#they threw the original fucking cast in there and it was spectacular

[trashexplorer]

BLCD Review: Sei no Gekiyaku

Title: Sei no Gekiyaku (性の劇薬)

Author/Artist: Mizuta Yuki

Shop: CD + Manga

Release Date: 2021/10/27

Cast: Morikawa Toshiyuki x Nojima Hirofumi

Synopsis:

“I’ll find all of your most sensitive spots.”

Makoto Katsuragi, a man working for an advertising agency, has so far led a perfect private and work life. However, that all comes crashing down in an instant when he loses everything he holds dear. In the midst of his despair, he drunkenly climbs onto the ledge of a tall building and is about to jump, when… “If you’re going to throw away your life…let me have it.” He is saved by these words offered by the sudden appearance of Ryuji Yoden, and decides to do exactly as Ryuji says. From the moment Makoto awakens in Ryuji’s room, his daily life of retraining begins, giving away not only his body but his heart…

Review Proper

Uhh.

Hmm.

???????

If y'all know me and or have read my older posts, you'll know I hate this type of plot. However, I had to listen to this 'cause the last I heard of Morikawa Toshiyuki was in 2021, and Nojima Hirofumi in... 2019?! *goes into existential panic*. It doesn't help that these two were Shigure-san and Haru in Nights Before Night. I wanted my happy ending with them to happen even though it was nearly impossible since these two are already inactive in the BL industry. Having the two of them come back and co-star in a BLCD again is just too good to be true... and I was right. I didn't expect them to come in for one of the sketchiest things in the market. I really don't know what Frontier is smoking, having all the budget for veterans like these only to put them in weird projects.

Biases and triggers aside, I think that Sei no Gekiyaku failed to deliver what it was set to convey. It tried so hard to be deep and psychological in the beginning, but it's like sensei just threw that out the window in chapter 3. It reminds me a lot of Lala no Kekkon and Derail. What was all that build-up for, then? I'm gonna say it. If you wanna use Stockholm Syndrome, then commit. This is also true with the discarded BDSM. I don't like these themes, but damn, do I feel bad for them 'cause they all felt pointless in the end.

Anyway, onto the topic of the BLCD itself...

You'll miss a lot of things if you haven't read the manga beforehand. There was a lot of added and dropped content that was understandable since no other characters apart from the two leads were in the BLCD. But that also led to Ryuji's older brother's presence being missing in the BLCD. Although Ryuji mentions him in the BLCD often enough, the manga just shows Ryuji's trauma better since we get to see him constantly haunting Ryuji. I'm not sure if they've changed censorship laws on BLCDs because the same thing happened in Kuroe to Mesu, but the BLCD was less graphic than the manga. Take that part where Ryuji rapes Makoto in the bathtub. You can hear Makoto take a toy in, but you'll never know it was a dildo mount whatchamacallit if you didn't read the manga.

There's also that part when Ryuji loses it when Makoto smiles when they were fucking. Nojinii does chuckle then, but you wouldn't pick that up if you didn't know what happened in the manga. It might've been better if Ryuji loudly thought: "Oh crap, he smiled."

The original plot was already badly paced, but the BLCD was even worse lmao. The tracks don't even start the same way the manga chapters do. I really don't recommend listening to this if you haven't heard the story and are a beginner to Japanese. Speaking of reading, idk what happened to futekiya, but the translation progressively got worse towards the end of the manga. I also read the scanned version of this when it was still unlicensed, but it was also a bit off.

Now for the light in the tunnel: the voice work.

I tried to fight it. I really did.

But I'm always going to be Moririn trash.

Don't get me wrong, Morimori did spectacular here (duh). But I really hated Ryuji that I initially had no thoughts other than respect towards his voice acting here... until he whispered in Track 4, that is. At some point, I just wanted to throw Nojinii out of the picture 'cause THAT SHOULD BE ME???!!! I'LL SLURP THIS SPAGHETTI OFF THE FLOOR ON ALL FOURS FOR YOU, MORIKAWA TOSHIYUKI!

My god. Frontier sure has taste in VAs but not in stories.

He was just-ugh. I wonder how he does that. Like in Tadaima, he makes you feel like he's talking to you rather than his co-star wtf. I was gasping for air goddammit. This man is a danger to society.

As for Nojinii, I actually thought that his voice was too high for Makoto in the beginning. It was almost in the same range as his Haru, and I imagined Makoto's voice to be lower. It did grow on me, though. I missed my bottom Nojinii. Of course, he did excellent as well. His fear was really believable in the first tracks that I just feel so bad for him 'cause he needed to throw that all away. 🙄

Man, I can't help but think that Morimori and Nojinii were wasted on this work. Again, it's already a miracle to have them back, so this might be the last time they ever pair up again. And for fucking Sei no Gekiyaku? Part of the reason why I stopped listening to BLCDs was 'cause I wouldn't know how to cope if I saw more of my favorite older VAs leaving the industry. That's also why I stopped doing releases lists. Hype around BLCDs has steadily been on the decline and if you haven't noticed, there's been considerably fewer releases too. The manga scene isn't doing well either. I'm just so afraid it'll all run out someday. *crisis*

Going back on topic, I do not recommend this BLCD. If you're into psychological and BDSM, I would look into Harada or Kabukichou Bad Trip instead. If you're a fan of Morimori and Nojinii, I still wouldn't recommend it if the theme isn't your thing. Let's just re-listen to Nights Before Night and suffer instead. 👍

#sei no gekiyaku #frontier works #mizuta yuki #morikawa toshiyuki #nojima hirofumi

[nvvermore]

sorry everyone im reverting back into a poto fanblog, if u cant tell i fell into a rabbit hole this morning looking for an image to add to the beamie fic and now i have brainrot

#i always have poto brainrot even if its not surfacing #such sexy costumes #i even forgive the movie a lil for the production budget i just wish they had casted u know. #ACTUAL musical theatre actors and not #g rard but ler #why didn’t any one who does a broadway movie take advice from rent??? #they threw the original fucking cast in there and it was spectacular #its only strike was cutting goodbye love and changing mimi and maureens costuming #poto looks good and sounds okay until u hear like #OBC or RAH #even the les mis movie figured it out!!! found two big names w mus threatre bgs #and how they did the singing was genius cause it put everyone on an even level and sounded natural #ofc i dont know what happened w eddie redmayne #or with amanda seyfried cause shes great in mamma mia and then???? #honestly she was too old to play cosette but #disclaimer i am not bashing musical movies i support them on the basis of accessibility #and bc of that i criticize them cause EVERYONE deserves quality theatre #and i know im a huge proponent of ‘all art is good art and all singing is good singing’ #but autotuning the fuck out of vocals for broadway shows is not good #again #les mis is an incredible example of emotion over whats technically right #wow this got long ok #ophie runs their mouth

[ohtobeleah]

Okay but I wanna know what happened at the pub. for In Production

In Production Series

The Interview Series

Summary: The events of the dinner and drinks with Sebastian at the pub. Prequel to hand to hand.

Dinner and one beer, one fucking beer! That’s what you’d agreed to. Sebastian however, he had other plans. Dinner was ordinary—you’d had your fair share of amazing pub schnitzels. Tonight’s order was anything but spectacular, the company however? Was perfect.

“My prized possession?” Sebastian repeated back to you over the music, you nodded with a mouthful of food. “What’s my prized possession? god you’re so weird.” Sebastian chuckled. Rubbing his chin as he thought for a moment. “A candle stick holder, an old casting director gave it to me way back when, said it belonged to James Dean.”

“You’re prized possession is a fucking candle stick holder and you have the nerve to call me weird?” You smirked, taking a sip of the beer Sebastian had brought you. Dinks on him, dinner on you. Fair considering you originally had planned on paying for everything—it was your idea anyway.

“It’s belonged to James Dean!?” Sebastian defended his answer, his candle stick holder. You threw your head back as a loud laughter escaped your chest.

“You have absolutely no fucking way of proving that candle stick holder belonged to James Dean.” It was the casualness of the conversations you’d find yourself having with Sebastian that made you smile, that made you less nervous about working with him, a seasoned pro. A professional, something you were very clearly—not. Sebastian huffed. Cutting into his next piece of schnitzel, bringing the backside of his fork to his mouth.

“What about you? What’s yours?” Sebastian snarked cheekily. “What’s yours prized possession—“

“My coffee machine, that things worth more than my apartment, worth every penny though, nothing but liquid gold every morning.” It was easy conversation, the laughter came easy with Sebastian. Hours passed as food was finished and one beer turned to two, three to five. Before shots were being ordered and arms were been hooked around each other. Downing the burning clear liquor as you squinted, chasing with lime.

“I said one drink!” You hissed, head in the towel bowl in the bathroom of the pub. Knees grazing against cold tiles. Sebastian held your hair. Laughing along as you laughed at yourself between coughs and splatters of vomit. “This is fucking insanity!”

“Just get it out Y/l/n—“ Sebastians hand was on your back, rubbing gentle circles as you threw the content of your stomach up. Almost instantly feeling better as you wiped your mouth with a few squares of toilet paper. Leaning back against the wall, Sebastian pressed up beside you, arm against yours. “You wanna go home or?”

“Are you insane? I’m good.” You let your head rest on Sebastians shoulder, both sitting on the floor of the bathroom stall. “I always rally, Let’s get another round, I saw the pool table was free.” Sebastian couldn’t believe your persistence, his head was spinning the moment he allowed himself to relax against the wall.

“This the probably the most derelict thing I’ve ever done.” Sebastian chuckled as he felt your head get a little heavier on his shoulder.

“You’ve never had a nap on the floor of a pub bathroom before?” Sebastian shook his head in disbelief, he hadn’t. “God you haven’t lived, I once fell asleep on the toilet for half an hour before my best friend came and got me, that was at this fancy dress party her work was hosting, free champagne.” Sebastian decided in that moment he could listen to you talk all day, he’d never get tired of your voice. The way he wished it would infiltrate his dreams. “God she’d be screaming if she could see me right now.”

“Why’s that?” Sebastian asked, his arm pulling you closer into his side when he felt you shiver. Looking around he couldn’t believe where he was, this was by far the most random places he’d sat to have a chat. The floor of a pub fucking stall. He wasn’t sure if he was in the women’s or the men’s, he didn’t care, as long as he was with you.

“Because I’m free.” It was a simple three word answer that held the weight of the world. “For Five years I let Tom rule my life, I haven’t had this much fun in years, sure—I’m broke, live pay-check to pay-check, but I’m living life, hell, what a fucking story this will be!”

“Sitting in a dirt filled disgusting bathroom drunk off your ass?”

“With Sebastian Stan of all people, do you know how ridiculous that sounds?” You sat up laughing, head spinning. “You got me drunk, you’re here in the disgusting bathroom too, you’re no better then me.” You chuckled. Slurring your words just slightly.

“I got myself drunk too., don’t make me sound like I’m taking advantage—I can’t even see you properly” Sebastian added, his eyes dipping to your lips before quickly coming back to your eyes, you did the same. “Don’t forget that, you aren’t the only one who’s fighting the urge to pass out, I for one just don’t want my head in some random toilet.”

“Rather your own huh?” You asked, knowing it would probably be the final destination of the night, your head in your own toilet bowl.

“Oh yeah.” Sebastian pressed his lips together with a sure nod. “Much cleaner then this dump.” Silence fell over the pair of you as you sat together. Both buzzing, alcohol pumping through your veins. “You sure you don’t wanna go home?” You just stared at Sebastian for a moment, mesmerising his face, his smile. You shook your head.

“Nights only young, c’mon—let’s get fucked up.” You stumbled to your feet with a chuckle, bringing your bottom lip between your teeth. Sebastian followed, fumbling to his feet, unlocking to bathroom door before running his hand through his hair. “Let’s go!”

“Shots on me Y/l/n—let’s see what you got.”

