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bravelyartbooking · 10 months ago

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little known bravely default series facts

I noticed a couple of comments about the Bravely Series on Twitter last night that made me realize some folks didn't know some of what I consider common knowledge of the series (like why the ba'al theme wasn't on the Bravely Default soundtrack).

Contains spoilers for all three games. Also this got longer than I thought, thanks in advance if you make it to the end and find something you didn't know! I'm sure most of this seems obvious to long timefans.

Here is a compilation of what I know that may or may not be common knowledge to newcomers?

I had to split this into three parts because of Tumblr's character limit and I'm honestly too tired to fix the numbering. A much more readable version can be found on Google Docs here.

First part:

The version of Bravely Default that was received in the West is the second version of the original Bravely Default game, released in Japan in Dec 2013. This version, called "Bravely Default: For the Sequel" came with a massive (80ish) amount of improvements based on player feedback, such as: additional sidequests for the Asterisk Holders in later parts of the game, difficulty and encounter settings sliders, battle speed, redrawing the cities, and the Bravely Second mechanic itself.

This means some tie-ins to Bravely Second didn't exist with the first version - the Adventurer being green when you first encounter her, the end AR movie with Magnolia, the Ba'als and their theme. All this was added later.

The Japanese version does include different languages, including English, so if you can't understand Japanese you can still easily play this version of the game on a hacked or Japanese 3DS!

The first release in Oct 2012 was called "Bravely Default: Flying Fairy" and a lot of JP folks still use BDFF to refer to it.

While BDFTS and BD: Where the Fairy Flies (the Western release) are functionally identical, some changes between JP and West include but are not limited to:

Costumes were censored (such as the Vampire having a bodysuit under the belts and the Bravo Bikini)

The ages of Agnes, Tiz, Edea, Alternis and the Venus sisters was bumped up 3 years in their journal entries (or anyone whose age is written out instead of written as numerals).

Japan had merchandise that had codes for the extra costumes. The extra costumes made it into the Western version of the released game for in-game currency with the exception of Tiz's Dimensional Officer, Edea's Military Cadet, Agnes's Bravo Bunny, and Ringabel's Wakoku Warrior.

You can summon friends from Japanese versions and those costumes will be visible EXCEPT the Bravo Bunny is censored (the cut-out is covered) and Wakoku Warrior is replaced with Freelancer.

These codes expired after like 2 years.

There are 4 novels called "Pocketbook of R" (2 books) and "Pocketbook of R Second" (2 books). I'm including all the translation information I currently have.

Pocketbook of R is a first person journal from Ringabel in what is commonly dubbed "Infinity World" between the events of Bravely Default and Bravely Second.

Ellen translated the first book here (note that she did largely 'summary' translations as she hated the writing in the novel).

Bill translated most of the second book (page 70+) here. (Bill's native language is French and while I did some proofreading, there may be some clunkiness of translating from a third language into a fourth.)

Ellen started translating the third book here. This and the fourth book take place at the same time as Second, for the most part.

No solid English translations of the fourth book currently exist though I know the gist of it thanks to an older Tumblr fan who gave me the rundown. I'm sure RNT will make a video.

Second Part:

There are an additional 2 novels that are based on two of the spinoff games.

One is "Bravely Default - 200 years later" based on Praying Brage that was released in the Japanese Bravely Second collector's edition ONLY.

One is "Bravely Default Fairy's Effect - Rinne's Miracle" based on Fairy's Effect that was released as a standalone novel.

Very little information has been released about both. One day we'll have a summary/translation.

There are (currently) 4 spinoff games, all currently shut down.

Praying Brage (Nov 2012 - Apr 2017) was a browser game and was based on the premise of Edea going 200 years into the future to save Agnes. RedNovaTyrant has a great video on it here!

Bravely Archive: D's Report (Jan 2015 - Oct 2017) was a mobile game that centered around an alternate/future Luxendarc with crystal memories and a new main character who is revealed to be Deneb

It released in Australia for about 6 months in 2018

Bravely Archive Fairy's Effect (Mar 2017 - Aug 2020) was a mobile game released after Bravely Second that took place simultaneously 8000 years in the future and between the events of Bravely Default 1 and Bravely Second. There's a lot of lore for both games in FE that can be seen in various videos on the internet (such as info on the Kaiser/Glanz Empire and Agnes's transition into Pope, Ominas having a role in saving Mahzer and the newborn Edea from Eternia during Braev's coup), but Bill translated some of the remaining website summary here.

Bravely Default Brilliant Lights (Jan 2022 - Feb 2023) was a crossover mobile game in a new world that combined Luxendarc and Excillant characters and setting. It lasted 13 months and I archived as much video as I could on Youtube but as of now, first person "reports" can be found here that summarize each board of each story.

It explains why "First Born" Ba'al was a thing in Bravely Second.

An 'offline' version was released but pulled from the app stores in July 2023.

There are 2 audio dramas for the first game!

First one is called "Festival of Reunion" and a translation of all four tracks can be found here.

Second one is called something like "Bracelets of Eternity" and so far no English translation seems to exist (though I know the gist of the first track).

The Ba'al theme was released with the first audio drama.

There's a Luxendarc / Linked Horizons concert that took place in Japan in 2013, you can find video of it on Youtube and Amazon Prime Video, and they released music CDs specific to it.

Square released an X-mas Collections Music CD that has wintery remixes of some of the Bravely Default music.

There is a Bravely Default 4 volume manga that's a retelling of the first game. Red made a video about it here. You can find scans online and most of the translations were done by Ellen.

There is also a manga anthology that serves to tie together Bravely Default and Bravely Second (released around the same time as Second, if not earlier). Red also made a video about it here. Ellen scanslated the third story in the anthology, I reuploaded it here after her imgur account got nuked.

Bravely Second was changed between the JP and Western releases based on feedback from Japanese players:

Sidequests were streamlined so that players could get a "good ending" based on their decision even if they chose the opposite Asterisk after the time reset

The Black Mage/ Ranger sidequest had its endings completely rewritten, as the Japanese version ends with either Bahamut being eaten or the wounded NPC dying depending on who you sided with.

Some costumes that were DLC were added to be bought with in-game currency (same as Default)

Fort Lune was made more easily available instead of being locked behind a SE Member account (along with some other things like costumes).

Some of the writing was tweaked as there were complaints about the memey/modern references/references to other media like Dragonball.

Aimee/Hawkeye costume was changed (there was also minor censoring of other costumes, like adding a bra to Ranger for Magnolia).

The fox companion was moved to different locations instead of sitting next to the Adventurer, lessening some complaints of "mood whiplash" between tent scenes and serious story events.

Some JP preorder-exclusive weapons were excluded (as far as I can tell, some weapons were just very hard to get).

The controversial apology for Bravely Second was in regard to the large amount of negative feedback the team received from the JP fans in regard to Second (though some Western fans also had a lot of negative things to say, it was largely only because of the costume censorship to the point at least one mod was released).

Third Part:

Magnolia and Pope!Agnes had large plushie prototypes made of them that were never released.

There's an official MMD figure of Agnes from Second.

2 types of large Edea plushies were released, one with closed eyes and one with open eyes.

Only 200 of the open-eyed Edeas were made/released but now there apparently there's only 199 in existence because I tried to buy one and the seller told me she was damaged in by a wild animal getting into the warehouse, rip Edea...

Large plushies were released of Edea, Ringabel, Agnes, and Tiz based on their Default appearance. Tiz's plush had an unfortunate hair style in the prototype that they changed in the final version. Images of this bowl cut have been lost forever.

Gloria got a smaller plushie that's in the JP SE Store.

A set of even smaller Default 1 cast plushies, among other things, are in the 10th anniversary set.

The European Collector's Edition of Bravely Default Where the Fairy Flies included this unfortunate figure of Agnes.

The Bravely Second artbook has three versions:

Original Japanese version, scans of it exist online

Bravely Second (Western) collectors edition version, which removed several images - sketches/concept art of Agnes tied up in the ribbon and a couple of images of Geist as well. This version had translated captions but any text on the images was not translated.

The fully English translated version which also restores the images removed from the CE.

Sales data has indicated that the Bravely Series reached 3 mil in Nov 2021. No word on 4 mil or 5 mil, but maybe we'll find out this year?

Bravely Default 1 (all versions) hit 1 million in July 2014 (21 months from initial BDFF release)

Bravely Second (all versions) hit 700k in April 2017 (2 years from BSEL release)

Bravely Default II (all versions) hit 1 mil in Dec 2021 (10 months from BDII release)

So much JP only merch was released through the years, especially in the years before Second.

Some through the SE Cafe collab with BDII

Some through Artnia (here's Default and Second's collabs)

10th anniversary stores with Hakabanogarou in person and online (now closed)

10th anniversary collab with Super Groupies for watches, Agnes's pendant, a stole with Airy's pendant.

Stuff on the SE JP store

Limited edition rubber stamp sets for Default and Second

Linked Horizon branded BD merch was released with the concert like pins.

Magnolia figure.

Official D's Journal

The messaging Line app released Bravely Default/Bravely Second stickers drawn by a fanartist made official artist named Satokivi! I think they were like 3 dollars per set.

She also drew the mini series of 4koma called "Praying for Miko" for Praying Brage

Physical versions of these stickers are on the JP SE Store.

There's a vinyl record

Pop-up Parade figurines of the main four were released in 2023 for the 10th anniversary of Bravely Default.

Bravely Default II had two demos, the first one specifically made difficult to get feedback from the fans. They implemented some feedback to change the final version of the game (but not everything). This was the first time they have asked for feedback from the West instead of just Japan.

Team Asano has released Lunar New Year art every year except 2016 with Bravely characters and the zodiac animal

They do Christmas cards every year, and it seems that this year they included a special card for a special fan with an extra character in the dragon art. If you know you know.

The woman on the cover of Bravely Default II isn't Gloria.

Bravely Default II has several secrets in the names of Chapter 5, 6, and 7. Spoilers for BDII below:

Twin AGES refers to both the first initials of the known Heroes of Light (Adelle/Gloria/Elvis/Seth and Aileen/Godric/Emma/Sloan) as well as the repetition across the two eras of Heroes. Also, you’ll notice that the initials are shared between the folks who inherited the same blessing from the crystal (assuming Emma got the Earth Crystal and Godric the Water Crystal). This is most noticeable in the final fight against the Night’s Nexus when the spirit of the old Hero of Light is standing behind the new to help them. - Adelle/Aileen - Gloria/Godric - Elvis/Emma - Seth/Sloan

Twin CAGES refers to the ‘cage’ that Adelle locks herself into, and the ‘cage’ that Elvis is forced into without her

Twin PAGES references back to the twin eras of the known Heroes of Light, but now with the Player - whose help is needed for the cycle to end. This is why “P” is the last letter to fade in the ending credits when the player is thanked.

I'm sure there's a lot more I'm forgetting, and this isn't even including the Bravely Default original concepts that were revealed in a booklet in the 10th anniversary exhibitions.

If you made it to the end, I applaud you, and I hope there was at least one or two things you didn't know!

Also one day I'll finish the video on the English fan survey.

#bravely default #bravely second #bravely default ii #bravely default 2 #spoilers

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doctor-hopper · 3 months ago

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You said you wished to be added to the mistranslation mailing group so I'll send you everything I've come across playing thru SDR2 original. Keep in mind I'm only on chapter 1 right now. I am not a #gamer so I pick it up and play it like once every 2 weeks LMAO.

Also half of this stuff is gonna be copy-pasted from chats I've had on discord with friends but it's the same info :>

i got to this part in the game (seen below) but the wording in the jp version is like "Hey, hey! Now, Hanamura-kun, what did I say?" Komaeda specifically uses ってば which indicates extreme annoyance and is usually used by women (teen girls) so i found it really cute

2. hajime of course doesnt use keigo (polite speech) ever, except when he first meets sonia, he suddenly starts talking politely

3. in the official english version when teruteru urges hajime to discuss dirty stuff with him in private, hajime just says "...no thanks." however a more apt translation would be hajime saying in a very flat voice "I'll have to restrain myself" or even "I'm invoking my right to refuse." (遠慮ておく) the way it comes off is a very dry way of telling him off.

4. there's also a thing in the prologue where hajime thinks, "At any rate, if this is a nightmare, I have no idea if it's even started yet... Sheesh, what kind of nightmare is that?" but in the Japanese version it comes across as more tongue in cheek (if that's the way to put it). it's more like this: "Regardless, I can't even tell if this is a nightmare or not, or even what kind of nightmare... Jeez, what a nightmare!"

5. below are 3 screenshots. The first 2 from the official translations, the third from the Something Awful forums fan translation (before the official existed). As you can see they are quite different.

Here is the Japanese text:

when talking about this with my friend, I said:

As per usual it seems to be a case of the official translation being very literal and the fan translation taking tone more into account. The literal translation is:

Kazuichi: it's an unbelievable thought, but...those two are in a male-female relationship, don't you think so? Hajime: a "male-female" relationship? That is not how a teenager should put it.

The wording is more or less "not befitting of someone of young age", with a heavy masculine/imperative tone (since hajime uses ぞ). I'd personally translate it something like:

Kazuichi: I know this sounds crazy, but...those two, dont'cha think they could be havin' an affair goin' on? (Kazuichi speaks with a slight accent in the JP version) Hajime: "an affair"? You're talking like an old man.

I think an equally as accurate but localized translation would be something like " "an affair"? You *are* a teenager, aren't you?" but that sounds slightly stilted. Hajime also later says only 2 lines later "The more he talks, the more he sounds like a dirty old man." Hence my thoughts on changing the line slightly. All in all I think the fan translation did a pretty good job sliding in from Hajime's initial comment to his thought on Kazuichi sounding like a "middle aged man" (as it is put in the Japanese original). Honestly it's funnier than whatever I could come up with lmao

^in general, Hajime (or Hazime as he was originally known as in the JP version, am I the only one who thinks of this a lot? Anyways...) is very prone to dry/blunt humor. It's kind of similar to Haruhi Fujioka in Ouran Highschool (if you've seen that show). The issue is, a loooot of the text in Danganronpa one and two are translated super literally. This isn't a huge issue all of the time (though is very obvious pretty much in every sentence), but when you have a character who's supposed to be dry/blunt, focusing more on their words and less on the tone and meaning behind the words is why Hajime talks like a Redditor in the English version. Which is a shame, because he's very funny in the Japanese version to me.

Some more points...these are from the top of my head so I am no longer quoting discord.

In Danganronpa 2.5, I think it's the only time Komaeda uses imperative speech? I may be proven wrong once I play thru all of SDR2. Anyways, imperative speech is seen as really rude in Japanese. Of course anime rules are slightly different (many characters ESPECIALLY SHONEN characters will use imperative speech like it's just another Monday) but it's notable for Komaeda because I don't think he's ever used it before. He uses it in 2.5 when World Destroyer slides into his DMs (when he threatens Komaeda and his friends). Komaeda throws his phone on the bed and yells 黙れよ！which is the forceful imperative of "to be quiet". Given the context and Komeada's usual casual but not rude speech, I would actually translate that part as "Shut the fuck up!" the widely available fan(?) translation just has him say "I've heard enough!"

It's a very interesting point when analyzing Komaeda's character especially in 2.5.

