Adaptation - Blog Posts

Welp, I'm back at doing Portuguese covers of songs that didn't really need it. What can I say, it's what I like to do! And I haven't done one in a long time. My channel is catching dust 😩

Anyway I did this this not only because I felt like but to celebrate Identity V's 4th anniversary. So yeah, I sung the 3rd aniversary song XD

Happy birthday Identity V fancy a game

I hope you like it! I'm really proud of how it came out. It's not perfect but I think it's the best of my covers so far and I'm really happy to see some progress.

Chameleon colours ‘switched by crystals’:

Swiss researchers have discovered how chameleons accomplish their vivid colour changes: they rearrange the crystals inside specialised skin cells.

It was previously suggested that the reptiles’ famous ability came from gathering or dispersing coloured pigments inside different cells. But the new results put it down to a “selective mirror” made of crystals. They also reveal a second layer of the cells that reflect near-infrared light and might help the animals keep cool. Reptiles make colours in two ways: they have cells full of pigment for warm or dark colours, but brighter blues and whites come from light bouncing off physical elements like these crystals: so-called “structural colours”. These colours can also be mixed. A vibrant green might arise from a structural blue overlaid by yellow pigment.

Review: Rurouni Kenshin Trilogy (2012-2014)

Overall rating: 9.0 of 10

Rurouni Kenshin, adapted from popular manga and anime of the same name (popularized in North America and Indonesia as Samurai X, referring to his cross-shaped scar), tells the story of one skilled assassin from Japan’s Bakumatsu Era who turned into a wandering pacifist, helping people along the way and vowed to never kill anyone again.

The live action trilogy consists of Rurouni Kenshin: Meiji kenkaku roman-tan (titled simply Rurouni Kenshin in the English world) which was released in 2012, followed by two-parter Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto taika-hen (Rurouni Kenshin: Tokyo Inferno) and Rurouni Kenshin: Densetsu no saigo-hen (Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends), both released in 2014. I just binge-watched all of them so it made more sense to me to do a comprehensive review of the trilogy. Besides, I just thought it’d be just a tad boring to read me raving about Takeru Sato (who played the titular character) three times over.

The biggest accomplishment these movies achieved, aside from hiring the right director for obvious reasons, was casting Takeru Sato as Kenshin Himura the Manslayer Battosai. Kenshin Himura was a difficult character to get right. He was a small, unassuming, baby-faced, soft-spoken person who had the weight of all Japan on his shoulders and swordsmanship skill of a god. Not only Sato looked exactly like how Kenshin would look like in real life, he was able to play just about every range of Kenshin’s in the most unobtrusive way, from Kenshin’s trademark goffiness, kindness, to his restrained composure, deafening sadness and powerful regret, and the bombastic rage that he eventually let out. Every once in a while he lets out quiet words of wisdom that are so excessively true your heart breaks, because you know it took a great deal of pain and mistakes to be able to say them.

The rest of the casts were great too, each one of them dissolved nicely into the characters that we have come to know and love from the manga and anime (I never read the manga, admittedly). Animes in particular are difficult to adapt into live action because animes in general operate in a wholly different reality. Jinei Udoh’s and Shishio’s powers weren’t exactly realistic, for example, but director Keishi Ohtomo was able to make them at least plausible. Even small things like clothes, hair, and behaviors of characters from animes might be harder to translate from animation into live action but Rurouni Kenshin was able to bring them come to life with grace.

The film was also absolutely beautiful to watch. The colors and cinematography were absolute striking, and so was the fighting scenes. Each of the fights are fluid, absolutely clear and delightful to watch, and definitely captured the magic of samurai fights that we have come to expect.

But the truth is, the three movies weren’t created equal. The first movie did a great job at introducing and sucking us into its world, for reasons above. TL;DR It was a great origin movie of a compelling character, surrounded by a hoard of interesting supporting characters. But more intellectually, what I really appreciated from this particular movie is that they hit the tone right with the violence. They were dirty, they were bloody (not overly so that it’s unwatchable) but enough to bring home the fact that killing, no matter the cause, is an ugly thing to do.

I found Kyoto Inferno to be the weakest installment. Shishio was a brilliant arc in the manga and anime, partly because they spent considerable amount of time building into the arc. The movie had such little time to tell its story in comparison that it was understandable that it would not have the same effect, but TL;DR I also found the film to have problematic pacing, and it felt particularly heavy and overwrought.

That said, The Legend Ends was brilliant. It started as the slowest of the bunch, and I appreciated the change of pace (without resorting to spoilers I'll just say it was refreshing to see someone who looks down on Kenshin for once). I have to say it built up nicely into the climax though, so don’t worry, it was every bit as intense as the others and the fights were every bit as exciting. TL;DR The Legend Ends was a very focused movie, especially compared to Tokyo Inferno, and that’s why I found it to be the best.

If I had to assign individual ratings for each film, I maybe would give them 9.0, 8.0, and 9.5 respectively (and a completely unscientific overall rating of 9.0). Collectively, they were such a great adaption that if you’re a Rurouni Kensin fan by any means, you maybe should watch them.

Guys. Guys. Please. Not every adaptation has to be live action, not every adaption can be live-action, because making it so can rob the original IP of its very essence. If making everything look realistic diminishes it to the point where you literally have to animate it anyway to make it recognisable, then why even try to make it live action in the first place? What is so bad about animation that we have to make things live action because it’s otherwise “just for kids”? Why are we ignoring a perfectly good medium only to force a different medium to do what the former was designed to do only much worse?

Some things can only be done by animation, in the same way that some things can only be done by books or musicals or games. That’s what makes adapting things so difficult, and it’s what makes choosing the medium you want to write in so important.