Visual Novel adaptations

Visual Novels are a medium of entertainment I’m unable to consume myself for reasons related to my ADD and perhaps other undiagnosed disabilities I may have, it’s not that I’m unwilling or too lazy it’s that I’m literally unable.

But they are an artform I greatly appreciate because they have been the direct source material of several of my favorite Anime while even more are parts of franchises that started as VNs. So I want to advocate for them as much as I can as an outsider.

However a lot of Visual Novel fans have decided to resent their Anime adaptations, even the best of them, instead of appreciating them in return.  

And to some extent I feel it shows the immaturity of the western VN fandom that they are like this.  Could you imagine if the film adaptations of Jurassic Park and The Godfather and the many highly regarded Dracula and Frankenstein films were constantly being called garbage because people who read the books were defining them solely based on how much content in the books aren’t in the films?  

The Umineko Anime made my cry in it's penultimate episode first time I watched it at a time when I hadn't done that often yet. Maybe celebrate what it says about Umineko that a highly abridged adaptation of only it's first half can move someone so deeply instead of treating people who enjoy the adaptation like they are disrespecting the source material. 

I’m going to put the various Visual Novel based Anime I'm a fan of into different categories. 

First are VN Anime I consider absolute masterpieces, as stand alone works of art these should be considered top tier no matter how unlike their source material they are.

Robotics:Notes

Steins:Gate

Chaos;Child

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (the TV Anime by UFO Table)

Higurashi When They Cry (The original 2006 Studio Deen Anime and it’s 2007 sequel Kai)

Kanon (2006-2007 Two Cour Kyoto Animation version)

Clannad + Clannad After Story

Rumbling Hearts

White Album

Comic Party

Next are ones I like about as much as those, but I do in a sense feel they could be done better.  

YU-NO: The Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World (2019 Tv Anime)

Fate/Stay Night Haven’s Feel (UFO Table Film Trilogy)

Air (Kyoto Animation TV Anime)

Shuffle 

To Heart

White Album 2

Yosuga no Sora

Next are Anime I do consider notably flawed in some way, but still also see immense artistic value in.

Umineko

School Days

Steins;Gate 0

Chaos;HEad

Fate/Stay Night (2006 Studio Deen Version)

Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works (Studio Deen Film version)

Tsukihime

If there’s a VN Anime you like I didn’t mention it might be because I haven’t it yet, I’m still holding out hope for Muv-Luv getting a Dub.  Or I may not think of the source material as sufficiently qualifying as a VN like Neptunia or all those Gacha Game Anime.  If I have seen it and it definitely qualifies but I didn't mention, I may not dislike it so much as haven't thought about it as much.

I also for the sake of simplicity excluded ones that are Hentai OVAs, plenty of them I do have thoughts on, but now isn’t the time for that.

All that also excludes that Anime that are spin offs rather than direct adaptations.

Update March 2026: Ever time I rewatch the Heaven's Feel Trilogy I feel like I should move it up to the first category.  And my obsession with advocating for Deen this season has me wanting to move Deen/Stay Night up to the middle category.  

But I want to keep the main body of this post an accurate time capsule of how I was thinking in November of 2025.  There is a paragraph I recently added that wasn't in the post originally but it's a rant I was already starting to say in YT Comments back then and felt like it was a mistake not to include here. 

Anime that are more Communist then Hayao Miyazaki

For some reason, there is a narrative that Hayao Miyazaki is the most Leftist creator of Japanese Animation and Manga. The problem is even when Miyazaki was still identifying as a Marxist he was always a Malthusian and that’s mutually exclusive with Marxism. 

This list will still likely be incomplete as my own knowledge of Anime is itself still far from complete, for example I haven’t consumed much of anything from Leji Matsumoto or Osamu Tezuka and they were both known JCP members. 

This is not a ranked list of how good or how Communist they are.  I’m going to start with those that from what I’m aware of have the most external confirmation of the creators Leftist politics and then work down to ones that are arguably just my personal interpretation. I am a Death of the Author advocate so I believe some stories are Communist in spite of Authorial intent.

The Rose of Versailles.  The original Manga was written by Riyoko Ikeda who was a member of the Democratic Youth League of Japan, the youth wing of the Japanese Communist Party. It’s a shame only two of her Manga have ever been Animated.  And I consider it a personal shame that I still haven’t watched Dear Brother as both a Yuri Fan and a Communist.  But I suspect it’s a safe bet that the one about the French Revolution is more explicitly Political. The original 40 episode series is on Retro Crush and Prime Video but has no Dub, a new film version should drop on Netflix with a Dub the day before I post this, but I’m skeptical of the story’s ability to work as a single film.  

