#re zero games

[gabbyp09]

[aiarts-posts]

[thebabygirlenthusiast]

I swear to god the biggest sin of re village is that they somehow DIDNT MAKE CHRIS A WEREWOLF. HES LITERALLY ON THE COVER ART OF THE GAME HEADSHOT W A LYCAN/WEREWOLF. IM STILL SO PISSED CAPCOM

like are you fucking serious

[dukemercury]

[id in alt!]

real sketchy zero drawing...

[whiskers-my-beloved]

Happy Fifteenth Of December

Hello ! Now Billy Tsum joins us ! What did yall think of Billy ? He seems like a nice enough guy even if his tsum is a delinquent. For sure running after Tsum Rebecca to make sure she is fine....she is fine but he just huffs saying he is making sure just in case. Cutie

[dailytinysubaru]

Day 7: gamer hours.. what will he play?

[cutecapybarapics]

[mariannedulaksartblog]

Re:zero-Retro game style Arc 4 moment.

[zeivira]

This isn't necessarily a complain, i just find it hilarious at this point.

[arkus-rhapsode]

Sony wants to buy Kadokawa, what does this mean?

So this is a post I didn't think I'd ever have to make, but I guess I will because it concerns two things I'm invested in: anime and video games. And it concerns how we may potentially be seeing those industries get even more consolidated.

Yesterday on November 19th Reuters reported that Sony was in talks to acquire the massive Japanese media conglomerate Kadokawa. As of November 20th, we see that Sony has indeed sent a letter of intent for an acquisition.

Now look, I know we all tend to see Sony as a video game and technology company first and foremost, and I think that has led to a tendency for reports on this story to frame this story as "Sony wants to buy the parent company of FromSoft, what does this mean for Armor Core and Souls games going forward?" Now I don't necessarily blame gamers from focusing on the game aspect of this purchase, but its massively underselling that Sony is a multimedia entertainment company with plans outside of video games and Kadokawa's holding on other forms of media. For just a taste, here is just what Wikipedia lists as some of the subsidiaries of the Kadokawa Corporation.

As you can see, numerous light novel and manga magazine publishers, anime studios, and even news sites like Anime News Network fall under the umbrella of Kadokawa owned operations. And Sony themselves have been no slouches in the anime industry either. Having bought Aniplex, Funimation, Crunchyroll, RightStuff and more Sony has had a foothold on the distribution of anime outside Japan for quite a while. If this acquisition goes through there is no doubt that this will make their grip even tighter on the anime industry. Basically now controlling all the means of taking a work from the page to the screen to overseas to the merch to follow.

Obviously, I don't necessarily blame video game journalists and personalities for not going this deep into it, video games and anime fans may have overlap, but it's pretty clear there's a level of separation between the two in the same space. However, this focus on FromSoft honestly reminds me of the Microsoft-Bethesda purchase where most people talked about it like Microsoft only bought Bethesda. No, they bought Bethesda's parent company, Zenimax Media, which owns Bethesda and also numerous other studios like Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Obsidian, Roundhouse Studios, and Alpha Dog Games. Note that all those studios except Obsidian saw a closer this year. When dealing with a massive merger/acquisition like this its important to keep in mind the full scope of it.

Kadokawa and its video game sector which includes FromSoft, Spike Chunsoft and recent acquisition of Acquire being purchased by Sony would be pretty rough. Particularly Spike who have made a reputation for themselves as one of the still AA studios that are into developing and publishing niche games like Ai The Somnium Files, Master Detective Raincode, and Mystery Dungeon. So having Sony, who have spent basically the last decade and a half moving towards huge blockbuster AAA games and who have just incurred a massive loss and shuttered a studio like Firewalk after one disastrous game, makes me fear for a lot of the safety of any new company being brought on.

And of course, there's the very real possibility that one acquired Sony will make many of these games these studios make exclusive to their Playstation platform. Or at the very least require a PSN account to access these titles on things like the PC. I know there's a lot of people who like to turn stories of Sony and Microsoft acquiring companies into pissing matches for whoever's team is "winning" by buying up more, but setting aside the console wars nonsense, the adverse effects of the major third party publishers on the industry would be bad for all platform users.

However, even more worrisome is what will happen on the print entertainment side of things. Kadokawa isn't a small time publisher of works. When it comes to their Light Novel prints they include series like Sword Art Online, Haruhi Suzumiya, Irregular at Magic High School, Classroom of the Elite, Re:Zero, No Game No Life, and even Slayers

There's also Enterbrain, a much smaller publisher known for its cult fanbase and publishing of niche series like Delicious in Dungeon!

