This week marks the start of the Moyashimon live action TV-series. Beyond the cute bacterias… like every good manga turned into a drama… the drama produced was completely different from the manga. AGAIN.

Can’t these drama folks keep the story as it is, the way the people have loved it in the manga, the way that the manga is popular to begin with? For those who have followed dramas, we have seen how in the likes of Yoshinaga Fumi’s Antique, they had to make Ono straight rather than gay. Now… they kind of jumbled the story line of Moyashimon, turned Kei into a girl and… I… whatever happened to the relaxed pace of my bacterial manga!?! Everything bursted out of this comic like hiochi that the sudden skips from this to that made the story lose its laidback yet interesting turn of events.

It’s insane and I’m not exactly sure if I’m disappointed just yet. The series does run for thirty minutes and I suppose they’re trying to make things as compact as they can to integrate plots that came after the anime. Then again, I have a feeling these guys won’t be travelling to France.

On the other hand… the hiochi/kiviak scene was really strange. In a dank, damp, place like that, would the kiviak even ferment? Honestly. What were these guys thinking?!

It may sound that I’m being a manga purist, but I’d like to believe that there are reasons why they animate/dramatize manga stories and the strongest of which is the story’s own good story line. Hence, why would they change it? Why would they try to make the flow of the story different?

Sometimes I wonder if it’s really the artistic interpretation of the director however… didn’t the author have a say in the production of his own work as well? Sometimes I wonder if the mangakas allow the changes because this is how they foresaw their story but failed to put it in print. However, sometimes I think that the mangakas may have been too nice to really say a word or may have been too cooped up in their own manga duties that they didn’t have the time to oversee the creative direction of the work. I mean if the Korean version of Antique Bakery managed to pull of the gay and everything else in the story quite successfully, and the Taiwanese managed to follow HanaKimi quite faithful to the manga. I don’t understand why the Japanese have to change these things.

As much as I love Moyashimon, I’m going to have to force myself to stop twitching at every change they made to the story I love. Fundamentally, the story is still the same it’s just… it’s weird. Then again even the anime version of Moyashimon was just as weird for me. It’s still to early in the game to throw the hatchet though. Besides, the 3D integration of the bacteria is just awesome.

Congratulations to Ishikawa Masayuki for winning for Moyashimon!! Finally, they notice the genius of processed foods and the power that bacteria has in our favorite foods!

The 32nd Annual Kodansha Manga Awards has just been announced and Moyashimon got an award for Best General Manga. It also won the grand prize for the Tezuka!! Yay! I’m not so sure if the anime played in its popularity or at least exposure, but a lot of interesting things did happen to the manga last year so it’s quite amazing that way. :3

Another personal favorite of mine won. It’s called Kimi ni Todoke and it won for Best Shoujo. I’m not so sure if it’s licensed yet, but yeah, this is another great shoujo story and I hope it gets translated in english too. Its story is similar to The Wallflower without being too repetitive and stubborn. Its delightful without containing too much drama from shoujo mangas.

Manga awards are a great way to find titles outside your usual haunts. Some people are always iffy about award-winning mangas because some think it’s for those with sophisticated tastes and all that. However, it would never hurt to understand why it was shortlisted or why it even won for that award. I was a Naoki Urasawa fan and was pleased to see Pluto win for a Tezuka before. That same year, there was that shortlisted manga named Nodame Cantabile that got me curious. After checking it out, I was blown away with Nodame’s insanity. That experience convinced me that there’s a greater world out there other than those deemed as ‘popular’. So don’t be afraid to check these mangas out if you can. It’d be quite an experience. :3

So for a short quip, congratulations to Moyashimon for winning the lot this year!!

みんな！かもすぜー！