Anime News Thread

[weeblord]

Anonymous code being re-re-re-re-re-rewritten from scratch, Chaos Child remaining unacknowledged and Steins Gate getting over 9000 godawful projects literally nobody ever asked for

absolute state of sciADV series

[RoydGolden]

I actually think that sounds quite promising and cool. Stein's;Gate as a series is already pretty flavored in western sci-fi culture, so I don't think an American adaptation would necessarily be as outrageous as some of y'all are implying. Plus it doesn't have a lot of over-the-top character designs (Faris is the only blatantly "anime" looking character and she's meant to look gaudy in-universe so they could easily keep that) or flashy special effects that might be hard to adapt in a live-action format. As long as they manage to nail the chemistry and witty banter between the characters it could be a quite entertaining watch.

Also for weeblord's previous post, I'm pretty sure the anime's Eng dub already localized most of the meme references to western ones and it wasn't nearly as cringy as that. No need to be expecting the worst right off the bat.

[pinetree]

Considering they are trying to adapt anime into live action I think expecting the worst right off the bat is the only sensible reaction.

If it works out, then ok I guess, but it definitely won't lol

[Mattias]

Ruka's going to be hard to adapt. A nun maybe? But what kind of nun hangs around with Kevin Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch in their basement lab?

[RoydGolden]

Not to say there wouldn't be any issues adapting Stein's;Gate for a western audience. Some changes I can see coming up are making Mayuri a bit less childish, and Ruka's whole character-arc.

Mayuri's cutesy demeanour would probably seem jarring and forced coming from a grown actress rather than an anime character in a medium where the audience already is used to such tropes (unless they want to outright make her mildly mentally disabled or at least neurodivergent, which could be an interesting angle but would probably risk changing the story too much). She could still be ditzy and innocent, but not so much acting like a little kid.

Ruka's whole deal with being confused whether she's a boy or a girl reeks of coming from an era when trans issues weren't as well-known as they are now. Not to say there's nothing salvageable there, but I can easily see that raising some execs' red flags for things that might get a lot of people pissed off if handled poorly. On one hand her arc ends with Okabe swearing to affirm Ruka for being who she is regardless of her preferred gender, which is ultimately a positive message for trans acceptance. On the other hand he grabs her crotch to "prove" she's still a boy at one point and, at least in the Eng dub, outright calls her a "shemale" in one of his wild rants (albeit doing so as a backhanded way of raising her confidence, still it wouldn't exactly fly nowadays). It's a touchy subject is all I'm saying.

Okabe, Daru and Kurisu wouldn't have to be changed much at all since they're both quite grounded and well fleshed-out characters who could easily fit in a more "realistic" setting (Okabe has his mad scientist persona and crazy rants, but those are meant to be ridiculous in-universe so there wouldn't be any problem adapting that). Faris is anime as hell but again, she's supposed to be that way in-universe rather than just as an anime conceit so they could keep that as well. It does raise the question of if she'd still be a maid café waitress when the setting is presumably adjusted to America instead of Japan (assuming they don't do a Big Hero Six route and make it an alternate universe America that's assimilated way more of Japanese culture), but America has some fringe costume restaurants and the like too so that wouldn't necessarily be a problem. All depends on how they choose to handle it.

Whoo, I probably put way too much thought into this...

[Skull]

Ruka's going to be hard to adapt. A nun maybe? But what kind of nun hangs around with Kevin Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch in their basement lab?

After seeing Son Goku in highschool having to deal with bullies and trying to get the girls' attention... I just stopped questioning how far Western adaptations will take things.

[RoydGolden]

Ruka's going to be hard to adapt. A nun maybe? But what kind of nun hangs around with Kevin Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch in their basement lab?

As I said, Ruka would probably be one of the hardest characters to adapt. I didn't even think of the miko angle, but that would be tricky too. And since Japan is way more secular than the West and mainline Christianity still has pretty strict rules on gender roles, a crossdressing or trans nun would be a lot harder to believe than a crossdressing or trans miko. Or maybe the latter would be unbelievable in real life too (not really familiar with Japanese civil religion), but that's the kind of indulgence you can get away with in anime. Honestly I think either Ruka or Faris would be the characters most likely to be scrapped outright or heavily modified in a western live-action adaptation.

[Strange_One]

For more cheerful thoughts. I think the production company is supposed to be doing the SAO live action.

So we can see from that postmortem how bad it could be.

[Mattias]

Is that one coming first then?

Actually SAO as a movie series might be alright. Ready Player One with permadeath. Plus, less time means they'll have to scrap all the sexual assault.

