The game didn't save the anime — the anime saved the game

In Search of the Lost Future (尋找失去的未來) is a visual novel developed by Trumple and released in 2010. Its biggest selling point was the gorgeous art, but the scenario and just about everything else had too many fatal flaws, and Trumple eventually stopped operating — shut down, in plain terms. Companies that put out one title and die aren’t rare, and Trumple is hardly the only one. The game later got a Chinese fan translation, and I’m sure plenty of people have played it — most of them drawn in by the art.

Then In Search of the Lost Future got announced for an anime adaptation… and I was baffled. Why? The company’s already dead. You’re adapting its work — what for? Hoping a sequel sells well enough to summon the company’s ghost back? Or some other reason?

So let’s put on our tinfoil hats and figure out where the actual drive for this adaptation came from. Then the staff list came out, and I spotted Satomi Satou’s (佐藤聡美) name in it — a person who has no business being in an eroge got a character invented just to slot her in, and she sings the OP too. Remember, Satomi Satou had announced her singer debut only half a year earlier. Doesn’t take much to connect the dots.

“Eh, invest in an anime, sell a few songs, that’s all.” Truth is, funding an anime isn’t that expensive — scrimp and save and it costs less than running around doing promo appearances, and otaku are more likely to bite anyway.

So this “song sales first, anime incidentally” adaptation of a visual novel aired in October. Never mind anything else — the original game’s art by Kurehito Misaki (深崎暮人) and Shinobu Kuroya (黒谷忍) was basically impossible to reproduce in animation. Subpar fidelity was a foregone conclusion, and the funding motive behind this thing screamed “we don’t have much money.” Even though I’d braced myself for a tight budget, off-model art, and a butchered plot, when I watched episode 1… I was still constantly trying to convince myself to accept that level of animation quality…

But I really can’t accept it, dammit!

The visuals here can’t even be called “off-model” or “low fidelity” anymore. For 80% of the runtime, people’s faces were never straight. Early on the anime also leaned on a lot of 3D, so characters posed like C-3PO from Star Wars — twitchy and hilarious — and combined with faces that were fat one moment and thin the next, you couldn’t focus on anything else. Episode 2 in particular is a textbook case of shoddy workmanship. I’ve been watching anime for over 20 years — forget late-night ecchi shows, even the Little Carp cartoon I watched as a kid never looked this broken. Funny thing is, from episode 3 the art style changed again, the 3D was gone, things looked much more normal, but the quality was still low… The important part is, at least it was watchable (tolerable)!

Sometimes I wonder if the studio hadn’t paid the staff for the first two episodes, and this was the result.

Fine, at least I could grit my teeth and watch. But by then the anime had already been savaged — 90% of the attacks were about the visuals, and fair enough. Anime, animation — moving pictures. If you can’t even draw well, what do you expect people to praise?

Enduring art that broke every five seconds, I actually finished the whole thing. Maybe I’m obsessive, maybe it was curiosity — I’d played the game and wanted to see how the anime handled it. And you know what… I was kind of pleasantly surprised. Setting aside the biggest factor, the visuals, the anime showed extremely high quality across the music, OP, ED, BGM, voice acting, and the scenario arrangement. Honestly, it might be the best visual novel adaptation of that October season — UBW was merely competent, while In Search of the Lost Future’s script arrangement completely crushed the original.

Speaking honestly, as someone who finished the game, I can only say it’s pretty bad. The story it wanted to tell had a high coolness factor, and the art was very, very, very beautiful, but the scenario was very, very, very stupid. Put simply: the protagonist’s childhood friend dies in a traffic accident, so in the future he creates an artificial human and sends her back in time to try to change history. Sometimes I think this plot is a lot like Doraemon — Hanamiya-senpai is Nobita, Yuu Furukawa is Doraemon, Sasaki is Shizuka, and so on… okay, I’ll stop.

