User blog:Samaru163/Deltora Comparison: Jasmine, Girl of the Forest

Hello Deltora Fans and welcome to episode two of my Deltora Anime comparisson series.

Anime episode
Jasmine, Girl of the Forest covers the events of the other half of Forests of Silence chapter eleven, twelve, thirteen, and half of chapter fourteen.

Characters
My God, what did Japan do to Jasmine? I complained about Lief looking like a generic anime protagonist last time, but at least he still had some semblence of his original character in his base design. Jasmine was described in the book as a wild-haired girl with black hair, slanting eyebrows, green eyes, sun-browned skin, and dressed in the ragged clothing of dead Grey Guards. In the anime... well, they got the green eyes right, and I guess her skin colour is technically darker than the others, but it just looks pink, not sun-browned. And where did she get leggings and a mini-skirt in the middle of the forest? And how are those things not torn to shreds by her jumping through the trees? And why is her hair green and so well caired for? Just... ugh! This design bugs me so much!

I won't talk about Jasmine's personality here, as there will be plently of times to do so below.

Kree at least looks like a raven, though for some reason they gave him a cowlick of feathers, maybe for more personality? Filli suffers a lot worse though. The book describes him as a small furry creature with paws and big eyes. The anime... kept the fur and the eyes, but turned him into a living puff ball, like you'd see on Digimon or Monster Rancher. On the plus side, I guess Jasmine has more cause to say he doesn't look like a rat once we get to Noradz.

The Wenn that attacked Lief and Barda look absolutely nothing like their book counterparts. They look more like gigantic cockroaches with shark-heads, wheras the book depicted them as something truly alien. Grey insect-like humanoids with no head and two stalk-eyes growing from their shoulders. The Wennbar, like Filli, has at least some of its book-details, such as its lizard-like body, gigantic mouth, and ability to extend its neck. But they made it purple instead of grey, and it is lacking in detail and honestly looks like a coloured sketch a child would submit for a drawing class.

Bridge
Once again, this episode is a real stickler for book accuracies. These include:
 * Lief and Barda waking up paralyzed in a clearing as an offering to the Wennbar.
 * Jasmine, Filli, and Kree arriving to loot Lief's cloke, with Jasmine commenting that if they had waited until tomorrow, the cloak would have been ruined.
 * Lief demanding the cloak's return because his mother gave it to him.
 * Jasmine's ability to talk to trees, and her knowledge that Grey Guards are created in groups of ten.
 * Jasmine giving Lief and Barda the last of her Wen antidote and instructing them to climb a tree.
 * The Wennbar extending its neck to try and catch the companions as they climbed.
 * Lief wrapping his cloak around everyone to keep warm while escaping the Wennbar, revealing its camophlauging properties.
 * The Wennbar eating two Wenn who had come for leftovers in retrobution for its escaped prey.
 * Lief and Barda initially believing the gem is hidden in the Wennbar's cave until Jasmine tells them there are a hundred other places they could look.
 * Jasmine taking Lief and Barda back to her nest, sharing fruit with them, and telling them the story of how she lost her parents seven years ago to Grey Guards.
 * Jasmien giving Filli and Kree equal shares of food.
 * Jasmine leading Lief and Barda to the Dark, the centre of the Forests of Silence, where the first gem is most likely hidden.
 * Jasmine insisting that they only travel on "good trees."
 * The belt growing warmer as they near a gem.

Alterations
Oh boy, where to begin. First off, Jasmine is a lot more impetuous and immature in the anime than her book counterpart. Many of her lines are delivered with this smugness to them, and her dialogue is made a lot shorter and dissinterested. For example, when Jasmine first met Lief and Barda in the book, she actually explained to them what had happend to them and that they were to be saccrificed to the Wennbar before taking Lief's cloak. Then, when Lief said the cloak belonged to his mother, she returned to hear his explination, since she believed him and Barda to be Grey Guards.

Compare this to the anime, where she completely ignores Lief and Barda until Lief demands the cloak back, and even then, her reply is a sarcastic, "As if you have a mother." Her telling them the Wennbar will eat them is also more sarcastic, with her calling it "dinnertime." All of this makes Jasmine feel more distant to her book counterpart, who could be cold at times, but was curious and willing to hear Lief and Barda out before passing judgement.

