jordangreywolf: Greywolf Gear (Default)
jordangreywolf ([personal profile] jordangreywolf) wrote 2020-03-19 06:28 pm (UTC)

I've run into this sort of thing a lot with manga-turned-into-anime. My theory regards this is that it has something to do with how many of these manga projects are pretty much driven by artist-writers, and the artist might be really talented and driven to churn out material (and that is going to be very attractive to a publisher even if the story isn't stellar -- BECAUSE WE NEED MATERIAL, AND WE NEED IT ON TIME), but being a great artist with a vision and a pressure to get stuff DONE means that the content is going to be heavily dependent upon the first thing that pops into your mind and what motivates you RIGHT NOW.

It's not like a novel, where in theory the writer may do an outline, then fill in the gaps in any particular order, then go back and edit things when your "vision" evolves a bit along the way and you need to put in a bit of foreshadowing in that opening scene, or maybe you need to tweak a few clues when you changed your mind about "whodunnit."

Or, like a movie, where presumably someone is going to have directorial control who can try to make sure that the thing has a cohesive mood and/or message (if that's a concern).

I basically went on a binge-roll through bunches of pages of the manga on my phone because I was stuck in a hotel having to get in my daily 5-6 miles of walking (and I'm terrible at that if I have to pace back and forth or go on a treadmill if I don't have something to occupy my mind other than constantly checking how much time/distance remains) ... and the tenor of the story changed so markedly, repeatedly, to the point of feeling seriously unhinged.

(Not that I think the WRITER is "unhinged" because of this. If I were to look back on anything I ran for Sinai as one cohesive story, I think I could say the same exact thing -- what motivated me, and the "mood" that dominated my games from session to session could vary violently. I am especially mindful of the dark turn that my GMing for Francisco took -- I still haven't forgiven myself for that debacle -- or how the adventures of Jynx bounced so much between "light-hearted silly slapstick antics" and dark horror. "At the time" it seemed to be the thing to do, but taken as a whole, it was hard to reconcile how all this could be part of the same story thread.)

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting