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Nov 30, 2013 4:50 PM

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Sep 2011
9876
Reckoner said:
You mean those horrible and ugly CG's from the VN? Masato's route should be a master piece? Are you kidding me?

You guys way overvalue most of Refrain. It's good, but not master piece level. Masato's route, aside from the flashback, is actually rather silly.

KeyIsLove said:
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening for LB! People might say "man that was good" or "it was an alright show" but not like they do with Clannad.


You're right. I thought Clannad was crap. JC Staff has proven more competent than Kyoani on Clannad overall so far. Nice visuals only counts for so much.


Nice visuals can do wonders for a scores rating and how people appeal to the show. JC Staff is inconsistent with their animation and always have been. There's no questioning that. And please, if rushing 3 character arcs in 3 episodes is "competent" then I question the episode directors ( or w/e you wanna call them) professionalism.
Nov 30, 2013 5:08 PM

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Sep 2012
1820
Tyrel said:


Nice visuals can do wonders for a scores rating and how people appeal to the show. JC Staff is inconsistent with their animation and always have been. There's no questioning that. And please, if rushing 3 character arcs in 3 episodes is "competent" then I question the episode directors ( or w/e you wanna call them) professionalism.


Pretty much.
I thought Kurugaya's route was poorly done and carried by animation. My thoughts on Kurugaya's arc, and how animation clearly carried that route, as it's the best animated part of the entire series:

Nov 30, 2013 5:08 PM
Offline
Mar 2008
24
Vladz0r said:
Anyway, Masato's arc didn't feel "silly" to anyone I know in the VN. Masato hallucinating with serious and creepy music, and having to take down your best friend as he's suddenly enraged and swearing "IT'S THIS FUCKING WORLD THAT'S GONE INSANE!!!" was not as "silly" as you might think it is.
JC Staff interpreted it to make it more silly than it seemed for most people. I don't know people who read the route in the VN and found it to be as silly and hilarious as it turned out in the anime. Masato's shift in behavior was jarring and ominous, not hilarious.


Silly is not a bad thing. It's very in line with what Little Busters has always been. I asked myself the same question in the VN as I did in the anime, "Why not just take off the jacket?" Well that wouldn't be a very Masato thing to do would it? It was very in line with his character and how he was a "stupid kid." As for unlimited masato works, I think the feeling is basically the same. I found it ironically humurous in the visual novel moreso than the anime actually because the sprites looked oddly funny.

What does bother me about what you're saying is that you seem to think anime only viewers see it the way you do. I can't be an authority for all of them, but I've generally seen very positive reception for Masato's episode among anime viewers. The only people I have seen harping on something like "Masato is walking like a zombie," has been visual novel readers like you really. In the end, the content of that first half the episode was more a setup for everything rather than the main course.

Vladz0r said:
The goal of Refrain, and what should've been the goal of the Refrain anime adaptation, should've been to be ominous in its contrast from the common route episodes and character behavior, serious in its themes of friendship, and intriguing in the Secret of the World that drives the character conflicts. There's some comedy throughout, but some scenes aren't handled as well as they should.
I've calmed down a bit after Kengo's episode, since they managed not to screw that one up nearly as much.


I don't see how the anime adaption screwed this up. One of my anime only viewer friends remarked that the first episode of Refrain gave him such a "desolate" feeling that was a jarring contrast to how the Little Busters were earlier. He truly felt like the world was falling apart and everything was getting weaker. I know he isn't alone on that. The anime must be doing something right about this, contrary to your assertions IMO.

Vladz0r said:
When you have the anime audience feeling entirely different emotions than what's intended by the writer, that's a failure in my book, and that's what happened with Masato's arc in the anime that didn't happen nearly as often in the VN.


First of all, you're assuming too many things about your fellow VN readers here. Second, there's a wildly different experience in going through LB/Refrain the second time than the first time. Things that were more subtle and emotional,were only readily apparent to the VN readers. I think you lack concrete evidence that the anime only viewers in general have a significantly different reaction to the events as compared to the VN on this part. To begin with, the anime has a more general audience than the visual novel and so you cannot really make such a claim. If you don't enjoy it, OK, that's your call... But don't try to act like you speak for all the viewers here.


