Starship Troopers anime
PostPosted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 2:08 am
Being a huge fan of the Book, and a huge enemy of the film version (holy crap, that was a crime against humanity... People who hate stories should never be given adaptation rights to those stories), I was intrigued by and skeptical of the anime adaptation from 1987.
Has anyone else seen it? I just watched it, and... Well, the ending was a bit what the crap, but it was an interesting take on the book, and 100x better than the 1997 movie version by the Robocop and Showgirls director... FOr one thing, it actually HAD the mobile Infintry armor... Even if it was a little too gundam style for my tastes, though i suppose rendering it like the book described would be prohibitively expensive. For another thing, the anime was respectful of the source material, not in direct opposition to it (the way the film was)
The only thing it really had in common with the movie that was different from the book was that they put more emphasis on the relationship between Johnny and Carmencita, which was barely mentioned in the book... Not so much a relationship as a brief Crush if I remember correctly... Not to say it didn't veer from the source in its own ways... It wasn't gung-ho pro-military. They didn't show how harsh and absurd the military was, the way it was in the book. No scenes with the firing squad, no mention of how ranks were, um, "earned" (in the book, basically, if you outlived your commanding officers, your rank went up)
One thing they kept (that I can remember) is the separation between men and women. All the pilots were women, and the infantrymen were all men.
One thing that kind of bugged me was that, in the Book, Rico was very clearly Filipino... In both this version and in the Movie version, they made Rico white. Another thing that bugged me, no pun intended, was that the two groups of enemies they fought were never mentioned... The bugs and the skinnies... We see some mostly amorphous enemies that are likely the bugs, and some tall, tentacled things that are most likely the skinnies, but it's never made clear they're even separate.
Overall, despite the WTH moment at the end, I liked it. I hope Paul Verhoeven's rights to the movie expire and a proper adaptation that treats the source material with respect can be made, but until then, this is the closest I'll get.
Has anyone else seen it? I just watched it, and... Well, the ending was a bit what the crap, but it was an interesting take on the book, and 100x better than the 1997 movie version by the Robocop and Showgirls director... FOr one thing, it actually HAD the mobile Infintry armor... Even if it was a little too gundam style for my tastes, though i suppose rendering it like the book described would be prohibitively expensive. For another thing, the anime was respectful of the source material, not in direct opposition to it (the way the film was)
The only thing it really had in common with the movie that was different from the book was that they put more emphasis on the relationship between Johnny and Carmencita, which was barely mentioned in the book... Not so much a relationship as a brief Crush if I remember correctly... Not to say it didn't veer from the source in its own ways... It wasn't gung-ho pro-military. They didn't show how harsh and absurd the military was, the way it was in the book. No scenes with the firing squad, no mention of how ranks were, um, "earned" (in the book, basically, if you outlived your commanding officers, your rank went up)
One thing they kept (that I can remember) is the separation between men and women. All the pilots were women, and the infantrymen were all men.
One thing that kind of bugged me was that, in the Book, Rico was very clearly Filipino... In both this version and in the Movie version, they made Rico white. Another thing that bugged me, no pun intended, was that the two groups of enemies they fought were never mentioned... The bugs and the skinnies... We see some mostly amorphous enemies that are likely the bugs, and some tall, tentacled things that are most likely the skinnies, but it's never made clear they're even separate.
Overall, despite the WTH moment at the end, I liked it. I hope Paul Verhoeven's rights to the movie expire and a proper adaptation that treats the source material with respect can be made, but until then, this is the closest I'll get.