Pacing Issues in Bookworm S4 — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:02] [music] novels, to enjoyers of original material that usually then get adapted into anime, I feel [music] you. I really do. Too long have I sat in the moral high chair of an anime only person thinking, "Oh, well, I am enjoying

[00:16] everything. I don't have the time to go and read the original material. This is perfectly fine." Even after all of them say, "But no, if only you read the original, you would understand. This [music] is better." And now I get it.

[00:32] I get it. So near the end of last year, I released a video talking about the then upcoming next season of Ascendants of a Bookworm. Mostly because I was a little worried about what we were going to [music] get and how we were going to

[00:45] get it, about this isekai series based on a a light novel series that I love and one that we had already seen three seasons of. Uh the the latter of which were not the greatest. And so a lot of that ended up being speculation on ah

[00:58] well we have a new studio now we're pushing on towards the quote unquote good stuff. Will the new season fix all of the problems of the old one? And the answer ended up being no. [music] And in some cases I could argue it made

[01:13] it worse. And you know I feel like I am uniquely able to talk about that at least a little bit because well you know I've read it. But before we get too far into my grievances, I would like to thank the sponsor of this video, SNK and

[01:27] their video game, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, the fighting game that has been released on Switch 2 literally today, the very day this video goes possibly you because of their collaboration with Tokyo Revengers.

[01:41] Fatal Fury is adding two characters from Tokyo Avengers being both Mangro and question, well, why isn't the protagonist of Tokyo Avengers a playable character? Isn't that a little weird? To which I respond, good. Because instead

[01:57] of having Tokyo Revengers as time travel protagonist, you know, the guy who wins not an insignificant amount of his fights by just persevering through the fight rather than, you know, actually having any semblance of Marshall

[02:09] prowess. So yeah, I would much prefer to be playing fighting characters in my fighting game. This decision was very much justified. Not that it matters much because in virtually any fighting game I ever play, you could probably beat me in

[02:22] controller and tossing it down a stairwell. So, I can't say that I am the best judge of mechanics. I can say, however, that I am a reasonably good enjoyment is always increased when I play games that have anime

[02:35] collaborations, especially when they make sense. to be able to take really them into a fighting game and play as them is just amazing and more companies think so too, you can get the Tokyo Revengers DLC either from season pass 3

[02:51] or from the very specific Revengers edition of the game itself. So, thanks once again to SNK and Fatal Fury for sponsoring this video. Now, let's get back into the beatdown of Ascendants of a Book where the biggest complaint going

[03:05] kind of the break neck pacing that this entire new season has. I should probably of myself. Let's set the scene. This is technically season 4 of this anime. Even

[03:17] novel series, the numbering just gets very confusing, and I don't blame anyone for kind of scratching their heads. The light novel is split into five parts. volumes and they seem to exponentially grow as you go. The season of 24

[03:32] episodes we're talking about today is season 4, but it is part three of the light novel. Part three contains five volumes, which at this point is the longest that any part has contained. We already had problems with the last two

[03:47] only 12 episodes each. And I really wish that it was like season 2, part one, and numbering scheme with the parts would remain the same. But say Levie, the part two adaptation already had problems when it came to pacing and cutting of a lot

[04:02] of things. And for the amount of volumes that we have and the amount of episodes that we have, it was not enough. [music] A lot of things got cut. And even in the even in a matter of things of where I could like open up a page, look at a

[04:15] things wrong." They didn't do things wrong. They just surgically cut out a vast majority of them because what they cut is pretty uniform throughout [music] everything, which is they've cut movement. If you have a scene that

[04:31] in a room, having a conversation, doing something, and somebody else comes into the room to have a more important conversation, the anime is going to go ahead and then just start the scene with everybody in the room already sat down

[04:45] be animating people walking in and out of rooms today. any scene from the actual light novel that involves people walking, people going from place to place, people moving. We're either going to turn it into a montage very briefly

[04:58] have it or cut it entirely. And I mean, I sort of get it because we have five volumes of light novel here. This is a lot of content and only 24 episodes is plainly not enough. And if you can't somehow bargain and try to get more

[05:13] episodes in order to fill your content, then you just make do with what you three is not the part that they're going to want to fight for that because in the release in Japan of a sentence of a bookworm, its popularity didn't kind of

[05:27] because for some reason everybody likes the magical school academy. It's a wonderful trope. We all love it. I love it. But we're not talking about that today. The worst part of its pacing is how they try to slam so much into so

