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Old 12-24-2022, 12:14 PM   #1
Talon87
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Mahoutsukai no Yoru


Mahoutsukai no Yoru (魔法使いの夜, Night of the Magic-Wielder), a.k.a. Witch on the Holy Night, is a visual novel by Type-Moon which tells the origin story of Aozaki Aoko, the wielder of the Fifth Magic. Debuting to general audiences in the visual novel Tsukihime, Aoko is the mysterious benefactor of the story's main hero, Tohno Shiki, providing him with priceless gifts and lessons that give him the strength to carry on. Audiences were intrigued by Aoko, a self-proclaimed witch with plain white tee, blue jeans, and striking red hair. Over time, Type-Moon built a mythos around Aoko, with subsequent works and interviews suggesting that Aoko is a rather big deal in the world of Type-Moon's narrative works. And, after much hype, the team released Mahoutsukai no Yoru on April 12, 2012 and shared with the world the story of how Aoko became "Blue".


When Mahoutsukai no Yoru (or Mahoyo for short) was first announced, Type-Moon had two critically-acclaimed VNs under their belt. The first was Tsukihime (2000), which tells the story of a young man who can trace the "death-lines" of any object he touches and a princess of the Moon who enlists his help. The team's second hit was Fate/stay night (2004), which tells the story of a battle royale between seven magi who, summoning the spirits of seven heroes to do battle on their behalf, vye for possession of a magic chalice that can grant any one wish.

Through their use of illustrations, music, and computer coding, with Mahoyo the team hoped to create a transformative experience which would elevate the medium and redefine what a visual novel could be. The team released a trailer showcasing sharp visuals with vibrant colors and special effects. Audiences were excited to see "the next big thing" from Type-Moon -- the Kara no Kyoukai movies were wrapping up, Fate/Zero was airing on television, and Carnival Phantasm had recently released to much acclaim. The fandom was pumped -- for the first time since Fate/stay night, a brand-new Type-Moon work neither a prequel, sequel, nor a spin-off to either Tsukihime or Fate/stay night was about to come out. The game launched on April 12, 2012 for Windows PC, with a price point of Ľ8000 before tax.

Originally advertised as the first in a three-part series, development on future Mahoyo titles stalled as focus shifted first to Tsukihime 2, then to a remake of the original Tsukihime, then to the popular mobile game Fate/Grand Order. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, Type-Moon redoubled their efforts on several of these projects, first publishing half of the Tsukihime remake (2021) and then publishing a much lighter remake of Mahoutsukai no Yoru (2022). Where Tsukihime got a much-needed facelift in graphics, music, and even story and characters, Mahoyo was deemed to already be in great shape -- the only thing it was missing was full audio voice acting for every line of character dialogue in the game.


Re-released on December 8, 2022 for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, Mahoutsukai no Yoru is the first Type-Moon visual novel to be released internationally and with multi-language support. Featuring Japanese audio and Japanese, English, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese text, the game is available for digital purchase in all regions. Limited-edition physical purchase was also made possible in Japan and North America.

Official Japanese site
Official English site
Japanese teaser trailer (YouTube)
Japanese trailer (YouTube)
English trailer (YouTube)
(There are also character preview trailers, but I don't suggest you watch those until you beat the game! Several of them were made with returning players in mind.)
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Old 12-24-2022, 12:16 PM   #2
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Mahoutsukai no Yoru - Characters

Characters


Aozaki Aoko: A Magician who lives in the modern world... though she is still an apprentice. Until middle school, Aoko lived a life uninvolved in the world of magecraft, but she was named her grandfather's successor once she entered high school. Otherwise, she is a normal high schooler. Thankfully, her strength of spirit and never-give-up attitude allowed her to adapt to the life of a mage. She is a reliable, big-sister sort of person who always sticks to her beliefs. She's a girl you can find anywhere, special in her own way. (Voiced by: Tomatsu Haruka)


Kuonji Alice: A Witch hiding amidst the modern world. The last of her kind. Alice is a genuine witch who has lived in the world of magecraft her entire life. Owing to certain events in her life, she moved away from her homeland of England and settled in a provincial Japanese city. Currently, she attends the prestigious Reien Girls' Academy for the elite. Because she is quiet and avoids getting involved with others, she feels most comfortable living on her own. She is a secret romantic who keeps her beliefs close to her chest and an icon of a girl who seems special in her own way, but not as much as one might think. (Voiced by: Hanazawa Kana)


Shizuki Soujuurou: A young boy from the countryside, introduced into the modern world. In a sense, he is a relic of another time. Soujuurou becomes an ordinary high school student, slowly adapting to his new life while being amazed by the abundance the city offers. With that forward-looking attitude, he is nothing if not stalwart. While a boy of few words, he is amiable enough that he gets along with most people. A down-to-earth boy who speaks little of his beliefs. He isn't special, but ... well, you wouldn't say he's normal, either. (Voiced by: Kobayashi Yuusuke)

(All character bios taken from the official site, with a few small tweaks. For more character information, feel free to check out the official site's character bio page!)
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Old 12-24-2022, 12:18 PM   #3
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Mahoutsukai no Yoru - My History


Eleven, almost twelve years ago, I sat on the floor of one of the university's chemistry research buildings, waiting for our inorganic lab proctor to unlock the door and let us into the lab. I surfed the Internet on my iPhone 3, loading UPN, Anime News Network, YouTube .... I navigated to Type-Moon's webpage -- they had recently announced a new game, and I wanted to view the pretty webpage again, listen to the pretty BGM, and see if there was any word on a street date. Afterward, I navigated back to YouTube and listened to the game's ending theme song, Hoshi ga Matataku Konna Yoru ni, sampled in the game's trailer, and then when it finished I listened to another supercell song that Yuki had recommended to me, Kimi no Shiranai Monogatari. The character in the word matataku, 瞬, was also the shun that was the name of one of the kingdoms in The Twelve Kingdoms that I was watching and discussing with UPN at the time. I studied the strokes, learning how to read and write the character, while listening to supercell and wondering when Nasu and Takeuchi would give us a date...

Mahoutsukai no Yoru has been on my radar since literally almost Day One. While I'm far from the biggest Type-Moon fan I know, it's fair to say that I was deep, deep into Type-Moon love when I sat on that cold hallway floor looking over my lab reports while listening to supercell. At this time already, I had:
  • seen all of the Tsukihime anime that everyone rags on
  • purchased several of the English localizations of the Tsukihime manga
  • watched all of Studio Deen's Fate/stay night adaptation
  • played Fate/stay night for PC, reaching the True Ends for all three paths
  • watched all of Carnival Phantasm that was then out
  • watched all of the Kara no Kyoukai movies (at the time, Extra Chorus and Mirai Fukuin didn't exist yet)
  • was watching Fate/Zero each week, re-watching each episode multiple times, as it aired live that season, Fall 2011 and Spring 2012
I would gush tirelessly about Fate/Zero to anyone who would listen. I looked forward to the day they gave us an Unlimited Blade Works and a Heaven's Feel anime adaptation, at the time nothing more than fan dreams. I beamed about Carnival Phantasm over Chinese fried rice with college friends. I was big into Type-Moon.

In the years after Fate/Zero's and Prisma Illya's releases, Type-Moon didn't really put out anything for me to consume. I was disinterested in their PlayStation content. We didn't have the likes of Fate/type Redline or Fate/Requiem yet. I would say I went through an "absence phase" until late February 2020, when let down by Pokémon Sword & Shield I decided to try and rekindle an old friendship by downloading Fate/Grand Order and playing it with a friend from school. It didn't work -- the friend dropped the game a few months later -- but now here I was, with a tether to my first promises of a genuine Type-Moon experience since Urobuchi Gen guest-wrote Fate/Zero. We'll save Fate/Grand Order (FGO) discussion for another day, but suffice it to say, this was my "lifeline" back into the Type-Moon fandom.


On December 31, 2020, Type-Moon fans were greeted with a remarkable New Year's gift from Nasu Kinoko and Takeuchi Takashi -- for the first time in over ten years, work on Tsukihime's remake was underway in earnest! :o The game would come out some time in 2021, stay tuned! Wow... :o If any game was in need of a facelift, it was Tsukihime. As a storyteller, Nasu felt he had improved. As an illustrator, Takeuchi had markedly improved. And as a lore lynchpin, there were many problematic contradictions in Tsukihime that hadn't been contradictions in 2000 when it first came out but which had become contradictions over time as more and more Type-Moon works piled on.


Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- was released on August 26, 2021. I pre-ordered my copy and imported it from Japan. I popped it into my Switch and ... *insert Emperor's New Groove Pacha "just right" meme here* It's honestly one of the most impressive visual novels I've ever seen. The illustrations? Each a masterpiece. The score? One of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a video game. Several pieces are true 10/10s. (One piece in particular blows me away at how well it does what it's trying to do, 当主様の優雅なひととき, but I'll save that discussion for another time.) But above all else? The writing. O_O Nasu's often said in the lead-up to TsukiRe that he felt he's grown as a writer and that he was unhappy with the writing in Tsukihime. Given what I had seen of his story contributions in Fate/Grand Order, I honestly wasn't persuaded. It wasn't until I was actually reading TsukiRe for myself that I was just amazed by Nasu's prose. Some of the things he writes are so poetic it is truly moving. Many of the things he writes are masterful displays of "To the newcomer, this will read like Object A; but to the veteran who knows the plot already, this will read like Object B coyly posing as Object A," and it's just so impressive how coyly he does it that I can't help but to be impressed. Some of his metaphors and similes have been so good I've been like, "Wow," because I normally either don't notice a simile or I have a low opinion of it. It's rare for me to encounter a simile that makes me stop and go, "Wow, that was good. :o" I could go on and on, but this isn't really the time or the place for a TsukiRe gush. All I'm trying to say here is, with TsukiRe Part I under my belt, I was primed for any further VN announcements the team might make in the near future.

I didn't have to wait long. Less than four months after I began playing TsukiRe, New Year's Eve 2021 was upon us. Fans waited with anticipation to see if Type-Moon would outdo themselves last year. And I mean, how could they!? Last year they had announced the most heavily anticipated Type-Moon remake of all time. How could they possibly top that?


A Mahoyo re-release. Okay... it's a start...

A Mahoyo animated movie by ufotable. Okay, now we're talking... :o But it still isn't enough to--

The Mahoyo re-release is going to have on-board English subtitles!? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?!?!?!?!?

It was happening. It was finally happening. We were getting an official Type-Moon release with an English language translation.

