Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-24810520-20151204182918/@comment-25296247-20170406180358

The anime covered only about 20% of the manga. And I don't think popularity was the reason.

Author of Medaka Box is NisiOisin, man who, of all mangaku I know, is the absolute best at playing with both kanji and katakana and just making your head spin...

Medaka Box manga was created in a way that is literally impossible to animate, because NisiOisin uses the advantages of the basic elements of manga (like the fact it's not animated, and thus characters can say a lot of things in one panel, which doesn't much work in anime). There are several characters that have actually abilities based around playing around with Kanji, they're called Style Users.

Also, there is one character named Najimi Ajimu and in one scene, she uses 600 different skills (Hero Academia calls superpowers Quirks, Medaka Box calls them skills) in 6 panels and the skills are written behind her (their names and short descriptions). This would be impossible to do in anime, for obvious reasons...

Also, following the part about NisiOisin's writing, Medaka Box highly focuses on 4th wall. Najimi knows she's in manga, but some other characters (like the main protagonist) don't and even has a conflict with Najimi about it, thinking she's insane. Some characters realize that Medaka is the main character and they are only side characters. When I was talking about Hanten Shiranui, it was this single part of the story, where his skill was used. And that's what I call his weakness. He has potentially omnipotent skill, but really only uses it once and then admits the skill was born as just a shadow of Najimi Ajimu's ability. At this point, Hanten uses his skill, which, sadly for me, wasn't named. Just described as the "skill to make any skill" and "no matter how many, no matter what, he [Hanten] can make it for you". Hanten then used (off-screen) his skill to design a skill for Zenkichi (who is basically secondary protagonist of the series, but unlike Medaka, is somewhat ordinary, human-class regarding his powers) based on his request. Najimi literally told Zenkichi he could chose any skill he wanted, how many he wanted, but he shouldn't pick too much, or else his character wouldn't be interesting in the story.

Naturally, Zenkichi made up something that I call the single most original skill in the series. Devil Style. This skill was, as I said, created by Hanten, and it's described as "Coincidence nullification skill", but for the terms we in our world use, I would better describe it as "Plot Armor nullification skill". It was literally skill that would remove the title of "main protagonist" from the main protagonist. You know how heroes and protagonists always win, just because they're heroes? That stupid thing we call Plot Armor. This skill completely negates it and allows anyone to beat the main protagonist, if they are, on the objective level, stronger than them. It takes luck, coincidence and fate completely out of the game.

And this is the only time Hanten uses his skill in the series and this is the only skill he makes that is named (Najimi mentions he created around 100 skills for her, but she just glosses over it like it's nothing). And this weakness, this plot unimportance, when this ability is just unused because he isn't important character... That's probably the greatest weakness of all... The weakness to writing...

And believe it or not, even Najimi Ajimu (who, as you will later find out, is OP as hell) gets defeated just because of the plot armor... Poor Najimi...