but… well, I re-read the beginning, where Train is markedly more ruthless and willing to kill people,and thought… hey. Honest to god character development. The protagonist is different at the end of the work from the way he was at the beginning. In shonen, that’s pretty rare, and you gotta take what you can get.
Never saw the anime, and nothing I’ve learned about it has made me want to.
I was also shocked and appalled to learn of his involvement in that. If it destroyed his personal life, serves him right.
Manga > Anime > Nothing
So you’re not going to watch anime, but you’re still reading manga? Ehh
Incorrect. “Still” reading manga suggests I was reading manga beforehand.
Once upon a time I wanted to buy the Black Cat manga. But reading some of the later volumes from the library made me change my mind. The “shonen whitewashing” as you put it was too much.
That, and there’s no point in buying something you can find in a library.
I’ve only ever seen the anime, so I imagine I’m lacking a lot of information on this. Certainly I agree with the pacing and how rushed it felt. I knew there would be a great amount of adaptation decay, especially in terms of truncation. Still I had thought they could do better than this. Regardless, it may never come to pass that I will read this manga, it’s more of a ‘as the fates will it’ scenario in terms of getting to older content that isn’t somehow mythical in scope. Going back to watch say, LOGH, was a guarantee as an anime fan. Eventually, it would occur. I can’t say the same thing with something like this. There was an expiration that occurred, and that is not transcended by a sense of magnitude created by a ‘legendary’ status. Without that codifier it becomes harder to resurface as something that ‘must’ be done. I’m sure there’s a better way to describe what I’m talking about, but I feel like it’s a universal enough concept that you know the feeling as I do.
It’s a feeling I knew all too well back when I was watching anime. Going 11 months without anime has a funny way of pushing back the statute of limitations.