#glacecannon opinion zone

[glacecannon]

Okay, bear with me: I have a dumb theory about Dungeon Meshi and nobody I know has actually read it.  So, I’m posting it here.

Uhh... Is it possible Marcille is a half-elf?  Because I’m starting to think Marcille might be a half-elf??

One of the most distinctive parts of Marcille’s design is her ears -- unlike most elf characters out there, they’re rounded rather than pointy.  At first I kind of assumed this was a stylistic choice on Kui’s part, (I’ve always been fond of it, they’re very charming) and because there have been so few elves in the story until recently, there hasn’t really been much reason to assume otherwise.  I do actually think it was a stylistic choice at first -- Fionil (The elf mage from ch.3) and Marcille’s mother, characters only seen in Chapter 3, both have rounded ear tips:

This was early enough into the series that Kui probably hadn’t fully fleshed out the details of the setting and characters, though.  But there is another, more recent drawing Kui’s made of Marcille’s mother in “Daydream Hour 2″, and interestingly enough... her ears are pointy there.

In fact, every elf we've seen since then has been pointier than Marcille.  Take a look at the Mad Sorcerer, Elf Senshi, and the Canaries:

Aside from the Canary who’s ears are lopped off (which I definitely have questions about), all of their ears are pointed at the tip.  This also applies not only to Senshi, but the entire rest of the main party when redesigned as elves in the most recent chapter title illustration:

All of them are significantly more angular all around, even Izutsumi, despite the cat part muddying the differences.  Meanwhile, take a look at Marcille’s human design side by side with her normal one...

They’re much more similar than any other redesign on the page, ear length and nose shape being the only significant differences.  All of her features are also much more rounded in her normal design than any other party member’s elf design in general, or any other elf at all.  Which, if maybe she’s half-human... might make sense.  Also, this is tenuous, but Marcille is the only member of the party who’s transformation is given an unsure tone:

She’s “a halfling?“, not “a halfling.”  Super minor, but it’s still an odd question mark in comparison to the rest, especially considering “kobold with cat ears” is way more unclear than Marcille’s transformation.

Marcille also doesn’t seem to hang out much with elves in general -- there were none at the magic academy (just humans and gnomes), none in her party, few around in general and... well, she’s obviously not psyched about potentially running into the Canaries, as seen in the previous chapter:

Traditional D&D talks about half-elves not being particularly accepted among elf societies, so I wouldn’t really be surprised if that was the case here, too, and that’s what's making her apprehensive about potentially having to mediate with the elves.

This is all mostly based on the most recent chapters, but the thing that really got me first wondering was the Nightmare chapter:

Marcille’s father, who we have never seen on-panel, is dead.  While we don’t really know how old Marcille is, he most likely died during her childhood.  This really made me stop and ask myself what could have happened when I read it.  Laius assumes he died young, but what Marcille’s mother told her afterwards paints a different picture to me: She’s talking about Marcille’s long lifespan in comparison to the people around her, including her father.  That seems like it means something.  Like... maybe he had a signficantly shorter lifespan than Marcille or her mother. He could have been human.

I don’t know.  A lot of this is admittedly flimsy.  Mostly, I think it’s starting to seem kind of strange how different Marcille is from virtually every other elf in the manga currently.  That, combined with some of these other details is making me wonder.  If I am right, though, I think it’s definitely going to come up whenever the Canaries catch up with the party.

[glacecannon]

npcs like kass and pikango who just show up in safe spaces on your journey are probably the ones that i like most.  It’s nice to just see them practicing their craft when i roll up at a stable and say hi, almost like having someone with you on the road (but not really)

Kass in particular is nice.  There’s something charming about a bird with an accordion singing to you about old legends.  I almost wish this game’s backstory was exclusively explored through his songs rather than dumped on you at the beginning of the game and then also constantly being reminded of it by everyone all the time.

(it probably wouldn’t make it any better though)

[glacecannon]

hey does anyone else remember back in ocarina of time when gerudo were just cool warrior women and that was it? And sure, there was like.  one text box in the game, on a gossip stone, totally not relevant at all mentioning sometimes they go to other towns to find men purely so they can have kids. But that was whatever.

