Katawa Shoujo as an anime?

[Blade_Runner95]

Hi all,

Recently I had the experience of playing Katawa Shoujo, ultimately with 2/5 routes completed thus far. Its probably one of, if not, the best Visual Novels I have had the experience of reading.

I was wondering, to those who have played the VN or those who know the general premise, do you think Katawa Shoujo would make a great anime?

While I am painfully aware that in modern times the concepts of harem and ecchi have skyrocketed beyond belief, and while I am aware that this VN is about a male lead chasing the love of one of 5 girls, I believe it can still be a successful anime.

And yes, I am also aware that the concept of Katawa Shoujo is highly controversial, as it deals with girls with disabilities. However, in my eyes, it is in no way exploitative or demeaning towards those in similar circumstances.

It could very easily become a great Romance/Drama anime, with the character interaction between Nakai and the 5 girls. Figuring out their emotional and physical problems, and solving them while developing their relationships, could be extremely successful......

.......maybe even rivaling the emotion of shows such as Clannad and Air, if produced correctly.

The episodic format could also follow a linearity similar to, say, Shuffle. Implemented as an arc system. It could allocate maybe 5-6 episodes a character?

I want to hear all of your opinions on this, whether its a good idea, what studio could hypothetically (maybe even realistically) develop it, your thoughts etc.

[CrimsonMoon]

Hi

I stumbled on @Munchman 's blog last time and he was playing this VN, so I downloaded it. It turns out that this VN is pretty good, I admit. I think that Katawa Shoujo would make a great anime. But there's always a problem with VN novel if you want to make it into anime. How to pair it with one girl or one guy only? Everyone has their own preference on a character/characters that they want to pair with the protagonist. I've never watched Shuffle, but from what you said, it seems like there are different endings. That might be good for VN. About the studio, I honestly have no idea, lol.

Also, since you seem to play some VNs, have you tried playing Yo Jin Bo? It's a pretty good VN, with Japanese voice actors. It's set in feudal era. The art is good too. Check it out if you want.

[Munchman]

@CrimsonMoon Well , i think that they could fix that problem by adding several different male characters , and instead of having ONE main character they could focus on the actions of several different guys.

And yeah , id love it if it was turned into an anime. Id get to see more of my beloved Hanako , and i bet Kenji would make for some good comical relief.

[Captain_Irish]

I freaking love this VN! I haven't played a whole lot of them but I have played a few that have been called "the best" and Katawa Shoujo is so much better than them. As an anime, I think it could work. As @CrimsonMoon said it would be difficult because people have there preferences and it would cause a lot of disappointment if they picked one girl for Hisao to get romantically involved with at the end. I know they definitely won't go the School Days route with it and make him go for every girl(Mainly because you can't do that in the game itself and because it didn't work out well in School Days). Anyway if some studio like KyoAni or whatever announced "We're making the highly popular Katawa Shoujo our main focus for the time being" I would actually cry tears of joy..For days...can you tell that I love this game? XD

[~*Red*~]

I have played the game six times (twice for Hanako, Emi and Lily) and I think it would be awesome as an anime

[Gjallarhorn]

It will never be an anime. They'd have to get the rights to do it from Four Leaf Studios - a loosely organized group, most of whom have never met, and who disbanded after the project ended. Getting the group to agree on it, and especially sorting out the financials with the group members would be a difficult enough process, but then there's also the inevitable social lash-back at the naming of the game and some of the content - you're not going to get around it simply by telling people to play it so they understand what it's about.

There's hundreds, thousands of independent visual novels created in Japan every year, and dozens of major releases. A handful of these might be animated in any given years.


As far as hypothetical production studios:
But if KyoAni or Xebec were to animate it, I'd have the urge to cause people significant harm. Leave the good stuff to Madhouse, Production IG, Studio 4C, or GAINAX. I'd say the best option is ufotable; they'd be able to capture the ambiance and subtly - that's their forte.

[Munchman]

@Gjallarhorn

Yeah , i had heard about the whole polemic about the name of the game in Japan.

It really is a shame we wont be able to see this as an anime. Id really like to get to know more of the characters , know how their life will continue , learn more about how their life used to be. I guess that's why movie/anime/book endings make me depressed. Because they are just that: endings...