Lots of good stuff this week! It’s pretty much impossible to sum up in a simple cover blurb, so I’m not even gonna try. (Yeah, that’ll get you to the article won’t it?)
Let’s hit the jump and take a look at what’s Worth Reading!
• At Fantastic Memes, Frog-Kun writes a brief but interesting article about Genki Kawamura – Your Name’s Producer is Kind of a Big Deal.
And speaking of Your Name, I came across this lovely video the other week…
• Radwimps performing Sparkle with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra… Lovely! When taken with the video they have playing in the background the last two minutes or so are almost breathtaking. It’s almost ten minutes long, but well worth watching in its entirety.
• Irina of I drink and watch anime tackles an interesting topic… Anime that waste their premise. Any longtime reader of this blog knows that’s something I gripe about on a regular basis – anime with strong potential and good ideas that end up going nowhere.
Unfortunately, they’re all too common. Do you have an examples?
• Scott at Mechanical Anime Reviews gives us his take on a set of topics that practically every blogger worth their salt eventually ponders – Is faithfulness to the source material important? Does filler matter?
• Karandi of 100 Word Anime tackles a related adaptation question: Why Is The Number of Light Novel Adaptations A Problem? (The comments are particularly interesting.)
• Amelia at A Girl & Her Anime has an interesting spin on the age-old question: What is my favorite anime? She concludes that’s not an easy question to answer… Other than the top two randomly swapping places, I personally don’t find that to be true. A singular answer is easy. Where I run into problems is articulating the next few places on the list.
As it’s one of those two favorite anime, it’s totally happenstance that the next anime came up this week… (I wonder if anyone can guess the other?)
The highlight this week is not one but two outstanding articles about A Place Further than the Universe (Sora Yori Mo Tooi Basho):
• At There Goes My Kokoro, crispyn64 takes an in-depth look at Yorimoi’s Perfect First Episode. I don’t know that I’d call it perfect, but it was very good – the first episode absolutely captivated me when it first aired. Anyhow, the article is a well done look at some of the themes of the episode and of the how the episode’s visual direction expresses them. (I am being very supportive of the idea that he continues this series and covers the entire show.)
• Just by coincidence, a few days ago Crunchyroll published a fascinating interview with Atsuko Ishizuka: The Director Who Stole Our Hearts Away to Antarctica. She discusses how Yorimoi‘s story was developed and what she hoped to accomplish with the series. If you read no other link, read this one!
• Though Nick’s tweet starts out talking about Kemurikusa, he segues into some interesting thoughts about world and character building. Click through to see the whole thread:
• Lastly, Anime Maru announces some important news about the Crunchyroll Anime Awards:
Seriously, this year is better than the last two in a lot of ways and the FAQ makes for some interesting reading. (It’s nice to know that it’s not entirely a popularity poll…) But for my money, removing the genre categories robs the Awards of a great deal of legitimacy. (And I can’t say I care for ‘sponsored categories’ either.) Sometime it seems that Crunchy takes the awards seriously, but not seriously if you get my drift.
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As usual, feel free to comment/discuss here or there – but if you enjoyed a particular article be sure and let the original author know!
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
Other favourite, hmm… Euphonium, maybe?
Those are some good links. I thought the heydays of light novel adaptions are over? I don’t know when they peaked, maybe 2015 or 16? I never checked, but that’s my impression.
(I’m not fond, to be honest, of having the scenes from Your Name playing with the song; the orchestra doesn’t work as soundtrack, and film track distracts from the music. They did choose good scenes, though.)
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Light Novel adaptations: Just scanned LiveChart: While I didn’t count, my subjective impression is that they peaked in 2014 and started to drop off in 2015. 2015/16 had prominent titles like Re:Zero and Konosuba, also lesser but still memorable stuff like Asterisk War, so that’s probably coloured my perception. 2014 had lots of shows, many of them bad (like Dragonar Academy, or Blade Dance of the Elementalers, as well as other stuff I dropped immediately); it was also the year of Mahouka.
Also, it feels that you could reduce the number LN-adaptions significantly just by getting rid of Monogatari. That would be a long-runner, if it weren’t released in bits and pieces.
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Maybe I should have said “Can anyone guess who isn’t Dawn or Wing?” :) :) I know you two know. :) :)
It’s interesting to look at “peak LN”, especially since the complaint is still so common today… But, as you said and Karandi points out, it’s actually all about perception. I think LN’s stand out because so many of them share so many common characteristics. Bulk fiction is bulk fiction the world over, and tends not to stray too far from formula.
So many LN’s are isekai or other power fantasies (or at least that’s how it seems) that I have to wonder if that’s what people are really objecting to.
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I’m not sure what people are objecting to in detail, but my impression is that it’s a little more complex than isekai power fantasies. I feel that people who don’t like LN adaptions generally fear anime being poked to death with the trident of OreImo, Monogatari, and SAO. I’d expect people who dislike LN adaptions not to have enjoyed Bunny Girl Sempai. I found myself disagreeing with people a lot on shows like Oregairu, for example (less so with season 2). (In that context, it’s ironic that I ended up not liking Bunnygirl sempai myself, since that’s usually the sort of show I’d enjoy.)
I think people were already rigging on LN adaptions by the time SAO first aired, and that tends to be the first example of the isekai power fantasies that you usually get. I’m not exactly sure when the shift began. When I started coming online around 2010, people were mostly decrying VN adaptions, especially dating sim harems, with Key adaptions being controversial. Both OreImo and Monogatari were already around, but they weren’t targets yet, I think. It’s sort of hard to remember. I misjudged the LN peak, too, by 1 – 2 years, after all.
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