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horrible-monstrosity · 6 years

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17 We open with friendly neighborhood dumbass Akko studying studiously, sitting on a bench in a sunny grassy field which she ignores in favor of a massive stack of books like the bookworm Lottie only sort of is, while redhead side witch bitches about dropping out of school because she's just too cool. An... interesting entrance into the episode, to be sure.

Redhead turns herself into a dashing boys' school student. ..... Did the spell make her grow bollocks

"even though no one's asking you?" is a pretty weird way to ask someone about their dream. I don't think anyone asked redhead to become a broomdancer, or robots girl to become robots, or... anyone to do anything they just wanted to do. and again, she has already accomplished what she says she wants to do- the yeti, in the next episode robert girl, the fairy strike... this show does not know what it has done or what it's doing.

... Wait, are they really here to just fucking steal the grail from the school? why? I've already forgotten why they wanted it, and why petty theft by a couple of randos is so easily accepted as a method of getting it back. Are there no witch authorities who might have wanted in on this? Later redhead says it "belongs" to the guys' school as a way to deflect explaining how it works... shrugg

Have I mentioned yet that I like the supporting trio more than the main three? I could probably write a whole fucking essay on that. All three of them are straight-up archetypes... but that alone is enough to make them at least basically functional as characters. Because that's *why* archetypes end up as archetypes- it's a grouping of character tropes and traits that hits a chord with people. And that's why "cunning normal" was such a fucking retarded concept, Kiznaiverrrrrrr-

It's kinda weird she stays disguised even after getting caught... I guess this is actually consistent; it's been shown before you need to use another spell to transform back, meaning unlike most settings ontological inertia actually applies. but then later on the transformation seems to start slowly undoing itself for no reason anyway. How does this work? magic router?? why'd akko even take that?... whatever

we finally get some violence against witches (threatened but never put though because of course not), which doesn't explain anything but at least characterizes the guys as your entirely typical medieval-styled witch not-likers. The fact that this is what passes for an improvement in this fuckshow of a shitshow is just fucking sad. there are some actually tense and brutal scenes in there, some nice visual shots, like akko getting thrown on the table tied up and the distant side-shot of the guy getting hit by the armor... that aren't killed by wackyness! Amazding! ... Though it still doesn't quite work, probably because the show is still clearly too light-hearted to, say, actually use the torture devices. But them being pulled out isn't a wacky gag either aside from a bit of the reaction. what tone is this?

"y u no use ur magic on me??" "because there's no reception here dumbass the fuck do you think this works like"

Yet another interesting unaddressed plot point- magic was what got them into this mess and turned blong guy into an armored monster, and while a witch was the one who stopped it little to no magic was used in doing so, she basically just needed to smack him hard enough. It seems like the takeaway from this is that witches are perfectly fine people, but magic still needs to fucking die. hmm

by the way what happened to the wordfinding plot this episode

So clearly this was Croi boi testing her angery magicks, but I have to wonder... *why* is anger magic the strongest sort? I mean, it can basically only be arbitrary, but how convenient that her evil energy-having plan can't just go off by spreading feelings of sunshine and happiness.

18 "trained to catch every gost in 12 days, but the goal is one gost in one year"... This is literally, exactly, what Lottie says. What? Literally one minute in and like 20 seconds of dialogue and already this shit makes not a single lick of fucking sense.

akko trips and fucks things up again okay we fucking get i- why was that enpugh to breakm the fucking robort? akko's own body must be the most destructive object know to mankind.

