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Premiere Report - Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!


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StarfighterPegasus



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Posts: 149
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 3:21 pm Reply with quote
I'll give it a read, sounds like something I would be into. ecchi and Isekai.
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2858
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:01 pm Reply with quote
I wonder if it's an anime only thing ; I ahev read the author's3 isekai works and none of them hint at lolicon at all, just random flat chest jokes.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
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Joined: 17 Apr 2015
Posts: 3017
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:27 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
(The foolhardy villainess that our heroines first join forces to combat is a pedophile who's kidnapping young girls to "enjoy their company"—purely in a chaste way according to her, but the "joke" is that her drooling expression tells a different story.)

It'd be one thing if this pattern were limited to a few jokes about Adele's flat chest or other eye-rolling anime canards, but this lolicon element is prevalent enough that it becomes impossible to ignore that all the unnecessary gags about little girls are clearly a surface distraction from a sincere proclivity of the author's, which distracts from the otherwise charming comedy in all the worst ways.


I've read the first six novels Seven Seas has put out (along with another 40+ fan-translated chapters) and none of this is ringing any bells. The girls certainly didn't first join forces to fight a villainess, and the only major gags about little girls in the first volume came in the form of Slayers-level flat chest jokes.

It sounds like the anime adaptation has decided to go in a very different and disappointing direction. Sad

Edit: I went back and checked, and yeah, this is almost a completely different story from the novels. Adele doesn't meet the other three adventurers until after she spoiler[drops out of Eckland Academy], spoiler[takes up a new identity], and spoiler[flees to a different country to become a monster hunter]. This is a real mess of an adaptation, and I can't imagine any of the existing Japanese fanbase are going to be happy.


Last edited by BodaciousSpacePirate on Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
Posts: 3767
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:54 pm Reply with quote
BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:
Quote:
(The foolhardy villainess that our heroines first join forces to combat is a pedophile who's kidnapping young girls to "enjoy their company"—purely in a chaste way according to her, but the "joke" is that her drooling expression tells a different story.)

It'd be one thing if this pattern were limited to a few jokes about Adele's flat chest or other eye-rolling anime canards, but this lolicon element is prevalent enough that it becomes impossible to ignore that all the unnecessary gags about little girls are clearly a surface distraction from a sincere proclivity of the author's, which distracts from the otherwise charming comedy in all the worst ways.


I've read the first six novels Seven Seas has put out (along with another 40+ fan-translated chapters) and none of this is ringing any bells. The girls certainly didn't first join forces to fight a villainess, and the only major gags about little girls in the first volume came in the form of Slayers-level flat chest jokes.

Not to mention that the other three main girls aren't even enrolled at Eckland Academy: Adele meets them after she leaves!

It sounds like the anime adaptation has decided to go in a very different and disappointing direction. Sad


If that is true, it seems like it is more on the anime creators than the original author, especially since the director’s last work (and the series composer’s last work with the director, whom they work with often but not exclusively) was Uzamaid. Though the director and writer’s previous work didn’t have that series’s overt lolicon elements. I wonder if it will be a persistent element or if it will become more in line with the original. It’s unfortunate that this element may squander this opportunity to show how the genre can do something else, though there are still other opportunities next season.
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Catsplay



Joined: 24 Sep 2015
Posts: 381
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 4:59 pm Reply with quote
I don't see loli elements to be a negative whatsoever so that's a win for me <_< What does suck is that it's not going to be an accurate adaptation which bugs me more then anything.
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kotomikun



Joined: 06 May 2013
Posts: 1205
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:15 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Unfortunately, "Average" bares its Achilles heel often enough to lose out on a significant portion of the audience who might otherwise be excited for a cute comedy about four weird girls struggling to succeed at an RPG Academy—and by Achilles heel, I mean the specter of an unmistakable lolicon fetish.


It also sounds like it's going to alienate the portion of the audience who've read the books, which the anime apparently diverges from in the worst possible ways. Closest thing in the source material to lolicon I can think of is the bonus chapter where she crafts modern underwear, in a not-really-sexualized manner. Some of the sketches in the book are a little, uh, sketchy, but that's likely not the author's decision. That whole thing about a creepy pedophile villain is entirely anime-original.

