| I wanted to do this from the start, but it is quite hard to find a framework for what this is supposed to be. I will try to give some additional information (maybe stuff the anime showed but didn't explain enough, or something that was mentioned, but could be misunderstood), a bit of an overview of the world of Arknights (what is it based on, technological level etc.) and some problems I see with the anime adaptation (that were obvious to anyone in the know, but are very hard to fix). This is meant for people that may want to know more after watching the anime, or may be confused why people like it so much (anime only and players that aren't much into the story alike). So I will start with some general things. Adapting the Arknights story into an anime was always going to be hard. The game has some excellent stories to tell, but a lot of them happen in character specific side stories, that would make for some great content, but would run into the issue that the viewer would have no base of understanding for the world or the general context. That is why the anime decided to go with the normal start of the game, even though it is considered by everyone as the weakest part of the game. The narrative team started the story with something rather simplistic and safe while already seeding some big things in the background (probably in case the game did well, while testing the waters with something less committed). Another problem the anime runs into is that one of the main fascinations of Arknights is the world 'Terra' that gets explored in incredible detail through all aspects of the game. You can find items with descriptions on them that lets you know more about the world, descriptions of enemies, character files, and basically everywhere you look. This is inherently very hard to translate into a serialized anime, even with the advantage of the visuals as an additional medium. This is why I thought my following mini compendium could be helpful to some. More problems will arrive later down the line, if the anime gets more seasons, as they split the narrative and jump between different character perspectives and times, but that should not be an issue for now, but will be a huge challenge if they get to that point later (HunterXHunter Ant arc would be an example of how it could be done, but it takes a lot of skill to make something like that compelling). So now onto the compendium part: Originium is the main aspect of Arknights that everybody has to understand as a basis for everything else in the story and world of 'Terra'. The anime showed some examples, but without much context. Originium is similar to radioactive material in our world, as it can be used as energy or as a conduit for arts, but similar to radioactivity it has some serious side effects. On one hand, it served humanity as the needed energy source to survive the catastrophes that are common on Terra, but on the other it leads to conflict and possibly even more catastrophes (the connection between usage and catastrophes is one of the research areas in the academics of Terra, and there are a good number of researchers that found out something but mysteriously 'went missing', so conclusions are still unclear about that). Originium is for example the only energy source compact enough to realize the massive moving cities (I wish we had some more imagery in the anime of the nomadic cities, as it could give some much needed scale to the problem and how humanity deals with it.), that are basically just giant tanks with, sometimes, millions of people living on them. Compared to those giants, like Lungmen, Rhodes Island is indeed that, just a small (moving) island. Originium is also the resource used in Arts (the magic system of Terra), which was only explained in a very crude manner. Basically, every Arts user needs to use some kind of Originium conduit, usually encased in a wand or staff, but sometimes even in the form of swords, hammers or other, more experimental, forms. That means that everybody with such a weapon and a talent for Arts can use that 'Magic'. The elephant in the room is Oripathy, the infection that happens after unlucky or prolonged unprotected contact with Originium. This common and lethal infection is what splits society. Oripathy is uncurable (finding a cure is one of Rhodes Islands main objectives, and one of the reasons the knowledge of the doctor was important enough to infiltrate Chernobog, just too bad the memory stuff happened ...), but with proper treatment the life can be prolonged for a long time (similar how someone with HIV can live a pretty normal life, given the right medicals, but so far not be cured). The problem is that not too much is known to the general public about the infected, partially because a government might want to abuse the infected as a scapegoat (like Ursus), so they keep the public from learning too much, or because the populace is just under educated in general. What we know is that the infection seems to only spread a while after a person dies and their body crystallizes into originium dust, otherwise the infection doesn't seem transferable between people (people will mostly get infected by dealing with damaged originium devices, or by handling originum while working, getting scraped by an originium rock while traveling would be a simple example), unfortunately most people don't know this and as research is ongoing. There might be cases where getting scraped by an infected that has crystals growing on their skin, but that is unconfirmed so far. The infection can play out in many different ways, it can effect physical abilities, by enhancing or decreasing them, it can lead to personality shift and mood swings (aka mental problems), it can form crystallized lesions on the skin, or the crystallization can be completely internalized and start with crystallizing organs. So don't let appearances fool you, one of the heaviest infected operators on Rhodes Island has her crystallization completely internally, so while she looks healthy, she loses sight and hearing and can barely walk. So after that part about Originium and Oripathy we have to talk about Arts for a little bit, because the anime makes a statement that is weirdly worded about that. It could be understood after watching the anime that Oripathy makes Arts stronger, but that is not really the case. Arts works by manipulating Originium (usually, as mentioned previously, in a staff or wand) with the casters energy, but infected can use the Originium crystals in their body to cast their Arts, so their only advantage is that they don't need an external conduit, but in turn if they do this, without the external conduit, they further