#but K the anime is the main storyline and everything else fleshes that out

[ridiasfangirlings]

What are your thoughts on K as some kind of multimedia series thing? I've been seeing other series that do that with them having anime, games, books, etc. that are all supposed to be this one big project that you'd need to know entirely to see the whole story. Unlike K though which got popular when the anime released, I barely hear anything much about other series that sorta did the same as it did.

I think K’s a bit different from a lot of other multimedia project style anime, in that it seems like nowadays ‘multimedia project’ is just code for ‘there’s a gacha game’ XD Seriously though I do feel like a lot of series do that now, an anime comes out but it’s just secondary to the mobile game and the real focus of the project is please please spend your money to buy pngs of our large cast who will each be allowed to have one (1) defining personality trait each. Sometimes the show might get some drama CDs or there will be an idol element so they can sell CDs and concerts but it definitely feels like you don’t see light novels as much (unless it’s for an already popular series to capitalize on something pre-existing) or even really manga that are specifically intended to fit into the series timeline and aren’t just random ‘day in the life’ or ‘retelling of the gacha game’s story’ ones. 

I think K is also interesting as a multimedia project in that the anime seems to be the ‘primary,’ more or less, or at least the thing that it’s expected people can generally watch with minimal knowledge of the other materials and still enjoy. Like I think it’s expected that viewers will at the very least watch season one of K first and that will get them interested enough to seek out the side materials, the side materials supplement the anime storyline but never supersede it. Compare that to something like, for example, Hypnosis Mic, where the main storyline is more in the songs and drama CDs and the anime was intended to promote those, but the HypMic anime itself can easily be skipped (season one at least, I never watched further than that) without affecting the main storyline of the actual series. Or something like the recent Delico’s Nursery anime, which gives a taste of the story but doesn’t really stand alone well without any knowledge of the stage plays it’s part of. By contrast while you could theoretically skip the K anime and just read the side materials you would be missing the main thrust of the storyline, the side materials build up the world around the anime but ultimately they remain in service to the anime rather than the other way around. 

I actually personally prefer this way too, while I do wish the side materials would get referenced more in the series proper I’ve found K far easier to follow than pretty much any other multimedia project I’ve tried to get into because the anime had actual stakes and important story happening and I didn’t feel like I would be totally lost if I missed, say, posts from the one person posting translations of a drama CD on Twitter or something like that. I also like that while K did have a mobile game at least it was brief and had fun moments with the existing cast, rather than falling into the trap of needing to constantly add more characters and everyone’s personalities getting flatter the more the cast ballooned. I think it both helps and hurts a little that K was created by light novel writers, on the one hand I think the anime is a bit uneven because Gora as a whole aren’t used to working within the confines of an anime but on the other the novels and short stories really give these characters a chance to shine that I don’t think they would have gotten if the anime was just there to promote a mobile game or a concert.