原作を消化していくつもりだ meaning

Question

In the second episode's preview of the Saiki Kusuo anime, Saiki recapped the premise(that he has superpowers) and said the following:

次々と原作を消化していくつもりだ

According to the dictionary, 消化 has the following meanings:

消化 しょうか (n,vs,adj-no) digestion; thorough understanding; selling accumulated (excess) products; dealing with a large amount of work; losing one's form and turning into something else; (P)

None of those meaning make sense to me in this context, so I got confused. I assume 次々と原作を refers to the episodes, but what does 消化していくつもりだmean here? Saiki intends to watch(digest) all the episodes? Or sell(?) the episodes lol. It probably sounds like a dumb question, but I'd be glad if someone shed some light here.

Answer 1

原作を消化する normally means "to consume/finish the (large amount of volumes of the) original (comic) version", i.e., "to read (up)". It corresponds to "to deal with a large amount of task" in the dictionary.

But if you heard it out of nowhere in a next episode's preview of an anime, I think it's a metafictional joke, like "we're going to make/show the anime version quickly (so stay tuned)" or "our anime version will rapidly follow the story of the comic version!" Again, the basic underlying meaning is "consuming" or "dealing with a large amount of task."