Silver Link are such fucking faggots.
Impression
Fuccccckin’ kidding.
I am starting to seriously lose hope in this adaptation. Next week’s episode is titled ‘Crazy Summer Time’. In other words, it isn’t the start to Volume 5. It is a filler episode. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? And it’s from a side-story novel released just this week in Japan? Are you for real, Silver Link? How autistic do you have to be to make this decision? I thought you were rushing like no tomorrow through every single other arc for the sole purpose of getting to Volume 5! And you fucking rushed to put in an episode of fucking filler?! You had one fucking job! Why not adapt one of the other arcs properly instead of rushing? This filler episode could have been dedicated to animating more of Usagi’s arc, or Ikaruga’s arc. You half-assed the world-building, the character development and the plot, and you decided to replace that with filler? Are you for real?! Did you guys get dropped on the head as a child?
Silver Link are actually absolute faggots, holy shit. I cannot stress how absolutely fucking ridiculous this decision was. Is filler supposed to help this show sell?! This is already selling like shit. It’s near the very bottom of the seasonal rankings for BD pre-orders. No-one is even watching this show any more except for the light novel readers and harem fans! FILLER?! This isn’t Naruto! This is a one-cour show with no money left! After the Sword Eater fight in Rakudai I can see why they ran out of money here! If anything was going to save this, it would be Volume 5 – all of the sacrifices this adaptation has suffered through is supposed to be redirected into adapting Volume 5 well! Why the fuck would you spend money animating more boobs?! That means we get less time for the best arc the anime will get to – who the fuck thought that was a good idea? And where the fuck is Kyouya, I’ve been waiting for him for weeks! Why are they doing something meant to fill up spare time? They just rushed through four arcs and skipped a ton of detail? What’s wrong with filling up spare time with plot? Are Silver Link actually retarded? THEY NEVER ONCE HAD ANY TIME TO SPARE, EVER.
Argh, this is so stupid. It reminds me of the Prisma Illya fiasco this summer, too – if you didn’t watch that, it was yet another example of Silver Link getting trigger happy with filler episodes and making a series of very bad decisions that took almost all the impact out of what should have been a great adaptation. They weren’t bad filler episodes, but they shouldn’t have been there. At least that had lolis, too. What will AntiMagic have, given that they seem to be pretending that Lapis doesn’t exist? Mari fanservice? I do love Mari, but nowhere near enough to want to compromise Volume 5 over her. Sorry, Mari.
…I wonder if someone’s getting fired over this major fuck up? At least, it’s likely that the ‘literally who’ newbie director won’t be getting many more directing roles after this. And up until the final scene I was quite happy with the episode, too. I wanted to fanboy over Lapis and talk about how much of a glorious bastard Sougetsu is. That scene with an embarrassed Lapis is one example of the many cute Lapis scenes on offer in the light novels by the way, all of which were lost in the perilous journey to becoming an anime. Wasn’t it just too cute? Were you not entertained? There should actually be a lot of banter like this between Takeru and Lapis, and it’s adorable when Lapis shows her childish jealousy. Takeru can’t check out any other Magical Heritage, for example – because that would be cheating on her. No idea why he would even dream of it though, just look at her, Isn’t she wonderful?
As for Sougetsu, I thought his entire scene was totally him. Innocentius is a perfect Relic Eater for him, because it describes him perfectly – he sits casually in his office, playing everyone both inside and outside his school like pawns on a chessboard while he sits back, relaxes and watches in amusement. He said a lot of stuff about being on the front lines and all that, but it’s only because he happens to find destruction fun – he could have asked Hayato and Kanata to help him attack or do it for him, and they could have done it easily, but to him it’s much more fun making the enemies dispose of each other in their magic-induced confusion.
