The way kadokawa mishandled Index as a franchise is actually insane, Had they done it correctly Index/Toaru as a whole could’ve easily been one of their biggest moneymakers right next to SAO.
They do have a chance to make it right with a good NT anime, but the adaptation of S3 and the long wait between seasons is definitely not helping
Like how I lost interest in Index. I would have simped that series hard, but their handling of it killed my interest in it. My interest in it is now perverbially buried in a concrete-entombed coffin 2 miles deep in my backyard.
The sequel series to the original Index, which was called *A Certain Magical Index: New Testament*, abbreviated to NT. The original series has been nicknamed *Old Testament* as a result, or OT. New Testament has also finished a few years ago and a second sequel series has started, called *A Certain Magical Index: Genesis Testament*, or GT, which is currently ongoing.
Right, so many acronyms being thrown around in this thread. COTE and NT aren't ringing any bells for me either.
Edit: COTE: Classroom of the Elite. Haven't watched it so explains why I didn't think of it.
NT: really had to google this one and surprised because I actually read a bunch of it- New Testament. A sequel to Index.
The A Certain Magical Index Novels currently has three parts:
The first is OT or Old Testament, which was completely adapted in the first three seasons.
The Second is NT, which stands for New Testament and is the sequel to OT
The Third is GT, stands for Genesis Testament and the third part of Index and is currently ongoing
Hope this helps!
Where does the railgun and accelerator content come from dare I ask? While I know a lot of railgun is lighthearted and filleresque, there have been quite a few very canon *looking* developments in it. (Dragons, Lvl 6 etc)
Do the novels switch protagonists around maybe?
All the Index series follows Touma as the main character, with other characters like Accel, Mikoto and Hamazura coming in and out of the story. It is the 'primary' story in that it is the one that has gone the furthest in the Toaru timeline.
Railgun is a spinoff that follows Mikoto and her crew, and dives deeper into what she is up to what the Index story line goes on. I think in terms of timeline it is still happening during the Old Testament story.
A-fucking-men.
The way they squander index’s potential is actually so depressing. This could easily be their JoJo’s, or Fate/, or-like you said-second SAO.
My only hope is that if they get around to it NT gets the time and attention it deserves. Hell, if they space it out correctly books 1-7 could be 2 cours and 8, 9, and 10 could be 3 movies. That would make them _sooooo_ much money.
I wouldn’t mind it, but imo a full remake isnt necessary as the first two seasons of Index are perfectly fine on their own. The third season getting a directors cut of some kind with more episodes would be great, but i don’t think that would ever happen.
A remake would also make the watch order more confusing and im sure fans are tired of OT content and want to move into NT
> first two seasons of Index are perfectly fine on their own
I would say they are quite mediocre adaptation of the novels and proper remake would bring the Index charm a lot more, even bringing team that does Railgun would help a lot. But it's true that hardcore fans would want proper NT adaptation already, ideally I want both of it.
From a business pov a remake of the OT anime makes the most sense. Even if you do a NT adaptation apart from dedicated LN readers who would even watch? They lost a lot of the original fans due to the long gap between season 2 & 3 (7 years!) and seasons 3 poor quality turned off most of the anime only crowd.
As for the generation that got into the new golden age of anime during the 2010's and just missed out on Index a huge chunk of that crowd are not familiar with Toaru series especially in the West. Let's hypothetically say NT gets an adaptation, it looks good and it gets the mainstream crowd excited but before they can watch it they find out NT is only a sequel series and they need knowledge from OT.
Now their only options are:
* Watch a very mid Index anime that's not aged well, has bad pacing issues and a terrible 3rd season.
* Read a manga adaptation that is unfinished and missing arcs that are not adapted.
* Read a very heavy text based Light novel that spans between 22 books and 2 side story books.
Unfortunately these barriers will make it very hard for the mainstream crowd or anyone really to get into the series and I love Index so it hurts for me to say this.
The best option is to give the Index anime the brotherhood treatment, make it fantastic, get people excited, bring in newer fans and you'll have the momentum to move forward to a NT adaptation.
> From a business pov a remake of the OT anime makes the most sense. Even if you do a NT adaptation apart from dedicated LN readers who would even watch?
Dedicated LN readers are the ones who buy Blurays and merch though, and that's what the business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the original media, and have tons of expensive and exclusive merch so as to proft from dedicated fans.
An OT remake would be a disastrous move at this point. Index is so old already that the pool of new fans is small (most people won't be bothered because the original material is fairly old or because they'd heard the original series was mediocre) and it would only serve to piss off the dedicated fanbase, which has been wanting NT content adapted for around a decade at this point.
Going to NT is the only option, as it would give the fanbase what they want and if they treat NT well it could act as a "fresh start" to get casual watchers who soured on OT back into the franchise as they "heard the new stuff was actually good and it starts relatively fresh so you don't have to know everything from before".
> Dedicated LN readers are the ones who buy Blurays and merch though, and that's what the business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the original media, and have tons of expensive and exclusive merch so as to proft from dedicated fans.
>
>
I think they're too busy profiting from Railgun. It's shame because there's so much more source material for Index vs. Railgun
>business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the original media, and have tons of expensive and exclusive merch so as to proft from dedicated fans.
Reminds me of the time I came across a late night anime some years back in my Tokyo hotel room's TV channel; the advertisements in that air slot were all hawking the source LNs or merchandise.
Yo u/Razorhead I gotta give you props for making the Razorhead facts about the Index anime I woulda been lost without it when I got into the series.
>Dedicated LN readers are the ones who buy Blu-Ray and merch though, and that's the business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the new media
I agree with this for sure anime are basically advertisements. But the thing is these dedicated LN readers are disappearing overtime. I did a [mini analysis on Ln & Blu ray sales ](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/150br48/comment/js9j679/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)a while ago and I found out that the new GT series is not selling well in fact as each new book is released average sales continue to decrease. Ever since the series peaked [between 2011-2014](https://www.reddit.com/r/toarumajutsunoindex/comments/g7m3v4/sales_of_toaru_series_light_novel/) sales have declined, even with the release of season 3 it failed to boost sales and even caused it to decline even more ...
With the Blu-Rays the sales for season 3 were okayish but hardly enough to guarantee another season. For comparison 1 volume of Bochhi outsold vol 1 of Index by x3 yet a new anime hasn't been announced yet. Volume 1 of Lycoris recoil Blu Rays outsold volume 1 of Index x5 which played a role in getting another season.
Blu rays aren't even that important anymore whilst streaming is generating much more consistent revenue for anime studios.
As for merch it's pretty much non-existence in the West... not sure how it is in Japan but apart from some figurines I don't see much to import from places like eBay or Ali baba.
>An OT remake would be disastrous at this point. Index is so old
Unless it's a bad remake like Shaman King I fail to see why it would be a disaster? According to your logic Hunter X Hunter which came out in 1999 would've been too old to remake the series and they were better off continuing where they left off. They decided to reboot from the start and guess what happened the series exploded in popularity and brought in multiple newer generations of anime fans.
FMAB, Fruits Basket, Fate series, Hellsing Ultimate, Sailor moon, Devilman Crybaby and Spice and Wolf have benefited largely from remakes, they redid everything to adapt it more faithfully. Including characters and content that was cut whilst improving the animation and style of the show which has allowed them to be critically acclaim, have better reputations and brought new and old fans back to the series.
>Piss off a dedicated fan base
They would but it wouldn't even be a big deal if those fans had to choose between a remake or nothing they will choose the remake because at the end of the day fans will always want more of the content they love.
>Going to NT is the only option, it would give the fan base what they want
Unfortunately corporate men in suits make the decisions. Kadokawa don't share your sentiment if they really wanted to give the fans what they want they would have given OT a better anime adaptation, they would've given us content instead doing nothing for 8 years, they would've given us better then whatever the fuck season 3 was. They would have actually adapted NT like people were claiming it's been 5 years since S3 and not even a word about anything.
You need to look at it from a business perspective Kadokawa are a huge conglomerate that own almost a 1000 of different media franchises. If you're a board member or investor why would you spend million of $ to do anime continuation of a series that peaked in popularity and sales more than a decade ago with current sales of the OG source material on a downward trajectory? You'll get higher returns in profit from giving the green light to Lycoris Recoil, the Angel that spoils me rotten, Slime, Ascendance of a bookworm or COTE, series that are actually selling extremely well and are hugely popular.
>"heard the new stuff was actually good and it starts relatively fresh so you don't have to know everything from before".
I wish that was true but Index relies heavily on exposition especially from the MC's inner monologuing that is completely cut from the LN's. We haven't even gotten to the world building, the atmosphere, side plots, foreshadowing etc. OT heavily sets up NT going into it blind will just confuse and frustrate most casual watchers and newcomers.
> Yo u/Razorhead I gotta give you props for making the Razorhead facts about the Index anime I woulda been lost without it when I got into the series.
Oh hey, thank you for the kind words! Glad to hear that even all these years later I'm still able to help out.
> I agree with this for sure anime are basically advertisements. But the thing is these dedicated LN readers are disappearing overtime. [...]
There are a number of factors you are not considering here. The first of which is that Oricon only tracks physical sales and not digital, meaning that over time with more people shifting to buying online this audience "disappears" in the sales numbers. That doesn't mean the numbers aren't on a decline over time, as the trend continues, but not the degree the numbers suggest.
Secondly is that, barring some exceptions such as the powerhouses that are Bookworm and Slime among others (which you've mentioned in your write-up), most LN series trend downwards the further along they go as people naturally fall off and newer readers tend to buy the first volumes in a series, not the 40th (like NT20 when Index III released). This means that later novels are more for their core audience, keeping the community alive, and as advertisements for new people to pick up the first few volumes.
For example going by sales numbers you'd believe Mushoku Tensei is a small series as the final volume only managed to sell 16,000 copies in [its first](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/zabtpq/japans_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_nov/) [two weeks,](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/zgr188/japans_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_nov/) and that Re:Zero isn't doing well as its 40th~ volume only sold [9,000 copies,](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/1byzupy/oricon_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_mar/) the same as Index's [50th volume in GT10.](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/1c9zqmr/oricon_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_apr_8/) Yet both of these series are doing fine with new content releasing regularly.
And the final thing you haven't considered is China. Toaru has a *huge* fanbase in China, which aren't represented in domestic Japanese sales data, and they count for a lot.
> With the Blu-Rays the sales for season 3 were okayish but hardly enough to guarantee another season. For comparison 1 volume of Bochhi outsold vol 1 of Index by x3 yet a new anime hasn't been announced yet.
The reason why Bocchi hasn't had a confirmed new season yet is because its core staff was busy (with its director most famously being tied up with Frieren) and they never expected it to become as big as a success as it did, meaning they're scrambling to work out a schedule for S2 and are doing a recap movie this summer to keep the series alive in the public mind to tide over the wait. A new season is 100% coming, they're just working out the logistics at the moment.
> Blu rays aren't even that important anymore whilst streaming is generating much more consistent revenue for anime studios.
This is true, but for Toaru the big revenue comes from...
> As for merch it's pretty much non-existence in the West... not sure how it is in Japan but apart from some figurines I don't see much to import from places like eBay or Ali baba.
Merch for Toaru is still going crazy. They just released a new Mikoto figurine which got so famous the costume based on the figurine was immediately released in the Toaru gacha game within 6 months. While Toaru isn't that famous in the West, resulting in not many places advertising or stocking goods, visit either Japan or China and every big anime merch will have Toaru goods flying off the shelves.
> According to your logic Hunter X Hunter which came out in 1999 would've been too old to remake the series and they were better off continuing where they left off. They decided to reboot from the start and guess what happened the series exploded in popularity and brought in multiple newer generations of anime fans. [...]