Now, all of these series in Japan are typically protected by much stronger creators rights laws in Japan. With the series creators owning their work and not the publishers. But it doesn't change that now Sony will essentially have ownership of their publishing outlets and a seat at everyone of their production committees I regards to adaptations of their work. And then we get into how those products might leave Japan. Yen Press and Book Walker aren't small outlets, they are a big deal in making several of these series legally accessible to non-Japanese readers. Yen Press has even taken it upon themselves to bring over series from other magazines like Oshi no Ko, which Viz Media had failed to bring over for years.

And speaking of Oshi no Ko, this acquisition would mean Sony would now own the studio that makes it, Doga Kobo. Along with Cinema Citrus, the studio behind Made in Abyss, Rise of the Shield Hero, and as I was writing this, just was announced for Star Wars Visions Vol 3. Now lets add onto the fact Sony currently owns Crunchyroll which is one of the three main players in the North American anime streaming and distribution game along with Netflix and Hi-Dive. Sony could in theory now cut out the need to bid for airing certain anime overseas and instead just have a pipeline that leads directly from Kinema Citrus all the way to Crunchyroll's servers.

And speaking of Crunchyroll, we haven't even talked about how Sony has been acting in regards to this one streaming platform. Initially, Sony had acquired Funimation and infamously we had a neck and neck streaming war with Crunchy and Funi, but eventually Crunchyroll would be sold off to Sony where they proceeded to fold Funimation into Crunchyroll's brand. Erasing years of Funimation's own identity and most egregious of all, shuttering the Funimation website which deleted loads of digital content. Especially annoying when one of the perks of purchasing a Funimation Blu-Ray was offering a free digital copy that could be used on their website. So all those purchases? Gone. Hope you saved the physical media.

Crunchyroll themselves have also been no shortage of controversies lately, from the implementations of AI subtitles that are not only inaccurate, but also a pretty transparent attempt to eventually phase out subtitle writers. Then there's the allegations by actors as recently as a few weeks ago that Crunchyroll Studios has acted unprofessionally and illegally with their treatment of staff. But I think the most controversial of all was what happened to RightStuf. RIghtStuf was an anime merchandise outlet that would be shut down after purchase by Sony and then redirected users to go to the Crunchyroll merch store. If that doesn't sound like an attempt to monopolize a hobby, I don't what does.

I know this post has been very alarmist sounding, I legit was shaken when I heard the news, but there is some small silver lining to this dark cloud. Kadokawa hasn't made any decision either which way to go with this intention to acquire. They are capable of doing they're due diligence and seeing if this acquisition is opportune for them or not. Do I think they are going to reject it? I don't know. I'd prefer to not have this go through, but its out of my hands.

Once again, we must unfortunately watch more consolidation in the animanga and video game spaces. Which in the year 2024, we've seen full display of what has happened with the shrinking AA space of developers and publishers as they've been eaten up by guys like Tencent, Embracer Group, Microsoft, and Sony. We've had so many lay-offs and shut downs in this year alone its disheartening. Combine that with how this will effect how many people outside of Japan's accessibility to the pass time that they are passionate about and how this will inch us closer to only a few big players making all the choices for the anime industry is also disheartening.

There's a very tangible future where corporations like Sony own so much of our art and entertainment.

[gabbyp09]

[madame-helen]

[crossbackpoke-check]

tagged by ko @tofumilanesa for wip wednesday! big shout out to writevember for making me feel like i can actually call any of these works in progress… your guide to my emoji code under the cut

wip!

🪻🐈‍⬛ - the doc title is still just. YOWLING but i am like 7/8 of the way done with omega yamo fic and hopefully salem isn’t reading this so i can just drop it over a year later with no warning <3

🫃2️⃣ - DEWEY^2 P2!!!! she is almost done (i am lying) but she is so close i can almost taste it. sorry to my pwp that grew its own feelings baby

😇🤭 (🕒 -> 🕜) - rip i’m not telling you about this one until it’s posted but it IS complete aside from being ao3 formatted and the eight billion edits i inevitably do right before full-sending it

☁️💧 - cloud petey fic, which exists mostly as an embarrassingly large tag on a different blog and is condensing into a narrative about as well as water at 30° N/S. the time loop fic also falls under this description

eternally in progress (short list)

🌑🐕 - tyler borzoituzzi exists… there is an index of scenes/plot points… it plays like a movie in my head…

💯❕- fantastic! ‘verse

👁️👻 - stevie brandon seeing ghosts au, which has eight different (now nine i guess but you haven't seen the mustache adam post yet) plots. sorry

just. rotating like a microwave

🍎 - because they didn’t have a pomegranate emoji, this is what i used for the fic that feels like it should be a 50k connor bedard character study hanif abdurraqib/cathal kelly thesis about legends and mythmaking in sports and eating your young. yes i know pomegranates aren’t actually pomes and apples are but it’s fine

🦈 - the one cat da fuck they doing over there meme but about the sharks just like. in general. more on this at five

tagging @colap1nto, @songsandswords, @whitenikes, @gordiemeow, @acheronist, and anybody else who wants to share!!

