Given those restrictions and that the anime tried to resolve some of the weaknesses in the game itself, it did a remarkably good job with the limited amount of time that it had.
Probably the wisest decision in the first episode was ditching the frame story with Sorata. Instead Kakeru and Akito go down to the ground to look for their new esper when the Norn signals that it's found one, and they bring Koharu up and introduce her to everyone. This also allows for a gorgeous establishing shot of the Norn that works much better than its introduction in the game.
But on the other hand, we don't get to see what makes Koharu unique, as she comes off as just another nice girl otome game protagonist. Her early interactions with Sorata in game make it abundantly clear that there's something off about her and that as far as bulbs go, she's rather dim. The anime doesn't give us anything about her needing to take notes about how to interact with people or how she read about something in her book of manners. Instead it alludes to a tragic past, which in the game we actually don't learn about until much later since Koharu prefers to live in the present.
The second episode features the introduction of Natsuhiko as well as throwing out terms like Reset and mentioning that he left the island eight years ago, all of which was previously end game material. Though the idea of a traitor comes out immediately after the attack, there's no mention of the fact that there are only rooms for nine espers, so they're stuck with two extra people. Which is kinda weird since, you know, the title is Norn9.
The end of the second episode also introduces Sorata in an extremely abbreviated fashion, putting him on the ship with no explanation for how he got on, as well as quickly establishing the year as 1919 to Sorata's 2016 (updated from the 2015 in the game).
That said, Norn9 does a surprisingly good job of marrying multiple storylines together into a single cohesive plot. I'm impressed by just how much fat they've trimmed to do so. Events happen quickly and lead from one to the other without feeling rushed as they follow the main plot about the espers (mostly referred to as people with power until the last couple of episodes when the translators seem to decide on the word "Gifted") and their journey to see The World.
We don't always get events exactly as they happened in game, sometimes the locations or the circumstances around them change, but they're close enough that we can follow the same narrative beats of the primary three love interests.
Since there are nine love interests for the three heroines, Norn9 departs from the usual otome adaptation tradition of shipping the heroine with all of them and primarily pulls from four storylines, pairing Koharu with Kakeru, Nanami with Akito, and Mikoto with Sakuya and Natsuhiko (since she's not kidnapped until past the halfway point, by which point they've mined everything critical from Sakuya's storyline except for the climax and epilogue).
And by combining storylines, the traitor gets to be more active, as that was a problem on some routes, where nothing much happened. But with the combination of Kakeru, Sakuya, and Natsuhiko's routes, Ron is plenty busy, and happily enough we get to see Masamune doing some solo investigation of his own, using his power to view the past, which he rarely got to put into practice during the game itself.
The scare maze being rejiggered into the haunted house was a pretty good adaptation that not only preserved the spirit of the original event (which was mostly fluff on Heishi's route), but also served as a final chance for the group to make memories together while resolving the fallout of Sakuya's bad take on seeing Mikoto with Itsuki (though sadly without ever letting the guy know how the misunderstanding came to be). We even got Masamune paired with Ron for a direct confrontation about why Ron caused the explosion at the start of the series. The adaptation writer of that episode was really on fire.
We also get to sit in on Masamune's reports to the World, though there is one scene where he comments on the number of people being wrong, when the number of people being on board not matching the number of rooms has never been brought up at all. (There doesn't appear to be a room shortage in the anime as Koharu has her own room and we don't see Masamune and Kakeru sharing.) However there is one part in Masamune's report that struck me as a bit odd, where he seems annoyed that the World won't help with the traitor.
While that's news he doesn't deny when speaking with everyone else in the game, he also knows why they won't help, which isn't clear in the anime.
The anime lifts a little bit from almost everyone's route (like Shiro Yuiga meeting up and running off with Koharu comes from Senri's route, even though Senri is not romantically involved with her in the anime) and it's nearly always the exciting bits that make things more dangerous. Unlike the game, the rumblings of war and the fact the Reset is supposed to prevent it comes out much earlier. The espers get the lowdown on the reason for Reset and the fact the world has already had three Resets two-thirds of the way through the anime, instead of at the end, and there's a great part where Masamune realizes that Shiro Yuiga is probably taking Koharu to the island where The World is. By going there, the espers are flung into a panic as to whether that means they will have to perform the Reset when they haven't had the time to discuss it (given all the running around trying to find Mikoto and then Koharu after their separate kidnappings).
There are just a couple things that felt extremely clunky to me due to the storyline compression. The first is Akito and Nanami's romantic subplot. While the anime does a decent job weaving Akito's route in with everything else in the first half, eventually we get to the part where he reveals himself as Senri's older brother so he can take Senri's power. It's not clear in the anime why he chooses that moment to do it, other than we're getting close to the end of the series. In the game it was clearer that they anticipated there could be a conflict and Akito would need powers to participate, which is why he reveals himself and takes the other half from Senri, but in the anime he kinda seems to do it so Senri doesn't have to feel burdened, and it's not prompted by anything.
The second one is the stargazing scene with Natsuhiko. The anime shortcuts all the drama between him and Mikoto when she first arrives at his base, so she's barely even a hostage. (She even goes looking for the keys to his plane at one point.) That's fine, except that they didn't change how Natsuhiko baits her into coming stargazing with him.
