It’s one thing when you are a fan of a video game that all of a sudden has been confirmed to have an anime adaptation and feel nothing but contempt and frustration in the reasoning why they would bother. However, when your game is already one that acts like an anime, you think to yourself that this will already be a slam dunk based on how it was born to become an anime show in the first place. So likewise, I was in the same mindset going into this. What I got in the end for Neptunia the Animation was nothing but partial disappointment that can only be described as a wasted potential for a series that had a lot going for it in terms of comedy and parody.
Neptunia plays off as your typical moe show with cute girls in suggestive positions. I can understand people passing it off as another generic moe show—not knowing that the Neptunia games themselves are parodying those types of moe tropes. The parody included in this adaptation is just as charming and lovable in portraying the girls as consoles of past generations. However, given how the Neptunia games have endless hours of non-stop comedy in their fun dialogue, understandably, the show is limited due to its 13-episode running time. This points to the show’s main problem: It doesn’t go as far as the games in terms of quality comedy.
It is nice to see the girls in full animation instead of just slightly animated portraits on-screen in your typical Visual Novel fashion. Still, sadly it doesn’t come off as underwhelming and average at best. When you compare the art to the show and the original game’s art done masterfully and beautifully by Tsunako, it’s not what you would call a great transition. The show's art can almost compare to Saturday morning cartoons where the colors look too bright and hardly have any excellent lush drawings like in the games. Calling the art to be “horrendous” or “terrible,” on the other hand, would be a stretch because, for what they’re worth, the fighting scenes are done relatively decent, and there are some moments where the art indeed does add to the humor.
As any fan of Neptunia can all agree, every single character is funny and charming to look at and listen to their witty dialogues with one another. Neptune is an absolute joy to listen to, as always, with her hilarious and sarcastic personality that initially annoyed me. Eventually, I grew fond of it after a while. The tsundere princess herself, Noire, has some great laughs in her hilarious attempts to hide her side. One scene involving her stalker and showing many pictures of her alone was enough to send me howling on the ground and laughing. Our other main CPU, Goddesses Blanc and Vert are great together in how they always argue over such silly things. The side characters, which are the CPU candidates, have equal enough screen time to bolster some memorable scenes together, though really, could they have at least given us more of Rom and Ram? And finally, Plutia and her rather exciting alter-ego once again never fails to be as sadistically hilarious as usual with her perverted antics. You can’t go wrong with Hanazawa mixed with sadomasochism.
This department has one crucial problem with the gushing about the characters themselves. There are hardly any other characters in the Neptunia universe that either don’t appear or aren’t shown very often. One of the best characters in the 2nd Neptunia game was NISA. Unfortunately, she is nowhere to be found, not even in a cameo appearance which is quite unfair considering that at least 5pb is shown only twice. The only reason for this is that they wanted to hold them off for a sequel because they haven’t appeared chronologically where the show is adapting, right?
The plot for the show follows nearly every single game that has come out. The writers honestly try to put different spins on it by placing characters in various roles that they were initially suited for another one, i.e., Neptune doesn’t get transported to an extra dimension like in Victory. Yet, she still falls on Noire amusingly enough, and this time Plutia gets transported into their world instead of the other way around. At this point, it’s clear that the writers didn’t want to put their time and effort into fitting all 300+ hours combined of all three of the games and wanted to make one show that isn’t trying to be a point to point adaptation but instead represents the entire series as a whole in spirit. So with this in mind, many plot points in previous games aren’t shown or bothered with, which isn’t bothersome considering how some aren’t needed. Unfortunately, there are some points in the show where the rushed plots could’ve worked for the better.
What makes the Neptunia series addictive and fun to play and experience? If you ask any fans, including me, it isn’t for drama or profound moments in any of the games. Not only did they have the will and power to make a show into anything they wanted based on the core concept, but they decided to put in their effort in putting two or three episodes devoted to those two aspects I mentioned before. First off, the drama wasn’t very well-handled anyway in the previous games before Victory, which is by far the least serious of the bunch. Second, if you want to put drama into your moe comedy show, at least try to put more effort into making it believable and somewhat endearing. Granted, the episodes devoted to this aren’t that many, but it can leave a sour taste in your mouth regardless of the quantity of uninvolved drama thrown into you and expects us to be invested in it. Hell, there aren’t that many newly added comedic scenes that have not been seen before in any games, with only a select few that are somewhat amusing.
Thankfully, all original voice actresses from the games are here and fill in their respective roles with the same amount of chemistry as in fun. Amai Isumi, once again, never fails to embark into dangerous territory in becoming the next queen of Tsundere voice acting. Rie Tanaka has perfect charisma whenever she works as Neptune and successfully fulfills Neptune as a larger-than-life character. With our two leading ladies getting out of the way, our supporting cast consists of Yui Horie, Kana Asumi, Rina Satou, Yui Ogura, Kaori Ishihara, Kana Hanazawa, and Eri Kitamura. All of them make for a terrific ensemble cast. You couldn’t have asked for better casting than all of them combined.
To conclude my thoughts, Neptunia the Animation isn’t a terrible show to sit through. It’s one of the better video game adaptations out there, whether or not how much you care a lot for the medium in general. It is not something you would recommend to your friend if he wanted to get into the Neptunia universe firsthand. They’ll most likely think of it as nothing but pure moe pandering at its purest if they aren’t into that whole thing already. It is nothing more than pure fan service to the people who play the games to see the static portraits come to life before their eyes, even if the result isn’t as mind-blowing as previously expected. If you are a fan like me by chance, you could probably try to see what is in store and how it is taken in animation. You’re better off just firing off another new game plus my fellow Neptunia brethren.
Grade: C
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