In the West, yeah. In Japan Hunter x Hunter never declined in popularity, as it's one of the most famous manga out there. They also didn't remake the series from the start, but after the 1999 series finished kept releasing OVA's of newer arcs the next few years. When they wanted to adapt the newest arc though (Chimera Ant) they took the opportunity to reboot it entirely with a consistent art style, new voice actors (as older ones passed away), and to attract a new audience. In other words the reboot was an *addition* to the new content which was their core goal.
Same with FMAB (in fact, one of the few criticisms of the show is that they rush through the earlier content to get to the new things faster) and the newest Spice and Wolf as well (the first scene of the new anime and the key visual seem to suggest a full adaptation). And while I can't speak to the other shows you brought up as I haven't personally seen or am familiar with them, I do find it interesting that you brought up Fate, as that one is in a very similar position as Toaru.
The very first anime for Fate by Deen adapts the Fate route, and despite being criticised beyond all belief for generally being rushed and quite bad they still haven't released a remake of this route. Likely for similar reasons as Index: there is too much other content left to be adapted and most fans are familiar with the source material anyway, so they might as well focus on newer things first.
> They would but it wouldn't even be a big deal if those fans had to choose between a remake or nothing they will choose the remake because at the end of the day fans will always want more of the content they love.
But this isn't a binary choice though. Yeah of course if the choices are "remake" or "nothing" fans would pick "remake". But why would it be restricted to this? If they're making an anime anyway I guarantee the majority of the fans would want NT over doing OT again.
> Unfortunately corporate men in suits make the decisions. Kadokawa don't share your sentiment if they really wanted to give the fans what they want they would have given OT a better anime adaptation, they would've given us content instead doing nothing for 8 years, they would've given us better then whatever the fuck season 3 was. They would have actually adapted NT like people were claiming it's been 5 years since S3 and not even a word about anything.
According to talks with the director of Index III the production committee (which includes Kadokawa) initially wanted to skip directly to NT (because that's the content the fans wanted to see) and the editor for the LNs had to talk them down as that would confuse anime watchers and annoy the fanbase as there are plenty of moments in the tail end of OT people wanted to see adapted. So the corporate men in suits definitely know the demand for NT content is there.
> You need to look at it from a business perspective Kadokawa are a huge conglomerate that own almost a 1000 of different media franchises. If you're a board member or investor why would you spend million of $ to do anime continuation of a series that peaked in popularity and sales more than a decade ago with current sales of the OG source material on a downward trajectory?
Because, again, the merch sales for Toaru go crazy. This is not a series that makes money with LNs. And Toaru is still very popular, to the degree that it was retired from the yearly light novel popularity contest back in 2022 together with *My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Ascendance of a Bookworm, COTE, The Ryuo's Work Is Never Done!, SAO*, and *Chitose is in the Ramune Bottle* because it kept sweeping awards for years and they wanted to give other series a chance.
>I wish that was true but Index relies heavily on exposition especially from the MC's inner monologuing that is completely cut from the LN's. We haven't even gotten to the world building, the atmosphere, side plots, foreshadowing etc. OT heavily sets up NT going into it blind will just confuse and frustrate most casual watchers and newcomers.
While NT is definitely set up by OT, the beginning was made explicately as an entry point for new readers as mentioned by the author. That's why NT1 is a very simply plot just to grab people's attentions while NT2 is a large lore recap of how the various powersystems work to get people onboard. Yes, they'll miss context from previous seasons, but they'll be able to understand what's happening in the current arcs at least.
I thought railgun was adapted quite well.
But Index. Oh boy, that was a flustercuck. As an anime-only, I always wondered why railgun was so much better than Index, ESPECIALLY season 3 Index. Until I found out that s3 crammed in over 10 volumes of LN.
Yah, OP's complaing like they are the bane of the industry when they're actually just like every other production company: they put resources into what they think will be successful and then don't for what they think won't.
This season alone they have Mushoku Tensei, Spice and Wolf, Konosuba, Dungeon Meshi, Date a Live 5, and many more *at least* decent adaptations.
You're favorite LN's didn't get the adaptations you think they deserved? Hate to say it, but tough shit. That's the industry sometimes.
Mushoku Tensei and Spice and Wolf are Toho, not Kadokawa. Don't ask me why that is, but yes, those aren't produced by Kadokawa. Although the others are, so you are correct there.
They are, but they don't lead production, Toho do.
When in doubt always look to where promotional materials like trailers, OP, ED, PVs show up on, or who makes the anime websites, and in the case of Mushoku and Spice and Wolf, it's them.
Kadokawa are there because it's ultimately their IP, they are the publisher of the books, so they will always be part of the production committee.
But no one will say Mushoku is a Kadokawa anime, because it's not, it's a Toho production that they (Kadokawa) have a stake in too.
Of course, but i don't think that's what OP means. He's including shows where Kadokawa has huge influence on budget/production timeline because his main point is that they should spend on fewer shows and spread more of the pool of money to improve production, this thing is not only a Kadokawa thing, it's the whole industry, there's a lot of anime being made without but not enough money around.
That is my point, they don't, they left those duties to Toho. They are in charge of budget and scheduling and who is animating it. Kadokawa as the publisher of course have a word too, but it's nothing compared to the productions they take charge on.
They gave the rights to Toho for those series (money of course exchanged hands, lol), so the responsibility for how those productions go falls on Toho for Mushoku and Spice and Wolf, not Kadokawa.
I do wonder what the deal was there, how come Toho got their hands on those two and how come Kadokawa didn't take the lead on those productions themselves.
Pretty sure it's because Kadokawa didn't have an anime studio avaiable. Kinema Citrus was busy with Show by Rock and ENGI with Full Dive. Plus, Toho has money and more know-how in making animation. Kadokawa's core is still it's publishing side after all.
Most of their stuff is animated by external studios.
Neither Passione (Spice and Wolf) or Bind (MT) belong to Toho or anything like that, don't think there was anything stopping Kadokawa themselves hiring those studios.
Toho has exactly one animation studio, so they almost exclusively hire others to animate their shows. From that point of view Kadokawa are ahead, as they own a couple.
I really can't come up with any good reason Kadokawa would have to lend those two to Toho. Why just those two, what makes them special. Maybe the authors wanted to work with Toho because they thought they'd get a better anime there? And Kadokawa just agreed I guess, lol, but then why don't more do it if it's that simple? I really don't know.
I guess the production of those shows might be a bit special, with both authors being more involved, maybe Toho committed to a full adaptation where Kadokawa would have taken it on a season by season basis. That's the only thing I could guess there.
Toho leads production and retains a lot of the revenue from the anime. You can see it on Kadokawa's SEC reports since they are publicly traded. By the way, it was a good decision by Kadokawa. During Q1's airing, MT's print revenue represented over 30% of all Kadokawa's total print revenue. Revenue from the anime was not listed as it doesn't have the rights to the anime. Perhaps they thought MT was too niche to make a profit or Rifujin insisted but it any case MT prints money for Kadokawa. Total revenue, if you include anime, was probably around Oshi no Ko or more but it is hard to tell since I don't have Toho figures. Total sales of the light novel surpassed Re:Zero a while ago though Re:Zero makes a lot on merch.
Kadokawa is listed alongside Toho as part of the Mushoku Tensei Production Committee; [you can see so every episode during the credits.](https://i.imgur.com/TzMYIqF.png)
Yes, like I replied to the other user, it's because they publish the books. Same reasons Shueisha is always on the production committee of every single of the anime based on their manga.
But those are Toho produced shows that they have a stake in. Meanwhile Dungeon Meshi or Konosuba or Eminence in Shadow are produced by Kadokawa with a couple others also having a stake in it.
So for example if Kadokawa wanted to put Rudy in a new season of Isekai Quartet, they would need Toho to approve that since they have the rights to produce anime with those characters and story. While Kadokawa own the IP (alongside the authors of those works) and publishing rights for books and manga, they sold the right to make anime to Toho.
That's really the broad strokes of it.
In the future when ever in doubt which production company actually leads, look to youtube, o who's channel the OPs, EDs, trailers or weekly PVs show up on. For Mushoku and Spice and Wolf it's always Toho, for Dungeon Meshi, Konosuba and a bunch of others it's always Kadokawa's channel.
Also they each use certain temples for their websites they makr to promote the anine project, that's another way you can instantly tell who's in charge.
I'm going to need some sources for some of what you're saying. It seems very strange to say that Kadokawa is only licensing out the IP as part of its efforts. Yes, Toho leads the production for MT, hence why it has higher billing in the credits, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Kadokawa isn't doing anything else in production.
Perhaps I'm simply misunderstanding your intentions, but I feel like it's very misleading or disingenuous to say "those aren't produced by Kadokawa" in your parent comment because it makes it seem like it's all Toho even though it's a committee, no?
That is exactly what I'm wondering too, why they are lending (or maybe even sold) the rights to Toho instead of them taking charge. You will notice pretty much all Kadokawa published works have anime projects they take the lead on since they have the infrastructure for that.
So why are Mushoku Tensei and Spice and Wolf different then? I'd need to do a bunch of digging to find out.
As for the others, go to youtube right now and search for Toho Animation, go to their youtube channel and you can find there the OP and ED, PVs, trailers, everything promotional for MT and Spice and Wolf. And you won't find any of that on Kadokawa's channel, where you will see every other anime THEY are producing.
Like yes, if you know how the production committee system works, by being part of it they are technically producing the show too, under Toho... but that is not really how that works actually works. The point of the production committee is to mitigate risk, so you have multiple companies paying their share of the production costs and then they get a share of the profits based on how much they invested. This is an oversimplification of the whole thing, but for the purpose of this conversation it's enough I think.
So the actual producer is the one organising the production committee and taking the lead on production, promotion, anime merch and all that. And in the case of both MT and Spice and Wolf it's Toho.
Again, I have no idea why those two are different, why Kadokawa didn't take the lead there.
Anyway, hope this answers your question.
One last thing, production committees tend to be quite a bit more secretive these days, so it's harder to know who's where, but usually with Toho productions they tend to cover most of the costs themselves, with the other participants bringing in other things. Like obviously Kadokawa are the publisher so they'd be on the production committee either way, regardless if they are actually covering any of the production costs (although they still might just so they get a bigger shate). We can have this discussion too if you want, how you can still get inside a production committee without actually paying anything out of pocket, lol. Anyway, the deal with Toho is they have a lot of money and they like to invest in long-term franchises, why they don't just do one-off seasons. Anyway, this is a much longer and much more complicated conversation I'm stepping into, and I'm on my phone right now, so I'll just stop here.
>You're favorite LN's didn't get the adaptations you think they deserved?
It would be nice if they received some decent pacing.
Bad animation? People watch Hentai and say it's a mind blowing experience; you can live with bad animation.
Bad Storytelling? That's a worse crime, especially in a story focused anime.
Most weebs never realized that majority of a shows quality is dictated by the amount of money invested in it and publishing companies like Ko doesn't have complete control of that. They don't hold the wallet, they just use the money given to them to find how to use the money in the production.
Kids these days would easily know this stuff if they took the time to do an hour of searching and learning lol
> They thought the anime adaptations wouldn't be succesful so they did the bare minimum
Or they thought they'd be successful *despite* doing the bare minimum. If people are going to watch something even if it looks bad, why put more time in than necessary?
I mean I have definitely not bothered with source because of some of their shit adaptations. The Unnamed Memory threads and my impression is so much was cut out that the story narratively doesn’t make sense.
So it is hurting them at least a tiny bit.
I never understood pumping out low quality anime, either. There's no way it's good promotion. Honestly, these past few seasons have had me thinking the industry needs to seriously cut back on how many anime they produce. I wonder how long this'll last.
>wonder how long this'll last.
