Dec 22, 2014
Hentai adaptations for visual novels suffer because of their severe time limitations. Visual novels have a notably relaxed atmosphere, like you’re never rushed by the plot to move forward. Since the gameplay is anything but fast-paced, the stories are designed to accommodate. You will discover this lax atmosphere in the anime adaptations of Steins;Gate and Walkure Romanze, for example. Starless, despite being a phenomenal eroge, does not translate well into video format – at least not without a vast budget and a visionary director. The original game is nothing but a vast collection of sex scenes, so there’s not enough time to provide the original ... experience point-to-point. With some creative decisions, you could come close, but the studio that produced the animated Starless failed to find their focus. The end result feels incomplete. The slide into deeper echelons of depravity is missing, there’s no escalation of perversion – the whole point of the original game got lost in translation. As a lover of quality erotica, I feel miserable that I have to talk bad about this title.
There are many factors that ruin the animated Starless. Because hentai is a very visual entertainment form and visuals are expensive, a detailed artstyle, like the one in Starless, strains the budget immensely. There is just no way to produce this story without spending a small fortune - something has to give, something has to compensate. In my opinion the studio should have picked only a couple of really good scenes and blown their everything into those. Ten minutes of awesome would’ve been better than twenty minutes of lameness. The way hentai studios usually compensate their lack of a budget is by getting creative with the scenes. That is why I find it baffling that the animated Starless is near completely vanilla. A few exceptions aside, the scenes feature fellatio and male on female intercourse and that’s it. The original game is famous exactly for its creativity, so in that context, it’s an even greater sin to deviate this far from the source material. There is no upside to this decision - if there is, I do not see it.
When I think about the issues of the animated Starless, I can’t help but think that maybe it’s perhaps too perverted to change mediums. Not only are there too many scenes to show, but many of them are so depraved that most countries’ legislation would force cuts into the content. I have to think that one of the reasons why visual novels seem to showcase some of the craziest porn I’ve ever seen in my life is because the medium isn’t very popular. You can do crazy shit when you´re underground.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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