User blog:Samaru163/Deltora Comparison: Escape

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

Anima comparison
Escape coveres the rest of chapters eight, nine, ten, and eleven of City of the Rats

Characters
I suppose now is as good a time as any to talk about Tira, since I considered her too minor in the previous episode to address.

Compared to her book counterpart, anime Tira is a lot more confident and, like many other characters, she talks a lot more than she did initially. They anime still has her act terrified when they need her to, but she seems to be more outspoken and questions the Ra-Kacharz more often than she did in the book. She also acts more indipendantly in the anime, wheras in the book the characters often had to stress their point to her and get her to comply by scaring her. Harsh, yes, but it made more sense given that she was indocrtrinated into a cult from a young age.

Bridge
Bonus points added for Tira performing the Noradzeer chant when talking about tainted food, Reece lifting Jasmine up with one hand as he drives Lief and Barda towards the hole, Barda shoulder checking two of the reinforcing Ra-Kachar, Lief knocking out the third with Tira's frying pan, and the hole having a steep drop midway through.
 * Reece lying to Tira that he would personally deliver food and blankets to the companions when he actually planned for them to die of exposure.
 * Tira learning of this when she visits the companion's cell and eventually agrees to take them out of the city through a hole used for disposal, though she warns them that only the Ra-Kacharz can enter it and live.
 * Tira leading the companions through the great kitchen of Noradz and explainig that most of the food prepared by the cooks is disposed of by order of the Ra-Kacharz.
 * Tira defending the Ra-Kacharz's wasteful attitude as a means of protecting the city from infection.
 * The companions sending Tira to recover their weapons and Jasmine deciding to stay behind so that she can look for Filli.
 * Reece arriving and attacking the companions, only to be knocked out by Tira and a trusty frying pan.
 * Tira leaving as three more Ra-Kacharz arrive, but after Filli joins them, the companions manage to overpower them.
 * The companions deciding to wear the Ra-Kacharz robes to travel safely through the hole.
 * Discovering that the Ra-Kacharz bare the Shadow Lord's brand.
 * Reece dying inside the hole when his bare skin comes in contact with the deadly Scarlet Night fungus.
 * The companions exiting the hole to find three more Ra-Kacharz loading the discarded food onto muddlet-pulled carts, which the companions stow away on.
 * Kree knowing the companions got out safely and following behind them.
 * The carts coming to a stop at Tom's Shop just as a pod of Grey Guards arrive on the scene.

Alterations
There's no official description of the outside of Noradz given in the books, but I am pretty sure it did not look like a giant mechanical dome. This is a world where the technology level is still medieval-era: I doubt even the Ralads could have built something this impressive.

The anime wastes no time in its annoying Jasmine moment, as it depicts her lamenting the fact that the companions will die of thirst in their cell, then snapping at Lief when he has the audacity to think that someone might be coming because people aren't as good as he thinks. This feels highly out of character for Jasmine in both the books and show; she'd never give her enemies the sadisfaction of seeing her cry. The line about Lief trusting others could be a bit of forshadowing for her internal conflict in this arc, but I'll talk more about that when the anime reaches it. For now, this emotional outburst feels weird for a young woman who grew up in a harsh forest and always acts fierce and fearless in the face of danger.

In the anime, the companions argue with Tira over the amount of food Noradz disposes of. This is something all three companions avoided doing in the book because, despite their grievences, they couldn't risk wasting time and losing their only ally. Not that the last point matters because the companions decide to leave Tira on the walkway, rather than asking her to get their weapons once they reached the hole. This makes her coming back to give the companions their weapons a tad random.

The entrance to the Hole was located next to the Ra-Kacharz sleeping quarters in the book, while the anime has it beside three random passageways. Reece ambushed our heroes when he woke up after Barda snapped at Tira to get her to fetch their weapons, but in the anime, he seemed to be waiting in the hallway leading back towards the kitchen.

The anime changed the goodbye between the companions and Tira. In the book, she was in so much shock from attacking the first Ra-Kachar that Lief had to shove her back into the kitchen before more arrived and she could be identified. He also used this time to bolt the door to the kitchen so the staff couldn't interfere. In the anime, Tira is much calmer, and Lief offeres to let her join them on their quest, but she refuses since Noradz is her home.

The fight with the three Ra-Kachar was an actual fight in the book, with Lief and Barda actually getting dissarmed before Filli arrived and gave them the distraction they needed. In the anime, he shows up immediately. This is a shame because it was a great detail to show off how skilled and deadly the Ra-Kacharz could be.

After defeating the Ra-Kacharz, the companions decided to dress in their garments, since they figured there was a reason the nine dressed differently. This was when they discovered the Shadow Lord's brand on the back of the Ra-Kacharz necks. In the anime, they take three spare robes in a closet located next to the hole's entrance... which makes no sense. If these spare robes were availabe for anyone to grab, why didn't any other members of Noradz think of grabbing some on their way out? Did no one ever try to flee Noradz in the anime, or at least get curious about the outside world?

