The anime is great and enjoyable on its own but just feels like a half-baked version of its LN counterpart. It could have been a lot better, but because of poor budgeting; Only thirteen episodes, and outsourcing stuff, it turns into a somewhat watered-down version.
It is the classic: “Just read the light novel, bro,” and I recommend doing that if you enjoyed this season because the LN is the entire package, you get everything, while the anime is the free trial period. I’d still recommend the anime, but the light novel is miles better than its adaptation and is far ahead with V8 of Y2 coming out soon, so there is a lot of LN content to consume.
This season takes place after the uninhabited island exam, where Ayanokouji beat Ryuuen by working in the shadows, and not revealing his identity and is where the plot takes off with the first season acting as more of a prologue, introducing its character, premise, and narrative and that is why, in my opinion, rushing through volumes four to seven is not optimal, because this is when significant stuff begins happening, character-development, well thought-out exams and crazy plot-twists.
They released the first season five years ago, which to many light novel readers’ dismay was a poor adaptation and experienced a boycott in Japan. It was not bad, but nor was it what the source material was; a somewhat emptier version, and the first three volumes were definitely weaker than what this season is covering, so to me, it was not much of a problem, but it just felt a lot emptier and shallower.
People labeled another season impossible because of the changes the first season made, so it came as a surprise for many that it happened, but you would think; If the previous season experienced a boycott and was poorly received, just maybe, just maybe, there was a universe where they would reflect on their mistakes from the previous season.
So does the adaptation do the source material justice?
No, it really does not. I would label it as a worse adaptation than the previous season. They thought adapting 4 volumes into 13 episodes was a good idea and they skipped V4.5, which develops the characters and adapted scenes from V7.5. COTE volumes are on the thicker side, so mashing everything together in 13 episodes is simply not possible. COTE is pretty dialogue-heavy, considering they constantly try to outwit each other and the insane plot twists, and having a first-person narrator, which makes it harder to adapt the story compared to a third-person narrator, because of having to adapt the monologues/inner thoughts, which is harder, because you cannot adapt everything. The plot has to keep moving, instead of longish monologues.
But one of COTE’s selling points is its narrative and Ayanokouji monologues, but in the anime, they are cut down to simple one-liners, and many times, they straight up remove his monologues. This makes his character feel emptier, you don’t hear what he thinks, and that is a problem when COTE is about Ayanokouji. His rejection of his time in the white room, trying to be an average high-school student, so cutting lots of his monologue, removes his inner conflict, his competitiveness, and being a high school student.
They also outsourced to a Vietnamese company, which is an idiotic move when their core competence is their animation department because holy crap do they not know to adapt a Light Novel. The outsourcing just makes it even more of a mess, with constant inconsistencies, some episodes are straight-up trash, because of the rushed source material, but then they sprinkled a bit of terrible animation on top of it, while others are decent to great.
From the narrator's model, the point of no return and climax are the most exciting parts of a story and this applies to the volumes of COTE volumes. You have the introduction of an exam and its beginning. Each one has its point of no return and climax, which are the more exciting scenes, so with their limited budget, they focus on the latter part of the narrator’s model rather than the introduction and presentation. They do this by outsourcing the episodes that cover those phases, before the episode that corresponds to the end of a volume. This creates massive inconsistencies, where characters aren’t introduced properly, and exams likewise. This also applies to the entire arc, where the focus is set on the climax of the hunt between Ryuuen and Ayanokouji, which just creates lesser of a wow factor when they rushed through the build-up.
Characters
One of the beautiful things about COTE is its characters and how their ideologies all differentiate and eventually confront each other in the exams; Ryuuen’s class showcases tyrannical authoritarianism. He seeks to use power, violence, and force to win against his opponents and to seek obedience from his class. Ichinose’s class is a representation of unity, a caring leadership. Katsuragi and Sakayanagi is a civil-warlike situation with one being cautious and the other manipulative. All these go head to head in is fun to watch play out.
Ayanokouji; The protagonist of the story, in my eyes possibly the best, but in the anime wise it becomes a distinct case: He is the observant type and lost his sense of ethics and morals after his upbringing in the white room. At heart, he is competitive and will do anything to win, which his upbringing has caused, but throughout the anime, you see a conflict in terms of interest, where he wishes to sit back and relax, enjoying his high-school life. This is because he wants to reject his time in the white room, as the perfect specimen, but when his white room persona awakens, he becomes the competitive type and does everything to win. But the rushing of stuff just makes things a lot emptier and removes a lot of this stuff, making him less of an interesting character and just some edgy guy trying to destroy everyone.
They did get his facial expression right, but not how he views himself in his monologues and how he wants to be portrayed as an ordinary high school student is not shown, which is a consequence of removing most of the monologues.
Horikita; Her stubbornness and pride caused her leadership to be poor at the beginning, but through the exams and multiple setbacks, she improves and develops as a leader, hearing the opinion of others instead of holding onto her own.
At the sports festival, she had to give up her pride in front of Ryuuen to bring Sudou back, so the class had a chance of winning the event. Instead of putting the blame on Sudou for leaving the event midway, she took it upon herself as the leader to bring him back, but they cut out the race where she got into problems with the Class C student, so her entire conversation with Ryuuen felt like she did not want to worry her big brother, which is not the case. It is her finally becoming a better leader.