The only problem for most people was, it still seemed like this was going to be a Japan-only release. If you wanted to play Mahoyo in English, you were either going to have to import the physical game from Japan or else figure out how to download Japan-only software from the eShop to your Switch. And most people were not about doing that. Too much hassle. Too much expense. Too scary. No, we still needed a Western release of this game.

On July 3, 2022, the head of the localization team for Fate/Grand Order, Albert Kao, introduced the American market's trailer for Mahoyo and confirmed that we would be getting access to the game in some form. We still didn't know if we'd be able to get the limited physical edition that Japan gets or if we'd have to settle for digital only. The latter seemed more likely. Melty Blood: Type Lumina had been released in the West but was digital only. Lots of otaku media are released that way. What makes Mahoyo any different?

In November 2022, it was confirmed that North America would in fact be getting access to their very own version of the limited edition physical release. Unfortunately, it wouldn't release until January 27, 2023, putting it almost two months out from the Japanese street date of December 8, 2022 -- but a Western physical release is a Western physical release! This was historic. Not Fate/stay night, the most successful of the franchises. Not Tsukihime, the one that started it all, the one that only just one year prior had gotten its exquisite remake released. No -- it would be Mahoutsukai no Yoru that would be the first mainline Type-Moon visual novel available for purchase in the West.

I'd decided New Year's Day that I would be likely purchasing this game twice. I was confident it would eventually be released in North America, given the English-language inclusion in the Japanese release. But I was not confident that we would be getting our own limited edition physical deluxe copy. I figured I would pre-order the Japanese game first, the same as I did with TsukiRe, and then I would purchase the American release digitally to show my support for the franchise. But now with an American physical release also confirmed, those plans were upgraded. I'd get the Japanese physical release first, and then to show my support for more Type-Moon localization efforts I would get the Western physical release second.


On December 12, my package arrived from Japan. Pokémon Scarlet had just released less than a month prior, and while the rest of the community was getting started on the postgame, I was still wrapping up completion of two paths and the final act. I didn't want to delay Mahoyo too late -- I wanted this thread to go up as soon as possible -- but I also didn't want to make Yuki wait for eagerly-anticipated reactions to the Scarlet/Violet endgame. Much patience from her later ='3, I ended up completing Scarlet's main story the night of December 22, and last night we caught the vast majority of the Pokémon that can only be found in the endgame area. While she's still very much eager to hear my thoughts on a certain history teacher, I decided that that's gonna have to wait for another day. ^^; =') After eleven years of waiting, and with the "Holy Night" upon us, it was finally time.

I hope that this thread can serve as a time capsule for future fans seeking Mahoyo thoughts and reactions. And I hope that this can be a fun community experience for all of us UPN VN players.

Mahoutsukai no Yoru: Witch on the Holy Night can be purchased for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. For more information, check here:
Mahoyo English site
Nintendo Switch
Sony PlayStation
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Old 12-24-2022, 08:29 PM   #4
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Chapter 01: Strange one

Spoiler: show

Is Soujuurou the cat!? : So the game opens up with a provocative scene in which Nasu Kinoko attempts to silence his critics who would dare question the man's ability to out-perform Urobuchi Gen when it comes to writing gruesome, tragic situations. Our game opens with a girl less than 10 years old ... turning on the family vehicle per Daddy's instructions ... only to hear a blood-curdling squeal ... and discover that a mother cat and two kittens had been sheltering under the car hood for warmth. And have now been mangled to death. =< >_< There's our game, everybody! O_O

The girl -- presumably Aoko -- races to her grandfather's cottage in the woods and begs him to fix it. The mother cat and one of the kittens are irreparably dead, but maybe Grandfather can do something about the other kitten, barely hanging on for survival ...

Grandfather tells Aoko that no, there's nothing doing, they were too late. And then we see this:


...Huh. So right off the bat, the game is hinting that the kitten ... did survive, despite appearances, and that his tale with the girl started eight years ago.

Fast forward eight years to the present day.






The game seems to lay it on thick from hints like "feral" and "cute little animal that doesn't speak human" to Alice plainly stating she saw a "man-sized cat" riding around town making deliveries ... deliveries like what we know Soujuurou to be doing from a scene not but 30 minutes previously seen. Then there's the problem of Soujuurou's neck:


Soujuurou's neck is conspicuously hyper bandaged. He looks like Shishio from Rurouni Kenshin. Could it be ... Is the bandage supposed to be keeping Soujuurou's head attached to his body? Is this like one of those horror stories where if you remove the ribbon 'round the person's neck, their head will topple off? IS SOUJUUROU THE CAT!? XP @_@

I don't know. ^_^; It's really weird. First of all, the hinting that he may be the cat seems way too much for it to be anything besides a misdirect. It's not like Nasu to misdirect in quite this manner, but neither is it like him to be so on the nose with his reveals! ^^; Second, say we assume Soujuurou is the kitten who Aoko tried to save but (thought she) couldn't. Say we say, Soujuurou doesn't seem to know a whole lot about human society ... he thinks it's fine to exit a building from the second or third-story window ... That's fine, but like ... Does he really say or do enough other things to make us go yes, that man is definitely a cat!? I don't think so. Not yet, anyway. He's able to speak just fine. Despite being supposedly "so unfamiliar" with schools, he has no difficulty putting on a student uniform ... His own internal monologue does not betray kitty kat thoughts about his kitty kat life with his kitty kat family ...

We'll see. Just noting this here for now.


Comedy: So far, the game has had a surprising number of light dry humor scenes. They've all been appreciated. Pictured above is one such example, but there is also the scene of Aoko arguing with Alice over dinner ... and the scene where the narrator describes the addition of a television to the Kuonji lounge ...

Aoko also has a number of fun reactions. She has no poker face and very much wears her emotions on her sleeve.


Cinematographic techniques: I like how the game tries to be a cinematic experience. One of the ways it tries to do this is by having 2+ illustrations of the same camera shot with different things in focus. The game will transition between the two image files, but it gives the semblance of a camera lens shifting in focus from an object in the foreground to one in the background. It's of the many neat little ways in which this VN tries to go above and beyond.


General thoughts: The writing so far has been fine and interesting. I'm so used to FGO, where even Nasu tends to come across as very event-focused in his writing. (If something isn't happening, then he isn't writing about it!) The Tsukihime remake is refreshingly different from this, and I'm glad to see that Mahoyo is too. Mahoyo looks and feels like a book -- the author takes time, "wastes" time?, describing all manner of transient emotional states, setting details, and so on ... details "inconsequential" to the plot, perhaps (or perhaps not? who knows!) but which lend the world a lot of needed realism-weight. Aoko feels like a real person with each passing page. This stated, I am eager to grow beyond the introduction phase and start getting to the good stuff. I think my experience with TsukiRe is a little bit different because I already know most of the core plot and character details so getting to play through the intro and see the many, many hints and references to things is a pleasure. I'm ... "not in a rush to exit the forest," if that makes any sense. I'm not "in a rush to get from point A west of the forest to point B east of it." I'm very happy to soak in all of the sights, smells, and sounds of the forest. Whereas with Mahoyo, I am very eager to get to point B! lol

The voice acting is wonderful. I already knew it would be from TsukiRe, but yeah ... excellent addition that truly elevates the experience. For any studio that can afford it, I expect it to become an industry staple soon. For studios that can't afford it, I expect them to try and come up with ways to afford it.

The music so far is fine. So far, it's not as strong IMO as what we have in TsukiRe, with the exception of the Mahoyo main theme song which I think is top notch. There've been several bonafide classical pieces borrowed so far that are fine, but nothing that's quite captured me yet. We'll see. I'm sure there will be!

The English translation is ... fine also. It has its issues. Importantly, it places priority on accuracy, and there I'd say it 99% of the time lands it. The problem is that it is weirdly liberal in places with just ... cutting out entire sentences. O_o You'll hear the voice actor read three lines (and if you understand what she's saying, it might be something like "You hit me on the head, didn't you!? Don't deny it! That smarts!") ... and then the English TL will be something like, "Ow, you hit my head!" Thankfully, this only happens every here or there -- enough to be noticeable, but not enough to condemn the translation. The bigger issue, perhaps, is the quizzical English in places. Things that might read perfectly fine when you compare them against source Japanese audio might not hold up when read in English isolation. Again, I think these moments are uncommon and the script generally reads like a professional product.
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Old 12-25-2022, 12:01 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post

Shizuki Soujuurou: A young boy from the countryside, introduced into the modern world. In a sense, he is a relic of another time. Soujuurou becomes an ordinary high school student, slowly adapting to his new life while being amazed by the abundance the city offers. With that forward-looking attitude, he is nothing if not stalwart. While a boy of few words, he is amiable enough that he gets along with most people. A down-to-earth boy who speaks little of his beliefs. He isn't special, but ... well, you wouldn't say he's normal, either. (Voiced by: Kobayashi Yuusuke)

(All character bios taken from the official site, with a few small tweaks. For more character information, feel free to check out the official site's character bio page!)
"He's normal", "she's normal", what self-defeating marketing. Of course these people aren't normal! And with a name that's suspiciously similar to "Kuzuki Souichirou" I'm betting this fellow is an assassin from the same guild as Kuzuki. Presenting "child assassin" off as "country bumpkin" is a convenient excuse to hide a true origin.

It would be funny if a character voiced by Subaru turned out to be a stoic badarse. That's so against typecast.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post

On December 12, my package arrived from Japan. Pokémon Scarlet had just released less than a month prior, and while the rest of the community was getting started on the postgame, I was still wrapping up completion of two paths and the final act. I didn't want to delay Mahoyo too late -- I wanted this thread to go up as soon as possible -- but I also didn't want to make Yuki wait for eagerly-anticipated reactions to the Scarlet/Violet endgame. Much patience from her later ='3, I ended up completing Scarlet's main story the night of December 22, and last night we caught the vast majority of the Pokémon that can only be found in the endgame area. While she's still very much eager to hear my thoughts on a certain history teacher, I decided that that's gonna have to wait for another day. ^^; =') After eleven years of waiting, and with the "Holy Night" upon us, it was finally time.

I hope that this thread can serve as a time capsule for future fans seeking Mahoyo thoughts and reactions. And I hope that this can be a fun community experience for all of us UPN VN players.
Goody gumdrops! Quite sad that it's only offered on consoles, though, especially since those consoles have their own obnoxious form of DRM. But hey, I don't have to buy it, I can read you gushing about it instead!
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Old 12-26-2022, 11:12 PM   #6
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Chapter 02: Little happening of last night

Spoiler: show
Chapter 02 sees us fast forward by approximately 10 days from where Chapter 01 left off. Soujuurou is doing his best to adapt to school, while Aoko and an enlisted ally are doing their best to assist him. Diving right into it ...


