It is very rare for me to have read a manga before the anime comes out, mainly because I don't read as much manga as I watch anime. However, in the case of Kimi no Iru Machi, I got to experience that not-so-familiar feeling of going into an anime knowing what happens. So, for such the occasion, I want to critique the adaption of Kimi no Iru Machi with relativity fresh knowledge of that portion of the manga that was covered.
Now, I'm not one to judge a different medium based solely on how similar it is to the source material, mainly because I understand that different mediums have their own strengths and weaknesses. The other reason being that I actually don't want them to be identical because I could just watch/read the original and be satisfied. With that being said, I do feel like the adaption was pretty weak if I were to go purely off how the anime handled a bite-sized chunk of what was the Tokyo Arc.
I can split up my complains about the anime into three major points, but there are smaller ones, but they are far too nit picky to include them into the argument. So the first one is what makes the story move forward and is what is most important in a romance, that being the relationships.
Do keep in mind that there will be spoilers, but only up to where the anime ended. So for people worried about manga spoilers, there will be none, I just will lay down some detail in the manga that the anime skipped over for brevity.
Relationships
The most difficult thing to convey is making romantic relationship believable in a short amount of time. And when you don't find a relationship somewhat realistic, it is hard to care about the people involved. In the case of the anime, the relationship between Haruto and Asuka felt far more like a buffer to eventually get to Yukuki. It most likely has to do with the fact that there wasn't much development in the their relationship past friendship and possible sexy time.
Not only that, but the slow progression in romance that Haruto has is difficult to show what the relationship looked like in such a short anime. In the manga, Asuka was very forgiving on multiple occasions when Haruto got caught in a misunderstanding -- the biggest one being him and Shiori, who wasn't even mentioned in the anime, were caught in a love hotel together. That trust Asuka had for Haruto was clearly laid out throughout the manga, while the anime surprises you by introducing the fact of them dating after they got over Kazuma's death.
And that lax nature to most of the relationships is probably the main reason why the break up with Asuka and going back to Yukuki, wasn't as bittersweet as it was meant to be.
Supporting Characters
What amplifies the shallow feeling of the relationships is the fact that the supporting characters are almost not existent. The reason I find Kimi no Iru Machi, the manga, so compelling is the fact that all the characters you meet play some role in progressing the story; so by shafting those characters, it felt like there was less personality there to support their main characters, and more of an irrelevant stand in.
Take Haruto's childhood friends, Akari and Takashi, in the beginning Haruto's sister mentions that how similar they are to Asuka and Kazama, but they are never there to compare. Also they play a major part in Haruto's decision to not care what others think and break up with Asuka for Yukuki. In the anime, I think I might of seen them maybe once or twice; not only that, but they never suggested that Haruto would lose them as friends if he broke up with Asuka -- and that is far more of a shocker and a more powerful statement when Haruto chose to be with Yukuki and not his friends.
The only person that was done right was Rin. She is just as manipulative as ever, the only problem is the reason why Rin acts like this toward Haruto -- that being Haruto punched her brother, and Rin has a brocomplex and is very much protective of her brother. The detail might not be as important because she didn't do that much to screw with Haruto in the anime, but still a weird lack of explanation there.
Flashbacks
The last to this trifecta is all those wonderful flashbacks. This is the problem with starting on an arc that has a lot of things establish before the current events; you end up having to fill in the gaps for the viewer to have context, all the while trying to convince them to care about these events.
I have previous written about the rampant use of flashback on my blog, but to sum it up, every time it was used the pacing felt slowed down. And this problem was presented right at the start with about two or three episodes being filled with some flashback. These amount of flashbacks really do hinder me from even wanting to care for the characters -- and ironically, the flashbacks were intended to get you to care.
These kinds of problems can be difficult to tackle and they were formed by the decision to start in Tokyo; however, I wish they did a better job of not having to filling too many episode full of fluff, but it ended up feeling really forced to me.
Conclusion
It's hard to call the story itself bad, because I do like it seeing as I continue to read the manga. What the anime did poorly was represent all the characters that the story revolves around. Even with a good story, if you don't care enough for the participants in this rollercoaster, it is easier for you to walk away not affected, if all things came crashing down.
The anime adaption was pretty much a subpar piece that I, as a person who read the manga, didn't feel it represented the character correctly. By making the anime standard length of twelve episodes, it suffers from the sheer lack of detail, losing the one thing that kept people coming back for more, the fleshed out characters. That lack of dept left most of the characters feeling like shadows of the real character, with no real reason to make sound decisions making most of the drama feel unnecessary.
Orginally posted to the now shutdown sekijitsu.com: No Archive Found