Opinion Prone

I finally got around to finishing up my review for the DOGS OAV. (MAL mirror is here.)

I put off watching the last two episodes for a while just because the first two were so… underwhelming. It’s fairly rare for me to discover a manga before a corresponding anime is made since I watch a lot more than I read, but honestly, it’s probably better that way considering how annoyingly purist I tend to be about adaptations. I don’t want to feel this way! This feeling of burning injustice when something turns out much less amazing than you’d like — when something doesn’t seem to do the original justice at all. The strange thing about the DOGS anime is that it doesn’t really seem to be its fault that it sucked (well, aside from the shitty animation). I feel like the format just didn’t suit it. DOGS is just something better read than watched, even if the voice actors all do great jobs and there are lots of action scenes.

Then again, maybe the anime only proves that underneath all of Shirow Miwa’s beautiful artwork, his story and characters aren’t that interesting after all. Maybe that’s what pisses me off the most. Nobody wants to be shown that something they loved isn’t actually that awesome. Is the love that comes from blinding nostalgia enough? The manga marches on, so I guess I’ll keep seeing what Miwa’s really made of. Viz’s release of the first volume of DOGS: BULLETS&CARNAGE came out earlier this month and I’ll be picking it up soon; might do another semi-review, but we’ll see.