Already back when it was first announced that Rewrite was going to be adapted, I was getting some very mixed feelings. On one hand I was happy that one of my all-time favorite visual novels was finally getting an anime against my expectations, but on the other hand I also knew that making a good adaptation out of it would be incredibly difficult. This is partially because the visual novel is extraordinarily long and partially because all of its routes directly contradict each other and therefore wouldn't make much sense in a linear medium like anime. So it's fair to say that I came into this with a fair amount of skepticism, especially considering that 8bit were the ones pulling the reigns: the same studio which had already completely destroyed another top rated visual novel two years earlier in Grisaia no Kajitsu.
And as it turns out, I was right to be skeptical, albeit not quite for the reasons I initially expected. See, the main reason Kajitsu was butchered so hard was because it was unbelievably rushed: they tried to squeeze in a full 80-ish hour visual novel into 13 episodes, and unsurprisingly failed miserably at it, so I was expecting Rewrite to get roughly the same treatment. But as it turns out that wasn't quite the case, because this time around they decided that instead of trying to adapt an enormous amount of content in an impossibly small time frame, they made an anime original story instead. They tried to circumvent the problem by doing an original arc instead of adapting any of the routes of the game itself, which felt like a bit of a cop-out move to me, but given the circumstances it was probably the best thing they could have done. On paper that is.
The main problem is, however, that this series doesn't actually function properly as an original anime. Why? Because if you're an anime-only viewer, the story makes absolutely no sense. For anyone that hasn't played the visual novel, you're most likely going to come out of this anime thinking "wtf just happened" more so than anything else. Basically what they've primarily done is taken certain snippets from Rewrite's various visual novel routes and put them all together into something new, but it just doesn't work out very well at all. It's like blindly taking out all the contents of your refrigerator and throwing them into a blender, and hoping that the resulting slurry turns out to be tasty (protip: it probably won't). There are so many characters that are just thrown into the show with barely any explanation whatsoever, so many plot twists that come across as pulled totally out of nowhere, so many underlying themes and deeper messages that will fly completely over anime-only viewers heads due to lacking proper exposition, and so many supposedly emotional scenes which wholly miss their mark partially because they feel spontaneous and unnatural, and partially because the show does almost nothing to make you empathize with its characters due to how little development they get. Also how they insist on using some of the amazingly beautiful soundtracks from the visual novel for a few such scenes feels almost insulting due to how low the actual emotional impact of the scene itself is compared to where those tracks were originally used in the game... it's like watching a death scene from Another set to the music of Continued Story: you just don't.
Anyway, despite supposedly being an anime original version, it's still part of the same complex universe that the visual novel routes play out in, and if you're an anime-only watcher it'll all be very confusing to watch not only because of how lightning fast the pacing is, but also because of how many scenes are omitted and how much information about the bigger picture of the world itself that you don't have. As I mentioned earlier, Rewrite is built upon having blatantly contradictory character routes which together create the overarching story as a whole. Everything is connected and part of a much greater picture. So when you're doing an anime original route instead, you can't really avoid having to leave a ton of loose ends open. As a result this is barely even watchable as an anime-only viewer, and even if you have played the visual novel it's still rather inexcusable. Yes, I might understand what is going on a lot more so than most viewers as a result, but it doesn't change the fact that the entire anime is a huge clusterfuck that doesn't even come remotely close to the level of the visual novel at any point. It just doesn't feel satisfying to watch at all, and constantly leaves you hanging with this feeling of "what could have been".
There are also certain plot points which are so obviously catered towards people familiar with the source material that they don't really function properly for those who aren't. For example, in the beginning of episode 8 there is a minute-long scene of a tiny rock floating through space at high velocity, eventually crashing through Earth's atmosphere and hitting Kagari right in the head. Evidentially it hit her head pretty badly because from that moment on, her personality makes a full 180, which has a rather drastic impact on the following turns of events. Now if you've played the visual novel you should be able to figure out how and why this happened as it's certainly not anything random, but for an anime-only viewer this plot point is completely absurd. A random tiny asteroid ending up hitting a girl's head as it crashes onto the planet, forever altering her personality? I mean it'll look like the most forced plot twist ever made if you don't know any better. Sure, after the upcoming second season (and yes that was announced at the end of episode 13) they should be able to piece it together as well, but the entire joke of the scene won't really work retroactively and it'll still come across as somewhat forced that way. I just can't help but feel like this is the wrong kind of execution to do when you make an anime original route, because again it pretty much assumes that the viewer has knowledge of latter events which at the current point in time only people who've read the visual novel will have. If this Kagari route had been part of the game, it'd probably have been pretty far down on the recommended route order chart; certainly not at the very top at least.
