Various Thoughts

Originally, I had not bothered to read these since the events were covered (in abridged fashion) by the first Anime adaptation. After recently watching the second season though I came to realize that the adaptation didn’t merely skip events. It actually goes and changes some things as well… quite illogically at times in that season’s case. As a result I decided to read them after all.

The first novel is covered by the first five episodes of the TV series and unsurprisingly ends up not actually having much skipped content beyond the students’ introduction to the world (which was eventually covered by a special episode). The second novel then gets compressed into the sixth and seventh episodes, and yet… you still don’t really miss much. Nothing all that important was actually cut out, and the Labyrinth exploration in particular was edited extremely well.

The third switches things up by having been adapted into episodes eight through ten, yet again with nothing of particular value being cut out. Finally we come to the fourth novel which similar to the last one was also adapted into 3 episodes. A few more noticeable things were changed here than for the previous novels, yet in all cases they merely serve to streamline events. The only real absence that hurts is not seeing the hero party progress until they’re already near the end.

So, all-in-all, if it weren’t for the dire state of the first Anime’s action scenes it would actually be a pretty damn good adaptation and can easily be watched in place of reading the novels (assuming you have a tolerance for periodically abysmal animation quality). Frankly, I’m shocked at how well whomever was in charge of the series composition managed to smooth out the event progression.

Although this franchise is getting a second Anime adaptation relatively soon, I decided to switch over to the novels since the (lack of) quality on display in the earlier adaptation makes it doubtful any continuation will end up any good.

Happily, it seems the author is not one to pointlessly drag out their stories or cut corners. Less happily, it turns out that the content of the source material is pretty much the same as the content of the Anime. Meaning it’s a fairly stereotypical, if slightly more explicit, action-focused harem series with its one saving grace being not having an oblivious/indecisive protagonist. The Anime did leave out a number of things though, so I’m morbidly curious what the second season is going to do about Lily’s existence and the beastman city.

Comparisons aside the story advances at a pretty brisk clip until you reach the end, where there’s a pair of two-parters. The 9th and 10th books cover the clearing of the last labyrinth while doubling as something of a character study, while the 11th and (eventual) 12th are the main plotline’s action-heavy climax.

To be frank, I do not like the 11th book at all. Though the series as a whole has never given a shit about keeping consistent power levels, the constant stream of insanity present here goes well above and beyond what could be considered acceptable. It has no believability whatsoever, which robs what should be dramatic scenes of all tension. What the 6th novel pulled off this one unequivocally fails at.

Which means I have little hope the 12th (and presumably final) book will end the series well.