It Happens, Man: Anime Adaptation 101

“Well, I better go back for the night. I made some roast beef and stuff for you guys in the fridge, so feel free to have some.”

Once the RPG session ended, Chihiro prepared to head home. He had just begun his second year of high school, and tomorrow was a school day. It was already late—and while their parents knew not to expect their child back early, coming home after the late-night anime block ended was out of the question.

“The buses have probably stopped running by now. You should take a taxi back,” Itsuki said, giving him a 5,000-yen bill.

“Oh, that’s fine. There’s still the train.”

“Yeah, but it’s a long walk between the station and home. No need to make people worry about you.”

“Yeah… All right,” Chihiro said, blushing a little and accepting the bill. “I’ll give you the change back next time.”

“Don’t worry about it. Think of it as an allowance.”

“Oh, I can’t do that. I’ll pay you back later on.”

Itsuki was already funding the food for Chihiro’s cooking, of course, but no matter how much he insisted on his brother keeping the change, Chihiro always stubbornly gave back the exact amount on the receipt. You couldn’t get that level of cooking at a restaurant even if you paid three times as much, but for some reason, his brother was always really weird about money.

“Thanks again, guys! I’ll watch the anime at home.”

With a bow, Chihiro left the room.

“You’ve got such a nice younger brother,” Haruto marveled. “Wish I had one like him. My sister’s just the worst… I bet he could teach her a thing or two.”

“Yeah, Chihiro’s pretty well put together… A little sister is worthy of high praise by virtue of her mere existence, but I don’t think your sister’s some exceptional rare species of non-sisterliness. It’s just that my brother’s overwhelmingly superior.”

“‘Species’? Dude. I mean, apart from her personality, my sister’s pretty perfect…but, yeah, personality’s probably the most important part. Sorry.”

He recalled how, when he mentioned this morning to his sister that he was going to watch episode one at Itsuki’s place, she flew into a sudden rage and verbally beat him to a pulp. It made him visibly wince. There really was nothing good about having a little sister.

“Well, you all hungry?” he said, trying to rally himself as he got the drinks and cooking ready.

There were roughly three hours left before the premiere of Chevalier of the Absolute World. It put Haruto on pins and needles, but the four of them would have to chill for just a bit longer, eating and drinking to pass the time.

“You never watched your white-box version?” Nayuta asked Haruto.

“It came in the mail yesterday, but no. I wanted to watch it live on TV and let the emotions move me in real time, you know?”

The “white-box version” was a DVD with the completed episodes written on them, passed out as samples to related parties. Despite being plain discs in jewel cases, they were still called “white boxes” in Japanese for historical reasons, dating back to when they were videocassettes in plain white cases.

These pressed discs were lower-quality and usually had issues that were fixed for the broadcast version, but generally featured the same content as what was shown on TV. Voice recording was generally done before actual animation, leaving actors to work with storyboards instead, so the only part of the Chevalier anime Haruto had seen so far was the tiny snippets from the preview videos.

“…Wait a second,” Itsuki said, looking confused. “I thought you said in the interviews that the battle scenes had tons of impact and I should ‘look forward to them’ and stuff.”

“Well, that’s how interviews are…”

Miyako’s face stiffened. She had the feeling she had learned something she shouldn’t have.

As they chatted, Haruto laid the spread out on the kotatsu table. There was roast beef, boiled mussels, clams steamed in wine, sauerkraut, marinated salmon, chicken rolls, a huge omelet stuffed with seasoned rice…

“We’re meant to eat that big-ass omelet today, right?”

Haruto thought it best to confirm. It was easily hefty enough to feed three people on its own, so it certainly wasn’t meant for Itsuki’s lunch tomorrow.

“Yeah, he whipped that up specially for you.”

“Oh. It looks good…but why a rice omelet?”

“Chihiro asked me what you liked. I said you like maids, and he said he meant what kind of food you liked, so I said ‘I dunno, whatever kind of food maids cook.’ So there you go. Maids make rice omelets; everyone knows that.”

“Um, yeah, I know that’s the typical offering at a maid café, but…”

“Exactly.”

“But I never said anything about enjoying maid cafés.”

“No?”

“No. I like maids in part because of the spirit they bring into their position, so I’m not attracted to some lady working part-time, dressing up as a maid and calling everyone who walks in the door ‘master.’ I want my maid to serve me, and me alone, I guess.”