Also sounds like they may have made the main character less intelligent for comedy/moe/whatever, which is a little silly since the premise is that she was a stressed-out child prodigy in her first life and wanted to become normal (but it backfired). Lot of planning and scheming and literal calculating in the books. Did they cut that out, too?

Merging the two school settings might be a good change, since it's a little confusing in the books how she goes to one school very briefly before ending up at another one. But there's a potential later plot development (haven't read that far myself) involving characters that are left out of this adaptation. So that would be an issue, if there weren't bigger problems to worry about. I guess anime still can't quite bring itself to take a mostly-harmless story about little girls and not make it weird.

zrnzle500 wrote:
the director’s last work [...] was Uzamaid.

So that's why we can't have nice things, in this instance. Sigh...
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Xavon



Joined: 09 Jan 2007
Posts: 366
Location: Minnesota
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 5:27 pm Reply with quote
I also see no mention of the Nanos. I hope the anime (which already sounds shaky to me) didn't decide to excise them...

It is sounding like the screenwriters and directors read some online reviews, rather than the actual books.

The Manga also had some significant deviations, but not this bad.

Or maybe the preview got it wrong?
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Sailor Sedna





PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 7:31 pm Reply with quote
Sigh... Pass. Anime hyper

And Uzamaid's director is working on this? [expletive] great, that's a huge red flag right there. This better be one of those "READ THE MANGA/LIGHT NOVEL!!!" anime where the original source material has none of that horrible stuff.
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Florete



Joined: 21 Jan 2018
Posts: 363
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 8:09 pm Reply with quote
BodaciousSpacePirate wrote:
Quote:
(The foolhardy villainess that our heroines first join forces to combat is a pedophile who's kidnapping young girls to "enjoy their company"—purely in a chaste way according to her, but the "joke" is that her drooling expression tells a different story.)

It'd be one thing if this pattern were limited to a few jokes about Adele's flat chest or other eye-rolling anime canards, but this lolicon element is prevalent enough that it becomes impossible to ignore that all the unnecessary gags about little girls are clearly a surface distraction from a sincere proclivity of the author's, which distracts from the otherwise charming comedy in all the worst ways.


I've read the first six novels Seven Seas has put out (along with another 40+ fan-translated chapters) and none of this is ringing any bells. The girls certainly didn't first join forces to fight a villainess, and the only major gags about little girls in the first volume came in the form of Slayers-level flat chest jokes.

It sounds like the anime adaptation has decided to go in a very different and disappointing direction. Sad

Edit: I went back and checked, and yeah, this is almost a completely different story from the novels. Adele doesn't meet the other three adventurers until after she spoiler[drops out of Eckland Academy], spoiler[takes up a new identity], and spoiler[flees to a different country to become a monster hunter]. This is a real mess of an adaptation, and I can't imagine any of the existing Japanese fanbase are going to be happy.

I'm a reader as well and this is exactly what I was thinking. It sounds less like an adaptation and more like a different spin on the same premise with (some of) the same characters. Hell, I don't even remember any flat chest jokes in the novels, only the occasional mention of Pauline being particularly busty.

spoiler[If she meets The Crimson Vow (Reina, Mavis, and Pauline) at Eckland Academy like this article suggests, how does she even go from Adele to Mile? They've advertised her as Mile, but she starts as Adele, and those three never knew her as Adele in the books at all. And it shouldn't even make any sense for Reina to be at Eckland at all unless her backstory is drastically different.]
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Yaafm



Joined: 11 Mar 2017
Posts: 31
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 9:08 pm Reply with quote
Is the author of the article so out of touch with the anime community? Superfans might watch it? Your average anime watcher will watch it. The people who wont will be the the artist snobs and such. Your high and mighty reviewers. Those people that pick out single frames of animation and shit on an entire show because of it.

Gah. Really bothers me when writers do not even know their own audience and generalize.
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kotomikun



Joined: 06 May 2013
Posts: 1205
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 10:49 pm Reply with quote
Yaafm wrote:
Your average anime watcher will watch it. The people who wont will be the the artist snobs and such.

