Ourka said: I think the bar was just set unbelievably high for LB:RF from the start.
It was set high from the beginning with Little Busters.
I mean, the experiences of Clannad and Little Busters are similar in that they have the mediator/psychiatrist protagonist helping out the other characters.
The sub-plots in Little Busters are individually kind of weak, even moreso through their transition to anime, which I think wouldn't have been miles better even if KyoAni did it. The series would've still been heavily dropped and criticized until Refrain.
Here comes my rant for if KyoAni did it:
Personally, I feel the main way it could've been significantly better if KyoAni did it is if they gave the series more episodes, included every heroine route, and kept them all closer to the original experience than what JC Staff did with them.
The comedy and dramatic execution would've been miles better, but there would be nearly as many people who would find the show to be trite, tedious, overly dramatic, etc. Objectively, the stories would've been mostly, but people would value the experience more, even without Refrain being the end goal of the show.
The dramatic heroine arcs in the VN I believe would've had to have been heavily changed in execution in order to work well in the anime, though, and I don't think that would've happened.
I wrote a wall of text for /a/ about it, but I'll try to condense my thoughts of what they should've done much better, and what was unavoidable.
Series Composition issues and lack of foresight:
Miyuki and Suginami needed more screentime, considering their plot relevance.
Masato and Kengo needed more screentime for the same reason.
There should've been more common route variety, and better jokes. They left out some of the fun Kurugaya ones in favor of devoting entire episodes to stuff like Kud's roommate situation, Rin's missions (episode 20 was awful), and spent an entire episode on the cafeteria minigame.
There could've been some more episodes that focused on characters that people will actually like and will matter in Refrain.
Masato felt more like a gag character with few memorable scenes in the anime compared to his presence in the VN. I think his turnaround in Refrain will be weak because of this.
Kengo and Kyousuke are nearly equal to where they were in the end, so this is alright.
Animation and Direction- obvious issue, and probably the biggest one
Riki's character design and characterization-
It's pretty weak in the VN and the anime.
He's a weak protagonist by design, but his experience is supposed to be the audience's experience as he enjoys his time with the Little Busters.
And LB vs. Clannad in terms of enjoyment and story structure:
Aside from After Story, Clannad is full of self-contained, episodic subplots, that are varied and simple to follow. Little Busters pretty much has the heroine routes and its comedy up until Refrain.
I still think that LB as a whole is more focused, but the common route could've had some heavy revision in the anime. They could've used the same familiar jokes and applied them to different settings and subplots in the anime to make the experience more enjoyable. Clannad transcends the daily school life setting much more often than Little Busters does. In fact, some of the parts where they left the school in LB didn't even make it to the anime. (Haruka house visits?)
Anyway, I think Refrain will turn out well given 7 episodes, but I think there will be a ton of people who won't have become attached to the characters, despite spending 32 episodes to build up to the Refrain arc.
There are some people watching Refrain who can't even get the character names down.
LB gets most of its depth, its recommendations, and high approval from Refrain.
That being said, I think that if they do the rest of the series on the level of Kurugaya's arc, it can still be pretty good.
For people who marathon the LB series when it finishes, the character attachment to the Little Busters may be close to what it is to VN players, and they might get an experience close to what we got with the true route, especially with the addition of tons of scenes being animated that didn't even get CGs in the VN.
But yeah, the whole thing is that Maeda's thing with Little Busters was that the characters didn't have very high levels of depth, but their through familiarity the repetition of the common route is what makes Refrain such a good experience. Aside from the main 5 characters in Refrain, there will always be complaints about the character development in s1.
Anyway, there's my daily wall of text. |