[Ended] Brynhildr in the Darkness (Gokukoku no Brynhildr)

Sorry, can't be bothered to find a screenshot for this one

Pros: The story that they didn't carve up.
-Although it is technically an extension of the original story...and they technically muffled some of it, they didn't flinch away from the more graphic bits of the show. Well...some of it anyway.
-Up until the last 2-3 episodes, the story is the impressive original work that made me so eager to see this anime

Cons: The ending, hands down.
-I saw the paving stones they laid for it early on, but I was honestly okay with the alterations they made, because they looked like they were just to end the story quickly, which the original content easily allowed for with minimal alteration. Instead, they horribly carved it up like Freddy got a job as a butcher.
-The ending is channeling waaay too much 'magical girl' themes. It's disgusting. particularly in this shows context
-The ending isn't anything like the original except for two points, which I can't mention because spoilers.

My Opinion: Skip it. No, really, just...skip it. Go read the manga.
A) The story has several more potent moments that the anime trimmed for time
B) It doesn't go magical girl at the end like this did, and
C) It keeps going.
The story is much more impressive than the ending of this lets on. The first 10 or so episodes are a good taste of what it has to offer, but after that it starts cutting corners. Hard. No one would give this thing a drivers license. People would die. (oh wait, they already are. Bad Joke, Fnar Fnar).
I put the last episode for this off for a very long time, as is readily apparent from this posts time stamp. I wasn't looking forward to this last episode at all. After the one previous to it, I just couldn't see them concisely wrapping it up without horribly butchering anything. Normally I wouldn't care so much, it would just be another in the pile of 'butchered to shorten the anime because budgets' or whatever other reason they have for it. This particular show though, could have ended better. Like, 100% the manga facilitated a concise ending for this many anime episodes. Hell, I thought the manga had ended where the anime chooses to stop, it was that ready for it. All they would have had to do was trim a few pieces of foreshadowing that lead into the story after, which they were already doing anyway. But no, we get this carved up corpse of a thing.

Impartial Judgement: Aside from the original story having crawled up my arse and died making a stink all over the place, it's not...horrible. Certainly in the realm of most of the things you would find from anime about magic, it's much more interesting, for it's down-to-earth practicality of what it would really be like if we had magic within our reach. Just another way for us to horribly murder each other, en masse. Oh, and sometimes help some people, when we felt like it.
All that aside, I'm trying really hard to be impartial after the bad taste the last few episodes left in my mouth.
In summary, I recommend about the first 9-10 episodes just for the colored motion picture of what the manga can offer you. If you absolutely cannot stand reading manga, which I honestly can understand, then I don't recommend this show at all, unless an incomplete or poorly stitched together story doesn't bother you at all. If those don't bother you, then I recommend this with complete abandon, because it is still heavily built from the good story and plot of the original material. The only thing that may be grating is the characters, some of them are a little trope'y at times.
[Aside]
They always prefer to behave and act in context of their horrible situation, but when the pressures off, it feels like they switch into these weird almost-too-trope to stomach persona. . . actually...that makes a little bit of sense. Any kind of light-heartedness in the kind of day-to-day hopelessness these people live with would feel a bit forced...Never thought of that before. Really, I'm just dredging for the cons I couldn't think of three paragraphs ago. I've given my poorly rendered two-bits for this show.
[Aside end]

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.

[New][April 2014] Gokukoku no Brynhildr

Precisely

Last Seen: Episode 1

Summary: When he was a child, Murakami was infatuated with a girl he called Kuroneko. She insisted on knowing about aliens and having met one, but no one believed her, even young Murakami was skeptical. One day, she decides to show him the alien, but an accident occurs and Kuroneko dies while Murakami is left seriously wounded in the hospital. Years go by and Murakami obsesses on finding proof of the existence of aliens because of a promise he had made with Kuroneko. Then, one day, a new transfer student comes to his class, who not only looks a lot like Kuroneko, but is named Kuroha Neko. 

First Impression: Good things in the future. Starting off right, and I've got everything that can be in its future in my pocket as long as they follow the script.

First Opinion: Think Madoka Magicka, to the power of 10, if it's going to be anything like its manga, Kiwaguro no Brynhildr. It says something about its quality that as soon as I saw 'Brynhildr' I immediately jumped into every websites summary of it that I could find, and Fist Pumped when I knew it was based on what is one of my favorite mangas being translated right now. I've only seen episode one, but it follows the manga exactly. Now, if any of you read my first post about Golden Time, you may recall they did the same thing, but eventually changed things down the line. So why am I still so thrilled about Brynhildr? Because when you change plot elements in a romance/drama based story, you run a very high risk of diluting, weakening, or outright ruining the impact and quality of the story. In a story like this... as long as they're planning to stay the course for the essence of the story, (and the opening gives me great confidence they at least plan to), it doesn't matter how many minor plot or story elements you change, or how fast you clip the story down to size, it's still going to be a great show to watch. Obviously, anything can be ruined past the point of no return, but I have great hopes for this show.

Now, something a bit more objective. Whenever 'Magic' pops up in anime, it tends to immediately trigger the 'Magical Girl Show' stereotype in peoples brains. While that may not as be as deep of a stigma as it used to be post-Madoka Magicka, it still brings to mind the childish and shallow essence of the original stereotype, just slightly tempered. I've raved about this in a post before, only more generally on the topic of Fantasy, but to sum up fast: Fantasy(Magic) gives great power of reach and depth to a story and plot, but if applied too strongly, weakens it and makes it shallow. Why? When everything is solved in a one sided manner with 'The Power of Love/Friendship/Peace/Happiness' or other such nonsense, or the main characters have the power to reshape a quarter of the planet with a thought, but the fights still take 2-3 episodes, things get to feeling too absurd, even for animes powerful 'suspension of disbelief'. Enter the (I hope) upcoming trend I've likened to calling 'Modern Magic', and you have a potential solution. The basic essence of the idea, is that even Magic, if it existed in our world, would have its own Principles, Laws, and Physics that ruled it, even as it itself reshaped our vanilla Physics and Laws. In other words, its a higher minimum expectation of Fantasy(magic) as an enriching element, instead of a diluting one.
Brynhildr may not quite fit into a 'Modern Magic' slot by technicalities, but if it plays its cards in the pattern of the manga, the rest of its world is going to fit into it perfectly even if the magic doesn't do so 100%.

TL:DR;
I hereby award this show:

Zetro's Preemptive Must Watch of the Season Award. [Redacted]
For a opening and first episode that promises to be true to the manga in spirit.
Oh, and a word of warning: The squeamish may want to have a bucket nearby to lose their lunch in if the show doesn't pull any of its punches at all with the story.
You have been warned.