...and now their whole culture is just… GOTTA GET ME A HUSBAND

[glacecannon]

i kind of wonder how much of the themes in iconoclasts’ storyline are like, sort of also about konjak having spent basically a decade making this game by himself

[glacecannon]

I've been thinking about making a post about the games I've played this year, but I also wasn't sure in what capacity... I really didn't want to make some top ten list, and while I certainly COULD have, I didn't know if I really wanted to make long-winded essays on the merits of certain games when I had little to say about others that I liked just as much.  In the end, I decided to take (basically) everything I played, and write the briefest possible summary of my feelings about them. 

So, here's... GAMES I PLAYED 2017 IN THREE(...ISH) SENTENCES OR LESS

Gravity Rush Remastered: A game with incredible potential that's already good on its own, if very, very obviously unfinished.  It lives on its great mechanical concept and wonderful sense of charm and surreality (the surrealism much moreso than its sequel even).  But also... let's never talk about that one sidequest ever again, yikes.

ABZU: Beautiful, serene, and extremely my shit. I deeply appreciate interesting and engaging movement in games and I especially appreciate games that work to make swimming feel as good as it actually does, since they're few and far between.  This game does exactly that, and offers a simply entrancing experience all together.

Final Fantasy VIII: Mechanically, narratively, in all respects, FFVIII is a mess -- but a beautiful mess, the kind of mess I love.  I could say so much about it, but I’ll leave it at this -- I have had a very poor opinion of this game since I was a kid, but for whatever reason, I picked it up in January to give it a second chance.  Coming around on this game, finding the good in it, and realizing I actually really honestly liked it was my favorite surprise of the year.

NieR: Automata: To put it briefly, Automata deserves better criticism than to be hailed as perfect and genius, but also has too much value to be flatly dismissed for its problems.  It might be objectively one of the best games I played this year and yet it also was one that really let me down in a way; a frustrating dichotomy that I've rarely been able to let go of.

Final Fantasy Tactics: It’s FFT.  I’ve played this game too many times to count.  My feelings may have more depth now, but they haven't particularly changed: it's fucking good.

Sonic Rush: There are a thousand mistakes in this game, from the disastrously Dimps level design to glaringly inelegant mechanics and more.  ...At least that Hideki Naganuma soundtrack is good as hell, though!

Freedom Planet: Extremely fun levels marred by boss fights that require a mindset that clashes with the rest of the game and how Sonic games are played in general.  Speaking of Sonic, I think Lilac has the best implementation of a boost mechanic ever, probably?  The story is what it is, but Torque was particularly worthless.

Sonic Mania: Mania shines whenever it does the unexpected with the familiar, something rom hackers are great at, and is at its worst whenever it doesn't know when to rein an idea in, something rom hackers are terrible at.  It’s at least the best Sonic since the end of the 90s, if not longer, a powerful reminder that the Genesis Sonic games have always deserved their praise, and one of my absolute favorite games of the year.  Sega, PLEASE, trust this team with more.

Splatoon 2: I can't possibly say much about this game other than that I loved Splatoon and this is also Splatoon, but more, which is a very good thing.  I honestly haven’t played as much of it as I’d like, so I need to get back to it!

Wonder Girl: The Dragon's Trap: I might be a Sega baby, but I never much cared about this series until I played Monster World IV a few years ago, and damn, the remake proved I was sleeping on this game too!  Dragon’s Trap’s early and relatively unique interpretation of what we now would identify as the metroidvania genre feels great still -- it’s stunning just how well it all holds up despite being a Master System game with a (beautiful) new coat of paint and some minor tweaks.  All I can really say about the game beyond that is that I wish there was more of it!

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight: This game had me wrapped around its finger from the get go.  Momodora definitely wears its influences on its sleeve, but more than that, from its atmosphere to its always-just-right gameplay, you can tell this game is exactly the thing it wants to be, and pulls it all off perfectly.  I wanted to play again immediately when I finished.

Super Mario Odyssey: I don't know what to say about this game that isn't obvious, it's so clever and designed so well, it's so, so fun to play!  I especially like the constantly changing art style, which was a really neat touch (though I wish it was pushed a bit more in some places).  While I had some minor issues -- mostly that most of the boss fights were uninspiring to say the least -- it really doesn’t change that this is game is phenomenal.

and of course...