We return to the generic wackey-qwackey humorisms the show had mostly shed in the last couple episodes, and it feels more forced than ever before. After all these thng I can't actually believe Akko's still this shit... and apparently the show itself doesn't either, since as soon as Akko finds something she can actually do it entirely stops. Once she starts working as a convincer/go-between/gopher, not a single thing gets broken. In other words, Trigger just abandoned her character development to churn out and force out more mediocre obligate humor. But at least it was only for, like, half of the episode.

on the other hand once she gets her shit back together the cards get brought back. That was always a kind of interesting little thing, that Akko knew some things even other witches didn't because of the fandom-ing that brought her to the school where she was otherwise so far behind everyone else. I mean, that just raises the question of why the other witches apparently never saw these cards and I feel like I asked exactly this many an episode ago so let's just move the fuck on again

isn't the ship from the OVA? it looks like the shiny rod... and like the same old vaguely eva-lagann looking shit. I forget what it was from Gainax that looked like that, but definitely it was something.

"I already know I won't be as good as Constance"... Man, when Akko's good, she's fucking good. She really isn't trampling over someone else with the conviction that she's always right about everything, she's just so excited she wants to draw a fucking robort. And then Candace loves it and is inspired to make it actually work. it's fucking cute man

gosts viral on social media Normies can't see gosts, but presumably Akko can. How is this actually determined? Rather, the deeper problem is that the line between witches and normies was never defined. There's some implication that it's hereditary, since everyone aside from Akko comes from a "witching family", but the very existence of Akko belies that. So if anyone can train to become a witch, how much training do you do before you become witchy enough to see gost? Actually, should people with latent potential be able to see gost? If Akko is bad at becoming a witch, logically there should be some people who would be better at it relative to her. Shouldn't there be some people in the crowd who can see gost as is? Also, do any males exist with any amount of witch potential, who could see ghosts on their own? If they had never called attention to it by doing the "gost can't see normie" thing, there'd be nothing to really question- you could assume witching is a skill like any other that people could aquire, that's often handed down through families like any other job or career, and that some people are just kind of terrible at. Buuuuut they had to get in this lame "muh on muh cell phone at tuh evuuuunnnt" joke and didn't think it through. Good work, Trigger, keep it up

how is many crow? how many gost We're shown each cube succing up at least one gost each, then multiple cubes forming one crow, but then there's a whole fucking lotta fucking crows. How many gosts were there? How many were left after the large amount that were already taken out? There's just an unmeasured infinite supply of gost somewhere offscreen to conveniently move in as needed. Trigger didn't think this through. And then a super-giant mega-crow shows up which must have used up even more gost. Great

and then the robort- OKAY TRIGGER WE GET IT YOU WUZ GAINAX ONCE CALM THE FUCK DOWN this is just so boring. YEAH, A FUCKING ROBOT, WE GET IT TRIGGER, YOU FUCKS HAVE FUCKING ISSUES. GAINAX-SENPAI WILL NEVER FUCKING NOTICE YOU, GET OVER IT. ... reactions from the peanut gallery are on point tho. akko even credits constantinople for her part in making this possible. she's a good kid. so good. too pure for this fucking show - the robort runs out of energy- WHY DID YOU NOT BRING A ROUTER YOU FUCKNAUTS THERE WAS ONE IN THE IMMEDIATELY PRECEEDING EPISODE WHY - it's a drill. it's a fucking drill. ........ i want to cry acid.

team cubes it blastign off againnnnnnfuck this gay earth

aww man akko doesn't even want to be thanked but compton gives her a training broom anyway. it's beautiful.

19 an old tradition and a new power... croix-was-write is written into the very fabric of reality in this show. good and then mom-diana fucking dies. LOL BYE BITCH.

why would you have the head-appointing ceremony randomly every few years rather than, like, when you need to appoint a new family head? it would even affect the exact same urgency, just have events come to a head so she needs to be pulled out of school and become family head now. why are they electing a baby teen as family head anyway? what age are these kids, anyway? akko looks like ten sometimes.

the second diana says "muh respekt for convention!!" you know she's gonna be treated as full of shit. it's over something we've never heard of and had no reason to assume, anyway. i don't even know "you know about the words?" you've blabbed them to everyone including the rival school that wants to execute you all, so why are you surprised?