The other three stared at Haruto as he laid out the details.

“Wow, Fuwa, you’re really…um…”

“You’re a plain old otaku on the inside, aren’t you?” Nayuta said, putting into words what Miyako couldn’t.

“N-no, not really, I’m just—”

“Given that you bought a hundred porn games in two years, I don’t think you got much room for excuses,” Itsuki mercilessly pointed out,

“Oh, all right, all right! I’m a total otaku at the core; you guys win. I got this look going just so I could look cool in college, too!”

Nayuta’s eyes opened wide as Haruto turned defiant. “Wow, Prince Manwhore, you mean you really aren’t a manwhore?”

“That’s what I’ve always told you!”

“So wait, are you, perhaps, Prince Chastity? Like, a total vir—”

“Stop! End of conversation! We got this huge omelet Chihiro made for us! Let’s write something on it with ketchup!”

Haruto grabbed a ketchup bottle, putting a forceful end to Nayuta’s accusation.

“Hmm,” Itsuki mused. “How about ‘Congrats on the Anime Launch!’ or something?”

“It’d be lame if I wrote that on myself. Someone else wanna do it?”

“Me and Myaa can. Give us a second to get ready, okay?”

Nayuta and Miyako left the living room. “Get ready?” a puzzled Haruto asked.

“Ah, just wait for ’em,” Itsuki advised.

“…?!”

After a moment, the two girls returned. They were dressed in maid outfits.

“Wha…?!”

Haruto’s eyes burst wide.

“Tee-hee-hee! What do you think, Itsuki?”

“I think I don’t give a crap about maids, just like I told you. Your master for today’s over there.” Itsuki coldly ignored Nayuta and her smile.

“D-don’t stare at me too much,” said a clearly fidgety Miyako.

“Wow… You did this for me?” Haruto’s mouth hung open.

“Sorry this is just cosplay instead of the real thing.”

“This was Itsuki’s idea, by the way.”

Itsuki turned away, a little embarrassed. “Yeah, well… It’s your special day, so…”

“Itsuki…!”

Haruto’s eyes were dewy with pure emotion. The two girls were wearing stereotypical French maid outfits—definitely costumes, made from cheap fabric—but simply dressing up for his sake was enough to make him overjoyed.

“Heh… You happy? Don’t say I never do anything for ya.”

“…Yeah. Thanks, Itsuki.”

As smug as Itsuki was acting, Haruto’s thanks were genuine. Until…

“…What’s that all about, Itsuki?”

“You dress us up as maids, and then you try to take all the credit? Talk about selfish!”

“Huh?” was all a confused Itsuki could manage to Nayuta and Miyako’s protests.

“We actually purchased one more maid outfit, you know.”

“Um…? Wait, Kanikou, you didn’t…”

“Come this way, if you could, Itsuki.”

Itsuki broke into a cold sweat as Nayuta and Miyako grinned at him.

“N-noooooooo!!”

Several minutes later…

“Ugh, why do I have to dress up like this…!”

Three maids appeared in the living room.

“Ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! But that actually looks good on you, Itsuki! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“I don’t care!”

Itsuki blushed in shame at Haruto’s uproarious laughter.

“It really does look nice on you,” the mischievous Nayuta commented.

“Yeah, um… Yeah. It does,” Miyako added, judging the look with nothing but complete seriousness.

“That doesn’t make me happy, you know! Maid outfits like this give me nothing but bad memories—wait, never mind…”

Itsuki grabbed at the ketchup bottle, his face largely the same color as its contents. “Let’s get this thing written! Con…grats…on…the…—Oh, shit, I’m running out of space.”

He made the classic rookie mistake of drawing the text too big to start. What was meant to be “Congrats on the Anime Launch!” sputtered out at “Congrats on the.”

“Wow, Itsuki, you’re more of the bumbling maid character.”

“What a klutz. Are you even literate?”

“Ugh…”

Itsuki gritted his teeth in frustration as the nearby veteran maids teased the new girl. Haruto, for his part, was actually digging the whole scene.

“Ah, don’t worry. I appreciate the thought a whole lot. Wanna crack open a beer?”

