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.

That light novel was so terrible to read that it became entertaining again. You just needed to adjust your mindset a bit.

Ray’s Hesitation

Just showing her taking a quick glance at Ray’s spear before she told him to follow her would have taken maybe a single second. Just her eyes moving down, and a cut to the clean spear tip before cutting back. It would have been so simple and would have made such a big difference. But that’s something I see more and more. Direction is getting worse, and studios either put the wrong people in place, or they simply often don’t have people anymore who understand what made the source worth adapting in the first place.

I guess they need to remind people sometimes that this is still a zombie show.

maiden

noun

maid·​en ˈmā-dᵊn

old-fashioned + literary : an unmarried girl or woman

Hardly a war crime. Personally, I could never be arsed to finish it, and what I have seen of it was more out of obligation to give it a fair try.

Pssst. Yeah, you. Come here. Not so loud. Can I interest you in some Shirobako?

Good, huh?

Yeah, leave it to the shoujo/josei audience to do the mental gymnastics to go from this premise to “uwu, so romantic”.

I disliked the light novel, but it works a lot better as an anime. The slapstick animation, sound effects and pixel art jump cuts change the entire tone and make the dumb stuff more palatable.

Not an isekai, though, or is that something coming up later?

Update: Everything arrived. I had to use Bebop for the maiden run - Jazz and vinyl go hand in hand in my mind.

Next step, put the PC speakers back on the PC and get a proper amp with passive speakers.

You’re right. I forgotten that one already since I dropped that one after the first episode.

This is fun. You can trust P.A. Works to deliver quality.

I’m not happy. The intro scene (under the red moon) made it look like it was Nia who died and got reincarnated as Nia again. Then the pacing is similar to how Bookworm got rushed and is skipping over all the build up. I wish anime directors would learn that hype scenes have to be earned. Just skipping forward to them don’t work. This first episode is basically two thirds of the first volume.

Lastly I have some minor gripe about the naming and wish they would use the naming conventions from the official source translation in the subs. Lynokis = Rinokis.

This is the same author as the isekai minecraft one… which I’m surprised wasn’t animated first I feel like that one is more popular?

That one turns into outright non-stop porn orgies, so this doesn’t exactly lend itself to mainstream anime.

However, I completely understand their need to move the story along and not end on a huge cliffhanger.

Ending on her entering the jureve would have been the perfect stopping point. they could have let 2 real world years pass by before continuing in the story with her waking up 2 in-universe years later.

This follows Suikoden 2 and the main selling point is how the story puts pressure on the protagonists. I’m curious to see how well they will pull this off in the anime, but so far I’m not convinced that they will do a good job of this. the main feature of the game are the side characters, and I fear they will just throw in as many cameo appearances as they can, whether it makes sense or not (like the mini carnival troupe). I will also say that the villain Luca wroked in the game (for that area) but in the anime he just looks like a caricature. After the pilot I would say you’re better off playing the game (there’s a remaster) than watching the show, but I hope the next episodes will be better.

That was great. Makes me kinda want to install a old space sim again.

Love the characters apart from the moody one.