I’d actually forgotten that Isuka gets killed by Haunted, so I was surprised to see him appear out of nowhere and kill her at the height of her despair – which is classic Haunted, really. Isuka was subject to ‘re-education’ by Alchemist upon them discovering that Ikaruga has escaped, which basically involved tampering with her emotions and causing her intense pain whenever she does feel strong emotions – she was clutching her head last episode, and this is the reason why. It was merely implied in the anime, but she read the same book that Ikaruga did, and developed the same interest in the outside world – but now that Alchemist have remodelled her, the only way she can get out is via Valhalla. Haunted is still supposed to be covered in bandages and recovering from his fight with Takeru at this point (remember, they removed all the blood and cut out all the real damage dealt in that fight) which is why he doesn’t stick around to fight Ikaruga directly. Instead, he uses a giant mecha dragon to try to hold them off, and I was honestly disappointed that Takeru didn’t end the battle by splitting the dragon in half, just like in Metal Gear Revengeance. It was a decent fight on the whole though, and even though it was CG I liked the dragon’s design.
If I was asked to sum up the episode, I would very truthfully say that it involved nanomachines, dark elves, antimatter explosions, and giant mecha dragons. But because it was rushed, the impact of every single one of those was reduced. I hope the beach episode or whatever we’ll be getting remotely attempts to make up for that. Is it too early to say the burial rites for Volume 5? The high amounts of suffering in this series seem to have been transferred to its fans through the adaptation. So in a way, we’re living the true AntiMagic experience – we can suffer alongside them as we lament over everything this anime could have been.
RIP SILVER LINK
I hope this sells so badly that they fire the director. All the rushing was for the sake of a goddamn filler… are they actually stupid?
Please read the light novels if you’re not doing so already.
This entire recap is exactly what I felt. It makes no sense rushing through all these volumes and have it all come to a screeching halt before Volume 5 and pad this shit out with a filler episode from the Short Story Volume that released this Monday. They skipped Caligula’s scene, skipped Kyouya’s hospital and Reima scene and the impact of the best parts of Volume 5 are completely compromised.
Innocentius scene also had Sougetu’s speech shortened.
Oh shit, there’s that too – it came to a screeching halt before Volume 5. What happened to swapping Volumes 3 and 4 around to make things progressively darker? I thought Volume 4 came first because it would have been a worse transition before the suffering in Volume 5? Literally what was the purpose of doing it in the wrong order if there would be a waste of a beach episode either way?
And don’t even get me started on what they skipped. All of the foreshadowing is completely gone – Kyouya was supposed to have more screen time in Volume 2, and appearances in Volume 3 and 4. His hospital scene is necessary to explain how and why he ends up as he does in Volume 5 – and when he does appear then, the stuff you learn in the previous volumes about him means you can immediately tell that something is very wrong, and shit is about to go down. What are they going to do now, retcon it in through a fucking flashback?
I didn’t really mind Sougetsu’s speech being shortened because he got his point across, but no Caligula was really painful. There wasn’t even a fight in the LNs, all I wanted was an appearance for Caligula. Hayato is nothing more than a secretary and personal assistant in this anime, instead of one of (if not the) most powerful characters in the series. We will never get the line “It’s time for Caligula the Tyrant. Release the hammer.”
Come to think of it, the only radical thing they did right was to make Suginami Suzaku a loli. What are they going to do next, remove the X marks in Kiseki’s eyes? Oh wait.
This, really this, this summed up my whole opinion on things as a LN reader. My only hope for the Vol 5 adaptation would be so good that it would make the rush worth it, but now the add a filler episode. What is SL smoking? Really this is making me want to cry and I guess you are right that the adaptation being so bad is the true AntiMagic experience, we get to suffer just like the characters have to suffer and thus bond in that way.
To be honest, I just want the filler episode to the a Kyouya scene to properly foreshadow him, if they do that I might be able to bitterly accept that SL did something this stupid.
That’s what I said back during the first episode – that if they were going to split it as 2/2/2/2/4, it would speed through all the less important stuff (like fanservice) and make Volume 5 really, really great. Even 2/2/2/3/3 would be fine. But for some reason, the amount of fanservice has been increasing as the episodes go on, instead of decreasing like they should be. I mean, the cosplay cafe instead of the Reima scene? And the fuel tank scene this episode instead of the hospital scene? What the fuck?