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway’s Flash.  This is a film adaptation of the first novel of a trilogy written by original Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tommino who we have on record talking about how he and most Anime creators of his generation were Communists at least in their youth. While Malthusianism also seems like a theme in UC Gundam stories I don’t think Tommino is accepting it as uncritically as Miyazaki does, especially given the themes of Brain Powered.  Hathaway is what I’m putting on this list because for once the narrative is principally on the side of the Revolutionaries rather than the defenders of the Status Quo.  It’s on Netflix.  But it’s not the best entry point to Gundam, it’s best to have at least seen the Mobile Suit Gundam Trilogy and Char’s Counterattack for context, fortunately they’re also on Netflix though the Dub for the Trilogy isn’t on any official streaming site. [Update June 18th: So the Trilogy and CCA are leaving Netflix.  The Trilogy is up on YT now and CCA is on Crunchyroll as "season 2" of the original series but this is still annoying, it was very convenient when I could recommend people to watch this whole saga on the same App.]

Mawaru Penguindrum.  Leftist readings are pretty common for all of Kunihiko Ikuhara’s works, but I think Penguindrum is the most about society as a whole and not more specific forms of oppression. 

Robotics;Notes is a show I’ve often defaulted to as an example of good Leftist Collectivism in Anime. 

Durarara!! Is also a story with a practically Anarchist sense of Community.  But it does at times undermine itself, I mostly wish they hadn’t backed out of how they first depicted the Cops.

Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine episode 7 Music and Revolution.

The Loudly Laundry episode of Princess Principal.

What I’ve seen of the .Hack franchise also lends itself well to Leftist readings, it’s a reminder of the Revolutionary potential the Internet once had, and could have again.

Hugtto Pretty Cure has a really interesting final arc. 

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya.  No, I’m not joking. 

Twelve Unintentionally Christian Anime

[Update 2026: This has been supplanted by a newer post.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2026/04/anime-that-are-more-christian-then.html]

Are Giant Robot Anime about Giant Robots?

So a number of weeks ago I watched a YouTube Video from the channel The Bellam called Anime Cryptids that begins with the author talking about hearing people praise a given Mecha Anime, most often Evangelion, for being a Mecha Anime that “isn’t about the Robot”, and then goes on to explain how no Mecha Anime is actually about the Robot, especially not Gundam.  

And yet to me the obvious response to this annoying type of Evangelion fan should be “what do you mean Evangelion isn’t about the Robot?”  If anything Eva is more about the Robot then Gundam since in Eva the Robot is actually a character with sentience of its own, but mostly that point is key to why Eva should be compared to Super Robot shows like Mazinger Z rather than Real Robot shows.

Still I find it amusing that to both sides of the debate in that video it’s treated as a good thing for a show to not actually be about the Robot.  I feel like especially in shows that are named after the Robot that should not be the case, it should never be a good thing for a show to be named in-correctly.

Clearly we are dealing with different people prioritizing different senses of what a show is “about”.  This video’s argument for Gundam not being about the Robot is the abstract philosophical themes of the overarching metanarrative of the Gundam Franchise. On that level no piece of Genre fiction is actually about the premise of it’s Genre, but no one feels the need to defend the integrity of their favorite Batman story by explaining how it isn’t actually about the Billionaire dressing up like a Bat to fight crime.

The author of this video clearly strongly feels only someone who hasn’t actually seen Gundam would think it is actually about the Gundam, but I’m not so sure.  I explained above one reason for viewing Gundam as less about the Robot the Evangelion.  But on the other hand Gundam feels more structurally built around the Mecha battles then Eva does.  Also the Plot of the original Gundam is explicitly that the introduction of the Gundam near single handedly changed the tide of the war.

And when it's framed specifically as focusing on the Characters rather then the Mechs I feel like "why is that even a contrast?", obviously the Characters involved in piloting and maintaining the Mecha will be very prominent in a show about a Mecha  And again in some the Mecha is itself a Sapient entity and thus a Character..  But it would be really weird if the Main Characters the show focuses had nothing to do with the Mecha it's named after.