Is Soujuurou a cat!?: It's still not clear. But man ...
  • in one conversation between Soujuurou and Tobimaru Tsukiji, the student council vice-president, Soujuurou opines that dogs are the scariest animal
  • in a second conversation between the two, Soujuurou first claims that his rice balls' filling is grasshopper, then he reveals that this is not true and that their actual filling is salmon, then he reveals that the reason they couldn't possibly be grasshopper is because there aren't any good grasshoppers in the city! So it's like, hmm! ^_^;
  • Tobimaru remarks at one point that "anybody that never lies can't really be considered human" when explaining why he thinks he likes Soujuurou.
  • Soujuurou states that he likes Aoko but that he does not know why. He demonstrates to us (or it is narrated to us; Tobimaru is hopelessly out of the loop) that his feelings towards Aoko are neither lustful nor romantic. And at one point he states, "I believe that nature of hers has helped me out repeatedly." Helped you out repeatedly, you say, HMM? ...Like that time when she was 8 and you were a kitten and she did her best to try and save your life and now you're a human? LIKE THAT TIME!? XD >_<
So who knows. If Soujuurou is going to prove to be a cat, then it has been so telegraphed that I don't feel like any of us can reasonably expect to get any brownie points for calling it. If he is going to prove to not be a cat (which is my optimistic hunch), then putting aside my amusement and mild admiration for the dedication to this red herring act :'3, I have to wonder -- what then is he? Because he is certainly not a normal boy.

Meat vs. fruit: So, this scene, with the 2-C boys pooling their canned meats while the 2-C girls pool their fruit. I was totally, totally bracing for it and it never happened -- I was waiting for Soujuurou to remark on how meat is so much better than fruit, how even expired meat would be preferable to mangoes and papayas. IS HE A CAT!? ^^; orz


Tobimaru Tsukiji: He's been amusing so far. Kind of a mixture of elements of Issei, Shinji, and Cu Chulainn personality-wise. He's not Prince Charming, what with him slugging (or attempting to slug? :shrug:​) Aoko last summer and a couple other mannerisms that can most favorably be written off as "typical '80s Japanese male". ^_^; oof -.- But these few Shinji-isms aside, he's really predominantly the Issei and Cu halves, and it's a fun combo. Not too much else to say about him though, sadly: like Issei, I feel like he's a character who at the most favorably I will know exists? and that that's about it. ^_^;

A deadly duel: Soujuurou tells Tobimaru that, last night in the city, he saw someone with a flamethrower battling someone else with a naginata. Not only does Soujuurou witness this ... he witnesses one of them killing the other. And, what's more: at least one of them was a student according to Soujuurou. Hmm. Students dying is definitely something more I expect out of Tsukihime and Fate/stay night. I'll lend special exception to Aoko and Alice, but there really genuinely aren't many students in this story besides those two who I would expect to be involved in deadly mage duels.

Double standards: credit to Yuki for bringing this up first, but there is a disturbing double standard between the story of Aoko's stalker and the story of Tobimaru punching Aoko. As Yuki explained, Aoko was the victim of a stalking event yet because of her violent self-defense she was given one month's house arrest ... yet when similar violence is dealt by Tobimaru with Aoko on the receiving end, now there's suddenly no punishment, no repercussions of any kind other than Tobimaru's bruised ego, and he even gets to be vice-president of the student council. Is this Nasu faithfully depicting the chauvinism of '80s Japan? Is this a chauvinist oversight by our very own author? I don't know.


The lady in green: when discussing the pachinko parlor 2F scene with Yuki, I discovered that not everyone is going to know who this mysterious woman in green is at first glance. Since I know who she is, and I want to speculate based on the information I have available to me, I'm going to spoiler tag my thoughts here and ask for your forgiveness if you're reading this while playing and have no clue who she is yet. ^_^;

Spoiler: show
Yaaay, Aozaki Touko. :'3 *pachi pachi* What Aoko is to Tsukihime, Touko is less so (but still so) to Fate/stay night. And while Aoko has been waiting for this game to shine, Touko got to become a fan favorite years earlier with the popularization of Kara no Kyoukai by ufotable. So here she is -- Aozaki Touko, "Red", the puppetmaster designated a Sealing target by the Clock Tower.

The rest of this spoiler box contains spoilers for Fate/stay night and for Kara no Kyoukai! Specifically, for FSN's Heaven's Feel path and for KnK's fifth movie.

I suppose it also contains spoilers for the end of this very game! But that's because this game is Aoko's origin story, and as long-time fans we've already known a lot about Aoko's backstory for quite some time.

Soujuurou recognizes Touko as one of the two people he saw in the duel last night. Whether she emerged victorious or was slain is anyone's guess, given Touko's powers, but Soujuurou doesn't know any of this. All he knows is that the moment their eyes meet, his every instinct is telling him to run.

Thoughts/predictions:
  1. If Soujuurou's the kitten, my guess now is that Touko affixed the kitten's soul to a doll she had constructed -- that is to say, what became Soujuurou's body. We know that Touko's magecraft is on another level and that she specializes in at least two things: making dolls so lifelike they would be mistaken for humans; and self-experimentation with soul affixing. This famously comes up in the fifth Kara no Kyoukai movie in her duel with Alba, and is also why her help is enlisted at the end of Fate/stay night's Heaven's Feel path's True Ending. Sooo ... just throwin' it out there. =\ :shrug:
  2. the script is very deliberately juxtaposing Touko's incredible luck (e.g. with the pachinko machine) against the fact that Aoko surpasses her. (This is the "Mahoyo spoiler" I was referring to earlier. ^_^;) We know that Grandfather chooses Aoko to carry on his legacy, not Touko. We know that Aoko is the one who gets the title of "Blue", not Touko. And we know that Aoko is the one who will ultimately become the wielder of the Fifth Magic, a true magic, not Touko. Touko is very, very good! But for someone who was told her entire childhood that she was going to be the valedictorian in life only to wind up the salutatorian time and again and again to her sister ... Anyway, that's all I'll say for now. But I do think that this scene is a deliberate juxtaposition, on the one hand "oh, look at how lucky she always is!", yeah, but luck balances out in the end and while Touko might be lucky the 99.99% of the time, to offset that comes the heavy (to her) price of losing to Aoko in some pretty big ways.
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Old 12-27-2022, 01:17 AM   #7
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Cats like fish, so Soujuurou preferring grasshoppers wouldn't mesh with the cat theory. I'd also point out that dragons also dislike dogs, per the Chinese zodiac, and Kuzuki being a "snake" might pair with Soujuurou being a "dragon".

Also, I don't have all the details, but I don't think Nasu is big on social commentary. Historically, this is not his forte. I would surmise the double standard is more that Aoko was destroying someone supernatural, and someone at the school knows that, whereas Tobimaru is just a normal person who really can't hurt any of these supers.
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Old 12-27-2022, 11:20 PM   #8
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Chapter 1.5: Seven Days of Spinning

After players complete Chapter 01, two things unlock -- Chapter 02 in the main story (from whence the game will continue by default if you ask it to) and then a bonus Chapter 1.5 that is tucked away in what is called the Archives, a chapter log accessible throughout the game that allows you to go back to specific chapters and re-play them if you like. Yuki hadn't noticed they existed until she had already started Chapter 02; I had noticed but had decided I wanted to press on to 02 first and then would circle back around to 1.5 later; in both cases, we are happy with our outcome. Yuki had said that Chapter 02 does a better job of introducing several new characters who are also featured in Chapter 1.5. I strongly agree -- Chapter 1.5 is clearly written with the assumption that you already know who Kinomi and Tobimaru are, and it does not introduce you to them in that typical "introductory way" that Chapter 02 does. While I think 1.5 is so ordered because it chronologically takes place in between Chapters 01 and 02, I think most players will find themselves better served if they read through Chapter 02 in its entirety first, then go back and read Chapter 1.5.

But hey: you do you. =')

This chapter comes in four discrete portions. I'll be referring to these as Chapters 1.5.1 through 1.5.4, and discussing them in three separate spoiler boxes below.

Chapters 1.5.1 & 1.5.2

Spoiler: show

I'll be perfectly honest: I don't have much to say about these two. When I first saw that Chapter 1.5 existed at all, I wondered if it was like a "bonus chapter", something that is just kinda extra padding, cut from the main story for those who like their stories lean but included here in the Archives for those who prefer it fatty. Chapters 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 certainly fit that assumption -- they can be cut completely from the game with almost no consequence to the plot, and minimal consequences to readers' impressions of the characters. Is that to say that they are complete wastes of time? No -- but, they're not exactly riveting, gripping story either.

Chapter 1.5.1 establishes for us where Soujuurou lives in town, and then shows us a day in his life working at the Chinese restaurant alongside Kinomi. That's it. The end~


Chapter 1.5.2 gives us a glimpse at Aoko's studying under Alice. Its one plot-important detail is that it gives us an answer to something posed in Chapter 01. In Chapter 01, Aoko feels that Alice is silently asking her to "make up your mind" whether she wants to become a magus and join the world of magi or whether she wants to remain a muggle and live a normal, mage-world-free life. In Chapter 1.5.2, Aoko verbally provides Alice with her answer -- yes, I choose to be a mage, and no, I won't let it happen again (re: allowing muggle distractions to interfere with her mage projects).

Not much else to say about that so go and read Chapter 1.5.3!


Chapter 1.5.3

Spoiler: show

Now we're talking!

Here we have our first magi duel of the story, between Alice Kuonji and an unknown master in control of two ... well ... hmm. ^^; This is one of those times where I'm not going to be able to discuss the chapter fully with first-timers, because I have a mixture of spoiler information and pretty strong suspicions supported by evidence as to what's going on here, and so like ... we'll just have to split this discussion into two.

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum: I was very confused at first by who all was talking. I had thought that the voice we heard at the beginning and the red FMA "Kobito no Homunculus" we saw at the start were both the security monitoring system of the Kuonji estate's, and that the pigs' voices were in fact the slit-mouthed enemies'. It wasn't until Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were ripping off the one assailant's arms that I figured out it was them who were talking in the syrupy voices and that the slit-mouthed men in trench coats had been largely silent this entire time.

The pigs are cute, to an extent. ^_^; That pretty much sums it up. They have cute voices ... that topple over the border into creepy and disturbing. They have cute designs ... sorta. They behave ... like "cute serial killers". ^_^; -_-; I enjoy them just fine as characters, but they are definitely straddling that line between adorable and icky.

