Many may disagree, but I’m here to argue, against reboots that is. Specifically reboots for anime. Now I could get into a whole nother blog series about why reboots are bad for say movies, or comics, or even clothing/fashion, but I’m here to ram anime today.
A little context first. Anime [at large] is based off of manga, but because it’s a lot faster/easier to make a few anime episodes as opposed to a few manga chapters we all too often wind up with shows whose plots exceed the original story. One of the ways the industry has seen to rectify this is by using ‘filler’. Basically episodes that have absolutely nothing to do with the main story. Now these are great for making money, which is PART of the reason they are used so much. But I would argue that the other part, in fact most of the blame for filler, lies squarely with the fans. Because, like it or not, filler only really shows up in shows that get really popular. And fans get really enthusiastic about the show(s) and demand more. And the industry graciously appeases them-because obviously they will make more money (the greedy bastards). And then the fans go and read the manga, and the honeymoon’s over. So then the fans cry foul because, quote, “the anime’s not true to the original manga”. EVEN THOUGH THEY ONLY RELEASED MORE ANIME BECAUSE YOU ASKED FOR DEMANDED IT!
Now here’s my beef. I’m bringing this up now because there are a slew of titles that are getting reboots; my biggest issue with this is that these are highly established titles in the anime community and each have left their mark and inspiration on cartoons and multimedia internationally. They’re big, they don’t need reboots. They need to be left alone and remembered fondly for what they are-what they were anyway. I’m talking about of course, Evangelion, Dragonball Z, and Fullmetal Alchemist. There are tons of good reasons to make a reboot, but none of them include making the viewer watch a new series and disregard everything they’ve come to know-because then you’re just wasting their time, and more importantly time that could be better spent making better quality anime.
I suppose I could give Eva a pass, if only for it’s intention to make the quintessential mindfuck that it is make sense. But DBZ?! FMA?! Really?! DBZ wants to tweak its original format so that the pacing of the series is more in line with the manga, but to be honest, the long-ass, billionty ep. battles are a staple of the show in my opinion. Seriously. DBZ is the only show to get away we that because we love it so much; no other show has ever been able to pull that off like DBZ. FMA wants to be more true to the manga because of exactly what I described in paragraph 2. But I personally feel fans are going to go into the show with preconceptions from the anime that won’t be met, and then they’ll complain because they can’t decide what they really want. Makes me want to tear my hair out.
But I’m not complaining because some of my favorite shows are about to be rectoned worse than any comicbook I love, but because if this is the new medium the anime industry is taking to save itself, I find it that much harder to get excited about anime. Anime’s supposed to be about new and exciting and engrossing subject material. And at the end of the day, I think these [reboots] hurt more than help, cause they take away from the originality of, well, the [usually](already critically acclaimed) original work, and serve to saturate the market more. All that time and dedication could be used to be promoting something new, something original, something we haven’t already seen a few times and read/written a fanfic about.
I’m just saying…..
