I stumbled across this on a blog ages ago~ I didn’t know that was you~! >A< I can’t remember how I found it though…
I was either randomly searching for Rewrite stuff, or someone on Twitter sent the link to me…
Yeah I have a blog I use rather infrequently to dump random things every now and then, I was just thinking of a way to get some discussion here and remembered it.
Rewrite was the first Key VN that I’ve ever read. Before that, I only had watched the anime adaptations of Key’s works (which were generally more than enough for me to like them). That’s kind of ironic, since I began reading Rewrite knowing full well that it was departure from their style and that Maeda was not writing anything.
So, I’ll try to keep it short (already wrote a full review for a Brazillian site that I participate): To me, Rewrite was good, but not a “masterpiece” by any means.
You see, my main problem with the story is it’s lack of consistency. Even though the multiple writers format does pay off during the experience (to me, one of the best aspects of Rewrite was not knowing what was coming up next, since the routes were so different), it’s also it’s biggest weakness. The routes are just so different and the story gets so convoluted that somethings were simply “out of their place” in my opinion.
While the protagonist changing his ways through varying circunstances in the differing routes is a given in most visual novels, here I just couldn’t buy into all of Kotarou’s “mutations”, with the biggest drawback being Akane’s route, where I felt he was simply going with the script without any actual resolve or much character development until the very end. While in Terra route Kotarou struggled to find strength in his power for an example, in Chiahaya’s route he pretty much becomes a super-hero fairly easily with all the shounen tropes and such.
Lucia’s route was one of the best to me, but it’s just waaaay too unrelated to the bigger picture. She does virtually nothing in the rest of the story and her backstory and struggle, which I found to be the most engaging, is simply not even mentioned as an issue in the rest of the VN.
The salvation thing was also quite confusing to me, as it happens differently in two routes (three, if you count Terra) for no real reason. We just have to kind of assume that the Key had some sort of power as to how the whole shebang would take place, and she decided to it differently from time to time.
Also, characters that served purpose only on their respective routes to never be seen again, mostly the villains. Midou, Tenjin, Tenma, Brenda, Takasago (though he still makes a brief appearance in Terra) and, the ones that actually got me kind of pissed, Gil and Pani. I just loved those two, and they only have any sort of role in two routes. It’s like they don’t exist on all the other routes, and the reason they are not summoned by Kotarou in Moon to at least support the fight was just like a “screw you, they’re not my characters” by Tanaka Romeo to me. I kept hoping they would somehow appear in Terra, but nope. Midou’s group is also not an issue outside of Chihaya’s scenario. I guess Gaia deals with them offscreen in some unmentioned way every other time, even though they are stated to possess three of the strongest familiars in the whole organization.
Also, while Moon got me really pumped, I don’t think Terra offered a proper payoff to such a long visual novel. It had it’s fair share of really nice moments, but also a lot of scenes and arcs that I think dragged on for waaay too long (the middle east portion comes to mind…also, I think this whole portion was just bizarre and came out of left field). Terra was like a roller-coaster of quality to me, and I still have mixed feelings about the ending. While I think it made sense with the overall message of the story and had a nice bittersweet feeling, it also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
All of those things might make it sound like I dislike Rewrite, but that’s far from the truth. I liked it overall, it was a very interesting read full of very good ideas and deep, emotional messages. It’s just that for every outstanding moment (every route has at least one), there were scenes that dragged too long, spriteless characters, consistency issues and the like.
Wow…that’s one long post…hope somebody reads it, hahaha.
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Yeah, Rewrite is hurt the most by its abysmal production quality and multiple writers.
Every KEY game has multiple writers, mind you, but they don’t usually suffer from it quite so much either because there’s some actual oversight or because the storyline is simple enough to not need that kind of consistency.
That said, routes are pretty consistent within but not between writers… the reason that Salvation is so different in Shizuru’s route and in Akane/Terra is because I don’t really think Tonokawa knew what Salvation really entailed, and that lack of understanding of Romeo’s concepts is a pretty big issue with his routes in general.
Lucia, by the way, was added later in development (even though her route was finished first) which is probably why she’s not really involved in anything else…
I don’t really consider it out of left field, but the funny thing about that section that nobody really realizes is that Midou and his friends make an appearance in it.
I see this complaint a lot. Can you articulate why? Because I absolutely loved Terra’s ending.
I moved 4 posts to an existing topic: Rewrite - Terra Discussion
Focus was shifting heavily to Terra, so I cleaned it up a bit.
Since it might be announced one of these years, I was wondering what everyone’s thoughts were on a Rewrite anime adaptation.
How does everyone think it would work? I sort of doubt the approach from the previous Key adaptations would fit well with how the routes play out…
Well I thought Clannad and Little Busters! would have had the Higurashi approach… but neither did x.x
Rewrite is a lot more dependent on arcs being separate “routes” but I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow trimmed it down to a single true route~ ^^;
Well, the issue I have with that is that, like, Moon/Terra pretty much -have- to be separate, yeah?