Mother Goose: I'm not really sure what Alice's magecraft is. Clearly she does something with English nursery rhymes like Hey, Diddle Diddle and London Bridge Is Falling Down, whether to manifest her familiars (Tweedle Dee & Dum for the one, the Thames Troll for the other) or whether to do something else, I don't know. Does Alice have unique control over these familiars? Could anybody who recites these songs as she does manage to summon these guys? I have no idea. I assume they are uniquely hers. Anyhoo...

HanaKana's best attempt at English aside ^_^; , what the heck is this melody she's singing for "Hey, Diddle Diddle"!? I've never heard anyone perform "Hey, Diddle Diddle" like this before. Is it something accurate to the UK? Is it a Japanese variant? They got "London Bridge" right, so I don't know why "Hey, Diddle Diddle" is so far off the mark, but okay...

Okay, what follows is me speculating based on some information not available until later in the game. If you don't like spoilers, I'd suggest not clicking until you've beaten the game completely, honestly. ^^; Sorry.

Spoiler: show

The Other Master: If you know Touko's role in this story, and if you are familiar with her abilities from other Type-Moon works, then I don't think it takes much of a rocket scientist to figure out that these men in trench coats are likely hers. They are presented as having sinewy arms that are able to be detached (albeit painfully), something which fits with them being lifelike dolls that Touko created. The fact that they were dispatched to the forest bordering the Kuonji mansion begs the question of motive -- and in Touko's case, it's as simple as spying on Aoko and/or Aoko's caretaker, Alice.

The thing is, though ... if they are hers, then there is a rather distressing detail. =\ The trench coat men at one point are said to be responsible for the abduction-murders of a number of children. I think it's when the narrator is describing their scissors for hands? And it's like ... what is Touko doing luring children of Misaki City to horrible deaths?


Chapter 1.5.4

Spoiler: show

The Church! I can't believe this is buried away in what is presented as an optional side chapter -- how Soujuurou ends up working as a volunteer for the church in Misaki City.

Aoko's family: We're told that Aoko's grandfather and father had relationships with the Church. I'll be interested to learn more.


Yuika: In a game filled with stereotypical characters, Yuika is a surprisingly strong display of the "subverting expectations" trope that would become common in the years following this game's 2012 release. Normally you expect a sister who is blind and who has Yuika's physical appearance to be the soft, gentle, pure-hearted type. ...That's definitely not the impression I get from her from our one interaction so far! She seems duplicitous, dangerous, and very much aware of (and a sponsor of!) the Church's more sinister activities. Who knows~ at this point! But yeah. If ever there were a character in this game to give me Kotomine Kirei vibes, so far Yuika would be it.


Hanazawa: I can't say much here without divulging information from the official website that still isn't revealed at this point in the story.

Spoiler: show
She's Yuika's sister, Ritsuka, and she very much so has a tie with the Church. I'm not sure what her agenda is, but it's definitely very odd that she presents herself to Soujuurou as someone who was just passing by, has no relationship with the Church, etc. For all of his naivety, Soujuurou at least does seem to have picked up on it somewhat, remarking "For someone who seemed to have been on an aimless walk, Hanazawa had spent a good deal of time with him."
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Old 12-30-2022, 08:24 AM   #9
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Chapter 03: night's

Spoiler: show
Chapter 03 rewinds us back to the night before Chapter 02 and depicts the events referred to by Soujuurou in Chapter 02 and by Aoko and Alice in Chapter 1.5.2. Aoko and Alice have gone to the park in the middle of town. There, they have entrapped what Aoko hopes is an enemy magus against whom she can demonstrate her abilities and take her first adult step into the world of magi. Things don't go according to plan when Aoko discovers that the enemy magus is none other than a mannequin. And things go even worse according to plan when a boy from school witnesses their magecraft.


This is a very short chapter, and there's not too much to say. It's enjoyable and plot-relevant, but its main purpose is to clear away some of the confusion regarding our unreliable eye-witness Soujuurou. First, Soujuurou thought he saw two people battling, one wielding a flamethrower and the other a naginata. We now know that the "flamethrower" was Aoko casting a fire spell, while the "naginata" was the outstretched, weaponized arm of the mannequin. Second, Soujuurou thought one of the two battlers was a student from Misaki High. Well, he was right: we now know it was none other than Aozaki Aoko.

Spoiler: show
Third ... (safe if you know who sent the mannequin)

Spoiler: show
Soujuurou thought that the lady in the green dress was one of the two combatants. While it isn't clear whether Soujuurou was mistaking Touko in the pachinko parlor for Aoko or whether he was mistaking Touko for the mannequin, either hypothesis frankly works at this point. However, some points to consider:
  • If he were able to confuse Touko in the pachinko parlor for Aoko, then surely when he saw Aoko at school the next day Soujuurou would freak out too. This is a point in favor of Soujuurou confusing Touko for the mannequin.
  • If he's confusing Touko for the mannequin ... then that implies that it's her mannequin. And if that's the case, then ... dun dun DUN, it implies that Touko is the magus dueling Aoko.

Onward!
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Old 12-30-2022, 11:03 AM   #10
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Chapter 04: Blues in her name

Spoiler: show
The plot's heating up! Bit by bit, we're getting there. :'3


Aozaki Family details: this chapter confirms the following:
  • two years ago, Aoko's grandfather decides that Aoko is to succeed him
    • not Aoko's father; this implies that Aoko's father was not in contention
    • not Touko, the eldest child and the one who had been in training as a magus
  • Touko departs Misaki City at this time
"Your elder sister left on a journey," Grandfather tells Aoko. Hmm... #DOUBT I don't doubt that she left, but I do doubt that it's as simple as "she left on a journey~ ^-^". When she was delivered the news that she would be losing her heiress position to Aoko, Touko probably lost her composure. This in turn probably resulted in one of two things: either she attacked someone and was banished for it; or she rage-stormed off and left. I very much doubt it was a happy, peaceful transition of power.


Aoko and Alice's relationship: this chapter confirms the following:
  • Alice and Aoko are partners of convenience
  • "they [are] more like enemies than allies"
  • "ultimately, they were just not a match"
  • "Where there was a blunder, it would be punished. Where there was an opening, it would be attacked. If there was even an opportunity... The two of them would kill each other in the event of such a moment."
One thing I am very, very interested to learn is why Aoko is living with Alice in the first place. Chapter 04 (re-?)confirms that Aoko and Alice began living together two years ago. Chapter 04 also confirms that Aoko's grandfather appointed Aoko the family heir two years ago, and that Touko left home two years ago. (See above.) So like ... A + B + C, I want to know why the heck Aoko started living with Alice, and not (say) continuing to live at home with her father in the suburban-looking home in the mountains, or why she didn't move in with her grandfather, etc, etc. Why is Alice her teacher, as opposed to Grandfather (before he died), somebody else, or no one at all? Why is Aoko Alice's guest, as opposed to someone else or no one at all? Why is Alice supporting Aoko's growth if they truly have this kill-or-be-killed relationship with one another?


Aoko's study: this chapter reveals that Aoko has relocated the majority of her grandfather's study to Chez Kuonji. And we know from earlier chapters that Grandfather died last year. This raises a few possibilities. Did Aoko choose to live with Alice for other reasons, and then living with Alice meant that it was more convenient to relocate the contents of Grandfather's study to the Kuonji mansion than it was to leave it at his place in the mountains? Is Aoko unable to live at her grandfather's? (Is the commute simply too difficult? Are there enemy hostiles who would target her there but who wouldn't or who can't at the Kuonji estate?) If the hypothesis is correct that Touko was not happy about Grandfather taking the inheritance away from her and giving it to Aoko, then is it possible that Aoko has relocated Grandfather's study here precisely because she is worried that Touko would either steal it or destroy it?


Alice's blue bird: I assumed at first that it was just her familiar. That's still my predominant assumption, but now I've got a second hypothesis that it might be the head of the Kuonji family (her father, her grandfather, whomever) or that it might be her teacher (whomever that might be). For right now we'll still roll with it being her familiar.


Reien Girls Academy: Chapter 04 confirms that Alice attends Reien Girls Academy. This is the same school sponsored by Asagami Fujino's father and which Asagami Fujino, Kokutou Azaka, and Seo Shizune attend later in the 1990s.

Not to be confused with Asagami Girls Academy, which is the school that Tohno Akiha attends in Tsukihime. I definitely confused the two. -.-;


Aoko's personality: it is interesting seeing Young Aoko here, and contrasting her personality with the Aozaki Aoko of Tsukihime and Melty Blood fame. Adult Aoko feels ... a lot more carefree, a lot less uptight, a lot less quick to anger. Mahoyo Aoko very much so feels like "the Tohsaka Rin of Misaki City". ^_^;


Aoko's silly faces: There's a lot to enjoy here, with the innocence of a child, in all of the funny faces that Aoko makes as she responds to various things. The girl has *zero* poker face. And illustrator Koyama Hirokazu clearly is having a lot of fun with that.


Soujuurou's neck: So, Alice finally calls attention to Soujuurou's neck. Aoko's reaction is a "Huh. :o I hadn't noticed"-type. Will the story unravel the mystery soon? Or is it an end-game revelation? Guess we'll have to keep playing and find out. IS HE A CAT, IS HIS HEAD GOING TO TOPPLE OFF IF WE UNWRAP IT-- T~T

We're four chapters in, and one thing I want to discuss are my impressions regarding the game's script and how I think it compares to Tsukihime ~a piece of blue glass moon~'s, the Tsukihime remake's.

Mahoyo in a lot of ways is an eye-opening transporter that has taken me back to 2012, to a world where Nasu had not yet written multiple scripts for Fate/Grand Order each the length of the Fate path in FSN, a world where he was nine years greener than he was when Type-Moon published TsukiRe. The eye-opener is not so much about the fact that Mahoyo's script is beneath TsukiRe's in quality, but instead is about how remarkably similarly Mahoyo reads to Fate/stay night. :o Reading this book, I am transported back not even to 2012, but to the Summer of 2007, when Doppel had bbb and I play through FSN. This book reads remarkably similarly to how FSN reads. The entire time I'm reading this, I'm like, "Oh yeah -- this is written by the author who wrote Fate/stay night! ほら, look! See? It sounds just like him!" Sounds just like him indeed -- this has Nasu Kinoku (circa 2012) written all over it. :o

It is, on the whole...a little clumsier in its construction than TsukiRe is. ^^; There are chores here or there, where TsukiRe has practically none. TsukiRe introduces twice the number of characters that Mahoyo does in the same amount of time played, and the characters TsukiRe introduces are two times more developed than the Mahoyo ones in this same window of time. And the poetry of Nasu's writing in TsukiRe is conspicuously absent here in Mahoyo.