[05:41] little when they have no other choice. So, like I could go through these books they cut that I wish that they didn't. But to uh give you an example, this is volume five of the light novel. This is the final light novel out of five that

[05:56] they were adapting for this season. And to give you context on how they like to slam a lot of things into a single episode. This section is everything that was chronologically covered by the final episode. I mean, look at that. This is

[06:08] one out of 24 episodes that they've just straight up cut. I mean really the final episode is only that. That's our main character in her final episode of this season. And the rest of it is all the side story stuff that is supposed to be

[06:21] immediately following what happens in the finale. But we're not going to be getting any of that. Instead, what of this we did get was just kind of summarized by having a single character just kind

[06:36] of speak in voice over over an image of who they are. Hi Alvara. And I don't believe that the part 4 adaptation is going to make anything better. In fact, and I feel like it's going to be just as bad, if not worse. So, for comparison's

[06:48] sake, part two of the light novel was adapted in seasons two and three of the anime. That was four volumes of light novel that turned into 22 episodes of anime that already had a lot of cuts and compression into it. Now, with part

[07:01] three, it was five volumes instead of four. And we had [music] 24 episodes instead of 22. And we still have the exact same amount of problems. And what really bothers me with cuts from original material to adaptations is not

[07:13] just like cutting in general. You can cut things and still make it fine. There [music] Yeah, I would have loved to have seen it spent more time with like the Gutenbergs and everything involved in, you know,

[07:27] and everything involved in, you know, Rosem's kind of industrial revolution in her gung-ho nature to blitz her way into [music] a printing press and just more books in general. That is all lovely, but you can argue that you could get

[07:40] around without [music] it. Where I end up having problems is when they spend some time on a subplot only to just toss it away without proper explanation. And have to start getting into some semblance of spoilers. And that starts

[07:53] off with the whole and Brigite kind of fumble. Daniel and Brigit, if you're knew that they weren't getting together. I didn't really care so much that their romance kind of fizzled out and died. What I dislike was the way in which the

[08:09] final episode showcased that, which was just a kind of a quick scene just to be like, "Oh, yeah, no, their expectations were not what we thought." And then they just canceled it. And I'm just like, "Yeah, but you you already spent so much

[08:23] time on this relationship. You're not even going to spend some time to kind of properly explain to people why it didn't work out. You're just like, "Oh, yeah, no, it didn't work out. Let's move on." Like, at that point, why even freaking

[08:35] bother? Because well then what they do spend time on makes no freaking sense. spend time on makes no freaking sense. Final episode. They spent so long. They spent literal minutes on this cockami explanation for why Geb Gerlac was

[08:51] [music] the responsible party for the kidnapping and the assault on Charlotte kidnapping and the assault on Charlotte and Rosem. And he is. We know he is. We saw him. We heard his voice. But the explanation that Mr. Bones there has we

[09:04] spent so long on that explanation and it's not even the right one. Why did Mr. Bones throw Rosemine into the air and we spend this extra time so that Ferdinand can dramatically fly up on his high beast and catch her midair just so that

[09:19] it looks pretty. That didn't happen in the light novel. Yes, he threw her and she got out of the bag, but then she just kind of slammed into Ferdinand as if he was walking up and then we continue from there. We didn't need to

[09:31] animate a hive beast going into the air and grabbing her and being all dramatic. It's just like the choices bother me because we cut so much and then we add the narrative. If you're going to add things, if you're going to expand on

[09:45] light novel, I'm not against or opposed to that in general. I'm just more opposed to it in practice when you don't do it well. And that kind of sums up my thoughts on a lot of this entire part and this entire season and adaptation is

[10:00] that a lot of it just isn't done well. We all thought and we all hoped that when Studio Wit took over for Ascendants of a Bookworm that this new season was going to be so much better or at least slightly better than what had come

[10:14] before. And [music] then we saw the the the PV and we saw the new art. Everyone looks fantastic in still images, sure, but in practice, the animation is so but in practice, the animation is so much more basic than previous seasons.