I would like the filler episode to have Kyouya too. Ideally it would show him falling into darkness followed by the Reima scene, but it would feel really out of place if alongside that everyone is in swimsuits or going to the beach or something. Are there even any inhabitable beaches left after the Witch-Hunt War? Not that the anime has expanded on that nearly as much as it needed to.
Just show the Chairman giving him Nero in an after-credits scene, that alone should be enough to at least save some of this. Plus I am not sure how they will do Vol 5 in just three episodes, too much happens in this volume and I am not sure if they will manage to cram everything in just three episodes in a good way.
That would work. I’m hoping that, because it’s a side-story chapter, it’ll end up being quite short – in the past each episode has covered several chapters’ worth of material, so the filler should hopefully only go up to the halfway point and the second half of the episode can be used for something productive.
I think three episodes for Volume 5 can be done. I had a look at the volume, if it’s broken down roughly it could work like this:
[spoiler]
Episode 10
All the background stuff about Kiseki – Takeru visits her in prison and probably flashbacks about their childhood. When he leaves they show one of the Kiseki torture scenes (how long she can tolerate a poison overdose before it kills her). The 35th Platoon go out to track down that guy from Insect Cage, and it ends with Kiseki breaking out after her mind breaks and Takeru finding her in an alleyway.
Episode 11
The date. Maybe the explanation for Hyakki Yakou should go here, when Takeru lies to the platoon about what’s wrong with Kiseki. Kyouya appears to gatecrash, they fight briefly and Kiseki gets taken away. Then the jail scene with Takeru and Ouka. The Kyouya and Hayato tag-team scene, maybe? The episode ends on a cliffhanger with Kyouya deciding not to transport Kiseki safely, and murdering her instead.
Episode 12
Takeru vs Kyouya, before it turns to Takeru vs Kiseki. Then the God Hunter fusion with Lapis, and hopefully a short fight against Kanaria. Hayato vs Orochi would be good here, and it’ll end with Orochi and Sougetsu facing off and the magic transfer circle to Valhalla. The anime ends with ‘Welcome to Magic Academy’. Alternatively, they do an anime-original happy ending and have Takeru kill Kiseki for good. [/spoiler]
That sorts of works, but I still feel that some scenes will have to get dropped to cram everything in, and a part of me feels that the flashback should happen after the Date just to build tension better that way. Overall, I am a bit wary for how SL will adapt Vol 5, I honestly don’t trust they will do it right, and since neither Kyouya or Kiseki have been foreshadowed I am not sure if vol 5 will have the proper impact it should have. Finally, I honestly wouldn’t mind an anime-original ending, maybe something like them pulling a Mother Goose post what you suggested? The anime opening did say they would meet in a new world right?
I can forgive them for skipping out the detail where Takeru cut down 11 Knights of the Round Table, I can even forgive them for cutting out Tyrving’s fight entirely because it wasn’t too significant of a fight. As the adaptation goes so far, I’d give it a 6 out of 10 with everything but the pacing and animation being great. But it could have easily become an 8 if they had just sprinkled small scenes with Kyouya. Those small scenes alone would have left a better taste in my mouth for the overall adaptation, that’s how important they are. With how they had him in the opening and generally been teasing him from the start, there’s no fucking way they wouldn’t show at least a single scene before his appearance to fight right?
What hurts more is that just having Caligula’s scene and having it fade to black after the sound effect would have been all it took for Episode 4 to have a higher score too. They bothered to have Kurogane ask Sougetsu for permission to use his Relic Eater too. I’m just sad we’ll never hear that perfect voice say the incantation and hear the sound effect of the hammer dropping.
As for the X’s in Kiseki’s eyes, she still has them, just inside the pupils.
