Category Archives: Franchises

October 23, 2017

Anime-Gataris Is BBT

By omo

I watched 3 episodes of Anime-Gataris. It reminds me of anitwitter in that it has all these really low level takes. Unlike anitwitter it wasn’t funny or even occasionally insightful, or all that updated–tons of old takes. What I find more troubling in Anime-Gataris is that it lacks the double layer of awareness that I am coming to expect of my meta anime in 2017. Imoto Sae is a good example of what Anime-Gataris is not, for a recent example.

The result, I don’t know if it’s fair to say, is that Anime-Gataris reminds me a lot of the Big Bang Theory. A character and situational driven comedy poised to drop bombs on nerdy references…is exactly what both are. The problem is the jokes and references are fine and well and good in Anime-Gataris, but I’m not sure if it’s for an audience that really wants to get all the jokes. To use an example, it’s like how Garnidelia’s Aikotoba has a space in it on ANN’s listing of Anime-Gataris, and not a no-space or even a dash. (Do you get what I’m trying to say by this meta joke?) If it was proper anitwitter, “A~I~Ko~To~Ba” or something just a little more ~woke~.

The problem at a glance with Anime-Gataris, and other shows like it, is that they are the sort of despised creatures of the 00s in that mid-Azuma, database creation space. I think on a certain level I’m intrigued to see that “character X is supernerd into [vertical Y] and character Z plays the outsider getting in” template is applied to actual anime and not as a derivative work, because that’s how everyone outside of Japan sees things. [Which leads to a bunch of thoughts in my head about oversea fan-catering-isms, but that’s besides the point.] We’ve had enough of this with games, cosplay, Akiba culture, idols, whatever. Finally one on actually anime as disposable entertainment.

Anime otaku is really an underground and hardcore breed of otaku in Japan, ultimately. There are a lot of “poser-likes” who are aware of the meta but don’t play, to use a CCG metaphor. The type of people who watches 10+ shows a season over the span of a few years (minimum) is what makes up real anime otaku I think. Except I think there are more people who don’t watch that many anime and know what’s up, than those who do.

Maybe in 2017 it’s time to have another show like this (yes, it’s novel), in this way (no, it’s tried and tired). Like at this point I don’t even care for its curious, gloves-on references to other properties (such as..Dub Tones? Or whatever Love Live is). It just feels like a by-the-committee effort to milk actual anime otaku, in that flat kind of way that I know oversea nerds like. Of course, this is also counting on Anime-Gataris to carry out its plan to develop its characters as usual and provide some compelling hijinks, but until it makes an IDOLM@STER reference, all it’s doing is saying the things I’ve been hearing people say for the last 20 years.

I guess I judge this kind of things on actual merits, not on superficial performances. So while I will observe Anime-Gataris from afar, I’d suggest people actually go watch all the shows referenced in Anime-Gataris first before watching Anime-Gataris. You are guaranteed to spend your time better that way.

Leave a comment | posted in Animegatari

October 23, 2017

Some Thoughts on the “FairyTale Ja Irarenai” Event

By omo

I went on Reddit looking for a fight and caught a fish who didn’t know any better. So let me summarize the finding in more precise terms. And also some thoughts.

  1. The new ranking event forces everyone to play the same way, with some options:
    1. You can pick your Stamina use, 2M, 4M, 6M, MM. (15/20/25/30)
    2. On the next page you can pick from two songs (one is “recommended” and gives slightly more points, see below), or a job;
      • And also, alternatively, the event song. Which uses no Stamina but song tokens and doesn’t count as one of the 5-things.
  2. You do 5 non-event-song things with Stamina and you get 1 event song token (max 99 stored)
    • Each of those things also give some amount of event points.
    • The amount of event score those 5 things give you correlates to Stamina used. More Stamina you use, more points you get per type of thing.
      • Job gets you about half the points as the recommended song for the same Stamina tier.
  3. The lower Stamina you spend to get finish those 5 things, the less Stamina per token you can get.
  4. Since event songs give the most score for the event, it is most efficient to do the lowest Stamina things over doing higher Stamina things, because you end up with more event song tokens with the same Stamina spend.
    • But of course, it also means playing for longer to get the same amount of points as someone spending more Stamina.
  5. People who don’t spend money on stamina or has a cap and need to maximize mileage, should play with minimal Stamina per 5 things.
    • Because you get more points overall since playing the event song gives you a lot of points
  6. People who have unlimited spend or limited time to play that they can’t use up their budget/Stamina store and need to maximize score at all cost, should play with max Stamina per 5-things.
    • The event song also rewards players who do the higher stamina 5-things, but not enough to cancel out just grinding with the lowest stamina and then play the event song.

