Semi-colons should be reserved for being used confidently and incorrectly to separate independent clauses, not in this chaos. Yet, weebs will forever know semi colons as the herald of a Science Adventure anime adaptation.
Chaos;Head and its sequel Chaos;Child are both anime adaptations of two separate visual novel games in the Science Adventure universe it shares with the more famous and beloved Steins;Gate. Unlike beloved Steins;Gate, which is considered probably one of the best visual novel anime adaptations ever made, both Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child are considered terrible anime adaptions of its source material.
Alternative Titles:
- カオスヘッド
Year Anime Premiered: 2008; 2017
Animation Studio: Madhouse; Silver Link
Number of Seasons: 1 (Head); 1 +1 movie (Child)
Source Material Country of Origin: Japan
Source Material Available: Game
Entry Last Updated: November 4th, 2024
Before diving into this, it merits a TL;DR – Play the visual novels if the anime intrigued you or if you are looking to break into Science Adventure. Each individual anime series is bad (objectively, as adaptations of the visual novels) for reasons discussed below.
Chaos;Head Anime Versus the Chaos;Head Noah Visual Novel
The Chaos;Head anime is an adaptation of the Chaos;Head Noah visual novel that was released in 2009 and later released officially abroad in 2022. The visual novel has two routes you can choose between late in the game and a third route that you can explore after beating the game. The Chaos;Head anime adapts the common route of the Chaos;Head game, but as that route takes at least around 25 hours to beat, the anime shaves quite a bit of it off, skipping whole events as well as a number of smaller details.
However, while visual novel fans being disappointed in the quality of their anime adaptation because it left out a lot of details is not a new phenomenon. Yet, what is uniquely damning for the Chaos;Head anime adaptation is how inconsistent it is.
Details from the visual novel that the anime skipped have their repercussions shown in the anime, in a way that even anime-only fans noticed and thought made no sense. Like Nanami’s missing hand, which was an event that was skipped, but shown briefly, almost accidentally, in the anime and never explained.
Finally, the anime added in fully anime-original events before trying to swerve back in line with the visual novel in a way that didn’t make much sense.
Chaos;Child Anime Versus Chaos;Head Noah Visual Novel
Chaos;Child is an anime adaptation of the visual novel by the same name that was released originally in 2014 and released worldwide in 2017. While the Chaos;Child anime is well-known as a sequel to Chaos;Head, it did little to help make sense of the chaos for people who only watched the Chaos;Head anime.
In truth, Chaos;Child is a thematic sequel to Chaos;Head rather than a direct one. This means it plays with the same themes, in the same universe, several years later, but is telling a new story with new characters. So Chaos;Child takes place several years after the events of Chaos;Head and tells a new, but still related story with a new main character.
While the Chaos;Child visual novel serves to expand on the story presented in the Chaos;Head visual novel with the concepts in its story. In fact, the Chaos;Child game was designed to be enjoyed independently without necessarily requiring you to play Chaos;Head Noah. The same can’t be said for the anime.
Whereas the Chaos;Head visual had a more linear story with just three real routes to explore, Chaos;Child is more akin to the more popular visual novel style where there is a common route, then each girl has her own romantic route. The anime chooses to adapt the common route without committing any which way to romance while attempting to adapt the true end of the Chaos;Child visual novel in the Chaos;Child: Silent Sky movie – named after the Silent Sky true end.
The issue with the Chaos;Child anime is not inconsistencies like in the Chaos;Head anime, it is that the Chaos;Child anime staff only adapted the bits of the common route that had to do with Chaos;Head in a more direct way. The amount of content in the Chaos;Child visual novel that directly related to Chaos;Head is really not as much as you think. The visual novel was, again, building out the concepts of the world in a different and only lightly related way.
How Are Science Adventure Series Connected?
The Science Adventure series was all planned out as an extended visual novel world by Chiyomaru Shikura. This means that every title takes place in the same universe and the story of one series may affect events in the story of another.
You definitely do not need to play or watch every Science Adventure series, but if you play any single visual novel, you will find small references to other Science Adventure series. The anime adaptations keep very small nuggets of crossover too, but far less than the visual novels due to the number of details they usually have to omit due to time constraints.
Science Adventure visual novels with anime adaptations include:
- Chaos;Head
- Steins;Gate
- Robotic;Notes
- Chaos;Child
- Occultic;Nine – This was originally a light novel series that gained a visual novel and anime adaptation later. The light novel is still considered the most detail-rich and best story experience.
Science Adventure visual novels with no anime adaptations:
- Anonymous;Code
- Steins;???? – An unreleased upcoming Steins;Gate visual novel title.