Another thing I never understood about SDR2's translation is the removal of accents and certain quirks. Nekomaru talks like a wise old master in some ways...which is totally different from the heavy shonen talk I was expecting (which he has for sure, but I was not expecting that part of him. It actually made me like him a lot more.)

Kazuichi, for lack of a better comparison, talks kind of...gangster-y? I'm unsure how to put it. He would be saying things like "bro is tweakin' skibidi style" or whatever. Again, it makes sense with his character. Kazuichi in his FTEs talks about how people basically profile him without learning who he is. The way he talks only adds to the "delinquent" impression he gives off, which is where Hajime had the initial misunderstanding.

Komaeda uses more filler particles than the average character in the game I would say, at least enough for it to stand out to me. I don't know if Makoto was the same (I'd have to re-check it's been a while), but I've caught him using "redundant" amounts of ね and さ, which would most closely translate as "uh" or "um" or even "like" in English. It's not constant and he's much more well-spoken when he's rambling about hope/despair (ironically), but it was enough for it to be noticeable to me. I just wonder why it's not in the English version.

Of course, all the characters have their own speech quirks as you've probably picked up...Hajime talks very masculine and kind of rudely, Mikan is very polite, stuff like that.

OH! Here's a fun one.

from UTDP. This got completely fucked in English. It's actually one of the worst mistranslations in the series aside from Komaeda's love confession IMO.

I don't blame the translation team wholly because if you look at the original Japanese text...

it's not very clear. But still, I think it's pretty obvious that this is how the conversation was MEANT to go:

Hajime: Komaeda...give me your hand. Komaeda: Huh...? Why? Hajime: "Why"? We're going to do a handshake. Normally, I wouldn't go out of my way to ask this, but... Hajime: Will you be my friend? Komaeda: ...Hinata-kun, do you really think this will mean anything?

This is getting long so I will leave this, because as a translator/localizer this article speaks to me very much. Specifically...

Another benefit to a good localization is that it will be truer to the intentions of the original creators than a strict translation by allowing a Western player to be entertained by it in the same way the creators intended their Japanese players to be entertained by the original – you’re laughing at the same points, and crying your eyes out at the same points, too.

That's kind of why I dislike the official ENG SDR2 translation. It is not very faithful to the emotional meaning of the original text in many ways. And I think that's a very important part about translating stories...

Whew that was a lot. If you aren't already bugged by this, I'll make sure to stop by and send more sometime :] fun fact: according to the SDR2 official art book, Komaeda's favorite food is bread, specifically toast, and he dislikes white rice.

Whoops, I didn’t see this in my inbox until now. I’m not bugged at all—thank you for the lore, and I’d greatly appreciate any more when you have it! I’m not as confident or aware about some of these particle nuances, too, so it’ll be educational.

#komaeda lore #text #misc lore #language #translation #japanese #danganronpa #sdr2 #ask

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yukirayu · 1 month ago

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this new translation, whilst i was super excited at first, honestly seems overly verbose. and some parts are just blatant plagiarism. i don't understand, if these people were going to go to the effort to "retranslate" in secret for over a year, why they wouldn't have completely thrown out JAST's script and started from the original. what do you think?

The patch is retelling the game by following the JP text more closely, so if it's very verbose, then that was how it was also worded in the original game. I even pointed out a few examples (albeit with MTL, which is more intended to give the closer gist of the sentence, than anything else) that does hint at this same verboseness. That, and the fact that there's far less slang and cursing, and while I can't read Japanese, I am familiar enough with the spoken version to notice a lot of worded lines (in the localization) that do not match the voice llines themselves.

And as for the claims of plagiarism, it is another version of an English translation of the game. I wouldn't expect every single sentence to be worded differently. If someone stays "Stop doing that" or "Stop that", then that's usually the best way you can word it. Or if the reply is a quick "Sure", then that's fine. It's impractical to think that for another translation to avoid the accusations, every letter is retyped and every single word (adverb, verb, preposition, adjective, etc.) is replaced.

And any posts that claim they barely edited anything only showed sneak peeks from the tutorial, and I have shown screenshots from when you're far enough into a route that show how whole sentences were changed. Even if you generally can see where either version of the same scene is getting at, wording and tone play an important role in how people understand the context, except that the localization got overly crude and memey and that can really affect one's perception of the characterization and the themes.

And they did say it's a patch. Patches like this function similarly to game mods, where you use the base file of the game and tweak it in a way that more features get added, or even refine parts of the game's coding to fix any potential bugs and whatnot. Since they explicitly stated that the patch works with the localization, it'd make sense that the do use the localization's files to insert their translation of the text.

One can only guess why they didn't patch over the JP version of the game, but if I am to make my own guess, it may be because this is their way of sidestepping the potential accusations of copyright infringement, since Slow Damage is still officially licensed by another company.

Another funny thing I have to share is that before the localization itself was released, there was a translation of the VN's demo, which was told in third person (much like this patch is). But that demo, which technically isn't the same as the licensed game and is also free property since that's what demos are for, got mysteriously deleted all of a sudden, and I've seen hints that it had something to do with JAST not wanting people to notice the change in narration POV (whichever you prefer is up to you, but the fact remains that they changed it, something that they didn't do even in the other N+C visual novels they licensed).

#slow damage #fen answers

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tired-writer-in-progress · 4 months ago

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Welcome to me being pissed at some Persona fans and now making this rant. Very sorry to my followers-

TLDR: The ENG VAS for Reload and for FES and Portable are both good and discourse about it shouldn't even happen

Okay so. How this all started was that, I was watching a long video of the Persona 3 Reload final boss fight, which I am not going to spoil for those still playing. The title said it was a Merciless, No Items run which is something I could never do honestly.

But then it also had: JP voices. Which is basically the japanese voice acting instead of the english one.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and say which is better than the other. People have their preferences. Some prefer the eng dub and others prefer the jp dub.

Tell me why.

Tell me why I see people in the comments just shitting. SHITTING. On the Reload english dub and calling some people who defend it Persona 5 babies who play on Safety mode.

LIKE IT'S FINE IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE ENGLISH DUB, JUST. TURN ON THE JP DUB IF YOU HAVE THE GAME?! OR WATCH VIDEOS WITH THE JP DUB, WHICH I'M SURE THERE IS?! IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO NOT SHIT ON THE ENG DUB!

I especially see a lot of hate for Akihiko and Fuuka's VAs, Alejandro Saab/CyYu and Suzie Yeung respectively. I saw some hate for Yukari and the protag's VAs too, Heather Gonzalez and Aleks Lee. And to that, I say:

IT'S YOUR OWN OPINION, NOT A FACT

I have, my own opinions as well. Like how I prefer Yukari's FES voice over Reload's because it just suits her better in my opinion. But I'm not going to say Heather was a miscast! She did her best, and it wasn't that much of a terrible job!

Same with Fuuka and Shinjiro, but reversed! Her Reload voice is so much beter in my opinion, it fits her more timid and quiet self than in FES and the og! And Shinjiro's VA did a killer job with his role! I definitely enjoyed the interactions with him more in Reload! Does that mean the FES and the OG versions of their voices suck? NO!

Mainly because voice acting in games at that time wasn't exactly as solid, and p3 was the first installment to have a game fully voice acted (I know p2 has some voice acting, but I think it's not fully. And p1 only had battle cries, as far as I'm aware)! And for the first installment to do that, it didn't do so bad!

Like I get it! You liked the og game better! It's fine! But that doesn't mean you have to shit on people for liking the remake more!

Jesus christ, people. Respect others' opinions.

I would also like to mention the person who like. Complained that P2 Nyarlathotep was harder than the last boss and that this boss was the easiest boss in the series and said that 55 minutes for the boss, when it was like 26 (confirmed by the youtuber) and then some other stuff which I won't say because it enters spoiler territory.

#mod togo #mod rambles #persona 3 #persona 3 reload

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thoughts-about-robots · 1 year ago

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Thoughts About the Second Hour

Yesterday I finally finished up my play-through of the Switch version and yes I cried during the very final cutscene lol

But then I went back to my new PS4 save and continued on...

Here we are starting to get into the longer prologues... I was able to blast through three of them + tutorial battles in the first hour, here we slow down a little

I'm not sure why exactly the English localization was unable to use H.G. Wells's name in-game but the whole "that one author" thing is awkward as hell, especially with the JP voice track on. when I said in my last thoughts post that the localization was dodgy, well... this is kinda what I mean lmao. I figure this is some copyright-based limitation but it's still silly, especially when the allusions to The War of the Worlds are so explicit otherwise

that said I find it interesting that the world of 13 Sentinels has stand-in fake names for movies from our own, but The War of the Worlds (and its author) is explicitly name-dropped. I just find this interesting because you know what movies they're "not" talking about otherwise (Godzilla, E.T., Terminator, etc.). this may perhaps be due to something we find out later

I love Minami, honestly... this game has really great female characters. I think most of the guys are actually kinda boring (their scenarios are much more interesting than they themselves are, let's put it that way) but the girls are all *chef's kiss*

I also love BJ... you can tell, after he gets oriented, that he thinks Minami is kind of A LOT

I was playing this and going through the last part of Minami's prologue thinking, wow I just love all of this... honestly the end with the Hi-Quads looming in the background (and the one suddenly standing up to look at her on the ridge) is one of the best moments of the early game

this isn't the first time Lonely Struggle is played but I really love this track and its use here... the whole soundtrack is pretty great but sometimes it's easy to forget it's a game soundtrack. Lonely Struggle in particular sounds like it came straight out of a Godzilla movie

Ogata showed up before in Hijiyama's prologue and I didn't like him there, either lmao

finally getting to the battle tutorial section... out of all the sentinels, the 2nd gen and 3rd gen are the ones where I'm reminded, oh yeah, these things are basically walking tanks. 3rd gen in particular are slow as fuck for most of the main campaign

I'll talk about Miura more when I get to his prologue but I think he is actually one of the better-written guys in the game... out of all of the boys I think he has the most nuance, unfortunately on the surface he's kinda boring lmao

another blink and you'll miss it bit of foreshadowing: "this was his last gift to me"

then we get to Yakushiji's prologue, which has to be my favorite in the entire game... all the scenes are really well put-together and memorable, from Kurabe showing up in the sentinel right up to the "contract" scene with Fluffy

another thing we are shown very casually: Kisaragi comes from the same "time" as Yakushiji

I remember this being the first part of the game where I was really truly disoriented... you go from 2024 (hmm) to 1985 (hmmmm) with a flashback to 2025 (hmmmmmm) and I was like wow there's just something kinda cray cray about this. the time traveling seemed very significant when it was shown in Hijiyama's and Minami's prologues but here it's happened so casually and without comment lmao so when the talking cat shows up it doesn't even seem that weird tbqh

when I said the game doesn't spoon feed you information, this is all what I'm kind of talking about... you already got shown that there's something up with Kurabe in his prologue (the documents in Morimura's office), but here we find out three things: he's a time traveler (and from very, very far into the future), he actually was Juro Izumi, and he's suffering memory loss. Kisaragi is also from Yakushiji's time period but we know she's also in 1985 at the same time, as shown in Fuyusaka's prologue. time travel was introduced in Hijiyama's prologue and now everyone can apparently do it lmao. the game does eventually provide explanations for all this but the explanations are usually only stated once and never brought up again

I love the scene with Fluffy, he's honestly a great character. once you know who he actually is all of this is very funny and also note that he never once lies to Yakushiji lmao

do note that no matter what you pick during the "choice" Yakushiji actually refuses to make a contract with Fluffy... she either sarcastically "accepts" or just straight up says no

two great pieces of music play in this prologue, Impending Doom (which was first played in Kurabe's prologue) and A Clause with Claws, one of my favorite tracks in the story sections

finally, the battle segment... we're introduced to sentinel recovery here but during my first play through, I never used it. I forgot it was even a thing to be quite honest until I was browsing YT comment sections and someone mentioned how they almost got a game over in one part of the game... and I was like "oh yeah :o"

I don't like Ogata but I do think he and Kisaragi are a good couple lmao

little tangent: if I ever harp on about how I forgot some significant detail in the tutorial section it's because... the second time I picked this up I believe I played up to a certain point and then put it down for a couple weeks . as much as I love this game, for me it didn't really pick up until a certain series of events several hours into it. the early game is equal parts entertaining, confusing, and honestly kinda boring (which is why I didn't zip through it when it launched, and even back in 2020 I only got about 8 hours into it before I stopped playing). but on a repeat play through you can see just how tight and well-written the narrative actually is. it's just the game is really really invested in getting you to think it's about one thing when it's actually about something else entirely :v

Miscellanea:

I really love the little drone icon on BJ's projected screen.... bless

#october play through

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multitrackdrifting · 2 years ago

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gacha game anon - you have my full encouragement on going back to fgo! for some of the faults with it, the writing in Camelot (chapter 6) and onwards is amazing, and from what I know it just keeps getting better from then on. im on anastasia at the moment and it hasn't dipped in quality for me so far! it's a bit of a slog until it gets good but when it gets good it gets REALLY good. and good luck on your protoarthur rolls! i don't remember when he's on gacha but if you've got $15 to spare the guaranteed SSR is going on right now and im 80% sure he's on one of the banners that's up right now.

i haven't played granblue yet but with that endorsement i want to check it out! im always on the lookout for new gacha games, I started nikke myself recently but nothing else has much caught my eye. i completely agree though localization being trash is the number one reason I usually quit on games I think I otherwise would have loved. but I've generally heard great things about granblue and would love to try it out. if you like I will keep you updated on that!

and totally take your time on mahoyaku, when you get to it I recommend watching a video of the game, or playing it alongside if you can get your hands on it as it's jp only at the moment. i went in with no visuals and it took me a lot longer to put names to faces and stop getting everyone confused with each other haha.

enstars is a very good game but the lack of access to translations and the subpar level of quality for the English version has been really hurting it. the rhythm aspect is fun, actually, but my heart will always be with enstars basic. which has no rhythm elements, but mirrors the original idea for the game, which was an idol game where people who can't play rhythm games could still participate. unfortunately they didn't even try to give that version an english release, probably because they would have to translate a good five years worth of event stories from the previous game that are hosted on that version. which is really unfortunate because id love to read the official translations for those. and thank you for that image lol im definitely going to be saving that for future use!

I didn't mind the first few arcs in FGO, but I've read a lot of manga in my time including a lot of bad shounen and romcoms so my pain tolerance is pretty high. My brain is just like oh man time to read more fgo *burns all my AP on farming mats* . I will probably make a liveblog tag at some pt though I probably need a theme so I can just put a page up with different threads im running through since I use my pinned for my videos rn

Granblue is honestly very dear to my heart but the like "end game" cycle is very unappealing bc its super grindy - that said the story stuff [the main attraction imo] is not power-gated so you're not forced to engage with the worst aspects of the game (i.e. multiplayer/ranking called "unite and fight" or guild wars, kind of similar to how idol game card farming works). The event stories & main story are for everyone, so that's fun :' ). Also they do fun character themes, which I love - I think most people got hooked once they did What Makes The Sky Blue Parts 1-3 (it's like an epic about fighting for the fate of the world but in a more direct sense than most of the early conflicts in the story) which you can do in the event archive nowadays once you pass a certain chapter I believe. The art style might seem somewhat familiar bc the art director used to work for Square Enix

Granblue is kind of funny because just, one day they decided "yeah we will support eng" but the login stuff & lack of a localised app. It's just a web-game so they never released it in other regions, it just has full english language support - thankfully it's just like a g-mail signup process not as annoying as like doing lottery for an account like kancolle was

Mahoyaku I'll have to just login to my jp itunes acc dl it and play along or st so I know what people look like

#long post #asks #gacha game anon

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aquaburst3 · 2 years ago

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I'm bored. Here are some observations that I've made in the TWST fandom.