But, all of that stated ...

It's a fun, pleasant, curious adventure.
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Old 12-30-2022, 12:08 PM   #11
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Chapter 05: Night of the Witches I

Spoiler: show
Well! XD


The House of Mirrors: This is honestly one of the coolest, simplest, most exciting and novel settings for a pursuit we've ever seen in a Type-Moon work. While mirror houses are by no means new to storytelling -- I can think of at least one Batman: the Animated Series episode alone off the top of my head from my childhood, to say nothing I'm sure of the countless other times one must have featured in a television series, film, or novel -- this is to my recollection the first and perhaps only time we've ever seen one used in a Type-Moon work and ... boy does it work well!

I like how Nasu built to it, justifying the choice of setting to readers in a way that wouldn't be rejected reflexively. First he starts off by telling us the story of how the abandoned theme park in nearby Yashirogi came to be. This is a safe, cute little bit of backstory because he's already previously established that the theme park exists and that it was shut down some number of years ago. Then as he's telling the backstory, he starts to discuss some of the missteps that were made that resulted in the park's being shut down. First Nasu tells us about the mascot ... then he tells us about all the bakeries ... then he decides he wants to tell us about the house of mirrors, and he has to give us a little background first on theme park design philosophy... It's all so subtle, so craftily done, that before you know it he's already landed the punchline: Yashirogi's theme park featured neither a labyrinth nor a house of mirrors but a two-for-one labyrinth house of mirrors -- and that, ladies and gentlemen, is where Aozaki Aoko has told Shizuki Soujuurou to meet her.

In the hands of a capable storyteller, a house of mirrors proves surprisingly versatile. There's a lot you can do with it. In this scene alone, we see:
  • Soujuurou violently crashing head first into panes of glass, "OWW!", because he can't go slowly like you might more timidly do if you were to make your way through a house of mirrors. This helps to build tension, helps to justify how Aoko closes the distance on Soujuurou despite her steady Terminator walk and his sprint for survival.
  • panes of glass getting destroyed, in various ways. (Mostly from Aoko's magic bullets.) It creates a wonderful visual and aural spectacle, and provides the team an excellent chance to flex their muscle and stun audiences with their VN engine.
  • blocking off exits unexpectedly/"unfairly", as when Aoko reveals that Soujuurou should not even bother with the 1F path because she's physically barricaded it off and it will pretty much cave in and collapse on top of him if he tries to manipulate it any.
I feel like neither my list nor my words do it any justice. You really have to read the scene for yourself to believe it. It's a really well-written scene. This was my first full-length page-turner of a chapter from when Aoko confronts Soujuurou all the way until I had to take a break for stamina. (I had been reading for what felt like an hour, a good hour, and with no chapter end in sight I needed to pause and catch my breath. )


More on the special effects: I thought that this chapter, more than any so far, really demonstrates what Nasu & team set out to do with Mahoyo. This game really feels like "an anime in the palms of your hands" as you hold a book and turn its pages. You're essentially "reading an anime," one that waits for you really well and has well-looped music to suit. It's a "book" ... with the visual and aural spectacle of an animated television show. It's kinda crazy. ^^; I love it! =>

I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg, did Nasu decide he wanted to set the fight in a house of mirrors first and then they executed the visual effects around that? or did the team ask themselves "What sort of visual spectacle can we get away with in our visual novel engine?", someone proposed broken shards of glass flying through the air, and then from that discussion someone proposed the house of mirrors setting? Either way, one thing is clear: the house of mirrors setting and the broken glass visual effect compliment each other very, very well! Narratively, it's exhilirating; visually, it's spectacular; aurally, it's exquisite. Every single time a pane of glass shatters to one of Aoko's Gandr shots or a blow from the enemy puppet, it was simply great.

The music is no slouch here either. I had mentioned in a previous post how I had yet to find a song to truly love in this soundtrack. I still hold the position that Mahoyo's soundtrack is generally weaker than TsukiRe's and Fate/Grand Order's, but-- we finally had some songs this episode that really got me. After I finished Chapter 05, I went to the main title screen to go and visit the music archive. I wanted to find the main song that plays during the climactic fight between Aoko and the puppet. I ended up clicking on one of the early songs on Page 1 first, and then discovered that if you let the song finish, it will auto-play into the next song. (Or at least it did that night; I may have pressed a button or something.) So, sleepy and with headphones in place, I placed my Switch down, rested my eyes, and enjoyed listening to the next few songs... ...Nine or ten hours later , I woke up in a slobby mess, my Switch to my side, my glasses crushed under my weight. (I literally had to go to an optometrist that morning and have my flex memory frames readjusted by a professional, that's how bad the damage was. ^^;; ) But the point is, such was my enjoyment of the music that night =) , and such was my desire to find the song that I so loved.

The song in question is "Duel / One-on-One" by Fukasawa Hideyuki. The man is a gift to Type-Moon, having contributed many of my favorite tunes in the Tsukihime remake and now this one in Mahoyo.


Soujuurou: The boy's an enigma, that's for sure. XD I'm really not sure what to make of him. Nasu keeps maintaining the notion that this is Soujuurou being a "country boy" who is out of touch with modern city living, but like ... no, Nasu XD, this goes far beyond hick ignorance.

Part of me wonders if this is Nasu writing about a person's Origin again and Soujuurou's Origin is something like "Innocence" or "Purity". In a lot of ways, he almost sounds like an extraterrestrial visitor or le Petit Prince. He has an other-worldly sagaciousness to him that contrasts against his worldly ignorance.

Part of me then in turn wonders if Nasu is setting up for Soujuurou to be in the same class of character as Nasuverse Jesus or Nasuverse Buddha. I don't mean Servant class container when I say that, lol -- I mean, considering the similarities between Jesus and the Buddha, will Soujuurou end up being canonically a similar sort of character (if not a similar sort of being altogether)?

Very curious to know what is up with his stamina regarding Gandr curses. Aoko remarks that even she is feeling the effects of the many curses piled onto her, and that Soujuurou must be feeling it ten times worse. Yet here he is, picking her up and running off with her like he's Kuzuki Souichirou picking up and running off with Caster. I'm willing to respect Aoko's assessment that Soujuurou has "no" Magic Circuits -- so if that is indeed the case, then how/why the stamina/resistance against Gandr? Hmm...


Aoko's assailant: I feel like the game is being mean to me at this point. ^_^; lol I will have to place all of this in a spoiler tag.

Spoiler: show
I feel like it is pretty obvious at this point in the story that Aoko's assailant is Touko. There are pretty much two criteria you need to know to reach this conclusion organically:
  1. Touko's specialty is puppets/dolls.
  2. Touko and Aoko have a bad relationship.
That's it. That's all you would need to know. It seems very strange to me, and AWFULLY CONVENIENT , that Aoko would not have suspected her own sister of being the enemy magus the moment she saw that she was up against a doll master who strangely seemed to be targeting her.


Then, as the doll starts spitting out Gandr curses of its own, the narrator contrasts the red aura of the doll's magic with Aoko's own blue. And it's like, HMMMMMM... ^^; GEEEE, I WONDER...! Laying it on awfully thick aren't you, Mr. Mushroom? I can forgive an audience less familiar with the source material for not picking up on this, but anyone who knows that Aoko is "Blue" and Touko is "Red", it's like, c'mon. ^_^; =p


Then Aoko gets a closer look at the doll's face and realizes what audiences were doubtless thinking thirty minutes prior -- "Wow! She looks just like Aoko, doesn't she!?" Doesn't she. :p Aoko even goes so far for us as to explain that the minute she recognizes that the doll was made in Aoko's image, she understands her enemy's intent -- the enemy magus doesn't want to simply kill Aoko, she wants to destroy her very existence. O.o In other words, this is personal. At this point it should be "DUH! " obvious to Aoko that her assailant is Touko. But so far, *sigh*, she still doesn't seem to have realized it.

I'll be curious to see what Yuki and other players who haven't been spoiled on Touko's role in the story think by this point in the game.


The Latin chants: most of what I would want to discuss, ties in to the above spoiler box but I don't have much else to say besides that. So just in general, I'm curious to hear what less-spoiled people think about these chants and their significance, if anything. A few choice lines that I feel tie in to the assailant's likely identity are:

Spoiler: show
"My life is immortal" <-- because she can transfer her soul between dolls on a level where soul putrifaction is negligible (implied to be much better than Zouken)

"my future was destroyed" <-- referring to Aoko "stealing" everything from her: the inheritance of the Aozaki family's magic crest, the Clock Tower title of "Blue", etc.

"I hate you" <-- ^^; duh

"I love you" <-- what a situation, these two sisters ...

"we are all sinners" <-- Kara no Kyoukai's subtitle is "the garden of sinners"

"It was all a mistake. I should have never been born." <-- This line is a curse directed moreso at Aoko, I feel like. Technically all/a lot of these lines are, though many of the rest feel like they double for Touko. But this one in particular I feel doesn't so much apply to Touko's wishes directed towards herself...as it applies to Touko's wishes directed towards Aoko. She wishes that Aoko had never been born. Because had Aoko never been born, Touko would have inherited her grandfather's Magic Crest. (Or so she's convinced, anyway.)


Spider-Doll: I couldn't fit this in anywhere else but man was it such a cool visual. ^^; ='> It felt wrong not to mention it! The J-horror trope of a human walking like a spider is exactly that -- a trope at this point, hardly new. But it's a trope for a reason -- 'cause man is it effective! >.< =') When that elevator door to the basement opens and out walks Spider-Doll Aoko ...!


