Firstly, no.
There was a lot of stuff to say, introduce the story properly, introduce the circumstances and explain them properly.
It takes time i'm afraid, if they did it in 2 eps till the point where she is functioning properly, a lot of viewers would rage about what the fuck is going on, seriously, it took 3 episodes to properly explain Rea's situation at home and the dominance her father exerts over her, to the point of moving her friends away to different sides of the country because they spend some time with his beloved daughter. If all that was missed, i would simply drop the show.
Secondly, I think they are following the source material very closely, and if they stepped away from it too much people would still rage. Up till now this is not just an anime with 2 characters, this show involves quite a lot of characters, and 2 eps to her functioning properly, dude, that's skipping half the season and 80% of the story till then. no one wants that.
Not really. It took the manga 6 freaking chapters to get to the point where we are in the anime. They're essentially devoting an episode per chapter, plus anime-only fanservicey stuff. That's honestly ridiculous. I would understand if they were expanding upon what was in the manga, but they really aren't, save one scene. It's not a matter of stepping away from the source material, it's a matter of dragging it out incessantly.
Introducing the situation: her father takes naked pictures of her and doesn't let her leave or have friends. I think that's good enough, although showing how his power was exercised in removing her friend was a good touch.
Literally, getting her to function properly in the manga is him freaking out for a couple chapters, and then
Rea crawling out subconsciously and eating the hydrangea leaves.
And showing how they made her friend move away was a nice touch, but it wasn't really necessary. I think we all understood how creepy and controlling her father was anyway, although that's up to personal interpretation, I suppose. It's just that the way this show is unfolding, they've spent 6 episodes getting her working, they'll probably spend 1 or 2 episodes on
the confrontation Furuya has with Rea's father,
then spend some on Darin's appearance and the complications that brings up.
I would have rather had it simply and quickly show us how Rea became a zombie (maybe three episodes, then) and give themselves more time to get into the meat of the story. Exposition is fine and all, but 5 episodes of exposition out of 13 episodes is a bit much. It is skipping a good chunk of the "season" (I assume by that you mean the availability of episodes out of 13), but in reality in 5/13 episodes they've covered 6/27 chapters of real material. They've used up twice as much "available space," so to speak, with equal amounts of content as the manga.
And I never said they were deviating from the source material. In fact, the added bit about how her father made her friend move away was actually a
good deviation. But they're just going way too slow. They're never going to be able pay the amount of attention they did to emulating the first few chapters into episodes if they actually want to make a good fleshed out story arc. The manga makes it clear that
Chihiro's confession to Rea
isn't the end of their story, nor is it a solid conclusion, so I can't help but feel the rest of the show is going to be badly paced with some crappy anime original ending.
I've already read the manga, though, so maybe that's why I feel like it's too slow. I dunno. Granted, the manga is ongoing so an anime original ending may be likely no matter how the show was paced.