Now I have to admit I did not initially respond to this video with the strong disagreement I’m expressing here. I initially left a comment saying something like “Robotics;Notes is actually about the Robot and that’s why I like it”.  But why did I feel that way?  At the time I would not have been able to explain myself and the counterargument that it's Robot doesn’t even exist yet for most of the show could easily have been thrown in my face.

It feels more narratively about the Robot then a lot of other Mecha shows because building the Robot is explicitly the Goal of the main protagonists, as an end unto itself not merely as a tool to achieve some other goal.  The build up of the Evil Conspiracy they will wind up having to thwart is mostly treated as a background plot till the final stretch of episodes.  But I guess even then the creator of that YouTube video could argue the Robot is actually just a symbol of something else like Communism maybe, I am a Communist who loves the show in part for it's Collectivist ethos.

So I guess the answer to the question is both Yes and No.

Occultic;Nine subverts the Flat Earth Atheist trope

First of all this post is going to spoil some of the central twists of the Anime Occultic-Nine, if you haven't seen it already I suggest you do so quickly, it's very underrated and is only 12 episodes and it's both subbed and dubbed on Crunchyroll, and it's a fitting show for Halloween month in my opinion.

Flat Earth Atheist is the TVtrope term for when a character is written like a strict hyper rationalist materialist even when in a setting where denying the Supernatural is a lot less rational then it is in our world.  Occultic;Nine is a show that at first one might think is going to feature that trope but actually doesn't.

In the opening episodes both Gamon and Sarai are skeptical of the supernatural, the rest of the main cast are all pretty ready to believe in the paranormal so those two are the Skeptics' representation.  While both are skeptics it's only Sarai who gives off that smug Reddit Atheist energy, he's the character who a genre savy viewer will expect to act like Fred in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island. Gamon's skepticism is a lot less central to his identity.

So that's why it's interesting how in episode 7 following the reveal that they've all been Ghosts for 3 episodes it's Sarai who's mostly accepted that the evidence is pointing to that being the case even before it's made truly indisputable.  While it's Gamon who's in denial, but his denial is framed as Emotional coping not a product of whatever his ideology was.

So it's an Anime where the true Rationalist accepts the facts even when they go agaisnt his prior world view and the "Flat Earth Atheist" was never actually that much of an Atheist.

Kuudere are Stoics?

I’m pretty usual among modern people interested in Ancient Stoic Philosophy in that I’m mainly interested in their Metaphysics and in the Political Philosophy of Zeno’s Republic (which later Roman Stoics disowned) rather than what it means to live like a Stoic.

But as is often the case with me, the thoughts I do have on the subject relate to Anime.

First however I need to comment on how the casual understanding of a Stoic Demeanor causes Stoicism to be misunderstood.  Stoicism isn’t about having no emotions or suppressing them.  It’s simply about having them under control, trying not to make emotionally impulsive decisions, or in debates to not make arguments that are emotional rather than logical.  

The Roman Stoics I don’t like probably would agree with what Ben Shapiro means by “fact don’t care about your feelings”, but Zeno Stoics would not, they would understand that Gender is based on more than just your sex organs, as would Paul based on Galatians 3.

One of the articles in Stoicism in Early Christianity argues that the very Emotional Characterization of Jesus in The Fourth Gospel doesn’t conflict with a Stoic reading of The New Testament but supports it.

And so in that context we come to my thesis that some Kuudere Anime characters are the true Stoics of modern popular fiction.

Kuudere is mainly a description of a character’s demeanor (which is where the Stoic comparison begins, all Kuudere are Stoic in that casual sense) and so can refer to a variety of different kinds of characters.  Some I suppose are the bad misunderstanding of Stoicism I referred to above, some are really Rei Ayanami clones, and some just come off this way because they’re Introverts.  And like Tsundere it seems to have originally referred more to the specific character journey of some Visual Novel Love Interests, being at first cold and seemingly indifferent to the protagonist as opposed to the hostility of the Tsundere.

But the Kuudere characters I’m thinking of when I refer to myself as a real life Kuudere are ones who are not unemotional or suppressing their emotions but are in fact entirely motivated by their emotional desires, just in a particularly calculated way.  For some their Tragic Flaw is their tendency to place the emotional needs of their loved ones ahead of their own.

To be trendy I think I’ll mention first the most recent addition to the Anime Kuudere canon, Misuzu Gondou of Tomo-chan is A Girl.  She’s the reason I watched the show, the actual main couple bugs me.  She’s the smartest character in the show, but spends much of the latter part questioning herself.  She’s also just really fun to watch.

