(//_-) ← emo bang

I had a lot to say about this 20? 30? hour game, clearly. Making my icon for this post Eisen because I think he's soooo cute :3

This is the last post of this silly series. I'm free... I'm finally free.
( Harukanaru Toki no Naka de )

Since I started this series of posts I've also finished Resident Evil 4 (the Wii port with improved graphics and stuff, not the remake), but I don't feel like reviewing it. Everyone knows RE4. All I will say is I had fun and I liked it, but I could only play it in short bursts because it made my motion sickness act up badly. I kind of want to draw Ashley and her big ears.

Four days ago I started a really long post reviewing (badly, because I am a bad reviewer and critic) things I've finished in the past few months because I felt like I should. The post started like this:

I really need to learn to just make posts as soon as the idea is in my head rather than hold on to them, so that I won't have to make posts like this and push other post ideas back. Procrastinating these long things that only get longer as I hold out sucks a little. I'm using a template for most of these because otherwise I won't write anything that makes sense or reads well, lol.

You see, because I procrastinated writing review posts I now had to write 8 in one. Except... no I didn't. I realized late last night I can make and post them a few at a time. I've already finished 6/8, but some of them are really long, and some were even truncated for the sake of not having a miles long post. If I separate them I can talk more. So here goes!
( Legend of the Galactic Heroes )
( Gokicha!! Cockroach Girls )
( Grandia )

Something for the 90s-loving yume, fu, and himejoshi!
(Even if you're not a joshi you can join in on the fun too, just as I do ❤)

Because why read Wikipedia or something when you could read a post on a blog, right? I highly recommend reading this on a webpage where you can open and close the cut tags.

Thank you for your attention! For the sake of my mutuals who watch me reshare illustrations of lanky, godlike men in confusion, for the sake of those who see my art and wonder who these strange people are, and for the sake of those curious about video game or joseimuke history, I have written this. I will mainly focus on the first game Angelique (1994) and its rereleases, but I'll be sure to mention characters and such from the other games too.

The Basics

Angelique is a series of video games along with a media franchise encompassing anime, manga, novels, drama and music CDs, and much more. It's a series of simulation games - with one JRPG aberration and two digital board games - that forms part of the otome umbrella. In fact, it's the first otome game in history! (What is an otome game?) It's made by Ruby Party, who had to fight to prove making a game aimed just at women would work out. It's also part of their Neoromance series, a franchise of dating simulation games for girls. (Others include Harukanaru Toki no Naka de/Beyond the Stream of Time, Kiniro no Corda/La Corda d'Oro, and Neo Angelique. Maybe you've heard of them!)

The first game released in 1994 and centers around an exam to choose a new Queen for the universe. As the current one loses her power, her aide Dia leads the exam to choose a new one. Two girls from Smolney Girls' Academy on the Main Planet, Angelique and Rosalia, are chosen and whisked away to compete for the throne. To win they must properly harness the powers of the all-male guardians to nurture their own continents. Whoever fully cultivates their continent first gets to be Queen. Obviously it will go better for you if you're in the guardians' good favor, but be careful -- the Queen must be entirely devoted to her work in supporting the Universe. Or, put into other words, girls with boyfriends can't be queen.

( Do NOT underestimate how long this post is. )

*felix voice* why am i even here
( Read more... )

Obviously this is all just my opinion, before I start.

If you're going to make a romantic visual novel and you want to give the player character a developed backstory or preexisting friend group with set dynamics and everything and stuff, you might as well draw them a face too. It's irritating when a game only asks for a name (and maybe pronouns), so I think "oh, this game is going to be real self-inserty," and then the self-insert isn't anything close to a blank slate.

And what's more annoying than that is when these self-insert-wannabe games say that I'm blushing or my heart is skipping a beat or whatever when it isn't. I'm not doing that. I wouldn't do that in this situation. If you want me to do that, you should just write something that makes me do it, not command me to do so. If you want strong control of how the MC acts and reacts without irking me, give them a look and default name. Then I can cheer them on from the sidelines and maybe even start to see what they see myself, instead of feeling like I'm being forced to fall in love.

Examples: I am not much like Ceres from Virche Evermore*, but I enjoyed watching her love stories and took a liking to all the guys myself via how she moves in the world and how they treat her. Unexpected, since I wasn't expecting to like them all. And maybe this isn't a fair comparison because it isn't a VN, but the Angeliques from Angelique don't talk much in their games. The love interests talk to her, and often her reaction isn't shown, neither with dialogue nor a portrait. It doesn't need to be shown because she is me, and I know how I reacted to what I just read/heard in real life. The game doesn't need to say that my heart skipped multiple beats and I'm red as a tomato, because it gives me little moments to reveal and lets them speak for themselves.

*Unrelated to this entry, but related to the last one: this game is a good example of what I was talking about in my last entry, because I saw a LOT of people say the game is too depressing for too long, while I didn't think it was quite depressing enough.

I'm not good at remembering names, so I'll call him Calzone until I do. I mean the dragon guy.

His beach outfit is a robe with one side off above the belt/sash (I dare not call it an obi), as if ready to shoot a bow.