You had absolutely nothing. You were wasted before Sebastian could even think of asking the bartender for a jug of water, with a half finished gin and tonic in your hand you slouched over the pool table. Face pressing against the greenery. Sebastian wrapped his arm around you, steadily walking and supporting you towards the front door, a taxi already waiting. Someone must have called. Sebastian leaned in towards to open window as you mumbled something.

“You Patrick?” The taxi driver asked. Sebastian smiled in response.

“I’ll be whoever I gotta be to get you to drive us to Parks and Fairfield?” The taxi drive shrugged, gesturing for Sebastian to hop in. He dragged your almost dead weight self in along the backseat. Your head in his lap as he struggled to focus on anything outside the window.

“I’m so totally gonna fall in love with you.” You mumbled against the warmth of Sebastians jeans. His hand absence playing with your hair. His eyebrow raised in response, had he heard you right?

“What was that?” He chuckled, laughing to himself as you mumbled incoherently.

“Nothing nothing—shit, I’m gonna, hey! you wanna watch that movie when we get back to my place?”

“What movie are we talking about?” Sebastian couldn’t control his soft laughter, his cheeks hurt from his smile. Looking down in his lap where your head was resting gently. Cheek squished against his high.

“The one where he’s all like, ‘It’s sheriff Bodecker son!’ Sebastian wanted to stay in this moment forever no matter how much his own head hurt or how much the movement of the taxi he sat in the back of was making his stomach churn. “That’s you isn’t it? You say that?”

“I do, I do—“

“You’ve say a lot of things” you mumbled, eyes closed as your gave into the feeling of Sebastians fingertips dancing against your scalp. Sending shivers through your body as you sighed.

“What’s some other things I’ve said that come to mind?” Sebastian asked, he just wanted an excuse to hear you talk gibberish to him. Keep you away long enough to make sure you got home safe. You sat up slowly with a groan, eyes meeting Sebastians sleepily as you leaned in, he didn’t stop you. How could he? His hand found your cheek drunkenly as the pad of this thumb gently caressed the soft skin of your cheek. Your breath hot on his. The smell of alcohol lingering just as much is his did.

“You know what the issue with the w-world is?” Everyone wants a ma-magical solution to their problems and everyone refuses to-to believe in magic.” Sebastian didn’t know if he leaned into you or if you fell into him, but your lips were in his before he could begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together. His eyes closed as he brought you closer though, moaning into your mouth as you deepened the kiss, caught up in the drunk taste as his tongue danced with your greedily, needy.

It was when the Taxi came to a haunt when Sebastian was pulling away, his eyes wide as his wiped his mouth, catching his breath, lips red, eyes full of something between lust and longing—your head coming to rest in his shoulder.

“Shit—I’m sorry Y/n I—“ but Sebastians apologies fell on deaf ears. You were gone. Passed out. A world away in your dreams. “Fuck.” To say it was a mission to get you out of the taxi and up over his shoulder was an understatement—but Sebastian managed. Taking the elevator from the lobby of your apartment complex and one flight of stairs before he took a left down the hall to where your apartment was. Fishing for your key awkwardly. 

“She keeps a spare key on-top on the doorframe son.” Sebastian nodded softly as he reached up for your spare key, unlocking your apartment door. Gesturing to the old lady who seemed to know everything. “Don’t you try anything with her young man, I’ve got ears like a hawk.”

Sebastian didn’t dare, simply fetching a glass of water and two Advil to put on your beside table. You were fucking gone. Making sure you were in fact breathing before he himself stumbled out of your apartment.

Tags:

@iamtheonewhocares

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #sebastian stan fanfiction #sebastian stan x female reader #Sebastian Stan #bucky barnes x reader #marvel mcu #ohtobeleah #tfatws #bucky fic #bucky barnes one shot

[artificialqueens]

Galactica, Chapter 71 (Group Fic) - TheDane/Veronica

A/N: Fun fact: this rewrite is now the second-longest fic in the Drace Race RPF section of AO3. (Second only to the original story, lol.) So if you’re looking for a lot of content…we’ve got you. ;) Click here if you’re looking for previous chapters (or here if you’d rather read on AO3). 💫

Previously: Violet revealed her estranged relationship with her family to Sutan, and Courtney struggled to live up to Miss Fame’s demands.

This Chapter: Some uncharacteristic vulnerability from Violet, Met Gala meetings and morning television.

***

“Do you want more marshmallows?”

“I always want more marshmallows.”

Katya grinned as she got up from the kitchen table, grabbing Trixie’s mug to top them both up. They were decorating gingerbread men, Katya pulling them from the oven last night. Trixie was doing clothes, drawing in the lines and putting details on them, one of his favorite jobs.

It was a tradition of theirs, spending the Sunday before Christmas in their pajamas, preparing cookies and watching Home Alone, the leftover icing always ending up in the bedroom for some sticky afternoon fun.

***

“Aaaand release...”

“Oh god,” Sutan groaned, rolling onto his back and spreading out like a starfish. “I’m dead.”

When he had jokingly asked if he could join Violet for her yoga session, he hadn’t figured she’d say yes, and he definitely hadn’t expected that it’d be this hard, those last few breaths of extended child’s pose essentially torture where he could feel his bones bend and creak.

“Stop being so dramatic,” Violet grinned, his girlfriend sitting back on her knee, the leg with her cast spread out to the side. “We only did 40 minutes.”

“You’re not even sweating.” Sutan looked at her, Violet’s hair in a high ponytail, the Sunday look of one of his shirts and a sports bra quickly becoming a fave.

“Some of us remember to do more than weights and cardio, Mr. Amrull.”

“I’m texting my trainer right now,” Sutan reached over his head, grabbing his phone that he had left on the floor next to their mats, Violet giggling as she laid down next to him, putting her head on his shoulder.

“There,” Sutan pressed send, his trainer probably falling off of his chair when he read the message, Sutan always attempting to get away with the bare minimum when it came to exercise, but he refused to be humiliated by being unable to reach his toes.

He was just about to put his phone down, when Violet reached up and tapped the screen, his front camera opening up, both of them in frame as they were lying on the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking a picture?” Violet smiled, her sarcastic tone never wavering. “To document the moment.”

Sutan looked at the screen. It was so incredibly tempting to say yes, to keep this moment in the private password protected collection that had steadily grown since Thanksgiving, Violet really and truly trying to let him take pictures, but he couldn’t say yes, not when he knew why she was so confident.

“And can I post it?”

“Post it?” Violet raised an eyebrow, sitting up on her elbows. “Why? Isn’t your hair...?”

“A mess?” Sutan didn’t want to smile, but it was impossible not to, Violet knowing him way too well if she had already figured out that he was sometimes embarrassingly vain about his hairstyle, the mess on his head looking like he had been fucking for an hour. “Yes, but I still want to post it.”

“I-” Violet had pulled away completely now, not a single trace of the sweetness left. “No.”

“Violet,” Sutan sat up as well, putting his phone down, “I know you hate social media, but you’re my girlfriend, and I don’t think what I ask for is unreasonable-”

“Sutan. Please” Violet grabbed her mat and rolled it together in an attempt to avoid him. “I said no.”

“And I’m pushing because I don’t understand.” Sutan could feel the annoyance build, the hurt and the rejection. It stung every single time Violet denied him, hurt every time she neglected what they had.

“I’m not saying we have to announce it with a workout selfie,” Sutan hated that they were fighting, but he couldn’t help himself, “but I want to tell the world that we’re together.”

“And I don’t-” Violet looked at him, her brown eyes filled with hurt. “If the world knows, they know, and I don’t want them to know where I am or what I’m doing.”

There it was. The they, the them, the family from Atlanta that was haunting his girlfriend's life like a shadow that had slowly started to creep into his too.

“Violet, I hate to be the one to tell you,” Sutan didn’t touch her, simply putting his hand down on the floor next to hers, telling her that he was there. “But the internet exists. If they have your name, they can find you, no matter what you do to hide.”

“Have you taken a moment to consider that they might not have that?”

Sutan paused, Violet’s words like a bomb.

“... What?”

Did her family not have her name? It was true that Violet Chachki barely got any hits on google, that it was Parson’s assignments and internships that popped up, the Galactica employee directory right at the top, but Sutan had never considered that possibility, had never even toyed with it.

“This wasn’t how I planned on telling you. Actually, I probably wasn’t counting on telling you at all, but I’m not…” Violet was fiddling with the tiniest hole in her yoga mat, her fingers tugging on the foam. “I wasn’t born Violet. Wasn’t even born a Chachki. Hasn’t it ever seemed weird to you that my last name literally means trinket?”

“It does?”

“Mmh,” Violet smiled, the same heavy sadness he had seen in the hospital in her eyes. “I needed to not be… Blair anymore.”

“Blair?”

“Yes,” Violet nodded. “Blair Dardo. It was my birth name. I never liked it, and I changed it the moment I turned 18, left it behind the second I could. That’s why I can’t,” Violet gestured vaguely to Sutan’s phone. “Changing it meant that they can’t, that they can’t find me, and I-”

Sutan didn’t know what to say, but it felt like he had just been given another puzzle piece in the mystery that was his girlfriend.

“I’m sorry.”

Violet’s head snapped to attention, her eyes widening in confusion. “...What?”

“I’m sorry.” Sutan said it again, making sure he put his genuine emotion behind the words. “I should have realized that you weren’t saying no to be difficult, and yet I kept pushing.”

“Sutan-” Violet still looked confused and a little suspicious, like she didn’t really understand what he was doing. “You don’t have to-”

“No but I do.” Sutan smiled. “I get it now, and I’m sorry, but next time you have a deep dark secret, maybe you could just tell me instead of this charade-”

Sutan was cut off as Violet threw herself in his arms, knocking him down on the floor and kissing him like her life depended on it, gratitude rolling off of her in waves.

***

“Raja?”

Alyssa held out the plate of croissants, Raja waving it away since she didn’t want one. The entire senior management team was gathered in the  conference room, Fame for some ungodly reason always insisting on a full breakfast spread for their Monday meetings, even though only a fraction of them ever actually ate any of it.

“So,” Fame looked around, a gold fountain pen in her hand, a black moleskin notebook open in front of her. “Any updates?”

The theme of today's meeting was the 2015 Met Gala, Raja barely hiding a groan when Courtney had sent out the meeting agenda.

It wasn’t that she disliked the Met Gala, the first Monday in May a spectacular party, but it was such a hassle getting there, the gala the fashion world's version of the Oscars.

“Yes,” Pearl smiled, turning around in her chair. She was weirdly chipper, her blonde hair collected in a clip, her signature leather jacket exchanged with a cropped black fur. “We have the final confirmation from Jessica Chastain’s team. She’s in.”

“Good,” Fame nodded, making a note in her moleskin, the fact that Fame was actually writing herself more than enough to cement the severity of the situation. Courtney was standing against the wall, Ivy sitting at the table with her computer open, typing away, but when it came to the Met, Fame left nothing up to chance.

“She’s looking forward to working with us, and she says she’s honored-”

“Yada yada yada,” Fame made a hand puppet, and Raja had to hide a smile, Pearl leaning back in her chair with a roll of her eyes, mouthing at everyone else that she’d send a follow up email.

It was Fame who had requested Jessica, in her own roundabout way, her friend casually mentioning to Raja that she had a good smile, which was more than enough for Raja to make Pearl offer her up as Galactica’s celebrity face.

It wasn’t every house who did it, but the big ones always had a celebrity at the gala, wearing their clothes and repping the brand.

“Does anyone know if they’ve moved away from the terrible theme yet?”

“It doesn’t seem like it,” Alaska offered up, the promotional material the Met had sent out at the start of the fall in the middle of the table thanks to Ivy’s forthsight. “It’s December, and since we haven’t heard anything, they’re sticking with China's influence on western fashion.”

“Good god, I was really hoping they had come to their senses.” Fame breathed out through her nose, and Raja had to agree with her. Sure, ‘China: Through the Looking Glass’ made sense as an art exhibition, but there was really no way to convert it to fashion without being culturally insensitive at best and offensively appropriative at worst.