The polling info for the JP side of the fandom is based on this. The stuff based on the Western side of the fandom is based on this poll done by XxJuJubexX over on Reddit. These polls were done several months ago, so things might've changed slightly since then. But I think some of the bigger things to note are probably the same.

Also, it should be fucking obvious that these are generalizations and don't apply to everyone in a specific demographic.

According to the western poll, 65% of the survey participants were between the ages of 16-26, and a whooping 75% of them identify as female. (Honestly, this matches up with what I noticed here in the western fandom with it being dominated by high school/uni student aged people, and explains why a lot of the "Yuusonas" tend to be girls.)The follow-up biggest gender demographic is non-binary. This contrasts the Japanese fandom where it attracts mainly "working age women" or women in their mid 20s to late 40s.

Most of the English fandom doesn't actually play the JP game. However, a lot of international players are at least aware of what happens in that version, especially ones that rely on the fan translations.

The favourite dorms in both the international and JP Twst fandoms is Octanivelle. However, Diasomnia is the runner up in the west, not in Japan.

As a surprise to absolutely no one, Malleus has the number one spot on the "Favourite Characters" list in the west.

Azul and the Tweels are popular in both fandoms, but they are secondary compared to Malleus in the west.

The Tweels are more popular than Azul in Japan. In the west, this is flipped.

Trey is much more popular in the JP fandom where he's usually in the #11-16 spot. He's in the #21 spot on the western poll, and is even out ranked by Crewel and fucking Crowley. Ouch. (This matches what I've noticed in the westerner fandom, since he's completely written off as a boring big brother character by most. Honestly, I tend to agree. He's not a bad character per se, just rather dull and underdeveloped compared to the others. That's fine. He's just a side character.)

Malleus isn't popular in the JP fandom, being #17. (According to Reddit, this has to do with Japanese people not typically fantasizing about being whisked away by a brooding supernatural love interest and fucking them as much as westerners, and Malleus "notices" Yuu more, which is much more appealing to westerners desires to be "noticed" and "matter" more. Cultural differences, basically.)

Vil didn't crack the popularity list in Japan. (Which is kinda surprising to me, and I can't think of an explanation as to why.)

Jamil is in the # 6-8 spot in Japan, and vastly outranks Kalim. In the west, Jamil's #12 with Kalim coming right after him. (Despite this coming out before Scarabia on the western server, I don't think this would've changed much, because I always noticed those two have the same amount of popularity before and after their arc, sadly. I think this has to do with the western fandom skewing younger and finding characters like Azul and Riddle more relatable than ones with more mature backstory like Jamil.)

Leona is in the top 3 in the JP fandom while in the west he's #9. (Again, can't think of a reason as to why.)

Idia's popularity is about the same on both sides.

#aqua rambles #twisted wonderland

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emblemxeno · 3 years ago

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JP vs. Localization in Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation

(Okay, for real this time lol)

Again, here’s a link to my sources post.

Fortunately, this route follows suit in terms of good localization quality after Conquest. It’s the shortest out of all the posts, since I don’t really have a lot to talk about. Mostly subtle line changes, references and a few key points of information that were cut out. I also went through Hidden Truths and Heirs of Fate to see if I could add stuff from those on here, but there were no big problems that I found.

Once again, the main part of this post will all be put under the cut. If a chapter isn’t covered, it means I didn’t think there were any differences worth talking about.

I’ll use localized names for characters and locations, unless I feel the need to do otherwise.

I’ll be using she/her when referring to Corrin in this post. (I flipped a coin to decide the gender lol)

Also, note that after Chapter 14, the translation of this route on Fateswartable ends, so I mostly relied on the English patch done by Serenes at that point forward. (I also used PegasusKnight.com as a reference to fall back on if I needed it)

Chapter 7

-A minor gripe I have with localization. The JP version compares Touma (Valla) to hell constantly. To jump ahead a bit, I believe in the JP versions of the End of All Sky/Land/Below tracks are even called The End of All Roads Heaven/Earth/Hell. The Vallites are also often called demons in the JP version, and Anankos himself is known as the ‘Invisible Demon Dragon’.

Another cool thing I just thought of too, is a connection to a popular Japanese short story. Zelda fans might be familiar with the story, “The Spider’s Thread”, which inspired the Ancient Cistern dungeon in Skyward Sword.

The beginning of the story has Buddha walking through paradise (heaven), before coming across a pond. The pond is filled with crystal clear water, and covered with water lilies/lotuses. As Buddha gazes further into the pond, he begins to see the depths of hell.

Sound familiar? “Azura is walking through Hoshido, before coming across a lake. The lake is filled with crystal clear water, and when she gazes into the lake she sees the fallen kingdom of her birth. Valla, the kingdom associated with water lilies/lotuses in the game, has been turned into hell itself.”

This association loses its meaning a bit when the comparisons to hell are a bit toned down, as well as when the Buddhist inspirations were kind of supplanted in favor of Greek renames. It’s not supremely important to the plot as a whole, but it’s something interesting I wanted to bring up.

-In the JP version, while explaining what happened in Valla, Azura eventually says “Using the art of manipulating people’s souls, he (Hydra/Anankos) made the people kill each other.” This bit of the people killing each other was cut in localization.

Chapter 12

-In the JP version, when Corrin asks Flora if she knows anything about dragons, Flora says “Sorry, I don’t know…The ancestral dragon of the Ice Clan has already perished and isn’t part of the legend. I don’t know what role it plays, sorry…” Localization makes her response “I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything... They've been gone so long that we don't even have tales of dragons in the Ice Tribe. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more assistance...”

So, the JP version explicitly says the Ice Dragon is dead (I believe Fates’ second artbook mentioned this as well), whereas the localization only says the First Dragons have been gone for a long time.

Chapter 16

-There’s not really much of a problem that I have with what Ryoma says about Corrin “having leadership qualities at a young age” but I wanted to do comparisons regardless cuz the word choice might lead one to different conclusions. In localization, Ryoma says this:

Ryoma: Huh... So she told us the same thing... I don't think it's in Corrin's nature to lie. And there's a leadership quality about her that just attracts followers. I remember being jealous of her as a child, in fact. Even at such a young age, she displayed the characteristics of a ruler. Silly to be jealous of her, right?

In the JP version, Ryoma says this:

Ryoma: Oh... So, she told you the same thing. …Corrin isn’t one to tell lies. She’s been like that since childhood. She’s always genuine and honest... She has this mysterious appeal that draws people to her. Seeing my younger sister with the qualities of being a ruler... Honestly, it makes me feel envious. …What a ridiculous thing to say, right?

Again, I don’t necessarily have a problem with how it was localized, but some might. The localization version might have people think that Corrin somehow was a fantastic leader at such a young age, but JP is more clear that it was about the qualities she had at a young age that would be valuable as a leader.

Chapter 19

-A minor gripe. In the localization, Azura says that Anankos uses his magic to send Vallites to Nohr and Hoshido to stir up conflict. In the JP version, she says he uses magic, along with the help of a body of water. That’s why whenever you fight Vallites outside of Valla proper, there’s a body of water nearby; Hoshido’s lake (and the ponds shown in Hinoka’s CQ battle which are in the capital) for Chapter 5, the sea for BR chapter 11, the burning falls for BR chapter 21, and the city for Rev chapter 13. Similarly, the consequences of being a victim to the curse are described as “turning into sea foam” in the JP version. Localization as a whole kind of toned down how much water has an influence on the story.

Chapter 23

-Probably the pettiest gripe I have lol. As Arete is fading away from Azura’s arms, Azura has a different reaction in localization and Japanese. In localization, Azura says “Mother? Mother!” while a voice clip of her in-battle pain cries plays. In the JP, she says “*Sob... Sob*…! Mother... Mother...!”, while a voice clip of her crying plays. Her crying voice clip I don’t recall hearing anywhere else.

This is one of the few times in the you get to see Azura express a heavy and heartfelt emotion, since her rough childhood caused her to remain guarded and stoic around everyone. The equivalents to this scene in other routes is her death scene in Birthright, and her crying with Corrin over Ryoma’s death in Conquest; a normally unflinching and aloof character breaking down is a rarity, and indicates that the cause of it is something to take note of for the character as a whole. Localization softened this aspect, and I take issue with it, despite it probably seeming trivial to most other people.

Chapter 24

-When Corrin is questioning the phantom Mikoto, an exchange happens. In localization, part of it goes like this:

Corrin: But this can't be... Are you truly my mother?

Mikoto: I am. Even as a puppet of Anankos, my spirit at least remains my own.

Corrin: I... I believe you.

In the JP version, it goes like this:

Corrin: It can’t be... …Are you really my mother?

Mikoto: Yes... I became an Invisible servant, controlled by the Invisible King... Even so, I am your mother.

Corrin: …………

Again, a minor thing that I don’t personally have issue with, but replacing Corrin’s silence with an admittance of belief could make some believe she has “reverted” back to being too naïve.

Chapter 26

-While Gunter is relaying his past, an exchange happens. In localization, it goes like this:

Gunter: I ask myself that, every day. I cannot understand the minds of royals. To you all, we commoners are little more than pawns in your schemes... Or weeds to be killed on a whim.

Corrin: That's not true...

Xander: Is that how people view the royalty?

Ryoma: Such an impression would easily breed powerful resentment...

In the JP version, Corrin, Xander and Ryoma don’t say anything. They just remain silent.

Endgame

-Not a major problem so much as a general thing about the game, but I can think of like... at least three memes that Treehouse inserted into the localization. Now I like memes, but there is no better way to date your media nowadays. One of them was Kana’s “That’s dragon for I love you” which tbh, is kind of cute and isn’t the most well known meme so I guess I can let it slide. Another is Felicia saying “I had one job!” when she messes up in the dining hall, which isn’t that big of a deal since the dining hall is very optional.

The last one I can think of is why I put this specific grievance here, and it’s during Corrin’s speech before facing Anankos.

Corrin: We won't back down! This is my... This is our destiny! Ready your weapons! Fight for your friends! With the Seal of Flames... With the Fire Emblem on our side! We fight for our world!!

Yeah, she says “Fight for your friends” which is everyone’s favorite Ike line from Brawl. Now, this isn’t even a totally inaccurate translation either, but it kind of just... makes the moment funny for the player when it’s supposed to be commanding and serious I guess.

But yeah, not the most important issue by far, but something I’d thought to mention. Hell, it’s not even that bad compared to how they made Peri’s, Effie’s and Hisame’s quirks into exaggerated and tired jokes. And the Beruka-Saizo support. Never forget.

-When Azura and Corrin are by the lake and discuss the latter’s plans to rule, Corrin says this in localization:

Corrin: I'm going to make Valla a wonderful place! In honor of the true last king and for Queen Arete. And everyone who fought... I promise to make them all proud.

In the JP version, she says this:

Corrin: I’ll make the Invisible Kingdom (Valla) into a great land. For the previous monarch, Queen Shenmei (Arete)… And for all of my allies who fought beside me. I promise.

So, JP version only mentions Arete as the reigning monarch of Valla. Which makes sense, cuz unless there was some wild “keeping the bloodline pure” shenanigans in Valla, Arete being the Queen keeps in line with what we know about the rest of Valla’s history. Arete was royalty from birth, as was her sister Mikoto. Arete is the one who passed down Lost in Thoughts and the pendant to Azura.

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yukisohmasmokesweed · 4 years ago

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So I’m rewatching all of season 2, but now through the dub format and it’s actually pretty good?? Like there are moments where it’s a little jarring, but mostly I’m impressed by everyone’s performance. Kureno’s VA is so good (!??!) like I wasn’t expecting to like his voice that much, but crickey, the English performance is amazing (makes me wish for the 100th time that they didn’t make his character a creep) I’m also really impressed with Tohru, kyo and shigure’s actors, they honestly portrayed all of their respective characters with such nuance and consideration! I was even impressed with Eric Vale, he’s a talented actor though his voice for Yuki does have those awkward moments, but it seems like he’s getting more comfortable with playing yuki! I’m honestly so hopeful and ready for the next couple of episodes, I’m excited to see how the voice acting will continue to improve and change

opinions on the dub? I dont speak eng irl so I always watch anime subbed. I know a lot of people hold emotional attachment to the dub since they grow up watching the 01 anime. I heard the main trio dubbed voices and I really liked kyos , sounds similar to his jp voice! I prefer tohru with her jp voice but the eng is not bad... and yuki... i absolutely dislike his dubbed voice and im sorry if i sound rude 🥺. Its just too deep? It lacks emotion imo

(combining these asks since they’re about the same topic)

i like the dub a lot! i hold somewhat of an emotional attachment to it since i grew up with the og dub, but i actually always hated eric vale’s yuki (but preferred him to his jpn va from the og who is a woman with a pretty high voice, though an amazing actor who also plays sailor mercury and miki from utena). vale’s reboot yuki has grown on me a lot and agreed that he still has awkward/stiff moments, and also agreed that his voice is too deep. overall i think eric vale was miscast as yuki, i would have preferred someone with a naturally higher voice because i think yuki just. has a naturally higher voice like shimazaki does. i also think eric vale relies too much on breathiness to try and make up for how deep his voice is but it comes off as exasperated or even creepy when he’s not meaning to be. i think his yuki has greatly improved over s2 and he’s settled a bit more in the role and taken out a lot of that breathiness, which i like, but it does mean that he’s speaking lower. besides that i do think vale is a good actor and he’s doing what he can with the role, but because of his vocal quality and because i’m constantly comparing him to shimazaki, who i think was absolutely perfectly cast as well as an incredible actor who deeply understands the role, i will never love vale’s yuki. but he’s fine.

i agree that jerry jewell actually sounds similar to yuuma uchida, but jerry jewell has a really specific vocal quality that uchida doesn’t have which makes them both unique from one another. jewell has a sort of throatiness to his voice that uchida doesn’t have and uchida is pretty growly with his kyo (and overall, i’ve heard him in other roles) but i really love both of them equally tbh! but jerry jewell will always be my kyo, when i read kyo i hear his voice. i like these two an equal amount and its very exciting to have two incredible actors who i love so much interpreting the same role.

i LOOOOOVE love love love laura bailey’s tohru, i think she’s doing incredible work and i’m super looking forward to hearing tohru’s more serious scenes in english this season. i also really like manaka iwami, her performance is very understated and i think she captures the role perfectly. i don’t prefer one over the other but i definitely have a lot of nostalgia connected to bailey’s tohru.

also yes im glad you brought up kureno’s english va because I LOVE HIM??? i like kureno’s jpn va but i think his english va is perfectly cast, exactly what i think kureno should sound like. he has a great vocal quality for kureno and he seems like a good actor from what i’ve heard so far, very excited to hear more from him.

i also big love john burgmeir who plays shigure, i think he’s perfect for the role and he’s always gotten shigure’s humor really well but i’m enjoying all of his dramatic readings as well. colleen clinkenbeard’s akito is also great and i love hearing both actor’s versions of akito, i think she sounds pretty similar to maaya sakamoto vocally but the delivery is slightly different. another big one i love is justin cooke’s haru, i think he’s a great actor and perfectly cast and i always enjoy his line readings.

sometimes i have problems with momiji’s va but i have problems with his japanese va too, i like the english va’s vocal quality better but the accent irks me. other than that though i think fb has a very solid cast and i really enjoy watching the dub and hearing other actors’ takes on the same roles!