Herein lies the issue. He is wearing a battle outfit to the beach. You can see half of his sexy torso and he usually dresses very modest, so it looks nice, yes, but they're still cowards. In the cultures his outfits are based off of, they wear a loincloth to the beach. His beach outfit should be just a loincloth. Get naked now.

( mistria spoilers; calzone beach outfit )

it might just be an aid for the viewer or because they didn't think too deep into it or something, but you know how kliff calls testament testament? which to me implies that's their birth name? that's a crazy ass name to be born with. like that's just not the kind of name a 5 year old should have.

( Read more... )

~

20:08 / 10:08 P.M.

why is this song so good seriously

i wonder if there's any point, or multiple points, in three houses where felix would have struck if not attacked dimitri, had they the extra $300 to pay and the extra shit to give for "hitting ally" and "being hit by ally" support/explore animations. maybe you could say felix cares for his friends so deeply he'd never hit them. but i like drama and i like when people hurt each other*, sooo.... maybe he has much more self-control than i'm giving him credit for too.

he could probably smack sylvain around a little too, if they cared.

*for example, i have yet to actually watch idolish7, but i've seen that one seen where glasses boy attacks the guy with white hair(?) soooo many times, plus i wrote the episode number and time in my official Three Hopes™️ notebook so i can go back to it whenever

Do you think when a guardian turns a certain age in the seichi they get super special clothes? Or is it just the oldest who get them? Because Julious and Clavis are rather fancily dressed. I mean, irl, character-design wise, I'm sure it was just "they're light and dark, the most basic things, so we're making them the oldest and most gaudily dressed," but I mean in-world. Because when you look at art of them younger they aren't dressed super fancy.

So to combine these, I would assume that only the guardians of light and dark get super epic fancy ultra rare clothes, and they only get them after a certain age. So now I wonder if it's there's a celebration for that or not. If their home cultures said reaching a certain age is a big deal I'm sure seichi would accommodate... plus they're men; many cultures have initiations and etc. for them to mark adulthood due to the typical lack of a period, a clear marker of reaching adulthood... hm hm hm much to think about

 

[02/10/2025, 1:06 P.M.: microblog repost]

I wish the Clavis artist hadn't nerfed his bang length so the resemblance would be even greater, but..............!!!!!!!

They have a lot in common; I really want to draw them together. There's a lot of things I want to draw though... I wish I drew faster. Or I should dedicate a day to staying the hell off the computer so i Have to draw (or read or game).

But basically, listen. They kind of look the same, except Clavis is a little taller and his eyes are smaller. And Testament isn't built like a triangle. If using ML Tes as the point of comparison then their bodies are probably more similar, but Clavis has more shoulder. #seme. And I think of pre-Strive Tes as being bony, but Clavis has servants and friends nearby who would make him eat even if he's too melancholic to care.

They both preside over death! For Tes I think it's just an aesthetic thing; they're probably not actually the Grim Reaper... Probably seemed that way to all the people they killed, but like, you can say that about any (mass) murderer. Clavis may not have a scythe, but he is the guardian of darkness. His sacrea brings peace, but also! It brings the most eternal peace of all 😌 So he also kills people, although I wonder if the deaths in question are all from illness or suicide or something since the others guardians' power Also can bring death (ex. too much water creates floods, which *gasp* kill people)

They're both sad, lonesome, pathetic little inidividuals. Tes gets better! So Tes may not be associated with that image anymore. Clavis also gets better. I felt he was a little less cold in Etoile, so one must assume that Limoges and Colette's prescence were just so awesome that they kinda fixed him. (What does this say about Dia?) You may point out that Tes was never Alone because they had their familiars, but Clavis wasn't either because he always had the other guardians, especially Luva and Lumiale, and that's not even getting into the servants. And I suppose he had the queen aide too, although they don't show Dia interacting with them a lot? Those are a bunch of humans and Clavis still acted the way he did, so maybe he should have been a little grateful that at least he's not Testament who post-Dizzy, pre-movingtothevillage, only had Creatures of dubious linguistic abilities (/JOKE btw)

I'm going to end this by saying........... They share some hobbies :) Clavis likes tarot and scrying via crystal ball and star-gazing :) Tes likes star-gazing and fortune-telling :)) twinninggggg. and Tes has lots of outdoor hobbies besides that, so they could become his friend via the previously listed hobbies and then make him grow as a person by slowly sucking him into some more active stuff. Tes doesn't have to fix anyone, of course, but :) yknow :) we can hold someone's hand as we help them back to their feet once they decide they're ready to stand up, can't we? :D :) :3 :3c :p ^_-

Feb 12, 10:34 A.M. edit: Thanks to a very helpful person in a server, I was able to get the pic of Clavis and the deer from Fushigi no Kuni :3 For further comparison!

You know, I coulda swore there were pictures of Tes in nature that were less ominous and had the various forest creatures on/near them, not Dizzy, but I guess I was thinking of something from a yonkoma or doujinshi. Well, if you know Testament hopefully you get the point!!

[02/10/2025, 12:00 P.M.~ish: microblog repost]