As I commented in Kabitzin’s excellent retrospective I found this show a bit of a chore to sit through at first but burning through the last five episodes in the space of an afternoon was better than the weekly episode viewing I initially tried. I quite like the open ending with its promise of more to come later in the year but also felt a twinge of guilt: the show is not without its flaws but I feel that it was given a bit of an unfair beating. More than anything I want to be annoyed at the series for the right reasons and want to understand why it took the approaches it did.

Can I be bothered to dig up the eroge adaptation issue again? Quite frankly I can’t see the point. The idea of branching narratives and periodic storyline choices in a VN -> indecisive protagonist in a strictly linear plotline of a TV series ought to be obvious by now, or at least I hope so. This isn’t the area where the show falls down – rather, the frustration viewers felt was the price of presenting the characters in the light they were; not so much the question of whether the faults lie in a poor adaptation or the act of recreating the original material complete with those faults.

On the latter point: I’m at a bit of a disadvantage in that I’ve never played the game so can’t say whether my criticisms stem from the anime’s screenplay or the story it’s based on. I guess you could argue that an adaptation has the advantage in that regard: it has the chance to put things right and make improvements. If, say, the lead is an unlikeable jerk, why not make him a bit more likeable in the anime?

The main problem I had with White Album is indeed the fact that Touya is an unlikeable jerk. I’d be interested to learn if he’s like this in the VN because from my point of view I want the protagonist to show a bit of backbone and honesty in such an interactive first-person setting. I’d feel a bit awkward if I were to play the part of a serial liar and wouldn’t be able to identify with him since I’d be shouting “I wouldn’t do that, you idiot!” at the screen, which wouldn’t be nearly as rewarding as playing from the point of view of the heroic type who does the right thing, beats the bad guy and gets the girl in the end.

Touching from a distance/further all the time…

I suspect that White Album is indeed the story of What Happens To The Lying Numpty. Perhaps the moments of infidelity are bits and pieces of alternative routes tossed in, perhaps not. The story is however one of a relationship being tested by outside influences, so the offers of ‘a bit on the side’ are all intentional parts of the story. I’ll bet a White Album that would result from the likes of me playing the game would be boring as hell though: Touya rejects serious offers from the other girls and sets himself on a Yuki End, no matter what. That would lack all that juicy soap opera-ish gossip and “will they, won’t they?” dorama though, wouldn’t it?

I think the viewer is supposed to dislike Touya: his irritating knack of talking himself into a jam is a necessary part of moving the plot along. There’s a risk in that this goes too far; it is indeed a price to be paid in that sense. Some people may have been put off this show entirely because its lead comes across as an unfaithful, spineless ass but to look at it another way, isn’t this quite brave of the writers and, ultimately, isn’t it a bit of a refreshing change?

I might not want to play the part of someone whose philosophy is out of line with my own in a VN but from a more detached perspective as a TV viewer it was a different matter. It really did feel like a soap opera in that I wasn’t so much sympathising with the characters as observing their behaviour with morbid curiosity, watching to see what would happen next; since the VN format actively encourages you to think and feel the same thoughts and emotions as the characters themselves I was a little surprised that a story derived from that format succeeds while doing the opposite.

As a result of all this I wound up watching this in a somewhat cold and detached fashion, rather than getting all sentimental but even so, it was a nice exercise in watching a realistic-style drama in an interesting setting. I’m just old enough to have some recollections of the mid 80s and things like reliance on landline phones work well in favour of the pervading themes of disconnection and awkward moments where, far from being star-crossed lovers, they frequently miss each other. The colour palette’s muted range of greys and greens didn’t make it exactly engaging I suppose; nor did the occasional dips in animation quality later on.

Nevertheless I was actually impressed with its artistic ambition: in a way similar to true tears back in the day it makes an effort to show the characters in as lifelike a light as possible, for better or for worse. In between the superficially dull shades and bits of outsourced animation was a story that felt closer to a live-action drama show than the anime we’re familiar with these days. Could this fact be part of the reason why White Album went against the grain for some?

There is of course the issue of those text overlays, which I loved at first but they ultimately felt a bit superfluous. They stated the obvious and came across as the attempts at pseudo-intelligence I feared they were, rather than being the sophisticated and helpful bits of character insight I hoped they might be. More often than not the thoughts and little agendas were already obvious to the viewer, if not to the other characters.

I love the little details, like the fact that the cans are AKG K-240s, a model widely used in recording studios of the time

Despite what I’ve said here I didn’t really dislike any of them – Touya was a fool, Haruka and Eiji were a bit odd but otherwise they came across as quite realistic and believable. The problem really was that I never empathised with them, instead paying more attention to the portrayal of the almost-famous and the resulting problems that arose from the in-between situation of being neither yet in the world of celebrity nor any longer in the world of the ordinary. This situation of Yuki’s is a bit of a rarity in anime and the way that Rina came across initially as the bitchy diva but ultimately proved to be her heroine and role-model was a pleasant surprise as well.

For all the differences in technology I daresay the nature of the idoru industry, and the ways in which it affects the lives of those within it, hasn’t changed one hell of a lot in the intervening couple of decades. Sure, mobile phones have got smaller, the music sounds a bit different and fashions have changed but the feelings and situations translate well. I’m sure it’ll still be the same in the future too, which I think is what Shoji Kawamori was driving at.