[Rafflesiac]

Wasn't it a Netflix series?

[Laserman]

It was sold to Netflix.

[Strange_One]

Aye, if I understand it correctly, Skydance does the work, Netflix distributes.

Comments from a dedicated follower of such things

It’s funny because the live action Steins;Gate is being treated as the most important of the 10th anniversary announcements (as #10), but Chiyomaru said before that a live action version would be aimed at people who weren’t S;G fans lmao

I’ve seen some people blaming Hollywood for the live-action Steins;Gate, but Chiyomaru has been talking about the possibility of a live action version since at least 2016.

In the booklet of the ‘Sound of Steins;Gate’ music collection, he brings up some ideas for a live action version:

-Aim it at people who know nothing about Steins;Gate

-Make it “completely different” from the original, don’t even try to be faithful

-More romance for mainstream audiences

-Okabe is a detective rather than a “mad scientist”

-Daru is a hot guy who is a genius hacker

-Mayuri is the one with Reading Steiner, although it isn’t perfect. At first she’s assumed to have a juvenile form of Alzheimer’s

So make no mistake: Chiyomaru is very gung-ho about the live action version

this will help to partition it in a segregated part of my mind for incineration.

Sounds kinda like the Your Name adaptation

[pinetree]

Make it “completely different” from the original, don’t even try to be faithful

The only way for this to be good. Though I'm not fond of his ideas for the changes either.

[Laserman]

Bleach Creator Kubo Tite's New Work to Be Unveiled at AnimeJapan 2020
I'm so excited for this. Like what will his next work be?

[weeblord]

Chiyomaru is commonly known as """THE CREATOR OF STEINS GATE""" but he is not the writer of steins gate, or any other SciADV VN either. He's the boss of SciADV, and a concept guy. Its up to the individual writer to form a coherent story of his loose ideas. the only SciADV title thats his own is occultic nine, widely panned and always forgotten.

If it were a Steins gate adaption, i would feel a lot more comfortable having the scenario writer of steins gate in charge of it rather than chiyomaru. But if its gonna be its complete own thing with no connection to the original Steins gate then maybe they can get a good writer and weave a decent story out of chiyomarus ideas just like how the original VN was conceived. The thing with chiyomaru is, he has lots of cool ideas that undoubtedly formed the groundwork for SciADV's identity... but he also has some godawful ones, and sometimes he's REALLY insistent they need to be implemented (Hana route in Chaos Child...)

[bassgs435]

Don't forget how Anonymous;Code eternal delays are because the dude is contantly having the game rewritten from scratch. Also, how O;9 VN had no more stuff than other versions of the story (LN, Anime, manga) and how he promised release in more platforms that'd have more story and a patch to add said additional story to the already released versions of 0;9 VN, but since he said that years ago he STILL hasn't released said 0;9 complete.
I'll also mention him not having any idea on wether he wants SVN to be it's own thing (0;9 and A;N) where SciAdv is fiction, or if he wants SVN to just be the new title for SciAdv and 0;9 and A;N would actually be connected to the rest of it. He's changed his story of how this goes various times

[weeblord]

Yeah, id be lyin if I said i hold the guy in high regard. Mans completely washed up. And as a fan of the medium, what he did with Steins gate elite and his recent vision regarding VNs as a whole makes me nauseous.

[RoydGolden]

Aye, if I understand it correctly, Skydance does the work, Netflix distributes.

Comments from a dedicated follower of such things




this will help to partition it in a segregated part of my mind for incineration.

Sounds kinda like the Your Name adaptation

Giving Mayuri Reading Steiner is actually a really interesting idea to expand her role in the story, since by the end (at least in the anime) she pretty much ends up being a damsel-in-distress for Okabe to save. That would also explain why she often seems "out of touch" with reality, beyond being just ditzy. Some of the other changes seem more dubious though. I can hardly imagine Okabe without his mad scientist persona, for instance.

[Mattias]

But if Mayuri has Okabe's power then doesn't the whole back half fall apart since the person who knows the timelines are changing keeps dying over and over. Sure Okabe would try and stop it, but without knowing there's a timeline where she didn't die, and it got changed to one where she does, he only throws himself against that problem over and over, without knowing he has to undo all the stuff they changed in the run up.

[weeblord]

any speculation on how certain plotpoints would work might be a waste of time because imo it sounds like theyre gunna throw everything away and just make it from scratch

Wouldnt surprise me if the only similarity between the two ended up being the short summary of “a gang of pals change worldlines with the power of textmessages”.