GRAVITY RUSH 2: GR2 was my feel good game of what was... an extremely feel bad year.  By carefully intermingling mechanics that make the fundamental act of movement a pure joy with the coziness of a world that's just the right size to make you want to wander through every corner of it for no reason other than to find a cute spot for selfies, it cultivates the exact feeling its protagonist searches for: Home.  In spite of just how many other great -- even some that were maybe honestly better -- games I played, the magic of that moment-to-moment play and the sense of comfort and coziness it develops (not to mention its charming cast and story) kept me coming back to it... and made it my favorite.

If you read this whole thing... thanks!  There’s a bunch of games I feel bad about letting slip by me this year (Zelda obviously, Night in the Woods, some others) but I feel like I pulled a good crop.  It’s been said again and again -- and that’s because it’s true -- this year was fucking terrible, difficult globally, personally, and existentially... so I’m glad I had some good escapes.  2018 looks like more of the same, but I am looking forward to Iconoclasts right out the gate, picking up some of the stuff I’ve missed, and replaying old games to get through it all.

[glacecannon]

(in response to this post)

lamphoera said:  i'm glad i'm not the only person who was thinking that marcille might be a half elf! i was wondering after the dream chapter but the other things you pointed out really seem to support the theory

asadoras said: no i totally think youre right on about this !!!!!!! ive been thinking this too

thank you!  I have been thinking about this a while but its one of those things where i still wonder if I could just be reading too much into things.  it does feel very possible, though!  It opens up some interesting parallels too, there’s already an obvious connection between Marcille’s interest in ancient magic & her father’s death, but the potential parallel between him & Faryln both being human is very rich!  I think there's a parallel being drawn between Marcille & the Mad Sorcerer too, and since Thistle is also like...  seemingly motivated by the mortality of their own human father figure & humans around them in a similar way that’s also something potentially very interesting.  I don’t really know where Kui would ultimately go with this, but those parallels are really too good to pass up imo!

[glacecannon]

I’m being jokey about it (and like, yeah, this definitely did leave an impression on me at age 10) but whew, uh, this part of the game really is... hoo boy.

Wall Market is fascinating because it’s one part interesting game design, one part the production team making use of the setting of Final Fantasy VII to do something that couldn’t fit in previous games in the series, and one part trash fire of indelicacy and bad gay jokes, a disaster only amplified further by the quality of the translation.

Divorced from its negatives, this is a fun and interesting part of the game.  Exploring a weird, sketchy red light district to pick up items from quirky characters to get through what is essentially a puzzle dungeon is a really cool idea that uniquely takes advantage of VII’s near future setting in a way that, for better or worse, the designers clearly had a lot of fun with. But (much like a similar part of Breath of the Wild, which I just played before this) it comes with this baggage.  It’s maddening; why can’t I just put my protagonist in a cute dress in peace?

This is the kind of thing I can’t imagine how the hell Square is going to handle in the remake.  BOTW might have gotten away with its nonsense (It shouldn’t have, but, whatever), but I just cannot imagine all of Wall Market flying anymore.  But what do you do with it that preserves what makes this segment so interesting without cutting it entirely?

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Raven’s Choice was… Weird. It was pretty weird. Not in a good way? Like kind of a making things a mess needlessly sort of way?? Idk...

Like… What even happened in the first Gravity Rush anymore?? All of her motivation from then is gone & Boutoume now was totally empty then so how could Most Of It have even happened?? Why does time travel have to do these things to us??

[glacecannon]

Final Fantasy VIII Tier List

SS TIER: Invincible Status, The R1 Button

S TIER: Draw, Vit0 Status, Doomtrain, Shot, Duel, Renzokuken

A TIER: Attack, Combine

B+ TIER: Magic (if Double/Triple is in effect), Cerberus, Angel Wing

B TIER: Magic, Slot

C TIER: All Other GFs, Item

D TIER: Every Command Ability, Blue Magic

F TIER: why is quistis like this why did they make all of her base stats complete garbage why are her limits so low damage why is every mechanical aspect of her so maintenance-heavy for so little reward i dont get it oh my god