Saw this on the front page of Reddit, figured I'd share it:

http://imgur.com/A9o5X

 

Similarly: Anime-fied HP Cast

 

Well, time to crap over this:

'Boobatrix LeStrange'.

Nagini doesn't look menacing enough.

Voldemort doesn't look evil enough.

Narcissa's hair should be a lighter blonde.

Molly's too thin - she's supposed to be 'motherly'/dumpy.

Bill Weasley looks like a fucking woman.

The Twins: ...The fuck? That a hint for Twincest, or something? :facepalm

Fleur Delacour's hair is supposed to be silvery blonde, not golden
blonde, though that's probably because of movie!Fleur. Also, 'too plain' for someone who's a partial veela.

Tonks looks awesome.

Dobby looks like a kid. Too smooth skinned and...odd looking.

Snape isn't ugly enough. Also, flowers? The fuck?

Sirius looks like he has vampire fangs, and has pierced ears.

Lily Potter looks like she has Down Syndrome.

Overall art style:

Masculine features are too soft and rounded, making them look feminine.

Cheekbones need to be utilized more on certain characters to create a better effect.

It seems that a template has been used for most of the characters' faces.

This feels like it was drawn by a female artist, one who maybe has slash reading tendencies. Maybe that's just me feeling those vibes (coming from the poses, etc), though.

 

I think you missed the part where it said "Anime", Jorm.

 

I don't watch anime, but I've seen anime characters that have males that actually look like males, and have menacing looking antagonists.

It's possible to create characters that look closer to the book characters' descriptions, whilst keeping to the anime sort of art style.

 

James fucking Potter right there, bitches.

 

As slightly appealing as the idea sounds to me, I don't think I'd last too long watching a HP anime with all the stereotypical anime cliches we see now. I mean, it sounds nice, but no way in hell it could ever be made to my personal standards.

 

I would link you to my argument here.

And OP, I posted that picture in the Meme thread yesterday, lol. The discussions here and there... I sense redundancy?

Anyway, the posts from the Meme thread should be moved/diverted to here. This is probably a better place to discuss the current topic. =P

 

Mostly I agree with Jormungandr with this. I think the second link offers better designs. Though I wish Harry looked more like James. And Wormtail should be chubby.

I'd like to see a Harry Potter anime anthology of some kind like Batman: Gotham Knight or The Animatrix. Big-name studios all contributing their own designs, taking select scenes from each of the books and animating them. It'll never happen, but I like the thought.

I would give all of my money just to see how that would turn out.

EDIT²:

Oh sure, it's very well done. Just... not really to my taste. Too bishounen.

 

I don't know about you guys, I'm not that picky on the artwork. I think whoever did this did an amazing job...

 

Harry Potter anime huh? While kind of appealing, I doubt it would ever happen, and doubt even more it would be good. I've read the books and watched the movies, I don't think I could stand to watch the same material re-filtered through a new medium. Sure, I could hold out hope for quality new material, but something like this would probably make a ton of money even if they didn't put any effort into it, so why would they bother?

Hypothetical anime series aside, this particular artwork is very...pretty. Too pretty actually, but that's a hallmark of the whole 'shojo' style. I actually think Luna is the worst offender, they've robbed her of all character, she's just a pretty blond girl. And Lucius is prettier than his wife. I think what's actually going on between the twins is just sadness, but this art style is bound to make everything slashy looking. I'm not even going to say anything about Snape. I do like Dumbledore at the bottom. I guess kudos to whoever drew the thing, it's well drawn even if I don't love the style. It looks like a lot of work and I certainly couldn't do it.

 

A big budget HP adaption by Bones a la FMA:B would be awesome.

Brains Base would be fantastic as well, their other novel adaptions have been excellent.

A Shinbo/Shaft adaption would be amusing, if only for Harry doing dat headtilt.

Ah pipedreams, oh so fun.

About the actual image, I thought it was pretty good, but as others have said characters are generally too pretty. On the other hand, why does Sirius have dat fang ;_;

 

Lulz. They're Lillies, you Derpasaurus

OT: the artwork was pretty legit, even if it had that templated/effeminate feel that Jorm pointed out. And I won't search all the posts I've made on the subject, but an animated HP series would absolutely blow any live ensemble cast you could put together (if only because live-actions would never get the budget or attention to detail necessary)...however...

Animated. Not anime, but some sort of animated style.

 

Studio Bones is a good choice, but Madhouse or 4C would be the best pick bar none. The only issue would be the director; this kind of project would require someone who is more in tune with what a non-Japanese audience wants out of an animated feature, and unfortunately there are very few people like that working in the industry.

 

Harry Potter by Anno would be fun. He could use the mental connection between Harry and Voldemort to give us all kinds of trippy mindfucks.

However, I'd be equally tempted to have Gainax and the design team behind Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann make it; epically over-the-top badassery is exactly the sort of thing that would make for an awesome HP anime.

 

Harry Potter, by Lauren Faust, in Flash, featuring Ponies.

