Screenwriters matter even in "faithful" Adaptations.

My priors posts about how I feel Writers for TV Shows and Movies matter just as much as Directors (and maybe sometimes more even) has focused on Anime that either aren’t adaptations or drawn out Adaptations with a lot of Anime Original “Filler” content so that I could say the basic plot of what’s going on doesn’t always come from the Source Material.  

But I’ve decided to start thinking more about the subtle ways they can matter even in a very direct adaptation.  Because most Anime Directors, especially Episode Directors, are more like Ron Howard than a visionary Auteur, they frequently just direct the script given to them.  It’s simply the Auteurs whose names you’re more likely to recognize.

And I decided one good case study for that happens to be the Anime Adaptations of SciADV Visual Novels.

Now I happen to like all of them, but the thing is I can still tell the difference between them and have a sense of why some are viewed as more poorly executed than others.

Robotics;Notes is the least talked about of the SciADV Anime.  Well Occultic;Nine is about equal in lack of discussion actually but it’s the one who’s source material isn't a game but a Light Novel series, as a LN Anime it reminds of Baccano! and Durarara! But there are no behind the scenes connections to vindicate me in that observation.

Steins;Gate is the one SciADV Anime that is viewed as a success, even beyond SciADV specifically it’s the one VN Anime even the harshest of VN Purists have trouble saying anything too bad about.

Chao:HEad and to a lesser extent Chaos;Child are among the most virulently hated VN based Anime, treated by fans as something you should ignore the existence of on the same level as Tsukihime.

When I recommend Robotics;Notes to people I express my very genuine belief that as an Anime and an Adaptation it is far more similar to Steins;Gate then it is to either Chaos: show.  That it has 22 episodes is an easy place to start. But none of the SciADV shows share the same lead Director, and they have too many episode directors for me to bother verifying if there is zero overlap.

However, Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes have the same trio of writers, Jukki Hanada, Masahiro Yokotana and Toshizo Nemoto, none of whom had anything to do with any other SciADV Anime.  I think they are why the Robotics;Notes Anime is paced and structured similarly to Steins;Gate.

That they have different Directors and lead Artists doesn’t really surprise me, Robotics;Notes does look different, in ways that make it more inline with my general tastes in Anime. 

Masahiro Yokotana also wrote Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines which was pretty popular last season.

Magical Girls can use Swords

Clearandsweet is very much of the opinion that a Magical Girl ever using a sword would violate the Genre’s unwritten rules and betray its underlying moral ethos.  He loves citing a scene from Hugtto Pretty Cure to prove this point and it is a big part of his criticisms of Sailor Moon Crystal, Eternal and Cosmos and the original Manga compared to the 90s Anime. 

Interestingly the people I’ve seen most vocally express disapproval of Magical Girl Anime taking away the swords these Magical Girls had in their original Shoujo Manga source material are women, like the ladies at the Love And Justice Podcast or Aishyo in her recent video on Wedding Peach.

Frankly I also see a weird cognitive dissonance in Clearandsweet being so symbolically opposed to Magical Girls using Swords when he made over 24 hours of content arguing Madoka Magica is the most Platonically Ideal Magical Girl show with it’s very bombastic love of Gunplay.

I am a Pro-Gun Rights Leftist, I understand that weapons themselves are not the problem, only how they are used ever is.  

Likewise yes Jesus said “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword” but he also said “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one” and “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”.

Yoda said in Empire Strikes Back that a Jedi uses his Lightsaber for defense never to attack, that’s what makes a Sword Wielding Magical Girl different from a sword wielding villain or antihero.

Let’s be real here, pretending Magical Girl Warriors are using totally purely pacifist methods to resist evil just because they often lack the symbols of violence seen in Shounen and Seinen Anime and American Action Movies is silly.  They are always fighting, they are violently resisting the enemies who threaten their world, that’s literally what the Warrior part of the subgenre’s name means.

