Noone cares? I see... (Navel & MG - Divorce, or starting over again?)

[Fred the Barber]

3 hours ago, VirginSmasher said:

You're right. Only one Kickstarter has failed. It's just as of late Sekai Project have screwed up a Kickstarter with hype around it.

Good lord you have a chip on your shoulder for no apparent reason, bringing this shit up in every thread. Had you heard of Root Double before the Kickstarter? I sure hadn't. Root Double is far from famous, and has no particular pedigree to speak of (even I/O, with a fan translation, isn't all that highly-regarded or famous, and is the only somewhat-known VN from the developer). There was a fair bit of hype around here, presumably because influential people know about it and regard it highly, but it still had extremely little name recognition in the English VN community.

Here's a useful contrast: Chusingura, despite presumably being much harder to read in Japanese than Root Double, has about twice as many votes on VNDB with roughly the same distribution. That's a pretty huge difference in terms of name recognition (and anecdotally, I'd at least heard of Chusingura before it appeared, unlike Root Double). We all saw how that game's Kickstarter went down in flames immediately.

The Root Double Kickstarter was far from Sekai Project bungling some universally-acclaimed game, and it succeeded in the end; just let it go. We'll see what happens next time, but here's a bold prediction: if they try to bring over something actually famous, everything will probably go just fine. And frankly, given the following they clearly have, even if it's not already famous it'll also probably be fine.

Anyway, sorry for the threadjack; I'm just getting tired of reading this same crap in every discussion thread I go to, and this time I felt obliged to shoot back.

Here's a token attempt to be on-topic: the Shuffle! anime is one of my least favorite of all time, so I have zero desire to play the VN. Maybe it's better, but I'll never know. That said, that's just my opinion and clearly a lot of people actually like it, so you have my condolences on that. It is definitely a shame if it means MangaGamer is losing a partner, since I think they're the most competent licenser on the scene right now by a good margin, despite a few oddities like their sketchy-as-hell storefront, and I like to see them be successful.

[Deep Blue]

EDITED: 

Edited March 25, 2016 by Deep Blue
meh I don't want to start a debate over nothing

[ChaosRaven]

6 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

Here's a token attempt to be on-topic: the Shuffle! anime is one of my least favorite of all time, so I have zero desire to play the VN. Maybe it's better, but I'll never know. That said, that's just my opinion and clearly a lot of people actually like it, so you have my condolences on that. It is definitely a shame if it means MangaGamer is losing a partner, since I think they're the most competent licenser on the scene right now by a good margin, despite a few oddities like their sketchy-as-hell storefront, and I like to see them be successful.

In general you shouldn't judge a VN by its anime, because most of them are just crap, except it's done by TypeMoon, or in earlier years Key.

Majikoi would hardly be such a popular VN if it had the same quality than its so called anime. And don't get me started on the Innocent Grey 'animes' Cartagra or Kara no Shoujo. *shudder*

[tahu157]

To shell out $70 or not, that is the question.

[VirginSmasher]

6 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

In general you shouldn't judge a VN by its anime, because most of them are just crap, except it's done by TypeMoon, or in earlier years Key.

Majikoi would hardly be such a popular VN if it had the same quality than its so called anime. And don't get me started on the Innocent Grey 'animes' Cartagra or Kara no Shoujo. *shudder*

Who thought it was a good idea to make those story based VNs that could've easily made a good anime into awful hentai series?

[XReaper]

1 hour ago, VirginSmasher said:

Who thought it was a good idea to make those story based VNs that could've easily made a good anime into awful hentai series?

 

sex sells dude & in the case of adapting galge source material even more. there´re awhole fukking lot of cases where they went the other way, most recent ones being daitoshokans no hitsujikai (~1350) & ushinawareta mirai o motomete (~970) desastrous anime which didnt even manage to remotely scratch the magical manabi line ergo a pretty huge finacial loss for the studio aside from having some promotional value regarding its related eroge.
not saing that hentai ovas do sell like squishy, lukewarm mankos, but the risk is pretty low im comparison + you´ll find more people willing to spend some money on its moderately priced 1-2 bluerays, than throwing 150-250+$ at a possibly screwed up 13ep anime adaption.

