- Joined
- Feb 3, 2019
- Location
- Sydney Australia
- Favourite title
- Shenmue II
- Currently playing
- Tekken 7 (always Tekken 7)
- PSN
- danmann861
- Steam
- danielmann861
Alright now that the series is completed. I guess I'll give full thoughts.
I think it's somewhere around an 8 out of 10 for me.
The pros? I love the way it further fleshed out some of the side characters. That to me is its biggest advantage over the games. Anime Nozomi is a million times better than Game Nozomi. Same can be said of Joy to some degree. I mean the anime actually made me give a crap about Goro - outside of just being that goofball, they actually gave him a little bit of sympathetic character. In that regard, the anime is great.
I loved the fact that the anime allowed us to get outside of Ryo's head to further tell other perspectives. As much as I love the games and how much they commit to you roleplaying as Ryo. I will say it does come with a shortcoming in terms of story telling as we are maybe a little too slavishly attached to Ryo. I liked that the Anime took a much more conventional storytelling approach and allowed us to get outside of Ryo's perspective from time to time.
In terms of actual storytelling? I think it does a very good job condensing the main story beats. Even if it is a little too fast in pacing. I didn't mind the pacing in Yokosuka as I felt it was appropriate to burn through Yokosuka pretty quickly.
But I did feel Shenmue II was a little too rushed at times. Especially Kowloon. Kowloon may be the biggest disappointment for me of the entire anime. I just didn't get that same feel I got from Kowloon in Shenmue II. I think the lack of fights was a huge disappointment. Especially the Baihu fight. The Baihu fight was the biggest disappointment for me in the entire series and really underscores how I would have much preferred this to be a slightly longer series. I don't know. I just thought Kowloon was way too condensed and lost something in the process.
Wan Chai was mostly okay and the search for WUDE was fun but I just felt once we got to Kowloon it kind of suffered for me from being too abbreviated.
Still, there are some pretty epic moments. The Lan Di fight actually being included at the top of the Yellow Head building was something pretty special.
I guess it does hit all the major beats and that's really what you want from this. I mean in many ways this does serve as something of a glorified advertisement for the video games. And I don't mean that as a put down, but it is something of a condensed version meant to spark further interest in this series for newcomers and hopefully it did that for some people.
I think the only other thing I missed were the slice of life elements. I understand given the time constraints and all but I really did miss some of the small slice of life elements. It would have been nice to see Ryo playing Lucky Hit. Or even just a hint of the gambling in Hong Kong (even just a brief shot of duck racing could have been a nice little nod.) I felt like once we got out of Yokosuka, some of those cute little nods dried up. Again, I get it, time constraints and all but yeah. Slice of life is such a big part of Shenmue and I did kind of miss that element here.
Overall? I really liked it. I downloaded the entire series in English over the weekend so I'm gonna go through it again with the complete English dub in one sitting. But I thought the Japanese dub was great. I thought Masaya knocked it out of the park as Ryo.
8 out of 10 for me. Sometimes suffers from just being rushed in general. But I think overall they did a pretty good job condensing the two games.
But what say you, Dojo? What were your final thoughts on the series as a whole?
I think it's somewhere around an 8 out of 10 for me.
The pros? I love the way it further fleshed out some of the side characters. That to me is its biggest advantage over the games. Anime Nozomi is a million times better than Game Nozomi. Same can be said of Joy to some degree. I mean the anime actually made me give a crap about Goro - outside of just being that goofball, they actually gave him a little bit of sympathetic character. In that regard, the anime is great.
I loved the fact that the anime allowed us to get outside of Ryo's head to further tell other perspectives. As much as I love the games and how much they commit to you roleplaying as Ryo. I will say it does come with a shortcoming in terms of story telling as we are maybe a little too slavishly attached to Ryo. I liked that the Anime took a much more conventional storytelling approach and allowed us to get outside of Ryo's perspective from time to time.
In terms of actual storytelling? I think it does a very good job condensing the main story beats. Even if it is a little too fast in pacing. I didn't mind the pacing in Yokosuka as I felt it was appropriate to burn through Yokosuka pretty quickly.
But I did feel Shenmue II was a little too rushed at times. Especially Kowloon. Kowloon may be the biggest disappointment for me of the entire anime. I just didn't get that same feel I got from Kowloon in Shenmue II. I think the lack of fights was a huge disappointment. Especially the Baihu fight. The Baihu fight was the biggest disappointment for me in the entire series and really underscores how I would have much preferred this to be a slightly longer series. I don't know. I just thought Kowloon was way too condensed and lost something in the process.
Wan Chai was mostly okay and the search for WUDE was fun but I just felt once we got to Kowloon it kind of suffered for me from being too abbreviated.
Still, there are some pretty epic moments. The Lan Di fight actually being included at the top of the Yellow Head building was something pretty special.
I guess it does hit all the major beats and that's really what you want from this. I mean in many ways this does serve as something of a glorified advertisement for the video games. And I don't mean that as a put down, but it is something of a condensed version meant to spark further interest in this series for newcomers and hopefully it did that for some people.
I think the only other thing I missed were the slice of life elements. I understand given the time constraints and all but I really did miss some of the small slice of life elements. It would have been nice to see Ryo playing Lucky Hit. Or even just a hint of the gambling in Hong Kong (even just a brief shot of duck racing could have been a nice little nod.) I felt like once we got out of Yokosuka, some of those cute little nods dried up. Again, I get it, time constraints and all but yeah. Slice of life is such a big part of Shenmue and I did kind of miss that element here.
Overall? I really liked it. I downloaded the entire series in English over the weekend so I'm gonna go through it again with the complete English dub in one sitting. But I thought the Japanese dub was great. I thought Masaya knocked it out of the park as Ryo.
8 out of 10 for me. Sometimes suffers from just being rushed in general. But I think overall they did a pretty good job condensing the two games.
But what say you, Dojo? What were your final thoughts on the series as a whole?
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