Summer Pockets Writer, Director On The Hardest Things About Turning a Game into an Anime
by Richard Eisenbeis,
The Summer Pockets anime is based on the 2018 Key visual novel of the same name. It follows a young man who uses the death of his grandmother as an excuse to run away to an island town. There he meets several different girls and begins to deal with his own personal trauma.
To start things off, Kobayashi wanted to make one thing clear: “All original works are different. This is kind of bad to say, but there are some works that just can't be adapted [into an anime].”
“As for the difficulty when it comes to [Summer Pockets specifically],” Kobayashi continued, “it's that the scenario is enormous—there are tons of events and other things. To fit [the story] into episodes, we had to abridge it—and that's where the hardships really were.”
Of course, they didn't just make cuts at random—and Kai was on hand to guide the process. “I did say things like, 'I don't want this character's lines to be left out,' or 'I really want to include scenes that were well-received by the game's players.'” Luckily, Kobayashi almost always acquiesced.
However, “adapting” doesn't mean that there are only cuts—things can be added to the story as well. “In games, the number of 'stills,' so-called 'event CGs,' is predetermined. So there are a lot of scenes that I had to give up on [when writing the original game],” Kai lamented. “But the fact that they were able to be included in this anime is the biggest joy for me as the original author.”
One big issue in adapting from a game is due to scope and player comprehension. “If it's manga, you can read the content and understand it right away, but in the case of games, you have to play it to the end and—worst case—you have to go through additional routes, so it's difficult,” Kobayashi explained. “It takes a lot of time to complete everything—but even if you do, it doesn't mean you can understand everything right away.”
Another problem is the inherent structure of an anime series that airs on TV. “I think that's always the difficulty of anime, […] with a game you can write the scenario to be as long as you want, [in an anime] the scenario still has to be adapted to fit within a 30-minute chunk,” Kobayashi shared his feeling with the live audience.
As things were wrapping up, Kai mentioned his final complaint about the anime project overall: “Oh, speaking of hardships in making this anime… The studio was so far away,” He laughed, “Coming to [Tokyo] each week from Osaka—it was so far!”
Summer Pockets will begin airing in Japan on April 7, 2025.
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