Lucia’s maid scene used up valuable screen time and probably turned off a lot of anime only viewers who are actually interested in the already hard to follow plot. That, and the Lucia/Shizuru hugs were super misleading because it didn’t even seem like a joke. Nobody knows what they should be expecting, harem/fanservice or an actual story.
The comments section of the episode was filled with those who are confused or who are constantly reaffirming that it will get better or that it’s not supposed to be a harem and that scares me.
I understand why this episode was made the way it was though. They wanted to show the viewers that Kotarou keeps pushing the club to investigate leads and go on various adventures to make memories, while not using up too much time. The montage idea wasn’t terrible but I thought it was poorly executed. It was rushed, tried to seem funny without any of the buildup for the punchlines that were in the VN, and did nothing to add to the personality of each character. I even had a hard time following the montage, let alone anime-only viewers.
In my opinion, the occult club activities were the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the fun and interesting aspects of each heroine, but they still seem like the cliches they were built off of. They really needed to showcase the more unique aspects of their personalities to make them enjoyable to watch. What they could have done, was stuck with one of the club activities and make sure the jokes actually hit, with actual character development. Everyone just seems super awkward right now. Maybe after the one activity, they could show them striking the others off their list of leads to show how much time they spent together.
Another problem with the anime so far is that all the important information is being fed to the viewer too quickly. In the VN, only bits of info are slowly revealed so we have time to understand each major occurrence. All the parts that should be a big deal and make you excited for finally understanding another mystery just fall completely flat. Anime only viewers are bound to think: “Oh, another really weird thing was just randomly brought up then virtually ignored by the cast as if it’s natural. What’s the significance of all of this?”
If everything is made out to be important, nothing seems important.
The confusion is avoided in the VN by separating major info into the different routes and having slice of life elements in between, but most of it is either cut out, or badly adapted. I’ll cut them some slack though, since with all the important info that needs to be delivered, the time needed to pace the plot is non-existent in 13 episodes.
Finally, they are really pushing the environmentalism ideas a lot during the episode when it wasn’t necessary. I guess they were trying to show how the moral differences between the characters? A lot of comments on the episode complained they they’re just throwing “tree-hugging” propaganda in our faces. They’re making it more and more difficult for anime-only viewers to follow and enjoy it.
In all, even with the flaws, this episode was done better than most the others so far and I’m looking forward to seeing how they adapt the next part of the story.
