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Houshin Engi is a manga written by Ryu Fujisaki which is based on a novel by Ano Tsutomu (only in Japanese), and THAT novel is based on a famous Chinese novel called Feng Shen Yan I. After awhile, the manga series was animated into a 26 episode anime series (that's too damn short!). Character designs were slightly changed, and only part of the series was actually in the anime. The rest of the series was put into dramas, video games, and whatnot. (No OVA? That SUCKS!)
The length of the series could probably be due to the fact that they ran out of money, but if they ran out then, there may have been not enough money in the budget for Houshin Engi to begin with. Many series these days are coming out with 24-26 episodes a show which cuts out a great deal of the story and character development as in Senkaiden Houshin Engi and other series like Ayashi no Ceres. Despite how much money you would have to fork over to buy the series, the perfect length of a series is actually about 100 episodes. At the very least, it should be around 50 episodes (Fushigi Yuugi and Flame of Recca for example) to get the most out of the experience of the show. In the old days when most anime were all long, 24-26 episodes was a mini-series like Blue Seed and Shin Seiki Evangelion. These series would start in the fall anywhere from September to November usually and end in January or February which was the start of the new TV season in Japan.
Houshin Engi the manga is 23 volumes long and more or less does seem to be similar (at least in the beginning) to the original novel. Because of that, I assume that Ano Tsutomu's novel was true to the original as well. In any case, the names of the characters are pretty much the same except for Taikoubou's, but I have to check cuz my grandpa had the Chinese edition with all the names in Chinese. In any case, the characters all have original character designs, and the author added some of his own little original additions to it to create a very unique manga.
Now I haven't read all of the manga, but I've heard that our beloved characters (at least some of them if not all) die at the end of the manga. Everyone seems to think it's a bad thing to be houshined, but really it isn't. At least it's not in the novel. In the novel, when your name is on the Houshin list and your soul goes into the Terrace of Creations, you become a god later on. Even Chuuou became a god! Hard to imagine, no? But yes, in the novel, that's what happens to all those people that we saw die. So whether our beloved characters die or not in the manga (as I have no clue yet), isn't really that much of a sad thing if you associate it with the novel. After all, in this world, Nataku is worshiped as a god as well as Raishinshi and Youzen. Those three are three of the most represented gods I've seen in stories and television. According to a web site I read telling me about the novel, Nataku has a bunch of shrines in Taiwan and stuff. ^^;;; Of course his name in China is Nezha or Nata (or any other varied spelling of his name), but yeah. If they do die, don't worry cuz they're not really dead.
Now I think that's enough ramblings. If you want more information on the Houshin Engi manga, anime, the novel by Ano Tsutomu, or the original novel, I recommend that you go to Houshin.net. | |
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