I am more of a purist. The way I see it, whatever is in the source should also be in the adaptation. For me, the adaptation work should be about how the same story/plot/narrative/information/etc. can be delivered in the new medium. If something was important enough to be mentioned in the source, it should be important enough to be in the adaptation as well. I absolutely agree that not everything has to be spelled out, but a quick hint that something has happened when it did so in the source is not spelling it out. As in the example, a quick glance down is enough, and it doesn’t need a voice-over of her thoughts or added dialogue of her asking why the spear tip is clean. But it makes all the difference between Romelia being some omniscient character and her being an observant one.

In this Ray example, as an anime-only viewer, I personally just thought she had seen him during the fight and didn’t think more of it when she singled him out after the battle. But at no point did I get the impression that she was especially observant of the little details and that that is why she was able to help Ray. It might be a small thing, and it didn’t take away from the anime for me since I didn’t know that I got a different impression of the character, but that doesn’t change the simple fact that my impression of the character was different from what manga-readers had of her. And that’s a failed adaptation in my view. I’m not going to drop the show over it, but now that I know that the source handles the narrative so much differently, I’ll keep wondering what else they fucked up. You could also just say that I have Bookworm PTSD and am overly prickly about this sort of thing.