Pete just finished watching Infinite Stratos, in order to get the foul taste of Railgun out of his mouth. He was quite enthusiastic about it in the beginning, but by the end less so.

I've got an explanation for why the ending doesn't satisfy. It's loaded with spoilers, so it's below the fold.

IS is based on a series of light novels. There are seven so far, but it's not easy to tell from the Wikipedia article just how many of them were used in this. All we get are chapter titles. It looks like volume 2 is Charlotte's story, so either this is 3 books or 4.

Adapting light novels to an anime is always a problem, because they are by their nature episodic, and they aren't necessarily paced properly for 12 eps, or 24. Usually the anime director has to find the story he's going to use for his ending, and then figure out how to pace the rest of it before that point to make it come out right. In the case of AsoIku they did a really good job of it, and the story they chose for their ending arc was excellent. In order to get the pacing right they had to include one filler episode (ep 10, about "Gramma") but it was a really good story, and did some nice character development for Eris.

In the case of Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou, the ending story was excellent, but to get to it they had to really race through a lot of earlier stuff, and skip a hell of a lot of plot exposition, and as a result the final arc is somewhat incoherent. Characters say things, and know things, that the audience doesn't understand because we missed out on the scenes where the characters learned about them. (In particular, Akuto seems to know a lot more about Keina than is dramatically justified based solely on what was presented in the anime.)

In the case of Infinite Stratos, they didn't really choose a good story to end it. Without having read the books (or even synopses of them) I can only speculate, but I would guess that they picked the best thing available. But the point where they stopped was just the introduction to the series. Seems like it's gonna be a looong book series (if it keeps selling, and if the author sticks with it) and it's only just begun.

Leaving aside everything that could be classified as "harem antics", just what have we learned? Damned little. We don't even know where the IS cores come from, aside from the fact that Houki's sister seems to be the sole source. Are they cybernetic? Are they some sort of alien life? Are they ancient artifacts? Are they genetically engineered from human DNA? Are they demons? And just what is so special about Ichika?

Don't ask me. I sure don't know. It doesn't help that Tabane is such a flake. She knows more than anyone else, but she says even she doesn't know why Byakushiki responds to Ichika.

So here are things we expect from a combat story: we need a hero. Got that. We need a reason why he's interesting. Got that, too.

We need an antagonist. We need to understand what the antagonist wants. We need to know why the hero opposes the antagonist. We need to see them come into conflict.

We sure got that from AsoIku, in spades. The antagonist was revealed at the end of the second episode, and her motivation was made very clear from the beginning. Jens is a superb antagonist: tough, smart, ruthless, highly motivated, and damned dangerous.

We got that, mostly, from Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou. There's a fair amount of confusion; we do come to understand mostly what Bouichirou is after, and Eiko's motivation is pretty obvious. But what are the Gods after? Why are the Gods not even united? And just what are they, anyway? There are hints that we're going to get some kind of mind-fuck revelation regarding the true nature of things, especially relating to the reset/restart function of the Maou and the Identity, but we didn't get it in this series. If we ever get a sequel, a lot of that will be revealed, I think.

But in Infinite Stratos, the antagonists -- two cases of it -- were unmanned experimental IS's which went out of control. Why? Why did they go out of control? Why were they flying to Japan? Were they after Ichika, or something else? No hints, no clues -- and no real antagonist. I can think of five or six radically different ways it might go -- and that's not good. It would have been more satisfying if I'd been given some hints about who the real enemy was -- if, indeed, there even is an enemy.

Without any of that stuff, Infinite Stratos feels like the first chapter of a long story. It is little more than a character introduction.

IF there is a sequel, or maybe two or three, and if the story is continued and a lot of that stuff comes out, then taken as a whole the franchise might develop into something good. But the way it is, it feels unfinished -- because it is unfinished. The real story hasn't even started yet.

And that's why the ending isn't satisfying. It isn't really any kind of ending.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 09:05 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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