#maybe i'm just annoyed that it wasn't a harem story after all lol

[incorrect-guild-codex-quotes]

Tori: If you found out you have one day left to live, what would you do with it? Ezra: Say goodbye and mend my relationships. Zak: Something illegal. Kai: Accept my fate. Aaron: I would message 10 people on Facebook saying if they didn't forward this message to 10 people, I would die tomorrow.

[liberifatalis]

i agree to all of this! i love jessie but big no to her ignoring cloud's signals that he's uncomfortable. BUT ive always hated how SE literally made a mini-harem for cloud, and it's very unrealistic and poor writing imo. reminds me of cringey anime. and that's why i feel like they made her character the way it is. they're trying to make cloud look like he has all these women after them which like...sigh.

i was also misled by the 'remake' title and i'm still a little annoyed at the changes lol. especially because SE have managed to make the story even more convoluted than the original, which is like...already super convoluted like every other FF game. they have so MANY good ideas, and it's like they cram everything together and it just creates this damn mess. make something coherent, please SE, i'm begging you😭

zack's voice is so awful dear god. we need the original cc voice actor. i wish they kept mae whitman as yuffie's voice actor 💔 i actually am kinda into sephiroth's new voice actor, but tbh, i wasn't really a fan of any of his lmao. but maybe that's because they succeed in being a lil creepy and in my mind he's a sexy goth man. but yes!!! the emotions!! of all the characters are fantastic. they're all so human and expressive in their own ways and i'm still so in awe over it. the world is so well done and the designs are fantastic. sector 5 slums are just so 🥹🥹🥹 i'm like 12 hours in and i still have made barely any progress because i just roam around everywhere to try and see all parts of the map.

i'm hyped for rebirth even though i know it will be a convoluted mess. now with ever crisis, i wonder what they're gonna add in change. if they kill off any characters who didn't die in the og i think i might actually leave the fandom LMAO.

@liberifatalis

oh god I have a lot of feelings about it, too much for a simple reply, so let's go. I'm gonna start with the bad and then rise to the good, along with some mixed feelings stuff in the middle, so we end on a high note.

on an objectively bad level, my sweet Jesus this game's combat is a mess. when it's good it's great. the jumps and fluidity bring the advent children stuff to life. but it is painfully hampered by the ATB system being complete molasses. I have to waste time doing jack shit to get it to charge, and often waste my charges because an enemy stunlocked me, dodged, or changed forms before I could get the hit off. I have died mid limit break (you should be invincible IMHO), I have died seconds after a rez, and the canyon between easy and normal difficulty is the mariana trench. I am not a great gamer by any means, and I'm especially not great at ARPGs, but my boyfriend has been watching me play and even he noticed the blatant unfairness.

on a subjective level i'm one of the people who felt misled by the promise of a remake and then it was like haha yeah we REMADE the story! like bruh don't call it a remake then, sheesh. the plot ghosts are really fucking stupid, but to the games credit I can at least ignore them enough to not let it ruin the experience. and then deepground's inclusion in intergrade – let it die please, dirge was a mistake, the designs are ugly, the characters are worse, and the hammer it took to the game's lore is a death knell. if galian and chaos are their ugly redesigns in rebirth imma be mad. finally haha uhh i didn't care for Jessie's further character dev. I wanted to like her and be excited for it but her clinginess and inability to take cloud's clear discomfort seriously made me genuinely uncomfortable.

BUT. the game has some fantastic elements I can't get enough of. it feels alive. it breathes and flows, these are real people with real lives I see wandering the streets, both plateside and beneath it. the extended cast of npcs you interact with, and how you become close to them, makes the awful fallout of the reactor explosions and the plate drop so visceral. I cried when Marlene broke down in front of aerith. I felt that pain so keenly. the characters are so expressive and fully realized, and even though some of the voices suck shit (Zack's and Sephiroth's are awful), I actually have come to quite like Cody Christian's performance as cloud, and I don't know her name but the girl who replaced Tifa does a much better job than Rachel Leigh Cook (which don't get me wrong, I like her, but she phoned in her advent children role so hard). 

I spent wayyy too much time wandering the streets, soaking in the sights and sounds, taking in all the little details. I added so much to my writing lore as a result. this is what I came to the game for, and it solidly delivered. my hype for rebirth is almost entirely to see more character interaction and worldbuilding. I'm gonna eat it like fuckin cake. 

as long as Nomura doesn't Nomura super hard all over the plot and shove characters and things into places they don't belong, I'll be more content. from what I heard he actually wanted to do a more accurate 1:1 remake but got overruled (maybe my ire should be directed at nojima?) so I guess we'll see. there are many opportunities to do things right, and they've at least shown that character depth is one of their strong suits. 

8/10 experience overall so far, but I've been here so long I'm capable of shoving my fingers in my ears and ignoring the stuff I don't like. after all, that's what fandom is for! 

[otakween]

I'm Standing on a Million Lives - Volume 1

Hurray! Moving on from 100% Pascal Sensei, this is the next series on MAL alphabetically due to its Japanese title (100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru). I'm excited to be catching up on something so recent as season 2 for the anime is actually coming out this month! I'm going in 100% blind so, I guess we'll just see where this goes. Chapter breakdown after the "read more."