[10:29] what Pokémon used to do. So, for a long time, if you ever watch Pokémon in your youth, you probably had the old school Pokémon character designs and animation like drilled into your head for a very long time. And then I think it was

[10:42] around when they adapted Sun and Moon, the the Aloha seasons where they completely changed the character designs of every main character in Pokemon, all of the Pokemon, the the visual look of Pokemon changed dramatically. And the

[10:54] explanation for that was so that the new character designs could lead to more fluid looking animation. Ascendants of a Bookworm created new character designs at the new studio for this new season, except instead of allowing for more

[11:07] fluid animation, we have instead received a lot more stilted animation. Not only do we go back to what I mentioned before in where most scenes now start with everybody already seated cuz we can't have people moving around,

[11:20] even when people talk, it is the most attention to when you watch anime, not just in bookworm in general, but watch lip flaps in anime. There's a couple of different ways that you can do it. The

[11:33] very basic one is to just literally have the mouth moving, the small little bit of mouth, and it just kind of moves and forms shapes. The next step up from that jaw movement, potentially something in the shoulders, and then the big one is

[11:47] like when people are talking and they're like fully emoting with their words and explanations of things. Uh, Bookworm very much likes that. No, the character the mouth for a little bit. And they do that a lot. There are so many points in

[12:01] time in [music] this adaptation, in these episodes where if they can get away with somebody not actually having to move or if they can get away with having a static image that just moves from side to side or when the movement

[12:13] itself is just taking a PNG and moving it around, if they can get away with that, they're going to do it. And they did. It's one thing, you know, if they were going to be cutting in scenes that were [music] that could be made with low

[12:26] people talking around a table, okay, fine. Slime did this. You remember when whole season that was just the meeting their next season of having a lot more animated moments. And sure, one could

[12:41] argue, oh, that's what Wit Studio is doing here. And I'm like, I don't believe it. I very much do not believe in any way, shape, or form that the next anywhere better animated than this. When you have something that cuts corners so

[12:56] egregiously hard like this season has been, you do not give me any hope the exact same thing and trying to get away with the exact same thing on their started with the AI in the opening. Okay, so we had an opening scene in the

[13:12] very beginning of this adaptation cuz we had two openings cuz it's 24 [music] for the first 12, one for the second 12. And they got caught using AI in their animation for the for the opening.

[13:25] Studio comes out and apologizes and then in future episodes they had replaced the quote unquote AI art uh with actual art and um everything was fine, right? But

[13:37] here's the thing. I don't believe while watching even the updated opening and second opening of this show that there was no AI used anymore. I feel like they just got called out for the most egregious stuff and they replaced that.

[13:52] But anything that they didn't get called out for, they left in. The OP just looks so off from the character model of everything else. And maybe I am just distrustful. Maybe I am reading too hard into this and it's actually fine and it

[14:07] just happens to be how they decided to animate this OP possible. Sure. But once you we've already caught them using AI to make the art for their openings, it that it was not used elsewhere, especially if they think they could get

[14:22] away with it. Those openings are just so off. And I'd love to be able to point to they're wrong, but it's like the character designs just seem off. A lot of it just feels like they tossed in the cover art from all of the light novels

[14:36] and then just told an AI to animate it and then they threw like somewhat similar backgrounds or or or borders around things and it just felt so off. around things and it just felt so off. This is probably one of the worst fourth

[14:49] seasons of a thing I've ever watched. And I I really am trying to think here how much of this is because of how much I love the original material. How much I love these books so much. And and I'm not normally in that position. Normally

[15:03] Normally I am the guy that's just like, "Well, I can enjoy it for what it is." But in this case, I just kind of don't. I've been watching all of these with my wife, and even she is just like something just feels off and weird

[15:18] and we're skipping a couple of things or the animation looks a little off or things happen that don't make a lot of sense. And I know that like part three, light novel, part three is kind of like the down part for many people. I don't

[15:33] think so. Personally, there are a lot of things I like about part three. Part three has Brigit and now she's just gone. That's another thing that I'm disappointed in. She is this great character and not only did the the

[15:46] between the the subplot with her and Daniel, but she's just gone now because Rosemine ended this episode, the ended the final season with her teleporting to she's going to the academy already. So then we don't even have any semblance of

[15:59] get closure for Brigite in the light novel either. And maybe that's kind of the problem is that a part of me was hoping that the anime would actually fix about the light novel, you know, only to be like, "No, of course not." They're

[16:13] do it at all." And most of the things in the light novel we're not even going to do the same way. So Brigit is gone now, and that saddens me cuz I feel like we especially considering this is the only time we're going to get with her cuz I