I don’t care about Tyrving, and the bigger issue with the King Arthur fight was that Witch Hunter form had a helmet and was too flashy. I’m also still disappointed that they don’t scream SUMMIS DESIDERANTES AFFECTIBUS, MALLEUS MALEFICARUM when they transform. But Haunted’s fight was terrible. Every end-of-arc fight has been butchered somehow, and Haunted’s was particularly bad – it was static, all in CG and it looked like Takeru was dealing fuck all of damage when in the LNs he was hacking him to bits repeatedly to the point where he outdid Haunted’s regen. In the anime Haunted literally got knocked on his ass and ran away. If not for the Lapis and Nacht banter it would have been stupid. As for Kyouya, I don’t know why they went from hyping him up to pretending he doesn’t exist. He’s been shafted just as badly as Lapis, and to an extent Hayato has gotten a lot less screen time than he should have. I wouldn’t be surprised if Silver Link somehow, for some retarded reason, cut out his fight in Volume 5, even though it’s an important scene in the volume.
I see what you mean about the Xs still being there. They’re tiny now, though. What was wrong with having massive ones across her eyes? I always thought they were kind of cute.
Vantage, have you had time to catch up with Asterisk at all? I’ve heard they did an anime-original episode there, albeit better because it gives better characterization to Kirin and Saya’s partnership for the Festa. Plus Asterisk’s author is now in Singapore for their Anime Festival Asia; for a meet and greet session together with Ayato’s VA and the anime director.
I wouldn’t go as far as to abuse the whole studio though. Yes, they may have made a mistake picking this new director, but that doesn’t mean all the studio’s works are duds. For example, there are reviewers who dislike the Antimagic anime’s pacing, but they like the Rakudai anime and its pacing (granted Rakudai’s just adapting 3 volumes).
Unfortunately not, I’m still at Episode 2! It’s a real shame, especially since I heard they made Kirin really cute. Hopefully I can marathon it this Christmas or something. At any rate, Asterisk doing an anime-original is a very, very different matter. It’s not a bankrupt adaptation, for one. And linked to that, because it has two-cours it’s at complete liberty to do that – and most of all, there’s a reason. Kirin and Saya pairing up did feel slightly ad-hoc in the novels, especially as Saya was initially dead-set on going with Ayato and they had to keep the two lolis relevant somehow. So it’s an informed decision which would presumably improve the show as a whole. For AntiMagic, it looks like it’ll be a beach filler, very much out of place in between two suffering-filled arcs, which will add nothing to the story as it’s a side-chapter released in Japan by the author only several days ago. It’s like if Asterisk got two episodes each for the Julis and Kirin arcs, then after a trainwreck of rushing A-1 turned around and said ‘okay, so with all this extra time we’ve made, let’s use it up on fillers!’
I would abuse the whole studio, sadly. Going by their page on Wikipedia, I’ve watched almost everything they’ve produced. A lot of them are watchable shows, sure, but the only really good ones are Kokoro Connect and Non Non Biyori, and Prisma Illya if you count only the first two seasons (and whether that’s a good show depends on your preferences). Everything they did in 2014-15 that wasn’t a new series (i.e. not a sequel) has been crap except for Yuri Kuma Arashi, and that was a unique case because of Ikuhara coming in to direct it. That’s two years of duds. I mean, they do tend to gravitate towards a lot of harem and comedy stuff, so almost by definition there’s a greater chance of screw ups.
As for Rakudai, it got Silver Link’s A-team and Oonuma Shin. If Oonuma did AntiMagic, I can guarantee the decisions behind it would not have been this shit. It’s like a real-life Shirobako fiasco. AntiMagic were left with the B-team, or (I suspect) what remained of it after half of them went to work on Shomin Sample. To an extent, the blame for the shitty outcome as a result can be attributed to the studio as a whole, as well as in general their decision to adapt three different series this season. And two of them are school battle harems (or Rakudai at least, AntiMagic isn’t a ‘battle’ and drops the ‘school’ after the anime’s stopping point) going up against an Aniplex-backed version by A-1. Even ignoring Asterisk, why would you make yourself your own competitor? As a fan of the AntiMagic LNs, watching the Sword Eater fight in Rakudai was humiliating. The entire time all I was thinking was, ‘we could have had that, you know’.