Besides, Galactica had never been a brand that sought inspiration from the east in their designs and aesthetics, which made the entire situation quite the predicament.

“I’m sure we can work with it,” Trixie gave a small smile, the stack of papers by his elbow indicating that he had probably already put his senior designers to work coming up with concepts.

“And how,” Fame turned, looking directly at Trixie. “Are we supposed to work with it? Raja’s the only one who could possibly get away with being theme appropriate.”

Usually, Fame and Raja were the ones who walked the carpet together with their celebrity, Fame a nervous wreck for weeks before the gala because of all the strangers, while Raja enjoyed it because of her modeling days, seeing old acquaintances without the stresses of fashion week, a delightful yearly treat.

“I’m Indonesian.” Raja knew Fame didn’t mean anything by it, and she wasn’t that concerned about being politically correct herself, but everyone knew what it could mean for a fashion house to misstep, Dolce and Gabbana somehow walking directly from one scandal and into another one. “Not Chinese.”

“See?” Fame sighed, leaning back in her chair. “It’s a controversial time bomb. Either, we stay on theme, which I refuse since I look terrible in Chinese red, ”

“So we’re going off theme?” Trixie had picked up his papers, sorting through them, and Raja felt a moment of gratitude for their head of design, Trixie of course coming prepared with off-theme suggestions as well.

“Unless they get a grip and change it? Yes. Yes we are.”

*

“There!” Everyone held their breath as Maxwell pointed at Violet’s screen, an email from Ivy just ticking in, the Met Gala meeting still in full swing.

“Open it, Chachki!” Blu was practically biting her nails, hopping from one foot to the other, her red hair in a braid over her shoulder.

“Alright, alright-“ Violet clicked on the email, Bob standing right behind her, his eyes flying over the screen before he called out.

“It’s Jessica!”

A collective sigh of relief went through the floor, a loud ‘yes’ coming from Kiara who was clapping her hands together, the group breaking up, chatter filling the air.

“Thank god,” Maxwell groaned, putting a hand on Violet’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “I knew having you here would be worth it Chachki.”

“Right.” Violet raised an eyebrow, looking up at him, clearly not understanding why no one had thought to simply ask Ivy for updates before, the suggestion just casually slipping from her during morning coffee, the entire department running with it instantly. “But I still don’t-“

“Get it?” They turned to look over at Jovan who was sitting at his own desk, the man one of the few who hadn’t gathered around Violet’s computer.

“Yes.” Violet nodded. “If you needed information all this time, you could have just asked-”

“Like we could have just asked you?” Bob said, cutting her off and Violet opened her mouth, only to close it again. “Exactly.” Bob grinned. “You would have told us to fuck off.”

“I see your point.” Violet tapped her fingers on her desk, a small smile on her lips since everyone knew she would have said those exact words directly to their faces when she had been in Fame’s front office. “But, why is it such a big deal if a celeb is confirmed or not? The gala isn’t until May, that’s 4 months away and it’s three outfits. A whole collection is usually done in that time.”

“A collection doesn’t have to be approved by the celebrity,” Maxwell counted on his fingers, “the celebrity’s stylist, Vogue and Anna Wintour personally on top of Trixie, Raja and Fame. Alexis usually starts producing concepts in October.”

“As soon as they reveal the theme girl!” Alexis yelled over her shoulder, already pulling her sketches from their shelf, the confirmation meaning that she’d be in a meeting with Trixie for the rest of the day, working out the details of the first round of negotiations with the celebrity.

“Huh…” Violet looked around, the puzzled expression still on her face. “And what about-“

“Fame and Raja?”

Violet nodded.

“You’d think Fame would be the difficult one-“ Maxwell smiled.

“But make something gorgeous and custom in ivory and she’s on board,” Jovan grinned, putting the pen he was using behind his ear as he turned around in his chair. “Every year, she pretends like she’ll follow the theme, and then never does.”

“Exactly.” Maxwell nodded. “Fame is demanding, but consistent. Trixie has an entire drawer of Fame-appropriate outfits that we all contribute to whenever we have an idea.”

“That makes a disturbing amount of sense,” Violet looked mildly impressed, and if any of the rumors Maxwell had heard about how she had managed Fame’s front office, that approach wasn’t too far off from how Violet herself had attempted to tame the beast.

“Rule one of surviving at Galactica: Never disappoint Miss Fame. For once, however, Fame isn’t the problem.” Maxwell sighed, taking a seat on the edge of Violet’s desk. “Raja is.”

“Raja?” Violet looked genuinely surprised. “Really?”

“Yes really.” Maxwell crossed his arms. “Every year, she tells us that she’s chill, that she’ll wear whatever goes with the spring collection or the theme-“

“And every single year, she changes her mind at least four times.” Bob chimed in, the drama loving smirks on his lip. “More if you’re lucky.”

“Which is why,” Maxwell nudged Bob’s side with his elbow. “We’ve unanimously decided that you have the honor of dressing Raja for this year's Met Gala.”

“Me?” Violet’s eyes widened. “What? Why?” Violet looked at them, confusion painted on her face. “I’m the most junior member of staff.”

“True, but you’re also sucking her brother's dick,” Maxwell grinned, “so we figured she can’t kill you during the process, unlike the rest of us mere mortals.”

***

It should have been one of the most exciting mornings since Courtney started at Galactica--Miss Fame and Raja were being interviewed on a talk show, and so she got to go to the famous 30 Rockefeller Plaza building, and be on the set of a real television show. Unfortunately, it was such a whirlwind of activity and Miss Fame was in such a demanding mood that she didn’t have a second to enjoy it.

She felt like a chicken with its head cut off, running around in a hectic scramble to meet every request. Today was the last day before their holiday break, and even though Courtney knew that spending her break with Bianca would be incredible, she also knew that she had about a billion things to do before that could even start. Today was supposed to be a half day, but with how packed the schedule was, she’d be lucky to leave by 5.

She entered Miss Fame’s green room, silently handing her the coffee she’d asked for and then leaning on the wall to catch her breath. Miss Fame took a sip and then immediately spit the coffee back out.

“What is this?” she asked, holding the cup out like it was a bag of dog shit.

“It’s your usual-”

“This is not my usual. This is weak, and not hot enough, and-did you just roll your eyes?”

“No, Miss!” Courtney insisted, praying that she was telling the truth. She was tired, having arrived at the office at 6 am to drop off her stuff for Bianca’s, and there was a teeny tiny chance that she may have (accidentally) rolled her eyes. “Would you like a new-”

“Let me tell you something, Courtney. This may be the last day before a vacation, but I expect you to be fully present and accounted for. We have too many important things going on and I will not accept anything less than your absolute very best. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Now. Please go find me some decent coffee before I get a migraine.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“And after you come back, I need you to go to the dry cleaners. I’ve decided to wear my ivory Valentino suit to meet the investors later.”

“Yes, Miss, will do.”

“That’s all,” Miss Fame said, waving her hand, and Courtney took off back down the labyrinthine hallways of 30 Rock to hunt down a coffee that would meet her standards.

***

“Good morning! Welcome back to Coast to Coast. I’m Nina West, and today we are positively blessed to have with us the icons of fashion, Miss Fame and Raja Gemini of Galactica, here to talk to us about dressing to impress in the new year, and their exciting new business ventures. Thank you so much for being here, ladies!”

“Thank you, we’re thrilled to be here,” Fame smiled, the lie easily falling out of her red painted lips.

Raja could see the way her hands were clenched in her lap, her wedding ring turned inward and digging into her palm, and knew that she was at her tensest.

Raja had long ago gotten used to giving live interviews. She had a laid-back attitude and while she always wanted to represent the company in the most flattering light, she tended to relax and let the conversation flow naturally.

Fame, however, had never quite gotten the hang of it in the same way. She was just so brand-conscious, almost to a debilitating degree, written interviews so much more her speed.

She always looked impeccable, very much the ice goddess she was so often called, but Fame had never gotten the same confidence in her speaking skills as Raja, who had been dragged through developing them in her modeling career.

Even though Fame hated being on live TV, they occasionally got an offer they couldn’t turn down, and between the makeup line being released in January and the overhaul of their website and online store, they had a lot to plug.

The whole thing was so stressful Fame had asked Raja four times to check her pits for sweat stains, her papers with facts from the makeup department and pointers from Pearl not leaving her hand until they literally had to go on.

Raja leaned forward, giving Fame’s shoulder a reassuring pat, and added, “This is our favorite show, we never miss it!”

“Aww, thank you!” said Nina, grinning. “Now, I’ve heard through the grapevine that you have an exciting announcement.”

“Yes, and we’re so happy to be able to share the news with your viewers first-”

“An exclusive!” Nina exclaimed, eyes comically wide and mouth open as if this was news to her.

“Yes, exactly. Early this year, we released a limited makeup line, and it’s been doing just wonderfully. So in 2015, we’re going to be rolling out a full line of makeup and skincare, with special edition palettes and colors all throughout the spring.”

“All natural, vegan, cruelty free...I always want the very best for my own skin and I wouldn’t offer our customers anything less,” Fame cut in, and Raja felt a surge of pride at how natural she sounded. All their rehearsing had clearly paid off.

“If you use it, I’ll use it!” Nina said with a chuckle. “You both have the most gorgeous skin I’ve ever seen.”

“We expect the first batch to sell out quickly,” Raja said, “So go straight to our website, Galactica dot com, and sign up to be part of the mailing list to receive alerts on all new product launches and where they’ll show up in stores.”

“I’m doing that, the second we go to commercials,” Nina said. “But first, I heard that there’s more news about your spring line...”

***

Patrick reached for the remote, turning off the TV as Nina West rounded out the segment with Fame and Raja.

He was sitting in his office, wrapping up the last details before the firm could close down for the holiday break.

Fame had done a great job, the nerves he knew she had felt not showing on her beautiful face. Patrick picked up his phone, a smile on his lips as he started to type out a text.

Fame would probably not read it until she left work for the day, but he was proud of her, and he hoped that she was proud of herself too.

***

Fame collapsed onto her dressing room sofa, completely emotionally drained, the crystals she had stuffed in her bra digging against her skin.

Being on camera for live television always took up every drop of energy, and left her with nothing to spare. Unfortunately, she knew that she didn’t have much time to rest, since she was due at the Russian Tea Room to meet her potential investors in less than an hour. The makeup artist they’d hired was standing by for touch-ups, and her ivory Valentino suit hung in its dry cleaning bag on the clothing rack. But first, she knew that her blood sugar was dangerously low, so she needed…

She looked around. Where on earth was Courtney? Fame had never met someone with such a tendency to be underfoot at the worst times and completely MIA when her presence was required. She walked to the doorway, spotting Courtney having a casual chat with a girl in a headset, carefree as anything.

“Courtney!” she snapped, and Courtney looked up, surprised, even though she was literally here for the sole purpose of taking care of Fame’s needs. “Come!”

Fame turned and walked back into her dressing room, irritated, the rapid click of Courtney’s heels as she ran over grating on her nerves.

“Yes, Miss?”

“I need to eat.”

“Oh…” Courtney’s gaze shifted to the table, where a fruit basket sat amongst assorted pastries and other snack food.

“Not that sugary garbage,” Fame explained. “Violet always had- Don’t you have any protein bars?”

“Oh, of course!” Courtney exclaimed, rummaging through her purse.

Fame rolled her eyes, sighing. That girl truly was useless. What Bianca saw in her, Fame would never understand. She took one of the protein bars that Courtney had carefully lined up on the arm of the sofa beside her.

“I think you’d better head back to the office and prepare the conference room for the investor presentation.”

“Oh, but did you need anything el-”

“No, I’m much more concerned with the meeting,” Fame said. “Everything needs to be perfect. These people will be paying attention to every little detail.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Oh, and take this back with you…” Fame handed over a large manila envelope. “It’s some sketches I’ve been working on.”

“Sure.” Courtney began to put the envelope into her bag, and Fame’s eyes widened with alarm.