You could mush all the heroine routes together, sure, but if you already have separate “timelines” (not really an accurate word in Rewrite but you get my drift) for the true routes, than you already have a precedent for -not- mushing them together, you know?
…Really, it’s obvious why nobody has picked this up yet.
I can imagine them scrapping a bunch of events, and fusing Lucia and Shizuru’s routes together, and Chihaya and Akane’s together. Each time a route ends, Kotarou leaves and moves on to helping the next heroine with as little romance as possible. That’s just bad memories of past adaptions though ^^;
It’s entirely possible to have the world reset after each route. Spend episodes 1-3 on the common route, 4-6 on Kotori’s, 7-9 on Shizuru’s, 10-12 on Lucia’s, 13-15 on Chihaya’s, 16-18 on Akane’s, 19 on Moon, and 20-24 on Terra. Of course, a couple of episodes will be spent on fanservice/random filler episodes.
If you think about it, without Kotarou’s internal monologue, and the insane common route, a lot less happens.
It’d be pretty butchered for an anime… but a Rewrite anime is gonna end up butchered anyway~ ><
That… I don’t think you understand how long some parts of the game are, heh.
Moon in one episode, Terra in four and the Common Route in three would be… pretty bloody insane. That’s not even butchering, that’s outright removing vast chunks of content.
Most of the heroine routes, at least the ones that aren’t Akane’s, could probably be done in 3/4 episodes though, yeah.
Ahaha~ I read it 
How could I not understand how much time I spent on it?
Moon was pretty short~ It could fit into one episode. Two would be the perfect amount, but one would still get the important stuff in~
The common route of Rewrite was longer than it needed to be. It’s purpose is to introduce the characters, and set up the connections that form in the club. Three episodes is a good amount, that doesn’t sacrifice much, but doesn’t drag on and scare away potential viewers.
4 episodes is a bit short for Terra, but I believe it is the minimum amount necessary. Young life/Training for an episode, Mid-east for an episode, return events for an episode, and the concluding battles for an episode~
You could always bump it up to a 26 episode anime and give Terra 6 episodes anyway.
Yeah I think Taka’s count is pretty solid. If JC ends up doing it after Little Busters, then I could see them fitting it all into a 2-cour season. It doesn’t need as many episodes as LB.
…It’s thirty thousand lines and 1 MB longer than Little Busters, guys.
I really don’t feel that the common route is “longer than it needs to be”, especially if you’re comparing it to LB’s, which is also primarily character introductions and setup, is also very long, and wasn’t trimmed-down to that extent for the anime.
For that matter, IMO some of the best moments in the game are in the common route and… honestly, how would a high school club comedy “scare off potential viewers”? What? That’s literally what’s popular these days, heh.
I, uh, don’t really think you can cover all that adequately within 80 minutes.
If you’re willing to cut out Kotarou’s narration, sure, you could compress the entire game into just two-cours, but… the thing is that his narration forms the majority of the text in Moon/Terra, and is also where most of his characterization happens. That’s not going to work.
I guess if all you want out of a Rewrite anime is to see your favorite character moments devoid of context or meaning, sure, but I view an anime as an opportunity to fix the myriad things that are wrong with the game, not make them worse.
We’re just being pragmatic, Kaisos. In a perfect world Rewrite would be 4 cours and Little Busters would probably be 6. The chances of Rewrite getting more than 2 cours seems slim, though. We’re looking at the absolute minimum number of episodes you’d need to convey the story in the Anime format.
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Yup, this isn’t how I’d like the anime to be… But squeezing a VN into the minimum amount of episodes it needs is a common occurrence in the anime world
Of course Kotarou’s narration would be largely cut, as was Riki’s and Tomoya’s and every other VN protagonist in an anime. Judging from MAL comments, narration is one of the “annoying” parts of the Litbus anime.
Rewrite would deserve the big 48-episode treatment, but it’s not gonna get it. We’d get 24-26 episodes at best~
Also, I have to agree that the Rewrite common route doesn’t need to be as long as it was. In Little Busters, the fun times spent together and the bonding between the group was the foundation that made the endgame drama so impacting. Rewrite, sure it’s significant, but it hardly requires as much attention as Little Busters’ common route. Just a few episodes showing the group having fun together, and the gradual unveiling of the mystery surrounding everything. I did appreciate how it tricked you into thinking this was a mundane world, and then throws you deep into the supernatural.
I somehow got into Rewrite spoiler free.
God that transition was terrifying! A DRAGON!!!
One of the big parts of Rewrite’s story is that the club was never… connected. They all stuck around each other, but it wasn’t really “friendship.” Kotarou’s whole driving force in some routes is that he wants the club back, because they didn’t get enough time to develop a bond.
All I want from a Rewrite Anime is a 13 episode adaptation of Sakuya’s Chihaya’s route.
I’m not even kidding, I’d prefer that to a shoddyly put together full adaptation.