His first selection from the fridge was Gouden Carolus Cuvée van de Keizer Red. Gouden Carolus is the headline brand from Brouwerij Het Anker in Belgium, so named out of the brewery’s respect for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was raised nearby their headquarters. “Keizer” is their top-of-the-line beer label, a limited-edition bottle released on Charles V’s birthday.

The taste is, in a word, delicious—enough to completely change the way one thinks about beer in a single mouthful. Super good.

The high-quality hops’ bitterness works together with the refreshing, citrus-like sweetness to make it hardly feel like you’re drinking a 10 percent beer at all, but slosh it around the tongue a bit, and you can feel all the complex herbs and spices in the flavor as well. It’s easy to drink, but more than stands up to deep taste analysis, making it hard to turn one’s head away from—it does for the drinker, in other words, what the ideal light novel should do for its readers.

Unlike light novels, however, this beer was a limited edition and had a price to match. It wasn’t a session beer, but it was perfect for special occasions such as these.

“Here, I’ll pour it.”

Still blushing a bit, Itsuki the maid took the bottle from Haruto’s hands and poured out a glass for him. The beer, an elegant shade of gold, filled the glass and developed a fine head that covered the surface. He then poured glasses for Miyako and himself, providing some ginger ale for Nayuta.

“My writing idol, dressed up as a maid, serving me…!”

“Shut up, Nayuta. You’re just along for the ride… You may offer a toast, master.”

“Sure. Well… Cheers!”

“““Cheers!”””

Ting!

Everyone’s glasses clinked as they took a gulp.

“Whoa, this is really good!” Miyako exclaimed, it being her first time trying it.

“Isn’t it?” Haruto boasted.

“Oooh, wish I could drink it,” Nayuta grumbled.

“Go have a juice box or something, kid,” Itsuki replied. “…Ooh, this is good…”

“But you guys all drank while you were underage, didn’t you?”

Nayuta sounded pretty sure of the answer as she asked.

“Wh-what makes you say that?” Miyako countered.

“Well, Prince Manwhore is one thing, but Itsuki and Myaa, you seem a little too used to drinking, I think. That was definitely my impression when I saw you guys in Okinawa. You’re still both only twenty, right? Not even a year over the drinking age. Normally people your age would be having fruity mixed drinks and trying to act all adult with that.”

“Pfft! You have to be kidding me. I’ve been a man of refined tastes from the very beginning!”

“Y-yeah, me, too,” Miyako said. “And you sure have a hostile impression of what being twenty’s like! It’s not un-true, but…”

“Well, either way, we can drink, all right? And you can’t! Heh-heh-heh! It’s time to face facts! Facts, Kanikou! Bah-ha-ha-ha!” Itsuki was trying his best to deflect Nayuta’s astute accusation.

“Nnngh! This is why grown-ups are so unfair!”

“Ha! If it pisses you off that bad, hurry up and grow up!”

“What if I shout out ‘I’m an adult!’ pop out my tits and give you a big hug, Itsuki?”

“Then it’ll be time to say good-bye.”

“To your virginity?”

“No, to you! From the window!”

“From the window? That’s so mean!”

Nayuta pouted, then focused her attention on devouring the roast beef in revenge.

“Huh? Hey! There’s only twelve slices of roast beef! Three for each of us!”

“Ooh, I’m such a child, I don’t know how to do arithmetic too well. Mmm, this meat is yummmm-my! You grown-ups can just keep sipping on your beer, thanks!”

“Ughhh…”

“You people are all children,” Haruto laughed as the two of them carried on. He did indeed keep sipping on his beer, pausing for just a moment to fire off a tweet: “Only two hours until the big anime launch! My heart’s starting to race! Have fun watching it, guys! I’m watching with Itsuki at his place (° ε ^) ”

The alcohol addling everyone’s brains only added to the excitement, and the room was soon filled with laughter. Wonderful food, wonderful beer—and wonderful friends. Time flew by, and by the time Chevalier of the Absolute World’s hour creeped up, Haruto couldn’t have felt better about himself. “Here we go, guys! \(^▽^)/”, he tweeted as the four of them gathered around the TV.

There, Haruto’s happiness met its end.

It was thirty minutes after the episode began.

The end credits were over, the “Next Episode” blurb was over, and the subsequent program was already running, but Haruto still sat glassy-eyed in front of the TV, not moving a muscle.

