[Anime B-Side] KoiChoco - Adaptations Seem Difficult - 🎶"Strain" - Katara Yumi🎶

Adaptations usually must make adjustments to fit the constraints of a television production, moreso when the original medium was a Light, Traditional, or Visual Novel, all of which rely on the heavy usage of text to convey their content. This post will be about how I was somewhat disappointed with the restructuring of the introductory section of KoiChoco (Love, Election, and Chocolate) after reading through it in the original Visual Novel. The Anime kept the general tone and adapted most of the events whole-cloth (with minor shifts that made story sense), but the darker, more grounded parts related to Isara Aomi and the class segregation of students like her (called Keitoku) at Takafuji Private Academy was handled in a drastically different way between both. See my original review for further context on my feelings about it.

Welcome to the B-Side, an infrequent "bonus" segment where I get topical to a musical track that sets the tone of what's to come. This particular song was from the soundtrack and played during the main scenes from the Visual Novel I'll be discussing with a remixed version used in the Anime. Let's jam!!!

most images were sourced from the HD remake of the game and the first episode of the adaptation

Spoilers from here on out

I’ll start with the meaning of the word Keitoku - "blessing, favor, grace" (sourced from here). These were the students who attended the academy through a work-based scholarship program. Most of the attendees of this private institution were from wealthy / influential families; when it was introduced that the powers that be had decided to make it more inclusive so that families that couldn't afford it could still send their children out in the world with a better education and chance at success, there was immediate hostility and eventual violence towards these "blessed" ones. It's been several weeks since my original review and anyone that wanted to watch this would have already gone out and seen the series.

In this scene of the original, Yuuki, Mifuyu and Chisato had just finished club for the day and were heading home when they happened upon this troubling discussion between two fellow classmates. There's a confrontation that happens afterwards that does appear in the Anime later on. The "slave bus" comment was replaced with the text "factory bus" displayed on the top front of the vehicle instead, giving a similarly derogatory connotation that's not as yikesy in the United States and several western regions.

NOTE: the bus sign was only fully translated in the official streaming release on HiDIVE, so watching a fan-sub, it will probably lose its meaning to you, but here's the Kanji for factory 工場 (source
). I'm not fluent in Japanese but the point still remains. Now back to your regularly scheduled content. 😆

Aomi's coming into the story played out in almost the exact same manner otherwise with fanservice applied to her in the Anime that was only briefly alluded to in the original but never explicitly stated as such. Yuuki commented on how cute she was and how her breasts felt against his body, in which both Chisato and Mifuyu immediately responded with a change in tone through a fourth-wall breaking skit where they both "knew" they were in a Visual Novel and the pink-haired beauty was the "Tsundere" of such. This whole exchange was part of why the next section was bothersome to me.

The screenshots above were taken from Episode 4 of the Anime at just over the 19 minute mark and lasted almost 2 minutes. In the first, Yuuki and his political party were discussing and reviewing the manifesto of Satsuki Shinonome, the head of the school's Student Financial Committee, who was running against him in the election. While this was going on, it kept cutting to Aomi being assaulted by a group of nasty girls that wanted her to just "disappear". It was later revealed that sexual assault may have been involved but then this entire subplot was just dropped with only a brief resolution mentioned in the Epilogue, making it feel almost like it should have been completely removed altogether.

NOTE: different translations alternate between calling it a financial aid and a scholarship program, but they both meant the same thing in the context of how it was explained in the Anime's official translation. Think of the system as being like a Work Visa with the school paying for the student's attendance in exchange for them working a set amount of hours with little to no pay that they can apply to any expenses not covered. His rival wanted to replace it with a "grant" program that was a bit more fair but also less "inclusive". I'm not well versed in how Japan handles funding of private schools, so this interpretation could still be off the mark. I also haven't gotten to this part in the original novel so my opinions might still change if it was handled in a similarly jarring way there.

My Closing Thoughts

I can only speculate on why the introductory scene was changed in the adaptation, but honestly would have appreciated it if the order of events had been left alone for this one instance. An introduction to any work should set up what the tone will be throughout, especially when it tackles some pretty heavy themes while being a comedy (like this one). My assumption: the creators felt that introducing social commentary about a real world problem in modern society in the first episode would turn away audiences, but there's just not many resources that are publicly available about how this was made to back me up on that. It could simply just have been a committee and / or time thing.

What did you think about this content? If you would like to read more about my experiences with this game and others like it, I have been posting those here. If you enjoyed it, feel free to reblog, vote and reply down below. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your night.