Scarlet Night has been completely changed from how it worked in the book. It was just a red fungus that would cause agonizing death to anyone who touched it in the book, but the anime gives it two different forms. The first it a red, sticky substance that is similar to a slime mold, dripping from the walls of the hole. The second is a green mushroom that, upon contact with bare skin, causes a person to transform into a colony of mushrooms and die. I guess this was done to make Reece's death more visually interesting?

Speaking of Reece, in the book, the companions took him with them as a hostage after taking his gloves and face coverings. When he woke up in the hole, he freaked out and started wrestling with Lief, tumbling both of them down the hole's incline before dying from the Scarlet Knight. In the anime, he follows the companions into the hole and fights with them until Lief slashes his robes and pushes him onto the Scarlet Night, causing him to turn into a colony of mushrooms. This is when the companions learn about the Shadow Lord's brand in the anime, as the mushrooms keep the imprint of the brand where his hand used to be.

Interestingly, in the book, Jasmine actually showed a bit of remorce for Reece dying the way he did, while anime Jasmine couldn't have cared if you payed her. This I think speeks leagues about the differences between both versions of Jasmine, and why I prefer book Jasmine so much more.

In the book the hole had a conveyor belt that created a moving pathway that brought food all the way from the top of the hole to the waiting carts outside. The noise of the pathway made it sound like the hole was inhabitted by some kind of monster, most likely to further deter people from checking it out. The anime replaces this with a mine cart, leaving me to wonder how the cart gets back to the starting point.

Of all things, the anime changed the reason the companions hopped onto the back of the Ra-Kacharz' cart. Simply escaping the city wasn't good enough, now Lief suggests they get onto the cart because he just needs to know what happens to all the disposed food... I've complained about Lief's dumb moments in the past, but this is easily in the top five. We saw how tough Reece was to take down on his own, so does he really think fighting three is a good idea?

In the book, the companions reached the wagons at dawn, while in the anime it's at least morning. This makes a lot more sense because the dimmer light would have helped them sneak onto the cart without being scene. Though I suppose that doesn't matter in the anime because they just teleport onto the cart via a transition.

There were also three wagons in the book, with the companions hidding in some packing straw in the middle wagon, which, combined with the speed the Muddlets were travelling, prevented them from just jumping out whenever they wanted. In the anime, it's just one wagon, and they have no protection outside of the wagon's cover.

Omissions
On their way to the hole, Tira tells the companions that, in her lifetime, she had seen two people die in the hole—supposedly from shock. They were red faced with hands covered in blisters and foam around their mouths. Even though they changed how the Scarlet Night works in the anime, surely they could have had Tira confirm why she was so scared of leading the companions to the hole.

When the companions enter the kitchen, they oversaw two of the Ra-Kacharz selecting which food to keep and which to dispose of. This was important for a few reasons: it allowed Emily Rodda to actually show us the choosing of food as opposed to the companions pointlessly arguing with Tira, and it meant two of the Ra-Kacharz were too busy to help Reece. Lief even made a mental note of all the Ra-Kachar that were accounted for at one point. But since the anime left out the choosing scene, we don't know where the last two Ra-Kacharz were.

The anime left out an amusing line from Barda, who commented that Lief was following in his father's footsteps by escaping inside a garbage cart.

Final Thoughts
As you can probably tell form the legnth of the alterations and omissions, this was not the best episode adaptation-wise. Once again we have all the beats being hit, but no scene hits nearly as hard as it did in the book. Instead of seeing the souls of the cook's shattered when their food was rejected, we get Tira and the companions arguing when they should be escaping. Instead of showing off how powerful the Ra-Kacharz were in battle, they come across as inept.

This episode had a serious pacing problem as well. The chapters this episode was based on were fast-moving with little to no time for rest, which makes sense given that the companions are trying to escape a hostile city. The skills of the Ra-Kacharz and the terror of the hole helpd add to this momentum, as it seemed like, even our heroes reached the hole, there were still a dozen things there to prevent their escape. None of this is kept in the anime, which slows down the pacing something fierce with its needless quips from Jasmine, Tira's long goodbye, and the fight with Reece extending longer than needed so that the episode could feel like it had a climax. There are also several plot holes raised in this episode, from the spare Ra-Kachar uniforms to Lief's idiotic decission, that makes it more frustrating than anything to watch.

So in the end, this episode should have been an action packed race to freedom, but it suffered from too much down time, to​​​​​​​o much dialogue, and what little action being broken up by more talking and plot holes.

But what did you all think? Do you think anime Lief is a genious? Are you thinking of becoming a living mushroom colony yourself? Do you think you could take on all the Ra-Kacharz by yourself? Let me know below, and remember to keep fighting, no matter the odds.

Next time we will attempt to leap the next hurdle in Crossing the River