[wellgoodmorningtome]

Of course I had to do more Part 2 of this post

[okitanoniisan]

new rgg fans will never know what they missed back in ye olden days of the fandom (like, 2019), doubly so now that scott strichart's deleted his twitter and jon riesenbach's privated. twitter was so fucking fun and then whatever-the-hell at sega of america happened and caused a fucking snowball effect and now we have shitass localization and resulting discourse that makes every release nigh unbearable, misinformation, confusion, people complaining about "bad writing/mischaracterization" not realizing it's because of the shitass english loc, i'm sitting here like jesus christ these loc bitches massacred saejima's character voice, people will never see him as he was intended, as original yakuza 5 localization Correctly painted him, and now they're coming for kiryu. god help us. we used to be a proper fandom. before everyone was subjected to the remastered localizations and shaky eng characterization. no one had even played yakuza 3-5, people still called morning glory "sunshine" orphanage, kiryu was our only protagonist and people still called him "boring", it was beautiful...

anyway gaiden uses affective instead of effective because the current localization team is full of careless dumbasses who don't give a fuck about ensuring they're using correct english grammar and this is not an isolated incident

[demifiendrsa]

Metaphor: ReFantazio — The Royal Tournament

Japanese version

Official website footage

Metaphor: ReFantazio will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PC (Microsoft Store, Steam) in Fall 2024.

Key visual

Latest details

■ Story

This is a story of how people must find unity to elect a new king.

Our story takes place in The United Kingdom of Euchronia, where the assassination of the king brings chaos and unrest to the land.

Then, one fateful day, a magic known only to the king called the Royal Magic is invoked, and the world becomes embroiled in a royal tournament for the throne.

In the midst of this, the protagonist, together with his partner, the fairy Galica, must find a way to break the curse that has been placed on the prince that the kingdom believes to be dead. To do so, they depart on a journey across the vast land.

They will discover that in order to achieve their goal, they must participate in the tournament for the throne, and this great task shall require them to ally with many friends and followers of the various tribes inhabiting the world.

■ Characters

Protagonist (voiced by Natsuki Hanae)

Together with the fairy, Galica, he embarks on a journey to lift the deadly curse placed on his childhood friend, the prince of Euchronia.

He is a boy of the elda tribe, branded as a “tainted” people by the state religion who believe they have inherited dangerous and heretical magic. Being so rare among the populous, they are detested and discriminated against throughout the kingdom.

Gallica (voiced by Sumire Morohoshi)

Not only a traveling companion, Gallica is the guide who helps the protagonist carry out his mission to save the prince. Although she is too small to participate in battles, her knowledge of magic and ability to sense magla is superior to the protagonist due to her fairy nature. She doesn’t mince words, but she is a reassuring ally on his journey.

Strohl (voiced by Kensho Ono)

He is a young man of the clemar tribe who meets the protagonist in the recruitment centre for the State Army. A smart young man with a strong sense of justice, he hails from a noble family. And yet, it seems his circumstances are complicated, as it is rare for a noble to enlist in the army alongside commoners.

Hulkenberg (voiced by Saori Hayami)

A knight of the roussainte tribe and former member of the royal family’s Kingsguard who served by the prince’s side. Despite her young age, she excelled in the use of various weaponry, and was assigned to the personal guard of the prince. But when the prince was attacked, she failed to protect him and set out to wander, carrying the stigma of this failure in her heart.

Heismay (voiced by Akio Ootsuka)

A former knight of the eugief tribe. He has acute perception compared to most others, due in part to the eugief trait of being sensitive to sound.

With an appearance that differs greatly from other tribes, it’s not uncommon for eugiefs to be discriminated against—and it seems Heismay is no exception, his past his own burden to bear.

■ Followers

Meet and bond with your followers.

■ Game Mechanics

Unique battles that combine action and turn-based commands. Party customization offering a high degree of freedom and strategy. An evolution of the realistic day-by-day journey of the Persona series.

■ Staff

Director – Katsura Hashino (Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5)

Character Designer – Shigenori Soejima (Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5)

Composer – Shoji Meguro (Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5)

Concept Artist – Koda Kazuma (Notable Work: NieR:Automata)

Mechanical Designer – Ikuto Yamashita (Notable Work: Neon Genesis Evangelion)

■ Art and Sound

Journey through a vast and magnificent fantasy world. Explore the game alongside an intuitive and beautiful user interface that elevates the experience. Lend your ear to masterfully crafted music utilizing captivating unique chants.

■ New Screenshots