ChäoS;Child

Today was a rather normal day. I had an urge to pick up a new anime, because I really want to make it to that 200 completed shows threshold someday. I looked through some old boxes in my bedroom and found a CD for this one anime named "Chaos;Child". At first I was like "Wow! I didn't know SILVER LINK made an anime adaptation of my favorite SciADV visual novel! I hope it lives up to its source matetial!". So, I grabbed some snacks, like popcorn and some Mountain Dew(you know, to fully integrate myself into the full Chaos;Child experience), played the first DVD in and began to...huh? 12 episodes? That little episodes for a 60 hour long visual novwl? Meh, they probably found a workaround for that. And so then I pressed the play button only to be greeted by what might be the BEST visual novel adaptation to ever exist. As they say, there's a golden rule about visual novel adaptations and it's that they have to completely strip away almost everything that makes the original visual novel good in the first place. In Chaos;Child's case, they made sure make the characters act like a bunch of hollow shell of themsleves and they also make sure to omit ANY important scenes that are quite literally integral to the main story of the game! I hate exposition scenes. Give my zoomer, low attention span brain a chance man! The Chaos;Head anime did the same thing and look at how Madhouse masterfully showcased what made the visual novel good! In the early parts of the Chaos;Child anime, I loved it when we get thrown into the action without any proper introductions on who the characters are or how the murder case even began. After all, the viewers don't want to watch any boring scenes as mentioned earlier of course. Pshaw! Who likes reading? I want to see Nono's panties shown on screen! Oh, we don't even get that. Nevermind. B-but what about the ham sandwich - nope not that one either. The pissing delusions? Nada. Gah! I give up ! Either way who even is Takuru Miyashiro? Serika Onoe? Kurusu Nono? Kazuki Hana? Hinae Arimura? Mio Kunosato? Yeah, don't know those fellas. I also loved it when SILVER LINK randomly decided to add in a part of a character route for no reason when they were literally following the common route for the entire run which would make zero fucking sense if you understand how delusion synchro works. It really does show that SILVER LINK cares about the source material! They made sure to give it as much story relevance as possible because they wouldn't want to add that in for no reason, wouldn't they? I mean, it's basically common knowledge that Kurusu's route overlaps with the common route(it was an old playground myth spread by my bestie, Billy). Let's not forget how they beautifully adapted the last chapter of common route by not including the reason why Takuru wants to turn Serika into a normal person after everything that had happened. I'm sure you cried "real men tears" at the scene, didn't you? Oh and who's the Commitee of 300 you may ask? Beats me! They're probably just another name for SERN or something. Oop! Steins;Gate mentioned! Haha! El Psy Kongroo! I am a mad scientist, sonuvabitch! Lol! 5/10. Not enough Shinjo.

Gah... short and sweet review. PROS Animation is better, pretty good in fact. Character design although generic does give you something to hang on and you're not going "is that A or B?". CONS Although it's not got all the problems of Chaos;Head but still has a lot of them - go read that review and come back, cause this ain't much better. The route cause is the Giglacrappery is just a rubbish tenet to build a story around, which is also poorly implemented. The pace is slightly better than Chaos;Head, but it's still a problem. Not sure there's any likeable characters in this, although the main kid is slightly more likeable. Others obviously like it - you may be one. Go make up your own mind.

TL;DR it's a waste of time and you shouldn't bother, the VN is out there on steam for really cheap if you want to experience this masterpiece of a story Hands down the worst anime adaptation of a visual novel of all time, compressing a 50-60 hour visual novel into 12 episodes is just madness. To put it into perspective, Steins;Gate's adaptation which is more than twice as short (side routes were cut, which are frankly not very relevant) had to cut some of the plot, most relevant being late game Nae, in order to fit into 24 episodes. The story feels soulless, from start to finish, lacks any depth and character development, and so the reveals are lacking impact since you don't care for the characters

I didnt expect much from this anime and thought that i wouldnt watch it at all, but surprisingly its quite good average anime. As always, i will be short. ChäoS;Child is not a masterpiece, but you can watch it, it has its advantages: - really interesting plot with a lot of plot twists - many moments are unusual and not cliched - main character is not a typical boring one with unrealistic ideals and not a cowardly one, but a completely decent character - this is not a censored children's anime, there is cruelty and murder - there are very cute girls of different archetypes and appearances The visual quality is quite good, there is not much cheap animation. The soundtrack is ordinary, but there is a cool opening. What can i say in conclusion? You shouldnt expect much from this anime, but you can definitely give it a chance.

This anime does some things well, and some others rly bad. There are huge flaws and most of them are quite easy to spot; but if you can look past them and focus on its positives - which are amazing! - then here you have a must watch. Also, if you are looking for self improvement in your stories (writting, rpgs, or other medias), you will learn a lot about what to do and what to avoid with Chaos Child. Positives: There isn't much or maybe any fanservice (This is not exactly a strong point, but fanservice would be a problem for the story this show is trying to tell); Amazing main plot; Top tier opening; Some good characters; Great character development of the main character; Nice message at the ending; Chaos Child is a suspense story in which you have the tools to realize what is going on before the ending - in a great way! Really good at being gross and talking about human behavior - similar to what Evangelion does, but simpler, which I'd argue is better. Negatives: This anime is terrible at being a sequel; Bad side plots, that lack screen time and proper conclusions; This anime shows how to not make an adaptation. It doesn't cut nor rework material that definitely needed to be adjusted and trimmed; There are many characters here just because they were in the source material, and they serve little to no purpose; Bad/terrible character development for most of the secondary characters; Many things doesn't make sense (like the lack of police); Very difficult to understand what is happening during some scenes; Terrible pacing: sometimes too slow and, even worse, too fast during some of the most important plot moments. In the end, Chaos Child presents the viewer with an amazing plot, but that's basically it. I'd argue it is very worth watching for the plot alone - as it is truly great - even if almost everything else around it is, let's say, "suboptimal"