“Don’t bend them! For god’s sake…”

“Sorry Miss,” Courtney said, biting her lip, holding the envelope at her side. “Is there anything else you need before I-”

“No. That’s all.”

***

Courtney sat in the back of a cab, eyes squeezed tightly shut, using the time in traffic to center herself and go over her massive to do list. She had to make sure that all the presentations for the meeting were set up, work with IT to test it, messenger out the holiday gifts that Miss Fame added at the last minute, make sure the schedule for January was in order, set up her out of office reply…

Plus, the meeting with the investors wouldn’t begin until they were back from the restaurant, so the “half day” was looking more and more like a full day. At this point, settling in at Bianca’s felt like it was a million years away--and traffic crawling at a standstill didn’t help anything.

She pulled out her phone. Maybe she could set up some of the gift deliveries now, while she was stuck in the cab.

When they were finally in sight of the Galactica building, her phone started buzzing. She looked at the screen. Miss Fame. That couldn’t be anything good.

Courtney took a deep breath and answered, stomach tightening.

“Hello?”

“Courtney!” Miss Fame’s voice was sharp, sharper than usual. “Do you ever use your head? Or do you just go through life without a shred of critical thinking?”

It was fairly obvious that it was a rhetorical question, so Courtney kept her mouth shut, wondering what had gone wrong, what mess she’d have to clean up now.

#rpdr fanfiction #thedane #veronica #galactica #trixya #vitan #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #violet chachki #raja gemini #miss fame #pearl liaison #miz cracker #bob the drag queen #yvie oddly #courtney act #nina west #lesbian au #m/f au #fashion au

[olivemeister]

OKAY NEO THOUGHTS NOW THAT I’VE BEATEN IT AND HAD TIME TO MARINATE. no spoilers for another day bc i haven’t finished it yet, but i did go “no, why shan’t i? i have the internet” and watched the secret endings on youtube so those and the secret reports will be discussed. yeah. so here’s some thoughts. i’m going to talk a lot about the more contentious things, i think. and again i haven’t finished another day so nothing to do with that, but of course major ending spoilers for the main scenario.

these are my opinions both as a writer and a media consumer, so there’s kinda two levels here. it is very freeform “as i think of it” structurally so my sincerest apologies if it’s all over the place. i am trying to keep specific topics confined rather than splattering the same plot point/whatever all through the post, but it’s not like i’m posting a peer-revied academic essay here. it’s also fucking enormous and i would say sorry but that would be a lie.

the majority of the game, i actually really enjoyed. the localization was excellent and i can’t praise it enough. i know people threw fits over the “horrible overstep” of... teenagers using slang. but did you know, in real life, teenagers use slang? even in japan, there’s slang? wild but true! the dialogue was great, and while i can’t say much re: the jp cast since i played in english, the newcomers for the english cast were spectacular. i actually think the newcomers were, in some cases, stronger than the returning cast. even in characters where i didn’t like the voice (nagi had to grow on me, i admit it), they were a fantastic match for the character’s personality.

the emotional beats re: character deaths, typically, landed the way i think the writers wanted; kanon’s death in week 3 had me devastated even though i could see it coming a mile away. i think that’s a testament to the best parts of the writing; as soon as i understood how the current game was being run, i knew it was fairly inevitable that every other team would eventually lose. odds would be that, barring something like someone changing teams or a team merger, the majority of the other teams would be completely wiped out. i knew far in advance that kanon would likely not make it to the end of the story, but it still fucked me up when it finally happened not just because i cared about kanon, but also because of how much the other characters cared about her. some character deaths affected me far less, of course. i think kanon was the epitome of “this hit exactly as hard as the writers wanted it to”, but i do feel they fell short with others. ayano’s lack of development really hurt my ability to be saddened by her death, especially when it was so clear that she set up her own possession as a trap for shoka. it undermined things for shoka in general, because while she was devastated to lose ayano, the game did a poor job at making their relationship tangible and meaningful. i felt worse (not necessarily sadder, just worse) about motoi’s death, and i didn’t like motoi. speaking of him...

the biggest issue i have with the game is a chronic square enix issue. kubo is the Man Pulling The Strings, whatever, this is fine. the problem is that he, minamimoto, motoi, and arguably susukichi are the only characters in the game with dark skin. they are all morally grey at best. i don’t think i need to elaborate on why this is an issue. we’re not going to pretend that racism and colorism don’t exist in japan. i’m just going to say that all of the dark-skinned characters are either totally evil, excessively violent, and/or morally dubious. this is my biggest qualm, but i don’t feel it needs more elaboration. yes, i know motoi turns it around in the end. yes, i know susukichi ultimately changes sides as well, and he’s ultimately portrayed as sympathetic. minamimoto is........ his own beast. but the fact remains that we don’t get a single major character who’s darker and unambiguously heroic.

second big issue is that while i understand the decision to keep shiki off camera until the very end for emotional impact, i feel like this was to the detriment of the story and to the detriment of said impact. she was mentioned, sure, and she was briefly seen from the shoulders down in a cutscene long before her introduction, but i feel that this was ultimately for the worse. her absence in the plot made her a borderline non-entity that can easily leave the audience going “why should i care about this?” on what’s supposed to be a huge emotional cathartic moment. yes, people should know this is a sequel and neku and shiki’s friendship was a crucial part of the original game, and much of the endgame of neo makes no sense if you’re unfamiliar with the original, but their interactions in the ending felt incredibly shallow. and i think this is because of how little shiki appears and how isolated she is from her other friends. eri is unseen and unmentioned. she doesn’t interact with rhyme. she hardly interacts with beat, using him as a translator at best. her other relationships are just... stagnant at best, ignored at worst, and despite having had just as vital of a role in the first game as beat did, she does nothing of import onscreen. her only narrative actions are “fix mr mew (mentioned but not seen)” and “be sad about neku”. so, functionally...

for some reason (we know why) the story decided that the only thing that was important to shiki was seeing neku. but by holding off on this reveal of her, we lost the impact that their meeting could have had. because the game refused to show her it didn’t show how much his absence was affecting her, which leaves their reunion feeling incredibly hollow. shiki was gone for upwards of 90% of the game. if not for the first game, this reunion would mean nothing; the narrative does a terrible job of reminding the audience that neku and shiki have a strong relationship and i don’t know if it’s that they expected the first game to have done the heavy lifting, or they thought that what neo gave us was good rather than “good enough”. imo this was an enormous failure and i wish we had gotten more for her both as part of the plot and as a character.

this was an issue present with rhyme as well imo, though to a lesser degree. i think they should have given up the ghost much sooner on confirming that the shadowed figure was rhyme; it was obvious by the time they showed us her silhouette, so i don’t know why the narrative held off on showing her. they didn’t have to introduce her to rindo (or give her the name splash screen) yet, but people who played the first game and are paying attention know it’s rhyme, so why bother hiding her? most of what rhyme accomplishes in this game is off-camera as well, but she has double the screen time that shiki gets.

the shiki thing is another symptom of a common squeenix problem these days, which is poorly-handled implied romantic interests. and i think that was also present with how the end of the game treated shoka. rindo and shoka as an implied romance in general did not bother me; more than a lot of squeenix protags, and perhaps primarily because of the excellent job the english cast did, i actually was unbothered by the suggestion of budding romantic feelings because it felt genuine. they actually felt like a pair of teenagers who were starting to be interested in each other, trying to play it cool and prioritize. this, and shoka’s characterization in general, is really helped by the reveal of swallow’s identity; it retroactively heightens her closeness to rindo specifically and offers enormous insight into her decision to help the team covertly. however, i think this budding implied romance was severely undermined by having other characters comment on it, especially because it felt so out of place timing-wise whenever someone commented. it was never warranted; there are times where they seem to be... not flirting, but not doing a good job of pretending there isn’t an interest. this is not when comments come. the comments come when they are having a totally normal interaction that does not suggest any non-platonic feelings whatsoever.

up until the final day, i had fairly ambivalent feelings about the idea of them as the designated hetero pairing. i felt it was a vast improvement from recent shoehorned romances in squeenix properties. the ending made things much more contentious to me, specifically how shoka is vanished by joshua. the audience should at least have the suspicion that he’s reviving her, but the circumstances surrounding it are the problem more than joshua being a deus ex machina. it’s not the first time joshua was a troll re: reviving someone, but the context of why shoka’s revival is necessary is, well... unnecessary.

they barely foreshadow the shinjuku rules re: reapers, and i will freely admit it’s not remotely ooc for shoka to hide something like that until she can’t any more. but they seem to be just a contrived excuse for shoka to be taken away... and from the framing of it, not from the player, but from rindo. which, i don’t know that i need elaborate on why i wasn’t fond of that. and i won’t lie - i know everybody beefed it in those cutscenes, including beat and neku. but when the dissonance noise grabbed shoka it gave me the exact same vibe as the demon tide grabbing kairi in kh3, and i don’t think i need to elaborate more on why that would put a bad taste in my mouth and make me fearful for shoka’s future treatment in the game. i was worried that the narrative was going to yank her away from rindo like a prize being snatched from him, and it did! while i do also think it’s ic for joshua to fuck around the way he did when reviving her, it also seems contrived and brings up a major question.

if shoka is still playing by shinjuku rules, why does shibuya’s composer have the ability to overturn her erasure? yes, i know, shinjuku is gone, but its composer is still active. surely joshua having the authority to do what he did indicates that on a cosmic bureaucracy level, shoka is a shibuya reaper. the secret reports offer a potential that joshua exploited a loophole by waiting until the second after the shinjuku rules resulted in shoka’s soul being dissolved in order to snatch it up, so perhaps the explanation is that her erasure meant she was technically no longer a shinjuku reaper and no longer beholden to its rules. but that doesn’t answer a different question that honestly bothers me more than the admittedly sorta insignificant question of whether or not joshua overstepped in reviving shoka.

shinjuku’s game has ended because shinjuku has ended; why are its rules still in play for former shinjuku reapers? i am aware that shiba is the conductor “legally” and he has made changes to shibuya’s game, but they’re careful to specify that the “ex-reapers are erased at the end of the game” rules are from shinjuku and do not apply to shibuya reapers. is she considered by the higher plane to be joshua’s underling and not hazuki’s? the secret reports confirm that the transfer of personnel from the destroyed shinjuku to shibuya was authorized by the acting conductor (uzuki) and this is standard procedure, everything was done properly. so “legally” the formerly-shinjuku reapers are shibuya reapers, right? hanekoma notes in particular that it’s a culture clash leading to the shinjuku reapers being designated as such and that they’re only nominally shinjuku reapers. why are a defunct game’s rules still active?

the biggest issue is that shoka’s threat of erasure was unnecessary from a narrative perspective, especially given how quickly it’s introduced and resolved. what was the point of putting this in the story if five minutes later the issue is just dealt with, no effort, minimal tension, by a (narratively speaking, don’t come after me joshua fans) minor character who doesn’t even appear until after the plot is resolved? i honestly wonder if it was just the writers deciding joshua needed to do something so that his appearance in the ending wasn’t just shallow fanservice for people who wanted to see the original gang. joshua’s lack of action is also presumably going to be contentious with fans; i’ve read the secret reports, and i don’t feel that they sufficiently justify why he doesn’t make any moves to protect his city despite being positioned both in his own dialogue and the secret reports as someone opposing shibuya’s purification. i will talk about this a little later re: kubo’s motivations though.

i also think it’s kind of stupid that joshua sets up “find her and you win” and then... rindo doesn’t do anything in that regard. he just bumps into her in the scramble. i know i already said i hate the idea of her being a prize to be won in a game but if they’re going to set it up, why make it pointless in that regard? it feels so unnecessary. joshua portrays shoka’s revival/return as something to be earned, and unlike the ending of twewy there’s no recognition that he was actually just fucking with them.