I basically spelled out point #6 on Reddit and one person refuses to get it, because the realization that you get more points with the lowest setting stops them from realizing that this event is about max event score, not max efficiency. In other words, time is a limited resource for everyone, Stamina is not limited in the same way for rankers and whales.

Ultimately a hybrid strategy is ideal for people who want to achieve a high rank in this event; the score scale has changed from a standard “play songs normally, or crunch gems to P2W, whoever does the one or the other thing the most time wins” to “play songs normally…and optionally spend gems to get more points per period of time, and somehow someone wins?” The scaling swings towards people who can play the event song the most number of times, rather than the limits of the event token that you can get. It opens two doors for whales; you can grind 75 stamina or 150 stamina, the latter gives a modest advantage only (maybe 50% more points for 100% stamina), but it closes the door on them in that the overall time it takes is not drastically reduced unlike the jewel crunch method for the other type of ranking event.

There’s a calculus problem hiding in here.

My gut feeling is that much like the pay-to-lose style of grind that characterizes Greemas Million Live battle ranking events, pay-to-win jewel crunch for the typical PST event is too easy. You can grind in a couple hours enough points for the 5000th place tier, and that’s probably impossible for this event given how things are working out 2 days in.

The meta models is pretty easy to understand. Instead of calculating the best efficiency, it’s about predicting player behavior and figuring out how to one-up other players, in a competitive ranking event. So you do still need to understand efficiency, but the psychological barrier preventing people from spending or taking a less efficient route necessary means the group of players who do not have that Greemas 1200th place ranking mentality will have narrow score groupings, because you would do the max efficiency model. People who want to tier 2 will figure things out early and abandon that to go full throttle, or try to see if they can extend that efficiency to higher scoring tiers.

I sort of like this particular change they’ve done to the meta, but at the same time, it’s an outright nerf to P2W so it’s more P2L–in that the trap is both you could be spending your time grinding 2M and getting fewer points than your ranking competition, or you could be blowing cash and achieving fewer points than someone who has more time and is steadfast. Pegging the amount of play you do with the final score by requiring the # of tokens to be fixed and unattached to the ticket system is both good and painful, I guess.

At least, if anything, there are more options to victory in this event, and equally options to screwing yourself over. That is an overall improvement, I guess.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, Idolmaster

October 2, 2017

Episode of Jupiter

By omo

Here’s my actual hot take, after I dried it from my tears. There are some spoilers for Episode of Jupiter (#EOJ) in this post, but they target mostly people who are invested in the series already. If you are new or don’t care, keep going!

Continue reading

Leave a comment | posted in Idolmaster, Modern Visual Culture

September 25, 2017

On Million Live, New IM@S Game

By omo

In response to this, I’ve got almost nothing. Let me quote:

In short, the reason you likely won’t be seeing the Million Live anime anytime soon isn’t due to some odd bias against it, and it definitely isn’t because they’d rather chase the wallets of evil women ruining your cartoons. It’s far more straightforward than that: there’s simply no one around to make it right now. One of the reasons this franchise has consistently had high-profile adaptations, sometimes in spite of messy production schedules, is because it’s been supported by an immensely talented group of creators; even as the key staff is reshuffled, Idolmaster‘s production backbone has stayed the same, and that can only mean good things.