Magical Girl Warriors are supposed to be in part Hyper Feminine Knights, that’s the imagery the word Senshi is supposed to evoke.  Sailor Venus’s Sword is because she is the Moon Princess’s loyal Knight.  Cure Sword in Doki Doki Pretty Cure is also a Knight.

The real reason swords, especially realistic looking swords like the one in the Sailor Moon Manga, were not allowed in the Anime versions is because they were heavily merchandised Toy Factories, Japanese parents did not want their kids playing with realistic looking weapons. When Wedding Peach did their DX OVAs they were no longer driven by the child friendly merchandising and were thus now given swords and even a gun.

Hugtto Pretty Cure had the same series director as the first 5 cours of the 90s Sailor Moon Anime Junichi Sato.  But in between there was one more unambiguous Magical Girl Warrior show he directed, Pretear, it was geared a bit older and was a single cour so this time he did not take aware her Wind Sword, he could have, other things were changed from the Manga for that Anime, but he did not object to the Sword even though it would have been very easy to come up with a different Wind Elemental attack.

So I don’t think that sword based plot point in Hugtto was intended to defend how he adapted Sailor Moon, that sword represents something very specific in that context but it is not a statement about Swords in this genre as a whole.

But I also do not think a man like Sato get to decide what is and is not allowed in a genre first and foremost meant for young girls. 

Magic and “Science” are not actually different in the ToAru Universe

My knowledge of ToAru lore beyond what’s been directly revealed in various Anime is mostly via watching videos on the Aeon of Horus YouTube Channel.  I feel the need to make that clear up front.

I haven’t even seen all of what’s Animated btw, I’ve so far been strictly Dub only with these franchises so all the OVAs and Specials that the Dub has ignored I still haven’t seen.

A detail revealed in the first Arc of A Certain Magical Index that I used to forget about because I generally rewatch later arcs more is Index reveals that Magick began as mages trying to mimic what Esper could do.  But if Espers have existed for longer then why are they now so firmly associated with this less than a century old futuristic city-state?  

Well that’s where the Gemstone distinction the Anime has never gotten into comes in. 

Gemstones are the naturally occurring Espers whose powers do not in origin have anything to do with Academy City’s curriculum.  While the term and concept of Gemstones hasn’t been properly explained in the Anime yet two Gemstone Espers have been seen, Aisa Himegami whose ability is called Deep Blood and Sugita the 7th ranked Level 5.

Paradoxically however these Natural Gemstone abilities seem the least Scientific, they seem like the highly magical superpowers someone would have in the Nasuverse.

Academy City’s Espers are the products of an attempt to artificially recreate what the Gemstones are, they are doing the same thing the Mages are just with an aesthetically different method.  Academy City was, after all, founded by one of the most infamous of Mages.

The core of how Academy City tries to scientifically explain what Espers are draws on the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, just like many Visual Novels.  That’s why there is all the “personal reality” talk.  But the way Mages powers work also has a similar mind over matter quality to it, remember the villain in Deep Blood was defeated by his own lack of belief in what he could do.  

The simple fact that Touma’s right hand can cancel out both feels like proof that they aren’t that different.  And that ability is called Imagine Breaker.

Like the Gigalomaniac powers in Chaos;HEad and Chaos;Child both Magic and Esper powers in ToAru seem to have their roots in the Transcendental Idealism of Immanuel Kant.

Academy City produces Espers whose powers seem like SciFi rather Magical abilities because the kinds of minds drawn to and bred by Academy City can only Imagine in Scientific sounding terms.

The Remotes Misaki Shoukuhou uses are normal TV remotes, not things specifically designed for her, they are just a tool to help her imagination.  In a way that’s not at all unlike a Magic Wand.

We’ve seen plenty of Magical Abilities that would not at all be hard to imagine as Esper Abilities with only superficially different framing, like Style’s fire elemental powers.

Then there’s how the entire description of what a Level 6 is supposed to be reminds me of the Kwisats Haderach from Dune.