Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses anime adaptations of visual novels. We seek to produce an approach from narratology to how the branching narratives and multiple endings of visual novels are adapted within the linear conventionalism of the classical plot structure at the base of commercial anime.

Paper long abstract:

Anime adaptations of visual novels are appealing cases to study the structural differences between the storytelling patterns of two different yet closely related media: video games and anime. The branching narratives and multiple possible endings of these typically Japanese gēmu genre confront the conventional three-act structure linear plot at the base of commercial fiction by means of the particular torsion of the syuzhet in order to hint all the possible endings featured in the visual novels to the spectators.

This paper proposes their animated versions as paradigmatic texts within the growing number of Japanese animation films and television series that present complex narration in the fashion of puzzle films and complex TV, emergent trends of complexity within commercial film features and television drama. Particularly, we refer to the complex narration in the adaptations of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (C. Kon, Studio Deen, 2006) and Steins;Gate (H. Hamasaki & T. Sato, White Fox, 2011). In both cases, the characters in the diegesis are forced to repeat a fatal destiny ad nauseam that, in order to accommodate the time travel fabula, results in a pattern of narration that alludes to the setback punishments of video game mechanics. Significantly, the only way out of the agonizing loop is the reconstruction of a linear plot, a condition that requires the prevalence of one of the possible endings of the visual novel over the rest.

As a conclusion, we ponder over the narrative innovation and true crossmedia coordination in the production of contemporary audiovisual fiction—what Henry Jenkins defined as co-creation— involved in the visual novel adaptations to anime in comparison to the mere implementation of the right-to-left transcription model —informed against by Ōtsuka Eiji— prevailing in the adaptations of the media mix iterations.