Shizuku Sangou from Kampfer is fun in how she’s perhaps the least susceptible to the Tragic Flaw I mentioned above.  She decides she wants the protagonist pretty quickly and does not hesitate to act on it.  But she’s also the one most motivated to advance the plot because of her past girlfriend who died.

Ayase Kishimoto from Chaos;HEad is perhaps the closest Anime character to my Christian Stoicism thesis.  She is a fan of a fantasy novel that seems like this world’s version of Narnia so she’s constantly interpreting the show’s Sci-Fi concepts in religious sounding ways while talking almost like a Prophetess.  Unfortunately what the Sci-Fi premise of the Chaos: shows is can be interpreted as Platonist, though I feel Steins;Gate in the same universe has an ultimately Stoic take on Fate.  So maybe there is a Stoic impetration of what's going on Metaphysically in Chaso;HEad and Chaos;Child??  I don't know.  [Occultic;Nine very potentially has a Stoic understanding of The Soul and the Afterlife.]

And that brings me to the culmination of this post, Setsuna Kiyoura of School Days.  Like most School Days characters she is better handled in the original Visual Novel than in the infamous 2007 Anime, but for the most part she is still essentially the same character. She’s the smartest character in the story and is principally motivated by her loyalty to Sekai but that is complicated by her own feelings for Makoto.  The circumstances under which Makoto has sex with Setsuna in the VN are very different from the Anime, in the VN it’s a very unique premise for a love scene that I find very emotionally moving.

She is my Avatar on most websites because she is the best.

Update: April 13th: 

I didn't originally plan for this to be one of those posts I'd come back to adding new sections later, I really felt that Tetrad would be sufficient to convey the idea I was trying to get across.  But I've since watched the first 5 episodes of Re:Creators and already I find Meteroa Osterreich to be possibly even more of a Classic Stoic.

It's interesting how her not the male nominal protagonist or the Asuna looking deuteragonist is basically serving as the leader of the group, the one figuring things out and doing most of the talking when they have to negotiate with the SDF and the Government.  She does it all with a very calm and cool demeanor but she does have emotional motivation for her role in all of this.

Update May 2024: I have decided Miyu from Prisma Illya is also relevant to this thesis.  However that Anime is one of the most difficult to get into if you're not used to certain.... aspects of Anime.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2024/05/miyu-edelfelt-supreme-kuudere.html

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child both have good Anime adaptations actually.

I can't claim to have no understanding of why people think at least Chaos;Head's Anime is bad when I myself had originally given up after a few episodes and mentioned that on this blog before.  However what I speculated on in that prior reference was that my issue with Chaos;Head was probably the story itself not the Anime as an adaptation.  And I never said it was horrible or anything, just that I was having trouble getting into it.

In the years since that first attempt I've gotten more used to VN based Anime of it's type, while still not actually playing VNs themselves.  I started the show over from the beginning and wound up giving it a 9 out of 10, then I gave Chaos;Child a bull blown 10.

I give Child a higher score partly because Head is more difficult to get into, the early episodes are a bit disorienting but ultimately that served a purpose and things will get clarified.

What gets me about how hostile to these Anime their VN fanboys who've made YouTube videos on them are, is they keep saying these "horrible" Anime give people bad impressions of these brilliant ingenious Visual Novel masterpieces.  But the truth is the only people who think these Anime are horrible abomination are VN fanboys overreacting to even the slightest creative adaptation choices they don't like.  Non VN fans who just watched it like they did any other Anime at worst simply went "meh" and moved on.

Their average MAL rating is between a 6 and 7, that's between Fine and Good.  Given all the 1s and 2s being hurled at these shows from those haters, clearly there are many who also gave it higher ratings then the average.  I haven't written any reviews for these shows on MAL, among those who have are people giving them 8s, 9s and even 10s.

Most 5s, 6s and 7s given on an out of 10 rating system generally mean one of two things.  Either that person respected the execution but just couldn't get into the premise or the characters, or they see the potential value in the premise, characters and story but had issues with the execution.  The latter group are probably fully prepared to assume it's something great in it's source material.  And the former were not going to get into that VN even if VNs are a medium they're into.

