50 replies to this topic

[antarctico]

I've been watching the anime, which so far is 100% faithful mostly 100% faithful to the manga plus being pretty good, and by my math they are burning up eight chapters for every three episodes. That works out to the anime being able to cover 35 or so chapters. Seeing how we are now at chapter 58 and the new Witch assassin has just appeared, and that same assassin appears in the opening credits of the anime, meaning the new Witch gets her own anime ending arc, the anime is going to have to cut out a huge chunk of stuff. I can guarantee one episode is going to be burned up with the girls at the beach mini-arc, as in is an immutable law of the universe that every anime has a fan-service beach episode, so that leaves nine remaining episodes covering 24 chapters. Any thoughts as to what they will cut out?

 

My bet for the arc most likely to hit the cutting room floor first is the one covering the memory manipulating Witch. Also, any mention of the weird scientist uncle, and replicating the medicine seems likely to be cut due to time as, outside of being an exposition delivery mechanism, this plot thread doesn't seem to be anything but a dead end in the manga.

Edited by antarctico, 23 April 2014 - 10:59 PM.

[Lawrencex01]

I agree with you that the beach episode will probably not get cut, but not because of fan service. It's to make the readers more attached to the characters and also it gives MC girl the will to live. I don't think they will cut a whole chapter completely but maybe small parts of it, like for example after the date with kazumi and how she ends up on his bed. 

[antarctico]

I agree with you that the beach episode will probably not get cut, but not because of fan service. It's to make the readers more attached to the characters and also it gives MC girl the will to live. I don't think they will cut a whole chapter completely but maybe small parts of it, like for example after the date with kazumi and how she ends up on his bed. 

 

Fair enough about why they will keep the beach arc. It also provides some cool-down time before the arc with the new Type-S assassin. Even Elfen Lied had some lighter moments where horrible gore wasn't happening (the OVA, for example). I agree with you that the date with Kazumi will get cut, which is kind of a shame because I enjoyed that mini-arc, but some stuff is going to have to go. Too bad the anime couldn't be 26 episodes.

[lonewolf]

there is numerous cases where character showing up in OP doesn't really show up in actual episodes... also I wouldn't be surprised  if they cut a lot of that precognition witch arc which was just confusing (srsly /i have read it few times just to get grasp behind wth just happened)

[antarctico]

... also I wouldn't be surprised  if they cut a lot of that precognition witch arc which was just confusing (srsly /i have read it few times just to get grasp behind wth just happened)

 

If you mean that precog vs. precog arc, yeah that was super seriously confusing. I would be perfectly happy if the anime takes a razor-sharp plot machete to that mess. The whole note passing cross/double-cross that wasn't a really a double-cross thing gave me a flippin' headache. The only worthwhile parts of that arc for me was watching Kazumi falling super hard for the MC, and the very sad, busted-up little precog they had locked away in the underground lab.

Edited by antarctico, 23 April 2014 - 08:57 AM.

[ZdrytchX]

so far is 100% faithful to the manga 

Iirc one of the events were reversed... I forgot which chapter, but around ch 10, +/- 10 chapters

[antarctico]

Iirc one of the events were reversed... I forgot which chapter, but around ch 10, +/- 10 chapters

 

Hmm...can't saw I say that. I re-read chapters 1-8 after watching the third episode and the only thing different that caught my eye was there was some slight cleaning up of the radio conversation with Kazumi. Of course, my memory lacks the total recall of the MC's, which is to say sometimes it seems to hold information about as well as a sieve holds water. What event are you thinking about?

[NG14916]

The event where Kana saw that woman get run over by a car was in chapter 10 or 11 of the manga but was in episode 2 of the anime.

[antarctico]

The event where Kana saw that woman get run over by a car was in chapter 10 or 11 of the manga but was in episode 2 of the anime.

 

Thanks! Odd that they would time shift such a minor plot point. I am sure we will see more of this as they burn through the remaining episodes.

[Sangios]

Not to mention those 4 people in the shadows from the opening. Though I looked at all the raws, so I know who they are. Still, I was thinking there'd be an original ending.... sadly. I wish they could just stay loyal to the source material. It just makes no sense for Valkyria to be introduced within a 13 episode time frame as is. And I wonder if they'll skip the part with Nanami or not.