this is similar to my mixed feelings about kubo’s defeat. on one hand, i wanted to smash his face in personally, i have hated him the entire game. on the other hand, having him jesus beamed and rewritten out of existence without any warning or chance to resist was fucking hilarious and i actually laughed out loud. my speculation as to why he didn’t get a boss fight is that developers worried about people having trouble suspending disbelief over the party being able to defeat an angel. ultimately i think the only way this could have been done was to have it be a boss battle where your victory doesn’t matter, like the week 1 fight with susukichi, and have hazuki curbstomp kubo in the post-battle cutscenes. ultimately, i feel like this was a lesser of two evils; i don’t think the “you lose in the cutscene” approach would have necessarily been significantly better than what we got, i recognize that “the battle didn’t matter and you lose in the cutscene after” is a contentious game trope. and i would understand people struggling to accept the cast defeating a being from a higher plane without intervention from said higher plane. the only benefit would be the catharsis of getting to slap kubo around, which admittedly i kind of miss. having him as a secret boss was an option i guess but i think it would bring more questions than it was worth.

kubo’s motivation is also just bizarre; i understand that it’s given as him getting overzealous after carrying out his orders to purify shinjuku, but why? i feel like this could have easily been fixed/rationalized by “shinjuku’s surviving reapers fled to shibuya, leading kubo to consider shibuya to be an extension of shinjuku”, but that’s solely speculation. i do not know why kubo decided to also start an inversion in shibuya. they didn’t give me enough information. his conflict with joshua is inexplicable and almost entirely offscreen via the secret reports. i do not feel like i have a grasp on why the plot of the game even happened. hazuki’s involvement is iffy; i can’t say whether he initially approved of kubo’s overstep and changed his mind, or if he just took his time collecting his errant underling. the secret reports suggest the former, and hanekoma noting that the contentious nature of the previous game’s events gives a speculative explanation for why no action was taken if hazuki was actually making moves against shibuya rather than kubo being out of line. hazuki could damn well have been lying, there’s a precedent for composers being full of shit and telling bold-faced lies to protagonists, though in the previous game these lies were all eventually uncovered. this leaves me to believe that ultimately, hazuki’s statements regarding kubo acting outside of his given authority were mostly honest. but what i don’t understand is why joshua took such a hands-off approach.

yes, he says he figured the main cast had it under control and would have stepped in had things gotten worse, but this appearance and statement comes long after rindo fails and shibuya is destroyed in multiple timelines. why did he not step in in the first timeline? i can speculate, but the game and secret reports do not do a great job in explaining why the proxy vs. proxy game even happened in the first place. kubo is hazuki’s underling, which makes joshua higher in the pecking order than kubo. if hazuki was capable of exorcising kubo instantaneously, why didn’t joshua just flick him off the board like a flea before he even got started trying to cause an inversion in shibuya? in the epilogue of a new day joshua is seen in conversation with hanekoma, who’s taking shinjuku’s inversion seriously, which seems at odds with how easily his fellow composer ends the problem.

retroactively, i guess i could rationalize this as him realizing that either shinjuku’s composer must be responsible for said inversion or that potentially shinjuku’s composer has been compromised in some way. and i can rationalize him failing to immediately jesus beam kubo as well - it’s possible that, as kubo was initially acting under the orders of another composer (assuming hazuki is still technically “legally” one/at the bureaucratic level of one), joshua’s hands were somewhat tied re: what actions he could take without potential consequences. it could be that joshua would get in big trouble if he took disciplinary action against another composer’s underling, but 1. the legal transfer of personnel should mean kubo is joshua’s underling, not hazuki’s, see the shoka problem 2. hazuki’s status as a composer is questionable given that his territory is now purified and its game is defunct 3. given that kubo was acting outside of his original composer’s turf and outside of his initial orders (purify shinjuku) at this point i feel like that isn’t likely. it could be that he was trying to avoid a conflict with hazuki himself. it may be that he considered it hazuki’s responsibility to retrieve kubo, but that’s at odds with him choosing a proxy to combat kubo’s and his claims that he totally would have done something, really, he swears. they don’t give us much info at all as to why joshua entered a game with kubo in the first place. i have reason to believe that something’s fishy in the secret reports, and i would like to see the japanese text, which i’ll mention again in a few paragraphs.

i know the absence of shibuya’s composer is partially, and perhaps primarily, “there wouldn’t be a plot if joshua fixed it”. but it really feels like they just kinda tucked joshua in the corner and hoped fans wouldn’t be like “hey where is shibuya’s composer and why is no one mentioning them?” that part is probably for the same reason we don’t see shiki until the very ending, teasing the audience by holding off on revealing him until the last second, but it’s jarring to me that shiki is mentioned but neither neku, beat, nor any of the reapers (!) think “we should contact the composer”. even if just to say “we can’t contact the composer, he is unreachable”! i guess it’s to avoid people remembering how significant joshua is and thinking too hard about it, because joshua is simply too powerful of a character to be running around freely. the plot falls apart when you have a character who’s so strong and, in his own words, kind of omnipotent, who could trivialize the conflict in an instant if he took action.

i feel like they surely could have given a more explicit reason for him to not be involved in the story, even if it’s a reason like “he’s in trouble with the higher plane”. which could have easily been set up! hanekoma is clear in his reports that shibuya’s impurification is highly contentious in the higher plane; people are big mad about it, potentially people higher in the chain of command than a composer. this could have been easily utilized as an explanation for why joshua is hands-off; he’s on a shit list and needs to step carefully as a result. but it’s just not addressed. hanekoma is unreachable according to his reports, and he notes that people are trying to contact him for help. are we just to assume that people have looked for joshua to ask for help in the past but it was so long ago that it isn’t even worth mentioning now to the newcomers? according to other reports, the higher ups are pissed with joshua about his game with kitaniji and are turning a blind eye to what’s happening with kubo in shibuya as a result. but this doesn’t explain why the members of the shibuya UG never discuss the composer. hanekoma’s reports have him confused as to joshua’s lack of action as well; he knows the context of what’s going on in shibuya but doesn’t understand why joshua is staying silent.

that said! the fact that hazuki’s motive for the destruction of shinjuku is never stated does not bother me too much. he’s placed in a position very parallel to joshua in the first game, and he even says he felt like he was following in josh’s footsteps. when you add his seemingly-genuine inability to understand why people care about shibuya, i feel there’s enough evidence to... not dismiss, but nudge this aside as “He Too is a misanthropic bastard”; shinjuku’s destruction is a parallel to the intended destruction of shibuya in the first game. hazuki just carried on where joshua had a change of heart. the secret reports complicate this; it might be that someone fucked up in transcribing, but the reports i read online state that shibuya’s composer, i.e. joshua, was responsible for the destruction of shinjuku due to a game with kubo. this does not make sense given everything else, including hazuki’s own statements and later reports, so i’m setting that aside for the moment as either an uncaught mistake either in translation or transcription online (most likely) or hanekoma not knowing the actual truth until receiving the post-purification shinjuku reports. hanekoma also suggests that hazuki’s goal was also the purification of shibuya, but as he’s not shibuya’s composer this is certainly not his jurisdiction so i’m curious as to what exactly happened there.

EDIT: i’ve been informed by a helpful anon that this is not a mistranslation, the japanese secret reports do state that it was a game involving joshua that resulted in shinjuku’s inversion. with that in mind, i have figured out how to rationalize this and it solves a lot of problems: if it was a proxy game between joshua and kubo, then joshua must have been the opposition to shinjuku’s inversion. though you could argue that joshua is responsible for the end result, he didn’t destroy shinjuku; his proxy lost, probably because kubo’s had the support of shinjuku’s composer. kubo’s overconfidence in running rampant in shibuya is now explicable and he may have been trying to rub it in that joshua lost.

if hazuki was still backing kubo post-shinjuku, this could explain why hazuki felt he could make decisions about shibuya’s fate and wander around it; joshua had already overstepped onto his turf to meddle in purification, so he was returning the favor. at this point in time, i figure that joshua’s proxy was either tsugumi’s brother (shinjuku’s conductor) or coco (she’s noted to have inexplicable powers for a rank-and-file reaper, but joshua’s opposition to her killing of neku throws this into question), and if we truly had a scrapped “shinjuku’s final game” plot then joshua’s proxy could also have been neku. kubo’s proxy was presumably shiba. this actually answers a few questions that i couldn’t rationalize when i assumed joshua was uninvolved (why would shinjuku’s composer be running a game against kubo when they wanted the same thing?), so i’m gonna chalk it up as an absolute win.

i think hishima as a character was... sort of nothing. he was just there. yeah, it was kinda funny how he dressed shiba down, but i don’t know that the plot needed him. his role in the endgame could have easily been given to tsugumi without much fuss, and i feel tsugumi deserved a much bigger part in the narrative given how much she was hyped up by solo and final remix. she was so prominent and anticipated that the fans called her hype-chan for years before we had a name for her. this could also be folded into the problem with hiding shiki until the very end; it feels like we missed a whole sequence with both of these characters simply because the narrative refused to show us shiki. instead, we’re told that shiki showed up and fixed mr. mew, and somehow this freed tsugumi. i think the fact that they don’t even give a flashback of this crucial event after shiki’s proper introduction is just a questionable decision. the story tells us that tsugumi’s release from the plushie is of the utmost importance and shiba can’t be swayed without her, setting it up as a vital event, but it happens offscreen with no real interaction with the main cast. it also only happens after multiple failed loops, even though rindo’s interference is what prevents the meeting between coco and shiki to repair the plushie. i don’t understand this from a logistical standpoint; if coco isn’t pulled to escort rhyme, she must have met with shiki and released tsugumi in timely manner, but tsugumi does not appear until after you replay to get coco back to her original schedule. you could wave it off as “she didn’t get there fast enough”, but i can’t accept that as a reason given the circumstances; it’s not like she would have to look hard to find shiba. this one’s flawed writing; i know in a meta sense why she didn’t appear, it was to build tension etc etc, but in-universe it’s a plot hole.

coco being so absent from the plot is also somewhat conspicuous. i wonder what reception of her was like in japan and if that influenced her lack of presence in the story. i honestly don’t even know if she was received well by the english audience, all i know is that i did not like her at all in final remix. not from an “i don’t like the villain because they’re doing bad things” perspective, from an “i don’t find this character compelling and i think they’re annoying” perspective. also curious as to whether or not her speech patterns changed in the japanese dialogue since final remix; i found her far less jarring and obnoxious in neo and i think it’s enormously because she stopped talking verbally in internet shorthand. overall, coco’s retool was imo a change for the better, but she’s barely there for me to appreciate how much of an improvement she was. it feels like there’s an entire narrative we were set up for by a new day, yet it’s almost completely missing. the ending of a new day laid out this framework for neku and minamimoto to be forced allies in an unseen future game. i had mixed feelings about this conceptually, but the narrative setup was fairly transparent. not only does this not happen, coco’s motivation in a new day and what ultimately happened were so lacking to me.

i feel like something got lost and we were originally going to actually see and perhaps play the shinjuku game that ended in disaster instead of just getting a summation and brief flashbacks of the survivors fleeing. this kinda ties in with my complaints about how hyped tsugumi was by solo and final remix, and then she turned out to have a very small (albeit crucial, via her trailer ability) and mostly unseen role in neo’s story. retroactively we learn that rindo’s visions are from tsugumi, but this is something she does entirely off-screen. all of coco’s scheming was for nothing, because joshua was a deus ex machina and whisked neku away the second he died. this feels to me like cut content or rewrites; there’s a whole game’s worth of story that just happened off-camera and we got to hear a little bit about it. it wasn’t enough, imo. i think doing it as a midquel is still possible, but it’s a hard sell to create a video game with a downer ending and we know shinjuku’s fate is already set in stone... even though a new day ended on the tragic cliffhanger of neku’s death, it’s a little different since it’s coming as an optional postgame sequel hook after victory rather than the entire narrative you fought through ending in failure. i suppose it could be done with a Distant Epilogue now that we know shiba and most of his surviving reapers will return to rebuild shinjuku. ultimately i really think that if not for the concern about neku overshadowing the new cast, shinjuku’s purification could and should have been the prologue to neo. it would be a tough balancing act, but i do think it could have been done right and it would have done a lot for narrative tension with his absence if we had a prologue following him that ends in a cliffhanger re: shinjuku’s purification. neku’s role in the story was done decently i think re: how big said role was, but a lot of circumstances surrounding his absence, legendary status, and reappearance leave much to be desired.

