(//_-) 🠄 emo bang

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