#ask #acting commentary #Anonymous #takes a huge bong rip

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nebulous-wanderings · 6 years ago

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Tokyo Trip/Kurenai Enishi October 19-21, 2018

Wow look who procrastinated writing a blog post for this for 2 months (me). I made a mini-post when I got back but I didn’t really explain everything I saw and did in my 48hrs there so I’ll do that here. More pictures and me rambling about Tsukista below~

I only went on this little weekend trip because my friend and I had gotten tickets to see Tsukista’s 6th Stage Kurenai Enishi. I would’ve stayed longer but I wanted to save my vacation days for next year :P Luckily, my friend was able to meet me in Tokyo from the area of Japan she currently lives in and stayed with me for the weekend to watch the show.

I arrived Friday evening and checked into the hostel. It had the best prices for the area and was super clean and easy to check in and out - I would definitely stay there again! After that I met @lavendermintrose at Animate since I wanted to buy a penlight and shop around for a bit. We then made a spontaneous visit to the karaoke place with the Tsukista drink collab~

My other friend arrived at the hostel later that night, and we ate a late-night meal and were up until like 2am drafting fan letters on our phones to write onto stationary the next day.

On Saturday we went to Harajuku for breakfast (see first pic at the top) and scoped out the Tsukipro Harajuku Shop. We had timeslots to enter on Sunday, but we passed by it to take a look at how it was set up. After that we tried to get to the train station as fast as possible in order to get to the theater in time for the merch queue to start but Takeshita Dori was looking like this:

which is sooo much worse than Times Square so we were crawling at a snail’s pace back to the station. After the trainride, we got off in Shinjuku where the theater was and it was a bit complicated to find since Google Maps had us cross through and mall and back outside to find the theater (that’s also connected to a movie theater). The line had only opened up 5mins before we got there but there were already so many people ahead of us:

(the entrance is a little past that white sign board with colored rectangles). The wait didn’t feel too long ince they opened sales a bit earlier than the scheduled time and it moved pretty quickly.

My and my friend’s matching tsukiusas (+ my Sing Together Forever usa). I don’t do itabags so I at least brought these little guys.

The merch form~ They got stricter with the purchase limit for this stage (like one copy of each CD per person). (+ check out that girl's Aoi and Yoru itabag in the background)

The hallway to the merch sale tables/entrance to the theater was lined with Kurenai Enishi posters with art of the nenchuu by Jiku-sensei. They matched the red walls nicely lol.

(My face looks really weird in this pic so I covered it lmao) but I was super excited in line 😂 After buying all of out stuff there was a little over an hour until the show started so we got some food and the food court next door and started writing our letters:

My friend wrote one for Yuusaku and gifted local omiyage from her region. I wrote one for Yuusaku and one for Yuusuke. Technically my friend wrote it for me since my handwriting absolutely sucks and we were pressed for time (I would’ve taken forever to write the kana) but I wrote the whole message and she just copied the Japanese onto paper. I handwrote the English I included at the end and also signed it. I included some gifts I brought with me from NY to give to them as well.

We got to the theater as doors opened and placed our letters and gifts in the boxes then picked up the premium seat bonuses (2 group bromides and a shrine charm in the 3rd pic from the top). The charm was one of six color combos depending on which day it was and luckily for me that day was the Rui/Iku colors! Ours were in the 6th or 7th row off to the right. The stage was very wide and we were right in front of the little side-stage area where the actors come out from.

I won’t spoil the plot but I will say that people cried during one of the more dramatic scenes. I wouldn’t say it’s as sad as Yunemigusa though lol (I saw ver. Red btw). It was really cool seeing the new cast for the first time, and I think they all did a fantastic job!

The Mutsuki-kun higawari had Gaku (Haru’s actor) as some evil guy trying to defeat Kakeru who is trying to become a stronger ninja. At first it was just a pair of sunglasses talking while Gaku did the voiceover from backstage but then he appeared on stage in a white lab coat. It was really funny, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly his character was supposed to be referencing lol. Also random note: there was a reoccurring mushroom joke that I also found really funny lol.

The songs in Kurenai Enishi weren’t my favorite per se (I’m not a huge fan of slow songs) but they matched the mood and tone of the show very well. However, I do love the theme song since it’s catchy and makes me want to chant along with it lol.

Since I watched the Red version with Procellarum as the focus, the dance live was their group songs and solo character songs from the 2nd season of CDs. The background dancers were the Six Gravity counterparts from the same age group. Rui is my fave and Yuusaku was soooo cute performing “Oh… Yes!” Ryoki did a great job as Iku, and his dancing looked so pro I was amazed. I was really bopping to You’s “Manatsu no Summer” and he went into the crowd for fanservice as usual lol. For the entirety of Yoru’s song, I was just staring at Yuusaku’s face cuz he’s so bright and sparkly~ He had a big smile on just like Tani’s Yoru and looked like he was having fun. During Kai’s “Beast Master,” I was on the side Haru was mostly dancing on, and let me just say Gaku went IN on the hip movements and overall risqué dance moves lmao. Can’t wait to see that again on the DVD 😂 Taka had big shoes to fill as Shun, but he was great throughout the play and dance live (sasuga idols) and his Shun voice was even super similar to Tomoyuu’s.

At the end they performed “Tsuki no Uta” with both groups which was a lot of fun. I was debating whether or not to change penlight colors at each verse but it would’ve been too difficult lol. I had them on Rui and Iku for the whole duration of the song, but did all the name-yelling fanchants which was fun to be a part of (this was my first time at a jp live event). At the end when everyone runs back and forth on the stage waving goodbye, I was sitting close enough to the stage to tell who in the crowd they were looking at, and I got waves from Iku (who probably saw me frantic waving my green and brown penlights) and Kai! Kai also did a finger gun shoot to the girl 2 seats away from me (sitting next to my friend) since she had a Kai uchiwa and she was crying tears of joy all after that lol.

The closing message for that performance was from Yuusuke, and I could tell he was a bit nervous trying to get words out but he looked genuinely happy to be up there on stage. (Honestly, stan Akiba Yuusuke, he’s adorable).

After it was over, I wanted to watch it again, it felt so short! But we met up with Lavender for some more Tsukista collab karaoke and talked about the show and fangirled over stuff. I kept getting Shun coasters when buying the collab drinks, but in the end I ended up with a Rui at least so all was well. I need some more Growth fans to karaoke with so we can all harmonize on the songs 😂

On Sunday, we went to the Tsukipro Harajuku Shop, but I’ll include that in a separate posts since I hit picture limit in this one already. Overall, I had a fun time and I’m super glad I was able to fulfill one of my goals which was to watch a Tsukista show live! I landed back home at 8pm on Sunday and thankfully I was able to wake up in time for work the next day (due in part to me sleeping most of the plane ride back). 10/10 would do a weekend trip (or longer) again for a stage play or concert 👍

#my digressings #tokyo trip 2018 #tsukista #kurenai enishi

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hippomanblog · 6 years ago

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My Fire Emblem Rankings

I’ve had a few questions about my legitimate Fire Emblem opinions and thoughts, so I figured I’d write this up while I’m waiting for some things to process. This is all just personal opinion, no shade is meant to be being thrown, and this probably won’t interest you too much. But, hey, here it is. I’ll list the Fire Emblems going from favorite to least favorite, and explain a little bit about why I feel that way. Note that I won’t be including 1-5. I’m considering the remakes the “definitive” versions of 1/2/3, and I haven’t actually played the Jugdral games. I’m also not counting Heroes because it’s kinda hard to “judge”, but I do like it a lot and play on a pretty regular basis. THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR EACH GAME!

#1. Awakening

Awakening is a game that gets a few things wrong but most things right. What don’t I like about it? I preferred the art style of the Tellius games. The maps aren’t very creative. Pair Up is a thematically cool mechanic that really doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and trivializes many encounters. The story is simple, with the exception of a couple twists, and Validar is a dull villain. I like pretty much everything else. Awakening managed to be accessible to new fans and still provide a nice challenge for series veterans. There’s a diverse selection of characters who are all pretty viable, meaning you can use your favorites. Most characters have a lot of personality and depth to their lines, like with how they turned Frederick from a typical stoic Jagen-type into this goofy obsessive pyromaniac without making him a complete joke character. The SpotPass characters are also a lovely addition if you adore the series like I do, and there’s just so much to do in this game, so it feels like a celebration of the franchise as a whole. If I’m trying to get someone into Fire Emblem, I will tell them to play Awakening. Favorite Character: Gregor or Owain. Least Favorite Character: Yarne #2. New Mystery Of The Emblem

This is bias, yes, but I love New Mystery. I was really excited for this game, because I was pretty new to the fanbase when it was announced, and couldn’t wait for an English release. I waited, and waited, and waited, and... Once I finished playing my JP copy I just lamented that we didn’t get to play this game here. I think that while Awakening reinvents Fire Emblem, New Mystery is sort of the pinnacle of “classic” FE. The game is just fun, the maps are diverse and challenging, and the combination of reclass and the sheer amount of playable characters gives it immense replay value. The plot is nothing to really write home about, but after the vast wasteland of Shadow Dragon Plot, I really liked what was there. It’s nothing that’ll blow your mind, but there are some nice moments. I know a lot of people hate Kris, but I don’t mind them. I won’t go to bat for them being any kind of great character or vital addition to the story, but as a sounding board to give other Archanea characters a little personality, and a way to customize your own unit and give them all sorts of terrible hats, they work just fine. I also like the idea of Marth as a bit of a shell-shocked, reluctant king who relies on his friends to rise to greatness. It prevents him from being “too perfect”, like RD Ike. But I can see where people have problems with this. I wish this were a more accessible entry in the series, because I think it has a little bit of something for every Fire Emblem fan. Favorite Character: Honestly? I like Caeda and Ogma, they’re cool people. Least Favorite Character: matthis is creepy and I hate him 3. Blazing Sword

Like a lot of people, Blazing Sword was my first exposure to the series (through an LP on Youtube for me), and it does a great job. You could honestly probably swap these first three around in any order, to be frank. The balance in this one is a little wonky, and it goes on a little too long. But I like what it does with its extra time. You get some clever gaidens that mix up the formula, have room to use lots of units, and the sprite animations are just wonderful to watch. The three lords all bring something to the table, even though you’re honestly probably just going to play Hector Mode once you’ve unlocked it. Lyn has a story about claiming your birthright and using nobility to help people, Hector’s brash and boorish nature is offset as he learns how to be a better person on his journey (That scene with Matthew on the Dread Isle is great.), and Eliwood...exists. With maps ranging from cramped and objective based to sprawling battlefields, there’s a lot of variety in gameplay and room for different units to shine. It’s also got some of the best supports in the series. It’s a must-play for any Fire Emblem fan. Favorite: Hector is a good boy and a friend. Legault is also a surprisingly involved side-character with some great lines and dialogue with almost every Morph in the final map! Least Favorite: Jaffar, because it’s hard to tell if I hate him more for killing Leila or ramming his face into the paladin in Battle Before Dawn and getting slaughtered so many times.

4. Path Of Radiance

I guess only the top 3 are getting thumbnails, sorry. PoR sticks with me because it tries a lot of new things and most of them work out. The bonus experience is a good system, I think this game does support unlocks better than any other, Laguz units are fun to use, and the conversion to pseudo-3D maps feels smooth and never gets in the way of gameplay. There are issues, though. I’m not a fan of the way the full-body portraits look in the cutscenes of this game, biorhythm is silly, and that Bridge Map sure does Exist. The reason this isn’t breaking Top 3, though, is that I just never really got attached to the cast. Characters are a big part of Fire Emblem for me, and while there are some great ones in PoR, there are also several that feel very forgettable. The plot is also a little...iffy, because it’s all FANTASY RACISM and it feels like it’s trying to punch above its pay grade sometimes. Like, be honest, did you give a shit that you had to kill Jill’s dad? That character who showed up maybe once? The maps also tend to blend together, with a few notable exceptions (because they’re annoying, mostly). In Minor Nitpick Town, the 3D cutscenes are hilariously goofy and the Trial characters have really awful unlock conditions. Still, PoR is a very solid entry and I’d give it a hearty recommendation. Favorite: Ranulf, probably. Least Favorite: makalov shouldn’t have been recruitable

5. Sacred Stones I balked a little at putting this one this low, like “Really? This is FIFTH?” But I guess that’s just a testament to how much I enjoy all these games. Like with the top three, you could probably swap this with PoR. Sacred Stones gets a lot of shit for being “too easy”, and I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong, but I also don’t think it’s that big a deal. This game takes risks, but they’re good risks that frequently pay off. This was the ideal game for the Trainee classes to come in, because you can actually feasibly use them! The monsters add variation to the types of enemies you encounter! Split promotions are interesting tactical decisions that give the player more control over their personal experience! There’s just...not a ton of substance to SS, though. The monsters, at heart, aren’t really interesting to fight. The game’s plot often feels like it’s on fast forward, and it ends before any real tension builds. The villains are, with the exception of Lyon, who’s great, mostly just cardboard cutouts of bad guy stereotypes. The postgame is mostly just grindy and once you’ve beaten the Tower or Ruins once, you’ll probably say “okay, I’m done!” Well, you aren’t, not if you want 100%! Get back in there and kill more Dracozombies to unlock your underleveled Druid! If you really crave that “challenge” as an essential part of your FE experience, although I think SS is often made out to be easier than it really is, you can probably skip it. But for most fans, it’s not to be passed up. Favorite: L’Arachel, of course. Least Favorite: I usually forget Syrene is in the game until she appears. 6. Fates: Conquest Yes, I’m dividing Fates into three games. Sue me. Conquest feels like the best of the Fates routes, because it’s creative. In... a lot of ways. The maps are creative. While some just amount to gimmicks, several are, in my opinion, series standouts. Chapter 9 is a Defense map that actually feels like a Defense map. You’ve got anti-siege weapons, you’re scrambling to keep the Hoshidans from flooding in, and when Takumi drains the water the whole dynamic of the map suddenly changes. It rules. To me, that map encompasses all the best parts of Conquest. It’s too bad it’s still in Fates, though. Let’s get it out of the way: Plot Bad. But, unique to Conquest, I think, is a plot so utterly ridiculous and convoluted that it actually becomes actively enjoyable. This is a story where your cousin puts on a different colored costume to COMPLETELY FOOL your adoptive dad, who she reveals is actually a jelly monster, but cannot tell anyone else because of a terrible curse inflicted by the King Of The Jelly Monsters, so you organize an invasion of an entire country to unmask Jelly Dad by making him sit on the Super Special Chair that will reveal his gelatinous form. I love it, to be honest. Otherwise my issues are mostly just the standard Fates Problems. The game tries to take what worked in Awakening and amp it up to 11, which ruins most of it. The child characters are unmemorable and the plot explanation is bafflingly nonsensical (BABY DIMENSIONS), the characters often feel like they’re just gimmicks that smash into eachother and then get married for some reason, and the game tries to be so many things at once that most of them feel half-assed or over-complicated. Jelly King Dad though. Favorite: Arthur cracks me up. Least Favorite: Peri Peri Peri peri peri p e r i p e r i 7. Echoes: Shadows Of Valentia

