Rewrite Anime - Episode 5 "Asahi Haruka"

Key Discussion
#17

I liked Sunbright as a ED, but I’m starting to miss Philosophyz and Sasayaka na Hajimari…

I don’t think it’s worth complaining about how fast it went anymore, but yeah it was rushed. However, I think they covered enough for an anime-only viewer to understand what’s happening.

One small thing that bothered me was Nishikujou opening her eye(s) for the first time. I remember when it happened in the VN I was screaming “WTF” at my computer and sent screenshots to people saying “OOOOOOOOOH MAH GOD” because it was that big of a plot twist to me. But now, it just becomes an “empty” threat because now we know that she can be threatening, but when she does something threatening, viewers will just say “oh yeah” and won’t get the same shock/disbelief. However, I understand it’s placement in this episode. It’s the turning point for the show, where Gaia and Guardian are known to the viewer and it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s not your average school show. Adding another plot twist in showing Nishikujou’s other personality helps to reinforce this. Still a little miffed, but it’s not a big deal so I’ll let it slide I guess.

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#18

The part of Lucia’s route they chose to adapt has so many suspense and mystery elements that this episode felt out of place. Lucia’s route in the VN is really weird too compared to the rest of the game but its jarring going from a pretty sweet episode last week to this mess this week and probably back to a more casual tone next week.

The parts that they did adapt they did well but the pacing is so god awful that everything except for the chapel scene felt ham fisted. They spent so much time rushing through exposition to set up the reveal that there was no time for any subtlety.

The best part of this episode was them continuing to build of of Kotarou’s relationship with Shizuru that they developed last week, even though we only got to see her for like two minutes.

Most importantly no parfait scene 3/5

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#19

Lucia’s story was one of the longer ones in the novel, and I liked the suspense of figuring out what Asahi Haruka was during the start of her story. We knew it was Lucia within the first third of the episode, so it didn’t have the same horror and mystery feel in the anime.

Sunbright vocal arrangement is A+++

Needs more giant desserts.

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#20

Perhaps it’s my Lucia bias, but this was the single best episode of the series so far for me. The entire chapel scene was deliciously over the top and I’m not even mad, though at that point I wished they’d have just rolled with it and made Kotarou’s rewriting the most epic thing ever in the world instead of letting it just kinda… happen. But whatever. They did a good job of including Ryukishi’s unreliable narration without making it feel weird and out of place! And of course we’re actually starting to see the plot getting set in motion (although the post ED scene was so silly I had to laugh out loud) which is hype.

Of course the episode was far from perfect and there are many, many criticisms I could make, but right now I’m just like screw it, I’d rather spend the next hour rereading the Lucia date scene.

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#21

I really enjoyed this episode, it would have been nice to get the full ryushiki07 mystery suspence of asahi haruka but this was a preety good adaptation although it was rushed. There was alot of things I would have liked to get animated from Lucia’s route but because of the time constrants I am not too let down by it. Overall this was a really well done episode. Although the orginization reveal was anticlimactic it was a good introduction to who is on what group and what the true plot is. On another note omg they played sunbright ugh that was a wonderful ending song, and that ending preview mmmm can’t wait to see lucia and shizuru in all their epic glory.

#22

“Lock On!” > Everything.

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#23

Since everyone has already said most of what I want to say, I’ll just tl;dr most of my thoughts: It was rushed, even more so than the past episodes, but they still somehow kept the narrative more-or-less consistent, so it’s alright.

One of the things I noticed, though, was that the dialogue in one part of the story felt a bit disjointed, perhaps due to cutting a lot of lines. I noticed this from the part where Kotarou said he wanted to dispel the Asahi Haruka rumor. But it feels consistent to his character more-or-less, so that doesn’t feel particularly bad an issue.

And I’m pretty sure the sudden tone shift near the end of the episode was just used as an excuse to use Sunbright as a track. :)) (Not like I mind, I like Sunbright but where muh Sasayaka na Hajimari)

I also like Lucia’s combat outfit in the post-credits scene. (Scratch that, I liked that post-credits scene as a whole. So badass.) A bit too puffy, but thank god it’s not on the side of stripperrific.

Kotarou in that long-sleeved shirt tho ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I think he totally suited that outfit.

EDIT: The anime really loves their Scene Shifts There man. I can see why; it’s such a cinematic track it really works. I hope they don’t use it too much though.

#24

So the point of the episode is the exposition regarding Guardian, Shizurucia and whatnot, but why did they have to mix in the stupid mystery Like, it wasn’t even a good mystery in the first place, so they should have just scrapped it for a more streamlined story.

Maybe if the script had been something like this:

  • Shizuru drags Lucia to the club room. The atmosphere is understandably awkward. She hands Kotarou the tips from her mailbox (that thing was adorable btw). Cue exposition same as the anime. Lucia is visibly disturbed and tells them to not pursue this one then she storms off. Kotarou says he’ll talk to Yoshino and then we cut.
  • Yoshino does the same stuff but doesn’t hand Kotarou the list, so he can’t progress.
  • Left without an option, he turns his focus to Lucia and Chihaya’s fight. He goes down and talks to Shizuru. She tells him the entire story about Lucia’s powers, but it’s off screen, so the viewer doesn’t know.
  • Using this information, Kotarou tricks Lucia into helping with a fake investigation. After that you can splice in Haruka scenes to get sympathy and show Lucia’s inner struggle between facing up to her problems and avoiding them.
  • Santa Brosia scene could play out basically the same; you just need a place for Kotarou to explain that Shizuru told him.