 

Yeah, it's a very shoujo style character design. They're all epic bishounen.

I think Hagrid, Dumbledore and Voldemort are the only males who don't look like pretty boys. Definitely, Snape could do with some toughening up. He doesn't need to be hideous or anything if they want to keep him attractive, but surely they can make him look a bit darker. Like a male version of their rendition of Bellatrix.

I think Hermione is totally out of character too. I can think of a lot of anime examples that fit the 'bookworm' character a bit better - she reminds me of Taiga from Toradora at the moment and looks way too loli.

I think apart from that, I like their rendition of most of the other characters given the style they're going for. Bill looks epically cool and the rest of the Weasleys (apart from Molly) seem to fit. Ginny especially seems to fit in the picture Sin Salori linked to.

Luna looks good in the picture Sin Salori linked to as well. Really seems to fit her.

Regulus looks a bit better in the second picture too. Has a bit more of a darker expression to him, with the young Sirius and James having a nice, fitting arrogant look to them.

And as mentioned in the other thread, I'm completely in love with their version of Lily. =P



As for how they'd go about making an anime, I guess there's quite a few routes they could go.

The most obvious would be go for a typical shounen rendition. Which wouldn't necessarily be bad, if done well. The typical over-dramatizing, Harry's 'nakama', and the way that most shounen's tend to start quite lighthearted, and then become a bit more dark and serious later on - all that could actually work quite well, given that the plot - especially in the first 4 books - is a bit childish.

The main issues I guess are the ones that plague most shounen's. I think there's 3 common main characters in shounen anime - the loud idiot (Naruto, Peace Maker Kurogane, Bleach, Tenjou Tenge etc), the uber shy useless guy (mind blank atm - I'll think of something), and the super strong guy - often hiding his powers under a guise of a super nice guy (Kenshin, Shaman King, Yakitate Japan, Trinity Blood, One Piece, etc).

I'd imagine Harry would take the second one - the ultra shy guy. This character style regularly annoys the crap out of me whenever they try to use it. He's useless, pathetic and then tends to pull off some ridiculous bullshit that seems cheap.

The other thing with shounen anime is sometimes it is just overly cheesy. Given that the plot is already somewhat cheesy, anime could end up making this 100 times worse.

And then the obvious things - pacing, animation, OST, etc.

 

The character archetypes that you mention for shonen anime are that way because they are true for the shonen manga that they are based on.

A faithful adaption by a competent studio wouldn't have Harry characterized in that way, because that isn't how he is in the source material. Of course, give it to a shitty studio and all bets are off.

Cheesyness, well again - Faithful adaption by a good studio would (mostly) only be cheesy where it was originally.

Pacing is an issue in many of the anime you mention, because the source material (Manga or a light novel) is not yet completed. Thus, filler episodes and overly padded scenes are par for the course as they ensure that the anime doesn't catch up to, or overtake the manga.

Animation wouldn't be an issue in any HP adaption, as the budget would be so big that all of the staff would have solid gold desks. Likewise with the OST.

I think looking at Shonen anime based on ongoing series as an example is a mistake, as they usually have a lower weekly budget for non-awesome scenes and copious amounts of filler.

A much better shonen example is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which was finished for the adaption (to be specific, the mangaka for FMA had planned out what she was gonna do so precisely that the manga ended ~3 weeks before the final episode of the anime adaption was planned to air, so there was always fresh material to be used, removing the need for filler) and had a big budget (like a HP adaption would).

 

Pota Hari

Is a German song about HP as a Manga from 2003.

 

As for a faithful adaption, well, there's still a lot of stylistic things that can create differentiations between possible renditions and still be accurate. Things like voice actors, character design, background music, art style.

The movies tended to use very dark scenes, and had that playful and yet mysterious OST. I thought PS, and CoS felt a lot darker in the movie than I thought it in the books because of that.

So imagine the differences between say, using the shoujo-styled character designs above, versus a more typical shounen style, versus just going for a realistic style. An OST like Naruto, versus a fully orchestral OST. Have a brightly colored Hogwarts like Naruto does Konoha, or make the whole thing dark like Trinity Blood?

All can be accurate to the books and yet give very different results.


Another good question would be how many episodes to allocate?

Do we allocate a season per book? 13 episodes? Or a full 26 episode season? Do we need that many? Or given the varying length of books (eg, PS vs OotP) just allocate like 140 eps for the whole thing? Or could we fit it into 51 eps?

One of the things about Harry Potter is that the the 'main plot' is often a background thing for most of it. They go about doing their classes, their daily life, with the 'mystery' they're trying to solve spaced across the book in small amounts and then towards the end, the main plot suddenly becomes the focus and all that.

I think the problem with the movies is that because they're short, they do lose that slower pacing feel and tend to just focus on the main plot events. An anime, you'd want to make use of the fact you can use of that pacing. Yet at the same time, the 'day to day life stuff' may be a lot more boring to watch in an anime than it is to read in a book.