When they stop being super profitable they will cut the amount of productions
The issues with streaming in the short term might cause this exact thing to happen, since the licensing revenue is basically what was financing this whole overproduction in the industry, If you made a show cheap enough you could get some really good profits from just the streaming licenses, so there were financial motivations to continue to keep this going
This is what is happening to viral hit rn its a pretty bare minimum adaptation . The “animation” is just still frames copied from the manhwa but with a camera moving around to make you think theres movement.
It’s basically a glorified power point presentation, which is sad considering how much more amazing and dynamic the art for the manhwa is in comparison.
> There's no way it's good promotion.
That's cus it is not. People need to move on from that believe that anime is just a promotion.
Obviously the influence it has on manga/LN sales is a factor in production decisions but anime is mostly being made because there is a demand for anime.
A hit anime will also make you more money than a hit manga/LN.
> I never understood pumping out low quality anime, either. There's no way it's good promotion.
My assumption is they throw out shittons of contracts just to get wide coverage ASAP, then they throw the money at whatever they think will pop off the most, and the rest they still have a contract saying they need to make an anime so they just shit them out.
A badly done ad is still an ad, there are only so much money, so for some stuff they get the short end of the stick. But with streaming they are moving away from the reliance of anime as advertisement but a self sustaining product which is why we're getting so many animes with season schedules (12~24 episodes every 2~3 years).
> A badly done ad is still an ad
I don't see how? There's been a number of times where I've been interested in a series but then have hated the anime adaptation when it comes out so never read the source material, whereas I might've done so if it had not gotten an adaptation in the first place. And it's always an uphill battle trying to convince someone to read the source material for a series which has an infamously bad anime.
I don't understand either, but apparently it works well enough on average, just the pure brand awareness helps increase sales in Japan. (Usually with anime also comes the toys and other collectibles)
Usually there are sales bumps in Manga/LN sales when an anime project premiers, sure after it ends it won't bring new people but for the suits the sales increase at the beginning may had been worth it.
This feels a bit unfair to bring up since this anime is getting treated a million times better than COTE or Unnamed Memory, but Re:Zero is also a victim of really poor management.
White Fox got a lot of shit for what became of Season 2, but they did the absolute best they could with the limited resources. They were asked to produce what was essentially a 3-cour series with less staff than Season 1, and to cram it all into 2 cours. There was no way that would end well. The final product luckily was still amazing, but that's more so because of the sheer willpower of the people at White Fox bringing blood sweat and tears to the project.
They also neglected to give Re:Zero side story seasons which are essential to building the world and expand on the lore that it's really sad. There's so much more going on beyond the surface, but Kadokawa isn't interested in giving it that treatment.
The only reason Re:Zero is so good now is because of the staff fighting tooth and neck to give the best possible product with the limited resources and restrictions.
I think when things like poor scheduling and low budget happens with a studio and they still give their best, it's mostly because the staff loves the source material and are passionate about adapting it as faithfully as possible or just love their job so much that they don't give a fuck how little time they got they're going to give their best. I still can't wrap my head around how good Jujutsu Kaisen looked when literally every week there was some news regarding poor scheduling and time crunch. When a couple episodes didn't look as good as I imagined as a manga reader, I just stopped watching the anime and gave up but when the show finished airing and I binged the show, I was shocked throughout and always had a thought in the back of my mind "I can't even comprehend how did they even drew this fight and it looked this fucking good, just how"
>I think when things like poor scheduling and low budget happens with a studio and they still give their best, it's mostly because the staff loves the source material and are passionate about adapting it as faithfully as possible or just love their job so much that they don't give a fuck how little time they got they're going to give their best.
We know that this is indeed the case in general because of how their employers exploit them in terms of wage and overtime so much so that it basically constitutes slave labor.
As a re-zero fan, this hurts. It's always been about the dedication of the staff. I even dare say there were never plans for season 2, however the work in season 1 by the staff practically forced season 2 into a reality. I mean, that was a roller coaster of a ride to not continue.
As an adaptation, totally. God knows how depressing it was to see Volume 4 and 5 cut down to that extreme.
But in terms of just an anime, Season 1 felt less convoluted, had on average better animation, and the directing was consistently better.
Season 2 felt convoluted, but that wasn't because of the context of the LNs, but how information was conveyed. The visuals didn't do a good job keeping you invested since the sets are rather lifeless to look at. Even though the sanctuary is supposed to look dreary, the anime has to make it at least look interesting. The animation was also extremely limited which led to a bunch of jank cuts of facial expressions.
Arc 4 luckily didn't require as much sakuga action as Arc 3, but a lot needed to be done to make the dialogue scenes interesting on their own. Wasn't really an issue in the LNs, but the pacing started to drag in the anime.
Wait, my points were:
- It was depressing to see volumes 4 and 5 trimmed down as much as they were. Since half of the entire thing was cut out. The royal selection scene was butchered and took out and the candidates' intro were reduced to just one sentence.
- The visuals of Season 2 were not as good as season 1, especially since the entire thing took place in a forest compared to the many locations in S1 that allowed for more creative sets.
- Season 2 was more convoluted than the far more straightforward Season 1.
- Season 2 (Arc 4) required less Sakuga action compared to Season 1's Arc 3.
- The pacing of Season 2 felt like it was dragging cause so much of the weight of the LNs was lost. The narration wasn't translated into screen properly making some of Subaru's choices hard to follow despite in the LN being very clear.
Like, I can totally get you disagreeing with a couple of things. But most of that?
Edit: If it helps my case to not seem like just another Season 2 hater, I love Season 2 more than Season 1. Parent and Child is my favourite episode of Re:Zero and in the Novels, I think Arc 4 utterly destroys arcs 1 to 3. I think outside of the animation, set design and general direction, the OST, the voice acting, the sound design, etc etc are equal for Both S1 and S2.
Meanwhile, Ishura received an almost perfect adaptation. Fairly good animation, almost nothing skipped and if anything, the things they skipped weren't important. 1 LN Volume covered in 12 episodes.
Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (Apothecary Diaries) was the same. The 2 cours that aired adapted only 2 volumes of the LNs, with 12 episodes for each cour.
I started reading the LN because I was enjoying the anime, so the LN was fresh on my mind as I watched the anime. It's amazing how good that adaptation was, along with how beautiful the anime was. I honestly can only hope that they do the same for season 2.
I get that this isn't Kadokawa related, but it goes to show how well a good adaptation can sell people on the source material.
I sympathize with your sentiment but they probably actually work to get people to buy the original LN. The COTE LN’s popularity blew up overseas because people were intrigued by the end of season 1. (And I do not like COTE, I’m just describing it as it is) Anyways, things will only change if they pay proper wages to animators who dedicate years to developing their craft skills.
You should look what happened to SAO anime adaptation. The productiom quality is pretty good, deciding what to adapt and what amount of it is probably one of the shittiest in the industry
They skipped volumes for progressive because the elf war quest wasn’t finished in the LN, they should have at least made a unital ring cour 1 adaptation to entice people to read the LN lol
That's the tip of the iceberg imo. When it comes down to business decisions, SAO is in a pretty bad shape. The only good thing about it, is that the product itself have its qualities
Of course they did 🤦♀️.
I remember me and a former acquaintance of mine were so excited the prospect of SOA focusing on the dungeon tower and going floor by floor instead of whatever garbage the anime was
That's why I don't read sources for anime I like, and I don't tend to watch adaptions of sources I've read. It's not that they're never done right, but odds are good that I'm going to be more frustrated than not with how the property was adapted. And advertising for the source isn't entirely accurate, it's more advertising for the property as a whole to push sales of items branded with that property in general.
Or never get a sequel, yes. I've been watching anime for 38 years, not getting the full story is the norm and what I'm used to, so it no longer bothers me and I've learned to just enjoy what the anime gives me and judge it on how well it told the story it did give me and how much I enjoyed the experience overall. At best I may go look up specific info on what happened to characters or events, but I rarely run into a show that makes me want even that much more anymore.
I cannot stress enough how badly they fucked up Index. What they did to that franchise in anime format needs to be studied on what not to do. A lot of people clown on it because Railgun is more popular now but S1 and S2 of Index were mega hits. And then they just proceed to make a bunch of wrong decisions.
And Tanmoshi was a legit embarassment
They are the biggest ln publisher with hit series after hit series.After a terrible anime adaption,many of their newer ln series sells 2x-5x more than before,so they are doing something right.
I literally just finished watching the raildex series yesterday and if i didnt have razorhead comments filling in the gaps and explaining shit idk if i would have made it past the first season.
This is why if a series has even a minuscule bit of my attention, I read the source.
Did that for Kumo Desu… and my god was it good. Anime’s that are bad because the source is bad, fine. But anime’s that are a terrible adaptation of a great source… I will never forgive.
While I agree with how you feel it's very unfair to compare them to Toho, Aniplex or even to Kodansha (which is an argument you can make).
For Toho and Aniplex, the are part of much larger conglomerates and their pockets and influence run much deeper. Kodansha rivals Shueisha, so again these are 3 much bigger players.
That being said, I once again will say that do agree with you that they need to allocate their resources better but if it's working they won't. What struck me as odd was them handling Re Zero of all things with less care, that's the one I figured they'd put more effort into for S2, but we'll see what happens with S3.
I'm not underestimating Kadokawa, in fact I think you might be underestimating Aniplex (Sony) and Toho (Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group). I did say you could make an argument for Kodansha (although I'd argue against that) but their sales gaps are wide enough that I'd say they aren't in the same league. IIRC it was around a 30% difference between Kodansha and Kado and compared to Shueisha it was around a 50% difference in sales.
That being said, I ultimately agree with you that they need to treat their LNs better, but they are a publishing business first and foremost and are focusing on that area. Not to mention LNs, no matter how good, don't exactly fly off shelves like manga.
The highest selling LNs of all time probably can't even make the top 50 if you add in manga and even a very popular LN will only be around 5m in sales. In their eyes they probably see this as justification to not go overboard with the budget for their LN adaptations since the returns are not there.
Using Re Zero as an example here, from what I last remember the LN's total sales is around 13-15m and that was with an INSANE season 1. Mushoku Tensei is also in a similar boat.
Meanwhile let's use JJK as an example, that has been going absolutely ballistic since season 1 and actually began outselling one piece.
The point being is that as a publisher they won't see the kind of returns they want to justify using larger budgets on pretty much the vast majority of their work. But they still want to advertise it via an anime so this is why we get what we get.
I am talking about anime, and when it comes to anime Kadokawa don't focus on just IP they already own, just like the other major producers (Aniplex, TOHO)
Kadokawa has many hits where they have nothing to do with the publishing side, so when talking about anime reducing them to just 'publishing company' is really misleading, to not say completely wrong
Anime is waaaaaaaaaaaay more than just selling books
> I am talking about anime, and when it comes to anime Kadokawa don't focus on just IP they already own, just like the other major producers (Aniplex, TOHO)
I get that but the OP is focusing on Kadokawa's IP in particular.
> Having under their umbrella really popular IPs like Index COTE Tanmoshi or Unnamed memory and the treatment they are giving to them is so bad its actually sad.
> I dont understand why they are not letting their IPs to be something more than a horrible adapted advertisement of their source material with garbage production values.
BTW I thought you were the OP lmao, so it maybe confusing the way I was addressing you in my first post, but yeah.
Funny enough, the best selling Light Novel series of all time is Slime at 40 million.
It's manga is also at 40 million in circulation and doesn't even crack the top 75 all-time.
That is indeed correct. LN sales usually include all books derived from that IP so that includes manda adaptations, spin-offs, art books and more.
The Slime manga adaptation and the manga spin-offs are actually outselling the main LN series iirc.
I mean re:zero season 2 was great if we're gonna compare how much content it skipped compared to season 1. For me I'd rather have passable animation that doesn't skip much compared to having a good animation that skips a ton, like redo of healer.