The cause of this was clear enough that Itsuki, Miyako, and Nayuta didn’t say anything. They couldn’t. So they watched Haruto nervously. The TV was playing a romantic-comedy anime—another episode one premiere, just like Chevalier of the Absolute World. There was a girl, looking perfectly normal, in front of a perfectly normal background, moving around perfectly normally, speaking perfectly normal lines.

“…Sure must be nice,” Haruto muttered as he watched.

Unable to endure any more, Itsuki shut off the TV with the remote.

To be totally blunt, episode one of the Chevalier of the Absolute World anime was trash.

First, the animation work was terrible, something even an amateur could see. The characters were all bungled, and sometimes the same character would look completely different in another scene. Even Itsuki, who had read the entire series, wasn’t totally sure who was whom at times—if you came in with no knowledge of the original, it would have been utter confusion.

And it wasn’t just the characters. The Calibre robots that were supposed to sell the show, and the Dragon foes they fought, were just as awful. Their designs had been simplified to some extent out of necessity, the original illustrations being too intricately detailed to animate, but they had failed to execute even on those simplified looks. Haruto had been promised that these new designs would result in much more fluid animation, but the episode was filled to the brim with still shots, making it hard to figure out how the battle was unfolding at all. Even the climax of episode one, with the protagonist using a finisher skill to mow down a horde of foes, was brushed off with a single still piece of art. It truly stumped the audience in Itsuki’s room.

Next, the main cast. Simply put, their acting skills weren’t there. The fetching heroines were played by rookie voice actresses, all of them nearly brand-new to the industry, and while some of them had voices to match their characters (and some absolutely didn’t), they were all poor at their roles, across the board, to one extent or another. The protagonist was played by a more well-known actor, one who had multiple hero roles under his belt, and a lot of the supporting cast was just as experienced, which made the heroines’ subpar performances stand out even more. The women all sang together as a group for the ending theme, and that wasn’t too great, either. Plus, the song itself was a frenetic, high-tempo dance piece that was a complete mismatch for the story setting.

The auditions held for the main cast had featured a plethora of more talented veterans and popular voice actresses. Haruto had naturally submitted a few names he’d like to see in the recording booth, but he got shut down. As a producer or some other TV bigwig had told him, “We want a fresh feel with some new people. It’ll be harder to organize public events with voice talent who’re already well known, but with rookies, we can organize a music group with them and hold live concerts.”

Also, the story was shit.

The books went through the trouble of describing the protagonist’s life and troubles before being selected by his Calibre and fighting as a royal knight. But in order to compress the story enough to keep the aforementioned climax scene in episode one, the hero’s motivations were completely glossed over, the heroines’ motives for caring about the hero more or less pushed upon the viewer, and almost no time was given to describe the setting.

Haruto had heard all about how the anime format allowed the setting to be described visually, not just with words, but the backdrops and buildings were just as humdrum as the characters, so it gave hardly any information. Thanks to all the nonsensical cuts made to the original books’ dialogue, there were a lot of scenes where conversational lines didn’t even correctly connect with each other. Haruto had gone over all the scripts, making sure everything made sense while being cut down to the needed length—he had no idea how it wound up like this.

“…I had kind of a bad feeling when the white-box version came to me just a day before the premiere, really…heh-heh… I guess I didn’t watch it because I was too scared to.” Haruto chuckled drily to himself, then sighed, as if his very soul were escaping his lips. “Dahhh… I worked hard on it, too…”

It was so pathetic to watch that nobody else in the room could say anything.

Realizing that he was harshing the buzz, Haruto tried his best to brighten up.

“Well, that’s over! Time to drink some more! I brought a bunch of other beer over today, so let’s keep it flowing!”

He whisked himself over to the fridge, grabbed a bottle at random, sloshed it into a glass, and took a long gulp.

“Mmm, this beer is good! It really is…”

The alcohol that made everything seem happier a mere thirty minutes ago now amplified all his negative emotions. He was almost in tears.

Itsuki reluctantly spoke up. “Umm… Well, I dunno what I should say, but…”

“Nnnh, yeah…”

“But we’re not here writing anime pitches! We’re writing novels! So even if the anime’s, like…that…don’t worry about it. Um, if you can…”

Haruto snorted at Itsuki’s feeble attempt to cheer him up. “Yeah. Well, guess I’ll just forget about the anime and work hard to make my manuscripts more interesting… I guess that’s the best way to deal with this, huh…?”

