I was randomly browsing Crunchyroll and on the front page, I saw that the Shenmue anime is finally here! Luckily you don't have to be a premium member to watch the episodes. Almost immediately, I decided to give it a try. My thoughts on the first episode will be down below!
Even though Shenmue has been around since 1999, I only got around to playing the first two games last year. I never got around to the third one because it wasn't available on Xbox. In one of my older posts I briefly discussed my thoughts on them. I thought that they were both great games. Obviously, they did have a few flaws, but nothing can be perfect. My favourite part was probably the second half of Shenmue II, I remember having a lot of fun during that section. I loved the adventuring aspects and how you could approach things through many different ways. A lot of modern games are open world, but they tend to hold your hand a lot. There's usually only one way to do things, and the game directs you on how to do it instead of letting you figure it out yourself. I should probably go back to replay the Shenmue series, because there are a lot of things I missed because I didn't use a guide. Like duck racing, it was mentioned on the back of the case, but I never came across it during my playthrough. Some of the side activities were missed during my playthrough because I mainly focussed on getting through the story. That is always the case with me and these types of games.
I had heard about the Shenmue anime sometime last year, but had forgotten all about it until this week. Hopefully it manages to make the series slightly more accessible to new fans. The games seem to get a lot of criticisms online, people always go on about the forklift section (which honestly isn't that bad), and the fact that it occasionally requires the player to wait in real time to progress. I suppose some people might not want to play the games because of those reasons, but perhaps they might be interested in the anime? Or maybe the anime will cause viewers to want to pick up the games?
Shenmue the Animation is going to have thirteen episodes. I don't know how much of the story it's going to adapt. It's labelled as a "Crunchyroll Original", and I think Adult Swim were also involved in the production. Crunchyroll are releasing one episode a week, which doesn't bother me that much. I've never been one for binge watching.
The first episode was quite enjoyable. I thought the animation was so pretty. Each background looked almost exactly like the locations from the game. Everything felt familiar to me. Sometimes with these game adaptations, they don't feel anything like the original, but this one does. Even the transition cards matched those from the game! The snow animation was just so pretty. I don't know if other people also like the animation, but I think it's great. Recently I've been watching a lot of old anime in very low resolutions, so this just seems wonderful in comparison.
Some of the character designs had to be tweaked slightly to match the new anime style. The designers did a good job with that. The only character I didn't recognise was Nozomi. Maybe it was because it had been a while since I played the games. When she first came on screen I wasn't sure who she was. I think it's because her hair is lighter this time.
I wasn't sure how the soundtrack was going to turn out, since I wasn't sure how much of a budget the sound team had to work with. But the music is just as good. The opening theme didn't seem like it fit the theme much, but I still liked the song and animation that accompanied it.
I was expecting the first episode to be an exact adaptation of the game, but they added and changed a few things here and there. If I remember correctly, the first game starts almost immediately on the death of Ryo's father. The anime gives us some extra scenes beforehand to establish things, which was fine. It was nice seeing Ryo in a martial arts tournament, it gives us a little bit of insight into what his life was like before his father passed.
It seemed like things progressed far quicker than in the game, but that makes sense. In the original you have to walk around yourself, and for me there was quite a big gap between cutscenes. I found Ryo more interesting in the anime than in the game. Maybe that's because before, I projected myself onto him as the player, and didn't consider his character that much.
Most of the voices of the characters (at least in the Japanese dub) sound the same, but it looks like a few of them have been changed. I wonder how well the English dub is this time? A lot of people laugh at the dub of the original Shenmue, but dubbing has improved a lot in twenty years.
This first episode was exciting, and I'm excited to see the next episode, once they unlock it for us non-paying users. Hopefully Crunchyroll and Adult Swim have made an effort to market it well. When I've finished the series, I'll try and write another review on it. I've forgotten some of the plot, so this anime will be a nice refresher for me.
I'm excited to see the animated version of the second game in
particular, because that is my favourite of the two games I played. Do
you think they'll adapt the third game at all within these thirteen
episodes? The first two in the series are probably the priority, because
the third is the most recent and modern. They probably want people to
go out and purchase it after watching the adaptation of the older
games. Maybe the interest generated from this anime will be enough to give us an Xbox port of Shenmue III...
Hopefully people will like my anime related posts. There are already a few on this blog, but most of them were just big dumps of thoughts that I wrote half asleep after finishing a series late at night. I've been obsessed with updating my new My Anime List profile lately. If you look at the very bottom of this blog, you can see it change with every new episode I finish! I don't think many people will really be interested in that, but I think it's neat!
I'm still not very good at ending blog posts, so... goodbye for now!
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