This theory crafting is extremely hard without a grasp of how long scenes would be, but I guess that’s about it.

Other random ramblings then. I have a bit of a love/hate thing with the vocal Sunbright. It’s a cute, catchy song, but it makes reference to an awkward scene from Harvest Festa which I would rather not remember. It also slightly bothers me how they show Lucia firing her gun on the cue “Lock On.” It should end with her pointing at the screen after having found her target; she shouldn’t actually fire. There are arguments for doing it like they did, for example, how holding the gun up is a more recognizable pose then pointing it at the screen, but it doesn’t mesh with me.

Finally, Lucia’s battle outfit just looks silly. Why would it be a frilly dress? Shizuru’s outfit looks like it’s from Matrix, and Lucia’s outfits looks like it’s from a maid café. It preserves her silhouette, but I can’t help thinking that I’m just going to laugh my ass off every time I see it.

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#25

I actually agree with Helios for once. I don’t understand why people are saying this episode was better than the last; it’s several times more rushed (several hours content vs one scene), and arguably the whole mystery event was unnecessary. You could’ve still had the hammy scene in the chapel without any of the mystery. Maybe it’s because I’ve read it before but I found it extremely hard to follow, and hard to tell how obvious it was meant to be that Lucia did it.

Not saying this episode was bad, but i find the inclusion of the mystery questionable, like it doesn’t really contribute anything to the narrative.

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#26

As usual, not a fan of the episode, although it’s worth noting in this case that I was not a fan of this part of Lucia’s route or her character as a whole in the visual novel.

It especially bothers me (and this applies to Shizuru as well) that Lucia just has a seemingly random assortment of powers that are basically specifically geared to evoke a tragic emotional response. As in, it felt like they just wrote her like “Let’s think up some really sad story, like not being able to touch living things, and then just conjure up a power that would prevent her from doing so. Oh, she can also break glass by telekinesis, and things she holds vibrate as well , because reasons.” This is even worse in the anime, where the impact of Lucias superpower combo platter on her person isn’t explored in full. You don’t get as much of a sense of her isolation, and really they should’ve just opted to not adapt this material IMO.

As others have said, the mystery is insanely awkward here. It doesn’t even feel like a mystery - I’m not sure just how obvious or not obvious it was supposed to be that everything was Lucia’s doing. The lack of first person narration also means you don’t see how much Kotarou is mentally freaking out, reducing the paranoia effect (which is also a criticism I have of a certain other adaptation of a certain other work written by Ryukishi07).

It seems that this episode is serving a similar purpose to Kotori’s route in the original visual novel, in that it establishes the major underlying conflict of Rewrite. This is made insanely weird by the fact that they decided to just bulldog through part of Lucia’s route to reach this conclusion. Ostensibly the point of the episode was setting establishment and to build Lucia’s character, but the former was muddled by the runtime of the latter, as it was suddenly hamfisted down the audiences throat in an infodump at the end of the episode rather than steadily built to. Conversely, the latter is ruined by the former because it feels like the only reason these things happened was so we could get to that infodump at the end.

And despite all that…I honestly thought this was the best episode of the anime so far.

#27

Actually, I’m still expecting the Parfait scene as transition from Lucia to Chihaya. If you remember, they still haven’t made up.

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#28

yeah i thought the same thing

#29

@ThePlasticSpork Lucia’s powers are explained as a compound of two causes. (VN Spoilers) Her poison and lack of taste is the consequence of Brenda McFarden’s crazy experiments to engineer her as a human capable of living in a post-apocalyptic world. The vibrating and smashing windows are both an extension of the Hunter ability she was born with, the manipulation of vibrations.

It makes sense when you think about it, and I think it also doubled as a compelling supernatural mystery in the early route.

#30

The more time I spend with translation as a concept, but across language and across medium, the more sensitive I’ve become to what must change.

I’ll double what most seem to have said here that they did the best they could with the time given. Complaining any more about that is essentially useless at this point as it would be beating a dead horse.

What I would like to complain about, though, and I have a feeling I’m in the minority here, is that basic designs (and the writing of some scenes as well) simply don’t translate well into animated form. Novels are great because the author provides the canvas and the palette, but you paint the picture. Visual novels are similar, albeit with a bit less freedom given to the reader. Anime is the clear opposite, with all power given to the creator and the watcher simply consuming it. I think Rewrite is a perfect example of outlandish ideas losing potency once given more “solid” form. Tertiary examples would be things like the school uniforms and costume/monster designs, most of which I would claim are pretty ridiculous in the original VN. More important examples would be, well, almost every scene adapted, haha. Much more lenience is rightly given a medium that directly depicts less.

