Saekano is the story of an incredibly passionate otaku and those that aid him as he goes from a consumer to a creator through serving as the director of a doujin visual novel for comiket. The original work for Saekano is a light novel series written by Maruto Fumiaki, who is also the writer for the critically acclaimed and well known visual novels White Album 2 and DameKoi. Thus, it should be no surprise that the writing in Saekano shows that the author has a good understanding of visual novels and the industry surrounding otaku media in general. Fumiaki is well known for being able to write very complex relationships. And while I haven’t read the original novels, this trait was very evident in the anime adaptation of Saekano. Unfortunately, this manga doesn’t handle things nearly as well.
The protagonist, Tomoya, is a hardcore otaku who views being an otaku as the defining trait of his personality. His character arc is centered around him growing into his role as the director and that I suppose came across decently. But more important to the story is the relationship he has with the heroines who compose the rest of the members of the doujin circle. Eriri is his childhood friend and a well regarded up and coming artist. Utaha is a light novel author that he was originally just a major fan of, but that he grew closer to after discovering that she was an upperclassman at his school. Both of them have very generic aspects to them, what with Eriri being the tsundere childhood friend and Utaha being the cool beauty senpai. However, the writing adds a lot of complexity and layers to them that ultimately gives them both and their relationship with Tomoya a lot of depth. This depth came through really well in the anime, but not so well in the manga. The manga glosses over a lot of the background and a lot of the subtleties aren’t really present, and thus it isn’t able to flesh out their relationship with Tomoya anywhere near as well. And it’s even worse at fleshing out the relationship the two have with each other which ultimately becomes really important as well.
The third heroine and last member of the circle is Megumi, a girl that’s interesting in how uninteresting she seems. Kuudere are a pretty generic archetype, but she definitely isn’t that. Less so than cold, she’s just flat. She’s just an incredibly normal person that for the most part just seems to go with the flow. That despite that she’s still written as such a strong character is really impressive. I originally wasn’t very fond of her but after seeing more of her, as well as well as having seen her story to its end, she really grew on me. She surprisingly seems to have a good amount of depth as well and a very clear ongoing character and relationship arc. The anime was much more subtle about it and the manga seems to be much more in your face, but ultimately, I think it comes across just as well in both. I still prefer the more subtle way the anime handled it as I feel it fits her character better, but in the grand scheme of things I’m okay with how the manga did it as well as it’s better than missing key elements entirely as what happened with the other two.
The aforementioned issues likely arise from how the manga feels rushed compared to the anime. For the most part there isn’t that much of a difference, though the manga being consistently faster paced ultimately does add up. But more importantly, the last arc differs from the rest in that it’s clearly going way too fast. The last arc in the anime was pretty fast as well, though to the point where I think it’s arguable whether the fast pacing benefited or hurt it. But this is even faster than that to the point that it’s clearly hurting it. It glosses over so much and moves through things so fast that the emotional beats don’t really land at all. The ending is an incomplete one as the story clearly has a lot more to go, so it failing to reach the emotional levels it needs to results in the ending overall just being really unsatisfying.
Furthermore, the manga doesn’t adapt any more than the anime did. The anime was kind of strange in that it adapted the first 7 volumes across two seasons, and then did a time skip to making a movie with the last two, volumes 12 and 13. Putting aside the bizarre choice with the film, the anime adapted the first seven volumes. The manga does the exact same and ends at the exact same point the second season of the anime did. Furthermore, while the art in the manga is decent enough, it’s only that. Just okay. The art and animation in the anime were quite good and much more of a selling point for the anime, not to mention the music. As such, the manga doesn’t really seem to have anything that it offers beyond the anime, while the anime offers quite a bit more than the manga. As such, I would largely recommend just watching the anime or reading the light novels. I suppose if you simply just can’t do that then the manga is good enough. Rather, in and of itself I would say it is a good manga. But the shadow of there being something better hangs over it.