...... LOL WHUT THE AUNT LITERALLY HAS GLOWING RED DEMON EYES WHAT THE FUCC?

.... Andrew is one of the best fucking characters in this shitshow of a show. The amount of fucks he's come to not give... Just invite the witch girl your father knows and hates to ride in your car squished up between him and yourself. And dad-man just can't fucking do anything about it. Holy shit lol and lol these british people sure fucking love soccer. boy i sure bet this isn't hammed-in foreshadowing for some fucking bullshit that's going to happen in the last episodes!!!! i'd fucking bet my lyfe on it !!!!!!

what fuck is diantha wearing We get another one of those nice moments that makes me hate the rest of the show. Akko, being energetic and people-oriented as always but somewhat more constrained due to the awkward and unfamiliar situation, tries to go for the teddy bear as an attempt to start some conversation with Diana... Diana yells at her not to touch it, and she actually does not touch it. Now go back and watch the robot episode again. HMMMMMMmmmmm Except it wasn't about the bear, it was about the box of Chariot cards, because of course Diantha actually likes Chariot, bet no one ever saw that twist comingHEY WAIT A MINUTE, didn't one of the earlier episodes hinge on Akko knowing something Diantha didn't because of the cards?? It can't be because Akko was the only one to autistically memorize them all, because Diantha is smurt character and should have remembered it at least somewhat just from reading it normally. kindness from diana, when the rest of the family and household is by akko's own statement even worse.

old lady yells at akko while unfitting music plays

#triggered by trigger

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horrible-monstrosity · 6 years

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Adventures in reviewing games I haven't actually played

so it took me something to figure out why i really didn't like danganronpa, and that something was 9 doors 9 people 9 etc. i'm totally not just salty that chihiro dies early, r e a l l y

to begin with without even comparing I can already say Danganronpa is visually... terrible. The characters look mildewed, for lack of a better term. The backgrounds are clunky as shit, weirdly proportioned, brightly colored eyesores. Usually I'm pretty down for thing in weird unrealistic reality-breaking styles, but this just looks like... chunky ass...

Next, the characters... aside from looking completely unappealing, they're all bizarre unlikable stereotypes. I remember seeing someone claiming that's the "point", that the characters seem like stereotypes and treat each other like stereotypes because you supposed to get to know them and then you care when they die, and also they barely interact with each other because only you know their true selves because it's a deep meaning thing about stereotypes, but... it kinda doesn't seem like they actually manage to get beyond that. And also then of course they eventually die and then they stop developing. But we'll get to that. On the other hand, compare that to the 999 characters... it's a vibrant cast of tropey but still fairly unique characters with nice eyecatching designs. You get a taste of their personalities immediately via first the main guy's stupid little nicknames for them all and then through their reactions to his little snap assessment of them. Throughout the game they banter with and bounce off each other and continue being vibrant lovable characters and it's fucking beautiful. You could probably compare it to Higurashi with the great contrast between the characters dicking around with each other and the deeply serious and horrifying moments... hah, no wonder I liked 999 so much P:

And the final problem is that, and this is gonna sound really fuckin stupid for a sec, it's that people keep fucking dying in Danganronpa. No, really, lemme explain. So first off characters are slated to die regularly not only to fuel the court thing but as a direct result of it. If you're expecting at least two characters to die ever chapter or arc, it becomes routine. Plus the fact that the murders are slightly contrived- just put a bunch of people in a building and be like "lol kill each other", and instead of outright fighting and rioting you get single distinct clean murder events? It's fucking weird.

The other problem is, if you introduce a cast of characters we're all supposed to like and put them in mortal danger, people're gonna want to see them all come out alive somehow. DR addresses this with... a deus ex machina where you can get the key to the fucking exit out of a vending machine at the start of the game and just fucking leave. lol whut I dunno, maybe that was in one of the other games, not the first one which is the only one I ever bothered to even try watching. But the point is, the writers/designers decided to pander to the audience, but instead of thinking it out and allowing you to maybe affect events somehow I don't fucking know they went with a fucking stupid magic plot token.