frankly, i just don’t like how much they glossed over neku’s three year absence. we’re given a vague explanation of what he was doing, but it isn’t actually an explanation. definitely again feels like a plot rewrite situation; there’s this huge blank space of neku doing nothing because there used to be a story that we were going to play through and it got scrapped for whatever reason. overall i feel neku’s characterization was very odd and perhaps a little inconsistent in this game; he didn’t have much of a personality at all, which i struggle to reconcile with the original game. we don’t see how he reconciled with coco, it’s just dismissed entirely as “no we’re good now”. how are we good? why did you forgive her for playing murder games instead of just explaining shit? i know he forgave joshua for his gatekeep gaslight girlboss behavior in the first game, but we had context as to why he made that decision. also what the fuck was keeping him from coming back to shibuya, i don’t feel like that was sufficiently explained either? for someone who was so hyped up by the narrative, i was a little let down by how insignificant neku ended up being to the plot as a whole. and again, his personality seemed very watered down and neutral despite the seriousness of the situation. why was he so mellow? the circumstances of his return i did really like, because... well, we’ll talk about character relationships i guess.

i already summed up my feelings on rindo and shoka and i think i’ll leave them on the note of “unnecessary elements dampened my potential for overt enthusiasm, but overall i feel neutral-positive about the suggestion of romantic interest” which is a lot more than i can say about a lot of (semi-)official pairings. on a broader and more platonic scale? generally i have positive feelings about the new cast and their interactions; i feel like their development is more understated than neku’s in the first game, his character arc is very in your face and the neo cast is not nearly as overt, but you can see the difference in how the team interacts across the three weeks. rindo and fret’s established friendship, not to be dismissive of it, does exactly what it needs to. i mean this in a completely positive way. it’s an established friendship, they feel like friends, and they serve initially as anchors to one another in the beginning of the game as a “you’re the only person i know in this chaos” setup. this contrasts neku in the first game in an excellent way because of how it highlights their biggest character flaws, which i’ll talk about later; it’s important to rindo’s fatal flaw that he has someone to fall back and rely on in the beginning of the game in the same way that it’s crucial for neku’s development that he’s surrounded by strangers who he must learn to trust and rely on in order to survive. rindo and fret can lean on each other in the beginning of the game, and as people who have known each other for some time, are able to recognize and appreciate each others’ positive changes.

i do love the development of nagi’s friendship with fret, particularly how it’s sometimes but not always remarked on when she shelves her initial aloof attitude with him. i prefer when a narrative is more subtle on that kind of thing; pointing it out every once in a while is okay, but i don’t want it shoved down my throat via dialogue that characters are developing an emotional bond. we can see that nagi is slowly becoming more receptive to fret and less likely to dismiss or disparage him. it seems like their initial relationship is that of two people who have opposite struggles; nagi is notably closed off in the beginning, but fret immediately approaches her with an unearned and offputting level of familiarity. their slow and understated (more noticeable with nagi than fret) development towards accepting each other as friends is mutually beneficial to them even outside of the context of their personal relationship; nagi opens up a little with everyone, not just fret. placing two people with very different perspectives on how to interact with new people in close proximity helped both of them grow. i’m sure other people have different perspectives, but i do not feel like they were being teased as a pairing which i enormously appreciate, i am tired of “pair the spares” shit. (minor note: i also appreciate how while fret’s crush on kanon was very overt and strong, she was also fairly clear that she considered him a kid and his feelings were never going to be reciprocated because of that age gap. i know, the bar is low, but thank god.)

i love how, despite nagi now having been confirmed as older than beat, as soon as beat joins the narrative he takes this hard stance of “i’m the one who’s already been in this hellscape so it’s my responsibility to help the newbies”. he really embodies the big brother role so well in this game; he knows a little more about what’s going on, this isn’t his first rodeo even if it’s not exactly the same, so he considers himself to have an obligation to protect the others. he serves as sort of a physical and emotional rock for the team from the second he joins, becoming an excellent support for them both as a combatant and an older brother figure. he has experience in being both of these things, and i think beat’s writing is some of the best in the game.

despite his position as a former player who’s back in the UG, he meshes with the newbies perfectly. he doesn’t overshadow the rest of the team despite having more lived (ha) experience in the reaper’s game, he doesn’t feel like he’s on a different level from them or anything like that. he fits in while serving an important unique role that he can only fill because of his prior time in the UG. it’s completely understandable and reasonable why rindo remains the team leader despite beat’s presence. he’s had a three year gap since his last game and doesn’t even understand how he returned to the UG. he’s not a fish out of water, he knows the UG and the game. but he’s really truly gotta shake the dust off, and he’s trying to figure out what happened to him in the first place because he knows he shouldn’t be in the UG at all. he didn’t have a huge bump in intelligence since the first game, but it’s hard to dismiss him as a complete idiot. he has both large and small perceptive moments where another narrative might have chosen to keep him as the dumb muscle. in fact, his firm convictions serve an important role for the others - beat knows he didn’t die and can’t be convinced otherwise, and his confidence that he’s a living player is part of how rindo and gang realize they also aren’t dead. he’s clearly not simply a comic relief character. another story might have positioned him as more of a mentor figure, but he plays to his strengths and serves to ground the team instead. beat is honestly a highlight of this ensemble cast to me. i’m unsure as to how much of that is simply because he was one of my favorites from the first game, but i really truly love beat in this game.

shoka and neku’s late introductions to the team mean they have far less “we are now firmly allies and friends” interactions with the rest of the ensemble for unavoidable reasons. i will say that the excellent casting and localization for the english version, particularly shoka, has done a lot to mitigate that issue; yes, the plot doesn’t develop her relationships with the team as a whole as thoroughly as some of the others, but the combat interactions with her are so genuine that i found myself shocked when writing this because, well, those combat lines did so much legwork making her role in the party seem earned and cohesive. i had such a strong sense of her place in the team that just isn’t reflected in the cutscenes, and i find that very interesting but i’m unsure as to whether it’s good or bad; i think it’s incredible that the combat dialogue did such a good job fostering this air of “we are a unit” for these characters and it really is a testament to the skill of these actors, but i do wish it was more prevalent in the cutscenes itself. beat’s established relationship with neku and their relaxed nature with one another does a lot to ease neku’s entry into the group; he has an “in” with a firmly established member and a well-written dynamic with him that helps him out here.

as a nekubeat appreciator i feel very fed and i hope there’s an uptick in interest for the pairing following neo. i love how beat, who throughout the game is constantly forgetting who people from 3 years ago are (doesn’t recognize his former superior bc she’s wearing a suit now and can’t even remember her name), immediately recognizes coco despite her changing her entire aesthetic specifically because he’s so angry with her for killing neku. he’s ready to throw down the second he sees her, which gives this feeling of “he’s been waiting for this moment for 3 years”. because the narrative never addresses beat’s change in style, particularly that he wears his hair like neku now, i choose to believe it’s because the last time he saw neku was immediately after coco shot and killed him. it could be that this shit’s been haunting him ever since neku died. my city now, if you don’t talk about it in the game i make shit up. both their cutscene interactions and combat quotes do an excellent job of maintaining the sense that these two have been close friends for a long time and distance hasn’t changed that. they fall right back into old ways with one another immediately.

even outside of the context of me being a nekubeat shipper, their relationship and continued partnership (UG game context partnership) feels very genuine. neku and joshua call each other partner, but it rings hollow. i’m sure it’s partially the lack of screentime that makes it so they don’t feel like partners any more than neku and shiki do, but the game doesn’t even try to push closeness the way it does for shiki - more on that in a minute. beat is the only one of neku’s partners that seems to have retained the same strength in their bond with him despite the three years; shiki and joshua are super absent in the plot, which really undermines their relationships with neku. i’ve already talked about my problems with shiki’s lack of focus and how i feel it harms her relationship with neku, but as for neku’s relationship with joshua, i think neo has taken an interesting approach that i feel will have a mixed reception.

it actually feels like neku and joshua ended this game on worse terms than the first one even though joshua was a far more benevolent figure this time around. neku is very clear about wanting to return to the RG despite this meaning he will have no access to the UG (outside of potentially text-based communication since rhyme paved the way for RG residents to bust into the RNS and... however it was that shoka’s fanGO account worked, since she and rindo were fanGO friends long before his entry to the UG) and doesn’t show any hesitation or reluctance in stating this desire. he seems quite content with not having joshua be a part of his life, as opposed to the first game’s ending where he extends an open offer to joshua to join his friend group. i understand how this would (and will) let a lot of people down, but i actually think it’s for the best. i have no real opinion on neku’s capacity for forgiving joshua after the first game, good or bad, but i think putting distance between them in this game is the correct move.

i take this viewpoint especially given that after the first game, joshua did in fact choose this distance - neku invited him in, and he did not take the offer. it was his decision to not join neku’s group in the first game’s ending and he continued to remain separate from it in the three year gap; he may have masqueraded as a fellow player and peer in age, but joshua is not and has never been an actual peer to neku, shiki, and beat. his life experiences are so different from theirs that i would struggle to suspend disbelief that they have enough in common to maintain a close friendship. he intervened when neku was killed by coco and placed him in a safe area and gave moral support in the ending, and i think this is the most we should expect of a reforming (not reformed but in-progress) misanthrope like joshua. he’s an enigmatic figure sure and largely benevolent if inactive in this game, but he isn’t a good person and he clearly considers himself to be on a different level from neku and his peers. hanekoma notes that joshua’s somewhat reluctant to continue to remain separate from neku’s group, but i think the narrative places him both objectively and in his own mind as someone who is just... from a different world. joshua chose distance, he chose to cut contact, and this is the consequence of that decision. i think that’s a good lesson to teach; it may not be a given, but it’s natural that sometimes a friendship you ignore will fade. it doesn’t necessarily mean the time you spent didn’t matter, but you shouldn’t be shocked if a plant you don’t water wilts away.

i feel like that wasn’t the intended takeaway, that it was just questionable writing that i’m reading too deep into, but that’s how i feel about the situation.

i’m also incredibly grateful that hazuki was introduced as an age-appropriate option for joshua and i hope they’ll draw attention as a bastard boyfriends ship, both because i think it’s very funny and because i have opinions about shipping joshua with the teens. i know it’s contentious and i’m not going too deep into it, so what i’m going to say is this. the secret reports state in plain objective text that joshua downtuning his vibes aged him down and his true appearance is older. neither the narrative nor supplementary info state anything about how old josh was when he died or how long he’s been a reaper/the composer (reapers ageing is ??? as well, we don’t know if it’s not a thing or if it’s optional or what). however, it is firmly canon that he is older than 15. if that canon upsets you then that’s your problem to either work through or ignore indefinitely. suffice to say, joshua and hazuki do not have the schrodinger’s pedophile issue and i wholly support and strongly encourage that over the alternative for this reason and again because i find it funny and think they deserve each other. i hate to say hazuki is a healthy choice for joshua because i think both of them are just walking messes, but they are actual peers on the same tier of the higher plane pecking order and more importantly the disaster they could be as a couple has infinite potential.

on the girls side of things, i am still mad about eri’s absence not just because it’s a relationship shiki had that just got ignored. i know the story wants us to believe that neku and shiki have something but shiki and eri had more. i’m sorry writers you made a more compelling f/f ship by accident in the first game and i am not invested in the one you weakly suggested between neku and shiki here. if you made shiki have more of a role in neo maybe i’d feel differently, or maybe you would have screwed it up worse. we’ll never know. i think it’s a shame that they couldn’t make me care about neku and shiki as a pairing, but it is what it is.