Confession time. I still haven’t finished this one all the way. I’ve seen the ending, though. Let’s get the problems out of the way first. The gameplay is not very fun. The map design delights in sticking you in poisonous swamps, slow and dreary deserts, or Nuibaba’s Abode, which I would personally say is the worst map in the series. While some of Awakening and Birthright’s maps feel lazy, most maps in this game feel like they were designed either just to frustrate you or with a series of random dice rolls that somehow plant a single Cavalier at the ass-end of nowhere and extend the map for three turns with zero rhyme or reason. Class balance is all over the place and you basically just want all the Dread Fighters possible, with a Cleric to summon more Dread Fighters. The dungeon crawling doesn’t add much, most of the game mechanics go woefully underexplained, and the voiced supports feel minimalist and shallow. But when Echoes works? It really, really works. I don’t like playing it, but watching someone play Echoes is a treat. The game is bursting with personality thanks to some phenomenal voice acting, which leaves the story with some unforgettable moments, both comic (the boey scream) and dramatic (Berkut Loses His Shit). Even though the characters don’t have a lot of explicit backstory, their voices and conversations are so expressive that it’s easy to sort of form your own ideas about their personalities and lives. The art is some of the best in the series, and each portrait is expressive and well done. It’s clear that this remake had a lot of care put into it, and it produced some of the series best lords and a wonderful new villain in the sinister Berkut. 8. Radiant Dawn

A lot of good things from Path Of Radiance carry over to Radiant Dawn. Namely, the stuff I mentioned earlier, I won’t go into it all again. All of that is good, but the new additions and changes often don’t work. The multiple viewpoints has a few cool moments, like facing down Ike and friends in 3-13 (with the greatest faceless NPC of all time on your side), but often just contributes to making the game way too long and making the characters often appear outright stupid or contradictory for the sake of moving the plot along. Remember when Micaiah, who spared one of the most vile people in FE history in Part 1, dumped flaming oil on a 13 year old girl and her guards in Part 3? Remember when Ranulf just walks up and tells you who the Black Knight is, ending a mystery that had been developed since the previous game with the dialogue equivalent of showing you a spoiler on the internet? Remember blood pacts? The massive split in characters also makes some of them completely worthless. Never forget the sad case of Vika, who suddenly disappears and doesn’t return until almost the final chapter, still at her Part 1 level. Yikes. I do enjoy the Finale maps a lot, however, and the final boss encounter is fairly memorable, though it does carry its own problem with Ike being basically hero worshipped by the entire cast, to the point where only he can strike down Ashera. I like Ike, but RD kind of feels like it’s forcing him down your throat sometimes. Favorite: Out of the new characters, Nolan, probably? Least Favorite: surprise it’s still makalov 9. Shadow Dragon I’m sure this is bottoming out a lot of people’s lists, but let me make my case. 1. Reclass is cool and they introduced it in this.

2. Hardin’s turban.

3. The Prologue, where IS got to make new stuff, is a lot of fun and has personality.

Okay, so Shadow Dragon is disappointing. It’s a remake that did not change enough, and if the FE games were yogurt flavors, Shadow Dragon would be the batch they just forgot to put flavoring in. Everything, down to the graphics, is covered in this thin veneer of blandness, and it’s sort of a muddy march to the finale, so you can finally take down a villain who literally gets about four lines in the whole game. The Gaiden chapters also feel like a rude prank. If you want to get at the fun maps with the interesting characters with good dialogue, you have to slaughter all of your friends on purpose! At least it’s in Shadow Dragon so you probably won’t like most of them anyway! Favorite: The guy who calls Gordin “Gaggles”. Least Favorite: surprise it’s still makalovmatthis 10. Binding Blade I admit that this is bizarre placement. I just...don’t like Binding Blade. It’s mostly due to stat distribution in gameplay, honestly. The skill/luck formula in this one results in a lot of boss fights that are just two 40% characters whiffing on eachother for ages. Several of the maps are giant slogs, especially 14, but I don’t remember any in particular that I really enjoyed. The plot is okay, but not memorable. Idunn is a bit of a letdown encounter. Hector deserved better. To summarize, I guess I just don’t think this is a game that does anything that Blazing Sword didn’t do better. So I’m gonna play that one instead. Favorite: Bors because of a terrible stupid inside joke I have with a friend. Least Favorite: I don’t remember anyone I cared enough to dislike, really. Let’s go with Cath for having the worst recruitment for a Worse Chad. 11. Fates: Birthright Remember all those cool things Conquest did? What if they didn’t? Birthright! While the story is still bad, it’s not nearly as funny-bad, although I do have to give props to the scene where Flora sets herself on fire and Jakob spends about a solid minute screaming out how pointless this is, echoing the player’s thoughts perfectly. The maps are mostly just stat-checks and open fields, and the answer to your problems often isn’t “make a better plan”, it’s “go grind a bit and then just roll through it”, especially on some late-game maps. Iago’s comes to mind, with the whole Entrap into Berzerker combo? Screw that. Favorite: Azama is a treasure. On the NPC (in this route) side, Elise is a beacon of rationality and kindness. I sure hope nothing happens to h-Oh. Least Favorite: I remember literally nothing about the personalities of Hana and Hinata so them, I guess.

12. Fates: Revelations Do you remember when I said Shadow Dragon was like unflavored yogurt? What if all the flavorings got mixed into one batch? And then you add chocolate and cherries and sprinkles and nuts and caramel and parsley and cinnamon and more cherries and shaved ice and spaghetti and then you tell it to explain the plot of Fates. That’ll be 20 dollars. Revelations actively harms the other two routes of the game by being the obvious “true route”, where nobody has to get hurt (except the best characters, r.i.p. Scarlet and Izana) and everything turns out just fine, negating any sort of moral ambiguity present! Anankos is a non-entity and a dull villain, and to add insult to injury, you don’t get to learn shit about him unless you buy the other DLC for this DLC that also decides to crib from Awakening and mess with some of the characters from that one. Almost every map has a bizarre gimmick that’s just weirdly cumbersome, and the amount of plot twists the game shoves at you in an attempt to explain EVERYTHING is just exhausting. You can play as any character in the Fates package (almost, double r.i.p. Izana) but the balance is tossed out the window to the point where once Niles and Odin come crawling in, they’re nigh-unusable in their joining chapter. It doesn’t feel like any part of it really comes together. Favorite: not this Least Favorite: Thinking about what else I could have bought with those 20 dollars. Well, that took about two hours, but this is my list. If you have any questions, I’m open. Sorry if I dissed your favorite, but if it helps, know that I can see why someone would enjoy any game in the series, even my least favorites. Also, know that I’m an idiot on the internet and that my opinion doesn’t have to impact what you enjoy! Just love the games you love, I’ll stick with mine, and we’re cool! I’m going to stop typing now.

#fire emblem #hippoman #ranking #opinion #awakening #favorites #spoilers

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xtremedespair3d · 5 years ago

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Anime Fall 2019 Final Impressions + Plans for Winter 2020 [FINAL]

Before I start reviewing every anime I watched this season, I want to address this first: As the title suggest, this is gonna be my last post, but not my last post overall (as I’m still working on my 2019 review with a little bit of my history from the last 10 years to celebrate the end of 2010 and the start of 2020), this is the last post of the seasonal anime review series.

This may be a one-time thing since it’s the last post, but I’m gonna keep my opinions as short as possible because, here’s a story: right after I published my previous Summer 2019 anime review post, I started by sharing my post on a Discord server, someone pinged me about reading my post I just shared as well as my retirement post (finally, someone who reads my stuff), I later started talking about my issues with making these posts, such as inconsistent formatting, don’t really have much opinion on what I saw or looking forward to, and my least favorite: post-publish editing, about the part of not having much thought on the shows I watch or gonna watch next, this guy from the Karoshi Discord server who atually read my previous Summer anime review post responded with this:

Well, I’ll gladly try not to write lengthy paragraphs when in reality I don’t really have much to comment, but at the same time, it’s going to be rather weird how there’s one entry with little to no comments and another with lengthy paragraphs whenever I actually feel like commenting. I’ve always been forcing myself to make lengthy paragraphs because I needed to make these posts look even as much as possible. (And I still ended up having a little bit of forced opinions, but at the same time, there are some small things that I needed to get it out of my heart, and there are other lengthy things for the same reason)

However, there are some things that I do really feel like making lengthy reviews, so I’ll point them out with a * representing “Lengthy review written by heart.”

The only things I ended up having no commentary at all were three anticipated anime in contrast to literally everything else which I still ended up making lengthy posts, though I guarantee some of these were from heart.

(Let me know if I should change my ShareX image quality settings to .png or .jpg because I’ve been using .jpg for a while and now I started to notice that the quality is absolute crap. I should have pasted it when I cropped it for sure, but I just wanted to formally upload this, so I can make this post look “formal”, even though there’s a little bit of informal writing, sometimes.)

(Also, check the end of the post for my birthday thanks)

Ranking every anime I watched this season from best to worst

I should also address why I do these posts from top to bottom even though it should be the other way around, it’s because I like keeping track of what’s my highest and what’s my lowest, although now that I think about it, I should have made outlines of these lists and the moment I start making these posts, I could go from the lowest to the highest like many sites do, but whatever. Also, if that wasn’t enough, the thumbnails already spoil what’s my #1 AOTS.

Let’s get right to the rankings!

1.- Azur Lane: The Animation*: I’m super addicted to Azur Lane, I even play it a lot more than FGO, and when the anime was announced, I defintely was absolutely hyped for it! And now, it’s finally here and boy, it absolutely didn’t disappoint! So let’s get right to it! (Also, expect me to draw comparisons with Kancolle a lot. inb4 y’all gonna tell me “Try to bring Warship Girls for better comparison” and all that jazz and honestly, I don’t even care about lesser known shipfus properties as much as I do with Kancolle and Azur Lane)

For starters, the anime uses the “Azur Lane vs Red Axis” storyline which is a reference to the guild menu.

(Screenshot from the Azur Lane Wiki with the old UI)

(My screenshot of the guild menu with the new UI, for comparison)

As someone who always plays Azur Lane a lot, this is one thing I overlooked for the most part and I feel kinda stupid for it.

There’s just like a ton of easter eggs I understood, I could make posts after posts from each episode or just make like a compilation post about every single easter egg from the game in every episode, I was literally geeking out on all of them.

The animation wasn’t the greatest, sadly, and even Kancolle looked better than Azur Lane does, but I’m not really mad about it nor I care! Even so, there were still some interesting sakuga moments! However, for the last time about the visuals, Kancolle has a uniformal character designs (calling them same faces would be a stretch), but Azur Lane does a pretty good job on capturing the different art styles the characters have, at least from their facial structures. It’s still no Chain Chronicle-tier (nor there will be anything with the same animation and character designs as the Chain Chronicle OVAs EVER!), but I’m impressed!

Speaking of the animation, episodes 11 and 12 will be delayed UNTIL MARCH while the entire series will be rebroadcast in January so we could lead up to the finale episodes in March. Well that’s certainly going to be quite a while to wait but they’re doing this to deliver the best animated finale episodes as possible, so I’m totally down for it!

Perhaps my big problem with the story is that the subplot focused more on trying to befriend Ayanami and there wasn’t much of Z23, but I think it’s more like they’re pulling from the JP server’s starter ship roster with Javelin, Laffey and Ayanami while Z23 is an unlockable. But it doesn’t matter, we do not point out issues or think of what I didn’t like which I had no problems, it always leave me a sour taste in what I’ve always been hyped for, so forget what I said.

Not to mention there are a little bit of elements that are completely new in the series and I wish they added them in the game, like Kaga’s giant fox ship and Unicorn’s flying U-chan (I didn’t know U-chan lives, I thought it was a simple lifeless stuffed animal), Hornet and Laffey in swimsuits (Come on, Manjuu, give them these swimsuits), etc.

The anime is also making me like some characters more, I kinda like Sheffield more because she’s badass (and doesn’t wear panties), but I’m liking Belfast a lot more than I have before, her chemistry with Enterprise is just amazing, I really love seeing these two together.

To top it all off, the first volume of the Blu-Ray has a really awesome unlockable of a new Enterprise costume! Which I’ll probably never get of course because I don’t think I could ever buy the BD.

I also didn’t know I needed and find it strange to hear English dub in the anime when the game has 100% Japanese voices, and I really wonder how much of the VAs know about this game and if they play it themselves (I’m sure they might not). This is a common thing with mobage adaptations (and even Kancolle), and Azur Lane is no exception.

Azur Lane The Animation is truly a love letter to the people who play the game, especially me because boy, I couldn’t stop pointing out references galore! It’s sad that the series only has 12 episodes, but I really hope it gets second seasons and even a movie like Kancolle did... Alright, what I’m saying is that I want Azur Lane The Animation to straight-up copy Kancolle The Animation. (Speaking of which, season 2 of Kancolle The Animation is coming and it’s an absolute joke that it’s happening) I want more storylines, I want more ships, I want more Azur Lane anime to exist!

But if this is really gonna be a one-off series, I’ll be forever sad because I won’t get more animated Azur Lane related stuff, I want to see everything being brought to life. Since it’s a big franchise right now, I hope it could get the Fate/Grand Order treatment where there should be different anime by different studios, that’s what I’d love to see!

UPDATE - December 24th: It seems like my dream of more Azur Lane anime is finally becoming true, as they announced an adaptation of the 4koma series!

10/10 - 100% - Rank: S++, I don’t give a shit about what anyone might say about the series’ story or even the animation, I just loved it!

(I’m glad I don’t visit 4chan and I have seen nothing but praise towards Aur Lane The Animation (mostly from Japanese people to see negative comments everywhere so my mind becomes broken and giving me the idea that the general consensus being the series is absolutely terrible, inb4 I share this and tell me otherwise.)

2.- Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter (JP)*: Yes, I know I already talked about it on my last post, but it’s the Japanese dub we’re talking about and it’s relatively solid. However, there are quite some big changes, starting with the first episode where there’s more sound effects to the battlefield scene where it made the CN version feel poor in comparison, future episodes were having slight changes to the camera as well. Although there are things in the Japanese dub’s acting and scripting that I’m not really satisfied with, but it was still good regardless. Also, forget about “English sub vs dub”, now it’s “Chinese dub vs Japanese dub” now. Though the last few episodes didn’t have much of big changes, other than Chinese text written to Japanese.

The most important thing I have to talk about are these weird post-credits scenes, I have no idea what do these scenes even mean, maybe they just made these scenes as fillers to fill the maximum 4-5 minute run on Japanese TV.

Also, I have to go back to the CN version because, at the time when the first episode of the JP dub aired, the CN dub premiered its final episode and my god, I’m really sad this is over. And now we’re moving on to the other series, Madness Chapter (which you’ll find out as you scroll down this). Man, I really want more of this, I love the art style, but I wish some characters had more screentime and let RO shine!

Goodbye Healing Chapter, it was nice knowing you! ;_;7

Supposedly ShouKin (one of the uploaders for the two Girls’ Frontline anime series, the other being Berizou) found that season 2 for Healing Chapter was confirmed. Sounds awesome but I think I’ll have to wait for more and reliable information about it. Not that ShouKin is not a reliable source, but I really hope we get to hear more of it.