[16:26] work in part five is going to be acknowledged at all, assuming we even animate part five. Part three of Bworm is just kind of the the more standard going to be going around the duche and we're going to be uh collecting these

[16:40] adventure and then we're going to make the super awesome bath that'll make her healthy except not because you know poison. And it becomes like the on a grander scale than we'd seen before. And it bothers me because I

[16:55] don't feel like this was putting the best foot forward in trying to showcase noble society of this world to people. I feel like we did a bunch of fumbling with Wilfred, too. Cuz Wilfred is this naive, sheltered kid, right? A lot of

[17:09] his character development within Bookworm is him realizing that he needs to actually do [music] things, that he, despite the fact that he was basically he needs to be better than that. otherwise he's going to have problems.

[17:24] And most of his arc throughout all of Bookworm is kind of him trying somewhat succeeding then somewhat failing to come to terms with any of that and trying to determine himself what he wants for his own future rather than the future that

[17:39] other people want for him. That is largely his thing and it's supposed to start here. But in how the scenes get presented, I don't feel like the anime does a very good job at like [music] both empathizing with him and then also

[17:51] showcasing the severity in which the situations he's in are. Like when Ferdinand suggests to Sylvester that he be removed from the line of succession because he's an incompetent nitwit, uh the anime just kind of says it as a

[18:04] where they were all just around the table again and Ferdinand's just like, "Oh yeah, you should do this." And and then everybody reacts. [music] Like specifically, the light novel doesn't have them all started around the

[18:17] around the table at the start and they have a bunch of conversations and things beforehand and then Ferdinand comes in. He barges into the room essentially goes right up to Sylvester and says, "Remove your son from the line of succession."

[18:31] It is dramatic. It is over the top. And it is done that way precisely because of how severe the situation is. The anime though, it adapts that scene as a, "Oh at us. We're all calm around this table [music] when we're going to be talking

[18:45] about how Wilfrid is a piece of shit." And I mean, it's not wrong. That it's just the presentation is poor. It's like the reverse of uh that that Goblet of Fire thing from from Harry Potter when uh Dumbledore is responding to finding

[18:58] out that Harry's name was put into the Goblet of Fire. Everybody makes the joke did you put your name into the Goblet of Fire?" Dumbledore set calmly and then you cut to the the film adaptation of the book and then you have Gambon going

[19:12] you put your name in the goblet of fire and here for bookworm this almost like seems the reverse of that where Ferdinand should be busting in and being succession and then the anime is instead just like Sylvester you should remove

[19:25] your son from the line of succession like the impact is very different. Yeah. And yeah, we make fun of the the Potter one cuz it just is so over the top, but there are times where I feel like that is necessary to just showcase the

[19:37] severity. In general, I feel like having somebody kind of overreact a little bit because of how severe the situation is makes a lot of sense. And that's what I scene in the light novel from Bookworm. And then I was just grossly disappointed

[19:50] that that didn't end up being showcased at all. Part three has so much good weight to it, and we barely see any of it. We've pretty much given up on the Italian restaurant. Who cares about that place anymore? It had exactly one

[20:04] everyone was before they went off to make the uh the the monastery in. But to care about that anymore. And that I feel like is the sad part cuz it kind of showcases where we're going in future adaptations in that Rosem's industrial

[20:20] revolution is kind of put on hold, put on pause, or it's going to be happening entirely behind the scenes. All that we need to care about now is Rosemine going to the Royal Academy, making friends, uh making new acquaintances, um making new

[20:35] connections with people, showing off her trends that we're only going to get there's no way in hell that we're going to actually spend time on any of the trends that she has when we have so many new characters to introduce. That's the

[20:47] thing. It's like, do I feel confident about uh whether or not they're going to animate the scenes in in part 4? Well, no, because I already know that they're pretty much tripling the cast of the show by necessity, cuz that's what

[21:00] characters are introduced in part 4, and we're not going to have enough time for Brigit. She was only supposed to be here for these five volumes, for these 24 episodes, and we know so little about her. We got maybe one solid episode in

[21:15] two scenes that involve her at all. And out of all of the characters introduced have time spent with them, she got the short end of the stick, which means that short end of the stick. Feline was supposed to have her proper introduction

[21:29] in part three, and she didn't really. She's sort of there, but she's only worried of how much spotlight she's going to get at all in part four, which why give her attention with anything when Harmon's going to be there instead?