BTW, There are official audiobooks for the first 14 volumes out (that covers all 3 seasons of anime), with the rest of translated volumes probably being audiobook adapted within the next year, they are really good.
"barely read Manga"
What? The amount of ppl who read Manga keeps increasing every single year. Nowadays I see soo many Manga discussions on Twitter and youtube and they get thousands of likes. Yeah sure more of them still stick to mainstream shonen Mangas but the point still stands.
Your last sentence is the key. I don't think there's ever been issues with wider casual audiences reading *mainstream Shounen manga* like since the days of the Big 3. It's getting people to read manga in general that seems challenging
I think they are selective with the anime adaption they focus on. For certain adaptation like SAO or the upcoming Roshidere I can see the promotional material collaboration, awareness campaign is so much more profound for the latter they collaborate with high school to have daily SNS updates ok any small news, plot synopsis played on the PA, many overseas signing session, talk shows in regional anime conventions and even delaying the anime for production improvement.
Compared to some of their other anime like COTE, unnamed memory which barely have any promotional or awareness campaigns especially overseas. You can see they are selective and they know which anime they really want to focus on to push for its success
> adapting 1 light novel volume in season 1 part 1
No. S1P1 adapted Volume 1, 20% of Volume 2, and 30% of Volume 10, plus additional sidestories from other material (one of the things it adapted was the sidestory published in the manga's 2nd volume as part of Episode 10).
> (with an anime original episode) lol
Many of the episodes had anime original content, but none of them was wholly anime-original. Episode 6 had the most anime-original material, but even then almost 25% of the ep's runtime was using material from Volume 10. Episode 10's entire first half is a straightforward adaptation of a complete chapter from Volume 10, and then it uses another chapter as a foundation to build the second half on, before switching to using Volume 2 material for its ending.
Yeah, light novels are just very difficult to adapt to anime. People are spoiled on manga adaptations which are usually much more straightforward. For a lot of light novels, a proper adaptation would be words words words and you'd get people whining about that. A good LN adaptation usually needs lots of consulting with the author to get the transition in mediums to work.
People really struggle to understand what the word adaptation means, so they complain if content is cut and that they adapted way too many volumes and stuff. You can't translate everything from a medium to another, some stuff works way better in different formats.
Sure, you have to be careful what to cut as to not affect the main story, but people get really pissed because a random cool side character that barely appears in some LN got cut
People complain about CotE, but as is, assuming year 3 has the same format as year 1/2 we're looking at 9 seasons to adapt the entire story. Almost nothing besides endless shounen anime gets that much content. If it was slowed down to the pace people probably want, we'd probably end up with a 15 season show for the full adaption, and that's just never going to happen.
There's a very real tradeoff with how in-depth you can adapt a LN and how much content and story you actually get the chance to tell. People love to imagine the perfect adaption where you get the slow pace and no compromises on story and that's just not how it works. You're not guaranteed infinite seasons. You're not even guaranteed more than 1 season most of the time.
They could just spend more years working on each season, but I want to see it in a relatively short time frame, not 5+ years in between season.
On another hand, general pacing of a story is also important. While we all agree that good content was skipped in Mushoku. If we went the road of 2 novels per 12 episodes we'd be around the beginning of the depression arc now. If we went 1 novel per 12 episodes we'd in the great forest arc.
It would adapt everything, but it would also... "drag on" at time? I keep seeing comments about how S2 is awful because the depression and school arcs are boring, imagine if they lasted several season now. It's hard to find a good middle ground to this.
Yeah, people love talking about how they would rather wait for years for each season of anime is they are good. For me, if I have to wait for 3-4 years between each 12 ep season, which is 4h of content, I won't even remember much of the plot and will definetly lose any hype I had.
There's a reason most tv shows do a season per year or every couple of years, the ones that can afford to wait longer are the ones that are way too hyped up, like stranger things, and even then it still hurts them.
Not really. With decent pacing 20 volumes can be adapted in just 3 two cour seasons for most series. Plus, very few light novel series are longer than 20 volumes. Original run of Spice & Wolf & Konoha ended on 17 volumes. Original run of Monogatari and SNAFU was 18 volumes. And those series that surpass volume 20 tend to end shortly after, like Mushoku Tensei (26 volumes), Baccano (22 volumes). Series like Re;Zero and Index that spans dozens upon dozens of volumes are exception in the industry not the standard.
Why did you have to mention Index :( I'm fairly positive that we're not gonna get another season. Season 3 was just..... Sad and not in a good way. I guess that's the end of that anime. I'm depressed now.
People overreact about index imo ngl, if you’re talking about S3, yeah i understand, i dropped it mid way too, but season 1 and 2 are still quite coherent and enjoyable. Yeah they left out a lot of detail from the novels, and skipped events from certain arcs, but like at the end of the day, the novels are even more convoluted, so would a remake just to explain couple concepts and include inner monologues make sense? It’s not like it’s filler or anime original anyways
This is what anime have always been and Japan is notoriously slow to change it's only been in the last decade shows were more likely to get second seasons. Your best bet was getting 12 episodes then SOL.
Well said I have always wondered this too. Great LN stories, horrible adaptation that let you wonder what could have been. Just look at Frieren. It's a show that normally I wouldn't like, in fact I put it off for so long but then I watched it and the adaptation blew me way! I would like if authors have more say in the production of their work and not allow it get butchered just like the author of Mushoku tensei, who delayed just to get a good (in fact great) adaptation.
I don't know a lot of the times I don't like an anime produced by them is because... the LNs they come from are bad! Or at least not to my tastes. I can only tell if I like an anime, if I liked the LN, how many copies the LN sold, and how much money the anime committee makes (last two, sometimes not if it's not public knowledge, but often they are). I can tell there is a large disconnect between what I think about most Isekai series and what domestic LN sales for them are. Most of the time a LN fan says the anime didn't do their series justice I ignore them (especially if it's an Isekai... 3 episodes might not be enough to understand what a series is, but it's enough to know if I even want to continue) but in the remote cases I listen to them, I go to the high seas and find... no I don't like them either. I'm sure there is a case where I thought "man, the anime changed so much it didn't do the source material justice" but I can't remember the last time I thought that. Also get used to "26 episodes" since I don't think there will be a "37 episode" or "39 episode" or "40 episode" anime after 2010... probably ever.
There are good LNs and bad LNs, and anime adaptations of the good ones are generally descent. I notice that anime (both original and those with a source material) are usually better than manga if I pick them out at random and go in 100% blind. I half joke that someone who decides which video game/ LN/ manga gets an anime adaptation throw out the bad stuff and only let the good stuff get funded. On one hand, if such a person exists, it explains why watching a random anime on Crunchyroll or the high seas is a lot more enjoyable that grabbing random manga. On the other hand if such a person existed, how did Isekai Cheat Magician ever become an anime? If you're following 6 or less anime a season, why not give an anime adapted from an LN a punt for series number 7 if the description sounds good to you? I'm not telling you to try something which has a premise you probably won't like, but a "hey if this MAL description was talking about an anime original I'd give it a shot since the premise sounds interesting"
> Most of the time a LN fan says the anime didn't do their series justice I ignore them
Good approach
> will be a "37 episode" or "39 episode" or "40 episode" anime after 2010... probably ever.
idk if 'ever', but yeah the seasonal model is here to stay for a while, with a 12-24 ep constraint no matter what an adaptation "needs"
I was baffled how popular Unnamed Memory was, when what I was watching was trash. I guess this explains it.
Doesn't help when fans of the franchise are defending the anime, because their memory is filling in so much stuff that was skipped.
And the actual animation/fight scenes are woeful in UM. Trust me, I watch so trash anime, but if the animation is bad they better tell the story well. Funnily enough I rarely see anime that looks gorgeous and has a bad story. Maybe there is some.
So true. As a COTE fan, I have to say this: the 3rd season is disappointing. What the fk is wrong with Kiyokata's eyes? It closed half the show. Does that make him smarter? Nah, it's just a lazy animation team. Also 13 episodes for that anime is not enough.
If you remember, the first test in ss3, the rules are long as fk, and they only show it 3-5s. Wtf, this show is all about games/tests, wtf we gonna do if we don't even have time to read all the rules? Huh? Luckily I've read the LN, otherwise, I wouldn't understand the first half of the show. 🤕
These are all rules in episode 1:
https://imgur.com/a/dlj7vrj
>What the fk is wrong with Kiyokata's eyes?
Yeah like the conversation Ichinose and Suzune had and his eyes where closed during the whole conversation💀
> Why someone who watched a terrible paced anime with atrocious animation would want to read the source material?
Tbh I ended up dropping Unnamed memory and I'd rather just read the novel and manga than ruin the experience with the anime. So maybe it worked out for them.
It's been skipping like, 40% of the content and what is does adapt it's doing poorly. It's trying to adapt three pretty dense volumes into 12 episodes and it's just not going to work.
This is why I stopped watching new anime. Post 2020 anime has just been so bland. It’s like they are throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. If you watch something by a respected studio like bones from the 2000s even some in the 2010s the quality of animation, pacing, music -Just every aspect in general has degraded. At first I thought maybe I’ve changed and I just don’t like these newer shows but if you actually pay attention to production quality you start noticing the reuse of backgrounds, lack of fluid animation, overuse of expository dialogue. New shows just feel so dull and formulaic. It’s only a matter of time before all of the new anime watchers who joined in the past couple of years start to feel the same. It’s all just part of the cycle of capitalism. Demand is high, people want new content giving way for shortcuts and a lack of creativity. Once profits start hurting the industry will have to change.
The way kadokawa mishandled Index as a franchise is actually insane, Had they done it correctly Index/Toaru as a whole could’ve easily been one of their biggest moneymakers right next to SAO. They do have a chance to make it right with a good NT anime, but the adaptation of S3 and the long wait between seasons is definitely not helping
Toaru is one of their biggest moneymakers before though,it’s just running too long,losing the interest of many long time fans.
Like how I lost interest in Index. I would have simped that series hard, but their handling of it killed my interest in it. My interest in it is now perverbially buried in a concrete-entombed coffin 2 miles deep in my backyard.
If Blue Exorcist and Black Butler can come back from the dead, I still have hope for an NT adaptation
Did Blue Exorcist really came back from the dead though? Even when the new "season" was airing, I barely heard anyone talking about it
Cuz it was terrible. The animation sucked and the pacing wad awfull. It was a disgrace to the manga.
It did not, the new season was garbage and "flopped"
Totally fair
stupid question, but what is NT?
The sequel series to the original Index, which was called *A Certain Magical Index: New Testament*, abbreviated to NT. The original series has been nicknamed *Old Testament* as a result, or OT. New Testament has also finished a few years ago and a second sequel series has started, called *A Certain Magical Index: Genesis Testament*, or GT, which is currently ongoing.
Man I need to make time to catch up lol. I think I have only read like 10 volumes into NT.
Vol 10 of GT just finished a few weeks ago.
I want whatever that author takes to be so productive.
Right, so many acronyms being thrown around in this thread. COTE and NT aren't ringing any bells for me either. Edit: COTE: Classroom of the Elite. Haven't watched it so explains why I didn't think of it. NT: really had to google this one and surprised because I actually read a bunch of it- New Testament. A sequel to Index.
The A Certain Magical Index Novels currently has three parts: The first is OT or Old Testament, which was completely adapted in the first three seasons. The Second is NT, which stands for New Testament and is the sequel to OT The Third is GT, stands for Genesis Testament and the third part of Index and is currently ongoing Hope this helps!
Where does the railgun and accelerator content come from dare I ask? While I know a lot of railgun is lighthearted and filleresque, there have been quite a few very canon *looking* developments in it. (Dragons, Lvl 6 etc) Do the novels switch protagonists around maybe?