In 999 meanwhile, while there's indications you've taken the wrong path long before you get to the killin', the whole point is to get as many people as possible out alive, so that problem is nipped in the bud. Not only does that lead to a more satisfying good ending, the bad ends are a wild fucking ride of bloodshed and death and it's fucking amazding okay

I... I dunno, man, the things just bug me.

... But as it turns out, that whole thing was just prologue to me bitching about 999's inferior sequel Virtue's Last Reward!

So VLR is like... basically, it's like if the writers decided to do exactly the same thing as the first game but amped up to eleven, and put no thought into it beyond that.

Immediately out of the gate you can tell the characters just aren't up to snuff. Compared to 999, the group introduction is just... like, there? It's like, oh, here's a person, here's a person. It's pretty weak compared to its predecessor. And then robot comes in with unconscious Clover because why. As far as I can tell, there's no reason for her to be unconscious except le drama, and in exchange... well, her character introduction is even weaker than everyone else's. Because she's unconscious and can't do shit. Her character and the writing are undermined for nothing of any worth. I mean maybe they'll hack up a reason for it later, but I really doubt it'll be as good as say June collapsing with a fever whenever you made a bad choice in 999, for two reasons. For one it's just... a one-trait plot point. June's collapses are interesting because, as it turns out, she has a fever then because she's literally burning up in another timeline. But Clover is just... out cold. Just that. It's literally a boilerplate sitcom drama trope. It's nothing. And then secondly it only happened once with no apparent cause so even bothering to explain it would be a waste of fucking time. So I almost hope it's never explained or even referred to again, except that's still stupid so I guess we're just fucked either way huh?

After that, the game's own design prevents anything like the interactions between groups in 999 by forcing the cast off into minimal itty bitty little groups of three. Man, that just damages it. There's very little of the cast interacting with... well, each other. Yeah sure you get to see enough of each character individually throughout the story branches when you pair up with them but they really don't feel genuine as a group. It's really lacking.

Oh, but then we can get into something that's just the pinnacle-example of the writing problems with VLR... the door-choosing scenes. Just... no, oh no... Every single damn one of them... there's a time limit. The characters know damn well there's a time limit, but they manage to get right up to the very last second boringly agonizingly going over every single combination of who makes what color... then boringly arguing over who goes which what... one time they literally just turn to mister main character at the last second and tell you to choose and they all just go with it because lolwritinghowdoidothisshitfuckingkillme In 999 meanwhile, a lot of the group/door deciding scenes *start off* with characters laying out who they do or absolutely don't want to group up with, or with characters picking out which door they want, and *then* trying to work out groups... you know, the *characters* take precedence rather than the look at muh clever plot mechanics u guise did u know that basic colors? The main character being the arbiter because he's a conduit for the player's input was done much more naturally, usually due to you being the tiebreaker vote or the like. And yes, once they get through the doors there's a silly little time limit thing while they run around looking for the second bracelet thing, but it's given much less focus so it's fine. Ugh... it's just, it's so painful to watch this game trying to go through the motions of its predecessor so exactly (the characters must choose a group for the doors but there's conflict!!) and still failing so hard. It's not so much the same motions as it is following the same path by writhing along the floor and occasionally sticking its ass in the air and screeching.

Mechanically, 999's "morphic resonance" and its interaction with the player's ability to replay scenarios with different choices is... one-for-one replaced with a much more generic and obvious concept that's then massively overused. In 999 morphic resonance is very much a unique trait of the narrative- it's built up to with various odd stories and conversations, based on events both real and invented, leading to the climactic moments where it's first revealed to be the lynchpin of the entire story and then used to save day. Not to mention it's a concept I don't think I've ever heard of outside of the game. It's pretty fucking fascinating, I'm saying.

