What a train wreck of cuts, time shifts, and reshuffled events. This time out, the anime producers manage to chew through a dizzying 13 chapters (58-70) by increasingly brutal trims, deletions, revisions, time shifts, recombinations, and compressions.
When the episode starts, we do not get to see the satisfying scene in the manga where Valkyria blasts the annoying, cloying love birds into a bloody spray. Also, after Valkyria blows the SWAT team away, along with the top of the mountain, Hatusna begins her altered, shortened arc. The information about the existence of Valkyria and her being a hybrid with eight types of magic is revealed in a porked-up version of what was a short scene in the manga about the top of the local mountain exploding. In the manga the scene's purpose was to underscore Ryouta's concerns about Kuroha being an S-ranked weapon of mass destruction, but in the anime the conversation at the observatory plays out with all the main characters clustered around a flat-panel screen displaying that most popular exposition-ex-machina device of bad 21st century writers, the Internet, while Kazumi and Kana vomit out exposition left over from cut scenes.
Speaking of cut scenes, where is that heartwarming moment in the manga where Valkyria gibs her date-rapist in his own shower? This is Okamoto Lynn we are talking about -- where's my gratuitous gore! Plus, we miss out on an important teaching opportunity: Date rape gets a dude gibbed, so don't date rape!
Back to being serious, Ryouta's call to Hexenjagd is completely cut (or time shifted to a future episode) and is replaced mid-episode with a much shortened version of his meeting with Kogorou (a munged version of their two meetings from chapter 64 and chapter 68, combined and compressed) about Chisato's college research involving protease and how it will speed up manufacturing the anti-death drug, but not speed it up enough to keep all the witches alive. Kana and Kazumi playing shogi in the observatory gets whacked, and the observatory scene that follows is not about the cut Hexenjagd conversation, but it instead becomes Ryouta reporting on his meeting with Kogorou followed by the, largely unaltered, scene of the girls deciding on who should get to live from chapter 69, with the only change being Hatsuna's source for her pills being the corpses of the other minder witches killed by Valkyria (in the manga, it is Valkaria who loots the bodies for pills). All discussion of Valkyria being a fugitive is cut as is Ryouta's outdoor bath scene with Kazumi (one of the few times the anime producers passed on fan service). The content of Ryouta and Kazumi's cut discussion of the rumor that Kurouah is really an S-class witch and a Valkarie will probably be time shifted and jammed into an future scene.
Chisato's grilling by his superiors in chapter 58 is turned in the anime into a munged up version of the chapter 58 meeting about Chisato's decision to release the Valkarie, where the discovery of Valkyria's 9th and 10th powers is revealed, blended with the later chapter 64-65 meeting where Chisato gets dressed down for his incompetence and the unintended mayhem caused by Valkyria. He makes a second appearance, also lifted from Chapter 65, where he meets with Valkyria (Mako) on the overlook and uses his pimp hand to bitch-slap Mako into tearful Stockholm Syndrome submission.
Regarding Hatsuna, as Madara noted her origin is very different in the anime. Instead of being an escapee, she is one of Valkyria's seven minders killed off-camera when Valkyria, A.K.A. Mako, breaks loose. After regenerating herself and discovering her beacon has conveniently been sliced off, we next see Hatsuna when she arrives at the base of the mountain housing the observatory. Here, she coughs up the missing plot point that Valkyria can sense other witches, and here we also get to see, in flashback form, how Hatusna knows about the observatory. One point here: In this flashback scene Valkyria talks to herself about getting the other four witches later, but since, to save time, the search for pills plot point has been cut, why would Valkyria want to go out of her way to kill four other witches? In the Manga, the search for anti-death medicine is a strong reason for Valkyria to hunt down and kill every witch she comes across, but without this motivation, her desire to kill other witches is what exactly? Is it just because of generic, villainous pure-evil?
Back to Hatsuna, when she is introduced to the other girls in the observatory, in a very shortened and simplified scene, it is as an A-rank witch, which presumably means the anime producers have ditched the manga's plot point that she has never regenerated anyone else, which was why she was B-ranked in the manga. Assuming this point, that Hatusna has never regenerated another person is absent from episode 12, this also reduces her (future) saving Ryouta's life from an emotionally charged act of possible self-sacrifice to just another day on the job for an A-ranked witch. And, about her introduction to the other witches, even with all the cuts and changes from the anime, we still get another overly steamy, all girl oppai bathing scene, because who needs plot when you've got boobies, right?