[ALAKTORN]

They better not skip the Nanami arc. It was one of the best.

[NG14916]

Not to mention those 4 people in the shadows from the opening. Though I looked at all the raws, so I know who they are. Still, I was thinking there'd be an original ending.... sadly. I wish they could just stay loyal to the source material. It just makes no sense for Valkyria to be introduced within a 13 episode time frame as is. And I wonder if they'll skip the part with Nanami or not.

 

There's not much point in being faithful to the manga when they don't have enough episodes to cover the whole thing. It would have been nice if they'd had 50 episodes or so, but apparently it's not the case. And I doubt Brynhildr is popular enough to get 2 animes like Fullmetal Alchemist did.

[Sangios]

They better not skip the Nanami arc. It was one of the best.

 

There's not much point in being faithful to the manga when they don't have enough episodes to cover the whole thing. It would have been nice if they'd had 50 episodes or so, but apparently it's not the case. And I doubt Brynhildr is popular enough to get 2 animes like Fullmetal Alchemist did.

 

Yeah, unfortunately not. I really wish this could have been a 24 episode season.

And yeah, Nanami's arc was one of my favorites too.

[antarctico]

Well, the most recent episode really screwed with my chapters-to-episode calculations -- they managed to cram five chapters (9-13) into one episode. Nothing really important was changed, most of the time savings was from what I would call plot smoothing. For example, they managed to get the girls, including Kazumi, living in the Astronomy Club more efficiently by not having Kuroah and Kana returning to their burned-out home and then having to return to the club with the appearance of the dam survey crew, which also no longer needed to be shown. Also, by time shifting the precog rescue of the woman on the bike, this allowed the anime creators to repurpose the stairwell conversation into an explanation of why the girls would be living full-time at the astronomy club. This whole smoothing of getting the girls together living in the Astronomy Club shows a lot of skill on the part of the screenplay writer and the director.

 

One thing that pleased me was at the beginning of the episode, the final confrontation with Saori was streamlined in such a way that no exposition was lost, plus the scene flowed better and had more impact because of it. The shifting of Saori's internal monologue to spoken dialog helped here, and the dropping of the communication via note (for fear the remote ejection beacon/collar containing a microphone) was a huge help here because two or three minutes of animated note passing would have killed the momentum of the scene.

 

One thing that got dropped (but may just be time shifted into the future) is the Kuroah's short flashback to her escape from lab custody showing the wrecked truck and the dying lab assistant handing her the envelope with the PDA and fertilized alien egg. I did not miss it until I went back and re-read that chapter of the manga, and when I read it, it clearly did not have to be in the episode and dropping it meant they got to spend a minute or so of animation for something more important.

 

So, speaking of what might get dropped, who is taking bets that Ryota's next door neighbor girl Kitsuka (the one he tutors) gets axed? So far in the manga she hasn't done much beyond stalking Ryota in the beach arc and making a brief appearance in the Nanami arc, which I feel has a good chance to be axed. Kitsuka seems mostly like a filler character.

Edited by antarctico, 29 April 2014 - 11:59 AM.

[antarctico]

Three-and-a-half chapters got burned through in the most recent episode, again with only very minor cuts or changes. For example we lost the parking lot pun where Kuroha skips cleaning duty in chapter 14 in exchange for some not terribly funny titty humor involving Kazumi and Kotori. In a word, blargh, but no big deal plot-wise. Oh, and as an aside, what the hell is with the crappy incidental music? The OP theme is reasonably awesome, but the "funny" music makes me want to start punching.

 

The anime creators better put the pedal to the metal, because otherwise there is going to be some big friggin' cuts ahead.

[antarctico]

Ah...the cuts have seriously begun. Katori's happy birthday scene at Chie's grave -- cut! Ryota's corporate bitch of a mom -- cut! The next door neighbor girl Ryota tutors and his part-time job -- cut! Neko's karaoke outing and any hint of school life outside of the astronomy club -- cut! Any set up about Kogorou being Ryota's weird uncle -- cut!