In VLR meanwhile it's just like... hey, guys, quantum mechanics! Every second of every day, it's quantum mechanics!... But guys, guys, did I mention... quantum mechaniiiiiiiiiiiicfs- meh. Seriously, I'm... almost entirely sure I've seen a branching paths story use quantum mechanics to be "meta" with the fact that the game you're playing has the game mechanics in it before. It's basically baby's first smart-sounding complicated science thing that everyone basically already has a basic idea of (entanglement and spooky distance and shit).

But to make up for underdoing it on the actual ideas front, they decide to just massively overuse it. Nearly ever fucking "ending" I've seen so far has been "ha ha go quantum fuck yourself in another branch before you know how to do this one". Apparently only two endings out of go fuck yourself so many can actually be obtained from the start, and there's no real indication of which path you should take to get them (and it is *should* take unless you think perpetual bullshit and disappointment is some sort of necessary game and story feature). There's one fucking "ending" where the way out is to just fucking immediately go back a scene and watch it again. Just one. It's the one where Alice stabs herself, which happens in other timelines (or she tries to anyway) but only in this one do you do this thing because... it's a fucking misused overused gimmick! And look how clever we are in this single idea- what, polishing it? lol nope man go fuck yaself! aaaaaaaaaauuhghg- Also, you'd think *someone* would have thought "man all this quantum connectedness bullshit sure never happened to me in my normal life, I wonder what changed?" Again this isn't a problem in 999 at all because they use it sparingly instead of spamming it all over the place. Instead we get people wondering if the entire fucking universe outside of the box they're trapped in isn't the REAL shcrodinger's box *sarcastic mind blown ptcheeeeeww*

And then this is all just boilerplated on over the original Nonary game concept. Like, why does it still have to be the number nine? You're talking about quantum pairs and the binary between ally and betray, but the quantum entanglement system has to be awkwardly grafted onto the group of nine by having only some of them pair up and aaaaahksdjhguhdkhgkjdhgudrhg Why not change it to something relevant, like a power of two?

... No, seriously, let me just fix this entire setup in a hot fucking second. Let me introduce to you... THE BINARY GAME. So to fucking start off with you have eight characters, or fuck it have sixteen of them. If you want to "sequelify" things compared to the previous game just go fucking whole hog into it. Besides, having more characters might help with having smaller groups interacting at a time. So now your smaller groups are... larger. Anyway, you have eight or sixteen or maybe fifteen characters (because something zero indexing). They're quantum paired off and made to share their "destiny" or whatever the rabbit said (basically forced to ally regardless of how much they might dislike each other). Those pairs then pair off with another pair for the puzzle rooms who they can choose to betray/ally later on, forming a double standard of sorts that could be interesting. If you go with fifteen characters, the "zero"th one is the one missing (because of course). The 15th or whoever ends up without a partner has some dead relative/loved one as a backstory element and are particularly lonely or isolated, or are seen as suspicious by the others, but this is just thematic/a red herring and they aren't connected to New Zero.

And after you've got all that sorted have Alice-standin stabbing herself and you undoing it be the first significant quantum bullshit event that happens, effectively serving as a tutorial moment instead of shoehorned "look how clever I am u guise" bullshit.

After that, all the bullshit about "but what if humans are the real robot??" can be actually tied into the "binary" theme- New Zero's trying to make the "point" that if you boil a person's thoughts and feelings down to only two options (the prisoner's dilemma game) it supposedly becomes predictable, and all humans are just meat robots and shit. This is probably delivered in an extremely cynical way, like that people who'll always betray are proof humans are all evil and people who always ally are overly trusting fools. And people who'll ally or betray depending on the opponent or the situation, well they're just etc etc The player's ability to go back in time and change their choice is a "shrodinger's cat", in that no matter what you do the bunny will claim he knew you'd do that all along. And of course the final statement of this thing is that if you accept all the complexities of le human you'd see they're so much more than roburts. And then you just fucking play with the concepts. Binary numbers, binary options, binary pairs, quantum particle entanglement, going beyond two options like some quantum computing shit, do the gender binary by making Luna a trap, whatever! And for the endings you have like two or three or four that lead to "true" endings and are "to be continued" off if you don't get some of the bad endings and find out things first. You know, instead of the opposite of that.