10/10 - 100% - Rank: S++ (Even with the JP dub, you continue to be great)

3.- High Score Girl II*: Supposedly I’ve always been following Moetron’s news about its release and I thought the first 3 episodes were gonna come out on my birthday, it indeed happened in Japan but there has never been any torrent of them and I was seriously disappointed about it! It came out like late October and I was like “What took you so long for this to come out or something?”, there might have been stuff I may have missed that explain these weird releases.

Anyways, moving on talking about the series and all I can think of is that the series continues to give me a big smile, seriously, every time I watch High Score Girl, I always smile for 24 minutes, that’s how powerful this show must be. (Even though everything shown is from the 90s and I was born in 1999, so I’m a 2000s kid, so I probably won’t have any idea of its historical accuracies and references).

Seriously, out of everything JC Staff they made this year, including the absolute garbage that was One Punch Man season 2, High Score Girl is obviously the winner for their best looking anime of the year!

100/100 - 100% - Rank: S++

4.- Fate/Grand Order Babylonia: For the last time, Fate anime adaptations have become quite a hot sensitive topic for me since 2017′s Fate/Apocrypha and 2018′s Fate/Extra Last Encore (And I enjoyed them both), but with Fate/Grand Order Babylonia, I’m qutie impressed, especially with the animation. This is probably the only two-cour series consisting of 21 episodes, it’s a weird number but it’s decent enough, and it’s a very long chapter of the game.

The Type-Moon community seems pretty hateful on other Fate series adaptations, but they’re very chill with Ufotable’s Stay Night adaptations, and nobody really seems to complaint with the New Year’s content and I’m glad for it. (Which by the way, the New Year’s stuff continue to be great! I definitely want it to be a tradition forever.)

5.- Tokunana: This was a relatively fun cop drama with stellar performances, and perhaps it was definitely the most underrated show of the season. The art style reminds me of Shirow Miwa in a way as well.

8/10 - 84% - Rank: A

6.- Beastars: I don’t know much about the story, but my big focus is the animation. Orage continues to deliver great CG animation post-Houseki no Kuni but it suffers the same problems as Sanzigen with the hand-drawn background characters and that shit is seriously annoying.

8/10 - 82% - Rank: A-

Between Beastars and High Score Girl II, I wanted HSGII to be the better looking CG series without blatant hand drawn parts, but I guess it even includes hand drawn parts at times, so having to find which CG anime look better is a hard stretch, perhaps I’m asking too much on what kind of CG anime do I want. Also, I hate to admit, I have to give props to Studio Polygon because they definitely make everything 100% CG. (Or do they? Gah! I don’t know anymore!)

7.- My Hero Academia season 4: Well, I read the manga, it’s no surprising about what even happened with these arcs. (even though when I’m at the current chapters, I forget what happened the previous volumes).

7.5/10 - 75% - Rank: B+

8.- Psycho-Pass 3*: If Tokunana wasn’t enough of a cop drama, then here comes Psycho-Pass 3 which it’s the true definition of a cop drama with the 40 minute runtime.

As someone who wasn’t really offended on Psycho-Pass 2, I’ll have to assume that Psycho-Pass 3 is definitely a breath of fresh air for the series after the movies, perhaps even more.

I’m glad that most of the familiar faces have returned, although it was probably always expected, but there’s just something about Akane, Ginoza and Kogami’s returns from the first few episodes that made me fanboy a little bit, not gonna lie. It’s just that I was really stuck to the marketing and promotional images of the series.

If Psycho-Pass 3 is still somewhat received negatively like Psycho-Pass 2, I don’t know what do you really want from this franchise at this point. At this point you’re definitely thinking that Psycho-Pass should have been a one-off series, but no, most of the fans begged for a second season and so on, they delivered. Don’t try to mess with the creators’ efforts and stuff.

Though my only problem with this season is that I wish the original characters had some more screentime, and then episode 8 didn’t really feel conclusive but I guess that helped to lead up to the upcoming film--which turned out to be a compilation film which gives me a sour taste in my mouth. However, it does confirm that it will indeed conclude the story, for a “compilation film” I don’t know how that might work, but if it’s indeed gonna conclude the story, that’s the main thing I wanted to hear.

7.5/10 - 75% - Rank: B+

First there are anime with 40 minute premieres, movies are a different thing, but a full-fledged TV anime series with a 40 minute runtime? That sure kinda sounds revolutionary but at the same time it’s a total overkill for animators. Besides, I never have the energy to watch anything in 40 minutes, so let’s keep things the way they are with usually having to watch anime series in 20 minutes.

9.- Phantasy Star Online 2 Episode Oracle*: You think that a PSO2 anime that’s actually set in the game’s universe and it’s more serialized could be better than PSO2: The Animation? Well, part of it yeah. But for me, honestly, this was WAY WORSE than PSO2: The Animation for one major reason: This was absolutely rather dark and I wasn’t too comfortable with it.

The animation is kind of alright, it’s not very great but at least Gonzo has definitely improved since the maximum garbage that was 18if.

Is the actual game this dark? Even if I haven’t really seen any story mode (?) cutscenes, from what I’ve seen, I just don’t see it in that light. I haven’t played the JP version (I’d like to but I have difficulties with the download) but I am gonna try to play the English version next year (Can’t believe it’s finally happening).

I just read on MAL that it does adapt these episodes from the actual game but they have anime original content in the process, since I’m not a PSO2 player, I really can’t say for sure if it is indeed faithful but with the anime original stuff, but if it is, well shit.

Surprisingly I haven’t seen some friends I know who play PSO2 talk about Episode Oracle. They have talked about PSO2: The Animation when it came out and they certainly hate it but I can defintely tell they don’t watch Episode Oracle at all (I think it’s for the best).

Anyways, I want to forget this garbage and I want to go back to PSO2: The Animation, it wasn’t that offensively bad after all.

(As of the writing in November 11th, Firefox crashed and I wrote parts of this review a little differently, so I had to rewrite it and it might be different from what I remember, but it’s still decent)

5.5/10 - 53% - Rank: C-

10.- Girls’ Frontline Madness Chapter: Now that Healing Chapter is over, it was time to move on to Madness Chapter, and with the first episode alone... I wasn’t feeling it at all, I’m not super impressed.

Quick info drop, this series is an adaptation of Girls’ Frontline’s in-game 4koma which can be found in the Cafe, though I only play the English version and I assume that the Chinese and Korean servers must have the 4komas like on volume 10 or so.

With that being said about that Madness Chapter adapts the 4koma, there’s just something really off about the animation, it’s just that it’s way too quirky and over the top. It looks more like it’s the true definition of a Chinese anime or something, not for the dub, but for the talent.

Though I have to say, the last few episodes have been really growing on me, but my first impressions will probably remain.

Once Healing Chapter in Japanese ends, I’m definitely expecting Madness Chapter to have Japanese dub as well.

4.5/10 - 45% - Rank: C--

11.- Granblue Fantasy season 2*: A second season with an absolute stepback on animation and decent storyline, everything else is rather forgettable. The Vira episodes were interesting but I couldn’t get myself to care for everything else.

I seriously don't like the new animation at all. A-1 did a very good job on how it looks, but even so, people seem to hate the first season, so the animation in S2 is an absolute downgrade and won't do any favors for me. As for the story so far, I can't really tell if this is from the actual game's campaign (like I said, I stopped at Chapter 17), but I guess it's alright. The most absurd thing about this is that armored characters like the Empire solders and even Apollo are all CG and they look terrible. (Were they CG in the first season too? I can't remember already).

I'm not really one who should be like those "These people shouldn't make cashgrab adaptations doing the story from the very start and instead spend all their money on making OVAs or whatever on their most popular events, like What Makes the Sky Blue?" nazis and I don't give much of a crap about it, but I do really feel like GBF shouldn't really need to be adapted from zero and instead just do any of their popular events or something. I mean, just look at FGO where they only did about one adaptation of the prologue and later they're adapting Babylonia and Camelot, the most popular chapters.

On October 26th, I made a small TwitLonger post detailing my complicated history with GBF and why I’m feeling like I want to walk away from it. (It’s kind of dumb really. And yes, the first paragraphs of this where I gave my first impressions with GBF S2 were straight-up copied from the post).

The most heartbreaking thing that happened in this series is that they showed a Halloween special on November 8th WITH THE FIRST SEASON’S ANIMATION, my god, look how better it was before they went to this crap! This is One-Punch Man season 2 all over again! (But certainly doesn’t top it)

3/10 - 31% - Rank: D

Overall:

Honorable mentions

BLACKFOX*: I barely had time to watch it exactly on my birthday, but when I saw it the next day, it was a relatively solid and entertaining comic book-like narrated film. Although it may not be the greatest film like I wanted, but it may be for the best because at the time, my brain was absolutely burned from seeing Joker last night to even care for everything else, it’s a masterpiece.

One problem I do have is Melissa, at the end of the film, we see Rikka, Mia and... surprisingly Melissa with a costume and everything. What’s the origin behind it? What about her character development?

I really hope there’s more Blackfox because the teaser at the end seems too good to pass to make a full-fledged series of it.

(Mia best girl.)

8/10 - 85% - Rank: B+

Fire Force: My opinion on the animation, at least in non-action moments, probably remain, but I really like these arcs more, not that I didn’t like the beginning arcs but I’m really liking this direction.

(I don’t know how to define “better” anymore without using “I like X better just because. It tops, it exceeds, etc.”)

7/10 - 72% - Rank: B

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Re;surrection*: This one’s a little funny because it’s a movie that came out about months ago, but it came out in Mexican theaters on October 11th, since it’s October and it falls into the Fall category (”Falls to Fall” lmao), I’ll have to include it.

Anyways, having watched the compilation films as a road to get into the Code Geass series, Lelouch of the Re;surrection was good, but it did get me confused at times, I have a lot of questions about what was going on, but the post-credits scene got me the most confused, I don’t know if it was meant to be a teaser, but the way this scene happened is kind of ambiguous.

Even though watching the compilation films may or may not be the best method to get into Code Geass, I had to do it so I could have saved time, if I were to watch the series, it would have taken me forever. Besides, Lelouch of the Re;surrection is from the compilation films’ canon, so it’s something, I guess.

Moving on, the most baffling thing I have to talk about are the technical issues in my cinema. Like around the beginning of the film, the part where Lelouch blows up Shesthaal, the audio cuts off, they had to pause the run of the film a couple of minutes and rewinded some. People in my cinema, while thankfully not very loud with whistles and all, were definitely complaining about the issue, while my older sister and I were just laughing silently and smh’ing.

8.5/10 - 85% - Rank: A-

Lupin the 3rd Prison of the Past: I genuinely didn’t expect there would be another Lupin the 3rd OVA. It’s been months since I saw Goodbye Partner.

It’s probably unintentional but something tells me that releasing this OVA now is like a lead-up to the Lupin the 3rd CG movie in December in Japan.

There’s one thing I’m not happy about is that there wasn’t a memorial for Monkey Punch or anything (but does that “Monkey” branded chewing gum count? Sounds a little insulting), or this might have been made a while before Monkey Punch passed away, but they should have included something like that.

8/10 - 80% - Rank: A

Anticipated

This is the last anime season of the decade and now we’re gonna reach the first lineup of new anime in the new decade. I of course wouldn’t watch literally every single anime in existence, like I always do with every season, but here are some of the very first anime of the 2020 decade I want to watch!

(I’m surprised no one is hyping up how we’re getting our first anime of the 2020 decade)

I should also try to keep track on everything I want to watch because I think I may forget when they’re gonna come out.

Quintessential Quintuplets season 2 - January ???: A few months ago I binged the series and I seriously can’t believe I slept on this, it was hilarious and pure at times, so I can’t wait to watch more. Though I haven’t read the manga (but I’d like to some day) but it’s enough for me to go blind and enjoy the series.

Speaking of the manga, the series will end on its 14th volume next year and we’re so close on that happening because volume 13 will be released in January 17th 2020. I’ll be sad to see this series go but I’m interested to see what the creator will make next and if the anime keeps getting new seasons, we might actually see the series finale get adapted.

[UPDATE - January 4th 2020: As of now, there hasn’t been any news about Quintessential Quintuplets S2 lately, no promos or anything. I think at this point it’s probably delayed until Spring.]

Heya Camp - January 6th: It may not be season 2 of Yuru Camp (yet) but I’m glad there’s going to be more coziness with the short series lifted from the previews from the base series.

Isekai Quartet season 2 - January 14th: I’m definitely hype for more Isekai Quartet and that teaser with the new classmates at the end of the first season finale is not to be wasted, and those new classmates happened to be Naofumi, Raphtalia and Filo from Rising of Shield Hero. As of the writing this in December 1st, I’m planning to binge Shield Hero, I have pretty much watched every isekai series featured in Isekai Quartet, so I don’t want to be left out with Shield Hero. Regardless of what I heard about the series, I’m still gonna watch it anyways. (Finished watching on December 5th and... DAMN, I REALLY LIKED IT. FUCK THEM SJWs!)

Bang Dream season 3 - January 23rd: It would have been amazing if Sangizen were to do the Bubuki Buranki thing with the first season in Winter and the second season in Fall, but they deserve to take their time.

Madoka Magica Magia Record - January 4th: Fall 2019 was quite stuffed with anime based on gacha, Fate/Grand Order Babylonia, Azur Lane The Animation and Granblue Fantasy The Animation, but Madoka Magica Magia Record is the one show based on the mobile game that decided to not to join the party and it’s kinda funny.

Nekopara - January 9th: That’s right, there’s going to be a full fledged Nekopara TV series now. This is the most unnecessary anime to exist since there already was a plethora of OVAs, there’s no need to make a TV series of the VN now. I don’t have time to rush through the VN if I want to buy it (Most likely from Steam and buy the adult patch too) but I don’t have the money to do it, well, it may depend from my interest and time to try to play it because I’m a bit behind with Saya no Uta.

Speaking of adult content, I’m expecting a bit of fan service somewhere because they wouldn’t do the full blown hentai scenes. Pretty standard VN adapation rules.

Dorohedoro - January 12th.

Danmachi OVA - January 29th.

ID:Invaded - January 5th.

Ishizoku Reviewers - January 11th: I seriously haven’t watched any ecchi series in a long time, and reading the synopsis alone, I’m really intrigued in checking this one out.

There’s quite of anime to look forward to in 2020 but I haven’t been keeping track on what do I want to watch, though I know some that may come in that year, but I’m not gonna get into that since this is just for Winter 2020, I’ll address that in my “10 year journey” post.

The future of the seasonal anime review series

Since this is my last seasonal anime review post in Tumblr, I’ll probably continue making lists either by tweeting them out or will have to make a Discord channel in my private server, but it’s probably more about anticipated shows, for seasonal reviews, I’ll have to do Tier Maker images, probably for the best because I’ve been making a bit of a weird inconsistencies with ranking shows with scores and ranks, so I’ll probably have to stick to only ranks with Tier Maker from now on.

Although to be honest, I’m not sure if anyone would really care about what am I gonna watch, did I like a show or not, but at the same time, I forget people do really care as they’re quite the show-offs and ofcourse discussions galore. So I think I’ll keep doing what I’m doing but in a more simple way.

