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Hi Bella Phen here, when I fall in love with an anime or manga I fall hard. When I am actually able to get my hands on both and they don’t match up I’m often torn over which version of the story is better. It’s like your favorite sci-fi story finally hitting the big screen only to see that they screwed it up. Although, in the anime/manga world sometimes the anime is so much better than the original manga you can’t bring yourself to read it again. Sometimes they make an already great story absolutely perfect!

Funimation recently released Ikki Tousen The complete Series. It’s awesome! I love love love Ikki Tousen and I want my own Hakufu.  Hakufu is a toushi, aka a “fighter.” She as well as many other High School Students in Japan have been burdened with the spirit of an ancient Chinese warrior and will be guided into the same fate as the long dead warriors. The battle lines are drawn between schools and within the schools themselves there are some vying for more power. When Hakufu arrives on the scene all she knows is that she is a toushi and that means she gets to fight lots of strong toushi. As an observer you find out that Hakufu is the reincarnation of a serious bad ass fighter. Hakufu has a dragon inside of her and when it wakes up and takes charge no one can stand against her. She may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but when the dragon wins a fight for her she doesn’t like it and the victory doesn’t count in her mind.  Hakufu wants to be strong on her own so she can fight stronger opponents.

Ikki Tousen is fun, it’s sexy, and it has killer fight scenes. Go Get It Now! When you watch Ikki Tousen expect insane amounts of fan service, boob jokes, exploding clothes, and smash your face in punches. Plus Hakufu, what more need I say?

What’s missing though is in-depth character development. Hakufu doesn’t change a whole lot during the series but she does get continually stronger. At lot of the seriousness of the story line is gone through quickly to get to either action or fan service. While this would normally ruin a show for me there is one saving grace, the manga.

The manga is under the title Battle Vixens and all fourteen volumes are waiting for you to read them. The manga is very similar but a very different kind of story. While you still find lots of fan service you will actually get tons of character development, back-story, and more explanations of what is going on. In the manga you get a thorough recap at the beginning of each volume. You get detailed descriptions of each main character and a few secondary characters. You get side stories that help to explain parts of the Three Kingdoms, the magatama, the dragons or whatever else doesn’t seem to make sense. 

The story line between the two mediums differs quite a lot while still maintaining the same spirit. Hakufu is shown as less of a dumb blonde in the manga, she also grows emotionally and while she wants to fight for fun she knows there is more to it than just that. Ryofu stands out the most as being very different between the two mediums. I prefer the Ryofu from the manga. The anime version is easily seduced, she is a total perv, and her decisions in the anime don’t feel as believable as they do in the manga. The same characters will die in both versions but in different ways.  Toutaku’s death in the anime is lot more interesting and his character is a lot scarier. You actually get a lot more information about his emotionally state in the anime then you do in the manga. In the manga Ryofu loves Chinkyuu and the feelings are returned. In the anime Ryofu has feelings for her but they don’t appear to run as deeply.

Something that still doesn’t make sense to me is the magatama colors. In the manga (the black and white manga) different colors show how strong you a fighter you are. In the anime you actually see the colors but low level toushi are beating the crap out of fighter’s way higher than them.  Ryomou, who has a silver magatama, beats up some toushi with gold magatama and gets her butt kicked by toushi with a silver magatama. In the anime Hakufu’s magatama only changes color when she is possessed by another toushi but in the manga it apparently changes at least once as she gets stronger.  That is one area where neither medium explained anything.

In this case the anime and manga, while being different, complement each other really well.  When the manga gets to serious you can take a break with the anime. When the anime gets to confusing and the fan service is just too much, you can switch over to the manga and get some much needed clarification. Are there any other series out there where the two mediums don’t match up? Has this caused you to prefer one version of the story over the other?