All the Index series follows Touma as the main character, with other characters like Accel, Mikoto and Hamazura coming in and out of the story. It is the 'primary' story in that it is the one that has gone the furthest in the Toaru timeline. Railgun is a spinoff that follows Mikoto and her crew, and dives deeper into what she is up to what the Index story line goes on. I think in terms of timeline it is still happening during the Old Testament story.
The novels are mostly Touma as the protagonist. Railgun and Accelerator are spin-off manga.
We probably get the NT adaptation after the manga adaptation catches up to S3 content, after all that is what happens with S3.
A-fucking-men. The way they squander index’s potential is actually so depressing. This could easily be their JoJo’s, or Fate/, or-like you said-second SAO. My only hope is that if they get around to it NT gets the time and attention it deserves. Hell, if they space it out correctly books 1-7 could be 2 cours and 8, 9, and 10 could be 3 movies. That would make them _sooooo_ much money.
Would a remake make sense by this point?
I wouldn’t mind it, but imo a full remake isnt necessary as the first two seasons of Index are perfectly fine on their own. The third season getting a directors cut of some kind with more episodes would be great, but i don’t think that would ever happen. A remake would also make the watch order more confusing and im sure fans are tired of OT content and want to move into NT
> first two seasons of Index are perfectly fine on their own I would say they are quite mediocre adaptation of the novels and proper remake would bring the Index charm a lot more, even bringing team that does Railgun would help a lot. But it's true that hardcore fans would want proper NT adaptation already, ideally I want both of it.
From a business pov a remake of the OT anime makes the most sense. Even if you do a NT adaptation apart from dedicated LN readers who would even watch? They lost a lot of the original fans due to the long gap between season 2 & 3 (7 years!) and seasons 3 poor quality turned off most of the anime only crowd. As for the generation that got into the new golden age of anime during the 2010's and just missed out on Index a huge chunk of that crowd are not familiar with Toaru series especially in the West. Let's hypothetically say NT gets an adaptation, it looks good and it gets the mainstream crowd excited but before they can watch it they find out NT is only a sequel series and they need knowledge from OT. Now their only options are: * Watch a very mid Index anime that's not aged well, has bad pacing issues and a terrible 3rd season. * Read a manga adaptation that is unfinished and missing arcs that are not adapted. * Read a very heavy text based Light novel that spans between 22 books and 2 side story books. Unfortunately these barriers will make it very hard for the mainstream crowd or anyone really to get into the series and I love Index so it hurts for me to say this. The best option is to give the Index anime the brotherhood treatment, make it fantastic, get people excited, bring in newer fans and you'll have the momentum to move forward to a NT adaptation.
> From a business pov a remake of the OT anime makes the most sense. Even if you do a NT adaptation apart from dedicated LN readers who would even watch? Dedicated LN readers are the ones who buy Blurays and merch though, and that's what the business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the original media, and have tons of expensive and exclusive merch so as to proft from dedicated fans. An OT remake would be a disastrous move at this point. Index is so old already that the pool of new fans is small (most people won't be bothered because the original material is fairly old or because they'd heard the original series was mediocre) and it would only serve to piss off the dedicated fanbase, which has been wanting NT content adapted for around a decade at this point. Going to NT is the only option, as it would give the fanbase what they want and if they treat NT well it could act as a "fresh start" to get casual watchers who soured on OT back into the franchise as they "heard the new stuff was actually good and it starts relatively fresh so you don't have to know everything from before".
> Dedicated LN readers are the ones who buy Blurays and merch though, and that's what the business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the original media, and have tons of expensive and exclusive merch so as to proft from dedicated fans. > > I think they're too busy profiting from Railgun. It's shame because there's so much more source material for Index vs. Railgun
>business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the original media, and have tons of expensive and exclusive merch so as to proft from dedicated fans. Reminds me of the time I came across a late night anime some years back in my Tokyo hotel room's TV channel; the advertisements in that air slot were all hawking the source LNs or merchandise.
Yo u/Razorhead I gotta give you props for making the Razorhead facts about the Index anime I woulda been lost without it when I got into the series. >Dedicated LN readers are the ones who buy Blu-Ray and merch though, and that's the business model for tons of LN adaptations revolve around: working as an advertisement to get new people to buy the new media I agree with this for sure anime are basically advertisements. But the thing is these dedicated LN readers are disappearing overtime. I did a [mini analysis on Ln & Blu ray sales ](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/150br48/comment/js9j679/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)a while ago and I found out that the new GT series is not selling well in fact as each new book is released average sales continue to decrease. Ever since the series peaked [between 2011-2014](https://www.reddit.com/r/toarumajutsunoindex/comments/g7m3v4/sales_of_toaru_series_light_novel/) sales have declined, even with the release of season 3 it failed to boost sales and even caused it to decline even more ... With the Blu-Rays the sales for season 3 were okayish but hardly enough to guarantee another season. For comparison 1 volume of Bochhi outsold vol 1 of Index by x3 yet a new anime hasn't been announced yet. Volume 1 of Lycoris recoil Blu Rays outsold volume 1 of Index x5 which played a role in getting another season. Blu rays aren't even that important anymore whilst streaming is generating much more consistent revenue for anime studios. As for merch it's pretty much non-existence in the West... not sure how it is in Japan but apart from some figurines I don't see much to import from places like eBay or Ali baba. >An OT remake would be disastrous at this point. Index is so old Unless it's a bad remake like Shaman King I fail to see why it would be a disaster? According to your logic Hunter X Hunter which came out in 1999 would've been too old to remake the series and they were better off continuing where they left off. They decided to reboot from the start and guess what happened the series exploded in popularity and brought in multiple newer generations of anime fans. FMAB, Fruits Basket, Fate series, Hellsing Ultimate, Sailor moon, Devilman Crybaby and Spice and Wolf have benefited largely from remakes, they redid everything to adapt it more faithfully. Including characters and content that was cut whilst improving the animation and style of the show which has allowed them to be critically acclaim, have better reputations and brought new and old fans back to the series. >Piss off a dedicated fan base They would but it wouldn't even be a big deal if those fans had to choose between a remake or nothing they will choose the remake because at the end of the day fans will always want more of the content they love. >Going to NT is the only option, it would give the fan base what they want Unfortunately corporate men in suits make the decisions. Kadokawa don't share your sentiment if they really wanted to give the fans what they want they would have given OT a better anime adaptation, they would've given us content instead doing nothing for 8 years, they would've given us better then whatever the fuck season 3 was. They would have actually adapted NT like people were claiming it's been 5 years since S3 and not even a word about anything. You need to look at it from a business perspective Kadokawa are a huge conglomerate that own almost a 1000 of different media franchises. If you're a board member or investor why would you spend million of $ to do anime continuation of a series that peaked in popularity and sales more than a decade ago with current sales of the OG source material on a downward trajectory? You'll get higher returns in profit from giving the green light to Lycoris Recoil, the Angel that spoils me rotten, Slime, Ascendance of a bookworm or COTE, series that are actually selling extremely well and are hugely popular. >"heard the new stuff was actually good and it starts relatively fresh so you don't have to know everything from before". I wish that was true but Index relies heavily on exposition especially from the MC's inner monologuing that is completely cut from the LN's. We haven't even gotten to the world building, the atmosphere, side plots, foreshadowing etc. OT heavily sets up NT going into it blind will just confuse and frustrate most casual watchers and newcomers.
> Yo u/Razorhead I gotta give you props for making the Razorhead facts about the Index anime I woulda been lost without it when I got into the series. Oh hey, thank you for the kind words! Glad to hear that even all these years later I'm still able to help out. > I agree with this for sure anime are basically advertisements. But the thing is these dedicated LN readers are disappearing overtime. [...] There are a number of factors you are not considering here. The first of which is that Oricon only tracks physical sales and not digital, meaning that over time with more people shifting to buying online this audience "disappears" in the sales numbers. That doesn't mean the numbers aren't on a decline over time, as the trend continues, but not the degree the numbers suggest. Secondly is that, barring some exceptions such as the powerhouses that are Bookworm and Slime among others (which you've mentioned in your write-up), most LN series trend downwards the further along they go as people naturally fall off and newer readers tend to buy the first volumes in a series, not the 40th (like NT20 when Index III released). This means that later novels are more for their core audience, keeping the community alive, and as advertisements for new people to pick up the first few volumes. For example going by sales numbers you'd believe Mushoku Tensei is a small series as the final volume only managed to sell 16,000 copies in [its first](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/zabtpq/japans_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_nov/) [two weeks,](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/zgr188/japans_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_nov/) and that Re:Zero isn't doing well as its 40th~ volume only sold [9,000 copies,](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/1byzupy/oricon_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_mar/) the same as Index's [50th volume in GT10.](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/1c9zqmr/oricon_weekly_top_10_light_novel_ranking_on_apr_8/) Yet both of these series are doing fine with new content releasing regularly. And the final thing you haven't considered is China. Toaru has a *huge* fanbase in China, which aren't represented in domestic Japanese sales data, and they count for a lot. > With the Blu-Rays the sales for season 3 were okayish but hardly enough to guarantee another season. For comparison 1 volume of Bochhi outsold vol 1 of Index by x3 yet a new anime hasn't been announced yet. The reason why Bocchi hasn't had a confirmed new season yet is because its core staff was busy (with its director most famously being tied up with Frieren) and they never expected it to become as big as a success as it did, meaning they're scrambling to work out a schedule for S2 and are doing a recap movie this summer to keep the series alive in the public mind to tide over the wait. A new season is 100% coming, they're just working out the logistics at the moment. > Blu rays aren't even that important anymore whilst streaming is generating much more consistent revenue for anime studios. This is true, but for Toaru the big revenue comes from... > As for merch it's pretty much non-existence in the West... not sure how it is in Japan but apart from some figurines I don't see much to import from places like eBay or Ali baba. Merch for Toaru is still going crazy. They just released a new Mikoto figurine which got so famous the costume based on the figurine was immediately released in the Toaru gacha game within 6 months. While Toaru isn't that famous in the West, resulting in not many places advertising or stocking goods, visit either Japan or China and every big anime merch will have Toaru goods flying off the shelves. > According to your logic Hunter X Hunter which came out in 1999 would've been too old to remake the series and they were better off continuing where they left off. They decided to reboot from the start and guess what happened the series exploded in popularity and brought in multiple newer generations of anime fans. [...] In the West, yeah. In Japan Hunter x Hunter never declined in popularity, as it's one of the most famous manga out there. They also didn't remake the series from the start, but after the 1999 series finished kept releasing OVA's of newer arcs the next few years. When they wanted to adapt the newest arc though (Chimera Ant) they took the opportunity to reboot it entirely with a consistent art style, new voice actors (as older ones passed away), and to attract a new audience. In other words the reboot was an *addition* to the new content which was their core goal. Same with FMAB (in fact, one of the few criticisms of the show is that they rush through the earlier content to get to the new things faster) and the newest Spice and Wolf as well (the first scene of the new anime and the key visual seem to suggest a full adaptation). And while I can't speak to the other shows you brought up as I haven't personally seen or am familiar with them, I do find it interesting that you brought up Fate, as that one is in a very similar position as Toaru. The very first anime for Fate by Deen adapts the Fate route, and despite being criticised beyond all belief for generally being rushed and quite bad they still haven't released a remake of this route. Likely for similar reasons as Index: there is too much other content left to be adapted and most fans are familiar with the source material anyway, so they might as well focus on newer things first. > They would but it wouldn't even be a big deal if those fans had to choose between a remake or nothing they will choose the remake because at the end of the day fans will always want more of the content they love. But this isn't a binary choice though. Yeah of course if the choices are "remake" or "nothing" fans would pick "remake". But why would it be restricted to this? If they're making an anime anyway I guarantee the majority of the fans would want NT over doing OT again. > Unfortunately corporate men in suits make the decisions. Kadokawa don't share your sentiment if they really wanted to give the fans what they want they would have given OT a better anime adaptation, they would've given us content instead doing nothing for 8 years, they would've given us better then whatever the fuck season 3 was. They would have actually adapted NT like people were claiming it's been 5 years since S3 and not even a word about anything. According to talks with the director of Index III the production committee (which includes Kadokawa) initially wanted to skip directly to NT (because that's the content the fans wanted to see) and the editor for the LNs had to talk them down as that would confuse anime watchers and annoy the fanbase as there are plenty of moments in the tail end of OT people wanted to see adapted. So the corporate men in suits definitely know the demand for NT content is there. > You need to look at it from a business perspective Kadokawa are a huge conglomerate that own almost a 1000 of different media franchises. If you're a board member or investor why would you spend million of $ to do anime continuation of a series that peaked in popularity and sales more than a decade ago with current sales of the OG source material on a downward trajectory? Because, again, the merch sales for Toaru go crazy. This is not a series that makes money with LNs. And Toaru is still very popular, to the degree that it was retired from the yearly light novel popularity contest back in 2022 together with *My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Ascendance of a Bookworm, COTE, The Ryuo's Work Is Never Done!, SAO*, and *Chitose is in the Ramune Bottle* because it kept sweeping awards for years and they wanted to give other series a chance. >I wish that was true but Index relies heavily on exposition especially from the MC's inner monologuing that is completely cut from the LN's. We haven't even gotten to the world building, the atmosphere, side plots, foreshadowing etc. OT heavily sets up NT going into it blind will just confuse and frustrate most casual watchers and newcomers. While NT is definitely set up by OT, the beginning was made explicately as an entry point for new readers as mentioned by the author. That's why NT1 is a very simply plot just to grab people's attentions while NT2 is a large lore recap of how the various powersystems work to get people onboard. Yes, they'll miss context from previous seasons, but they'll be able to understand what's happening in the current arcs at least.
