Behind The Nihon Review

Let me tell you something about me: I’m a horrible person. My name’s probably in 30 federal databases of known sex offenders. I play eroge. Not one, not two, lots of it. Hell, I even WORK in an industry-related field. But as an eroge player, there’s a trend within the anime industry that bugs me to no end:

The eroge adaptation. There is something seriously wrong here. 

I’ll try and address this in as calm as a manner as I possibly can.

First of all: WHY?!

This is a fundamental problem with eroge adaptations. They’re stupid. Neither anime fans nor ero players should want to see these things. The reasons? I think they’re quite simple, actually.

Anime fans like good anime. Ero adaptations usually aren’t good anime. (I’ll address this later.)

Ero players are thinking, “Why the hell am I sitting here watching a TV show with chicks who are fully clad when I can turn on my computer and see them naked? I don’t get it.”

Therefore, WHO’S THE TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC?! Seriously, I don’t understand it at all. You need a target demographic for a show. Okay, so the only people who know about the show in the first place are probably people who have played the game. In that case, we can safely assume they’re either adults, or perverts. Now, neither of these two types of people want to see the exact same story told again with crappy animation quality with all the sex cut out of it. No. That’s a no-go, for sure.

Second point: Story?

Eroge, at least, MOST eroge, don’t have extremely compelling stories. You might say, “Wait, Akira, what about KEY?”

…You’d call a KEY game an eroge!? Shame on you. Everyone knows KEY games are made to be played without the ero. The ero is just a form of extreme fanservice embedded within. This is why adaptations of KEY games (such as AIR and KANON) are always made of so much good and win. It’s because KEY focuses on the story, not on the ero.

However, the same can not be said for other titles. Sometimes, I really do wonder if ero scriptwriters are trying at all. I mean, sure, I understand, the script-writer’s main job is to get the sound effects right (>_>), but some stories are so bad it just feel like the writers pulled pre-determined scenarios out of a bag.

What does this translate to? Really, really lame anime! Because first they take out everything that’s risque, which kills most of the backbone of the main story, and THEN they use whatever’s left of the story to attempt to piece together an anime to sell. Not a winning strategy.

Then there’s an even bigger problem. An eroge is interactive. You need to interact, make choices, and trigger flag events yourself if you want to get your girl. That’s one of the biggest thrills of playing an eroge: you need to figure things out for yourself. An anime adaptation doesn’t have that. Not only does it not have interaction, it also kills the whole excitement and suspense, and leave you with crappy, fourth-rate melodrama. Not only that, you don’t even get a slew of endings that you can aim for! There’s only one ending, and it’s usually quite lame. Great.

So from the perspective of an ero player, an ero adaptation will always fail. With the ero cut out, interactivity gone, and one ending, it makes sense to me that almost every player of ero would much rather just turn on his computer and play through event mode than sit down at his TV and watch an anime adaptation.

Now, to frame this from the perspective of an anime viewer:

The main grievance against eroge adaptations from anime viewers would be the story. WHAT STORY?! An eroge doesn’t have a story; it’s a game where, well, you know what the end goal is. Whatever story they come up with, as stated above, usually sucks. I’m not saying this for all eroge; it’s MOSTLY true, and there’s always exceptions. So we have a boring, hackneyed story, that’s not a good way to make a good first impression.

Then comes the animation quality. WHAT THE HELL. Most ero adaptations have really, really bad animation quality (a la Happiness! or Cresent Love; I’m sure you’ve heard of the infamous “mutant cabbage” from the latter.) This is yet another turn off for the anime viewer. We do three things when watching anime: Think, See and Hear. There goes two of them.

And then there’s the voice actresses. Not much I can say about them, really. Extremely hit-and-miss, usually crappy. That takes out the “hearing” part of the anime, too. There goes all three qualities. So as an anime viewer, you also can’t find anything redeeming within an ero adaptation.

So why do people still insist on making them? Probably because the industry assumes that people are too stupid or too lazy to care either way. But oh, we notice. We notice the lack of quality. We notice the lack of ero. We notice the lack of interaction. And we’re pissed about it.

So STOP MAKING ERO ADAPTATIONS PLEASE!!! I mean, School Days… why would you make an anime out of an eroge that already has 70 minutes of full animation? Why can’t I just play the game and get all 21 endings, good and bad, instead of just having one crappy melodramatic ending at the end of twelve episodes?

…I’m tired of it. I want more quality, not quantity.