Anime Discussion Thread - Page 267

If we were to use the "Maeda Jun's stuff are never what they appear to be at first" argument, then even the comatose theory should be out because he never reveals things till later on and tosses out multiple feints

工工工ｴｴｴｴｴｴｪｪｪｪｪｪ(ﾟДﾟ)ｪｪｪｪｪｪｴｴｴｴｴｴ工工工 I never watched Air/Kanon and I believe he only "finished" Air as opposed to having created it from scratch himself, but I think he only threw a complete loop in LB, but even so, there were hints, like the cat and the instructions from Kyousuke. The baseball/combat stats. Certainly Kudo and Yuiko's routes made me go "hmm," as did, to an extent, Mio (hers was bizarre) and Rin1 and 2. Skipped through Komari so I dunno about hers, and Haruka's one was the only "normal" one, but yeah. They just didn't make complete sense until the end, but that's because of the design of the VN -- he was forced to save the "tell all" until Rin2/Refrain because you don't know what order people will play the preliminary routes. But as a whole I just don't know if you can say he doesn't leave any hints, he just tends to not make them obvious. However, that's also because of the medium (VN - the reader can be feinted into thinking s/he's reading a novel about girls and their tearjerk problems). I don't think he can play "as coy" in an anime where you have to grab viewer attention quickly and consistently, if you get what I mean?

No idea why people liked Komari route so much, to be honest. I read through that on autopilot mode, a huge gap from how interested I was in Rin1/2, Mio and Refrain. But yeah, Kudo and Yuiko's routes as well as Mio & Rin 1's aftermath gave us some thought on the mechanics. The baseball stats also served as hints. But like you said, we look back upon the hints with hindsight and see they are hints.

Clannad anime was more than happy to just shove us segments with the girl and robot without ever touching on their significance till the end. Oh, we had ideas here and there, but in general Maeda Jun has been fairly content leaving smaller and less obvious clues. I am not sure how much that's really a thing with the VN medium though. That said, it feels to me like he is pulling a similar move with AB as he did with Little Busters with constant but random action. Given the length of the series, I still feel like both of the possibilities represented (death/comatose) are still too superficial.

Besides, comatose rather overlaps with LB, I don't think he'll do something that similar.

Considering the unlikeliness of an LB anime and the relatively smaller audience generated therefore, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a given that he'd consider the overlap a definite no-no. Definitely is something to ponder though, of course.

What bugs me with AB is that, I don't know if he can afford to completely "jump the shark" later on. As opposed to LB and Clannad, the inherent premise is itself "absurd," and thus smells fishy from the onset. I suppose you could say one of the biggest twists possible is to reveal that the premise itself is actually the truth! And it wouldn't be beyond him to pull off some writing magic like that. But there're so many bizarre hints that it's not (the digitalization of the whole thing) that it's very unlikely.

It's a bit of order, I suppose. + Show Spoiler [Worth noting here that I'm actua…] + By contrast, AB is pretty obviously a "false" world, so a lot of speculation will necessarily focus on whether Maeda Jun is going science fiction or "magic" again or what. I never got the impression that he does absolutely bonkers stuff (like creating heaven/hell etc.) so unless he goes completely out of his way, this time, there's gotta be some relation to "the normal world" and such, at least IMO anyways. Thus my relating it to the comatose etc. There might be some other means of connection, or maybe he did go out of his way to do something completely nuts, no idea.

The thing about AB is that he definitely created it with the idea of a long, epic story in mind. From the way that they had to consider the amount of materials put into a 13-episode anime and how they came to the to the conclusion that they should release separate short novel fragments just to elaborate on the character backstories (at least I recall the interview with him said that). It feels to me that he went into this with the ideas of a long VN. If that's the case, then it is possible that he would have tried to avoid an overlap here.

To go back to the afterlife scenario would indeed be a very interesting twist at this point, though it'll take some wonders to fit that in.

+ Show Spoiler [Clannad/LB] +

AB, in relation to the past Key works, is in a fairly odd position. If anything, I'd say that the worldview functions closer to Kanon and Air where we were more or less given that magical (or SF) elements are possibilities...but yeah, he never quite go fully out of the way as to make something completely fantastical, which really is the opening premise of AB. So honestly, I am beat here.

Personally though, just comatose would feel somewhat odd to me. If it was that, it feels strange that Yuri should avoid the issue where as Iwasaki just says it out. From the sounds of it, the two know each others' histories, and it doesn't feel quite like Yuri to miss potential similarities of that scale. Well, Yuri kept her hypothesis to herself at the end, so we'll see her thoughts on the topic yet.

At this point Yuri seems to have been too vengetastic to have an open mind, would be a pretty blunt way of putting it. You know what I wonder? What's the main character? Clearly at least one person seemed to have been waiting for him (whatever his name was, Hinata?). Oh well. Speculation could go on and on after just three episodes, though :p I can even imagine a sola-like protagonist.