Not for season 1, maybe for season 2 or at least some parts of it but definitely for season 3
I thought railgun was adapted quite well. But Index. Oh boy, that was a flustercuck. As an anime-only, I always wondered why railgun was so much better than Index, ESPECIALLY season 3 Index. Until I found out that s3 crammed in over 10 volumes of LN.
My guess is that there was a contract about having an anime. They thought the anime adaptations wouldn't be succesful so they did the bare minimum
Yah, OP's complaing like they are the bane of the industry when they're actually just like every other production company: they put resources into what they think will be successful and then don't for what they think won't. This season alone they have Mushoku Tensei, Spice and Wolf, Konosuba, Dungeon Meshi, Date a Live 5, and many more *at least* decent adaptations. You're favorite LN's didn't get the adaptations you think they deserved? Hate to say it, but tough shit. That's the industry sometimes.
Mushoku Tensei and Spice and Wolf are Toho, not Kadokawa. Don't ask me why that is, but yes, those aren't produced by Kadokawa. Although the others are, so you are correct there.
They finance it, Kadokawa is next after Toho in the production commitee.
They are, but they don't lead production, Toho do. When in doubt always look to where promotional materials like trailers, OP, ED, PVs show up on, or who makes the anime websites, and in the case of Mushoku and Spice and Wolf, it's them. Kadokawa are there because it's ultimately their IP, they are the publisher of the books, so they will always be part of the production committee. But no one will say Mushoku is a Kadokawa anime, because it's not, it's a Toho production that they (Kadokawa) have a stake in too.
Of course, but i don't think that's what OP means. He's including shows where Kadokawa has huge influence on budget/production timeline because his main point is that they should spend on fewer shows and spread more of the pool of money to improve production, this thing is not only a Kadokawa thing, it's the whole industry, there's a lot of anime being made without but not enough money around.
That is my point, they don't, they left those duties to Toho. They are in charge of budget and scheduling and who is animating it. Kadokawa as the publisher of course have a word too, but it's nothing compared to the productions they take charge on. They gave the rights to Toho for those series (money of course exchanged hands, lol), so the responsibility for how those productions go falls on Toho for Mushoku and Spice and Wolf, not Kadokawa. I do wonder what the deal was there, how come Toho got their hands on those two and how come Kadokawa didn't take the lead on those productions themselves.
Pretty sure it's because Kadokawa didn't have an anime studio avaiable. Kinema Citrus was busy with Show by Rock and ENGI with Full Dive. Plus, Toho has money and more know-how in making animation. Kadokawa's core is still it's publishing side after all.
Most of their stuff is animated by external studios. Neither Passione (Spice and Wolf) or Bind (MT) belong to Toho or anything like that, don't think there was anything stopping Kadokawa themselves hiring those studios. Toho has exactly one animation studio, so they almost exclusively hire others to animate their shows. From that point of view Kadokawa are ahead, as they own a couple. I really can't come up with any good reason Kadokawa would have to lend those two to Toho. Why just those two, what makes them special. Maybe the authors wanted to work with Toho because they thought they'd get a better anime there? And Kadokawa just agreed I guess, lol, but then why don't more do it if it's that simple? I really don't know. I guess the production of those shows might be a bit special, with both authors being more involved, maybe Toho committed to a full adaptation where Kadokawa would have taken it on a season by season basis. That's the only thing I could guess there.
Toho leads production and retains a lot of the revenue from the anime. You can see it on Kadokawa's SEC reports since they are publicly traded. By the way, it was a good decision by Kadokawa. During Q1's airing, MT's print revenue represented over 30% of all Kadokawa's total print revenue. Revenue from the anime was not listed as it doesn't have the rights to the anime. Perhaps they thought MT was too niche to make a profit or Rifujin insisted but it any case MT prints money for Kadokawa. Total revenue, if you include anime, was probably around Oshi no Ko or more but it is hard to tell since I don't have Toho figures. Total sales of the light novel surpassed Re:Zero a while ago though Re:Zero makes a lot on merch.
Kadokawa is listed alongside Toho as part of the Mushoku Tensei Production Committee; [you can see so every episode during the credits.](https://i.imgur.com/TzMYIqF.png)
Yes, like I replied to the other user, it's because they publish the books. Same reasons Shueisha is always on the production committee of every single of the anime based on their manga. But those are Toho produced shows that they have a stake in. Meanwhile Dungeon Meshi or Konosuba or Eminence in Shadow are produced by Kadokawa with a couple others also having a stake in it. So for example if Kadokawa wanted to put Rudy in a new season of Isekai Quartet, they would need Toho to approve that since they have the rights to produce anime with those characters and story. While Kadokawa own the IP (alongside the authors of those works) and publishing rights for books and manga, they sold the right to make anime to Toho. That's really the broad strokes of it. In the future when ever in doubt which production company actually leads, look to youtube, o who's channel the OPs, EDs, trailers or weekly PVs show up on. For Mushoku and Spice and Wolf it's always Toho, for Dungeon Meshi, Konosuba and a bunch of others it's always Kadokawa's channel. Also they each use certain temples for their websites they makr to promote the anine project, that's another way you can instantly tell who's in charge.
I'm going to need some sources for some of what you're saying. It seems very strange to say that Kadokawa is only licensing out the IP as part of its efforts. Yes, Toho leads the production for MT, hence why it has higher billing in the credits, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Kadokawa isn't doing anything else in production. Perhaps I'm simply misunderstanding your intentions, but I feel like it's very misleading or disingenuous to say "those aren't produced by Kadokawa" in your parent comment because it makes it seem like it's all Toho even though it's a committee, no?
That is exactly what I'm wondering too, why they are lending (or maybe even sold) the rights to Toho instead of them taking charge. You will notice pretty much all Kadokawa published works have anime projects they take the lead on since they have the infrastructure for that. So why are Mushoku Tensei and Spice and Wolf different then? I'd need to do a bunch of digging to find out. As for the others, go to youtube right now and search for Toho Animation, go to their youtube channel and you can find there the OP and ED, PVs, trailers, everything promotional for MT and Spice and Wolf. And you won't find any of that on Kadokawa's channel, where you will see every other anime THEY are producing. Like yes, if you know how the production committee system works, by being part of it they are technically producing the show too, under Toho... but that is not really how that works actually works. The point of the production committee is to mitigate risk, so you have multiple companies paying their share of the production costs and then they get a share of the profits based on how much they invested. This is an oversimplification of the whole thing, but for the purpose of this conversation it's enough I think. So the actual producer is the one organising the production committee and taking the lead on production, promotion, anime merch and all that. And in the case of both MT and Spice and Wolf it's Toho. Again, I have no idea why those two are different, why Kadokawa didn't take the lead there. Anyway, hope this answers your question. One last thing, production committees tend to be quite a bit more secretive these days, so it's harder to know who's where, but usually with Toho productions they tend to cover most of the costs themselves, with the other participants bringing in other things. Like obviously Kadokawa are the publisher so they'd be on the production committee either way, regardless if they are actually covering any of the production costs (although they still might just so they get a bigger shate). We can have this discussion too if you want, how you can still get inside a production committee without actually paying anything out of pocket, lol. Anyway, the deal with Toho is they have a lot of money and they like to invest in long-term franchises, why they don't just do one-off seasons. Anyway, this is a much longer and much more complicated conversation I'm stepping into, and I'm on my phone right now, so I'll just stop here.
>You're favorite LN's didn't get the adaptations you think they deserved? It would be nice if they received some decent pacing. Bad animation? People watch Hentai and say it's a mind blowing experience; you can live with bad animation. Bad Storytelling? That's a worse crime, especially in a story focused anime.
That still doesn't explain things like their treatment of Index, a franchise much bigger than those.
Most weebs never realized that majority of a shows quality is dictated by the amount of money invested in it and publishing companies like Ko doesn't have complete control of that. They don't hold the wallet, they just use the money given to them to find how to use the money in the production. Kids these days would easily know this stuff if they took the time to do an hour of searching and learning lol
> They thought the anime adaptations wouldn't be succesful so they did the bare minimum Or they thought they'd be successful *despite* doing the bare minimum. If people are going to watch something even if it looks bad, why put more time in than necessary?
Like 4Kids with One Piece?
No? 4kids one piece has a totally different problem lol
I mean I have definitely not bothered with source because of some of their shit adaptations. The Unnamed Memory threads and my impression is so much was cut out that the story narratively doesn’t make sense. So it is hurting them at least a tiny bit.
I never understood pumping out low quality anime, either. There's no way it's good promotion. Honestly, these past few seasons have had me thinking the industry needs to seriously cut back on how many anime they produce. I wonder how long this'll last.
>wonder how long this'll last. When they stop being super profitable they will cut the amount of productions The issues with streaming in the short term might cause this exact thing to happen, since the licensing revenue is basically what was financing this whole overproduction in the industry, If you made a show cheap enough you could get some really good profits from just the streaming licenses, so there were financial motivations to continue to keep this going
This is what is happening to viral hit rn its a pretty bare minimum adaptation . The “animation” is just still frames copied from the manhwa but with a camera moving around to make you think theres movement. It’s basically a glorified power point presentation, which is sad considering how much more amazing and dynamic the art for the manhwa is in comparison.
> There's no way it's good promotion. That's cus it is not. People need to move on from that believe that anime is just a promotion. Obviously the influence it has on manga/LN sales is a factor in production decisions but anime is mostly being made because there is a demand for anime. A hit anime will also make you more money than a hit manga/LN.
> A hit anime will also make you more money than a hit manga/LN. No it won't, because ln and manga give more profit.
I never claimed that anime in 2024 is purely promotion of the source material. Churning out shit isn't going to produce a hit, either.
> I never understood pumping out low quality anime, either. There's no way it's good promotion. My assumption is they throw out shittons of contracts just to get wide coverage ASAP, then they throw the money at whatever they think will pop off the most, and the rest they still have a contract saying they need to make an anime so they just shit them out.