The chapter length: so this was something else. There were multiple points in this chapter where I thought we for sure were wrapping up the chapter. At the barest minimum:
  1. First, I thought the chapter would end when Soujuurou asked Aoko if the third party was a friend of hers and Aoko turns around to discover that she and Soujuurou are not alone.
  2. Second, I thought the chapter for sure was gonna end when Aoko tells Soujuurou, "Okay, here's what we're gonna do. I have a plan ..." and the screen literally fades to black and the music goes silent and it's like, "Okay: we're ending the chapter here; the next chapter is gonna start up with Aoko explaining her plan, they then enact it, and then the chapter ends with Aoko defeating the puppet."
There were other moments throughout as well, but these two especially stood out to me, both for amount of time spent reading and for narrative appropriateness, i.e. you've set up "a cliffhanger and a transition" really well, the perfect way to end a chapter. But no. Nasu's crazy and this entire thing was one enormous chapter -- AND WE'RE STILL NOT EVEN DONE YET! XD orz =') \o/


Alice: So, throughout the fight, I had expected Alice to be watching. At first I thought that maybe Aoko would have planned for Alice to back her up (or to at least monitor her), but it becomes clear at kinda halfway through the chapter that as far as Aoko is aware Alice is nowhere nearby. Then I thought, perhaps foolishly, that Alice would swoop in when Aoko needed her most and would come and help and save the day. How easily we forget what we just read about these two being ready to kill each other the moment the opportunity presented itself. ^^;

And so here we are. With Alice, it seems, ready to eliminate Aoko because the stage is perfectly set. Aoko's physical stamina has got to be low, her mana had been sealed by the puppet and even without that seal she had previously told Soujuurou that she had enough gas in the tank for around 30 or so Gandr shots, of which we've seen her fire some 20-odd shots so far, so we know her magic reserves aren't especially high either. Mentally and emotionally she's in a frazzled state right now, torn between her emotional desire to spare Soujuurou and her obligation to mage society (if not simply to Alice) to eliminate the threat to their secret lives.

But again, I don't get it. Why would Alice want to kill Aoko right now, even if Aoko is jeopardizing their secrecy by allowing Soujuurou to live? Why not ... simply kill Soujuurou and then give Aoko a stern talking to? Reframing this, why is Alice at this juncture ready to eliminate her student -- and if Aoko was never really her student (uhh...? ), then why teach her in the first place? What has the last two years been about? So many questions still regarding these two's relationship.


"It's wrong to kill people!": I've discussed this with Yuki before, about how I suspect that this game is going to prove to be the backstory behind how/why Aoko got her mantra about never killing. It's something on violently full force display at the start of Tsukihime ^_^; , yet the Aozaki Aoko on display here is very much a Tohsaka Rin-type who isn't afraid to get her hands a little bloody if she has to for the sake of a secret.

Soujuurou really seems to be the key to all of this. This line of his features prominently in the promotional material, and here it finally is, in Chapter 05. (1)(2) This chapter represents, I think, the turning point in Aoko's life: when it started, she was determined to kill Soujuurou no matter his pleas; when it ended, she was looking for ways out of her obligations to kill him. What starts here as a uniquely special case, I think, will blossom into something more. By the end of this game, I expect Aoko to have not only spared Soujuurou but to have spared Alice and her mystery assailant as well.
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Old 12-30-2022, 03:37 PM   #12
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The answer why Aoko and Alice are living together despite all the hallmarks of an adversarial relationship is very simple.

It's yuri. You know it to be true.

Aoko must find Alice as irresistible as I do so it's a clear case of

Head: No.
Heart: No.
Body: I'm so horny right now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87
And we know from earlier chapters that Grandfather died last year.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87
Alice's blue bird: I assumed at first that it was just her familiar. That's still my predominant assumption, but now I've got a second hypothesis that it might be the head of the Kuonji family (her father, her grandfather, whomever) or that it might be her teacher (whomever that might be). For right now we'll still roll with it being her familiar.
It's her social media account. Before smartphones, magi used actual blue birds or slapped their literal faces onto grimoires, see: the Necronomicon.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
TsukiRe introduces twice the number of characters that Mahoyo does in the same amount of time played, and the characters TsukiRe introduces are two times more developed than the Mahoyo ones in this same window of time. And the poetry of Nasu's writing in TsukiRe is conspicuously absent here in Mahoyo.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that Nasu had a ghost writer and/or an editor to help him with any scripts in the post-FGO era.

This isn't even uncommon with isekai novels where editors actually ghost write a significant portion of the novel during adaptation to print to give scripts the pop they need to sell. Then you compare it to TYPE-MOON which has significntly more resources than a third-rate label buying the rights to a high schooler's naroukei, and it's not surprising at all.

Watching Fate/Zero today, it doesn't feel like a TYPE-MOON work. It feels like a Gen Urobuchi work since his fingerprints are all over the character thought process and tone. F/Z feels like it has more in common with Gen's later work than it does with TYPE-MOON's earlier work, or Mahoyo here.
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Old 12-30-2022, 10:51 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that Nasu had a ghost writer and/or an editor to help him with any scripts in the post-FGO era.
So, this isn't a bad guess in theory, but I don't think it's correct. ^^; It's a good theory because FGO is written by a team of non-Nasus for the most part. That team of non-Nasus incidentally are also most of the people who have authored the various light novels and spin-offs you find elsewhere. These contributing writers for FGO's various scenarios are:
  • Higashide Yuuichirou, who is also the Fate/Apocrypha light novels author
  • Sakurai Hikaru, who is also the Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Sky Silver light novels author
  • Hoshizora Meteo, who is also the Fate/Requiem light novels author
  • Urobuchi Gen, of Fate/Zero fame
  • Minase Hazuki, who is apparently the ghostwriter for the Prisma Ilya guy
There might be others I'm omitting, but this is a good partial list. Now, just so we're clear: Nasu himself also writes for FGO fairly regularly. The actual breakdown for the main story outings (i.e. not biweekly or seasonal events) goes something like this, courtesy of r/grandorder:
Quote:
Part 1:
Fuyuki - Nasu
Orleans - Higashide
Septem - Sakurai
Okeanos - Higashide
London - Sakurai
E Pluribus Unum - Higashide
Camelot - Nasu with Sakurai assisting (she mostly helped write the Pharaohs and Arash)
Babylonia - Nasu
Solomon - Nasu for the main stuff, all other writers (including event writers like Keikenchi) for the Servant reinforcement scenes

Part 1.5:
Shinjuku - Higashide
Agartha - Minase
Shimousa - Sakurai with heavy supervision by Nasu as Musashi is his character
Salem - Meteo

Part 2:
Anastasia - Higashide
Gotterdammerung - Sakurai
SIN - Urobuchi
Yuga Kshetra - Minase
Atlantis - Higashide or Meteo, people are unsure
Olympus - Sakurai and Nasu, Sakurai wrote most of it while Nasu wrote the Wodime scenes and Musashi's stuff near the end
Heian-Kyo - Sakurai
Avalon le Fae - Nasu
As you can see, Nasu is still pretty involved (insofar as he isn't in a distant 4th or 3rd place, but rather a rather close one). But as you can also see, Nasu probably writes no more than 30% of FGO (by volume; Nasu's outings tend to be much longer than the other writers').

So if Nasu has all of this guest writing talent at his disposal, then why don't I think you're right about the ghost writer? Well ...

1. The non-Nasu writers' writing tends to suck. ^_^; Not always! But the overwhelmingly popular opinion in FGO communities is that Camelot and Babylonia are light-years ahead of the other Part I chapters and that Avalon le Fae is the best thing Nasu has ever written. (A lot of these folks have never played TsukiRe, while I have yet to play Avalon le Fae, so we'll just have to wait and see on that one.) It wouldn't make any sense for TsukiRe to be so much better than Nasu's past writings if he had tapped someone to write it whose present-day writing is widely received so poorly!

2. All public indicators suggest that Nasu toiled very hard on TsukiRe, to the detriment of his personal health and concern from long-time friend and cohabitant Takeuchi Takashi.

3. Nasu has gone on record publicly stating that with TsukiRe he really wanted to show the world how much he has grown as a writer. Takeuchi said much the same about his illustrations. In both areas, TsukiRe demonstrates remarkable growth by both men -- and growth that you can chart over time.

4. There are hints of the writer Nasu would become in 2021 present already in Mahoutsukai no Yoru. For one example, I was discussing it with Yuki earlier this morning, there is simile in one of Chapter 05's scenes that I found very striking and poetic. It stood out to me much the same as the ones in TsukiRe have.

5. Nasu is notoriously supervisional of the guest writers' writing. All of the names listed above, they were simply the primary writers. They still had to submit all of their scripts to Nasu for supervision.

6. Nasu is notoriously possessive when it comes to "his waifu" characters! He literally will not allow the guest writers to write the scenes for certain characters. He says, "You can write the rest of the chapter, but I will write this bit!" It is therefore highly unlikely that he would allow a ghost writer to write TsukiRe, which is so important to him and stars his wife second only to Aozaki Aoko, Arcueid Brunestud.

7. TsukiRe shows a perfect understanding of every single character in the game. Without exception. Not only are the characters excellent, but as a separate matter the author's understanding of these characters is so excellent. These characters truly come alive, and I think a big part of why that happens is because your brain appreciates on a subconscious level how everything each character says and does lines up perfectly with everything else they have ever said or done.

Respectfully, there are really only two possibilities for TsukiRe. The first is that it was written by Nasu Kinoko. The second is that it was written by somebody else, but that that somebody else is also the hidden genius behind Tsukihime and Fate/stay night. And at that point, there really wouldn't be any difference to us -- "Nasu Kinoko" is just our shorthand way of saying, "The guy who wrote Tsukihime and Fate/stay night."

Quote:
Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Watching Fate/Zero today, it doesn't feel like a TYPE-MOON work. It feels like a Gen Urobuchi work since his fingerprints are all over the character thought process and tone. F/Z feels like it has more in common with Gen's later work than it does with TYPE-MOON's earlier work, or Mahoyo here.
I mean, I thought that was clear from Day One. Fate/Zero has always been, "Urobuchi Gen writes an FSN fanfic," not "Urobuchi Gen tries to write like Nasu Kinoko and ghost write a story treatment for Type-Moon to pass off as their own." It's a "Type-Moon work" because he did a fucking awesome job and wrote a better 4th Holy Grail War backstory than Nasu himself could have hoped to write at the time.

EDIT: I was so honed in on when you said "ghost writer" that I completely missed the part where you said "or editor". Uhhhhhhhhhhh, I will absolutely concede that he may have hired (a) a new editor from who he had back in 2004 or else (b) an editor period if he was previously going it alone. He probably also has a much more robust peer review circle of friends he can trust with early drafts. My bad.

Last edited by Talon87; 12-30-2022 at 10:58 PM.
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Old 12-31-2022, 02:14 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
3. Nasu has gone on record publicly stating that with TsukiRe he really wanted to show the world how much he has grown as a writer. Takeuchi said much the same about his illustrations. In both areas, TsukiRe demonstrates remarkable growth by both men -- and growth that you can chart over time.

Respectfully, there are really only two possibilities for TsukiRe. The first is that it was written by Nasu Kinoko. The second is that it was written by somebody else, but that that somebody else is also the hidden genius behind Tsukihime and Fate/stay night. And at that point, there really wouldn't be any difference to us -- "Nasu Kinoko" is just our shorthand way of saying, "The guy who wrote Tsukihime and Fate/stay night."
Significant growth as a writer is really rare. But it happens, Butcher is living proof of that. On the other language a writer like J.K. Rowling does not improve the more she writes, she just reveals more of herself.

