Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaris
As a scriptwriter, I strive to make stories with impact, to tell stories as dramatic and entertaining as possible, even if it deviates from the general order of things. To be honest, I could have scripted a Nayuki ending without having to modify three-quarters of the content. And I'm sure KyoAni, the producers, could have done so too. They had the manpower, the resources, the liberty to do something unconventional and still walk away as a success. And yet, for some reason, they held back.
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I'm a bit surprised by this statement, to be honest. What is the central theme of Kanon? What is the primary conflict that needs to be resolved? Which of the heroines is most central to that primary conflict? And then, as a second issue, what was the apparent primary objective of the scriptwriters in producing this adaptation of the game?
Would it have been possible to re-script the adaptation to deliver a Nayuki ending? Of course. The original game clearly can be played from that angle, so the material is already there. But, given the central theme and primary conflict, would taking things from that angle have been as effective at delivering a resolution to that conflict and an answer to the presented theme? In order to deliver a convincing Nayuki ending, one of the most important things you would have to do is change the development of the central theme/conflict so that it hinges more on Nayuki than on Ayu, or that resolution of Ayu's story arc could somehow flow naturally into Nayuki's, and, in the end, that wouldn't simply be "deviating from the general order of things", it might be re-imagining the way Key wrote the work, and to what end?
So, I don't think it's a matter of them having "held back" anything. Going for the "canon" ending is the cleanest way to resolve the central conflict of the story, and to deliver their promise to the audience: to provide a more faithful adaptation of the game's storyline. Their primary objective was not really to "tell stories as dramatic and entertaining as possible", it was to "to tell the dramatic and entertaining story that Key wrote". I think it's basically for that reason that we got the ending we did. If you rewind the clock even further, and postulate whether Key could have written things differently, it may be a more likely question.
Given the way the anime was presented and positioned, I don't think there was any possibility for another ending, and I guess I prefer a story ending that nicely ties everything back to the central theme. If they had started the story differently, and developed it differently along the way, then maybe I could have accepted a Nayuki ending. Certainly, Nayuki was my favourite character between the two. But I suspect that many of the people calling for a Nayuki ending haven't really carefully thought through what impact that would have on the rest of the work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaris
My reasons is that a Nayuki ending would have provided more emotional impact and therefore made more sense.
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This logic seems to be me to be a bit lacking in cohesiveness. Having more impact doesn't cause something to make sense. The purpose of the ending is provide resolution to the central conflict. So you'd have to propose a scenario where Yuuichi could end up with Nayuki and still satisfactorily resolve all issues presented in the story regarding Ayu and the past. I can really only think of one way to do this that might work, but again, I think you'd be rewriting the way Key envisioned the story, and that was never really in the cards. As you know, there already was an existing adaptation that did a bit more of this (and, in fact, tried to make a Nayuki ending more palatable), but it is largely discarded by game fans.