A badly done ad is still an ad, there are only so much money, so for some stuff they get the short end of the stick. But with streaming they are moving away from the reliance of anime as advertisement but a self sustaining product which is why we're getting so many animes with season schedules (12~24 episodes every 2~3 years).
> A badly done ad is still an ad I don't see how? There's been a number of times where I've been interested in a series but then have hated the anime adaptation when it comes out so never read the source material, whereas I might've done so if it had not gotten an adaptation in the first place. And it's always an uphill battle trying to convince someone to read the source material for a series which has an infamously bad anime.
I don't understand either, but apparently it works well enough on average, just the pure brand awareness helps increase sales in Japan. (Usually with anime also comes the toys and other collectibles) Usually there are sales bumps in Manga/LN sales when an anime project premiers, sure after it ends it won't bring new people but for the suits the sales increase at the beginning may had been worth it.
This feels a bit unfair to bring up since this anime is getting treated a million times better than COTE or Unnamed Memory, but Re:Zero is also a victim of really poor management. White Fox got a lot of shit for what became of Season 2, but they did the absolute best they could with the limited resources. They were asked to produce what was essentially a 3-cour series with less staff than Season 1, and to cram it all into 2 cours. There was no way that would end well. The final product luckily was still amazing, but that's more so because of the sheer willpower of the people at White Fox bringing blood sweat and tears to the project. They also neglected to give Re:Zero side story seasons which are essential to building the world and expand on the lore that it's really sad. There's so much more going on beyond the surface, but Kadokawa isn't interested in giving it that treatment. The only reason Re:Zero is so good now is because of the staff fighting tooth and neck to give the best possible product with the limited resources and restrictions.
I think when things like poor scheduling and low budget happens with a studio and they still give their best, it's mostly because the staff loves the source material and are passionate about adapting it as faithfully as possible or just love their job so much that they don't give a fuck how little time they got they're going to give their best. I still can't wrap my head around how good Jujutsu Kaisen looked when literally every week there was some news regarding poor scheduling and time crunch. When a couple episodes didn't look as good as I imagined as a manga reader, I just stopped watching the anime and gave up but when the show finished airing and I binged the show, I was shocked throughout and always had a thought in the back of my mind "I can't even comprehend how did they even drew this fight and it looked this fucking good, just how"
>I think when things like poor scheduling and low budget happens with a studio and they still give their best, it's mostly because the staff loves the source material and are passionate about adapting it as faithfully as possible or just love their job so much that they don't give a fuck how little time they got they're going to give their best. We know that this is indeed the case in general because of how their employers exploit them in terms of wage and overtime so much so that it basically constitutes slave labor.
If not for the news, I didn't even notice anything in JJK 2, just amazing!
The amount of skipped op and ed just to try to fit everything in it was crazy
As a re-zero fan, this hurts. It's always been about the dedication of the staff. I even dare say there were never plans for season 2, however the work in season 1 by the staff practically forced season 2 into a reality. I mean, that was a roller coaster of a ride to not continue.
S1 is the butchered season. Not season 2. S2 had a handful of cuts with a few important ones. Arc 3 had 6 volumes crammed into 14 episodes.
As an adaptation, totally. God knows how depressing it was to see Volume 4 and 5 cut down to that extreme. But in terms of just an anime, Season 1 felt less convoluted, had on average better animation, and the directing was consistently better. Season 2 felt convoluted, but that wasn't because of the context of the LNs, but how information was conveyed. The visuals didn't do a good job keeping you invested since the sets are rather lifeless to look at. Even though the sanctuary is supposed to look dreary, the anime has to make it at least look interesting. The animation was also extremely limited which led to a bunch of jank cuts of facial expressions. Arc 4 luckily didn't require as much sakuga action as Arc 3, but a lot needed to be done to make the dialogue scenes interesting on their own. Wasn't really an issue in the LNs, but the pacing started to drag in the anime.
I really disagree with most of what you said. My only real issue was that the art was off sometimes.
Wait, my points were: - It was depressing to see volumes 4 and 5 trimmed down as much as they were. Since half of the entire thing was cut out. The royal selection scene was butchered and took out and the candidates' intro were reduced to just one sentence. - The visuals of Season 2 were not as good as season 1, especially since the entire thing took place in a forest compared to the many locations in S1 that allowed for more creative sets. - Season 2 was more convoluted than the far more straightforward Season 1. - Season 2 (Arc 4) required less Sakuga action compared to Season 1's Arc 3. - The pacing of Season 2 felt like it was dragging cause so much of the weight of the LNs was lost. The narration wasn't translated into screen properly making some of Subaru's choices hard to follow despite in the LN being very clear. Like, I can totally get you disagreeing with a couple of things. But most of that? Edit: If it helps my case to not seem like just another Season 2 hater, I love Season 2 more than Season 1. Parent and Child is my favourite episode of Re:Zero and in the Novels, I think Arc 4 utterly destroys arcs 1 to 3. I think outside of the animation, set design and general direction, the OST, the voice acting, the sound design, etc etc are equal for Both S1 and S2.
Meanwhile, Ishura received an almost perfect adaptation. Fairly good animation, almost nothing skipped and if anything, the things they skipped weren't important. 1 LN Volume covered in 12 episodes.
Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (Apothecary Diaries) was the same. The 2 cours that aired adapted only 2 volumes of the LNs, with 12 episodes for each cour. I started reading the LN because I was enjoying the anime, so the LN was fresh on my mind as I watched the anime. It's amazing how good that adaptation was, along with how beautiful the anime was. I honestly can only hope that they do the same for season 2. I get that this isn't Kadokawa related, but it goes to show how well a good adaptation can sell people on the source material.
Yeah, totally agree. I liked the Anime even more than the LN, which is very rare for me.
Agree
I sympathize with your sentiment but they probably actually work to get people to buy the original LN. The COTE LN’s popularity blew up overseas because people were intrigued by the end of season 1. (And I do not like COTE, I’m just describing it as it is) Anyways, things will only change if they pay proper wages to animators who dedicate years to developing their craft skills.
i’m guessing it’s just to get the name of the LN out there, and people will just go look into the titles that sound interesting to them
You should look what happened to SAO anime adaptation. The productiom quality is pretty good, deciding what to adapt and what amount of it is probably one of the shittiest in the industry
They skipped volumes for progressive because the elf war quest wasn’t finished in the LN, they should have at least made a unital ring cour 1 adaptation to entice people to read the LN lol
That's the tip of the iceberg imo. When it comes down to business decisions, SAO is in a pretty bad shape. The only good thing about it, is that the product itself have its qualities
Is progressive the supposed Reboot that is meant to adapt the dungeon tower properly?
Yes, they just skipped the volumes for the movie adaptation but plan to adapt those volumes eventually
Of course they did 🤦♀️. I remember me and a former acquaintance of mine were so excited the prospect of SOA focusing on the dungeon tower and going floor by floor instead of whatever garbage the anime was
wat? there is a progressive adaptation already?
That's why I don't read sources for anime I like, and I don't tend to watch adaptions of sources I've read. It's not that they're never done right, but odds are good that I'm going to be more frustrated than not with how the property was adapted. And advertising for the source isn't entirely accurate, it's more advertising for the property as a whole to push sales of items branded with that property in general.
You don’t read sources for anime you liked that never finished the story? Like shows that go on for 7 years without a sequel?
Or never get a sequel, yes. I've been watching anime for 38 years, not getting the full story is the norm and what I'm used to, so it no longer bothers me and I've learned to just enjoy what the anime gives me and judge it on how well it told the story it did give me and how much I enjoyed the experience overall. At best I may go look up specific info on what happened to characters or events, but I rarely run into a show that makes me want even that much more anymore.
I cannot stress enough how badly they fucked up Index. What they did to that franchise in anime format needs to be studied on what not to do. A lot of people clown on it because Railgun is more popular now but S1 and S2 of Index were mega hits. And then they just proceed to make a bunch of wrong decisions. And Tanmoshi was a legit embarassment
They are the biggest ln publisher with hit series after hit series.After a terrible anime adaption,many of their newer ln series sells 2x-5x more than before,so they are doing something right.
I literally just finished watching the raildex series yesterday and if i didnt have razorhead comments filling in the gaps and explaining shit idk if i would have made it past the first season.
This is why if a series has even a minuscule bit of my attention, I read the source. Did that for Kumo Desu… and my god was it good. Anime’s that are bad because the source is bad, fine. But anime’s that are a terrible adaptation of a great source… I will never forgive.
While I agree with how you feel it's very unfair to compare them to Toho, Aniplex or even to Kodansha (which is an argument you can make). For Toho and Aniplex, the are part of much larger conglomerates and their pockets and influence run much deeper. Kodansha rivals Shueisha, so again these are 3 much bigger players. That being said, I once again will say that do agree with you that they need to allocate their resources better but if it's working they won't. What struck me as odd was them handling Re Zero of all things with less care, that's the one I figured they'd put more effort into for S2, but we'll see what happens with S3.
You are underestimating how big Kadokawa is, it's 100% fair to put them next to all those companies, especially when anime is concerned
I'm not underestimating Kadokawa, in fact I think you might be underestimating Aniplex (Sony) and Toho (Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group). I did say you could make an argument for Kodansha (although I'd argue against that) but their sales gaps are wide enough that I'd say they aren't in the same league. IIRC it was around a 30% difference between Kodansha and Kado and compared to Shueisha it was around a 50% difference in sales. That being said, I ultimately agree with you that they need to treat their LNs better, but they are a publishing business first and foremost and are focusing on that area. Not to mention LNs, no matter how good, don't exactly fly off shelves like manga. The highest selling LNs of all time probably can't even make the top 50 if you add in manga and even a very popular LN will only be around 5m in sales. In their eyes they probably see this as justification to not go overboard with the budget for their LN adaptations since the returns are not there. Using Re Zero as an example here, from what I last remember the LN's total sales is around 13-15m and that was with an INSANE season 1. Mushoku Tensei is also in a similar boat. Meanwhile let's use JJK as an example, that has been going absolutely ballistic since season 1 and actually began outselling one piece. The point being is that as a publisher they won't see the kind of returns they want to justify using larger budgets on pretty much the vast majority of their work. But they still want to advertise it via an anime so this is why we get what we get.
I am talking about anime, and when it comes to anime Kadokawa don't focus on just IP they already own, just like the other major producers (Aniplex, TOHO) Kadokawa has many hits where they have nothing to do with the publishing side, so when talking about anime reducing them to just 'publishing company' is really misleading, to not say completely wrong Anime is waaaaaaaaaaaay more than just selling books
> I am talking about anime, and when it comes to anime Kadokawa don't focus on just IP they already own, just like the other major producers (Aniplex, TOHO) I get that but the OP is focusing on Kadokawa's IP in particular. > Having under their umbrella really popular IPs like Index COTE Tanmoshi or Unnamed memory and the treatment they are giving to them is so bad its actually sad. > I dont understand why they are not letting their IPs to be something more than a horrible adapted advertisement of their source material with garbage production values. BTW I thought you were the OP lmao, so it maybe confusing the way I was addressing you in my first post, but yeah.
Funny enough, the best selling Light Novel series of all time is Slime at 40 million. It's manga is also at 40 million in circulation and doesn't even crack the top 75 all-time.
Pretty sure the 40 million figure is actually just manga and light novel combined, a very common way of reporting LN sales from what I've seen.
That is indeed correct. LN sales usually include all books derived from that IP so that includes manda adaptations, spin-offs, art books and more. The Slime manga adaptation and the manga spin-offs are actually outselling the main LN series iirc.
That definitely makes more sense, thanks for the clarity. Further reinforces OP's point about how much distance the two formats have.