Now I've seen some people argue that 8bit have still done a decent job under the circumstances considering that they had a basically impossible task to begin with, and while I do see what they're getting at (because let's face it, making a proper adaptation of Rewrite with this few episodes is a laughable idea regardless of who's pulling the strings), I can't really agree on it. While it is true that this anime was more or less doomed before it even started, there were definitely things they could have done a lot better. For example, episodes 4 & 5 were in my opinion a complete waste of time. What I was promised was an anime original story focusing on one of the girls that didn't have a normal route in the visual novel, Kagari, and nothing more. I wasn't exactly satisfied with that prospect but I could live with it given the lack of realistic options. But despite that they still insist on spending entire episodes solely on going into the backstories of some of the other heroines in an incredibly rushed manner of fashion that not only felt extremely unsatisfying on their own due to the terrible pacing, but also it has almost nothing to do with the anime original route itself. So why even adapt it? Like you either adapt a route properly or not at all, don't just throw in abridged versions of them out of nowhere just because you can, geez. In the first place, what's the point of teasing so much about the other girls when you're not ever going to follow up on it and properly show the full picture of what the truth behind them is? To tease people into buying the game I guess? Perhaps even more importantly though, by doing this you're taking away precious screen time that could have actually been spent on developing this original arc you're so insistent on doing. Like if there's one thing which you should never end up having pacing issues with, it's an original anime. I mean the entire scenario script is supposed to be written from scratch specifically to fit the episode count damn it.
Another thing I found really disappointing is how incredibly casual the anime is about revealing the supernatural. In the visual novel you don't even find undeniable evidence that there even is anything supernatural until the end of the common route (adapted in episode 7 in a different version), which is almost 20 hours into it. Yes, you know Kotarou can rewrite himself, and yes, you encounter ominous-looking black dogs in the forest and the city at night as well as numerous suspicious people, but that's about it. Then when the actual reveal comes, it hits you like a hammer with how dramatic the tone shift is. The early part of Rewrite is supposed to be school/comedy/mystery, and then in the actual character routes it transforms into action/drama/supernatural. But in the anime, they've kind of just... jumbled everything together. Kotarou is like yeah I have a super power, Shizuru casually reveals hers without much explanation provided, and when Kotarou is given his "claws" then you're just going to have to accept what you're watching because the anime sure isn't planning on explaining where they came from anytime soon, etcetera. It all feels very mish-mashed without any clear direction, almost as if they did everything in the wrong order. I don't know, making a good anime out of Rewrite with such a tight schedule is probably impossible no matter what you do; even an original route like this doesn't really work because the world itself is far too complex for you to be able to make a satisfying standalone arc without it becoming entangled in the "real" story of Rewrite in some way, causing a ton of loose ends that will never be able to followed up upon. It only forces 8bit to include a bunch of scenes they seriously shouldn't, wasting even more of what little precious screen time they have at their disposal. It's no wonder the pacing is so all over the place. On top of that the anime also has some incredibly awkward usage of CGI for all the various types of familiars it contains, so the action scenes aren't exactly a pleasure to look at either. Hell, even the regular 2D art really dips in quality every so often, especially in the last few episodes of the show. It felt like they were having some serious budget issues here, and as a result there were a lot more derp faces than I would have liked.
As far as the characters goes, I'm also pretty disappointed. I actually consider the visual novel's character cast to be in my top 5 even to this day, due to its diversity, great character development on many different fronts, and for just being plain entertaining in general. But the anime does... basically nothing to showcase either of these things. First and foremost, there are simply way too many characters in Rewrite for such a short anime to support. It's a very complex universe including multiple factions, people with drastically different ideals and goals, driven by their own respective backstories, etcetera. There just isn't anywhere near enough time to explain who they all are and what their purposes in the story really are. Especially considering that (you guessed it) for many of them, said explanations are provided deeper into the various heroine routes of the game, and they're not just something you can throw out at a moment's notice. In other words they really never had a chance to be anything more than random supporting characters in the anime because the script doesn't permit their characters to ever be properly explained or developed. Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to go full anime original? And this is just talking about the supporting cast; if we talk about the actual main characters here then it's obviously even worse because all the original main heroines (Kotori/Chihaya/Lucia/Shizuru/Akane) just come across as random harem members in the anime as none of them get any proper characterization to speak of at all. Why? Well... because their routes aren't adapted. It all keeps coming back to that, doesn't it? Even Kotarou suffers from this because he's supposed to grow in those arcs as well.
Sooo I don't know, I don't straight-up hate the show but I just can't help but feel that it's so pointless. If you've played the visual novel, the anime feels like a massive downgrade in comparison, and if you haven't played it then you'll be missing out on so much that it'll barely be comprehensible due to how confusing the story will be, how much content is cut out and how rushed it is. So what is the target demographic supposed to be? No one can say they're truly 100% happy with this anime. At least on that front it's certainly no different from Kajitsu.