And by good thing he and I mean:

The real reason to wait to be honest, is for Taneda Risa to recover. It is one thing for Theater Days to leave out Kotoha, but you can’t do that with the anime. The industry/technology isn’t there yet! There’s more to say on this matter, in that you can speculate about the A-1 pipeline, the order of Million Live anime and SideM anime, and other things. With Darlifra and SideM close to each other it could mean a lot of things, one is that Million anime won’t be in 2018.

As someone who’s a little invested in Million Live, the point of having an anime really is just so that these guys can now render our favorite characters and idols in the same ludicrous settings that Million Live is known for, at least among the producers who are into the mobile games. So it really is Fukushima’s crew or bust. It’s a bit unfortunate that this segment of the IDOLM@STER franchise is so “narrow” now, but the hope is that when they produce something really good, people will come to appreciate it on the merits, idol trapping aside. It’s as good as GamiP’s confirmation that this cast and crew will be tapped to make the show, whenever it will be.

As for the new IDOLM@STER game on the Bandai HTML5 platform, I’m thinking it’s going to be international. The titles they picked seem to say this to me. That will be the big hope I have on it. And like how IDOLM@STER is a franchise that rides on the first generation of new hardware and platforms, this one will be something that can live or die based on its reception with the players and existing fans. I’m not really holding my breath on it because it does nobody any good, at least without more details anyway. Plus, I’m too busy caring about the existing things I have control over, like how much to spend on Theater Days gacha, or how I’m going to see the 765AS live next January.

PS. One of the best way they could do with Million Live anime is to have episodes in alternates, where one is based on one of the ludicrous events, and the next based on the main continuum. In some ways the 4th PV is paving the groundworks for this delivery style already. The big challenge there is how do you execute these gag concepts into full-length episodes, while not totally upsetting the overall atmosphere of the series. Another benefit of this is that the episodes can get outsourced easier and allow for more freedom in crafting the animation. I guess we’ll see what happens.

1 comment | posted in Idolmaster, Modern Visual Culture

September 22, 2017

Summer 2017 Anime

By omo

Just to recap, on the first day of Autumn?

Re:Creators – A lot of this story is fun and enjoyable, but it also kind of rubs me in a wrong way? Hard to explain. But I think Aoki’s direction is quite compelling so I’m sticking with it even if it turns into Aldnoah Zero again. I’m a bit behind on this one. For some reason I skipped the seiyuu/recap episode, and I should go watch that ep because, after all, it’s a fourth wall thing with seiyuu! I am kind of over the whole aspect of this story being a dumb fanfic, so I’m ready to enjoy it, but the story is now a bit slowed down since the first half.

Fate/Apocrypha – Pretty fights but overall dull. Coincidentally this is just how Fate Grand Order is, LOL. (Psst go play Magireco it’s way better in every dimension.) I’m also quite behind here so I’ll need to catch up.

Gamers – Not sure if this is fun because of relationships or because of games. I guess, like New Game, I dig the style. It has a pretty tiresome romantic thing going that eventually sheds the video game thing and just deals with low-esteem introverts and obviously low-esteem extroverts not being extroverted enough. Hoshinomori is great, I dig her a lot, possibly because she’s kind of the third wheel thing. Thematically speaking, Gamers is interesting in that it focuses on the divides between hobby, friendship, and romance, but I feel it’s not really poised to go home on that front.

New Game – It was a little slow going into the second season but it was fun seeing the, uh, employee mobility within this company. The new characters brought the drama but they were slowly growing on me as well. Kind of sad the new ED was not as design-y as the first ED, but ah well. In a way the assets in New Game surpass New Game anime itself…

Knight’s & Magic – Fun little show about the meta driving the present in a way that makes science fiction fun. But it’s trapped in an isekai shell that at least doesn’t get in the way. I hear the anime keeps to the good parts of the books, so there’s also that. I will miss this one, just because the anime packaging is so tight, for the most part.

A Centaur’s Life – To me this show is the winner of this season, it wraps around some of the same issues other shows this seasons dealt with, but in a way that suited my tastes the most. If anything, sometimes it feels like an American sitcom, which is probably not the best thing in this context. I do like how it takes on some plain philosophical questions, not as core, but as extra bonus.

