A new series that people probably wont care about…. yay.
a long time ago, i honestly don’t even know when…. after 2002 but i think before 2004… a friend of mine…. the same one who suggested i watch Air… told me about a show called Spiral that was really good and had an interesting mystery.
Normally i’m indifferent about mystery shows… Don’t know why they just never did it for me.
However when i saw the character design…
I thought…. you know what he looks really pretty…. i will give this show a chance.
yes i am incredibly vain and will give things a chance if they ‘look’ nice.
the show was 25 episode long (it’s been a long time since i re watched it) with a kickass intro song…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO7Roa5Ab34 kibouhou by strawberry jam (btw love the simplistic vector style of the intro… such impressive use of shape…. anyways back on topic) and after finishing the series i felt one thing.
Disappointment.
Nothing is resolved…
The plot focuses around these ‘cursed’ children known as the blade children. They are all extremely smart and talented and really deadly. However Ayumu Narumi, the main character, is also really damn smart. in the first episode (or first few eps…. it’s been so long since i got the veridian collection) he manages to show that a suicide was actually a murder and he gets thrown into this situation with the blade children who try to kill him multiple times.
BUT even though these children try to kill him they claim that they don’t want him to die sicne he will be there salvation according to Narumi’s older brother who vanished a few years prior leaving a cryptic message of “gone to deal with blade children bye byes”… okay it was more serious then that but you get the point…
so he solves mysteries and avoids death and then…. it kinda…. just…. ends…
My theory on this is that the show wasn’t popular enough for a second season…. it finishes right around the time Kanon is introduced which is a good place to end the season…. but not the entire show… so they must have been counting on getting picked up again…. that was almost 10 years ago so i think it’s safe to say chances of season two are slim to none.
not impossible of course…. just unlikely.
Still while the show was on i really liked it…. it ended up being more of a thriller mind game then a mystery series and that appealed to me more…. so many years later i saw in my Comic preview book that Yen Press was selling spiral… this was around the time volume 4 was out.
Yen Press is good but they tend to only sell a little bit of a book and very rarely will they make another print… broccoli is also fond of this “get it while you can” mentality. So i was warned by the place i buy my manga from that it will be tricky to get the first few volumes but they would try…
and they succeeded.
Unlike the anime the Manga is quite long…. 15 volumes.
and kanon is introduced about halfway. so i’m loving that there finally feels like there is more to the story.
yes parts of the book felt like deathnote tennis talk to me… by that i mean
The main character thinks to himself “if i do this they’ll think that so i’ll do this other thing instead”
The villain smirks “ah he’s thinking that if he does that it’ll be too obvious so he’s going to do this other thing… will do this to counter that”
ect… i hate when stories do this…. i get its a necessary evil but it still annoys me.
but still i was enjoying the story and learning more about the blade children, Ayumu and his brother as well as the girl who always follows ayumu around.
so i got pretty much exactly what i wanted… there is a lot of talk of gods, devils, demons, fate and so on near the end but the fact that the whole series is pretty much ayumu going “i don’t care about fate i will make my own choices in life” makes all that fate talk bearable.
i do have to say i saw the twist of who/what Ayumu is coming from a mile away. But in the end…. so did Ayumu so i guess we were supposed to figure it out? maybe…
and while in the end the blade children aren’t really saved (though they are on the path) and maybe things are uncertain about many characters i felt like the ending was the perfect way to finish it….
So i called this segment Versus because i wanted to compare the two right? (hopefully i’ll remember all these questions when i do this again…. if i do it again)
When it comes to story the Manga wins hands down since it actually gets to tell one.
When it comes to Art i have it give it to the anime just because the show is really pretty.
when it comes to characters again i have to give it to the anime… yes none of the characters get to be fully developed but the blade children get more development in 25 episodes of the show then they do in 15 volumes of the manga. they just don’t get to complete their arc.
How similar are they to each other? almost exact duplicates… a few stories are added in for the Anime that show the blade children as being evil when necessary but overall when they tell the same plot they are exactly the same.
If You can only pick up one then get the manga… only because it actually tells the story and doesn’t leave you hanging.
Which one did i like more…. i don’t know why… maybe cause i saw it first… but the Anime…. even though it’s not really complete i think it’s really good for the 25 episodes that are there.
Ah this was fun…
Okay so how to get it…
The anime is being distributed by Funimation, there is a Verdian Collection version which is nice and compact and really friendly on your wallet BUT since the entire case and everything holding the disk in is paper (well some kind of cardstock but still) if your not careful it’s possible to scratch the disk so it’s a bit nerve wracking.
The manga was originally licensed by Tokyopop but Yen Press currently has the rights, it may be trickier to find earlier volumes but this show is surprisingly popular despite being old so you may be able to get yours hands on it….
and yeah…. i think that's good enough for now… like i said i may do this again…. maybe for dub versus sub… it’s all just for fun in the end.
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