This show would have had to vastly exceed expectations to get the average anime watcher to notice it; it's pretty niche even within its genre, not remotely Slime Isekai or Re:Zero levels of pre-popularity. MAL viewer counts for this season drop off quickly after the first 4 (Dr. Stone, Fire Force, Danmachi, and Vinland Saga), and people who use that site instead of "normal" social media are already more in the otaku sphere than most anime-watchers. Mediocre animation and questionable directing choices aren't going to improve its chances.

The lolicon stuff was probably thrown in to try to attract viewers, but, if anything, I expect that to backfire, because people who've read the novels won't like the change, and... well, I'd venture to guess that loli-fans have less awkwardly shoehorned options available, but I don't actually want to know. In any case, most anime fans aren't going to be drawn in just because of that, because most people wouldn't be, and anime fans aren't so far removed from the general population these days.
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AnimeFlyz



Joined: 31 Aug 2015
Posts: 363
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 10:51 pm Reply with quote
If what is said in this post is correct, it seems like this is gonna yet be another example of a butchered adaptation.
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Sailor Sedna





PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 11:14 pm Reply with quote
kotomikun wrote:

The lolicon stuff was probably thrown in to try to attract viewers, but, if anything, I expect that to backfire, because people who've read the novels won't like the change, and... well, I'd venture to guess that loli-fans have less awkwardly shoehorned options available, but I don't actually want to know. In any case, most anime fans aren't going to be drawn in just because of that, because most people wouldn't be, and anime fans aren't so far removed from the general population these days.


If it flops then I hope whoever made it will realize that genre itself doesn't make an anime, what makes an anime/manga is good storytelling, good, if not great animation, exciting action (if necessary), simple slice of life tones, and likable characters, it already is coming off to me like they're caring more about the shitty lolicon fanservice than actually telling a story and developing characters.

And to Yaafm, stating an opinion that you dislike a genre is not "snobbery."


Last edited by Sailor Sedna on Sat Sep 14, 2019 3:09 pm; edited 1 time in total
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murdock_tm



Joined: 06 May 2018
Posts: 22
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 11:27 pm Reply with quote
[quote="BodaciousSpacePirate"]
Quote:


Edit: I went back and checked, and yeah, this is almost a completely different story from the novels. Adele doesn't meet the other three adventurers until after she spoiler[drops out of Eckland Academy], spoiler[takes up a new identity], and spoiler[flees to a different country to become a monster hunter]. This is a real mess of an adaptation, and I can't imagine any of the existing Japanese fanbase are going to be happy.


This could be starting from the manga adaptation where spoiler[ the manga started with Mile the Adventurer. Then a few chapters into the manga she tells her companions about her school days. The school arc was a bit of an abandoned arc until she became Mile so maybe the consistent start makes sense ]
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StarfighterPegasus



Joined: 04 Oct 2013
Posts: 149
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2019 11:49 pm Reply with quote
kotomikun wrote:
Yaafm wrote:
Your average anime watcher will watch it. The people who wont will be the the artist snobs and such.

This show would have had to vastly exceed expectations to get the average anime watcher to notice it; it's pretty niche even within its genre, not remotely Slime Isekai or Re:Zero levels of pre-popularity. MAL viewer counts for this season drop off quickly after the first 4 (Dr. Stone, Fire Force, Danmachi, and Vinland Saga), and people who use that site instead of "normal" social media are already more in the otaku sphere than most anime-watchers. Mediocre animation and questionable directing choices aren't going to improve its chances.

The lolicon stuff was probably thrown in to try to attract viewers, but, if anything, I expect that to backfire, because people who've read the novels won't like the change, and... well, I'd venture to guess that loli-fans have less awkwardly shoehorned options available, but I don't actually want to know. In any case, most anime fans aren't going to be drawn in just because of that, because most people wouldn't be, and anime fans aren't so far removed from the general population these days.
I don't think it needs to, Shield Hero did well and it had negatives about it right out the gate. Goblin slayer also did ok. Instead of looking at this series like its going to be the next Attack on Titan or Naruto, we should just judge it based on its own performance.

So what if it has lolicon stuff in it, many other shounen anime has lolicon stuff in it, people just get use to it after awhile of watching the genre.
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