[21:44] that we're going to be seeing more Hartmoot. And I don't want to see more just such an over-the-top character that they're just not going to cut him by necessity. We're probably going to cut any semblance of Rodri until maybe the

[21:57] I would argue that the light novels didn't really give us enough time with going to do it. And even just like what did Angelica get in part three, right? She got a a rough introduction uh

[22:10] [ __ ] at school without really getting into how bad that is and like the we had the little bit with the monoblade that I mean, you got to have it. Stenluke needs to exist because it's something that happened in part three.

[22:25] But like we're not going to be building on Stenluke at all at this point going there as a random Ferdinand voice whenever Angelica's in the scene because that's all he's going to be. And then like looking at all of the quote unquote

[22:38] action scenes from part three, if that's what Ditter is going to be like in part four and beyond, I'm not excited for part four. Like there's a little small little spark in the back of my head that's just like, yes, but part four is

[22:52] the part that made Bookworm popular in Japan. It is [music] what increased its notoriety. It is what increased its fan base. Part four is where quote unquote it got good. And so maybe the plan was to just blitz through part three as fast

[23:07] as we could go so that we could just start with what we really want to do, which is part 4. And maybe that's what they're doing. Maybe there was something with the workload [music] or I don't want to keep saying budget. I feel like

[23:21] the budget go?" I feel like we are grossly misrepresenting what's happening behind the scenes because I've seen at least hints of enough that the budget is not just the only factor in these sorts of things. I'm also just in general

[23:34] worried about the skill because if this is the the skill level that we're seeing out of even just the direction, let alone the animation, then I don't know because I've been enjoying the part four manga a lot. But I do like especially

[23:48] characters and not just characters we see and interact with, but characters that are there. Rosem spends so much time in the dormatory with everyone. All of these characters who don't have names. We don't have names for so many

[24:02] we know they're supposed to be there, which means they're supposed to be animated or at least existing drawn at and watch what I actually said a year

[24:14] ago or almost a year ago. I think I was like hesitant but maybe cautiously optimistic. This No, I am I am not cautiously optimistic anymore at all. I am not optimistic at all. I fully believe that I'm going to dislike part 4

[24:28] in its entirety just as much as I don't like part three. I will watch all of it begrudgingly and probably keep rereading the light novel over and over again and then go on AO3 and reread a whole bunch of the fanfictions that I'd love for

[24:42] fanfiction from people who may be watching these adaptations and being thought it was going to be and then get their mind blown by reading the light novel." We're going to do that, too. This is just me like wallowing in a pit

[24:56] This is just me like wallowing in a pit of despair. And I get it now. I I get why so many times in the history of watching anime, I've had people come and tell me, "Oh, but read the manga, though." And I was like, "Yeah, but I it

[25:08] usually that was what I was judging it as. This does not work as an anime. And it works even worse because I know how it could be. That's the thing. Like I very much doubt that I would be enjoying this anime had I not read the

[25:21] light novel. I don't feel like um the comparisons that I constantly make in my head are something that detract from the anime. I still probably I probably would have dropped Bookworm a while back if I was an anime only to be quite frank cuz

[25:35] it's not that good on its own. And it's just the matter that the comparison between it and the light novel just makes it so much worse because you've now seen the goodness, the what could have been, and then you witnessed what

[25:50] McDonald's at home sort of anime. And I don't like it, and you don't have to like it. And if anything, a part of me almost doesn't want to read original materials anymore, right? Cuz I can't stop myself from watching anime. It's

[26:05] part of my job to an extent. One lesson that I could take from all of this, even that I could take from all of this, even if it is the wrong one, is that ah, ignorance is bliss. And so, thank you for allowing me to rant on Ascendants of

[26:19] a Bookworm season 4. I hope I didn't spoil it too much for you. And novels. Go read these. They're great. You don't even need to pick up the digital versions. It'll be great. Thank me later. And a very special thank you

[26:33] videos like these on top of everything else that I am doing and still be able way, shape or form. Your names have been [music] guys enough. And also of course a very special thank you to the

[26:46] wonderful patrons who go the extra mile. Those patrons being Gwig, Aiden, Sirio, Ryan Bonapart, Omar Showman, and Ross Emerson for being especially awesome.

[26:59] until next time where I promise except no I don't actually cuz we're going to about something from the new season now that more episodes have gone through and blitzkrieg through watching all of those. Until next time ladies gentlemen

[27:14] and others. Watch more anime and stay [music] frosty.