Rakudai Kishi no Chivalry

[Sutatekken]

Made some PDFs they are a bit LQ IMO but they are readable and the Images are inserted in the proper locations. please critique them to help me improve http://www.mediafire.com/?01t1aom2fc0rh

[nahucirujano]

Promotional Video and Image:

[KLSymph]

The art style seems pretty reasonable. I think we're in for a good round of "how far does the PV misrepresent the anime?"

[lifeman120]

The art style seems pretty reasonable. I think we're in for a good round of "how far does the PV misrepresent the anime?"

IMO it makes Stella look like a generic bitchy tsundere heroine while shes an angel D,:

[KLSymph]

IMO it makes Stella look like a generic bitchy tsundere heroine

To be fair, that is how she's introduced in the novel and the manga.

[lifeman120]

also i wonder how her voice will be, i know the voice actor but what voice will she make.

[sirgoodguy]

Hi.
Bye.
90 Hours of work this week. Shoot me plz.
Hope the Anime is Good.
~Nyaa!~~

[KLSymph]

The manga scanlation from Fallen Angels Scans and Underdog Scans for the Ikki/Ayase fight just came out. Looks like they managed to find the new translator they were recruiting for. Didn't do that great a job, though. The dialogue still leans a little bit too formal.

[KLSymph]

TheCatWalk wasn't able to find enough time to translate volume four after all, so I'll take it.

Here's the volume four back cover summary, to get you fired up.

Rakudai Kishi no Eiyuutan 4

Ikki and his fellow Hagun Academy representative team face the preparations for the Seven Stars Sword-Art Festival. They attend a combined training camp with Kyomon Academy, and just as they're wondering if it will go smoothly, Hagun Academy is abruptly attacked.

"Everyone, we'll have you all fall here―as our stepping stone."

Ikki and the student council elite stand against Akatsuki, an underworld group of powerful Blazers. But at the moment of battle, the one who they thought was a friend bares his hidden fangs! And the one standing before Ikki is―the world's strongest! Is it too soon for him to have this confrontation after all!? Ideal and reality, running beyond the threshold of hope: see the fierce combat in volume four!

And now please enjoy my cold silence for the next month, because I have to prep.

[nahucirujano]

TheCatWalk wasn't able to find enough time to translate volume four after all, so I'll take it.

Glad to see you still around here.
And thanks for (re)taking the baton and for all your hard work, it's just amazing

[KLSymph]

KLSymph's review of the Rakudai Kishi anime (episode 1)

I'm no expert anime reviewer, but here are my thoughts:

The art style and animation were overall pretty darn good, at least compared to the few anime I've watched. However, animation tends to get worse as a series goes on, so that doesn't mean very much. The voice work is decent enough. The characters so far sound more or less like what I had in my head.

I'm enthused about the anime adding new material, and not being shy about changing existing material to fit the medium. Anime that try to do a straight copy of the adaptation source is infuriating. Going a little overboard with the early-bird cameos of later characters is kind of meh, though. Everyone else I can make an argument for, but it doesn't make much sense that Touka is in there, just to show off her presence.

The pacing is good in the sense that it summarizes a lot of exposition. The light novel front-loads sooooo much exposition, but I think the episode did smooth over the cuts fairly well. However, it kinda went too far because speeding everything up also included the dramatic portions, which suffered. The Ikki vs Stella fight, especially the latter half, went too fast, and so did the Ikki-Stella bed scene.

The bed scene was pretty badly done, drama-wise. Instead of slowing the pace down and indulging in the mood of it, instead there was... what I can only call a moment of very ham-handed fanservice. Having spent quite a bit of time in polishing the novel scene to work well in prose, I can't support this kind of change.

The speed of the episode meant there are some important relationship aspects that got cut out. And by that I mean pretty much all the deeper communication between Ikki and Stella. They took out basically everything, to the point where I don't even know why Stella is okay with being Ikki's roommate (hint: because she was wrong about Ikki and to keep the promise of being his slave, which are all we're really left with, are not actually the reasons in the novel). This really changes how the characters are portrayed. I'm bothered by this, but at the moment I can hope the story will delay establishing those things for more dramatically convenient points in the story.

The humor was mostly okay. It suffered from the pacing too, but there just wasn't enough screen time to get the comedic timing optimal. This is a limitation of twelve-episode anime in general, and no doubt everyone else knows all about that.

In conclusion, the episode has some problems in terms of how it adapted the novel, but is not terrible as an anime. I'll still keep watching, and not just because that's my job as project manager.

PS: But seriously, Japan, don't throw orgasm imagery in there like that's just fine. I mean what the heck.

[Wolfpup]

KLSymph's review of the Rakudai Kishi anime (episode 1)

I'm no expert anime reviewer, but here are my thoughts:

The art style and animation were overall pretty darn good, at least compared to the few anime I've watched. However, animation tends to get worse as a series goes on, so that doesn't mean very much. The voice work is decent enough. The characters so far sound more or less like what I had in my head.

I'm enthused about the anime adding new material, and not being shy about changing existing material to fit the medium. Anime that try to do a straight copy of the adaptation source is infuriating. Going a little overboard with the early-bird cameos of later characters is kind of meh, though. Everyone else I can make an argument for, but it doesn't make much sense that Touka is in there, just to show off her presence.

The pacing is good in the sense that it summarizes a lot of exposition. The light novel front-loads sooooo much exposition, but I think the episode did smooth over the cuts fairly well. However, it kinda went too far because speeding everything up also included the dramatic portions, which suffered. The Ikki vs Stella fight, especially the latter half, went too fast, and so did the Ikki-Stella bed scene.

