shoutbox

Make yourselves at home! Our almost-normal-but-not-quite school is now open to new students...

this club is not allowed to die yet.

*casts full heal on the club*

Are you a fellow VN reader? If so, the translations or the original? I'm reading the translations (uncut version) and I am postponing the anime until I read Rakuen; apparently the uncut version is scheduled for late this year or something.

P.S.: I know I owe you an answer over at the Service Club. Will happen. Hopefully.

nope, i didn't read the VNs yet. will do at some point, when i'll have more free time.

i've watched the anime though (all of it) - 10/10 and instant fav. it's terribly underrated, and i've got a feeling it's because of people that saw VNs first.

From what I know, which is necessarily biased by the evaluation of people who had contact with both the anime and the VNs (including at least one person who read the Rakuen VN in Japanese), I managed to conclude that the issue is twofold:

• Due to extreme lack of time, the story was largely compressed and lost much of its depth, turning it into a show where the characters act for inexplicable reasons; the correct decision would have been giving it more time to develop the plot, with e.g. Kajitsu easily taking two complete cours;
• The route-centered nature of Kajitsu was thrown out of the window in favor of a single "merged route" attempt, which rarely if ever works, thus throwing kerosene at the flames of fan rage; first animating the common route and then using an omnibus format (think Amagami SS) to present the individual routes would have been a superior choice, and if Frontwing wanted a "merged route" attempt, they should have first done something to that extent in their home ground, the VN format.

Both issues, as presented, were the result of poor decision-making on a producing/directing level, together with a need to turn some aspects of the story more digestible to the public at large. As far as I can see, this created a similar situation to that of the 2006 FSN anime, which is imo a marginally acceptable show on its own but also a complete travesty of an adaptation, complete with made-up, anime-original episodes toward the end; by contrast, the FSN VN, with all its flaws, has numerous more layers of depth than those Deen presented, and things actually make a lot more sense in it.

I'll note that people love seeing the VNs, LNs, and manga they love turned into anime, and will gleefully embrace competent adaptations (see e.g. S;G); when fans of the original work pan the adaptation, it is highly likely that something was done very wrong.

Anyway, out of all three, apparently Kajitsu was adapted the worst, due to the forced "merged route" structure, and Meikyuu the best, by virtue of its grand route being short (none of the rest was adapted, so there's still a lot of content you've had no contact with), therefore requiring fewer cuts.

Disclaimer: this is just my understanding of what seems to be the majority opinion among those who read the VNs, and I don't necessarily agree with it. I will form my own opinion only once I watch the actual anime. I'm providing it for the sake of information, and so that you can also have a point of comparison when you read the VNs.

FYI: I don't know how long exactly I took to read Kajitsu. Going by memory and interpolating with extra information, I estimate ~25 hours for Meikyuu, out of which ~8 hours in its grand route. I heard Kajitsu is about twice as big as Meikyuu, and Rakuen about as big as Meikyuu, so, going by that, the estimate for the full trilogy is around 100 hours, maybe a bit more. Counting the thee side stories, that is bumped a little. Some people read faster than me, and others read slower, and it also has to do with whether you listen to voice clips to their end and stuff.

And to close this post off, allow me to do as the great quote goes, and proceed to spank Michiru-sama's butt ten times and then say something edifying!

as for compression, i disagree. sure, the VN is bound to have a lot more content (the time estimates you gave seem to be way off from what i've heard, and i tend to take my sweet time with VNs - the only one i've read was Steins;Gate though), so it's unfair comparison - they can't drag the anime to no end just to cover every little tidbit. but what i saw, was perfectly focused on what's important, and i didn't get the impression of missing depth nor characters acting for inexplicable reasons. of course, you won't be able to understand why characters act the way they are from the very beggining without seeing their stories unfold, but i can't imagine anyone with a reasonable attention span could complain about that. Okabe acted like a mad man from the start, and the reasons behind it all were made clear way, way later - in both the anime and VN - and noone complained about it.

as for "merged route", i didn't get that impression at all. stories are very clearly separated from each other. in the grand scheme of things, of course it's all linear and tries to follow some path down the road, but it's an anime, not a VN. i really can't understand why people complain about that - seems like a borderline insanity for me. this isn't Steins;Gate, which was perfectly suited for anime adaptation - changes had to be made. the fact that it's different from VNs, doesn't mean it has to be worse - agreed, i haven't read the VNs yet, but the anime for me is on the same level as Steins;Gate (i'm judging the series as a whole, not Kajitsu alone). very different, yet just as good - and that's the highest prise possible coming from me and something i wasn't really expecting to happen at all.

some people just hate changes and i think that's where all that panning is coming from - maybe they're right regarding some details, maybe not - for me the only thing Tenshou could give a pass was the aspect ratio. i would really prefer it to be 16:9, but i didn't see a single piece of it in both - i guess Tenshou did, so perhaps he decided some part of the feeling he was aiming at, would be lost. and that's the thing - it's easy to brag about how things could've been made differently, without giving a thought to all the side effects of such changes. imho, they did a great job at both production and direction level - as a matter of fact, i don't think most series come even close to Grisaia when it comes to that.