Look, there, I fucking fixed it. fucking hell

What else can I bitch about?... Well, there's some just dumb shit like the one time some of them found a HWACKEY QHWACKEY AUSTRALIAN ROBURT that talked about deep philosophical shit with a wacky accent! Or it tries to, anyway, all it says is some boilerplate I'm-14-and-this-is-deep shit about how *maybe you're the robots* because... like, your arms move, or something. Seriously, that's it. And it just goes on and on for fucking forever, saying nothing of any fucking value in any of it.

Clover and Alice as far as I can tell are just there as like continuity-bait characters. Like hey guys remember that time we had a good game and these characters were there (or Clover was there and Alice was kinda this... thing)??? Remember how you liked them?? Well, now they're here, too! Effort done, everyone likes the sequel now, we can stop trying. It hasn't been covered in the game yet but apparently Alice's backstory is... fucking stupid. Like, the obscure fictional "all-ice" rumor from the original games that was an invented piece of deepest lore that informed the plot and feel of the game... uh now it's just some rumor everyone knows and kids tease Alice because she was kangs n Alice and shiet. It's like they tried to surpass the most obvious, boring, boilerplate thing they could do with that girl who appeared as a gag at the end of 999 and create a character truly out of nothing. And of course it doesn't fucking mean anything, it's just look at how clever we are obsessing over random shit from out previous success. Did Trigger write this game?

Everyone seems to fucking hate the main character. If you choose to downvote someone everyone gets bitchy at you about it, including Phi who probably told you to do it when she's partnered with you. But if someone downvotes you they're all just like "it's perfectly understandable to look out for yourself I don't know why you're upset lol". If anyone else (so far Quark and Phi) gets 9 post karma, which is what you need to get out of there, they'll just let them wander around because they totally wouldn't abandon us here lol but if you get 9 points they FUCKING MURDER YOU. And this one fucking baffled me for a while- despite loving to go on and on about the most useless of fucking shit all of the fucking time the game decides to not remind you that opening the 9 door kills everyone who doesn't have 9 points yet until fucking forever later (or, given that it's multiple paths, just at some completely random point in the story). So for the longest fucking time it just seems like they decide to kill you out of spite.

Oh, and everyone also seems to also fucking hate Dio. Like, wow, he gets kinda snippy with people and votes "betray" all of like twice in each timeline before people start physically assaulting him to prevent him from voting. It's not like people might get selfish and snippy when they're in a life-and-death situation, nooo, that's not totally understandable at all. Better yet the thing goes on about the prisoner's dilemma as this great big moral... dilemma- oh, do you choose "ally" or you choose "betray"?? oh man the choices!!- but when Dio is just like "fuck it I pick betray" and everyone just goes HOW FUCKING DARE YOU REEEEEEEEEEEEE--- (And yes, I've read the spoilers about him... it sounds absolutely fucking retarded.)

Speaking of which Dio's "I'm a ringleader lol" shctick seems like an entirely weaker imitation of 999's wacky character designs. 999 had characters who were eyecatching but not too over-the-top in appearances, which the main character raised an eyebrow at at the beginning but it becomes strangely normal as you go along. Sounds great, right? Well in VLR we have... ringleader guy for no reason, kid with cinderblocks on his fucking head, Clover and Alice looking FUCKING TERRIBLE... and then completely normal boring designs like old man guy. What the fuck? Seriously, in 999 you look at Lotus and in one second you know she's dressed as a bellydancer. You don't know why she is, but she is. In VLR you look at Alice and she's a... what? She doesn't even look like a stripper like Clover kinda does, she just looks retarded.

#vidya bitching

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