----

As for sheer visual spectacle, no JC Staff is not as spectacular as say Kyoani, but again... Kyoani did not want to do it. This is just pure entitlement. The anime visuals have been fairly competent and I'm glad that we got a Little Busters anime at all.
ReckonerNov 30, 2013 5:11 PM
Nov 30, 2013 5:21 PM

Offline
Sep 2012
1820
Gah, Reckoner has seen through my arguments yet again.~
I'm constantly reminded that there are cases where people actually take the show seriously, and recall events throughout the season.
I guess I wanted it to have a higher success rate in impact than it had, and I'm expecting more emotional reactions from people on their first watch.
I still wish some things could be more impactful and visually appealing.
I need to wait until the series is over and people start marathoning it as a whole so that it feels more cohesive. I still feel like a lot of changes have negatively impacted when they weren't necessary, like leaving out the diary in Kurugaya's route, and leaving out Riki taking care of Rin, which actually made me like him.
The events are still being rushed through and aren't leaving much of an impression on people as they COULD. It can't be helped much with the episode limit, but the weak animation and style isn't helping. I thought that Refrain could be easily improved through seeing things be animated, but I mean, when artists can't even keep the same character design the characters for more than an episode at a time, it just looks like a rushed mess.

So, you made a lot of good arguments, but I still feel that KyoAni wouldn't have had nearly as many issues as JC Staff is having, especially in the animation and scriptwriting department, and in creating memorable scenes. It feels mediocre, and even if you say that the VN had mundane and mediocre events, it didn't have to come out this way. The dialogue is still fine or the most part, and I'm glad I'm reading subs half the time so I can try to ignore the bad quality.

Maybe I am being superficial, but it sucks to see Little Busters look this bad. I doubt there are many shows rated this high with this low of a budget. A lot can be improved through better animation, screenplay supervision, and sound directing alone, even keeping the script the same.
Vladz0rNov 30, 2013 5:27 PM
Nov 30, 2013 5:50 PM
Offline
Mar 2008
24
It's not that I can't see some of your points. The one route I really, really wish had more time was Rin's. I really enjoyed those moments when Riki was trying to hit Kyousuke's pitches, and things like the dying cat scene. This IMO does lessen the impact. Other things I wish were included more were just Kengo scenes in general. The first season seemed to forget he was an integral character for a majority of it. This I'm not so sure is an issue with JC Staff as it is an issue with the structure of the visual novel in which Kengo joining the Little Busters in common route pretty much came at the end. The omnibus/looping really affects how they are able to adapt it, and makes life difficult for anyone trying to do it. I actually originally thought that Little Busters was close to impossible to adapt in any capacity because of this.

In the end, visual novels are always more immersive experiences. This is for a lot of reasons. One you really are put into the point of view of the main character, whereas the anime is not quite the same. You also experience so much more content because MOST adaptions have to cut down on a lot of stuff. One thing I felt was always going to be off regardless of who adapted Little Busters was that you couldn't quite get the same sense of "daily life" in it. You're not constantly living out the day's from Riki's pov from morning to night. Eating meals and having fun with the little busters. This just wouldn't really work in a TV adaption and I definitely feel many anime viewers would have complained if this were that kind of show.There's only so much they can do of this before the story gets written off as some nonsensical daily life comedy. In fact, I remember at the beginning of season that a lot of viewers thought Little Busters lacked direction and didn't understand what kind of story it was trying to tell. And they didn't have to experience as much common route straight as we did. I still question JC's placement of Komari's arc though and that's been the biggest mistake of the anime adaption by far.

I don't want to necessarily say that anime viewers were being impatient. I myself enjoyed Little Busters common route because I found a lot of it to be genuinely amusing, fun, and endearing.... But a lot of people don't feel that way about KEY comedy, regardless of JC staff's execution and I cannot necessarily blame them.

I mean beyond giving the anime more episodes (Which may or may not have been a good idea since I know a lot of viewers would not have the patience, the VN does feel bloated to be honest), the only thing JC Staff could have really done is to do what Kyoani did in Clannad and basically obliterate some of the character arcs altogether. Shaft some characters to ensure that other characters get the best treatment possible. It's a trade off really and I think it depends on what you prefer. Personally I'd be scared of the Kyoani approach because I already dislike Komari and Kud enough and if they were given favoritism over Haruka/Mio/Kurugaya, I would've had major fits like I did in Clannad. Considering Komari's important role in the story, and Kud's popularity... That would've been pretty likely.

I'll never attest that JC is doing a perfect job here. Would I like Kyoani works standards for visual quality? Sure. But I'm very glad that JC is doing it and not say a DEEN. In the end I think I can say that this has been a reasonable adaption. We didn't have to deal with a KAnon 2002, nor a DEEN fate/stay night, or even JC's previous efforts on Tsukihime a decade ago (Wanna talk about adaption butchering?). We can always hope for better, but if we get too caught up in that, the adaption can never hope to meet our expectations. It's not like we lost the original visual novel story with this adaption.
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