Grisaia is a very specific series - and a series more suited for anime than VN, imho. it has a very narrow field of fire, aiming at people with specific experiences buried in their past - but when it hits, it's bound to change you profoundly. VNs are probably more just a thing to enjoy - the potential should be there, but it's just not the right medium for the job. my guess is Tenshou noticed it, and decided to take his freedom to turn Grisaia into anime it should be, not just "as-direct-as-possible" adaptation, which probably wouldn't work that well. and for that, he has my respect - especially because it was bound to backfire from the VN fans that weren't really the intended target of this story in the first place.

Okay, I'm really not sure how you're supposed to "drag" the anime to tell the whole story. Rather, I'm impressed you can actually think that telling the story 10x faster than in the VN isn't too fast, even with anime being naturally a faster medium. As a point of comparison, UBW TV covered far less content than the whole Kajitsu VN (about a third of it, to be more precise) in twice as many episodes, making it six times slower, and that was still cutting pretty much everything that could be cut. I mean, sure, it had its pacing issues here and there (in fact, it had many issues of all sorts), but those were the result of poor handling of the time they had, not of having too much time. Generally speaking, a VN adaptation to anime needs an episode for every 1~3 hours of reading at average speed, assuming you can just blaze through it without even thinking about the flow (which is true for Grikaji, which, route choice and a single good/bad ending choice aside, has minimal branching and no long-term decision impact, and truer still for Grimei, whose grand route, as far as memory goes, has a grand total of zero choices).

Yes, in the end it's all linear, which does not work; besides, as far as I understand the comments, that's just one part of the problem. Grikaji is all about fixing the mental issues of broken people; you can't just play with the sequence of events because you're altering their very personalities in the process, or ignoring the results. It's also totally not a question of suitability of the VN and anime formats; if you look at Amagami, its format couldn't be less suitable for anime, but that doesn't stop the adaptation from following the same format and still being as good (or as bad as it, depending on your point of view) as the original work, and indeed the omnibus format worked so well for it that the currently airing sequel is an anime original and it nevertheless follows the same format. I really don't see how the format wouldn't work for Grikaji; in fact, omnibus format is the only format that would work for Grikaji, and it still needed 2-3 times as many episodes to cover the content marginally properly. Meanwhile, we all sing Steins;Gate's praises, but its format is absolutely to adapt, its flow is a nightmare, and it's overall messy; that it worked at all is an achievement, far harder than having any Grisaia anime work, and that it worked so well is halfway miraculous, so you can see that it's really not the format.

Yes, sure, some people hate changes, but I don't see how that is supposed to relate. Some of the harshest criticism of the Grisaia adaptation I've seen comes from someone who heavily praised KyoAni for the changes they did to the Chuunikoi LN when they adapted it to anime and considers the LN to be a far inferior work; similar criticism comes from someone who considers the GITS manga to be "a joke" compared to SAC. You see, properly written works of fiction have an inner logic which they adhere to throughout their length as well as from someone who pans UBW TV for not having changed what had to be changed. It's very easy, and yet thoroughly incorrect, to dismiss legit criticism of a profound change to a work's inner logic as hatred of change while forgetting that not all changes are created equal and some changes are supposed to never happen; an adaptation is not entitled to make changes that upset the inner workings of its source.

If you think Grisaia's target audience is limited to people with specific sorts of traumatic experiences... I don't know what to tell you, because it's not. Having one in your past may enhance your experience, but is not a fundamental factor in allowing you to enjoy it. To name just one aspect, the VNs are full of solid, 24-carat comedy gold, filled with brilliant one-liners to the brink; my stats are outdated, but last I heard, Grikaji had the second most one-liners in VNDB's VN quote DB, just one behind the first place, and yorhel (VNDB head) was already denying the introduction of more Grikaji one-liners on account of having too many of them. The trolling is on a pro level and never ceases to deliver. I could go on about the tragedy, but you get the idea, right?

Really, you should read the comments thread for Grikaji -- it's elucidating enough on its own right, and since it has commentary from people who've had contact with both the VNs and the anime, the explanations they provide are better than anything I'll be able to put forth before I watch the three anime, which will only happen after I read Rakuen (uncut version, because fuck cut versions).

I would like to add that I watched from the beginning of Grikaji to the end of the fourth episode of Griraku (which still adapts the plot of the Grimei VN; the Griraku plot only starts on episode 5).

The adaptation of the Grimei plot is... passable. Weak, but passable. I've seen worse. Griraku is probably going to be worse.

The travesty that was sold as an adaptation of the Grikaji plot is not an adaptation, but something completely made up. The changes don't work well together and the OOC is real.

As that Tsukihime meme goes, there is no Grikaji anime.

Still, there's Phantom Trigger for a (lol nope) chance of redemption.