To RedBard specifically, the problem with these Anime seems to begin with them being single cour, unlike Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes which had 2 cour Anime.  Everything more specific is really the same stuff VN fanboys whine about in the VN based Anime widely considered to be great, even Steins;Gate isn't immune to these complaints.  Every YT video about recommending these VNs with little comment on the Anime doesn't mention any vital story element or themes the Anime hadn't already conveyed to me.  Information about how they're played however does tell me I wouldn't enjoy playing them as much as I do watching the Anime, even compared to other VNs.

I do prefer 2 cour shows in general, but these I felt worked as 1 cour just as well as Madoka did, which means I don't think dragging them out longer would have resulted in anything good. I did not feel like anything was missing, no criticism I might have would be fixed by adding more context.  It's only people comparing to the source material and know what's missing that can't stop themselves from thinking about it's absence.  But their perspective is the wrong one, most Visual Novels are longer then they need to be, that lack of restraint is largely what's holding the medium back, and I'm saying this as someone who defends three hour cuts of Superhero movies.  I recently tried to play YU-NO and I'll probably try again, but I was not prepared for it to take half an hour to get through the first 5 seconds of the Anime, I gave up before even reaching a save point.

I spend a lot of time watching Adaptations of things I have no source material familiarity for.  And often I can tell when something is missing, when an issue I'm having is probably because of something that was cut, that is where criticism of something as an adaptation and criticism of it as it's own stand alone piece of Art overlap.  

However any criticism that does not exist without comparison to the source material is irrelevant to judging the adaptation on it's own terms.  So you're not gonna convince me an Anime I enjoyed watching, and maybe even made my cry (as Chaos;Child and Umineko both did), is actually very bad because it left out some memorable internal monologue you really liked.

I am a defender of voice over narration and internal monologues in Anime and movies, I HATE the popular YT reviewer use of "show don't tell".  But Visual Novels aren't like the way these tropes pop up in Light Novel based Anime or Hard Boiled Detective novels. VNs are incredibly over indulgent with massive amounts of text of the protagonist pondering things that I'm sure build on the themes and characterization but really are not nearly as intrisincly necessary as their fanatics think they are.

The reason Steins;Gate's Anime was much more successful then any other SciADV Anime was because it simply had better luck getting seen by the non VN fans who would be into it's premise.  Part of that is how the Chaos;Head Anime kind of wears it's VN roots on it's sleeve a lot more.  Part of it might be Steins;Gate being more actively promoted in general (Chaos;Child was the only spring 2017 show I never even knew about while it was airing).  But it mostly comes down to something I'm going to say that might shock some people.  Steins;Gate is the most Normie friendly of the SciADV franchises, while both Chaos; shows are the least.

Trixie The Golden Witch likes citing Steins;Gate as one of the top Otaku Pride shows because it's set in Akihabara.  Yes Steins;Gate has lots of Otaku references, but it's really not actually about any of that.  Being set in Akihabara is perhaps itself a cause of this, like how people who live in New York have never visited the Statue of Liberty.  The status of Akihabara as an Otaku center is most relevant to Ferris's subplot.  Akihabara's older significance as a tech hub is probably more relevant to the main plot, since that's why it's a place one would look for an IBN 5100.

I know exactly how to recommend Steins;Gate to Normies, I tell them it's the best SciFi Anime and in my opinion best Time Travel story in any medium.  If they like the Denzel Washington film Deja Vu, you can tell them Steins;Gate has a premise like that but much more elaborated on due to it's serialized format.  

Even the Hououin Kyōma persona seems more like an American B Movie Mad Scientist then anything specifically Anime.

Steins;Gate became the only one of these that most non VN players have even heard of not because it's Anime is sooo much better at being an Anime, frankly I think it's Animation style and Art design is much blander then Chaos;Head.  It simply is a far more accessible story with inherently wider appeal then the rest.

Robotics;Notes is a giant love letter to the Mecha Genre, but more specifically a Sub Genre of Mecha the American fanbase never got into (Glass Reflection saying the in-universe Mecha show is basically Gundam really annoys me, it's clearly a Shounen Super Robot show like Mazinger Z).  I do consider it and even Occultic;Nine potentially Normie accessible, but still a tougher sell then Steins;Gate, one tactic I use is to describe Robotics;Notes as the msot Speilbergian Anime.  But with Robotics;Notes it's precisely what's more Otaku about it that makes me personally like it more.

Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child however are the embodiment of almost everything Anti-Otaku Anime fans hate, they will never respect them in any medium.  Going back to the discussion of MAL scores, if any non VN players have given these Anime truly low scores on MAL, it's probably those Anti-Otaku types being disgusted by their very premise.

Chaos;Head is about an antisocial shut-in literally named Taku who'd rather talk to his hallucination of his favorite Anime Girl then real people becoming the only person who can save this town that he hates.  That's a true Otaku Hero's Journey.

Then Chaos;Child..... well I'm gonna have to spoil it's central twists here.

Steins;Gate is the best Science Fiction Anime.

I also think it's probably the best Time Travel based story in any medium.  

But I want to clarify what I mean when I say it's the best Sci-Fi Anime.  I mean it's the best Anime at specifically being Science Fiction, the best Anime to recommend to Normie Sci-Fi Nerds as a potential entry point into Anime.

There are Anime I like more that also qualify as Sci-Fi.  

Like for example a show that exists in the same Universe called Robotics;Notes.  That show is quite possibly to me at least better then Steins;Gate at what I generally come to Anime for, but doesn't quite nail it's Sci-Fi premise as well.  But still the difference between those shows on both those scales is an ultimately small matter of degrees, if you like Steins;Gate then Robotics;Notes is probably the next Anime you should give a shot to and vice versa.

However A Certain Scientific Railgun and Code Geass are higher ranked candidates for the title of my favorite Anime franchise period, and are also both technically Sci-Fi.  But they are by no means Hard Sci-Fi, but rather the best Anime equivalents to classic Pulps and Serials.

Gundam Anime (the ones I currently like most are 00 and the Trilogy) are as Mecha War stories better Sci-Fi then Code Geass but ultimately below Code Geass in my opinion for other reasons, and still not as great Sci-Fi as the Semicolon shows.

"Why dedicate a post to this distinction?" you might ask.  Because I know to some Internet Pedantists it might be difficult to wrap their head around making this distinction.  That there can be a difference between a show's use of Sci-Fi being specifically one of the things it's good at, and being merely a plot device or setting to facilitate what the show's real appeal is.

Now there might be a better Sci-Fi Anime then Steins;Gate among what I haven't seen yet, which is still a lot.  But I feel like I've seen enough for my opinion to be worth noting, having completed 535 Anime, and started over 280 I haven't finished.  I can't guess right now what percentage of those qualify as Sci-Fi in some capacity, but it's a significant amount.

Robotics;Notes episode 15 is a good Christmas episode

I feel compelled to make this post about it even though I'm not entirely sure how to articulate my feelings.

Most of Japan is similar to California and Israel in that Snow at this time of year isn't as common as it is for those of us living further north.  That makes a subtle difference in the thematic role Snow plays in Anime in general.  In my post a couple years ago on episode 6 of Noir I got the name of that episode confused, it's Lost Kitten not Snow, but it kept using the word Snow in ways that confused my memory (I think it's because Snow was the name of a song on the Soundtrack).

The episode climaxes in a Christmas Miracle that is really a simple act of kindness.  Standard Christmas episode tropes.  But it's also specifically tied to the show's Sci-Fi setting and how Otaku driven it is.

I'm sure all the Christmas episodes BeneathTheTangles talked about are perfectly good if you're into those shows.  But I think this may be the best Anime Christmas Episode at being Christmas for Anime weirdos.

Frau Bow from Robotics;Notes

 I want to make a post on why I think the character of Kona Furugoori is unique and interesting.

There are generally two types of female Otaku who pop up in Anime.  There are the ones based on Japanese culture's actual stereotypes about Fugoshi or women that are into the Anime and Visual Novels at women.  And then more commonly there are the ones that are basically a stereotypical male Otaku inhabiting a Cute Girl's body usually with the idea of treating that as a humorous absurdity.

In Lucky Star for example the former is represented by Hiyori Tamura while the latter is represented firstly by Konata but also every other Otaku who shows up in the Anime at least with Patty specifically being the Weeb.

Frau in Robotics;Notes however seems to be a genuine mixing of these traits in a way you don't see very often.  She's into Yaoi/BL but also into devoting herself to a 2D Waifu.  

She also falls in love with the male MC and is actually the first girl to get anywhere with him which was enlightening in how surprising it felt, in fiction female Nerds actually have less luck at love then male Nerds which is the opposite of how most people think the real world works.

She also has her own plotlines related to being a Game Designer and trying to find out what happened to her mother.