Ch. 1

-Well, this was really awkwardly paced and written, not a promising start if I'm honest. I hate it when people are isekai'd and barely react, it's so jarring.

-Protag-kun is an edgelord who "hates Tokyo and all the people in it," has no friends, and just wants to play video games. Of course his video game skills are rewarded in isekai-land. Typical cliché BS so far. At least he had a self-aware "oh wait, I'm being a self-centered prick" moment.

-The art isn't hideous, but I don't sense any creativity here. Everyone looks very generic, including the monsters. At least the two-page spreads look nice on my new e-reader

-I feel like this would read as batshit to people who aren't familiar with the isekai genre. They just assume that people are so used to these tropes that they don't need to explain anything. I would have liked it if they showed us more of the "normal" world so that the isekai moment would be more of a shock and we could get a better feel for the characters/setting.

-Game master dude is really annoying. I hope they explain why he speaks in partial sentences. None of the characters even acknowledged it which was really weird.

-Kinda dumb how Kusue saying "I want to be useful to people!" just completely blew Protag-kun's mind and changed his whole world view. First of all: can we save epiphanies like that for at least the end of volume 1?? Second: how easily swayed is this man!? He felt like he went through the entire A Silent Voice MC's character arc in 2 seconds.

-I feel like the level of gore doesn't fit the tone they're going for. It just feels out of place and gratuitous. Like, this isn't Attack on Titan, this is more of an adventure series (I think)

Ch. 2

-The characterization in this is really annoying. So far the characters don't feel like real people, they're just assigned archetypes. Yuka is an otaku, Kusue is the "frail girl," etc. I think one thing that's lacking is the girls barely get a chance to speak and we're stuck with Yotsuya's incel monologues. Hopefully this improves.

-Real convenient that all the chosen party members are girls so far. The setting/make up of the party reminds me of Konosuba a lot.

-Why are bullying scenes in manga always so over the top? I'm pretty sure bullies don't typically go the sexual assault route. Similar to the gore feeling out of place, that felt unnecessarily dark. The character's also reacted to it as if it wasn't a big deal (???)

-Today in "fancy words used in manga": polyandric. Apparently it means an animal that mates with multiple males.

-I was honestly triggered by the centipede monsters. I have house centipedes in my apartment and they're horrifying. The thought of one wrapping around my head...-shudder-

-The bullying rescue scene was interesting. I feel like normally it would be a big, heroic moment, but instead they chose to show how all the girls (bullies and victim) were afraid of Yotsuya for suddenly showing up and acting like a maniac. It was kinda nice to see his "you love me now, right?" rejected lol.

-The self-aware anime stuff is obnoxious. MC being like "woah this is a harem situation" and the girls being like "gap moe!?" at the end of the chapter. It's jarring when characters that aren't supposed to be otaku bring up otaku things.

-Game Master showing up on Yotsuya's phone was pretty funny lol. I liked his selfie.

Ch. 3

-Shindo's backstory was so weirdly written and awkward: she was a bad kid, made friends with an older girl who taught her to be good, and then that older girl killed herself. She then overheard her family members being like "lol that dead girl was ugly" so...she vowed to protect the weak...or something? I dunno it was confusing. Also, more needlessly grimdark content with Shindo's parents basically saying that girl deserved to die because she was ugly.

-I don't think this mangaka understands anatomy, the abs on the male characters look...off

-Interesting rule where they lose EXP for fighting humans. Although, that does make me wonder about the cover art for this volume. Are the "million lives" supposed to represent all the times the characters die and are revived or...?

-Yuka being like "I don't think Shindo's a good person because she's got pretty privilege." Rubbed me the wrong way. She reeks of the "not like other girls" trope

-When Yotsuya said he's "not like other boys" because he'll listen to your tragic backstory and Shindo reacts "are you gay or something?" That felt like a mix of casual homophobia and toxic masculinity, not cute.

Ch. 4

-We get a new harem addition and her stupid quirk is that she likes cutting people up. I dunno, something about the way she robotically announced that while fighting felt so unnatural and forced. This manga is anything but subtle.

-Only now realizing that the artist and the author are two separate people. Honestly, I was surprised to find out that this is just a manga and it doesn't have a corresponding light novel. It really feels like it's being adapted from something, but maybe that has to do with the writer and artist being separate?

-Every time they mention a new fantasy name it kinda seems like the author just threw scrabble letters at the wall.

-The design of the bipedal steeds wheel attachment looked like it wouldn't work. Like, how do those things walk with a big giant wheel right in front of their feet? I guess I'll find out in the anime lol

-Very, very confused about Yotsuya's "career." When he became a chef he dressed as a chef, but now that he's a wizard he's back to dressing like a farmer and using a hoe? That seems like a continuity error. Either that or they didn't explain how things work very well. Can you switch between your past careers?

-They reveal that they only feel 1/36 of normal pain in this world, which would have been nice to know in chapter 1 when people were being torn apart, but okay.

-One of Yotsuya's new skills is "the ability to raise or lower the persuasiveness of your words." Immediately I was like, "wtf? In what situation would you want to lower your persuasiveness?" Maybe if you're using reverse psychology? -shrug-

-I enjoyed the author's mini essay at the end about stories standing the test of time. I guess this is their first serialization so now I kinda feel bad for trashing it so much lol. Oh well, gotta be honest in my reactions...