their infection. There are side effects that can make an infected stronger or their Arts affinity higher, but there can also be the opposite that the infected physically gets weaker, or their affinity goes down. We also know that chemistry works different from our world as gunpowder doesn't exist in Terra, in fact every gun we see in Terra is just a guide for the actual conduit (the munition) to get blown in the right direction by an Arts explosion, created by the caster that holds the weapon. I hope that puts Exusiai and Skullshatterer in perspective, they're basically just casters using a fancy way to do physical damage. That is also the reason crossbows are used way more often, because not everybody can even use a gun, even if they had one. Another question I have seen pop up is the question about humanity in general, because on Terra there are no humans without animal traits. In fact there is a dividing line between two types of humans in Terra, that just doesn't play much of a role because infected and non infected is the way more important split, but if that could get resolved in the future there is more conflict brewing between humans with animal traits (cats, dogs etc.) and humans with fantasy traits (angels, demons, oni etc.). There are some groups that look human without traits, these are usually Aegir (aka fish people) that can have very minimal to non existent animal traits. This is it for now in terms of general information, but there could be explanations for every episode of stuff that might look weird, but actually makes sense given some background knowledge. I hope people can still enjoy the show and for some the information might even lead to more enjoyment while watching the show. Is there something else I missed? Or something you want to know? I will try to answer reasonable questions if some come up. |
zwolf12Dec 13, 2022 9:31 AM
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| I don't think most of the people who watched the anime (Who haven't played the game) care very much. |
Animorphimagi said: ErogakiPatches said: I don't think most of the people who watched the anime (Who haven't played the game) care very much. that's the point of this post...the story is just like most lore heavy stories. you get more out of it the more you go out of your way to find more info. An anime of Arknights will never have the full story whether you like the anime or not, so if you are a fan who hasn't played the game then it is worth knowing that you will never get some of the biggest parts of the story unless you play the game. even if some miracle happened and this got 100+ episodes, that still would not be enough to adapt the story that is available right now in the game, which only keeps getting bigger. also it's always worth knowing that a story will get better if you stick with it. What part of my comment did you not understand? |
DarkHomieC said: Very good explanation, but I’m pretty sure most people aren’t going to read it. Simple explanation: if you like anime or have questions or, confused; play the game ( tower defense type game) or look for some videos about the story. As I wrote in my initial post, "anime only and players that aren't much into the story alike", because even if you play the game you might miss a lot of detail as it is spread around all matter of side stories, character files, enemy descriptions, item descriptions and even things like loading screens, and it is well known that a lot of people never fully read even the story, because you actually have to read a lot (later chapters and side stories have word counts similar to LotR). |
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| Nice background/ Lore of Arknight's world (TERRA) Tho there are a lot more about Cities, Regions, Races and Cultures of TERRA that play into the Arknight's World. Such as the anime/ beginning that shows the basics of Rhodes Island, Reunion and Lungmen And as mentioned, a lot of world-building is based on Character Development and Backstory. Each character will explain parts of TERRA's races and culture and how they all play a hand into Rhodes Island and the events of everything that's happening. ___ ___ ___ In later game, we get to see more about Reunion side of things of their Rise and Downfall. And also the Rise of Rhodes Island and how they end up as what they are. And game events that tells us how each character acts the way they do and why the main story plays out the way they do. (and how characters decide to join Rhodes Island) Some Main Story can't even be truly understand until certain game events happened. (such as Reunion's side of story and Reunion characters) ___ ___ ___ BTW, if anyone want to spoiler themselves... Here's game's Main Story: https://arknights.fandom.com/wiki/Story The current anime is from Prologue > Episode 3 (end) You can also take a look at the "Universe" tab, where you can find more Backstory about Arknight's world. |
| Nothing Written Here But Us Anime Bunnies *boing boing boing* |
Renzoku_Rentou said: zwolf12 said: Another question I have seen pop up is the question about humanity in general, because on Terra there are no humans without animal traits. no wonder whenever i asked game players why characters in Arknights have two sets of ears, most of the time they just answered: "Arknights people just built differently" Not everybody has two pairs of ears, there seem to be more characters with only animal ears or only human ears (like the angel and demon characters or animal characters with horns as their animal trait). Fun fact, there were only 5 characters that had two types of ears visible in their original art and three of those came from one artist (Arknights characters are drawn by different artists and many have drawn more than one character), so a theory is that it was a mistake at first but then they were pressed for answers by the community and they red conned that having two pairs of ears is common on Terra. :P |
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| An Arknights content creator seemingly had a similar idea (not quite the same, as I also wanted to explain why the anime was the way it ended up), introducing some more concepts and explaining some of the world building. Given the video goes about 50 minutes, he goes into a good bit more detail and also mentions things like the different countries (even though he doesn't mention the theories on what they are based on, given that those are always contested ideas). I thought the video would fit here for people that are interested to learn more after the anime so here is the link: The Lore of Arknights explained |
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