[Anime Campaign][EPITHET ERASED SPOILERS] How Rick's introduction changes his vibe

Big fuck off Epithet spoilers ahead

I love Epithet Erased and I love Anime Campaign and I love comparing Epithet Erased too Anime Campaign and seeing how the adaptation changes things in order to tell a cleaner more tightly written story. What do we gain? What do we loose? And how are those things justified? And the question I want to ask today is

How does Rick's earlier introduction change how first time viewers perceive his relationship with the Neo-trio?

When PoP first came out there was some buzz online around people being creeped out by Rick in the earlier half of the book. His overbearing personality, his persistence, and the children's obvious discomfort around him naturally made people a little nervous in a way that I didn't see people being when he interacted with the kids for the first time in AC despite him acting in much the same way. Why?

The answer, I think, lies in timing. In Epithet the kids are the ones who pull Rick off the beach and bring him home, they are the first people to interact with him and he is therefore a stranger to both them and the audience who do not know what to make of him yet. In AC its different, he is instead picked up by Stan Goldstein and Noah Finway, members of a news team who take him in and make him one of their own (and also adopt him and Sylvie but that's a different thing), these adults are who Rick has his first adventure with and so when he eventually does meet Team Little Girl we the audience know we can trust him.
This change in meeting place also massively changes how the characters interact with each other. In PoP Rick tags along because he's alone and vulnerable, putting the responsibility of his health and well being on the kids in a way that, while not necessarily Rick's fault he is half dead, can be seen as inappropriate and unfair especially with how persistent he's being about becoming close with them. Where as when he meets them in AC he is meeting them as a mentor and babysitter, hired by Pheonica's parents to help with magic and witch killing. In this scenario he is the one taking on the responsibility of looking after the kids and he clearly really cares about doing this job well and ensuring they don't have to suffer the same childhood trauma he did, hiding some of the grimmer parts of the adventure from them so as to protect their innocence a little longer. This also handily justifies his not leaving them alone, of course he's following them around its his job too, of course he really want to be friends with them he's their babysitter, and though the kids are still wary of him it's in the same way teens might roll their eyes at a chaperon.

So the next question is, if Rick's introduction in AC avoids all the pitfalls he falls into in PoP why change it?
And the answer to that is simple, because in AC Rick and the kids don't meet until episode fucking 6.

 

Let me run that by you again, most of the final party does not meet until 6 6-8 hour long episodes into a 9 episode series. This made even worse by the fact that the people who originally found Rick have been cut from the series and even if they hadn't he still wouldn't have been introduced at all until act 4.

Epithet simply does not have time for that, you can't be introducing main characters that late in the game in a book series and so Rick needed to be introduced earlier and in the such a way that had him meeting and interacting with other members of the main cast as soon as possible, a slightly wobbly entrance was just a price that had to be paid to ensure that.

Anyway thanks for listening to my ramblings.

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