If it was something anyone could deal with.

Up to now, somewhere in his heart, Haruto had thought of his novels as something like industrial goods. Before he made his debut, he conducted a careful study of which books sold well, which characters were popular, what kind of plot elements were in vogue, and he reflected all of that in his work. Chevalier of the Absolute World was the result of this carefully calculated study, and despite the cold comments the judges for the new-writers award gave him, it was the clear number-one hit of that year’s batch, and now it was an anime.

Everything’s precalculated… I’m only writing this stuff for work…

With something like Chevalier of the Absolute World, no matter how much it was trashed by the so-called educated fan base—no matter how much those anonymous idiots claimed it was “written with a template,” or “to serve the needs of the plot at all costs,” or “selling solely on the strength of its art”—as long as it sells well, that’s all that matters. No feeling about it…

…Is that really the case? It can’t be!

Even if he had carefully analyzed the marketplace to craft his story and characters, he was the one who stepped up to write the damn thing.

I like it. I like how cool the hero is, and how all these cute girls are crazy about fawning over him. I like how he gets mega-strong, beats this mega-evil dude, and neatly saves the day. I like how people are rewarded for their efforts. I like how kind, gentle people wind up happy. I like dudes cutting loose and beating the crap out of other dudes. I like harems. I like panty shots. I like dudes getting said panty shots through sheer luck. I like maids. I like heroines who fall head over heels for people at first sight. I like kindhearted big-sister types who’ll unconditionally do anything to care for you. That’s what I’m writing for.

I want to get summoned to this world of swords and sorcery. I want to go on a big adventure. I like the idea of someone being the “only one,” the “number one,” the single golden child out of the entire world. I look up to that. I really do.

The sight of a courageous protagonist stepping up before thousands of foes, just when he’s about to falter, makes me want to take heart, too. I shed tears when I wrote my guest heroine sacrificing herself to save the hero’s life. I was the one who created that situation, but it still hurt me so much that I cried.

I can say this with absolute certainty now. I love Chevalier of the Absolute World. If I didn’t, how could I have written thirteen whole volumes, a good one and a half million Japanese characters’ worth, strictly because it was my job?

This isn’t some mass-manufactured product. It’s sad and frustrating whenever someone makes fun of me. It pisses me off so much, I want to kill them. Getting praise from my readers makes me happy; I put all my fan letters in a safe and read them over and over again. When the manga version came out really great, I was so happy to read each chapter that I wanted to literally jump for joy.

And the anime version was just that shitty, and that’s why I’m sobbing.

“…I love this thing, man… I really love it…! Maybe you guys think of it as just another title in the catalog, but to me, this was like nothing else in the world…! I loved this thing, for fuck’s sake! Why don’t these bastards understand that?! Fuck ’em… Fuck each and every one of ’em…!”

Haruto stared at the tabletop as he shed his tears.

Then he heard someone else sniffling.

“…?”

He looked up, puzzled, only to find Miyako, her face a wet, hot mess as she sobbed.

“Whoa! W-wait, why’re you crying, Miyako?”

“’Cause she’s Myaa, that’s why,” Nayuta explained, looking at her fondly.

“…No, really, why? You didn’t even write it,” asked a concerned Itsuki.

Miyuki wiped off her face with one corner of the duvet running along the side of the table. “…Well, I’m… I’m not a writer, and I don’t know how it feels to have your book made into an…an anime…! But…!”

She looked toward Haruto with her reddened eyes.

“But even I know it’s sad when…when you try really hard at something, and it blows up on you!”

Then she went back to sobbing, Haruto staring on dumbfounded. He wasn’t sure when, but he had stopped crying.

Politely waiting for Miyako to regain her composure, Haruto stood up.

“…Right. Sorry, but I’m gonna head out. I’m probably gonna start acting like a dick again if I keep drinking.”

He chuckled to himself.

“The trains haven’t started running yet.”

“I’ll take a taxi. It’ll cost a bit, but screw it. I am successful enough to have my work made into anime, remember.”

With that last bit of self-deprecating humor, Haruto packed up his things and left.

“…You think Fuwa will be okay?” a concerned Miyako asked.

Itsuki and Nayuta didn’t have an answer.