Remakes tend to have a better track record. Did you know that Re:Zero basically copies the same plot/character arc for 70% of its run? You heard me right, "Natsuki Subaru falls into a trap of people who know the future, suffers, and has to learn to trust others" has been repeated three times, with Arcs 4, 3, and 6.

Arc 4 was the first written and is just monkey butts. Arc 6 ended up the best written by far, but was the third attempt at that character arc, and was 7 years in the making.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the Tsukihime remake is better, if the author is still passionate and in a mindset determined to improve on it. Contrast this with Hideaki Anno and his Evangelion remakes; Anno isn't the same man he was when he did the original, and indeed has some resentment towards the original work, so he can no longer properly "remake" his magnum opus.

Quote:
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I mean, I thought that was clear from Day One. Fate/Zero has always been, "Urobuchi Gen writes an FSN fanfic," not "Urobuchi Gen tries to write like Nasu Kinoko and ghost write a story treatment for Type-Moon to pass off as their own." It's a "Type-Moon work" because he did a fucking awesome job and wrote a better 4th Holy Grail War backstory than Nasu himself could have hoped to write at the time.
It wasn't, or at least back then, ignoring the author's original voice wasn't a consideration. What people cared about was something better at being FSN than FSN itself, and Butcher delivered on that.

What I mean is today, when I watch F/Z, expecting say Lord of the Rings, all I see instead Warcraft: Reign of Chaos. Characters are far oversimplified, there's a purveying theme of nihilism throughout all the plot threads and the epic fights overshadow FSN's own, making the senior work seem...quaint? By comparison. It doesn't feel like a TYPE-MOON work at all despite looking and sounding like one.

Quote:
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EDIT: I was so honed in on when you said "ghost writer" that I completely missed the part where you said "or editor". Uhhhhhhhhhhh, I will absolutely concede that he may have hired (a) a new editor from who he had back in 2004 or else (b) an editor period if he was previously going it alone. He probably also has a much more robust peer review circle of friends he can trust with early drafts. My bad.
Nasu likely didn't have an editor for Tsukihme or Fate/stay night but he almost certainly has one now, credited or not. One of the trends for those VN companies was that the other staff would read the scenario and give input, there was no editor as the chief scenario writer was the most senior writer. So if the earlier TM works had an editor, it was Takeuchi himself.
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Old 01-01-2023, 02:30 PM   #15
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Chapter 05 Part 2: Night of the Witches II

Spoiler: show
Yuki: You said you finished Ch. 5? But you're at the same spot where Alice just arrived?
Talon: Yes. Chapter 6 is "Night of the Witches II", no? Chapter 05 was what we all just witnessed.
Yuki: Idk I get confused by the ordering when looking at the Archive
Talon: Fair. lol I'm just saying that after Alice arrives, we agree that it goes to a "Save if you like
=>" screen, right? 👍 I am pretty sure it only ever does that in between chapters, and also that that screen had said "Night of the Witches II" on it. Where "Night of the Witches I" had been Chapter 05.
Yuki: Ok


I was wrong. -_- *wears one of those placards made for misbehaved pets*

So yeah -- Chapter 05 continues in a demarcated second part labeled "Night of the Witches II" with even more subchapters than the first part of Chapter 05 had. Here we get to see Aoko and Soujuurou in a fight for survival against various familiars of Kuonji Alice's, the nursery rhyme witch.


Pacing: after the page-turning excitement of the previous chapter, Chapter 05 Part 2 gets off to quite a slow start. I actually found a lot of the first few subchapters slogs to get through. =\ I'm not the biggest fan of Alice in Wonderland theming, and that's pretty much Alice Kuonji's entire schtick as a magus. Whole lotta exposition here of boring Nasuverse rules and lore about the fairy tale creatures. The same way that some fans can't take Nasu's zombies seriously, I can't take "Flat Snark" or "Scratch Dumpty" terribly seriously (the names and the entities alike), even less so a pizzeria clown coming to life trying to chomp down on our heroes. So like ... I was not having the funnest of times. I even put the game down for a bit shortly after one tedious exposition dump on one of these creatures and took a nap. What a far cry from the page-turner experience of the latter ... 85%? 90%? of Chapter 5 Part 1. ^_^;

When I resumed reading, it was still that way for a bit simply due to the random nature of where I'd paused to take my nap; but once I got to a certain point in the chapter's plot, things started to take off. Before long I noticed that the excitement of Chapter 05 Part 1 was back. =) \o/ And it stayed back all the way up until the natural, appropriate denouement with Aoko and Soujuurou having their tęte-ŕ-tęte.

I will specify that while the pacing picked up earlier than this, the pacing was especially good (and similar to Chapter 5 Part 1's) from when Aoko and Soujuurou split up onwards.


Length: Another hefty chapter. ^_^; If we compare headcounts, Chapter 5 Part 2 has quite a few more subsections than Chapter 5 Part 1 has! But I don't honestly think it was that much longer (if even longer at all). I feel like they were each probably about the same length. As with Chapter 5 Part I, there were several points where I questioned if we were going to end the chapter here and finish things off in a "Chapter 5 Part 3", only to discover shortly after that we were plodding on.


Flat Snark: Not too much I want to say here. ^_^; I thought the Crown Phantasm was interesting, if barely explored. I appreciated that he was an especially tough opponent for Aoko (or any magus) and that Aoko's solution essentially boiled down to "BRUTE FORCE!" 😂🥲 I had no idea where his hiding spot was at first, but am proud to say I did figure it out a mere twenty seconds or so before Soujuurou explains where it's at. 🥲😎 (I had been thinking it was the Ferris Wheel, and then in the shot they were showing of the Moon above the Ferris wheel right before going into Soujuurou's explanation, I was like "OHNOWAIT IT'S THE MOON! =O" ='>) I guess the upside down skull was a cool visual acutely in the moment. But otherwise no, not a huge fan, not hugely impressed by the entity. I guess the idea is meant to be that it's a pretty effing big deal in the Nasuverse that one entity can animate an entire theme park, but like ... I dunno. 🤷 ^^; Next!


Scratch Dumpty: Even less impressed. 😂🥲 First of all, why is he not simply called Humpty Dumpty? Second of all ... well, I'll get into his Soujuurou-specifics in a second.


The puppet: For as little screentime as she commanded, this was my favorite threat in the chapter, and wholly unexpected! Man was it a tense few minutes there. (And only a "few" minutes because I was rapidly devouring sentences and flipping pages as fast as possible, the tension was so high!) I suppose it is a testament to the assailant's craftsmanship that the doll was still operational even in that state; and a testament to their tenacity and their resentment of Aoko that, even after being crushed beneath a building and torn in half, the doll still homed in on its target.


"The better Shirou": Yuki's right -- Soujuurou really is the better Shirou. XD =') None of the white knighting. None of the idiocy (ignorance MAYBE, but not stupidity). He knows his limits.... But like Shirou, Soujuurou is brave, has high moral fortitude, is resilient, and proves surprisingly capable. I'm by no means a Shirou hater, but Shirou has never been my preferred Type-Moon male protagonist (give me Tohno Shiki any day over Emiya Shirou; and Kokutou Mikiya's good too!), and so far Soujuurou has him comfortably beat. Do I think he's the best character ever? No. ^_^; Do I like him? Yes. Do I want to learn more about what's going on with him? Yes. Is he "just another male self-insert character"? Hell no.

So speaking of wanting to learn more about Soujuurou ... What is up with his ability to survive all of that finale with Scratch Dumpty then, huh? First off, how does Soujuurou even survive the fall? It's a hundred feet up, and the only thing that could possibly break his fall is an enemy egg-mystic. Then he gets up, runs from the egg-mystic, the egg-mystic explodes and... Soujuurou's back eats all this cursed shrapnel. Yet he seems to shake it off "no sweat", comfortably conversing with Aozaki Aoko minutes later. We were told that Scratch Dumpty was an assassination device of high caliber. How is it that it can connect with its muggle target and still fail to take him out? Something's fishy ...


The Fifth Magic: If there's one mystery this game is to answer, it's "What exactly is the Fifth Magic? 🤷" Off and on I've looked into the answer over the years, but in the lead-up to this game's re-release I've avoided going to look. Speculating based on what we saw here in Aoko's fight against Flat Snark, I have a guess.

First: the game flat-out tells us that Aoko is tapping into a "True Magic" whose dominion is "consumption and extinction". What does that mean, "consumption" and "extinction"? Your guess is as good as mine. 🤷 Without having looked up or seen the original Japanese, I'm going to assume that consumption refers to "using up a fuel source" and not "eating; devouring"? And I'm going to assume that "extinction" is a very literal translation of 消す kesu, "to erase, to extinguish, to turn off [the lights]" and not to make the dinos go bye-bye? 🤷 "You use a fuel source ... and you use it all up until the fire goes out," or something. Iunno. 🤷 Let's find out together as we continue to play! ^-^

Second: when Aoko is up against Flat Snark, it's explained that Aoko's output is insufficient to break through Flat Snark's ice shield. It isn't that she doesn't have enough mana to work with -- the amusement park's flooded with mana, she's already quote "holding down the trigger, [...] continu[ing] to fire, taking in energy ad infinitum." To use a ballistics analogy, what's currently limiting Aoko's destructive output isn't the number of bullets in her magazine: it's her firearm. Whether it's the firearm's rate at which it can cycle through bullets or whether it's the firearm's caliber limitations, either way ammunition supply is not the issue.


So Aoko says:
There was a difference in our output. If I'm losing because of the scale of energy absorption and the size of the barrel, then ...

The solution is simple. All I need to do is make the formula bigger, and me with it!
Per the analogy above, Aoko's solution appears to be to increase the chamber size, allowing her to fire larger caliber rounds (i.e. more destructive output per individual shot). How she appears to achieve this is by lengthening the magic circuitry in her body to impossible lengths. ("Her veins, totaling sixty-two thousand miles in length [...] accepted the flow of magical energy with avarice. The subsequent magic bullet swiftly flew straight into the moon.") Whether she maintains the same rate of fire or not I cannot say, nor do I think it matters after a certain point. lol Reminds me of the old "Would you rather be attacked by 100 duck-sized elephants or 1 elephant-sized duck?" questions. Fire enough tiny shots in a unit of time or fire one singular heavy-duty shot in that same unit of time, the destructive output is theoretically the same (without getting bogged down in the materials science specifics ).