I think the obvious yet unfortunate truth here is that the whole point of this anime is nothing more than to be an advertisement for the Rewrite+ release of the visual novel, which is a new version released on July 29th in Japan this year, I.E: shortly after the anime started airing. It contains new CGs, more voice acting, slight scenario revisions, etcetera. For a long time I was also under the impression that this release was going to contain the new Kagari route as well in visual novel format, but as it turns out that's actually not the case. It doesn't really seem to contain any noteworthy new story content at all. So my hypothesis is that the release of Rewrite+ in combination with this original anime is nothing more than a marketing ploy, where people who have no prior experience with the franchise will get a first-time introduction to it through the anime and get interested enough to at least be willing to purchase the game. Then of course since Rewrite+ has just been released recently, which sounds like a much cooler version than the original for people not knowing any better, those new fans will throw their money at the much more expensive "new" game instead of the cheaper "old" Rewrite from 2011. Again, this is just my theory but honestly it's the only idea I can come up with that can financially justify re-releasing a game 5 years later with hardly any noteworthy changes made, as well as simultaneously making an awful anime adaptation of the same game that is neither satisfying for old fans of the games nor anime-only watchers.
So with that said, in the end... I can't help but feel like this anime is meaningless, or at least it'll only function as a sales booster for the new game release, which is nice for the creators I guess but that doesn't actually make the anime itself any better for me personally, nor should it for any other viewers of it.
It has to be said though that if we ignore this show's origins for a second and just look at it as any other anime among the thousands of others out there, then it's not the worst thing I've ever seen, far from it, but it'd probably be something most people would forget about almost completely within a day or two of finishing it. However, we can't avert our eyes from the truth that much, and the fact of the matter is that this is supposed to be a representation of one of Key's three biggest visual novels, alongside Clannad and Little Busters. Personally I'd even say Rewrite is the best of them all; I played all three of them back-to-back way back in the beginning of 2013, and at least for a short time afterwards I actually considered Rewrite to be my favorite visual novel. It might not have maintained that spot for too long but either way the point is that... it just deserves better than this. Yes, I've known ever since the day I finished the game that making a proper adaptation of Rewrite was probably impossible no matter what, but I was still hoping for a lot better than what this anime gave us. At the very least it should have gotten more episodes than this; Clannad got 4-cours and Little Busters got 3, why is Rewrite stuck with merely 2? If anything this is the one which needed the most episodes out of the trio since it has a lot less content that can be omitted. Realistically speaking 4 cours would probably have been the optimal pacing-wise given the length of the game. But I guess that's just the world we live in nowadays: anime are mostly produced in order to promote their source materials and boost the sales of those, and as a result we very rarely see shows with more than 2 cours anymore. For a lot of series that's totally fine and all, but for ones with very long source materials like this, it's basically a killing blow, unfortunately.
Last but not least though, as mentioned previously we are at least getting a second season for Winter 2017 (so it's a split cour), and this is giving me a certain feeling of déjà vu. See, as badly as 8bit destroyed Grisaia no Kajitsu two years ago, they actually did a very respectable job with its sequels, Meikyuu and Rakuen, and the main reason for that was simply that the sequels are way shorter to begin with and thus much easier to adapt since they didn't have to rush them so badly, unlike with Kajitsu. And I feel like the same thing could very well happen with Rewrite. In case you don't know, the visual novel has one route for each of the main heroines (Kotori/Chihaya/Lucia/Shizuru/Akane) and then a two-part True route at the end, with the first part being called Moon and the second part being called Terra. Now in the anime they've basically replaced the five girls' routes with this original Kagari route, and the upcoming second season will adapt Moon and Terra. In other words the second season should actually not be anime original, unlike this one. There will probably be minor changes in order to accommodate for everything they've done in the first season, but for the most part I reckon it should be pretty much the same as in the game. And above all, just Moon and Terra on their own should actually be doable in 1 cour, so we might actually have acceptable pacing next time around as well. With all that being taken into account, it could actually turn out to be a pretty good anime. The downside is of course that we seriously lack proper buildup for it since none of the heroine routes were adapted first, so I'm not sure how everything will turn out in the end regardless. But I think it at least has decent potential to come out alright for those who are already familiar with those routes, I.E: those who have played the visual novel first. And for those who haven't... maybe, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
If nothing else, given how unsatisfying this first season has been on its own it can only go upwards from here. Let's hope the second time's the charm in this case. Then again I know better than to expect much from 8bit no matter what by now, so I won't get my hopes up too high just yet.
