Fan Service Insanity
Fan Service: Things in a manga or anime that are added purely to draw in the audience, and has little or no relevance to the story.
I just picked up the first three issues of the Battle Royale manga, which is a modern version of the novel which I raved about a week or two ago. After reading these issues, (they were quick reads) I'm into it, but it's also amazing to me how far they go into the fan-service realm.
The violence and gore is incredibly grotesque and in your face. The nudity and sex would make a tenticle monster blush. In both cases, scenes are added to the novel's storyline that don't really do any work in fleshing out the characters, it's just simply there to look cool or hot.
Sure, watching Kazuo beat people kill a man with a library book or a bowling ball is interesting. Or showing Mitsuko naked on so many more pages than in the novel (she's only naked once, near the end, in the book) is, yeah, pure fan service.
But I'm still enjoying it, just to see their interpretation of the novel. Like most manga that deals with teenagers, they've made some characters look more grown-up than others, even for 15 year olds (Shogo and Mitsuko stand out). And it's an odd double-standard where the artist goes out of his way to block some characters' skin (Yoshimi Yahagi, for example), while also going out of his way to show as much skin of another as possible, more than even your usual manga shows, even though they're both the same age.
Still, not bad. Not great as far as manga goes, but, then again, I'm not a reader of "horror manga" too often.
Quick FYI, I've added another webcomic link to the side. Press Start To Play is yet another video game-based webcomic, but it's well written, the drawing's great, and the guy's a Pokemon fan!
I just picked up the first three issues of the Battle Royale manga, which is a modern version of the novel which I raved about a week or two ago. After reading these issues, (they were quick reads) I'm into it, but it's also amazing to me how far they go into the fan-service realm.
The violence and gore is incredibly grotesque and in your face. The nudity and sex would make a tenticle monster blush. In both cases, scenes are added to the novel's storyline that don't really do any work in fleshing out the characters, it's just simply there to look cool or hot.
Sure, watching Kazuo beat people kill a man with a library book or a bowling ball is interesting. Or showing Mitsuko naked on so many more pages than in the novel (she's only naked once, near the end, in the book) is, yeah, pure fan service.
But I'm still enjoying it, just to see their interpretation of the novel. Like most manga that deals with teenagers, they've made some characters look more grown-up than others, even for 15 year olds (Shogo and Mitsuko stand out). And it's an odd double-standard where the artist goes out of his way to block some characters' skin (Yoshimi Yahagi, for example), while also going out of his way to show as much skin of another as possible, more than even your usual manga shows, even though they're both the same age.
Still, not bad. Not great as far as manga goes, but, then again, I'm not a reader of "horror manga" too often.
Quick FYI, I've added another webcomic link to the side. Press Start To Play is yet another video game-based webcomic, but it's well written, the drawing's great, and the guy's a Pokemon fan!
posted by Bill at 9:20 AM
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