I mean re:zero season 2 was great if we're gonna compare how much content it skipped compared to season 1. For me I'd rather have passable animation that doesn't skip much compared to having a good animation that skips a ton, like redo of healer.
I think it's worth a note that this applies to Arc 3 (2nd Half of Season 1) and not the first half (arcs 1 and 2). But yeah, I get what you mean.
It's a shame about COTE. Just read the LN it's far better.
BTW, There are official audiobooks for the first 14 volumes out (that covers all 3 seasons of anime), with the rest of translated volumes probably being audiobook adapted within the next year, they are really good.
Too bad people nowadays can barely read manga (which in this case is not even a good adaptation) much less Light Novels
"barely read Manga" What? The amount of ppl who read Manga keeps increasing every single year. Nowadays I see soo many Manga discussions on Twitter and youtube and they get thousands of likes. Yeah sure more of them still stick to mainstream shonen Mangas but the point still stands.
Your last sentence is the key. I don't think there's ever been issues with wider casual audiences reading *mainstream Shounen manga* like since the days of the Big 3. It's getting people to read manga in general that seems challenging
I think they are selective with the anime adaption they focus on. For certain adaptation like SAO or the upcoming Roshidere I can see the promotional material collaboration, awareness campaign is so much more profound for the latter they collaborate with high school to have daily SNS updates ok any small news, plot synopsis played on the PA, many overseas signing session, talk shows in regional anime conventions and even delaying the anime for production improvement. Compared to some of their other anime like COTE, unnamed memory which barely have any promotional or awareness campaigns especially overseas. You can see they are selective and they know which anime they really want to focus on to push for its success
Proper adaptations are horrible as well; it'd take several decades to adapt a novel spanning 20 volumes or longer.
The 86 anime adapting 1 light novel volume in season 1 part 1 (with an anime original episode) lol
> adapting 1 light novel volume in season 1 part 1 No. S1P1 adapted Volume 1, 20% of Volume 2, and 30% of Volume 10, plus additional sidestories from other material (one of the things it adapted was the sidestory published in the manga's 2nd volume as part of Episode 10). > (with an anime original episode) lol Many of the episodes had anime original content, but none of them was wholly anime-original. Episode 6 had the most anime-original material, but even then almost 25% of the ep's runtime was using material from Volume 10. Episode 10's entire first half is a straightforward adaptation of a complete chapter from Volume 10, and then it uses another chapter as a foundation to build the second half on, before switching to using Volume 2 material for its ending.
Yeah, light novels are just very difficult to adapt to anime. People are spoiled on manga adaptations which are usually much more straightforward. For a lot of light novels, a proper adaptation would be words words words and you'd get people whining about that. A good LN adaptation usually needs lots of consulting with the author to get the transition in mediums to work.
People really struggle to understand what the word adaptation means, so they complain if content is cut and that they adapted way too many volumes and stuff. You can't translate everything from a medium to another, some stuff works way better in different formats. Sure, you have to be careful what to cut as to not affect the main story, but people get really pissed because a random cool side character that barely appears in some LN got cut
The fact that Mahouka is only on season 3 after ten years is crazy. They could've adapted so much more in that timespan
People complain about CotE, but as is, assuming year 3 has the same format as year 1/2 we're looking at 9 seasons to adapt the entire story. Almost nothing besides endless shounen anime gets that much content. If it was slowed down to the pace people probably want, we'd probably end up with a 15 season show for the full adaption, and that's just never going to happen. There's a very real tradeoff with how in-depth you can adapt a LN and how much content and story you actually get the chance to tell. People love to imagine the perfect adaption where you get the slow pace and no compromises on story and that's just not how it works. You're not guaranteed infinite seasons. You're not even guaranteed more than 1 season most of the time.
I think the Mushoku season 2 is suffering from it, maybe I'm wrong though but the quality is a drop from season 1, that's for sure.
That’s because of staff changes in key positions and freelance animators working on other series/movies that get more attention/funding
They could just spend more years working on each season, but I want to see it in a relatively short time frame, not 5+ years in between season. On another hand, general pacing of a story is also important. While we all agree that good content was skipped in Mushoku. If we went the road of 2 novels per 12 episodes we'd be around the beginning of the depression arc now. If we went 1 novel per 12 episodes we'd in the great forest arc. It would adapt everything, but it would also... "drag on" at time? I keep seeing comments about how S2 is awful because the depression and school arcs are boring, imagine if they lasted several season now. It's hard to find a good middle ground to this.
Yeah, people love talking about how they would rather wait for years for each season of anime is they are good. For me, if I have to wait for 3-4 years between each 12 ep season, which is 4h of content, I won't even remember much of the plot and will definetly lose any hype I had. There's a reason most tv shows do a season per year or every couple of years, the ones that can afford to wait longer are the ones that are way too hyped up, like stranger things, and even then it still hurts them.
Not really. With decent pacing 20 volumes can be adapted in just 3 two cour seasons for most series. Plus, very few light novel series are longer than 20 volumes. Original run of Spice & Wolf & Konoha ended on 17 volumes. Original run of Monogatari and SNAFU was 18 volumes. And those series that surpass volume 20 tend to end shortly after, like Mushoku Tensei (26 volumes), Baccano (22 volumes). Series like Re;Zero and Index that spans dozens upon dozens of volumes are exception in the industry not the standard.
Slight correction: Baccano isn’t finished yet, but it’s “very close” to the ending whenever Narita comes back from hiatus.
Why did you have to mention Index :( I'm fairly positive that we're not gonna get another season. Season 3 was just..... Sad and not in a good way. I guess that's the end of that anime. I'm depressed now.
People overreact about index imo ngl, if you’re talking about S3, yeah i understand, i dropped it mid way too, but season 1 and 2 are still quite coherent and enjoyable. Yeah they left out a lot of detail from the novels, and skipped events from certain arcs, but like at the end of the day, the novels are even more convoluted, so would a remake just to explain couple concepts and include inner monologues make sense? It’s not like it’s filler or anime original anyways
This is what anime have always been and Japan is notoriously slow to change it's only been in the last decade shows were more likely to get second seasons. Your best bet was getting 12 episodes then SOL.
Well said I have always wondered this too. Great LN stories, horrible adaptation that let you wonder what could have been. Just look at Frieren. It's a show that normally I wouldn't like, in fact I put it off for so long but then I watched it and the adaptation blew me way! I would like if authors have more say in the production of their work and not allow it get butchered just like the author of Mushoku tensei, who delayed just to get a good (in fact great) adaptation.
I don't know a lot of the times I don't like an anime produced by them is because... the LNs they come from are bad! Or at least not to my tastes. I can only tell if I like an anime, if I liked the LN, how many copies the LN sold, and how much money the anime committee makes (last two, sometimes not if it's not public knowledge, but often they are). I can tell there is a large disconnect between what I think about most Isekai series and what domestic LN sales for them are. Most of the time a LN fan says the anime didn't do their series justice I ignore them (especially if it's an Isekai... 3 episodes might not be enough to understand what a series is, but it's enough to know if I even want to continue) but in the remote cases I listen to them, I go to the high seas and find... no I don't like them either. I'm sure there is a case where I thought "man, the anime changed so much it didn't do the source material justice" but I can't remember the last time I thought that. Also get used to "26 episodes" since I don't think there will be a "37 episode" or "39 episode" or "40 episode" anime after 2010... probably ever.
I have to agree. I’ve mostly stopped watching anime adapted from LNs because I hate most tropes popularized by LNs. Maybe a hot take
There are good LNs and bad LNs, and anime adaptations of the good ones are generally descent. I notice that anime (both original and those with a source material) are usually better than manga if I pick them out at random and go in 100% blind. I half joke that someone who decides which video game/ LN/ manga gets an anime adaptation throw out the bad stuff and only let the good stuff get funded. On one hand, if such a person exists, it explains why watching a random anime on Crunchyroll or the high seas is a lot more enjoyable that grabbing random manga. On the other hand if such a person existed, how did Isekai Cheat Magician ever become an anime? If you're following 6 or less anime a season, why not give an anime adapted from an LN a punt for series number 7 if the description sounds good to you? I'm not telling you to try something which has a premise you probably won't like, but a "hey if this MAL description was talking about an anime original I'd give it a shot since the premise sounds interesting"
What tropes do you have in particular?
> Most of the time a LN fan says the anime didn't do their series justice I ignore them Good approach > will be a "37 episode" or "39 episode" or "40 episode" anime after 2010... probably ever. idk if 'ever', but yeah the seasonal model is here to stay for a while, with a 12-24 ep constraint no matter what an adaptation "needs"
I was baffled how popular Unnamed Memory was, when what I was watching was trash. I guess this explains it. Doesn't help when fans of the franchise are defending the anime, because their memory is filling in so much stuff that was skipped. And the actual animation/fight scenes are woeful in UM. Trust me, I watch so trash anime, but if the animation is bad they better tell the story well. Funnily enough I rarely see anime that looks gorgeous and has a bad story. Maybe there is some.
So true. As a COTE fan, I have to say this: the 3rd season is disappointing. What the fk is wrong with Kiyokata's eyes? It closed half the show. Does that make him smarter? Nah, it's just a lazy animation team. Also 13 episodes for that anime is not enough. If you remember, the first test in ss3, the rules are long as fk, and they only show it 3-5s. Wtf, this show is all about games/tests, wtf we gonna do if we don't even have time to read all the rules? Huh? Luckily I've read the LN, otherwise, I wouldn't understand the first half of the show. 🤕 These are all rules in episode 1: https://imgur.com/a/dlj7vrj
>What the fk is wrong with Kiyokata's eyes? Yeah like the conversation Ichinose and Suzune had and his eyes where closed during the whole conversation💀
Yes. This scene is the worst. ☠️
Hopefully they don't get any ideas for the Vampire Hunter D light novels and books.
> Why someone who watched a terrible paced anime with atrocious animation would want to read the source material? Tbh I ended up dropping Unnamed memory and I'd rather just read the novel and manga than ruin the experience with the anime. So maybe it worked out for them.
I might do that aswell when i am up to date with Cote's ln
is this why I didn't understand shit when I watched Index ? like so much missing context, you realize when you open any character's fandom wiki page
Even with low quality anime they can pump the LN sales 2-20x, basically.
Hence, the idiom "The book was better."
Despite the COTE anime being a bad adaptation, the novels have been selling pretty well even in English iirc
why are people hating on unnamed memory it’s been awesome so far
It's been skipping like, 40% of the content and what is does adapt it's doing poorly. It's trying to adapt three pretty dense volumes into 12 episodes and it's just not going to work.
Typical casuals problem, they don't what they're missing out
dawg i read manga and watch anime i just have never read any light novels. having a superiority complex over otaku knowledge is so unbelievably lame
I wasn't talking about ya, I was talking about causals in general.
Yep they should stick to audiobooks and paper media, thanks.
Ehhh. I've seen worse. I still can't forgive what Manglobe did to Hayate.
Isn't Manglobe an animation studio? We're talking about the production companies.
lil bro mad their fave series didn't get sequel ? throw your own money bro and become the producer yourself instead of ranting on the reddit.
This is why I stopped watching new anime. Post 2020 anime has just been so bland. It’s like they are throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. If you watch something by a respected studio like bones from the 2000s even some in the 2010s the quality of animation, pacing, music -Just every aspect in general has degraded. At first I thought maybe I’ve changed and I just don’t like these newer shows but if you actually pay attention to production quality you start noticing the reuse of backgrounds, lack of fluid animation, overuse of expository dialogue. New shows just feel so dull and formulaic. It’s only a matter of time before all of the new anime watchers who joined in the past couple of years start to feel the same. It’s all just part of the cycle of capitalism. Demand is high, people want new content giving way for shortcuts and a lack of creativity. Once profits start hurting the industry will have to change.