My current book diet, to quote Trys
May. 25th, 2011 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mercy_angel_09So I mentioned raiding Project Gutenberg for free eBooks a few entries back. After raiding TV Tropes for Anne of Green Gables, I somehow ended up on the page for FujiTV's World Masterpiece Theater which has been adapting classic literature into anime series since the seventies, Anne of Green Gables included.
On a whim I decided to go down the list and see which ones I had, had read, or still needed to read. The list has most of the basics, Little Women, Tom Sawyer and the like, but it also included Trapp Family Story (if you've ever wondered about The Sound of Music as an anime, there you go) and Moomin. On the list was Daddy Long Legs which I had heard about, but had never read. Since it and its sequel were offered on Project Gutenberg, I downloaded them and loaded them on to my nook. Since Daddy Long Legs is fairly short, it only took me an evening to get through it. And I loved it. I had that moment of, "Why the hell didn't I read this sooner?!" Kind of like me resisting reading The Secret Garden until I got really sick in the fifth grade and ended up bed ridden for a week with nothing to entertain me but a stack of books that my sister and handed me that I ended up plowing through (and loving).
Of course I was intrigued by the anime adaption. I found it streaming online and watched it over the course of a couple of weeks. I'm not sure what I think. The main plot is the same, an orphan is sent to school thanks to a mysterious benefactor, but instead of going to college, Judy is in high school - fourteen when the series begins. Which means when Jervis first meets her, she's fifteen. Jervis is explicitly stated to be twenty-seven (at this point she's already had her fifteenth birthday meaning he's only twelve years older than her, and later in the series it's shown that his birthday is the week before hers). But still, it's a little squicky and unsettling when you realize that a twenty-seven year old man is essentially flirting with a fifteen year old girl who's drawn like she's twelve.
The squick factor is less in the novel when she's eighteen when they first meet (and thus by all accounts legal by modern standards) and he's said to be fourteen years older than her. Given in 1912 that was probably the common age gap between husband and wives, it's less jarring - and even now it's not so odd. (True Fact: There's a fourteen year gap between my mother and my father.) But the anime just sort of adds an extra creep factor to it by making Judy and her classmates high school students. Ack.
Other changes in the anime includes Judy spending an extraordinary amount of time wangsting over the fact that she's an orphan. Admittedly, it causes her some concerns in the novel as well, but she's much more mature about the whole situation, generally not speaking about it unless explicitly asked. (In the sequel novel, it's heavily implied that Julia never finds out about Judy's past, but Sallie is told everything, as Judy and Sallie are much closer.) But I would say that at least 80 percent of the anime series is Judy wangsting in some way or another about her background as an orphan and how it will ruin her, and usually unnecessarily so. I suppose this was so that she could make the big reveal during her valedictorian speech in the penultimate episodes of the series, to thunderous applause and gaining the respect of her classmates and their families in the process. This is classic early nineties shoujo anime, after all.
There is also an extraordinary amount of wangst in the romance department. Judy is in love with Jervis (duh), but Sallie's brother Jimmie is in love with Judy. Julia, Jervis's niece and Judy and Sallie's roommate, is in love with Jimmie (after a bit of a misunderstanding, as she's actually quite rude to him when they first meet). Jervis is obviously smitten with Judy. They really play up the romance in the anime, while it's quite secondary in the novel. It's obvious that Judy likes Jimmie, but more as an older brother and that she's taken with Jervis, but school comes first. In the anime, Judy turns down Jervis's proposal because she feels that as an orphan she's unworthy of him. In the book she turns him down because she wants to live up to "Daddy's" expectation of her becoming a great author, which she is well on her way to doing and she feels that marrying someone like Jervis would derail that.
Never mind that Jervis is Daddy and therefore he has no issue with it. But it does cause a huge misunderstanding, as Jervis thinks that Judy turns him down because she's actually in love with Jimmie. In his depression over the refused proposal, Jervis is caught in a storm while hunting in Canada (eh) and catches pneumonia. He almost dies, but gets better when he realizes that 1) Judy does love him and 2) she was trying to do what was right by "Daddy." Lampshaded in the novel when Judy makes a crack about how much better Jervis looks after she visits for a half-hour and they clear up any and all previous misunderstandings between them, and are no doubt engaged by the end of the visit.
One of the changes I liked about the anime was that Julia got character development. She's more or less a satellite character in the novel, the Rich Bitch who is intrigued by Judy, but isn't necessarily friendly with her. Because Jervis decides to drop by rather unexpectedly, Julia has class and pawns him off on Judy.Once you know that Jervis is actually Daddy Long Legs, one has to wonder if this was a deliberate ploy by him to meet with Judy and check on her progress in person. Judy and Jervis strike up a friendship that grows over the next four years, but Julia remains a minor character. However in the anime she's a major player in the series, not only actively trying to figure out the mystery of Judy's past, but in the penultimate episode she reveals that she knew the truth about it. It takes Sallie off guard, as well as the viewer as only a few episodes previous Julia's mother threatens Judy by saying that she not only knows about Judy's past, but she'll expose Judy's secret to be ridiculed by the rest of the society. It's never clarified if it was Julia's mother that told her or if Julia managed to work it out of Jervis, because she can see that Jervis has an attachment to Judy.
