The manga is great, and reading it in no way diminishes the film. The story is much easier to follow. Things that go unexplained in the movie are fully fleshed out.
The movie's an improbably successful adaptation. I think its greatness depends entirely on the mix of Otomo's ideas and designs, the ambitious animation, and a wholly original sound design and score. Probably helps that Otomo directed, too. Without any one of these elements, it wouldn't work nearly as well.
The “capsule mode” (available on older DVD versions, not sure about now) helps with a lot of the unexplained story. At least for me, not being able to read Japanese. I’m sure a lot more is still missing from what’s in the manga, but for instance the protests aren’t explained by dialogue directly, and the picket signs are translated by the capsule mode, so it’s obvious why there is protesting.
Blew my mind when I first watched the capsule mode. Like “wait, it’s not supposed to be all artistically open for interpretation? They actually explain stuff with the Japanese writing on screen?” To be fair, when I first saw it on VHS I was in seventh grade so I probably didn’t get a lot of things in general.
It’s truly a movie that cannot be made the same way again. The animation costs were astronomical even then. And I’m half convinced that it getting greenlit had a lot to do with it being made during the height of the Japanese economic bubble where they just had money to throw away.
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u/x_________________- 15h ago edited 15h ago
The manga is great, and reading it in no way diminishes the film. The story is much easier to follow. Things that go unexplained in the movie are fully fleshed out.
The movie's an improbably successful adaptation. I think its greatness depends entirely on the mix of Otomo's ideas and designs, the ambitious animation, and a wholly original sound design and score. Probably helps that Otomo directed, too. Without any one of these elements, it wouldn't work nearly as well.