At the risk of inducing a violent emotional reaction or PTSD, I must ask… Is there at all any hope that Isuka could be brought back? Because I read…
—
——Ika…ru…ga.”
Immediately after she raised a painful voice, blood overflowed from the wound.
But that blood wasn’t spilled on the floor, but was sucked into Haunted’s hands.
It seemed like he sucked something out.
Isuka’s body lost its colour in no time, and cracked.
Ikaruga stared dumbfounded with eyes wide open, she could only stare as Isuka’s light was stolen.
Was the whole bit about her blood being absorbed and her light being stolen just pointing to the twisted nature of Haunted’s power..? I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the despair aspect is that most unfortunate incidents can’t be undone. Still, after watching last week’s episode just to pass the time before today’s… I just felt so wrong watching that with Isuka just having died. So I had to ask if there’s any indication at all as to whether, especially as a life that was ‘created’, Isuka could return someday ;_;
I mean, it should feel wrong – because as a filler that episode had no place being there to begin with. Despair is supposed to be an exponential curve with no stopping points! I’m sorry to say that Isuka won’t return. How it was phrased does seem to be alluding to Haunted’s abilities as a necromancer, but nothing else has come from it from what I can remember. What you should instead focus on is the fact that Kanaria is supposedly still alive, and in Valhalla. That’s where Ikaruga’s character development is next headed. How are you liking the novels, by the way? Are you appreciating the vast difference between that and this unfortunate excuse for an anime?
That being said, WATCH TODAY’S EPISODE ASAP! I’ve been seeing screenshots around, and THEY LOOK SO GOOD! IT’S WHAT WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!
I would’ve watched it sooner, but I’m waiting on that 1080p! I did do a little reading around the mostly incomplete wiki that belongs to AM35, so I know a little something about Kanaria and am excited to see whether she meets ‘mommy’ again!
As for my appreciation, well, the first five lines of the LN that I read felt so much more powerful compared to the relevant scene in the anime. It saddens me since I do enjoy the anime and connect with it enough to have felt sad upon seeing Isuka die, not even a body left to bury. Of course in the LN there’s a reason why there’s not one ><
It makes me appreciate the Rokka no Yuusha adaptation all the more! With that it's as though I was experiencing the same exact thing in different formats, whereas this is… it's like the anime is an adaptation of AM35 if there was a prototype version that was later overhauled by the author to create the current LN, ehe.
Kanaria is cute! Super cute! It’ll be a long while before she meets Ikaruga, way past Volume 5 (which is the anime’s stopping point) but depending on how Silver Link use up the time we have left, we may get a certain something. I’m not so sure that the wiki is mostly incomplete – it was certainly a lot more barren before the anime started in October. I had a quick skim, and you’ll definitely want to avoid the pages on Kiseki, Sougetsu and Hayato as those are the most spoilerrific, and generally any character’s name you don’t recognize.
A prototype is a good way of describing it. If you enjoyed the anime as it is, you’ll have a lot of fun experiencing what is in many ways the ‘real thing’. It’s slightly more painful the other way round ;_; Rokka was, in theory, the perfect light novel adaptation – a single volume over a whopping whole season. And that’s one of the reasons why it was so good, because the source material was fully respected and faithfully adapted. Too bad it didn’t sell well.
Well, I guess we let bygones be bygones and “walk facing forward” as a Sougetsu said to poor Kyouya. I forgot to mention this in the previous comment, but it’s actually quite encouraging to see you genuinely looking forward to today’s episode ^_^
Savage. He lost both his legs, you know!
I think it’s because a) it’s the start of Volume 5 (the best one this anime will adapt) and b) we’re moving from the worst episode thus far to what I hope will be the best episode thus far. It helps that I’ve heard there will be copious amounts of Kiseki, Hayato and Kyouya. All of them are wonderful side characters, faults and all (or lack thereof). Especially Kyouya, since we’ve been denied him for so long – that hospital scene was the exact sort of foreshadowing sorely needed for Volume 5. Such a thirst for revenge. The heretics will burn. They will suffer judgment.
And among that crowd of names… a weapon to surpass Metal gear.