#Maybe I'll go get them and reblog them over here for the shiggles later

[solradguy]

If you haven't answered this before, how did you get into guilty gear, and when?

I've talked about it a little in my tag ramblings before but the whole story's kinda funny so it's about time I shared it hahah

So, I've known about Guilty Gear since at least 2013 when I found Holy Orders posted somewhere. For the life of me I cannot remember where I actually first heard it (probably Tumblr) but I REALLY liked it, it was so different from anything else I'd heard up until that point. I was broke as shit in 2013 and my only option to listen to it more was to pirate it. The only download I could find was the GGXX Sound Alive album by A.S.H., but that album's really good, which is fine. Somehow I still actually have the files from that original download lol.

I didn't look into the games back when I downloaded that album but I don't think I would've enjoyed the series as much back then anyway. It was right near the end of my "anime is stoopid I'm so cool and edgy and only consume media for ADULTS" doofus phase. Isn't that hilarious to look back at?

Anyway, fast forward to December 2020. One of my friends wanted me to get into BBTag and IIRC Sony was having some kind of Japanese devs focused sale at the time. I still have the text I sent when looking up BBTag where I saw the Xrd Sign box art and I said something along the lines of "Idk who this Sol Badguy is but he looks like a me character." We've since gone back and pinned it in our group chat. It was like the klaxon going off before a big storm, in hindsight lol.

Then Strive came out last year. Our D&D group's DM got it (he comes from Street Fighter) and then the friend who wanted me to look into BBTag got it. He asked me one day if I wanted to watch the story mode with him since it was only us online and I wasn't doing anything so I agreed. I'm so grateful they included that encyclopedia for the story mode because we had to pause it every line 5 minutes to figure out what something meant haha.

The actual scene that REALLY got me hooked was when most of the cast are in the White House briefing room before Chaos shows up and they start talking about sending agents out or whatever. IIRC they mention agent Dokken first and I was like "Haha! Like the band!!" and then they mentioned agent Stryper and I was like "Holy shit they really did actually mean the band." I've got albums from those two on cassette lol. After that my friend and I went through the encyclopedia and I told him about all the classic rock references lmfaoooo

Now here we are. My brain is so rotted by this series but so many beautiful mushrooms have grown out of that mush in my skull that I've accepted it.