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Jan 06 2010

Categories: anime, sora no otoshimono
Tagged: sora no otoshimono

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Now this is how to adapt source material into anime. Sora no Otoshimono… well… it’s a guilty pleasure. But it’s a great guilty pleasure. Sure, that Snickers cheesecake might be really, really bad for me, but it sure tastes so very good going down. That’s Tomoki and friends: the Snickers cheesecake of anime. (K-On! would be a shrimp cocktail.)

(Andohbytheway, I was cruising along for Sora no Otoshimono‘s thin slicing… nailing everything including “Unapologetic fanservice show that’s actually non-horrible” until… “Mitigating factor: Super deformed Tomoki reminds me a lot of Dan-kun from Bamboo Blade. But Dan-kun is more man than Tomoki can ever be.” Gosh. That’s one I’d like back. Tomoki has proven to be a man amongst boys. Plus, his super deformed self is his normal mode. It’s weird seeing him non-deformed. The only way Dan-kun can pass Tomoki now is if Dan-kun releases revealing sexting messages between him and Miya-Miya.)

Now, what makes it enjoyable? The over-the-topness? The characters? The fanservice? Well, they’re all there for reason: they were there in the manga, and AIC ASTA did relatively little when adapting. Sure, a few things were changed (i.e. Nymph introduced early) to make it fit into an 13 episode schedule, but for the most part, the pacing felt right. And they still have plenty of material left for another 13 episode run; the newest major arc where they introduce batshit insane Angeloid– it’s like sharing a Snickers cheesecake with a hawt supermodel. (Okay, assume she’s not going to vomit it up afterwards.)

And that’s really it. There’s no reason why an anime adaptation requires to gut the source material *cough* Studio Deen *cough*. It’s like cooking. You got great ingredients… let them shine. I have cream cheese, I have cream, and I have Snickers bars… do I make Snickers cheesecake? Or do I start adding dried apricots, tossing in some caviar, substituting soy milk for the cream, etc etc etc? If you have great meat, a simple rare steak with a dash of salt and pepper is best. And that’s the same for anime adaptation. Sora no Otoshimono? Characters, plots, designs, motivation, fanservice (you reading this, K-On!?)– left wonderfully unchanged.

(Oh yeah, non-sucky animation… and make an effort on the OP/ED. Can you hear my heart bell? Definitely liked the wrinkle where every ED is different for each episode and features an in-joke concerning that episode. Great job.)

One rule of thumb is that one 24 page chapter of manga or about 50 pages of prose will yield one 24 minute episode. You want to avoid ultra compression (i.e. Cross Game compressing one entire manga volume into one episode) or ultra dilution (i.e. Endless Eight). Sora no Otoshimono? Almost exactly one 24 page chapter per episode. The key is to not get cute. Stick with this, and you’ll be fine, even if it means you need to add a minute of filler or take out a joke or too. (Must commend Shaft: they removed some more esoteric jokes from Bakemonogatari, including when Senjougahara first met Meme. She wondered if he was a pedophile because he grew up watching Full House. How many Japanese people would have understood this? How many of my readers have even watched Full House?)

More importantly, the best adaptations know when to pull away from the manga. Counter-intuitive, I know from earlier. But imagine it this way: I give you cream cheese, cream, Snickers, and M&M Minis, are you going to put both Snickers and M&M Minis into the cheesecake? Would it be as good with the M&Ms or not? Concerning Sora, I guess 2009 was the year of the genderswap (thank Omafuyu-sama it’s over), and the manga devoted very, very little time for Tomoko. Instead, it had Tomoki transforming himself into soap and other nonsense. The anime? We get Tomoko for almost a full episode and skipped the other transformation nonsense. Much better. OTL. I’ll go hang myself now.

And, of course, here’s to hoping for more Sora no Otoshimono.

(Astraea, of course, would be the whipped cream. The DVD extra is going to be interesting since the story needs Astraea… yet she hasn’t been introduced yet. But, somehow, I think AIC will figure it out. This is the exact opposite of how I feel about Chiru. Also, it hurts my brain to think that Tomoki is such utter fail with normal human females, yet has the world’s deadliest harem in Ikaros, Nymph, and Astraea… and the real saishouheiki, Sohara.)