Any who, I’m still baffled as to why they are writing their own new route if they’re still adapting all the others.

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Rewrite Anime General Discussion
#31

I’m aware of the VN explanation for why Lucia has her powers - but something being explained and feeling “natural” narrative wise are 2 different things. I can’t really explain precisely why I thought that because it’s been a long time since I read Rewrite and Lucia’s route in particular, but even after having it all explained I felt it just reeked of convenience for the sake of drama.

Either way, I highly doubt that the anime will actually get around to that bit you mentioned, although I suppose it’s possible. If we’re going to get 3 more heroine back stories on top of the “6th route”, it seems unlikely they’ll have time to dip further into Lucias story.

#32

Eating chips with chopsticks. I knew I’m not the only one who does it!

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#33

I think they went too deep into Lucia’s route. Last episode, I remember saying that Rewrite was taking a wrong turn, I still think so, but truth be said, I enjoyed the episode.
The animation got better in my opinion.
If you accept the fact that this episode is a quick summary of the “Asahi Haruka”'s part of Lucia’s route, you might enjoy it as much as I did.

But still, enjoying the episode doesn’t mean that the episode was actually good.
Going this deep into Lucia’s route in a 20 mins episode was a risk, it was going to be bad no matter what they did, but they actually did a good job summarizing that part of the route. And it had better storytelling here than Shizuru’s episode.
And I still hate how they are using the music, I was watching the episode on my phone, and I couldn’t hear the music well even on max volume. Music = better atmosphere. And it’s not like they are making new music, the music is already there why are they afraid to use it well? Rewrite had one of the best music collection I’ve ever heard yet the anime seems to be shy using it.

Also, Yay I guessed something right! The anime had introduced Gardian, and now to Gaia! However, I have a bad feeling about the last few seconds of the episode. Which is, I think This is the 4th time I’ve mentioned it… Them revealing things that aren’t supposed to be revealed that quick, which is Shizuru and Lucia’s battle gear, did they even show that outfit for Lucia in the VN?

Looking forward to see the next episode I think they’ll not processed to Gaia, but introduce us more to Guardian, and who knows, we might see the world destruction and start over again with Gaia in another line
This is just me guessing, or at least that’d be cool , or that’s just what I want to see haha

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#34

I’m pretty sure they did not use that outfit in the VN. [Lucia route]She was in her normal school outfit when she was fighting against Shizuru after the fact that Kazamatsuri was already filled with the poison Lucia had spread throughout the city.I don’t see why they would change her outfit at the post-credits ending.

As for the music itself, I do agree that they should use the soundtrack to its advantage as it is very impressive.

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#35

She needs a battle outfit that’s possible to animate. The normal one is too insane.

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#37

I’m quite neutral with this episode. I saw multiple good, bad, and other points, which I will have to describe here in a very cut-up fashion.

The good: I think everything they did flowed in very well to Kotarou learning about guardian. Arguably, wherever this story plans to go requires Kotarou to have deeper knowledge about guardian and most likely gaia as well; knowledge that he did not have in any single route in the VN. Showcasing a light introduction to Shizuru and Lucia’s route, I feel, was able to push the story to Kotarou learning about guardian in a fairly good way, and I couldn’t have imagined it in any better way. Heck, the entire reason why I always thought Rewrite would be difficult to adapt is that I couldn’t imagine how they would juggle the knowledge of both guardian and gaia while still being in the occult club, so, with that, I am fully satisfied with how they approached it.

The bad: The mystery lacked, well, mystery. Because of all the flashbacks connecting lucia and asahi haruka, I thought they made it a bit too obvious that lucia was actually haruka. Especially when Kotarou was remembering what Shizuru was telling him about Lucia, they decided to show what was obviously Asahi Haruka holding the dead animals. If that didn’t say the obvious, I don’t know what did. Frankly, I quite liked the mystery in Lucia’s route, and was fairly shocked finding out that Lucia = Haruka, so I thought they could do it in a more subtle way.

fite me irl

The neutral: The scene in the chapel. I absolutely loved the overly cheesy dialogue that Kotarou gives Lucia in the chapel; it’s part of the reason why I love the Lucia route so much! However, they went the route that pretty much every other VN adaptation uses, and pushed the feelings of romance into that of friendship, thus making the cheesy dialogue of “I am here for you” a lot less cheesy. And making me love it a lot less as well. It was done tastefully, but it isn’t my cup of tea, and was honestly a big gripe of mine in (Little Busters Anime) Kurugaya route’s adaptation in the anime.

The interesting: Kotarou permanently has anti-poison powers now. Or, at least, anti lucia poison. How will they use that in the rest of the series, I wonder. My only hope is they do not simply just sweep it under the rug, and properly utilize it in the story later on.

The I’m-not-supposed-to-like-this-but-I-do: That ending scene, including both the credits and the final animation, was just pure, unadulterated fan service for VN readers. The ending credits montage made absolutely no sense in context, the final scene seemed to be just randomly pushed on there… But man did I love every single second of it. Lock on!

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Rewrite - Lucia Konohana Route & Character Discussion