Monday, May 24, 2010

Nightmare! Incense of Spring Sleep

I have watched the newest Ranma Oav, Nightmare! Incense of Spring Sleep, since I have last mentioned it (this is the third mention of it on this blog). It can now be downloaded from several places such as BakaBT. While I like that it exists and would like to see more Ranma anime made, I like the manga a lot more. There are several things I liked about the Oav. Thing I liked the most is Akane's dream sequence in which she was a soldier, don't really know why, it is just what stuck in my head the most.

There are two things in particular I did not like. The first is Ranma flashing Happosai to stop his panty raid. I like fan service as much as the next person but I disliked it because it seemed forced and tacked on purely for the fanservice. Flashing someone to get an advantage is a tactic Ranma would, and had, used; though in the manga Ranma does not do that to stop Happosai's panty raids. The most common means by which Ranma stops Happosai's panty raids in the manga is a surprise kick to the back of the head knocking Happosai face first into the ground (see picture below); Ranma never had any trouble stopping Happosai's panty raids. The second thing I did not like was that Nabiki added the mosquito repellent to the debt Ranma owes her. The reason I disliked that is because Ranma being in debt to Nabiki is one of the things that the anime added in that annoys me the most. In the manga there is nothing even implying that Ranma has any debt to Nabiki and when she does manage to get money from him he pays it off immediately (it is also much more difficult for her to get money from manga Ranma than his anime or fanfiction counterparts). While on that I also disliked that it had Ukyo and Shampoo in debt to Nabiki when neither of them are in the manga. In fact Ukyo and Shampoo are far too dangerous for Nabiki to even try to swindle (damn near got her killed when she tried it in the manga).

2 comments:

Zwzn said...

It's the old everyone is dumb as a box of rocks, and far nicer in the anime when compared with their manga counterpart thing that makes me not like it.

Manga Shampoo wants something she will just take it, and a little blood will rarely be a problem to her.

Muphrid said...

I did like how most of Akane's dream sequences went; I think it's a fair observation that Akane would fancy those kinds of adventures, so I felt her dreams made sense as a reflection of her personality.

At the same time, however, it did feel like they were straining to work in all the actors, similar to how a lot of the other OVAs have done (the spirit doll storyline comes to mind pretty strongly). And I did think it was a bit nonsensical that Ukyo and Shampoo would seriously be afraid of Nabiki that way. Nabiki can be shrewd, yes, but it did seem odd.

Regarding the flashing, it did strike me as a bit fanservice motivated, but honestly, as far as fast, expedient means to do Happosai in, it did seem like a convenient tactic. He had the water bottle right in his hand, after all. Why not just flash him and be done with it?

Still, I enjoyed this new OVA on the whole. I was glad to see the character designs are much more similar to the manga. Granted, there are still some noticeable differences, but the massive amounts of cup size inflation were reversed, at least---if Ranma called Akane flat-chested here, it would only be a little ridiculous instead of patently absurd like the later OVAs made it look. It's nice to see the characters with modern animation and to hear their voices again (because voices, at least, are something that we can choose to incorporate in our minds if it suits).