Classroom of the Elite – I feel the draw of Yojitzu, besides fanservice and crazy characters, is the mystery element. The actual educational system and the plot are kind of drab, and frankly the pace of the anime is too slow. If it wanted to make comments on human conditions or Japan’s societal issues, there are better way to do so. Well, in its own way, it is a story about high school kids doing high school kids things, so it can be endearing on those fronts.

In Another World with My Smartphone – It’s Aho Girl or this, I went with this, now I feel kind of bad. At the same time, this is the kind of show you don’t need to check your brain at the door to enjoy, because you need it to understand how bad it is, and derive enjoyment from the badness of this show. And by bad I mean it’s just a poor production. The fluffy, softcore fantasy aspects of the story is enjoyable if you let yourself enjoy it, I guess. Despite having a lot of opportunity to play the smartphone joke up, it refrained from doing so.

Aho Girl – It’s dumb. I enjoy it to a degree but I couldn’t finish it–I wish the dosage is smaller.

Tsuredure Children – The Tsuredure Children are all right. It’s perfect because it’s  just all what’s good about romance anime boiled down and condensed. I feel that really added to the comedic effect of the series.

Sakura Quest – Long trek completed. I enjoyed it a lot, although it was more a slow burn than any great heights or valleys. I think the 2 best parts of the inaka experience are the sceneries and the people, but short of the former because your countryside is boring, then it’s the latter carrying the show. If anything Sakura Quest is stocked full of weirdos and fun people, in a normal folks are never really that normal kind of way. You can see it even in the way Sakura Quest credits itself with the storywriting by its own character.

Tenshi no 3P – Lolicons ahoy. I enjoy the music aspect of this enough. The story is even more soft pitch than Isekai Smartphone, although arguably it has an edge because they do play the lolicon jokes and threaten viewers with loli fanservice. Goes to show that among otaku, lolicons are not even the worst!

Magic Circle Guru Guru – Dragon Quest inspired cartoon is actually great. I am in the middle of it, but will catch up.

Restaurant to Another World – This is one of my top watching of the week, which I follow as soon as the new ep is out (Knight’s & Magic is the other). I dig that opening song. The story is healing and the food is delicious-looking. If there is a minus it’s that for a non-Japanese eater the food selection is kind of keks at times, and you will be teased by this show into wanting to eat what they’re eating.

Princess Principal – This is oddly fun, but I feel this is also a bit too wishfully fancy. I’m quite a few eps behind so hopefully I can catch up.

Welcome to the Ballroom – It’s just OK to me, but the animation is delightful to watch. I guess I’m a little fatigued by the character composition and the way how they are used in the plot. It’s kind of formulaic in that it tries hard to do its own thing, but I don’t want that familiarity it tosses to the viewers as a guide.

My GF is a Gal – This is kind of fun, a simple-minded but honest fanservice anime. It kind of played too close to textbook towards the end, for better (because it avoided being even more misogynist) or for worse (because it got real dumb fast). Towards the end, I’m not sure if it’s just a production thing or they decided to give the larger boobs minds of their own. It got kinda puri puri in terms of physics?

Still in the middle of PriPri Chiichan.

I’m holding onto Made in Abyss for a marathon, hopefully on my trip to Hotch Potch?

PS. That Nora Stray Cat anime short…has a whole episode (#6) where they showed footages of goats grazing, and the voice actresses dub over it. On a related note–that it’s not exactly anime–I’m still watching Agent Hazap, it’s worth it for the intelligence.

PPS. I didn’t mention much that I dropped, other than Aho Girl. I guess the Reflection counts? It’s the kind of show I’d watch 15+ years ago, because it’s kind of intriguing despite the other shortcomings.

Leave a comment | posted in Centaur no Nayami, Fate, Gamers!, Isekai Shokudou, Modern Visual Culture, New Game, Re:Creators, Sakura Quest, Tenshi no 3p, Youkoso Jitsuryoku Shijou Shugi no Kyoushitsu e