Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcus H.
^ One side of me is saying "good riddance" for those who haven't truly enjoyed the series despite its clear flaws in direction, but the other side mourns the lack of a decent discussion for the series.
I can probably say that Little Busters! is the biggest tragedy of the Autumn 2012 anime season.
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I think the big problem with this adaptation is that the adaptation has been very unintelligent, and hackneyed. Translating Little Busters to an anime format requires far more than copy-pasting, rearranging and axing of specific scenes. There needs to be a certain originality for the adaptation to do well.
The second problem is a rather common one. The plot has to build up for a long time, and the problem is that the build up is not anything especially exceptional. When you throw an unexceptional build up, on-top of poorly conceived rearrangements and unoriginal, copy-paste adaptation and sub-par directions, and that's where the problems start. Alot of people can't stand the build-up, and the Anime Medium, with it's Once a Week, thirty minutes expansion of the plot delivers too slowly for the plot to reach it's real meat, and the build up to pay off.
Now, some studios are very good at making excellent build up and adapting intelligently. I'd say that this is actually why many wanted Kyo-ani to do this - it's not just the visuals that makes Kyo-ani good, it's also their ability to do creative adaptations, and expand on the plot and characters of the source material.
We see this K-on (with it's brilliantly written and seamlessly fitted in plot expansions from the manga), we see this with Chuunibyou (with it's reinterpretation of the original Light Novel) and probably quite a few others. This WAS what people was actually fearing, I think. Not Kyo-ani tier visuals (personally, I'm indifferent to the visuals), but whether JC Staff could creatively adapt a story that by all accounts is very tricky to adapt to the anime medium, and requires a good bit of competent originality. It's that "creative adaptation" aspect that Kyo-ani does well that people actually wanted. But LB so far feels uninspired and clunky.
By all accounts, it's seems they have failed to polish up on the plot, expand or modify it well for the slower moving Anime Medium. In other wards, they failed to adapt LB intelligently. Yes, I see that the Komari's arc was an example of JC Staff being aware that viewers today want to be wowed in five- seven episodes (for 2 cour animes, if you got 1 cour, three episode rule applies), or they'll loose interest the show. And the way I see it, Komari's route does not center upon romance, but upon friendship, in the adaptation, and therefore can easily be modified to fit the Common Route itself.
Personally, Komari's VA alienated me to those episodes, but when I look at it on dialogue alone, it isn't actually quite bad, to be honest. It could do with being later, and I think there needed to be indeed, more buildup for it's denouement of friendship to be more credible. But taken in isolation, it's actually quite a nice story, by itself.
But that may be part of the problem. It isn't wowing people. It's just... average so far, at best. And in general, elements like hung jokes (as someone who never read the actual VN, some of the jokes just felt like they were just left hanging, and poorly executed, even if there's a strong story under the execution) only serve to irritate audiences further.
So, LB is probably a mess right now. There are plenty of unintelligent adaptation choices. This stage (which is clearly a buildup) isn't brilliantly or inspiringly executed, at best , it is just... average. Mediocre even. Will the situations change six episodes from now?