i was briefly worried that the game would try to suggest something between kaie and rhyme because sometimes people lose their minds when a boy and girl stand next to each other, but i was quickly set at ease with that one. they felt like two people who are starting to straddle that line of acquaintance/friend in a believable way despite how little interaction between them we see, and i appreciate that. i was also briefly worried that fret would develop a crush on rhyme based on his initial reaction at being introduced to her, but again quickly dismissed. can you tell i’m a little gun shy about strangled “him boy her girl” romances in fiction these days? yeah. i’ve been let down too much recently by bad writing.

i think all of the party members could have benefited from more development with one another outside of combat lines - i would like to see more interaction between nagi and shoka, or neku and fret, etc - but that would come at the expense of the narrative’s pacing. i think it could have been done by tweaking certain details, but ultimately i can accept this as a sacrifice made in the interest of keeping the narrative from getting bloated.

i wanna talk briefly about the new main cast a little.

rindo’s ups and downs re: development are much more subtle than neku’s were, but with the secret reports in mind i feel his arc is actually pretty excellent. i think we could have done with a little less of fret pointing out rindo’s increased confidence and how he becomes more assertive, i think the audience is smart enough to notice that on their own. but i’m a huge fan of how the narrative quietly places rindo in this position of a leader who fears that responsibility, but nonetheless has to grow and accept it. hanekoma’s reports may spell it out in plain text postgame, but the narrative already told us in our own way that rindo’s development stalled when someone else entered the cast who could take over for him and this is demonstrative of a(n understandable) lack of maturity and failure to grow. neku’s fatal flaw was his rejection of others, and so he was forced by the narrative into a position where he had to learn to trust them; rindo’s is that he relies too much on them and the narrative forces him to stand on his own.

while i think this is a little muddled (he was right in some instances to not make hard solo decisions; thinking specifically of ayano, it was absolutely the right call to ease shoka into this inevitable loss rather than forcing her into the situation unilaterally) and i wish we saw more consequences of his initial waffling behavior, rindo’s indecisiveness is an actual flaw that i think a lot of people can relate to and i think it contrasts him wonderfully with neku without being heavy-handed. rindo working through it from “relying on others to make choices for him -> still valuing the input of others but not wholly dependent on them -> capable of making difficult calls without anyone else to support him” was subdued and while it had realistic hitches in the form of other characters who he could consider authority figures, it was steady and imo very good. he’s a teenager coming into his own, stepping out of this world where others in his life - motoi as an0ther, shoka as swallow, presumably his parents, teachers, etc - have made the big, scary decisions for him or guided him through them, and into a place where there aren’t these people to guide him. he’s surrounded by people who either don’t know anything more than he does, or don’t care about his best interests; he’s clashing and changing and it forces him to grasp and accept his own autonomy rather than falling back and relying on someone else to fix things when it’s too frightening or difficult.

we can talk cultural differences re: the level of autonomy and responsibility that’s right for teenagers but i’m not really interested in drawing hard lines there. this is a coming of age story; as he approaches maturity, rindo is learning how to be an adult. i think that’s a classic and important narrative concept and it’s done well here.

fret, interestingly, is imo a case where the subtlety didn’t work out. to me, there wasn’t a huge distinction between flippant “telling you what i think you want to hear” fret and “genuine” fret. his initial interactions with kanon don’t seem different from their last conversation; maybe he comes off as less initally honest in the jp version, or maybe this one was a writing fumble. maybe it’s just me, and other people don’t feel the same way! he seems to be a far more static character in a strange way; the narrative tells us that he’s developing via other characters’ dialogue, but it doesn’t seem to support that. to me it’s a failure of “show, don’t tell” - i don’t take a hard stance on “show, don’t tell” as some kind of holy rule of writing, there are plenty of situations in a narrative where telling is perfectly acceptable and i think rigid adherence to showing and not telling can result in a bloated narrative, but in this case i feel like that’s where the narrative failed. it failed to support fret’s development outside of other people telling him he’s changed. i like fret, but i feel like in this ensemble cast fret and nagi kinda serve more as nominal protagonists and are more strong supporting characters than true leads.

as for nagi, i love how, despite it being low-hanging fruit, not only are there no real digs at nagi for being a vocal fangirl of a visual novel dating sim, it actually ties perfectly into her character as someone who understands people. dating sims are about people and relationships. how people interact, the importance of conveying your feelings, the consequences of bad communication; that’s what nagi is obsessed with. and rather than this being a detriment and making her avoid others, it ends up priming her to have healthy friendships because her gaming taught her to value knowing other people. it takes her time to actually open up, but rather than the video games closing her off to others they actually set her up to be an excellent friend. elestra in general could have been a subject of enormous mockery, but instead it’s viewed in a very neutral way and is given the implication of universal appeal by fret picking it up in the epilogue. nagi’s not in the spotlight for most of the game, but the payoff of her monologue to fret about being human was immense and was one of the best bits of dialogue in the entire game to me. it’s not going to be as iconic as hanekoma’s “open up your world” and “enjoy the moment”, but i truly think it’s one of the only parts of neo’s dialogue that approaches its level.

shoka is a character that i think is better on the replay, and i say this as someone who was very fond of shoka the first time around. i thought she had a lot of personality in her mannerisms alone, and i firmly appreciate how she wasn’t a one-note tsundere character. she had some of those minor elements, but subdued and with a reasonable context - she’s hot and cold with rindo and his team because she’s supposed to be working this rigged game to erase them, but she’s already rindo’s friend in a different context and is struggling to reconcile these two parts of her life. knowing her motivation as swallow gives so much retroactive depth to her actions; she was circumventing the game itself not just because she was exhausted by it or unease with shiba like some of the other turncoat reapers, but because rindo was her friend from before the story even began.

i will say that i didn’t actually fully call swallow being shoka simply because at first i had the impression that it would be rhyme (before rhyme’s role in the story became clearer), and admittedly by the time the climax hit the mystery of who swallow was had kind of dropped out of my mind completely, but i think it does a lot to develop shoka. whether this development being retroactive is strictly good or bad as an issue is subjective; neo is a game that has a built-in chapter select, so replaying the game and rewatching the cutscenes with the full narrative context is incredibly easy. however, for a lot of players, if you’re replaying the game it’s with a specific goal of getting something you missed earlier in-game, so you’re rushing through those cutscenes trying to get to that completionist bit. i think a line could have been walked re: giving more of a hint that shoka was swallow before the very end without fully giving it away, but i definitely think the rewatch value is more subjective and based on how you specifically play the game. if you’re here looking to watch all the cutscenes again now that you know everything, shoka being swallow is a huge treat regarding changing the context of her behavior - if you’re fast-forwarding trying to find a pig, it’s totally wasted.

i would have liked to see more of shoka’s backstory and interaction with the other shinjuku reapers for sure, and i wonder if this is another thing along the lines of “we were supposed to see more of shinjuku’s final game than we did”; if we’d gotten more of shinjuku, we certainly would have seen more of its reapers. i talked briefly about how i feel like ayano’s death didn’t hit the way i think it was intended to, but if the game had let us see more of her as a shinjuku reaper i feel like the entire plot would have benefited. it would have benefited shiba as well honestly; they tried to have him as a repentant “now i shall fix what i destroyed” character at the very end, but i don’t feel like they did a good enough job portraying that he had changed and he was brainwashed so it fell flat. if we’d seen more of shiba as the compassionate leader who deserved the loyalty of his reapers that they say he was, the contrast would have done a lot to help define the tragedy of his backstory. overall i think this is another “we lost a chunk of the plot in rewrites or something” issue, which i admit is not based in anything like interviews. it’s just my speculation because it feels like something that was supposed to be here got left behind - i can’t say if i’m right, or why it happened if so. it just feels to me like the shinjuku reapers besides shoka went fairly undeveloped not because of writing/lack of screentime alone but because we lost big pieces of shinjuku content entirely. it’s insane that we only learn in the secret reports how tsugumi became trapped in the mr. mew plush to begin with; to me, this screams “we had to cut something”, and the more i think about it the more convinced i am that we were originally meant to see more of shinjuku’s inversion. hell, the secret reports just flippantly inform us that tsugumi’s brother was shinjuku’s conductor and he’s why she survived - but he goes unnamed and unseen, mentioned only in a piece of postgame content that many players may never unlock.

shinjuku’s final game is just left as this incredible story that was never told, with a cast who we barely see. again, it doesn’t bother me that they never explained to us why hazuki purified shinjuku. but i do wish we could have connected with its reapers to see how they reacted to its impending fate; who was on kubo’s side, who was trying to protect shinjuku? who knew what was happening, and who was just swept up in the chaos? how did the purification affect them emotionally after their escape to shibuya? just from the secret reports we see that tsugumi’s brother is this tragic hero of another story, the conductor opposing the executor and fighting to save his city before ultimately sacrificing himself to keep his sister alive. this is enough content that it could have easily been a standalone, but it wasn’t. i think that’s a damn shame. i’m sure there are people who are already chomping at the bit to write about shinjuku’s tragic final game and it’ll make a stunning fanfic in the right hands, but this is a big gap for fanfiction authors to be filling in.

this was mostly a narrative thoughts dump, but i wanna say just a couple of things about the combat: overall i liked it! i was significantly overleveled for the vast majority of the game partially because i was having fun with the combat, i feel gameplay was very intrinsically motivating. because of how the food system worked, being overleveled didn’t mean too much since it only affects HP, but i also was eating constantly so i was in fact just OP for much of the game. so i suppose, take my gameplay commentary with a grain of salt because i was busted quickly. if i hadn’t been such a powerhouse from early on, i expect my gameplay experience would have been much different.

my biggest complaint: there were some significant issues in enemy design related to battles being timed and the timer having consequences. some enemies were a reasonable/intuitive pain, say, elephants being bullet sponges and chameleons having an invisibility mechanic. these things made them challenging, but in a sensible way. like, of course a big honkin’ elephant has a ton of HP. i think that chameleons in particular could have been tweaked; you have to be very close to them when they’re invisible in order to lock on, and i think this could distance could have been extended a bit to minimize frustration. likewise, it felt like party members that get grabbed by a t.rex were trapped for ages; i feel this could have been tweaked as well. i know a lot of people had issues with wolves for this same reason, but their comparative frailty and my pin choices meant that i quickly overcame wolves and they became a minor nuisance at best until endgame introduced a beefier wolf. even then, i found t.rex noise to be much more of an issue because of their sturdier nature and higher damage output. these are minor gripes; i didn’t like seeing these enemies, but i didn’t hate seeing them. no, here’s what i hate: rhinos and pufferfish.

to me, these are the most annoying enemies in the entire game outside of maybe a handful of bosses. i feel they were poorly thought out in general. the tendency for rhinos to put themselves against the arena walls and the delay on pufferfish exploding after their HP hits zero do not mesh well with that battle timer. i find myself very frustrated by these enemies because it feels like i’m being punished not for a lack of skill or bad decisions choosing weak pins, but simply bad luck. very few pins can circumvent the rhino’s front guard and the hitbox for their guard feels enormous, so i can’t imagine i’m the only player having difficulty herding them out of corners to actually damage them or get beat drops. there’s a postgame dive with a big noise rhino, and it was my worst experience with the entire game because it just kept backing into a corner. i quit that dive multiple times because of how much time i wasted with the rhino; i changed my pins like crazy trying to take advantage of elemental weaknesses or use pins that could circumvent the guard. but it wasn’t about what pins i was using, it was just bad luck with hitboxes. when i finally got the gold rank on that dive it wasn’t that i did anything significantly different, the rhino just didn’t park its ass in the corner that time.

as far as i know, and i hope i’m missing something that someone can enlighten me on, there is no way to prevent pufferfish from inflating and exploding outside of a killer remix. i have not discovered any way to make them explode faster. the amount of time it takes for them to blow up seems to vary not by species but by individual, i’m not sure if it’s being triggered by proximity to a party member or what but i know sometimes one of those little shits will inflate and chase me across the entire arena before finally exploding. in a chain battle, that wasted time adds up. the pufferfish issue could have been severely mitigated, if not entirely fixed, if the gap between HP hitting zero and explosion was just the time it took for them to inflate. that would have basically eliminated my needless frustration with them. but instead i just... don’t know how to make them pop faster.