Game Mikoto hated having anything to do with him, so he literally had to say "I'm going to kill the espers" or she wouldn't come on board to try to stop him. Anime Mikoto didn't need that kind of goading because she's had perfectly normal conversations with him already, so the idea that he'd need to threaten her friends to get her to come was ludicrously off-key.
The story also gets more and more original the closer it comes to the finale as it becomes harder to draw material directly from the game, which at this point would be focusing almost exclusively on the issues of a single couple. Some of it is handled really well. Like Shiro Yuiga gets to be the tragic villain, dying with dignity and the memories of his lost wife, that he didn't fully become in the game. And Kakeru and Koharu both get to see him in his last moments since he was the father figure for both of them.
Other parts were not so clean. There is a recap episode 9.5, which is what happens when an anime's production schedule has slipped so badly they can't make the appointed air date. The series does not get additional air time when something like this happens, so that means one of the originally planned thirteen episodes got burned and the studio had to do plot gymnastics to compress what was supposed to be four remaining episodes into three.
It looks like a good chunk of what was originally supposed to be episode 10 just got trashed, because the end of episode 9 has the Norn head to the island where the World is because that's where Sakuya's vision said the missing Mikoto and Koharu would be, but instead everybody changes their mind and leaves for Shiro Yuiga's base and they reunite over there.
I don't know if it was a compression casualty, but there's also a weird moment when Mikoto is about to get shot by one of Shiro Yuiga's robots. Sakuya, who we would expect to take the hit given that he's the one who shouts the warning and the one with the future where he dies protecting her, is actually too far away for protecting her to be reasonable, so Natsuhiko does the honors (though he lives).
Fortunately the anime recognizes that this is strange and manages to massage it a bit later on in the second to last episode where Sakuya and Mikoto have a conversation that suggests that perhaps they shouldn't rely on their powers as much as they have so they can make their own path.
The anime also shoots for an anime-only ending, which is a good thing given that the game doesn't have a unified ending of any kind. With Shiro Yuiga already taken care of, Aion sends a "test" Reset to all the espers, making it seem like their powers are being taken for the Reset to see how they would react. Most of them seem okay with it, but Koharu really freaks out, and being the strongest of all the espers, this results in the imminent destruction of the Norn due to her raging fire powers. (Probably not a wise idea on Aion's part.)
I get that the anime probably wanted a flashier decision on the Reset than just a bunch of espers sitting down talking it out (as happens in Sakuya's ending, the only one where everyone is present while Aion is still capable of doing the Reset), but it seems poorly thought out. And the anime even puts in the doors to view the past and the future, but doesn't explain what they are, so they just look like some strange vision that Kakeru and Koharu are having.
But what the anime ending did that the game didn't, was give us a better look at what everyone's doing in the days following the choice not to Reset. Most of the last episode is actually epilogue, with just a bit of tension due to Kakeru being missing for most of it (though being a romance story, of course he comes back by the end, though it was a surprise that Ron would be the one to make the delivery). No one is left out of the epilogue. Though not everyone gets as much focus as the girls and those immediately around them, all the major characters get at least a moment so we know where they ended up in the end.
Also, I was happy to see that Sorata found a place with Natsuhiko and Mikoto, working on their plans to go to the moon. It seems a lot better than spending his life trying to rebuild Aine/Aion, who meant more to his previous self than his current one.
And speaking of Sorata, his storyline was also handled better in the anime. It wasn't perfect, as it's not entirely clear why Aion both saved him from a previous Reset by putting him in cryosleep and at the same time woke him up to leave him wandering around the Norn, but Sorata's had moments throughout the anime (unlike the game) where he would see the apparition of Aine, so you could see that there was something going on with him. This made his bond with Aion in the final episode, much more believable than it actually was on most routes of the game.
Lastly, I'd also like to comment on the opening and ending credits. The opening credits is clearly a homage to the original in game, using many of the same visual motifs and even several of the character poses, though I really like what it does for the secondary love interests to give each of them a chance in the limelight. The opening director also included Masamune removing his glove as part of his limelight pose, which is a really nice touch since the game was never explicit about the fact he wears one on his right hand to prevent unintentional activation of his power.
The ending credits are remarkable in that they don't feature any of the espers at all, but focus on Shiro and Aion in mirrored poses. While both of them are absolutely critical to the Reset storyline, and I like the idea of them being two sides of the same coin (heck in the game neither of them are even able to live long past the other), at first it seemed strange to me that they would be positioned as reflections of each other.
It turns out that what binds them together is the wish to see a loved one again (Haruka, his wife, for Shiro Yuiga and Sorata, her creator, for Aine). And you can almost see that parallel in the anime, where Kakeru explains that the reason he had to come back to Koharu was because he saw his father's wish to see his wife again in the door to the past (which is the parallel in the game), only to swish past it because Kakeru is obviously relating it to his desire to see Koharu.
Since Shiro Yuiga died two episodes before the ending it was much harder to put together the parallel between his dead wife and Sorata, and his and Aine's desires to see their loved ones again, but once I realized that, the ending credits suddenly made a lot more sense to me.
I'm not sure I would recommend viewing Norn9 to those who haven't played the game, as particularly the last few episodes start skimming on details you need to know if you haven't played, but it's worth a shot if you have.
No comments:
Post a Comment