The original game has far too many unreasonable and goofy spots. First, the protagonist declares at the start that he’s in the astronomy club, but this so-called “astronomy club” from the beginning to the end of the game does ab! so! lute! ly! nothing! related to astronomy! Instead they spend every day getting into fights with people, and once a fight starts it drags on and on, bafflingly. Second, Hanamiya-senpai mentions in the game that she has a black box in her possession, but apart from that one line the game never brings up the box again until the very end, when it tells you it exists. There’s no CG of the box, no close-up — you don’t even know what it looks like. On top of that, the game is stuffed with endless boring conversation, euphemistically called astronomy club activities, when it’s really just banter and bullshit and more bullshit, enough to put you to sleep.

Only at the very end, after Sasaki Kaori dies in the first playthrough, does the save-the-day loop begin, one playthrough after another, each corresponding to a heroine’s route — and the route scenarios get goofier one after another, with zero logic. The senpai’s omiai ends in a fistfight — are you kidding me? Airi’s END is baffling too. Only at the very, very end, when Yuu Furukawa appears to save the protagonist and Kaori, does the story finally get a little interesting — but the front half had already wrecked it, and it’s too late to turn the tide.

But! But! The anime completely rescued this absurd excuse for a plot. Right from the start, the astronomy club activities actually include stargazing! Stargazing! That’s what an astronomy club should be doing. Then the senpai’s box gets far more screen time and emphasis, and the early slice-of-life episodes add much more about time travel, artificial humans, and the possibilities of future technology, and Yuu Furukawa’s character is fleshed out much more completely, connecting the initial confusion with the later developments so it doesn’t feel baffling like the game. It also adds events that build fond memories, and actually shows the school festival that the game only ever names and never depicts. It’s basically a patch and full renovation of the game’s idiotic script — the whole thing no longer feels jarring, and Yuu Furukawa has far more emotion, and with Aoyama’s superb voice performance, if not for that shit-tier animation, I’d have cried!

At the end, the story hits its climax, weaving together dialogue from two different worldlines and showing two worlds — the world where Yuu Furukawa was created, and the world where Sasaki is saved. The final “see you tomorrow” echoes the lyrics of the game’s OP and ED, and the whole atmosphere flows in one breath. If not for visuals that feel like eating shit, everything would be beautiful.

Yeah. If not for visuals that feel like eating shit, this work should have been very good. Setting aside the enormous visual factor, in the integration of OP/ED with the story, in the BGM support, in the presentation of the scenario, it beats the game 100% across the board by several blocks. As a game player, I’m honestly sighing about it.

“If Trumple could have made the game with this script, they probably wouldn’t have gone under.” “If Trumple hadn’t gone under, then if the game got an anime, maybe the budget would have been a bit more sufficient?” “If the budget were sufficient… then this anime wouldn’t have been such a disaster…”

The world doesn’t have that many ifs, especially for a worthless hypothetical like this where the game came first and the anime second. Sometimes I think the reason In Search of the Lost Future got attention is the game — but the game itself was of questionable quality, its art style couldn’t be reproduced, and it didn’t bring the anime anything. The anime, on the contrary, patched up the various flaws in the game and saved its illogical, low-IQ scenario arrangement.

The original game didn’t save the anime. Quite the opposite — the anime saved the game.

As for whether the anime is worth watching, I have reservations. The scenario arrangement and other aspects are decent, but the visuals are too much of a mental pollutant, and whether the BD fixes them remains to be seen. If the BD quality is good, it should be worth a look.

It’s a cliché, but I still like the chocolate-and-shit metaphor.

If In Search of the Lost Future the game is a piece of shit that looks like delicious chocolate, then the anime is a delicious piece of chocolate shaped like shit. The former looks fine but tastes disgusting; the latter looks disgusting but at least you can eat it.

Of course, if someone tells you while you’re watching the anime, “The anime’s plot isn’t great, go play the original!”

Remember to control your strength. Don’t beat him to death.