Ranked #2945

Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai!

[contains some mild spoilers, some suggestive language, and some comparison to the visual novel]

What a slaughter.

Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai (TV) is one of the two visual novels that was adapted this fall season. In comparison to Mashiro-iro, which was a decent adaptation, MajiKoi’s adaptation was pure shit. In Mashiro’s review, I stated that Mashiro was considered an “average visual novel”, which made the mediocre storyline understandable. But, MajiKoi doesn’t have the luxury of using the excuse “the visual novel was bad”, it was considered a great visual novel (8.71@VNDB). In other words, it was a great source with great potential.

Now, why exactly does the adaptation blow? Is it because they adapted it into a generic harem instead of an enjoyable slice of life? Or is it because they completely slaughtered the characters, and developed the cast of respectable female characters into homogenized whores craving the main dude’s dick. Well, it would have to be a mixture of the two; but predominantly the latter.

Now, I can understand that Western tastes and tastes in Japan differ. They like excessive fan service, I find it irritating. There’s an obvious difference, but it’s bearable for the most part; it’s not as prominent as it could be. But there’s a limit to everything too. When every other scene is censored due to nudity, it’s basically blatantly insinuating “Fuck you, buy the blue-ray release”. It’s probably a really effective way to catalyze sales in my opinion, but it’s still a douche thing to do. That could be ignored if the other aspects of the show was actually adapted decently, but they weren’t. .

My first major gripe would be the harem aspect of it. The first arc of MajiKoi, before branching out and choosing individual path, was essentially, a slice of life. It’s really extenuating more on friendship then it is with the individual intimate relationships, it’s reminiscent of AnoHana in a way. The main arc in the visual novel basically contains little to no romance and it’s not hindered by infatuation until you begin to branch (but that’s still only with one character). The arc is more than enough to be animated into twelve episodes, it took six hours to read. That’s reading with skipping the majority of the voice acting, basically spamming enter. It’s inevitably understandable on why they would adapt MajiKoi as a harem over a sexless slice of life (It’ll probably sell well), but it was still something that could have been done.

Now, the second gripe that basically ruins the visual novel, is slaughtering the characters. It’s similar to reading a book and developing the “ideal archetype” of the character, only to see it getting completely revamped in a movie adaptation. By slaughter, I don’t mean some slight miscalculations, it’s some pretty noticeable stuff. Some pretty notable ones would include the main character, Yamato. Now, in the visual novel, the main character is basically portrayed as an intelligent, devious tactician when it comes to facing everyday challenges; that carries on over in the anime. But in the VN, he wasn’t lusting after his friends, and his philosophies were more complex. In the anime, he was basically painted as a kind person as a kid when it came to taking in Miyako. In the visual novel, he just mentioned that she could stay if she wanted, it wasn’t through any good will, he was a nihilistic kid, I don’t think he really cared. On the other hand, each female in the visual novel had their own individual personality, in the anime, they’re basically homogenized into lusting after the dude(most notably Chris, she hated his devious dishonorable personality initially in the visual novel, however, in the anime, she doesn’t mind it). In the VN, they thought of him as a friend, and nothing more unless you pursued it while branching out.

Objective Score: 2/10. It’s a disappointment. It did one of the worst things you could do in an adaptation, it slaughtered the character. It turned something with little fan service into something based off of fan service. Action was actually the focal centerpiece in the anime, in the novel, it’s more of an underlying theme.

Subjective Score: 4/10: If you didn’t read the visual novel, you might actually like this. Most people reading the visual novel will probably dislike this immensely, it slaughtered the personalities of the majority of the characters. I guess you’ll like this if you like action, boobs, and cliché characters (excluding Miyako, she’s basically the only characters that’s pretty damn awesome in both versions, but then again, adapting a chick who’s going after the dude probably wasn’t the hardest in comparison to the rest). read more

We have Lerche's adaptation of the Minato Soft's adult visual novel that was originally release in 2009 for PC.

The first episode is full of action, the next ones are full of fanservice, but then we have this comedy drama overload with a bit of action, and it's not a great combination.

The art is awfull compared to the VN, but that will always happen, anyways, Mayumi and his co-workers made a great job.

The music goes perfectly with the scenes, Katsuhiko-san is good with his work on this and Mirai Nikki.

Every character is different, specially the female ones. personally, I fell in love with Koyuki and Kazuko, Mayo is so cute (kawaii) and that thingy called Kuroko it's so random. Also, I'm a big fan of Asakawa Yuu, she made a great job with Momo, and even when i hate Yuko Goto's voice, she's wonderful with Yukie and Matsukaze.

Enjoyment? well, besides this genre mess, it was a good anime, and I know that the VN is 100% better, but if I have the chance to buy the BDs, I will... read more