So it seems that I completely disagree with everyone.
[quote=“Aspirety, post:28, topic:37”]
Just a few episodes showing the group having fun together, and the gradual unveiling of the mystery surrounding everything. [/quote]
Like, just getting the group together takes three weeks in-game. While I think that, yes, this could be dealt with much more quickly, I don’t really agree that you can pare down the entire common route to just a few episodes.
Without enough buildup, without enough time to get to know Kotarou and the rest of the occult club, the Nov. 13th event kind of comes out of nowhere, and lacks the impact it could otherwise have… while it really, really is a bit long, I’m not the only person whose favorite moments in the game are in the common route.
Most VNs don’t have nearly as much text as Rewrite and even most Key VNs don’t have as much happening in them as Rewrite does, you know?
Also, regarding the narration in Little Busters… that’s not really what I’m talking about. From what I’ve heard the LB anime actually pauses the action to let Riki narrate, and that’s -terrible- in an animated format. Nobody should ever do that. I’m talking about how, say, Bakemonogatari or Haruhi approach protagonist narration.
I’m just going to go on for a bit here. WALL OF TEXT ALERT
Something in particular I feel strongly about (and that most people will disagree with) is that Terra should absolutely not be covered in the same season Moon is. That is, Terra should be its own thing, its own season, and IMO it has enough potential material to support an entire cour… but more because Moon’s ending is just about the perfect cliffhanger to end a two-cour season with, and it’s (mostly) conclusive enough that if the anime bombed there wouldn’t be a pressing need for another.
Then there’s Terra having just about nothing to do with the characters and situations of the previous routes… I’m bad at explaining it, but Moon feels more like the true ending of Rewrite, while Terra is the true ending of Moon. If that makes sense. Just shoving Moon and Terra together (whether as “Rewrite S2” or as the end part of a two-cour adaptation) reduces the impact each of them have on their own, IMO.
The real “problem” I see with a Rewrite adaptation is how to treat the heroine routes, when three of them are largely irrelevant and all of them tell different stories about the end of the world… in an anime, there’s inherently continuity between one episode and the next, and even if you were doing an omnibus format there’s only so many times the threat of the world ending can arise without it getting tiresome, without it losing the impact it would otherwise have.
I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and there are two approaches I see that could both “work” and do justice to the better parts of the game’s material:
- The “Why Don’t You Like My Favorite Heroine” Approach:
Common route (6-7 episodes) --> Kotori’s route (3-4 episodes) --> reset --> Chihaya/Shizuru/Lucia ‘combined’ route (5-6 episodes) --> reset --> Akane’s route (5-6 episodes) --> Moon (3 episodes) --> second season --> Terra (12 episodes)
There are good ideas in Lucia’s, Chihaya’s, and Shizuru’s routes, but they’re wrapped up in a great lot of irrelevancy (since the main writer had nothing to do with them) and don’t accomplish anything major in terms of furthering the metaplot… why not a route primarily about the Gaia-Guardian conflict as seen from the Guardian POV? Sort of an anti-Akane-route, something the game is lacking. Chihaya’s ending (the best part of that route) even works well here, and I think a happy, uplifting ending in between the endless despair of Kotori and Akane works well. Since I’m the only person who would really like this, there’s also:
- The “Does This Even Count as an Adaptation Anymore” Approach a.k.a The “Touka Gettan” Approach:
Anachronic assortment of standalone stories loosely (or not) adapted from the heroine routes, the common route, Harvest Festa, the various officially-published manga, light novels, and artbooks (20-ish episodes) --> Moon (the remaining episodes) --> second season --> Terra (12 episodes)
This, I think, works in a way a straight adaptation would not, because it can evoke the themes, some events, and overall tone(s) of the game in a format specifically designed for a television anime. It avoids the pitfalls of typical eroge adaptations, would be -incredibly memorable-, and fits well with what the common route and heroine routes actually are (that is, possibilities recorded in the Aurora as being viewed by Moongari)… the only drawback is that it would require a godly series comp and/or an actual writing staff, but to be genuinely good a Rewrite adaptation would require that anyway.
Yes, I know I’m crazy. Thank you.
It came out of nowhere anyway Totally freaked me out~
Nope~ We are just on different pages~
I agree that Rewrite would need lots of episodes to stand strong alongside the VN. I think that the anime should need lots of dedication to different sides of Kazamatsuri, and the director would really need to organize it well. It should be fast-paced without feeling rushed. It should emphasize the unknown to keep the audience interesting: how will the answers be revealed? And each route should bring something to the overarching plot line.
Buuuut I’m not talking about what I want from a Rewrite anime, or what a Rewrite anime deserves. That’s a whole different discussion~ I believe that it is unlikely for Rewrite to fall into the hands of a studio that will preserve Rewrite’s length and complexity. This is why I started my side of the discussion with “I can imagine them…”
I have no problems with your vision of a Rewrite anime… I just don’t see it happening as perfect as you envision.
