Brynhildr in the Darkness (Gokukoku no Brynhildr): Terror, Suffering, and Humanity

oh...ohgod. I know what happens next...I DON'T WANT TO KNOW! BRAIN! STOP IT! SHUT UP!

(Bloodcurdling Mental Screaming)

Last Seen: Episode 4

So my favorite moment from the manga entered the dimension of motion today with Episode 4. That would be, the confrontation with Saori and the events leading up to it. Thanks to it, I feel like I finally have something objective to say about the show, that I can be sure isn't just me vomiting my fandom onto the blog.

One of a few inherent problems with conversion from written media to motion, is the loss of...time? shall we say. You take every page of a book, or a manga, at your own pace, and generally, you also spend more time on or with a moment in a book or a manga, than you would if it was the exact same thing in motion. This is because with a book or a manga, you could literally explore eternity in the heartbeat of a second. Just write more. It takes just as long for the event to happen with 10 words, as it does fifty. When you write down that the event has concluded, it has, and not a moment before. 'The worlds slowest punch' if you would.
With Manga, the bridge is much shorter, because it features the words in simultaneous occurrence with the scenes. This can arise a different problem however. While every segment of manga has a finite amount of space for picture, and writing, and the more segments on a page you have, the less space you have, the author still chooses what, and where. It's very easy to draw additional attention, or create additional impact or emphasis on a scene in a manga, because you can just dedicate a whole page to it, to give it more 'umph', and you can ensure precisely what the reader is reading, for that page, because you put just what you want to have said about that event, with it. Then you put what you want to be said after it, on the next page, or segment. Now, reel in all that information I just dumped on you, I'm about to bring it to point.

In the anime, when the confrontation with Saori finally occurs, it feels like Murakami and his actions have much less weight than they did for the exact same scene in the manga. I stopped to think about this, and realize it was because each individual segment in the manga, could draw more or less emphasis to specific parts of Murakami's thoughts, by pairing them with a reaction, or more space, or several of them within a split second event. I think this may become a more significant drawback to the anime in the future. Off the top of my head, I think a particular thing that may have been trimmed, is that Murakami had a few more ideas or thoughts about the beacons, after the fact, than are in the anime. I haven't gone to check that in the manga, so I very much could be remembering it wrong.

Now, don't get me wrong. This anime is pulling up all gold and silver for me so far, minus the pyromancer they show in the opening and a few moments of an episode, I have no idea if that character is canon with the manga or not, she certainly hasn't shown in at all to this point. I'm quite sure she's the anime's early-end-of-show card.

The point I want to make though, is that in the Manga that has proceeded past where the anime is, Murakami's intellect is a very important character element for him. The way he thinks, and what he thinks, is given particular emphasis several times in the plot.
So far, the anime seems to have given the appropriate allocation of resources to get this in, but the medium they're working in, in my opinion, is going to be offering up ever more resistance to this as time goes on.
[Aside]
It was something the Movie industry learned as it was first growing up, that having a character just monologue on screen while not showing the audience anything, is very very boring, in the majority of cases. So over time, the trend has been to shorten thoughts and speeches, to keep the "Show, don't Tell" rolling. Feel free to have mixed feelings about that, but I guarantee in at least one movie this policy has saved you some boredom.
[Aside End]
So I wanted to take some time to talk about this, in case in the future you feel like something one or more characters act/react towards, like it had more significance than it seems to have, that significance may have been trimmed from an inner-thoughts-monologue of one of the characters. Most likely Murakami.

Also, I'm really looking forward to the scene with the person Murakami takes that Metal Tube with the[SPOILER REMOVED] in it to. Probably 1-2 episodes away though.