And that’s it, we’re done here. This is the end of the seasonal anime review Tumblr post series, though nobody had really read these posts before, but I finally got my first audition with the Karoshi Discord server from the beginning of this post. I’ve had fun making these posts, even if lately I’ve been getting burnt out but I still enjoyed writing these.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, thank you for the birthday wishes, a day early and even on the very same day.

With a day early, particularly from my Japanese friends, especially you @hinosuna0720/@hinosuna3D21 (NSFW content, viewer discretion is advised) for giving me sweet images with my Custom Maid 3D2 OCs, and you even gifted me VA-11 HALL-A and I’m seriously grateful. I also want to congratulate @ryuuunnji for giving me a picture too.

And on the actual day, I want to thank for @SALthePAL95 making me drawings of my new OCs! And speaking of drawings, my older sister made me one too (but I won’t show it, sorry), it’s been a long time since she made me one... ;-;

And I, of course, want to thank everyone else who has given me birthday wishes!

This 20th birthday was definitely the best I’ve ever had in my life, I’ve had some really sweet surprises that I’ve always been looking for, and I wish my future birthdays continue to be this good, especially in the next decade.

(Not you @kirishima_ss. Thankfully it was a day after my birthday but, come on... (he blocked me)) 🖕🔪 (Although that did teach me a valuable lession: I’m not gonna promote my birthday literally every day ever again, because I was seriously getting pretentious)

Anyways, it’s time for making these Tumblr posts to stop, but alas, there’s one more Tumblr post to make, it’s a whole different topic but it’s extremely important, it’s super long but I hope you’ll understand. See you there. Also, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance.

Check out my Carrd.

My retirement announcement for one last reminder. (And just fixed it to make it more readable)

#anime #anime of the season #aots #fall 2019 #winter 2020

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destinebrand-blog · 7 years ago

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top 3 fe games! :3 if you don't have a top 3 of that how about.... top 3 magic users!

Ooommg... the first one definitely is a toughie but I’m going to try fielding it anyway. I love the older games but I’m terrible at emulating so I’ve only ever played the games that have been officially published in america sadly and just looked up and watched the rest.

In that case though:Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade the the first fire emblem game I ever played. At the time I was a huge fan of Roy in Meelee and I thought that it was Roy on the cover rather than Elliwood. Though, I came to love them both and Roy and Elliwood are two of my favorite lords now. I think Binding Blade tends to accomplish a lot with really simple story ideas, like, go find my father, go stop the bad man from doing the bad thing. If there’s something the modern FE’s definitely fail at it’s trying to juggle too much at once. Binding Blade just sticks with a core cast of characters and develops them all in subtle ways, even if Elliwood being a good boy isn’t the most complex of character traits. He still faces consequences in the story, his father dies, he kills the woman he loves by accident and even when she comes back she can’t stay with him forever. As a prequel too I think it does a really good job of setting up for Blazing Blade, and I really hope Blazing Blade gets a release in the US or a remake b/c this game gets you so invested in the Elliwood -> Roy and Hector to Lilina timeline.

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn: Can I just count these two as one so they don’t take up the whole rest of the list? Ike and Roy have been my boys for a long time, and they’re also my mains in Smash. Ike’s game though made me love his character like 1,000 times more. I went into it thinking he was just the big muscly guy who kicked Roy off the roster in Brawl (I was like 13 at the time forgive me), but Ike’s story and character is probably one of the most complex leads ever for Fire Emblem storytelling? Like Ike loses his father and he isn’t just able to brush it off like Elliwood for the sake of everyone around him. Ike constantly feels inferior to his father and like he took up the burden of leadership too early, so when he overcomes those feelings, it makes the whole “fight for his friends’ themes even stronger. I like how Ike is basically designed like a truck, but he’s every bit as sensitive as the other lords in the series, perhaps even moreso. ALSO non lord character, and he never becomes nobility technically, unless you count him marrying soren. If I had to choose between one or the other I’d probably go with Path of Radiance just because Ike’s arc is stronger than that. Radian Dawn kind of has a problem of Ike showing up and stealing the spotlight a lil, even though I appreciate his appearance.

Fire Emblem: Echoes: I’m just really appreciative that I can put a DS Fire Emblem game on this list. There are definitely parts of Awakening and (IF) I like, and I prefer Awakening quite a bit more than (IF) but the part of Awakening that I love is the entire first half where the game felt like it was going somewhere in terms of consequences and challenging the characters. I can’t really call a game a fave if I kind of ignore the second half of the game. Echoes on the other hand is just on the whole an actually cohesive DS Fire emblem game. Of course I still have complaints because I complain about everything I like, but besides the 4th act being a little lackluster it’s pretty compelling all throughout. Even in the lackluster 4th act though, I really love Berkut’s turn, and considering that Berkut was an entirely new character for the game that they could have easily screwed up, it’s amazing how well he fits into the new plot.

Top 3 Mages

Soren: Like I said I like Radiant Dawn/Path of Radiance just delves in a lot more complex characters then the rest of the series. If you look at the rest of this list my type is just going to be emo mages in general but, Soren’s arc of trusting no one because of the circumstances of his past and then slowly opening up to Ike and trusting him above everybody else. It’s more than just the ship though, even though I obviously love the ship, Soren genuinely does act like both a trauma victim and a tactician. He’s closed off, cold, logical and greatly effected by the things in his past. A lot of people compare him to robin but.. Robin’s more of a blank slate none of their backstory really matters that much b/c they forget it. It’s just sad in theory. Soren’s is sad in practice. Also his grumpy butt is very cute. Henry: I like Henry, in both the JP and English versions. Even though I understand there’s a lot of difference between the two. Henry’s a damaged mage like Soren, but I kind of like how he joins the mercenaries even before he starts healing. Like he’s definitely one of those “killing is fun, so just point me at the enemy” characters. But he works a whole lot more than say Peri, because it makes sense why they would recruit Henry when they did (they were trapped by plegian mercenaries and defectors would have helped their cause) and also Henry’s supports all sort of make him change rather than just simply tolerating him because (lol eccentric). My favorite supports of his are with Olivia, and Nowi, because in those cases it kind of hammers home how much Henry wants a family and how better he does with him around. Espeially Olivia’s sort of taught Henry how people can actually care when he’s in pain.

Mae + Boey: I just love these two both together. They count as one. Totally counts. I like how they’re both kind of insecure but also do their best to treat Celica like a normal person. They made the Celica parts of the game honestly the most enjoyable route for me in Echoes, even if a lot of their dialogue has them backgrounded as a little bit of a comedy duo. Mae and Boey are both kind of insecure characters and both of their insecurities play off one another. Boey is from a big household that was poor and he’s more of somebody who had no choice but to become a mage. He’s also the more inferior mage to Mae. Mae doesn’t have as much backstory details as Boey, but she’s a natural mage and from her character and support with Celica I kind of interpret that she’s an easier mage, but unlike Boey finds it harder to sort of be a person. She’s inescure that the others around her don’t see her as a girl b/c she’s so close to them. Which is what makes her dream rather than just being a knight, or achieving greatness like a lot of the other characters in this series, just trying to go back home and start a family sort of sweet too. I just like mages who could easily blow you up in a fireball but all they want to do is start a family.

#chromemes #latrocinari

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sacredrite-archived-blog · 7 years ago

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not sure if i can ask this clearly zzz but here goes: how do you feel about holiness and divinity in regards to luna? could be as simple as godly metaphors and the like in your writing but also, for luna's character itself? like how does she feel about her power, her mortality. how does she feel, living in this world with all its gods. how does she, an oracle, a human, stand before their godliness and compare?

i’ve honestly thought a lot about this. i think a lot of it mirrors my own conflicting emotions and opinions on god. i was raised catholic. brought up into an extremely religious family excluding my mother and siblings. a lot of the things i say luna has experience are things i myself have also experienced. so i guess this whole thing will be based off my own experiences as they’ve always been.

with what we’re shown in canon, she didn’t fear them. you can’t even say she flinched when calling upon leviathan. the only time she turned her head away was to block any debris from getting into her face during the summoning. in the jp version, the dialogue used was rough as said on her wiki. though, i guess i’ll provide some more context because english translations aren’t always direct or trustworthy.

i don’t know japanese. i’m kind of awful with it, but it’s always important to look at the kanji used. i don’t have any to present as of right now, but trust me, i am looking. for now i think what’s best is to listen to the japanese audio and then listen to the english audio. the japanese audio presents a more stern, taking-no-bullshit sounding luna than the english audio does. the dialogue is meant to come off as rough and strong. she’s suppose to sound fearless and demanding because that’s who she is suppose to be portrayed as. the jp dialect is key to understanding how she meant to feel towards them. just a small clue. besides that, we are offered little with her canonical opinion of them.

luna has been subjected so abuse and manipulation through the years she spent held captive. i’ll link a small meta of it right here.

every time i researched a case ( due to my interested in criminology ), i always heard the same thing. when tragedies strike, your faith it shaken. i don’t think luna had much faith in the gods after tenebrae was invaded and her mother was murdered. i don’t have much with in god because of all that had happened to me. yet, due to being raised in an extremely religious environment, i still catch myself praying to him. still believing in him. i don’t even know 100% if i believe him to exist. in luna’s case, their gods do exist and even if she doesn’t have much faith in them, she will still end up praying. in a weird way, it’s comforting yet a constant reminder that there could’ve been a way to stop the bad stuff from happening. you grow to resent the act even if you have moments where you believe it is the only way to find a little moments of peace.

they’ve done absolutely nothing for her.

( they were gods, though. was it even their duty to stop everything bad from happening? to them, no. these are mortals who could only dream of being on their level. their world was their natural order and what happened to them wasn’t any of their business. their concern was bringing light back to their world. )

what do you truly hate about religion? what aspects of it caused you to grow to resent it? for animosity for it to blossom? sometimes the answer is simple, but other times its not. when you’ve grown up around holiness and gods, it’s a habit to abide by it. you scorn it, you curse it, but you had grown attached to idea finding comfort in it. you were made to believe that following the path of god(s) is the only foundation you’ll have. not everyone views religion like this, but i find a lot of people do based on how they were brought up.

regarding where she stands with her status, rites, and with the gods it’s…complicated. she takes pride in being the oracle. it makes her feel of positive use to those around her when she was too weak to do anyhing during niflhiems invasion. her calling to bring noctis to his destiny was defiance against the empire. it felt like she was cursing them for all the damage they had caused to her kingdom, her family and herself. it’s selfish. she won’t admit it, though. while it feels like freedom, it’s something worse than death for her. noctis is important to her. he’s her childhood friend and she is meant to stand beside him as oracle. sending him to fulfill his destiny is equivalent to murdering him with her own bare hands. this scares her. it scares her because she doesn’t want to be at the same level as her captors, her abusers.

i really do think there is a part of her that wants to be like “screw it, i don’t want to do this if it means he has to suffer.” but that would be sacrilegious. it’d be hurting more people than she wants. she is forced to choose between the tight emotional attachment she has to him and the entire world. people she doesn’t feel attached to at all. they were doomed from the start.

luna strives to be the gods equals. to prove that she is just as worthy as they are. she has an inferiority complex that will end up dictating her feelings and emotions. to be seen as below someone angers her. she desires to be above them or equal to them. she wants to be above the empire. she wants to be the gods equals. she wants them to respect her. she wants the empire to fear her. she wants it all but its so difficult to have when you don’t even actually know who you really are yourself.

lunafreya struggles with C-PTSD. her sense of identity is nonexistent. she had been stripped of it all when the invasion occurred and nothing more than their pawn in the game. her status is all she has and she is desperate to to keep it.

she no longer wants to be controlled. she doesn’t want pity. she doesn’t want to inferior. she doesn’t want to be some weak little girl anymore. she will demand respect because she did no suffer for so long to only be regarded as a lowly mortal that had no place in summoning levithan. this is where the jp dialect used comes in. it’s gritty and demanding of respect and an audience. she will not take any less. if she is to follow the prophecy, she will do so with her head held high and a glare directed towards the six. she will do it begrudgingly and she will do it how she sees fit.

to be looked down on is seen as a threat. it’s seen as a challenge. she’s hate them, but they have been apart of her life since she was born. they are a bad habit she can’t break. it’s like inhaling cigarette smoke. even if it feels good in the moment it will only do her harm.

she will play with role of martyr for as long as she needs to, but she will never ever let them treat her lower than dirt for the suffering they allowed to happen to her. for the sick prophecy that was thrust into her arms where they forced her to obliged because it meant life and death all their world.

luna does not feel she can be selfish. she doesn’t feel she has a right to complain. it’s been ingrained in her head that she is suppose to be a symbol of peace and harmony. of beautiful light and godly nature. this doesn’t mean there aren’t moments where she wants to drop it all and just go against them in spite.

i don’t think it’s easy to completely give up all you have been forced to digest from a very young age, but god, does she wish it was.

when she was younger, luna resented her mother as well. she was a child and didn’t know where blame should be placed. she still isn’t even completely 100% sure to put it all. she will blame herself and she will blame the gods and she will blame the empire and she will blame her mother. sylva waited so long to pass the mantle to her and then she died. when luna finally became oracle, it was as if all the burdens her mother carried became her own in an instant.

anger comes with the package of abuse and pain. but no one is really sure where to focus it.

she’s only a human that was touched by the astrals powers. she is only human and she knows it, but she wants to be something more. she wants to finally be in control.

it’s just the one thing she strives for. if she can finally be her own person and understand who she is and feel free from the gods, she can finally be at peace. trauma is a tricky thing. nothing makes sense and it’s always a hurricane of emotions. she has a lot of pent up frustrations. she has a right to be livid, but she’s self destructive because of it.

“i do not fear death” is akin to “i don’t care if i die as long as i do what must be done.” the luna we have seen in the game and in kingsglaive was got damn suicidal. death was never going to be as bad as living was for her. in fact, it would be a gift. it is release. her obsession with her calling was little her knocking at deaths door. it was unhealthy. her resolve was unhealthy. no one ever points this out. she didn’t let her fear things because she felt she wasn’t allowed to. she truly didn’t because she had suffered for so long that dying didn’t matter. she takes the starscourge into her body and there is no need to fear death because it would always be lurking around the corners for her. passing the ring to noctis and leading him to his destiny was her last mark on the world. it was suppose to be fulfilling having accomplished what she needed, but it was empty and hollow. it didn’t make her feel anything but deep regret and sadness.

“my prayers have been answers, my calling fulfilled.” this line does automatically mean she was happy about it. it just tells us she hoped she could do what she had been told to. she and noctis were born to die for the people and it wasn’t fair. it will never be fair. but if she was being sentence to death she might as well keep moving forward towards it.

to put it all simply, luna felt cursed. despite her title as oracle, she had always been seen as below others and it angers her to no end. she is well aware she was doomed from the beginning, but fuck, she wished it was different. the only thing she can do is keep going.