Ryuuen; A great antagonist, but his character is watered down in the anime, where the sports festival was rushed, where more of his scheming was shown and how he acts as a character, and his obsession with finding X, which was shown well at the end of the sports festival, but it never really establishes the hunt to its full extent and feels emptier.
There are also lots of other side-characters who develop through these exams, but the anime cut them all out and only focused on the main-cast.
How the rushing of Source Material affects the finished product
As previously stated, thirteen episodes are not enough to adapt everything, so obvious they need to skip stuff to fit the core of the story, which is how they approach to stuff. This means side-characters get less screen time and hence are less developed, and the same can be said about the build-up or plot twists because of the faster pacing, which makes the scenes less impactful, and to fit everything in, they tend to mix up the orders of scenes, again lessening the plot twists’ impact.
Further, the studio obviously knows which scenes from the source material are liked by the audience and can be seen as they put more effort into these episodes and are often more well-paced, but to do so, they rush the build-up to adapt certain scenes properly.
Another thing the rush changes is often how scenes are portrayed. The scenes in the anime are often changed into some melancholy drama or something that makes little to no sense. Take episode five as an example, where Ryuuen schemed against Horikita by having a classmate run into her, making it seem like vice versa happened. They did not even adapt the scene of them running, so zero build-ups and the plot twist happened out of nowhere with Ryuuen obliterating Horikita in their conversation. This was all changed into Horikita, not wanting to be a bother to her brother in the anime, and she simply said okay to Ryuuen.
Another example would be Episode 10, where Ayanokouji exposes Chabashira for lying about having contact with his father. Afterward, he cuts his contacts with Kei. This is his first time experiencing freedom. He was constantly forced to follow orders in the white room, and when Chabashira began blackmailing him. He had to help the class toward Class A. His first time where he could begin being a normal high-school student and as he sat on the bench; he pondered over how he would feel about experiencing snow for the first time. A nice metaphor for freedom, but all this was turned into some melancholy drama between Ayanokouji and Kei, removing the character development and symbolism.
Before the rooftop scene or storage room, I really don’t know why, but Manabu would help Ayanokouji with the aftermath of the fight with Ryuuen. Their deal was that Ayanokouji would get his sister on the student council. This is a complete flip-flop of what Manabu actually wants. He does not want to help his sister, but the school from his successor, Nagumo.
Ayanokouji trying to get Manabu’s sister in the student council is entirely a byproduct of that. Manabu honestly didn’t care if Ayanokouji used Suzune and gave him the thumb-ups to use his sister, and it was Ayanokouji’s plan, not Manabu’s. Further, they never introduced the rivalry between Nagumo and Manabu, their conflicting ideologies, and how Manabu is afraid of what changes Nagumo will make after becoming student council president. They never established this.
Manabu is scared of what the school will become after Nagumo becomes student council president, and how things will change, but they cut this completely out. They did Nagumo dirty and showed they won't focus on side characters because they have to condense everything into thirteen episodes.
Point Issue
This is more of a technical issue and by no means does it decrease the enjoyment, but when you have a show that is centered around classes fighting against each other and trying to reach the top of the hierarchy, then for God’s sake show the classes’ points. At no point throughout the entire season do they know what they are doing, they keep changing how points are distributed compared to the Light Novel, and in some cases, it mathematically makes no sense.
Take the planet exam as they call it. Firstly, they shot themselves in the foot by decreasing the number of students, because that equals fewer groups. Also, meaning that there cannot be the same amount of change in points between the classes. You might ask, how do they fix this when there are fewer groups? Maybe they would just decrease the number of awarded points and change stuff in another exam to make up for the difference in the previous exam.
So just how did they fix it? They turned it into even more of a mess, changing the rules of the exam, so you could not lose points if you were guessed as the VIP. Now, just what was Ryuuen’s goal in the planet exam? To crush Class A, but that is no longer possible because how the actual fuck can he do that when he cannot make them lose points?
How many points did Class A gain/lose in that exam? They lost two hundred, which is theoretically only possible if four of their students guessed incorrectly, so, in conclusion, they all suddenly turned into idiots. Actually, even that is theoretically not possible, as the number of groups where somebody guessed incorrectly does not match up with the amount of deduced points.
Rating
I know I have ranted a lot about the adaptation not being satisfying, and not doing its source material justice for how great it is, but that does not mean the anime is straight-up bad, it is still good on its own, but it is not the same complex and intriguing story, but more so a fun show with great main-cast, a fun plot and lots of twists.
Though the rush causes things to feel forced at times instead of something calculative, Ayanokouji was preparing throughout the entirety of the exam. The twists obviously leave less of an impact, and I understand if it seems pretentious to some, when the anime does everything really straight-forward.
I’d recommend watching the anime. I think it is fun to watch, not an 8-10/10, but a 6-7/10 show. I’d mostly contribute this to the poor adaptation, which does a poor job at presenting stuff, introducing the characters, and rushes through volume after volume at a world-record pace.
Adaptation-wise I’d probably give it a 2/10 because honestly, it was pretty garbage, and that is why I’d heavily recommend the LN if you read Light Novels or you liked the show because it is so much better. You can start from V8 if you want, but lots of things were left out or changed, so they can rush through volumes faster in the next season, so I recommend reading from the beginning.
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