Comments on: A Second Look at the Eroge Adaptation

By: ETERNAL

ETERNAL — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:05:32 +0000

Well, the reason why I can stand – and often enjoy – a lot of eroge adaptations is because I never view them like other anime. Instead of seeing the show as a single, coherent plot, I try to view it as an animated version of the game. Many of them end up being worse than the games for the reasons you already outlines, but the problem of predictability or lack of realism don’t bother me because I don’t expect the stories to be realistic. For example, I actually liked how the Shuffle anime played out because instead of trying to make the story seem logical, they simply went and animated each of the arcs. I wouldn’t watch a show like that and expect deep romance; I’m only watching it because I can’t read Japanese and the game isn’t translated.

That said, I agree with your reasons for why ef worked out, and I think the same can be said for the Key anime. They drift here and there to cover the side characters, but none of it feels like filler (unlike most of the genre).

By: gaguri

gaguri — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:15:03 +0000

“While many people (people like me) absolutely despise the main heroine, we can only sit and begrudgingly watch and accept.”

Exactly how I felt watching Clannad.

By: Sorrow-kun

Sorrow-kun — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:53:54 +0000

Favourite Akasaka character? Would you be offended if I guessed Nagomi? Hmm… well, from my review, you could probably guess my favourite was Karen, with second place going to Mitsuki. Karen might have been stupid, but at least she was funny. Out of the main love triangle, Yuuhi won by default because I thought Minato was dull as a doorknob. Guessing your favourite character, Tsukasa is plausible, but for some reason I can’t see you being a Tsukasa fan. So I’m gonna guess Mitsuki. That’s my final answer, so lock it in.

ef worked because it had multiple male leads, I think, which was pretty “new” for its time. The challenge with trying to adapt VNs is trying to turn all the multiple paths into a linear story. ef had the advantage of being a linear story to begin with.

I think KyoAni still do the visual novel conversion better than most with the Key adaptations, because they have such a strict modular style. Three or four episodes dedicated to one story path, three or four episodes dedicated to the next. Admittedly they have to cut a lot out, especially the romance related stuff if it’s a character the lead doesn’t have a romantic interest in in the anime, but KyoAni seem to put a lot of effort into thinking about how to weave the story arcs together without introducing a whole heap of loose ends or it feeling like they’re giving a side character the focus for the sake of pleasing (read: teasing) game fans. Then again, they did come dangerously close to doing just that with how they dealt with Kyou in Clannad.