Just like in the manga, even with her simplified arc, Hatsuna tests Ryouta on the cell-tower, but without Hatsuna's, cool and grisly death, and very grotesque regeneration in front of her shallow human friend from school, her test of Ryouta loses most of its emotional impact (outside of cheap shock value), and it comes off as puzzling and cruel. Putting Ryouta in danger like that just to prove he is worthy to befriended/date/molest comes off as a dick move without the axed back story to explain why Hatsuna did what she did.
The anime takes a further dump on the manga by short cutting the discovery that Kuroha is actually Kuro Neko. In the Manga Kazumi discovers Kuroha is actually Ryouta's childhood friend and this colors several of her internal monologs regarding her feelings for Ryouta and whether or not she should reveal Kuroha's identity to him. Since, in the anime, we do not have time to mess around with feelings and all that time wasting crap, Kazumi's love for Ryouta and her clumsy attempts to seduce him are all cut. With all that cut, the only thing left is the reveal in chapter 70 where Kotori pulls a clumsy trip trope and splashes Kuroha with juice, followed by her (added for the anime) forcibly undressing Kuroha down to her bare rack, thus revealing the three moles to Ryouta and thus proving that Kuroha is indeed his childhood friend Neko. Hell, who needs chapters of story and character development when all you need is a clumsy Tits Magee and a tray full of orange Kool-Aid to satisfy a plot point in your screenplay? Seriously, at this point, just fuck the anime to death.
The preceding scenes in the manga, beginning with Ryouta and Kazumi's cute nighttime pratfall kiss are, of course, missing from the anime. No morning pre-school boobie humor, no red faced meeting with Kazumi in school, no suspicious Kuroha, no after school bus stop kiss between Ryouta and Kazumi, no molestation/love counseling by Hatsuna in the observatory, and no tearful runaway Kuroha. There is no time at all it seems, what with only two more episodes to go, for awkward teenage romance under the gun of a week-long death sentence. No time for anything but a frantic head long rush toward the blood spattered guro action of a chapter 100 ending.
After Ryouta has his big post mole reveal cry, we jump to the heartwarming nighttime scene of of Ryouta and Neko sharing a moment of one-sided reunion, follow by choppers, followed by Valkyria making her (chapter 70) appearance in the observatory, and the big (gasp!) episode ending cliffhanger.
Now with the ball-busting analysis over, what's coming next week? I am sort of having a Keima-kun TWGOK moment -- I can see the ending. Not too hard really, what with only two more episodes to go. So, let us begin, and in no particular order:
-- Clearly the anime producers are set on a chapter 100 ending, The town laid to waste, the Neko personality gone, Kuroha forgetting everything that has transpired in the manga/anime, and the first scene of the manga replicated at the end of chapter 100, or in the case of the anime, episode 13. That's what we are going to get, the question is how we are going to get there.
-- It will be revealed (in an explosion of rapid-fire exposition, no doubt) that the witches consciousness (or souls) are contained in their alien parasite/symbiots. We can be certain of this because the anime keeps hammering on the urgent need to find and secure witch #1107 (Kotori). We will learn about Chisato's sister, her illness, his preseving her living head, and the transfer of her consciousness into the drasil (symbiot) currently residing in Kotori, and we will learn all of this very quickly.
-- We will get the bad-ass fight between Neko and Valkyria, because...well, that's pretty much all the payoff the anime has to offer us after it stripped out all the feeling, romance, character development, and "nonessential" plot points from the last third of the manga.
-- The cyber duel with Kazami and Freya will be cut as will most of scenes involving Hexenjagd. There is simply no time for any of this. The action team with the mini-habit wearing nun, her gunsels, and the anti-magic munchkin will appear for their action scene, at some point they will give Ryouta the information on how to make the drug, and they might be flying around in a chopper during the Neko vs. Mako fight, and that is it -- they're done.
-- The witches dungeon crawl under Chisato's hide away will be severely curtailed. Hatsuna and Kazumi will get splatterfied, and that will be the extent of the crawl.
-- Kana will probably have her overdrive switch tripped and she will probably still put down Mako from behind.
-- There will be 90 seconds of post-apocalyptic happy harem epilog over the closing credits.
-- The anime will end and we will all go about the important business of forgetting we ever watched it.
That's all I've got guys, anybody else want to take a shot? 
Edited by antarctico, 18 June 2014 - 07:01 AM.
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