in normal combat, your post-battle score is primarily just bragging rights/making yourself feel good to have gotten a good grade. but when it comes to dives, where the timer directly decides how many of the finite friendship points you get, the appearance of a rhino or pufferfish specifically is something i approached with dread and disappointment. i already mentioned the postgame dive giant rhino specifically being a nightmare, but this was a reoccurring element for me through the entire game with just normal rhinos. i know rhinos are a returning enemy and kept their front-guard schtick, but the shift to a 3D environment has made them a much more (imo needlessly) difficult opponent.

regarding the pin system itself, i was enormously disappointed to learn how the multi-pin input worked. it turns out that you can only have multiple pins using a single input no matter how many multi-pin wields you unlock; gone were my dreams of having 2 Y-input pins and two ZL input pins (i played on switch). the inability to multi-pin wield uber pins regardless of how many uber slots you have filled is also a huge bummer. i feel like in the postgame i should be able to be an absolute god of destruction, but this didn’t pan out.

this seems to be a switch issue, but autosave was the MVP of the game because i had a few cutscenes crash or freeze (the one with kubo’s reveal seems to be a common source of a crash on the switch version as it fails to load the 3D cutscene); this was annoying and needs fixing, but it was slightly mitigated by autosave kicking in immediately after boss battles. i was crushed thinking i was gonna have to go through the shiba fight again after kubo crashed my game, so the relief i felt upon loading up again and going right into the cutscene was immense. don’t get me wrong: cutscene freezes and particularly crashes are a big problem that a game like this shouldn’t have launched with, but at the very least i didn’t lose my progress on that crash. related, i appreciate the ability to speed through cutscenes you’ve already seen, but i do wish we had the option to skip them entirely because that would have saved me from the freezes that i had to manually close the game and lose progress for.

a more minor complaint that i admittedly am unsure as to how to fix (maybe utilizing the d-pad instead of having it be camera/target select alongside the right stick?) is that i do not seem to have much control over which character my camera centers on in combat. typically selecting the pin that’s equipped to them will focus the camera to them, but every once in a while i’ll be locked to someone whose pin is rebooting while my other party members are actively attacking on the complete opposite end of the arena. i have no idea why this happens. if i’m missing something please let me know. the static nature of the overworld camera took some adjusting to, at first i was offput but i got used to it quickly. if camera was fixed position in combat it would have been a nightmare, but it being fixed in the overworld isn’t the same beast.

this has gotten obscenely long, so props and condolences to everyone who has made it this far. i wanna end on a high note because i want to reiterate something: i have so many criticisms here and that’s actually praise. i enjoyed so much of this game that i’m critical of where it fell short specifically because it’s such a strong contrast to how much i felt it did right. the main story was pretty strong in general, though some character interactions were lacking. the plot itself i didn’t talk a lot about because i thought it was good. there wasn’t much to say, they did a good job! the dissonance noise being created from deleted timelines was great, i loved that. i don’t feel like predictability makes a narrative bad, so it’s not like i was upset when it turned out replay was (gasp) part of a dastardly scheme. for me, foreshadowing is an excellent thing even if sometimes i wish it was handled a little differently.

i vastly prefer this game’s vague sequel hook with minamimoto over how final remix ended a new day; that sequel hook i hated and it had me so worried about neo. thankfully a lot of my fears didn’t come true, and i am very happy overall with the game we got. if another game is greenlit, i would hope it progresses with a mostly new cast; as long as we stay in shibuya some supporting characters can and should be staples imo, like kariya and uzuki, and i hope to see more of what’s being set up with minamimoto even if not necessarily with him as a protagonist. but overall i think twewy’s worldbuilding lends itself much more to a rotating cast if it develops into a full franchise; that’s just the nature of the UG, and i would like to see further installments taking advantage of that and allowing characters to have a complete arc and then retire from the narrative naturally.

i’ve got some pigs to erase and some bosses to slap the pins out of, which i’m sure will take me some time. another day certainly has a secret boss and/or time trial boss rush, so i’ll take a look at that sucker soon as well. i’m looking forward to continuing my playthrough, and i expect to sink quite a few more hours into this game. i really truly enjoyed neo despite my qualms, and i’m leaving the main storyline behind for postgame stuff with almost entirely positive feelings and a hopeful stance on the potential future of the series. i know this was a long-ass post, which is why it’s beneath a readmore, but to anyone who cared enough about my thoughts to keep reading the whole thing... thanks for the time you spent, hope you got something positive out of it!

#neo twewy #neo twewy spoilers #this turned into a behemoth. im so sorry #I CHECKED AND IT'S OVER 11K WORDS #I'M SO FUCKING SORRY

[skriaki]

A Hat In Time REVIEW - "Unbelievably charming"

PLEASE NOTE: This game has very little story to spoil but I will be talking about the entire adventure, so consider yourself warned

RELEASED: 2017

FORMATS: PC, Mac, PS4, Xbone, Switch (review based on PC and Switch)

I debated long and hard how best to open this review, and in the end I decided that nothing introduces A Hat In Time better than its astonishing soundtrack. Though I’d been aware of the game since before it released, I never actively sought it out until I happened to watch the launch trailer. Not only is the kaleidoscope of levels and characters eye-catching, what stood out as truly special was Pascal Michael Stiefel’s music. The trailer features the game’s main theme, which is striking, energetic and playful, easily one of my favourite videogame themes of this generation, and a perfect encapsulation of everything A Hat In Time is about.

At the risk of spoiling the end of this review, I usually find that the hardest games to critique are the ones I love most. A review of a bad game almost writes itself, because all I have to do is point out the wonky mechanics, or boring story, or the fact that one or more of the developers are bigoted pieces of shit (ION FURY), or whatever. But when I try to sum up my opinion on an excellent game, it’s hard for me to maintain some level of objectivity. So I guess we should all go into this on the understanding that I freaking adore A Hat In Time.

As mentioned, what strikes you first is the sheer, weaponised cuteness that A Hat In Time wields like a sharpened umbrella. I think Nitro Rad put it best when he said the game was just unbelievably charming. How many soundtracks outside of Star Trek prominently feature theremins? Other than a tiny smidgen of slowdown in the larger areas (even on my reasonably beastly PC), ON SCREEN NOTE: THE SWITCH VERSION IS LOCKED TO 30FPS BUT I LOVE THE PORTABILITY it’s an explosion of visual and audio polish that would be impressive from a bigger studio, let alone a developer which originally relied on volunteers. From the moment Hat Kid wakes up in her time-travelling spaceship only to soon find herself stranded on a weird planet populated by surreal characters, the expectations have been set sky-high.

But this tiny quibble didn’t distract me for long, because the opening Mafia Town chapter gives you a bright and colourful seaside town to get lost in, with highlights including a sequence where you pretend to be a ghost and chase a terrified henchman, and an operatic 2D showdown against the mafia boss. I actually think Mafia Town might be the game’s weakest chapter overall, but that’s like being the worst port of Metal Gear Solid 3: still pretty fucking good. Afterwards comes Dead Bird Studio, where you have to help two rival directors film stunts to earn a prestigious award, with particular praise going to the hilarious murder mystery on a train. It’s very neat that the winning director is decided by how many collectables you gather in their respective levels. Then comes the game’s darkest sequence in Subcon Forest, which starts with Hat Kid literally selling her soul to a melodramatic demon who’s probably the standout performance in an entertaining voice cast. One of his levels is a startlingly spooky manor which honestly might be too scary for younger players. Although no game will ever be as scary as that one bit in Banjo-Kazooie (shark clip). Next, however, you get a relaxing change of pace with Alpine Skyline, which subverts the established level structure with a more open-ended village hub which made me think of the original Jak and Daxter. At this point you’ll have most of the hats, which makes it easier to scoop up enough time pieces to unlock the final chapter, which is a single level consisting of some fiendish platforming and a suitably spectacular boss. While the narrative’s sudden attempt to tie unrelated characters together during this last sequence feels a bit forced, I eventually warmed to it as a "look at all the friends we've made along the way" affair. Plus the chapter itself is undeniably climactic, and I couldn’t help get a little emotional when that phenomenal trailer music which I refuse to shut up about kicked in during the credits.

The Gears For Breakfast team have cited 6th-generation 3D platformers like Mario Sunshine and Psychonauts as their main inspiration, which is when 3D games arguably hit their stride, and their game flaunts those influences with pride without being afraid to forge its own identity. Hat Kid is not only adorably cheeky, with an expressive face that reminds me of Wind Waker, she can also jump, dive and walk on tightropes so that the platforming feels precise and forgiving, and she quickly picks up an arsenal of hats which grant various powers. This is one of those collectathons where I suggest speeding through most levels before coming back later with all the abilities unlocked, because some macguffins can seem tantalisingly just out of reach, but won’t actually be accessible without certain hats. All the powers are great, though, and see frequent use, from straightforward ones like the hat that makes you run faster to the one that lets you jump on ghost-blocks. They complement Hat Kid’s default moveset really well and getting a new hat always feels like a big moment. There are also badges, which grant similarly useful upgrades, but you can only equip a few at a time. This is one minor gripe I have: swapping between hats makes sense, because using them all at once would break the game, but some of the badges (such as one that lets you climb walls after a dive) just feel like basic features which make the game worse if you don’t equip them. Limiting how many badges I can use at once just adds a bit of unnecessary faffing about in the pause screen. Pro tip: buy the “no bonk” badge from the creepy merchant straight away and never look back.

From start to finish, I genuinely struggled to find meaningful problems with A Hat In Time. I could have forgiven a lot of problems for the fun and inventive situations the game threw at me, but I never had to. Instead I have to say I found myself wondering when a game had last struck me as being filled with so many little surprises and unnecessary extra touches, including an entire co-op mode that’s apparently a bit buggy but awesome nonetheless. Hat Kid mainly communicates through one-word sentences but stands out in a sea of platformer protagonists because of the obvious love that went into her animation and soundwork, and the game as a whole has an amazingly strong aesthetic. I was genuinely upset to find that the Hat Kid plush toys are currently out of stock. There’s not much of an overarching plot but each chapter tells its own story and feels distinct, and there isn’t any filler content even though you only need 25 out of 40 time pieces to reach the ending. This is definitely more forgiving than Yooka-Laylee, which has yet to let me fight the final boss. A Hat In Time has at least a few challenging sequences for completionists to endure, including a badge that makes you die in one hit if you hate yourself that much, but crucially that stuff is optional if you just want to have an adorable adventure without too much swearing.

I’ve tried very hard in this review not to come across as overly gushing, because no game is perfect and I definitely have a soft spot for ambitious indie projects. As someone who only really heard about the game once it was out, though, A Hat In Time snuck up on me with how impressive it is as a crowdfunded game. Despite the many obstacles described in interviews, Gears For Breakfast delivered a platformer which I honestly hope Nintendo takes a few notes from, given that Mario has had a bit of a monopoly on 3D platformers ever since the genre went out of vogue. Super Mario Odyssey represents the peak of what a big-budget 3D platformer can do, but A Hat In Time is undeniably impressive as a smaller project and I honestly prefer it in a lot of ways, not least of all because it packs so much charm into a small package and introduces the world to an lovable new platformer mascot. Even if Yooka-Laylee disappointed a lot of people, it’s still really cool to see games like A Hat In Time and Snake Pass giving Nintendo some competition again. After years of 8 and 16-bit indie games, there now seems to be a growing nostalgia for games from the early days of 3D, and as someone who grew up around that time, the prospect of new games that revive and improve ideas from that era is obviously thrilling.

Hyperbole aside, probably the greatest compliment I can give A Hat In Time is that it lives up to the standard of quality set by that theme music: beautiful, original and unrelentingly exciting.