#dualstarred #ᵗʰᵉ ᵍᵒˡᵈᵉⁿ ʳᵃʸˢ ᵃᶜʳᵒˢˢ ᵗʰᵉ ˢᵏʸ ; ᵗʰᵉʸ ˢᵖᵉˡˡ ʰᵉʳ ⁿᵃᵐᵉ ; headcanons #this ended up way fucking longer than i expected #welp

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marisexmas · 8 years ago

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alrighty I. finally gathered my courage and gave a proper listen to all the dub voices in puyo puyo tetris from this video. so now here’s a big old post of my analyses/thoughts on each character’s dub voice, normal and alt, with varying degrees of seriousness, for the sole reason that I had absolutely nothing better to do with my time

DISCLAIMER THINGY:if anyone cares enough to read this please read it with the understanding that my intent to buy and enjoy this game has not changed because of these voices. I did this purely for fun/out of boredom and while my opinions are somewhat strong, I don’t want them to affect anyone else’s interest in getting the game and enjoying it. these are only my thoughts and I’m just doing this to gush and also vent kinda.

okay here we go

overall: in general so many of these voices sound… foreign to me, ironic as that is. it’s simply because of the differences between spoken english and spoken japanese and the fact that I’ve grown accustomed to the japanese voices over almost four long years. no matter what, it’s gonna take a while to adjust to hearing these characters speaking english, most of them for the first time ever. to me, many of the english vas don’t sound as “into it” as the japanese vas, which is understandable because the jp vas have much more experience and practice voicing these characters. overall though? I think most of them did a pretty great job! and I’m sure if more puyo games get localized, the english vas will get a feel for the characters which will lead to them sounding more natural. let us cross our fingers and Hope!!

now for thoughts on individual voices. buckle up kids

Ringo:she sounds a lot more tomboyish and in-your-face than I expected, but honestly I kinda like that? she does sound a little bland and plain compared to the jp va, but to be fair it’s hard to compete with idol seiyuu goddess asami imai. I feel like I’ll warm up to this voice relatively quickly though~ Alt Ringo:Not really anything noteworthy? she sounds a lot more “aw yeah” and spunky though, which is cute! I like it a lot

Risukuma: I like his english voice a lot because while his jp va sounded eccentric in a creepy way, his en va sounds eccentric in a charming “cool dad” way, like the kind of cool mentor who’s probably very dangerous to hang around but you don’t care cause he’s just so cool. either way the “pedobear” vibes are not nearly as strong in his english voice which I am immensely thankful for Alt Risukuma: ounds like a guy who’s reading a storybook to small children and trying to put on a “gruff bear” voice to really invest them in it. it sounds strange but it’s oddly entertaining and kind of adorable

Schezo: my biggest issue with his english va is that it just sounds kind of… Flat? it just doesn’t have that Oomph or that Zeal that the japanese va had. but as I said that’s understandable because of the difference in experience, so it’s not too bad. the voice fits him very well, a good shounen swordsman voice. that’s enough to satisfy me. Alt Schezo: the most smug sarcastic self-satisfied asshole I have ever heard and I absolutely love it. this is a man who knows he has 5000+ followers on tumblr because of his “edgy” posts and because of that believes he is a paragon of sensibility and right-ness.

O:Bibibiii. Sounds pretty much the same as the japanese voice, only without the japanese inflection or accent. not much to say honestly? but it sounds nice. Alt O: I like the english alt way more than the japanese alt because it actually did something different. whO ANGERED THE CHEESE SPHERE THEY BETTER BOOK A FLIGHT OUTTA THIS UNIVERSE

Maguro: I was expecting a more P4 Yosuke-esque voice for maguro so the voice they actually gave him was a little surprising to me? but I actually like this one a lot more than I thought I would! it really plays him up as a playful carefree guy who doesn’t take life too serious and is just out to have fun. it’s a really good voice for him and I love it a lot Alt Maguro: he sounds!! like one of those stereotypical smooth-talking radio host dudes!! and it’s the greatest thing ever!! this is my number one favorite alt voice by far, it’s genius?? “You’re tuning into Smooth Jazz Hour with the S-man, kick up a chair, relax with some of Suzuran’s hottest jazz hits and add some Pizzazz to your evening~★”

Tee: stereotypical shounen anime protagonist voice at its finest. I’m honestly glad they chose a male va to voice him because that kind of voice more accurately reflects his character and sounds better for him in english than an english-speaking female voice would have sounded. if that makes sense Alt Tee: I really didn’t notice anything “different” about his alt voice at all? the inflections and such are different but otherwise the two voices sound pretty similar. they just sound like two different takes of the same lines basically…

Amitie: Flawless VA choice! I’m 99% sure christine cabanos is voicing her and a better match could not have been made, she has the peppy naive eager-to-help magical girl vibe that suits her perfectly!! I’ve honestly started liking her en va more than her jp va, and she’s the only returning fever 1 character whose puyotet va I may actually prefer over her old fever 1 va (though that still fluctuates quite a bit because fever 1 is too dear to my heart) Alt Amitie: Fanciful British Amitie!! I love her!! it’s really amusing and adorable to hear her try to sound “refined” and fail miserably. it just makes her even cuter and her ditziness more endearing, this is probably up there on my Favorite Alts chart, though there are others coming up that have her beat

Feli: she sounds a little bit older than I expected but I think the va pulled off her creepy, vaguely threatening tone of voice exceedingly well. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t give her stocking’s va if only to play on her similar appearance, but all in all her voice is pretty good. Alt Feli: Rebellious Teenage Wangst Factory Yeah!! Shut up Mom!! You don’t Control Me!! I didn’t Ask to be Born!! I’m gonna Curse you and everyone else I hate cause I hate Everyone!! Lemres is the only one who understands my Brooding, Broken Inner Soul!! Everyone I know is so Lame and Embarrassing!! I Hate My Life!! (it’s beautiful)

Ai: let me say Thank You VA People For Getting A VA That Can Do A Convincing Dog Imitation. that was one of my biggest worries with this dub tbh, and I’m glad to hear that his dog whimpering is as beautiful in english as it is in japanese. the voice itself is also quite nice, not quite as effeminate but still pleasant to listen to. Alt Ai: you know when people make fun of their mom or wife or some other female/effeminate authority figure by imitating them in a shrill gravelly falsetto to make them sound as annoying and antagonistic as possible? this voice is essentially that. it’s funny but it also grates on my ears if I listen to it for too long

Ess: again she’s way older-sounding than I anticipated? though the voice is not bad, I do think it’s a little unfitting for her childish, bratty personality. I wish it had been just a little higher-pitched? however it still carries the tone of spoiled entitlement that is essentially her brand, which is great. plus she’s still cute as heck, so it’s all good in my book! Alt Ess: Basically normal Ess if you subtract the spoiled entitled daddy’s girl and substitute it with cool confident action girl. I like it cause it’s almost like character development! she grew up and abandoned her spoiled ways, and now she’s on the road to becoming a mature, honest and learned adult!

Klug: it makes me sad to get this negative after so much optimism, but oh boy. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I cannot stand the voice they gave him. I had to mute my volume halfway through his spells because I just. can’t? nothing about his voice or his personality in the jp version supports the idea that he would sound like this? even ignoring the voice not fitting him at all, it’s generally just exhausting and stress-inducing to listen to. I’m happy if others can find something to like in it but I just. can’t? suketoudara, the dancing mascot fish, sounds less like a caricature than klug does and that in itself is unacceptable to me Alt Klug: I still don’t really like the choice of va, but this is a much less grating and more reasonable style of speaking for him. this is what normal klug should have sounded like. in fact, why isn’t this his normal voice? who decided to make the voice that sounds like an actual human being his “alt” and the one that sounds like a perpetually screeching demon spawn his standard? I apologize for my negative rant becoming this long but after so many decent, sensible casting decisions it genuinely astounds me that a professional voice directing team somehow managed to butcher this character so completely

Sig: hearing english sig is a very complicated experience for me especially, both because of the bias of sig being my favorite character and the fact that hearing him voiced by a guy after 4+ years listening to him voiced by a girl. while I still would have preferred a more youthful voice from a female va, I’m quite all right with the voice they gave him now, despite my initial distaste? it’s different, but the most important thing to me is that it retains his spacey, well-meaning but absentminded nature. it isn’t Pure Perfection, but it should be noted that sig has a unique style of speaking that would be very difficult to recreate in another language. when I look at it like that, I think the directors did a respectably good job with him. (and… his “oh boy” damaged quote. Masterful.) Alt Sig: I like this alt for the same reason I liked happy sig in 20th; getting to hear sig speak with more emotion. though this time he’s just a cocky anime protag. I love my boy and I love hearing him go beyond his drawling monotone, in both english and japanese. plus I’m just glad they didn’t go for pokemon speak like jp, because as painful as that was in japanese it definitely would’ve sounded a hundred times more painful in english.

Draco: like a lot of people, I really appreciate english draco being much less grating than japanese draco. to be honest I think this low, strong, more butch-sounding voice fits her much better. I gotta say I’m pleasantly surprised? I might even use her more because I’m quite fond of her new voice… Alt Draco: her alt is kinda amusing to me because it sounds like english draco trying to sound more like japanese draco? I bet this is the voice she uses at beauty pageants. it’s adorable and charming and it makes me want to hug her

Zed: I never paid much attention to him as a character but I like his english voice, it sounds very friendly and warm. in a way it gives me E-102 vibes, it’s strangely nostalgic to me in a sense. it’s quite nice. he’s a nice papa robot. ess is in very good hands. Alt Zed: basically zed as an actual robot. it’s amusing but very predictable and not too noteworthy so there’s not much I have to say about it…

Jay and Elle: first of all *pops party popper* congrats jay on being the only male character voiced by a female va in japanese who is also voiced by a female va in english~ (not counting carby and o~) that aside, the wonder twins are my favorite tetris characters and I’m very happy with how they’re voiced in english! they sound like the adorable and mischievous little shits that they are. I can’t wait to hear them in adventure mode I know they’re gonna be great Alt Jay and Elle: essentially the same “creepy twins” theme that was done with their alt in the jp version. They still sound cute but it’s another cliche voice trope and there’s not much to say unfortunately

Arle and Carbuncle: as one of the two people who liked her voice in fever 1 (and zero of the zero who liked carbuncle’s), I still think these vas are a massive improvement. she sounds much more like a spirited spunky adventurer with just the right amount of sass, just like the compile days. on that note, I especially like english carbuncle for exactly that reason. his deeper voice almost feels like a callback to his voice acting from those ancient madou games of years past, and that makes me inexplicably happy Alt Arle and Carbuncle: this alt is?? hard to describe?? arle sounds slightly more forceful in her speech, and her tone carries more of an anti-hero vibe? meanwhile carbuncle sounds almost exactly the same. I don’t really know what to make of it…

Suketoudara: first of all how dare you. How dare you have such a flawless english voice. how dare you make me actually start kind of liking you. you’re a mascot character. you’re not supposed to be this cool. go tell your voice director to switch with whoever was in charge of klug’s va. this is unexcusable. I’m angry. (in 100% seriousness though he has an awesome english voice and I am kinda bitter but not that much) Alt Suketoudara: hueAH GOT MY BLUE SUEDE SHOOOES, AN’ I… …HHAH GOT MY BLUE SUEDE SHOOOES, AN’ I…~♪. TOUCH DOWN IN THE LAND O’ THE DELTA BLUUUE, IN THE MIDDLE O’ THE POOOURIN’ RAIN ~~♪ (basically: Raw Unbridled Soul Grit)

Satan I mean Dark Prince: though I miss his super super deep jp voice, his english voice still sounds plenty sinister and powerful despite the fact that he himself is rarely either of those. he has a voice that could very easily intimidate and establish authority, and still sounds like a serious, threatening presence even though he’s one of the franchise’s biggest butt monkeys. still can’t wait to hear him cry like a baby in adventure mode though~ Alt Satan: The Most Beautiful and Campiest of Camp Gays. basically oshare in satan’s body. if any of you wanted a cameo from oshare in a main game look no further because he’s right here. he’s finally returned to us in the most unexpected of forms

Rulue: the ojou in her voice is not nearly as strong, but it definitely commands the image of a Fighting Queen. she sounds a lot tougher and less demure than her jp counterpart, and I’m having kind of a hard time deciding which portrayal I like better? I think they’re both equally good. her “Tetris” sounds horribly out of place though, for some reason. Alt Rulue: again I don’t hear much of a difference tone-wise? this rulue sounds less fired up and a little more… smug? but that’s it. maybe this is the return of “ojou” rulue… I think I like tough asskicking rulue better though

Raffina: first: nope, I still have not adapted to that spelling change. second: from an objective standpoint, this voice is a very good fit for her. but to me, who has known and loved her fabulous fever 1 va for thirteen years and still heralds it as The Ideal Raffina Voice to this day, this new voice just sounds far too generic in comparison. it’s a wonderful voice and I like it, but it’s going to be a long and bittersweet road before I can let go of the La-ti-das in my heart ;v; Alt Raffina:the polar opposite of alt rulue. abandoning the ojou way, raffina’s voice loses all its prim and properness as she goes full fighting foodon. I like this voice because it makes me think of a raffina who’s made peace with her lack of magical talent and focused on perfecting her fighting skills instead.

Witch: Very different from her jp voice, much deeper and more tomboyish than I imagined… but honestly I’ve started to like it a lot. a real lot. a “wow this is the best voice I never knew I wanted for her” lot. I am very inordinately fond of her english voice oh my goodness. maybe it’s my love for tomboyish witches talking but… it’s a Good Voice Alt Witch: it’s like witch if they’d tried to make her sound closer to her jp voice. more childish and giddy and deliberately cute-sounding. but after hearing it I have to say I still vastly prefer her normal english voice?? what is this. I’ve been hexed

Ecolo: a friend and I talked long ago about how great ecolo would sound if sam riegel voiced him. and while I’m sad that it didn’t come to pass, I think this voice is a good fit for him too. childish, playful, and slightly dangerous… I hear people say he sounds like a girl, but I don’t really hear it? he just sounds… like an otherworldly blob. which is apt. Alt Ecolo: ecolo after entering Pouty Tantrum Mode. he’s the universe’s biggest baby and it’s fantastic. “Whatever. I didn’t wanna do that anyway. See if I care. Myeh.” ecolo we love you, you tiny ender of worlds. now sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.

Ex: people were saying he sounds like a game show host, and sure enough when I first heard his voice I could vividly picture him hosting a game of jeopardy. his voice doesn’t have the wistful, sentimental vibe the jp voice did, but he still sounds like a wise, gentle mentor. and the host of jeopardy… alEx trebek, ladies and gentlemen Alt Ex: if normal ex is the host of game shows, then alt ex is the host of extreme wrestling tournaments. it’s beautiful and it must be heard to be believed. OOOOH YEEEEAH! TETRAMANIA COMIN’ AT YA BROTHERRRR

Lemres: he’s another firmly-established character introduced long ago, whose new english portrayal is going to take a lot of getting used to. despite what I’ve heard, he doesn’t sound bara at all. his voice is not as soft and singsongy though… instead he sounds more like a stereotypical teen celebrity heartthrob. and honestly, I really really like that they went that route because that’s essentially what he is? it’s a weird situation because the voice itself is eh to me, but the context of it makes me appreciate and enjoy it more? it’s especially cool cause recent games have glossed over/downplayed lemres’s celebrity status a whole bunch, so it almost feels like someone on the voice team actually did their homework on the other games in the puyo series. and that makes me happy~ Alt Lemres:okay the surfer dude voice is beautiful enough on its own but do you remember?? these old dr. pepper commercials?? that is what Immediately popped in my head upon hearing his win quote?? it made me cry laughing what a magical world we all live in

#text poast #puyos

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