Speaking of, in the book Jasmine heard out Lief and Barda's explination that they were not Grey Guards, especially when Lief asked for her name, something no one had ever done before. This is what prompted her to get the last of her Wenn antivenom and save them.

In the anime, however, Jasmine leaves Lief and Barda to die, and only returns to them when an old tree demands that she return the cloak... as well as steal the cloak with its branches, give Jasmine visions of Anna making the cloak for Lief, telling Jasmine Lief and Barda's names, and saying that they are on a quest to save Deltora. Now, I know the trees in the Forests of Silence are able to move on their own, but since when were they omnicient? What's worse is that much of the dialogue Jasmine had with Lief and Barda about Grey Guards was moved to this scene, where it comes across as pointless ranting by Jasmine.

Oh, and during this scene when Jasmine was chasing Lief's cloak, she lets Filli fall off her shoulder, and he would have died if Kree hadn't saved him. I don't think I need to explain how out of character this is for Jasmine, since Filli and Kree are the only family she has known since her parents were takne away.

In the book Jasmine gave Lief's cloak back immediately after deciding to help them, while in the anime, she keeps it until they are stuck in the tree avoiding the Wennbar. I feel this just further exemplifies Jasmine's bratty behaviour in the anime.

Jasmine's nest looks a lot more loaded than it was described in the book. She was supposed to have very few possessions: a broken comb, two tiny botttles, a carved wooden doll, an old shaul, a tattered sleeping blanket, a belt, two daggers, flint, and small pile of coins. But the anime decided to increase these few items to an etire corner of her nest just dominated by weapons and gold.

The anime added in an extra action scene of the Wennbar continuing to hunt after eating the Wenn, and Barda, for some reason, decides to try and fight the monster... after he had just said how important it was for him and Lief to continue their quest to helpt Deltora. And Lief just blindly goes along with this suicide plan, even after Barda tells him they will defeat the Wennbar with, "one decisive blow." I expected this kind of behaviour from anime Lief, but come on Barda, you were just chastizing Lief last episode for acting reckless! What's crazier is that they actually manage to injure the Wennbar and not get eaten.

The final difference is small, but interesting. After arriving at the Dark in the anime, Jasmine leaves them because she can't take the risk of putting herself or her friends in danger. In the book, it's actually Barda who insists Jasmine stay behind, mostly because he was put off by Jasmine's talk of trees having feelings.

Omissions
Speaking of trees having feelings, what was left out of this episode was Jasmine explaining that the trees in the Dark were covered in vines and made prisoners in anguish. She also go really emotional while explaining this, showing just how much she valued the life of the trees as if they were people, and offsetting Barda to the point where he told her to stay behind.

Final Thoughts
This episode is even more accurate to the book than last episode, even down to entire lines of dialogue being lifted straight from the books. Of course, this creates quite the contrast when put up against the lines written to fill in the new scenes. In one scene Jasmine can be explaining with clarity what happened to her family, but in another she is getting snippy when Lief and Barda don't believe that she can talk to trees. Still, if this keeps up I might not have the Omissions section show up in every blog.

The actors for Lief and Barda deliver their lines a lot more believably this episode. Jasmine's VA is also pretty good, though she suffers from how immature her character is written.

Just like last episode, however, the problem here comes from execution. There was no reason Jasmine couldn't have talked to Lief and Barda like in the book, and it would have saved us one scene with an omnicient tree. Plus, if the intention was to show off Jasmine's abilty to talk to trees, that could have been done later, maybe even during the Wennbar fight, if that absolutely had to stay.

The biggest issue with this episode is Jasmine herself, who is such a massive deviation from her book counterpart. Jasmine in the books could be stubborn, rash, and cold at times, but she was never this immature or inpetuous. She feels like a character who is six years younger than her actual age, not a young woman who was forced to grow up fast in a hostile environment.

So overall, this was a fantastic episode from an adaptation standpoint, but it's weighed down by the unnessisary action scene at the end, and Jasmine's terrible character-writing.

But what did you all think? Was Jasmine written perfectly this episode? Was Barda charging into danger the right thing to do? Would Jasmine actually let Filli die over a cloak? Let me know in the comments below, and ensure that the omnicient trees continue to know everything in the Deltora-anime universe.

Tune in next time fto see if we can defeat The Golden Knight.