The bed scene was pretty badly done, drama-wise. Instead of slowing the pace down and indulging in the mood of it, instead there was... what I can only call a moment of very ham-handed fanservice. Having spent quite a bit of time in polishing the novel scene to work well in prose, I can't support this kind of change.

The speed of the episode meant there are some important relationship aspects that got cut out. And by that I mean pretty much all the deeper communication between Ikki and Stella. They took out basically everything, to the point where I don't even know why Stella is okay with being Ikki's roommate (hint: because she was wrong about Ikki and to keep the promise of being his slave, which are all we're really left with, are not actually the reasons in the novel). This really changes how the characters are portrayed. I'm bothered by this, but at the moment I can hope the story will delay establishing those things for more dramatically convenient points in the story.

The humor was mostly okay. It suffered from the pacing too, but there just wasn't enough screen time to get the comedic timing optimal. This is a limitation of twelve-episode anime in general, and no doubt everyone else knows all about that.

In conclusion, the episode has some problems in terms of how it adapted the novel, but is not terrible as an anime. I'll still keep watching, and not just because that's my job as project manager.

PS: But seriously, Japan, don't throw orgasm imagery in there like that's just fine. I mean what the heck.

I know you have been working hard on translating this series and I hope you keep up the good work. I am enjoying this series very much.

Now for your concerns for the anime version of this series some times it is best to keep in mind that there are differences in styling between light novels, manga, and anime. Light novels have to portray what the author is seeing in his head to the reader so it will be more descriptive of the action and what is going on in the given scenes thus taking more space to get the idea across. Manga can show this because it has more pictures to show the same thing in less space, although there is text added for the 'sound affects' and other things to get the meaning across. Anime has the ability to be able to do a similar thing but had more ways to do this because the characters are in motion plus they are speaking. So I personally look at the three different forms in their own light. I know this can be difficult for some people. There is a lot that is being shown more visual and verbally in the anime for this series all though I do agree that the pacing dose seem to be a little fast to me but this is only the first ep and they do have the need to 'catch' the viewers attention in the first ep to make them want to keep the viewers watching the series. Now I have seen that some anime studios will use maybe two vols of a LN for one season depending on the series.

[KLSymph]

some times it is best to keep in mind that there are differences in styling between light novels, manga, and anime. Light novels have to portray what the author is seeing in his head to the reader so it will be more descriptive of the action and what is going on in the given scenes thus taking more space to get the idea across. ... Anime has the ability to be able to do a similar thing but had more ways to do this because the characters are in motion plus they are speaking.

I think you're saying that the novel devotes a lot of medium space to descriptive detail due to the nature of text, and that the anime consumes less medium space to provide a similar level of detail because visuals are more detail-dense than text, so this is why the pacing seems faster in the anime to me.

But is this really true? Certainly, anime does carry much more (audiovisual) descriptive detail than text per audience time consumed, but when I read the novel, I note that there are very few descriptive details of the action, almost all of which is represented in the visuals of the anime. The anime even adds a ton of new descriptive detail; Katharterio Salamandra doesn't appear to be a dragon in the novel, for starters. What the novel really devotes a lot of space is talky-thinky exposition, like how a technique works and why a character is doing what they're doing, and the anime doesn't try to represent a majority of that.

And I don't think this is the nature of the pacing issue. Honestly I doubt the anime could've really improved the pace of the duel except by rewriting the scene entirely. The anime was much faster in representing it, but the emotional tenor of the duel (Stella disdaining Ikki, then being shocked repeatedly about how much stronger he is than she expected) was the same, so on a practical level the pacing was equally appropriate. The bed scene was different. You can take a fight scene and remove large chunks of one fighter explaining what he's doing to the other without greatly changing the excitement of the fight (and I applaud the anime for doing this because I'm very critical about how the novel handles that sort of thing), but you can't take a personal moment scene and replace the girl on top of the boy slowly touching him and thinking "wow, this guy's body is very well trained, so he must not be in despair about being born without talent" with a visual of the girl naked on top of the boy naked and reaching climax without greatly changing the entire point of that scene. If that choice was made because there wasn't enough broadcast time to fit the original material, which is what I suspect, then that is what I'm referring to as the pacing problem.

Also, they put "funny" music as the background of the bed scene. I think "thoughtful" music would've been more appropriate. Not that the scene isn't supposed to be funny, but combined with the rest of how the scene comes together it made the scene lean too much toward fanservice and not far enough toward being a serious introduction to Ikki and Stella's burgeoning relationship. Since that relationship is taken very seriously in the story (especially in volume three), this strikes me as not awesome.

but this is only the first ep and they do have the need to 'catch' the viewers attention in the first ep to make them want to keep the viewers watching the series.

I sympathize with that need, but I think there are better ways to do it than the anime chose. Though to be fair all of my recommendations beyond music selection require rewriting the scenes, which would be expensive.

[TheCatWalk]

Watched the anime ep 1.
Four things i gotta say.
first,
>Overall liked the episode.
>The battle went too fast but i guess they'd have to fit 3 volumes in 12/13 eps so meh.
>I would have liked a bit more of Stella indulging in the whole "Wow, so this is a man's body" thing.
>I hate it how they didn't show the scene where Shinguuji explains Ikki's circumstances to Stella.

will keep watching.

[Botan]

There is other problem which is a result of changing medium.

LN have to hook within first volume, after all ending of first volume worked in my case, I have almost drop this title but I have "1 volume rule" and it worked.

However in anime there is a common "3 episodes rule" and ending of vol. 1 will be in 4th episode. That's unlucky.

PS. That black-white-red OP (as ED in first episode) is so darn good.