A Light Burden

With a new season upon us, it's that time once again when we decide which shows are worth following. But how to separate the good shows from the bad, armed with little more than a staff list and paragraph-long synopsis? Well, I've found myself following a tragically useful rule: don't watch what's based on a light novel.

Of course I hate myself for saying this. It's wrong to damn one genre completely for any reason; there will be both good and bad representatives at any given time. But there's such a glut of samey me-too content right now that I feel like taking a break from light novel adaptations for a while.

How did it get this way? It would be easy to blame Sword Art Online, the critically-panned series that nonetheless enjoys insane profits. But light novel adaptations have been around for years before, not only selling well but winning praise also, such as Gundam Unicorn, Spice & Wolf, and the Bakemonogatari franchise. Others may not have made bank right away, yet remain fan favorites. How many times has Baccano been given a physical release? Likewise, Durarara took a few years to get a sequel, but it's doing fine now. True, it wasn't until Sword Art Online's unexpected success that anime producers seemed to collectively say, “Let's milk the shit out of this genre”, but blaming this one show would just be unfair considering what came before.

That lazy attitude is the biggest strike against current light novel adaptations. I'd happily watch more if the shows covered a healthy variety of topics, but they don't. Seriously, try to find one where the hero isn't attending superpowered magic high school or trapped in a video game. Beyond that, you can just go down a checklist: the main character is arbitrarily weak but secretly the strongest, there's a harem of potential lovers after him, and everyone will waste countless minutes explaining how this world is actually so much more complex and works better than all those other identical fantasy settings. Seemingly zero effort is made to make the show unique in any way, which might actually be the case; I've heard rumors that making even a subpar adaptation is guaranteed to significantly boost sales of the actual novel, so maybe that's the true goal. Regardless, why should we the viewers dump our time into a story we've heard many times before?

Surprisingly, I find hope by looking at the recent history of moe anime, which has already gone through a similar cycle. Starting with acclaimed works like Azumanga Daioh, it soon devolved into a deluge of feel-good fluff. Now there's not only fewer such shows out there, they're better. I find many series by PA Works tend to tend to write their characters with complex thoughts and emotions despite them having the trademark huge eyes, no noses, and generally squishy faces of moe designs. Last year's School Live! ambitiously combined that genre with horror to produce some surprisingly heartfelt moments. Long story short: the fans stopped buying the load of samey crap thrown their way, so the creators had to put more effort in to keep selling.

Even if we are in the middle of a dry spot for creative content, I can't actually boycott light novel adaptations one hundred percent. The Bakemonogatari franchise is still great, as it has been for years before this started. And every so often something will stick out from the crowd for better (Shimoneta) or worse (Gate), so of course I have to investigate; hell, I'm following one or two such shows this season because they generated decent buzz. But in general I've become much, much more cynical towards the genre because it's given me few reasons not to. Not until we collectively act like self-entitled snobs will creators throw out that imaginary checklist and start making light novel adaptations with more care and variety. Let's face it, that day can't be too far off; who acts snobbish better than anime fans?