[VirginSmasher]

Just now, XReaper said:

sex sells dude & in the case of adapting galge source material even more. there´re awhole fukking lot of cases where they went the other way, most recent one being daitoshokans desastrous anime which didnt even manage to remotely scratch the magical manabi line ergo a pretty huge finacial loss aside from having some promotional value regarding its related eroge.
not saing that hentai ovas do sell like squishy, lukewarm mankos, but the risk is pretty low im comparison + you´ll find more people willing to spend some money on its moderately priced 1-2 bluerays, than throwing 150-250+$ at a possibly screwed up 13ep anime adaption.
 

Even if sex sells, I still don't see why you'd turn a story based murder mystery into a hentai when those two VNs were never about the h content. Even if a more story based VN were turned into a hentai, something like Amakano works a lot better than a murder mystery VN.

[Tyr]

Because anime never intends to be good on its own except when it's an original story. In every other case it's promo for the source material.
Anime is not supposed to be good or even being an adequate adaptation. It's about motivating you to buy the original game/novel/manga. Or, if you already read the source, to see your favorite scenes animated because in this case it's just fanservice for people who already know the story.

[Valmore]

6 minutes ago, Tyrosyn said:

Because anime never intends to be good on its own except when it's an original story. In every other case it's promo for the source material.
Anime is not supposed to be good or even being an adequate adaptation. It's about motivating you to buy the original game/novel/manga. Or, if you already read the source, to see your favorite scenes animated because in this case it's just fanservice for people who already know the story.

I don't know - The Ah! My Goddess anime was pretty good for the two seasons it got.

[Tyr]

Well, there are always some exceptions to the rule. ^^

[Chuee]

2 hours ago, VirginSmasher said:

Even if sex sells, I still don't see why you'd turn a story based murder mystery into a hentai when those two VNs were never about the h content. Even if a more story based VN were turned into a hentai, something like Amakano works a lot better than a murder mystery VN.

Because making an anime is expensive, plus you'd have to find a studio willing to work on it. Making a short hentai is much, much easier.

[Decay]

Basically. As Tyr said, those H-OVAs are basically marketing material for Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo. They weren't trying to make a smash anime hit, they were trying to get eroge customers to pay attention to their games. And H-OVAs is often a good way to do that, even if it's not nukige. 

Standard romance titles can get away without the porn because it's pretty easy to create some bog standard romance drivel. A deep mystery thriller like Kara no Shoujo requires actual serious directing and screenwriting skills to make good on TV. So why even bother? Just make some hentai drivel that will hopefully get a few horney teens off and have them think "Okay, but what's the real story like?"

[VirginSmasher]

1 hour ago, Decay said:

Basically. As Tyr said, those H-OVAs are basically marketing material for Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo. They weren't trying to make a smash anime hit, they were trying to get eroge customers to pay attention to their games. And H-OVAs is often a good way to do that, even if it's not nukige. 

Standard romance titles can get away without the porn because it's pretty easy to create some bog standard romance drivel. A deep mystery thriller like Kara no Shoujo requires actual serious directing and screenwriting skills to make good on TV. So why even bother? Just make some hentai drivel that will hopefully get a few horney teens off and have them think "Okay, but what's the real story like?"

I don't know if that gamble really worked out for them or not, but I barely see them ever being talked about anywhere.

[Vorathiel]

1 hour ago, Decay said:

Basically. As Tyr said, those H-OVAs are basically marketing material for Cartagra and Kara no Shoujo. They weren't trying to make a smash anime hit, they were trying to get eroge customers to pay attention to their games. And H-OVAs is often a good way to do that, even if it's not nukige. 

Standard romance titles can get away without the porn because it's pretty easy to create some bog standard romance drivel. A deep mystery thriller like Kara no Shoujo requires actual serious directing and screenwriting skills to make good on TV. So why even bother? Just make some hentai drivel that will hopefully get a few horney teens off and have them think "Okay, but what's the real story like?"

I don't know about that... After reading this thread I went for search of Kara anime and on myanimelist many commets looks like this:

"What I imagine is the storyline from the game (the detective trying to find the killer) was drowned out by the main character pausing the plot every five minutes in order to have sex with nearly every girl that appeared in the anime" which is not a good recommendation. Shitty commercial isn't luring customers to the product.

[Fred the Barber]

5 hours ago, Tyrosyn said:

Because anime never intends to be good on its own except when it's an original story. In every other case it's promo for the source material.
Anime is not supposed to be good or even being an adequate adaptation. It's about motivating you to buy the original game/novel/manga. Or, if you already read the source, to see your favorite scenes animated because in this case it's just fanservice for people who already know the story.

