Scarlet Nexus is now streaming on Funimation.
The Scarlet Nexus game that was released this past June was a pleasant surprise for me. It had an above-average story with fun real-time action gameplay. Its futuristic cyberpunk setting and psychic motif, dubbed “brainpunk,” intrigued me as well. Given that this was a brand new IP from Bandai Namco, I was also surprised that it also got an anime adaptation, which told me that the company had faith in this new property. Unfortunately, that anime adaptation is mostly just a watered-down version of the game.
By the very nature of, well, being a show and not a game, it strips away much of what makes Scarlet Nexus enjoyable: the gameplay. However, the series does provide extra context for certain events and fleshes out more prominent side characters from the game. In this context, the TV show is most enjoyable as a supplement to playing the actual game.
Scarlet Nexus takes place in a society where humans have developed supernatural powers and have technology based on the human brain. There are antagonistic creatures called Others who feed on human brains. The Other Suppression Force (OSF) use their psychic abilities to protect humanity from the Others, while finding out the truth about a phenomenon in the sky called the Extinction Belt, where the creatures supposedly originated from.
The game was already well paced, consisting of 12 chapters. The show manages to replicate the same pacing, hitting pretty much all of the major plot points within its 26-episode run. This can be really hard to pull off because cutscenes and story beats from video games don’t always translate nicely into TV episodes with time constraints, which we saw in Persona 5: The Animation. Trying to fit a 100-hour JRPG into just 26 episodes is a near impossible task when trying to capture the emotional rollercoaster that also comes with exploring the dungeons and watching the cutscenes.
The Scarlet Nexus show does a better job in this respect because the game’s story can be completed in about one-third of that time, roughly at around 30-35 hours. But like Persona 5: The Animation, the Scarlet Nexus show also had to drop its social interaction mechanic. In the game, the two main characters, Yuito Sumeragi and Kasane Randall, can interact with their teammates in “Bond Events,” which work similarly to Persona’s Social Link and Confidant mechanics that the series helped popularize. These are one-on-one interactions where you get to learn more about your teammate’s backstories and motivations, and viewing these also boosts their combat abilities; these are completely absent from the TV series.
In sacrificing Bond Events, the show is able to retell the game’s main story beat by beat. Unfortunately, the Bond Events and interpersonal relationships between the characters are a big part of what makes Scarlet Nexus appealing. Without these, we don't really know much about the main cast of characters and why we should even care about them.
While this isn’t ideal, the show does provide more flashbacks and scenes that weren’t present in the game that add to its side characters. In particular, Yuito’s best friend, Nagi Karman, and Kasane’s sister, Naomi, are a bit more fleshed out here. Since both of these characters weren’t playable in the game, it was nice to see them get more attention in the show. This is especially true when it came to showcasing Nagi’s wind-based powers and Naomi’s precognition abilities during the show’s fight scenes.
The final episode actually both ties up loose ends and sets up a better baseline for a potential sequel to the game better than the game does itself. In the game’s epilogue, you’d speak with the entire playable cast to learn about what their future plans were now that the world is saved. However, the final episode takes it further by fully dedicating its time to go over the consequences and subsequent political fallout that came with defeating the main antagonist. For that fact alone, I do think the final episode is worth watching at the very least for those who’ve already finished the main game.
One of the criticisms I had about Scarlet Nexus was that there was a massive info and lore dump around the latter half of the game. At that point, it was entirely too much exposition. The show attempts to alleviate that issue by foreshadowing some of its bigger plot points much earlier in the beginning episodes. Even the main antagonist is revealed at the very end of the first episode. It’s just another reason to play Scarlet Nexus before watching the adaptation, as some viewers could consider this a spoiler for the game.
Because of the TV show format, the fast-paced gameplay that made Scarlet Nexus so fun is gone. The anime replaces it with really boring fight choreography against the Others. They just simply do not match the intensity that the game’s combat mechanics provide. In some high-tension moments, the show will just feature a plain colored background with still images of the characters, which is just creatively uninteresting.
One of the game’s core battle mechanics, the Struggle Arms System (SAS), where Yuito and Kasane can borrow their teammates’ abilities to augment themselves, is completely absent in the anime adaptation. In the game, for example, you can borrow Shiden’s lightning powers to increase your attack range, or Kyoko’s duplication ability to increase the number of objects thrown with psychokinesis. There’s no such synergy or representation of this in the show, making the fight scenes even duller to watch.
This is easily the worst part of the anime adaptation. I suppose it’s unavoidable that some of the magic is lost in the transition from a game to a TV show, but the substitute here with the lackluster fight scenes is such a letdown.
That’s not to say it’s all a letdown. Rock group The Oral Cigarettes provided the game’s opening song, “Dream in Drive,” and they returned to perform the show’s two opening songs as well. “Red Criminal” and “MACHINEGUN” are some intense Japanese head-bangers. Surprisingly, the end credit songs, “Fire” by Yamato (.S) and “Stranger” by Ayumu Imazu, take a more introspective route, and are much less intense than the opening songs. It’s a nice change of pace.
Additionally, there’s some cross promotion between the anime and the game. Each episode of Scarlet Nexus features a hidden code somewhere that you can actually redeem in-game for a reward. This is a pretty cool tie-in that earns you additional lore, cosmetics, and items.
I also applaud the effort that went into bringing over the English dub cast from the game to reprise their roles in the anime adaptation. This show could have stayed as Japanese audio with subtitles only, but as someone who does prefer listening to English dubs when watching anime, this was definitely appreciated. English dubs have greatly improved over the last decade, and Scarlet Nexus boasts strong performances across the board.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/32hjpXA
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