 

The death of thousand cuts burned through four-and-a-half chapters and the anime is at its half-way point with seven more episodes to go. Based on the number of remaining episodes vs. chapters to cover, and using the opening as a cheat sheet, my updated predictions are:

 

 -- Nanami and her whole arc axed (not in the opening, lack of remaining episodes).

 

 -- Mizuka and her whole arc, along with the new female lab researcher Yuki, axed (again, not in the opening, lack of remaining episodes).

 

 -- We jump straight to finding out the medicine in not readily synthesized and the beach mini-arc (there must always be a beach episode), bathing suits and oppai abound.

 

 -- Based on the opening and chapter progression in the manga, we go into the Valkarie arc (ongoing in the scanlations).

 

 -- The Anime wraps up with what I'm calling, the Scary Amish Family arc, meaning the group of hat wearing spooks at the end of the anime's opening (not yet scanlated).

 

As far as this last episode (6) goes, I feel like the smaller cuts dulled some of the emotional impact of the episode for me. For example, short cutting the setup about the limitations of Kikako's attacks, the small trims in the pill scene with Katori, and the complete axing of her grave scene,. The episode just felt sort of flat to me. And, don't get me started on how abruptly we went from, happy, happy cookout to blowing shit up in Kogorou's office. "Hey girls, I gotta go see a guy about stuff. Neko, you good with glass? Cool," followed by boom, boom, pop -- cut to ED theme. The last five minutes of show were a bit...breathless.

[antarctico]

Well, episode seven kind of threw me for a loop because some of the missing bits that should have appeared in episode six were time-shifted into episode seven, plus it looks like we will be seeing Nanami's arc after all. So, mom and mention of Kogorou being Ryota's uncle are still gone, but the time-shifted school/karaoke scenes took place, Ryota's neighbor girl he tutors time-shifts in briefly, and they even managed to shoehorn in Kazumi's "date" with Ryota, which I was happy to see. I was kind of amused to also see that the producers are so tight on time that they had to drop the OP and lay the opening credits right over Ryota and Kogorou's exposition about synthesizing the pills and the alien egg.

 

At this point, I have no good idea how they are going to wrap things up given the remaining six episodes, given that they have already shown in the OP the Valkarie and following arc with the Wearers of Mysterious Hats, combined with the producers so far not showing much of a willingness to cut material as to compress and streamline it. So, WTF, lets see how wrong I can be this time:

 

-- Nanami's arc gets burned through in one full episode.

 

-- Mizuka's arc does make an appearance, burning up one+ episodes (meaning, one full episode plus a few minutes in the following show due to satisfying whatever cliffhanger they left us with previously).

 

-- We subtract another episode for the mandatory beach scene (already set up with the appearance of the neighbor girl), leaving us with three episodes to tie up the show.

 

-- We dispose of the Valkarie in one+ episodes.

 

-- The final arc with the hat people, done in one+ episodes.

 

-- Whatever final wrap up to the show is taken care of in the remaining few minutes.

 

Or not -- I just guessing at this point.

Edited by antarctico, 19 May 2014 - 06:33 AM.

[antarctico]

Thanks to the awesome job by the new English translators, we now know who the mystery brunette is in the anime OP -- she's Hatsuna the regeneration witch. Man, how are the producers going to fit all this into what's left of the anime? I'm starting to wonder if we will have some huge end-of-season cliffhanger!

[ALAKTORN]

Haven’t checked the anime yet, but from what you’re saying it seems pretty crazy that they’re trying to fit in the story up to Hatsuna in 12 episodes…

[antarctico]

Haven’t checked the anime yet, but from what you’re saying it seems pretty crazy that they’re trying to fit in the story up to Hatsuna in 12 episodes…

 

Yeah, it seems completely crazy, particularly since I just got caught up with the blitz of recent English translations. There is no friggin' way they are going to be able to get caught up with the Manga and conclude the overall story in six episodes. Either, as Sangios suggested a few weeks ago, they have an original ending (as Elfen Lied did), or they take a cleaver to a couple of major arcs, or they end the series on a cliffhanger and leave us all hanging if the producers do not get a second season. At this point, I'm leaning more toward the cliffhanger ending, but clearly, it will take a couple more episodes before we really have a good idea which option the producers chose.