User blog:Samaru163/Deltora Comparisons: The Enigmatic Giant

Hello Deltora fans, one and all and welcome to episode four of my Deltora Quest comparison.

Thoughts on the book
Since this is the first episode in the new arc, I will be giving my brief thoughts on the book.

If Forests of Silence was an appatizer to get readers excited for Deltora, then Lake of Tears is the main course. Everything we love about Deltora is in this book: puzzles, riddles, monsters, twists and turns, and imaginative set pieces. Also, because this book isn't being split up by two different stories, it is allowed to dedicate all of its time to developing the characters, making them feel more fleshed out and developed than the rushed job Forests of Silence gave us. This allowed Lief, Barda, and Jasmine to find their respective roles on the team, as well as their unique interactions with one another.

This book also highlights some of Emily Rodda's best and worst traits as an author. The sense of dread and buildup to the sorceress Thaegan is great: you get a feeling of how dangerous she is and just what she is capable of doing, making you dread the companion's final battle with her. But when we finally get there, it's a horrible anti-climax. Sadly, this is a trend among Rodda's works, where she is unable to properly develop any secondary villain beyound one book.

Overall, Lake of Tears is the Deltora book I have read the most in the original series. While it suffers from a weak climax, it has great world building and enough riddles and shocks to make the reader want to truly dive into the world of Deltora.

Anime comparison
Now, lets get ahead to the Enigmatic Giant, which covers the events of chapters one, two, three, and four of Lake of Tears.

This is also the first instance of the anime's opening changing, so I figure I should talk about it. Now we get yet another brief history of Deltora and its fall to the Shadow Lord before getting our obligatory previous episode recap. All of it is told by the narrator.

I guess this intro is OK, but like a lot of things with the anime, it's spoiler heavy. For one, the intro shows the Belt of Deltora in its completed form, which spoils one of the most important twists in the series. It also shows Jarred in a dramatic pose as the belt comes across the screen, which could be seen as a spoiler regarding him as well. All in all, it's also very long and repetitive, regurgitating the same information that was rampant in the Forests of Silence arc.

Characters
On the surface, the titular giant seems book accurate: dark skinned, hooked beak, dressed in a loincloth, and carries a curved sword. However, he is decked out a bit more than in the book, with arm bands and earrings for added details. He is also profiled in a way that usually shows just one eye, very similar to a bird. This is a detail a like, as it adds a bit of subtle forshadowing.

His eyes are a major point of contention for me. The book always drew attention to his golden eyes as his most defining feature, with the book even calling him the "golden eyed giant," or "golden eyed man." In the anime, his irises are indeed gold, but it's pretty much drowned in a sea of green scieras. I wouldn't mind so much, except, again, this was his most defining character trait, and they only went half-assed with it.

The Ralad man is spot-on in book accuracy, with the pale skin, button eyes, tuft or red hair, and short stature that defines their race.

Bridge
There's also the added detail of Jasmine arguing that the companions should approach the Lake of Tears from the south instead of going directly through Thaegan's land, and both Barda and Lief shutting her down due to the travel time, even when she tries to add Filli and Kree's votes to her own.
 * The companions arriving at a bridge leading into the sorceress Thaegan's territory and guarded by a giant who was cursed by Thaegen to guard the bridge until truth and lies become one for trying to save a friend.
 * The giant offering to let the companions cross if they solve his riddles. The order is Jasmine, Barda, and Lief. Special mention to Barda going second because he reassured Jasmine they would follow shortly after her.
 * Jasmine and Barda both completing their riddles, but Lief failing his due to a lack of outside knowledge of Thaegan's dietary habbits.
 * Lief insulting the giant to buy himself time to get rid of the belt, which gets the giant to play another game with Lief to decide how he dies.
 * Lief touching the topaz and giving an answer that locks the giant into a stalemate, thus making truth and lies become one.
 * The giant turning into a giant bird when he is freed.
 * Jasmine revealing that Thaegan ate Kree's parents and deciding to send him back to the Forests of Silence for his own protection.
 * Jasmine telling Lief and Barda about Thaegan's destruction of the golden city of D'Or.
 * The companions hiding in the trees and observing a pod of Grey Guards with a Ralad prisoner.
 * The Grey Guards falling asleep under the companion's tree, and Jasmine attracting his attention with berries.
 * The Ralad drawing a symbol on the ground which the companions don't recognize.
 * The Grey Guards waking up and pursuing the companions down a straight pathway. Bonus points for them calling their prisoner a, "Scrag."

Alterations
Right away the episode begins with an added scene of the Shadow Lord berating Fallow for letting the topaz get stolen and demanding the capture of those who stole it. While the Shadow Lord did become aware of the companions' actions, there is no evidence it learned of the topaz's theft so quickly. For one thing, how would it know? It didn't have any spies in the Forests of Silence. It's just a small scene that makes the audience fear that the Shadow Lord will be cracking down on our heroes, but ultimately serves no purpose in the arc.

In the book the giant was standing vigil over the bridge, unaffected by the wind or weather. But in the show, he seemed to be sleeping and woke up when the companions got too close. He also woke up grumpy, as he attacked them on sight, wheras in the book he didn't talk until after Barda told him they wanted to cross... just like Gorl. I wonder if this will become a recurring theme in the show.

Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the giant's inacuracies. His personality is much more agressive than his book counterpart, who was very statuesk due to the enchantments placed on him. Anime giant seems to have some of his free will still, as he declairs that he belongs to no one while trying to kill Lief and Barda. In fact, he refuses to let the companions pass until Jasmine tells him they are enemies of Thaegan as well, and even then he gives them a riddle as a way to, "test their intelligence." He can also be seen grinning as the companions struggle wiht his challanges, like he wants them to fail. He even screams in pain and frustration when they answer his riddles correctly. This makes me wonder, is the giant in the show a secret sociopath?

The giant was also gifted with magical powers in the anime that allow him to summon objects into existence with a snap of his fingers. This is how he summons Jasmine and Barda's riddles, as well as an hourglass to time them. Book giant never gave the companions a time limit to complete his trials, and it's unknown what he would have done if his challenger took too long to answer.

While Jasmine goes first in the book and show, it's under slightly different circumstances. The giant's first riddle is proposed to the entire group and Jasmine just happened to get the answer, while in the book Jasmine offered to go first. Either way, he presents her with a stick puzzle: change eleven into nine without removing any in the book and change five into three without removing any in the anime. However, the puzzle is fundamentally the same.

Barda's challange, however, is completely different. In the book he is asked, "what is it a rich man has, a begger needs, and the dead eat," to which he replied "nothing." In the show, he is given a group of tials to arrange in the correct order, with the symbols on them being mirror images. So he just cuts them in half and puts them in the right order. I prefer the book version immensly, because the show seems to just default on Barda being a grumpy guard who wants to solve everything with his sword, while book Barda showed a lot of wisdom from his time as a beggar.

Lief's riddle is pretty much the same, though there are some new lyrics added to the beginning and end of the song. However, one difference is that in the book, the giant sings the song twice for Lief, while in the anime, he sings it once, and Lief sings it to himself again while he makes his calculations. For the book this makes sense, since it's just flavour text, but in the anime, it's another case of painful filler.

The anime censored the dialogue for the methods of Lief's deaths—oh, sorry, I mean, demise. The giant gives him the options of, "being crushed," if the statement is true, and if the statement is false, "he will be oblidged to use his sword." The accompanying images are evenfunnier since they keep the blood for the sword option.

Barda and Jasmine watched Lief and the giant on the bridge in the anime, but in the book they had already crossed to the other side due to the bridge being in worse condition than its counterpart. All they do is provide filler commentary, so it's not a great change.

Anime Jasmine didn't seem to know that the giant was a bird, unlike her book counterpart who could sense it upon meeting him. And speaking of birds, anime giant seems to have the ability to speak telepathically, as he tells Lief that he will repay his dept to him one day. I'll cover this more in the omissions section.

The Grey Guards in the show eat some kind of weird brick with the Shadow Lord's brand on it. Whatever it is, it's solid, as one guard thows a brick at the Ralad and it hurts. In the book they ate the same food as any normal person. The Ralad was also treated much worse in the book, bound with heavy chains, a collar around his neck, and taunted with scraps of food only to be beaten. The chains acted as another obstacle in the book, since the companions had to wrap the Ralad man in Lief's cloak to stop them from making noise.

The anime had Lief initially be the only one who wanted to save the Ralad, with Barda saying they needed to continue the quest until Lief went ahead anyways. In the book it was a unanimous decission.

Finally, the anime implies there are toucans in Deltora! In the flashback scene talking about D'Or, honest to god toucans appear! Deltora is a place with a lot of variants in its biomes and species, but it is not a tropical island. There are plenty of other exotic animals they could have picked.

Omissions
After completing his riddle, Barda requested to wait behind for Lief to finish his riddle, but the giant told him that he wasn't allowed to let Barda stay once he'd solved his riddle. This is a small detail, but it highlights the important difference between the two versions of the giant: the book giant was a complete slave to Thaegan with little to no free will of his own.

In the book, after Lief freed the giant, the rope bridge fell apart while he was still  on it. He would have died if the giant hadn't come back and rescued him, thus immediately repaying the life debt he owed Lief. I really don't know why this was changed; the anime already has a horrible habbit of adding more fight scenes than were in the book, so why not keep the few action scenes provided by the source material?

As for how the giant repays his debt in the anime... we'll get to that when we get to that...

Final thoguhts
Honestly, I am not a fan of this episode. Yes, the beats are very book accurate, but once again, it's all in the execution. Much of the dialogue in this episode is so juvenile, and only exists to padd out the run time to that sweet twenty minutes. Ort it is censored needlessly, which makes the dialogue sounds clunky as the characters say, "oblidged to use my sword," instead of just saying, "I'll cut your head off."

The giant himself was also very polarizing due to the show making him more agressive, so it was a bit harder to feel sorry for him than when he was a literal robot. The changes made to his riddles serve no purpose other than to, again, stall for time, which end up replacing action scenes that were present in the original story.

So in the end, this episode falls short for me. After how well the show handled Gorl and the book dialogue in the previous two episodes, this kind of a downgrade was not appreciated.

But what did you all think? Do you like hearing the Thaegan song immediately after hearing it the first time? Are toucans in Deltora the best thing since sliced bread? Do you want to try some Grey Guard food? Let me know down below, and remeber that every comment you make provides a home for orphaned black birds.

Next time we will try and evade Nij and Doj's Trap.