Overall the anime adaption isn't bad, but it's very much early nineties shoujo and is sometimes kind of painful to watch. Especially since the shift in Judy's age means that the maturity and wit that she had in the novel is gone. She spends a lot of time wangsting over her past, romance and her desire to become independent. The lack of maturity especially bothers me, because while novel!Judy was behind in some aspects (socially and academically), anime!Judy is much worse, on top of being so ridiculously cheerful over the littlest things that she makes herself look like a fool in front of her classmates. Admittedly, in the novel Judy was pleased at the gold coins she received as a Christmas present from Daddy, but in the anime she's bouncing up and down in the halls and shouting to high heaven, making it obvious that she'd never seen gold coins before in her life. I think I liked novel!Judy because she had a tendency to keep things closer to the vest so as not to horribly embarrass herself and by proxy her benefactor. (This is not to say it doesn't happen occasionally, but it's always treated with the utmost tact.)
Anyway, it's late and I think that sums up my feelings on both the novel and the anime. I may write about the novels (covering both Daddy Long Legs and Dear Enemy) tomorrow, but as I'm starting to nod off at my computer, obviously it's bed time.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I found that the LJ Hook add on for Firefox has been updated to work with the latest version of Firefox and I can now get back to easily coding entries. Huzzah!!
On a whim I decided to go down the list and see which ones I had, had read, or still needed to read. The list has most of the basics, Little Women, Tom Sawyer and the like, but it also included Trapp Family Story (if you've ever wondered about The Sound of Music as an anime, there you go) and Moomin. On the list was Daddy Long Legs which I had heard about, but had never read. Since it and its sequel were offered on Project Gutenberg, I downloaded them and loaded them on to my nook. Since Daddy Long Legs is fairly short, it only took me an evening to get through it. And I loved it. I had that moment of, "Why the hell didn't I read this sooner?!" Kind of like me resisting reading The Secret Garden until I got really sick in the fifth grade and ended up bed ridden for a week with nothing to entertain me but a stack of books that my sister and handed me that I ended up plowing through (and loving).
Of course I was intrigued by the anime adaption. I found it streaming online and watched it over the course of a couple of weeks. I'm not sure what I think. The main plot is the same, an orphan is sent to school thanks to a mysterious benefactor, but instead of going to college, Judy is in high school - fourteen when the series begins. Which means when Jervis first meets her, she's fifteen. Jervis is explicitly stated to be twenty-seven (at this point she's already had her fifteenth birthday meaning he's only twelve years older than her, and later in the series it's shown that his birthday is the week before hers). But still, it's a little squicky and unsettling when you realize that a twenty-seven year old man is essentially flirting with a fifteen year old girl who's drawn like she's twelve.
The squick factor is less in the novel when she's eighteen when they first meet (and thus by all accounts legal by modern standards) and he's said to be fourteen years older than her. Given in 1912 that was probably the common age gap between husband and wives, it's less jarring - and even now it's not so odd. (True Fact: There's a fourteen year gap between my mother and my father.) But the anime just sort of adds an extra creep factor to it by making Judy and her classmates high school students. Ack.
Other changes in the anime includes Judy spending an extraordinary amount of time wangsting over the fact that she's an orphan. Admittedly, it causes her some concerns in the novel as well, but she's much more mature about the whole situation, generally not speaking about it unless explicitly asked. (In the sequel novel, it's heavily implied that Julia never finds out about Judy's past, but Sallie is told everything, as Judy and Sallie are much closer.) But I would say that at least 80 percent of the anime series is Judy wangsting in some way or another about her background as an orphan and how it will ruin her, and usually unnecessarily so. I suppose this was so that she could make the big reveal during her valedictorian speech in the penultimate episodes of the series, to thunderous applause and gaining the respect of her classmates and their families in the process. This is classic early nineties shoujo anime, after all.
There is also an extraordinary amount of wangst in the romance department. Judy is in love with Jervis (duh), but Sallie's brother Jimmie is in love with Judy. Julia, Jervis's niece and Judy and Sallie's roommate, is in love with Jimmie (after a bit of a misunderstanding, as she's actually quite rude to him when they first meet). Jervis is obviously smitten with Judy. They really play up the romance in the anime, while it's quite secondary in the novel. It's obvious that Judy likes Jimmie, but more as an older brother and that she's taken with Jervis, but school comes first. In the anime, Judy turns down Jervis's proposal because she feels that as an orphan she's unworthy of him. In the book she turns him down because she wants to live up to "Daddy's" expectation of her becoming a great author, which she is well on her way to doing and she feels that marrying someone like Jervis would derail that.
One of the changes I liked about the anime was that Julia got character development. She's more or less a satellite character in the novel, the Rich Bitch who is intrigued by Judy, but isn't necessarily friendly with her. Because Jervis decides to drop by rather unexpectedly, Julia has class and pawns him off on Judy.
Overall the anime adaption isn't bad, but it's very much early nineties shoujo and is sometimes kind of painful to watch. Especially since the shift in Judy's age means that the maturity and wit that she had in the novel is gone. She spends a lot of time wangsting over her past, romance and her desire to become independent. The lack of maturity especially bothers me, because while novel!Judy was behind in some aspects (socially and academically), anime!Judy is much worse, on top of being so ridiculously cheerful over the littlest things that she makes herself look like a fool in front of her classmates. Admittedly, in the novel Judy was pleased at the gold coins she received as a Christmas present from Daddy, but in the anime she's bouncing up and down in the halls and shouting to high heaven, making it obvious that she'd never seen gold coins before in her life. I think I liked novel!Judy because she had a tendency to keep things closer to the vest so as not to horribly embarrass herself and by proxy her benefactor. (This is not to say it doesn't happen occasionally, but it's always treated with the utmost tact.)
Anyway, it's late and I think that sums up my feelings on both the novel and the anime. I may write about the novels (covering both Daddy Long Legs and Dear Enemy) tomorrow, but as I'm starting to nod off at my computer, obviously it's bed time.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I found that the LJ Hook add on for Firefox has been updated to work with the latest version of Firefox and I can now get back to easily coding entries. Huzzah!!