I'm not sure that I agree with this rule of thumb, just because it's so easy for me to come up with good counterexamples: Steins;Gate, F/SN UBW, Clannad, and Kanon all popped into my head pretty quickly. Those are all extremely highly-regarded anime, and having seen all but UBW, I can say with confidence that at least the other three certainly stand up extremely well on their own.

Maybe I just happened to hit the only counterexamples, but I frankly haven't seen that large a number of examples in favor of the claim either.

[Tyr]

7 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

Maybe I just happened to hit the only counterexamples, but I frankly haven't seen that large a number of examples in favor of the claim either.

Oh, you just mentioned the most popular anime which are based on visual novels. Now try saying good things about the other 450, too.

[Fred the Barber]

16 hours ago, Tyrosyn said:

Oh, you just mentioned the most popular anime which are based on visual novels. Now try saying good things about the other 450, too.

Sure. Let's look at the "A"s. I've heard of AoKana and Air, and by most accounts, both have quite good anime adaptations. The rest I haven't heard of, so I don't know if the VN, the anime, or both are crap. To be clear, citing the full list isn't evidence for you - you specifically need to show examples of good VNs with bad anime. That list is going to include a ton of bad VNs with bad anime adaptations, which don't prove your point at all. The mental list I went through was VNs I've played with anime adaptations. There are definitely bad ones - Majikoi and Grisaia pop into my mind immediately. Ok, that's two. That's a much shorter list than my list of good VNs with good anime adaptations.

[Tyr]

You're missing the point here, Fred.

All the good examples you're mentioning were made under special circumstances thus an exception to the rule:

Aokana: anime was announced together with the visual novel. the anime was part of the whole project from the beginning.
Clannad, Air, Kanon: anime was made by KyoAni. They have a reputation to lose. Kanon was even a remake of the older Kanon adaptation. Of course it needs to be decent or else it would be pointless.
F/SN UBW: made by ufotable because they did a good job with the kara no kyoukai adaptation. In fact, all the other Type-Moon adaptations were so horrible that the fandom believes they don't even exist. same issue here as with KyoAni, they have a reputation to lose, it needs to be good.

Those are certainly not part of the norm I was speaking of. The norm are adaptations like Majikoi or Grisaia.

[sanahtlig]

I liked Soul Link and, to a lesser extent, Shuffle.

I find it odd that Navel would withdraw the license to games that already have English releases.  I suspect we're missing a piece of the puzzle.  If I had to guess, Navel is interested in selling the games on Steam and perceived that MangaGamer's version would compete for sales or would otherwise undermine the undertaking.  That or Sekai Project snapped up the licenses (but why?).

[Fred the Barber]

25 minutes ago, Tyrosyn said:

You're missing the point here, Fred.

All the good examples you're mentioning were made under special circumstances thus an exception to the rule:

Aokana: anime was announced together with the visual novel. the anime was part of the whole project from the beginning.
Clannad, Air, Kanon: anime was made by KyoAni. They have a reputation to lose. Kanon was even a remake of the older Kanon adaptation. Of course it needs to be decent or else it would be pointless.
F/SN UBW: made by ufotable because they did a good job with the kara no kyoukai adaptation. In fact, all the other Type-Moon adaptations were so horrible that the fandom believes they don't even exist. same issue here as with KyoAni, they have a reputation to lose, it needs to be good.

Those are certainly not part of the norm I was speaking of. The norm are adaptations like Majikoi or Grisaia.

Actually, you're missing the point - you've proposed a rule of thumb, but everywhere I look, I see more examples that go against your rule than I see examples that support it. If your rule holds, it should be pretty easy for you to pluck out many more examples than I have provided counterexamples, in a given random sample. I've tried two random samples (VNs I happen to have played, and anime starting with the letter A), and everywhere I look, things come up against your proposed rule - the ball's in your court if you want to keep arguing for your claim.

[ChaosRaven]

3 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

Actually, you're missing the point - you've proposed a rule of thumb, but everywhere I look, I see more examples that go against your rule than I see examples that support it. If your rule holds, it should be pretty easy for you to pluck out many more examples than I have provided counterexamples, in a given random sample. I've tried two random samples (VNs I happen to have played, and anime starting with the letter A), and everywhere I look, things come up against your proposed rule - the ball's in your court if you want to keep arguing for your claim.

Aokana has a rating of only 6.78 on MyAnimeList, so it's considered much bigger crap than Majikoi or Grisaia by the vast majority. I didn't watch it myself though, just saying...