But anyway, that appears to maybe be what the Fifth Magic is, or at least one of the tricks it allows Aoko to do: the ability to widen the size of your firehose.


When you get right down to it, this elegantly simple idea suits Nasu's universe perfectly given that his most well-defined magic to date, the Second Magic, is its partner:
Zelretch: "The caliber of my weapon is fine. I just need more bullets ... 😕"
The Second Magic: allows Zelretch to siphon mana from one universe into another, thereby providing him with functionally "infinite mana" given the infinitely many universes in the multiverse

Aoko: "My bullet supply is fine. I just need a larger caliber weapon. 😕"
The Fifth Magic: allows Aoko to lengthen her magic circuitry, thereby increasing her effective fire output (her "caliber") provided she has the mana to fill it
Zelretch is the flame that will never go out. Aoko is the flame that can turn into an inferno.

Zelretch, provided he has access to high-caliber weaponry, can become unstoppable with the Second Magic. Aoko, provided she has access to arbitrarily plentiful mana, can become unstoppable with the Fifth Magic.

Two halves of the same coin: "give me a big gun, and lots of ammunition to fire through it!"

That's my speculation, anyway. Please, no spoilers! at this point. 😖🤞 If I wanted confirmation from outside the game I could go on the Type-Moon wiki and look it up myself. For right now, I'm enjoying just fine my semi-informed state as I progress through the story, and look forward to the story delivering the rest of the answers in due time.


Aoko and the kitten: And speaking of speculation, this chapter goes ahead and confirms what we've all probably assumed from the very beginning: that Aoko is the girl seen in the prologue. It doesn't quite come out and say it, but ... I mean, see for yourself. *points to the picture above*


Alice: Out-of-universe, Alice is meant to be a menacing faux-threat who readers enjoy as equal parts cute and powerful. I get that. ...In-universe, though, I'm scratching my head over here at Alice's presentation right now. ^^;
  • we're told that Flat Snark is under her control, then told it isn't (because Aoko has pissed it off), then told it really isn't because it considers itself a "king" and doesn't allow insubordinates to insult it. Soooooo... what king, exactly, is taking orders from a teenage British girl? ^^; (That is to say, I question the very premise that Flat Snark was ever going to listen to Alice.)
  • We're told that Flat Snark is so priceless, it literally would not be priceable were it to be put up for auction at the Clock Tower. This girl ... just allowed her family heirloom that is priceless beyond imagination to get destroyed because she was butthurt that her roomie broke her promise to kill a naive eye witness who has proven his loyalty multiple times. Yuki joked, "Where's memory wipe rain when you need it?", referencing the Fantastic Beasts series, but like ... she's absolutely right! Surely the mages of the Nasuverse are capable of the level of hypnotism necessary to just ... not even make Soujuurou forget what he saw, but convince him that what he thinks he saw was in actuality something else. I understand the idea that "Well, you don't know if that hypnosis is going to wear off 😕🤷" but YOU JUST LET A PRICELESS ENTITY THAT CAN ANIMATE THE INANIMATE GET BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS! This was your heirloom! This was your responsibility! Now, when the historians look back and ask one another, "What is the history of Flat Snark?" or "What is the story of the Kuonji family?", they will say, "Well, the family declined over the generations, culminating in ALICE KUONJI who royally SHAT THE BED and allowed an irreplaceable Mystic to get destroyed all over a squabble about a broken promise!"
I just ... I get that this is the story being in service to Aozaki Aoko, trying to establish her power level and adding an event to what is to become her storied history as the wielder of the Fifth Magic, but like ... it absolutely comes here at the price of making Kuonji Alice seem like an incompetent, inept mage. ^^; =\ I don't get it. Surely there were better ways of having this same sort of thing play out. Surely they could have, like, oh I dunno, had it to where Alice and Aoko are dueling, and then the Flat Snark shows up, attracted by Alice's fairy-time magic, and it's like oh shit, not the Flat Snark!, and then Aoko destroys it and whoa, what a boss. "Not even I could do that ... :o" goes Alice. And that's okay, Alice, you're fine, 's all good, no worries! But no. -.- Instead we get this.


"Hoshi ga Matataku Konna Yoru Ni", the Music Box edition: ^-^

...So I've mentioned how I used to listen to Hoshi ga Matataku Konna Yoru ni while doing homework or studying Japanese on the lab hall floors at Purdue ... This is a song I've loved going back to 2011, thereabouts ... But what I haven't mentioned, and what you may not know about me, is that I absolutely love listening to well-transcribed music box versions of songs. Perhaps because of the bias of how music boxes are used in anime and other otaku media, I associate them by default with a sad, maybe tragic take. For example, "Sugar Baby Love" by the Rubettes features prominently in Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar and has a music box version that is played during some particularly tear-jerky scenes. ;~; ='> For a second example, "Shikisai" is one of the theme songs of Fate/Grand Order that has this music box version that plays one of the saddest moments in the game. T_T And of course, who can forget Clannad's "Negai ga Kanau Basho" 2nd version, which makes full use of this bias to great effect before powerfully transitioning into orchestral strings.

So yeah. I go looking for music box versions of songs all the time, be it "You'll Be In My Heart" from Disney's Tarzan or "Weight of the World" from Nier: Automata or "It's A Small World" of Disney theme park fame.

BORKED

So you can imagine my delight when this popped up in the middle of the chapter. => >w< Truth be told, I had already listened to it once before -- mere days, in fact, before we started playing this game. I can't wait to hear Yuki's reaction to it -- she opted to wait until it came up in the game organically before listening.

But yeah. Well-transcribed music box pieces are an easy way to earn brownie points from me. 👍


Romance, and Aromance?: From the beginning, I just assumed that Soujuurou was going to be to Aoko what Kokutou Mikiya is to Ryougi Shiki in Kara no Kyoukai and what Tohno Shiki is to the Tsukihime quintet: a taisetsuna hito who is also the character's love. And so far, Mahoyo is gently shaping up that way. Aozaki Aoko does a lot of tsundere-ey things without the love involved elsewhere in the story, so it's easy to be confused in either direction, but I think at this point in the story that she is definitely, definitely tsundere towards Soujuurou, i.e. in love with him but won't admit it. In a blow to fans who don't like it when eeeeeeverybody in a story has gotta have romantic feelings for someone, Aoko is seemingly taken from a position of aromance -- she's shot every boy down in school and it's not because she's got somebody else she fancies -- into a position of falling hopelessly in love with Shizuki Soujuurou, even kicking and screaming and clawing at the ground as she's dragged into the pit.

Yet the real surprise here is Soujuurou. =o Soujuurou is the one who seemingly has zero capacity for romantic attraction. His writing suggests less that "he has yet to meet Miss Right" and more that "he is wired differently from everybody else." Soujuurou has made it very clear, both in his actions and in his words, that he likes Aozaki Aoko. But what does "like" mean, exactly? Is he fond of her? Does he yearn for her? Does he enjoy her company? What is it about this girl that makes it to where he's willing to risk his life for her, time and again, even when she's making moves to end his -- and yet when she asks him if he has a crush on her, he legitimately expresses confusion and naive rejection of the very notion?

Romantic and greedy, I would prefer it if we had a well-written romance here for me to once again enjoy and to celebrate. But altruistically, I can acknowledge aro representation in anime is very low, that aro representation in a leading role is rarer still, and that aro representation without the story or character focus being on that aro nature even rarer still. The love in Mahoyo is certainly not the star of the show. It takes a backseat to many things, like Nasuverse lore, Aozaki Aoko lore, displays of friendship and courage, and spectacle. Soujuurou, if he is aro, is not "Soujuurou the Aro": Soujuurou, if he is aro, is "Soujuurou the heroic sidekick of Aozaki Aoko, mysterious mountain 'farmboy' , possible cat, occasional Chinese food delivery boy, endurance runner darling ... oh, and I guess he might also be aro too."


Guess we'll see. Try not to get too excited. =p Fate characters and romance go together like toast and cheddar. I'll believe it once we're done. (Hashtag, #SEEYOUINTENYEARS! for Mahoyo 2. ^^; orz)
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Old 01-05-2023, 04:17 PM   #16
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Chapter 06: Like a dog.

Tsukihime ~a piece of blue glass moon~ does not allow you to take any screen captures after the opening movie file. It's disappointing and frustrating, and seems borne out of misguided intentions. So I was quite delighted to see that Mahoutsukai no Yoru's re-release on the Nintendo Switch changed course, allowing players to take screen captures in all but a very select few spots. It turns out, this was not the case: Mahoyo is very deliberately programmed to allow for a "teaser" period that covers all the way through Chapter 05 Part 2, and then it switches into a more "media blackout" mode from Chapter 06 onward. This is true regardless of whether you play on the Nintendo Switch or the PlayStation 4.

So ends our run of posts filled with lovely pictures. I'll try to keep posting at least one banner picture per post that is chapter-appropriate, but even sourcing this picture exposed me to some spoiler risk. (Nothing I didn't already know, but something that would have been a spoiler for someone who has gone in blind.) We'll see. ^_^;

Spoiler: show
House arrest...?: At the end of Chapter 5-2, Aoko guarantees Soujuurou his life. Alice, however, is not on board (despite having lost to Aoko and Soujuurou, and iirc wasn't one of her terms that she would let Soujuurou live too should Aoko best her? ). So Aoko and Alice come to a ceasefire agreement -- for the time being, allow Soujuurou to live in the Kuonji mansion. The good news for Alice is, Soujuurou will be under house arrest, unable to tell the world Alice's and Aoko's secret without being gunned down by Alice first. The bad news for Alice is, she has to share her house with this ... with this stranger! Needless to say, Alice is not amused.

What I don't understand is, what exactly is the point of a "house arrest" where the individual can:
  • still freely go to school, approximately 8:30am-4:00pm every day
  • still freely go to work, approximately 9:00pm-??:​?? in Chapter 06 (we know that Soujuurou's curfew is that he has to be back inside the mansion by midnight)
Like, he's literally home 4:30pm-8:30pm maximum and then when he gets home again at (say) just before midnight he's going to sleep at midnight and sleeping until it's time to get up for school the next morning. The focus here's a little off-topic, so looking at it another way: Soujuurou is able to spill the beans about Aoko's and Alice's magic from 8:30am to 4:00pm every day at school, and for who knows how long when at work.

It seems like Nasu encountered a problem, didn't want to deal with it, and came up with a solution that presents more problems than it solves. The original problem was, "How realistic would it be to expect Aoko and Alice to be able to keep Soujuurou under house arrest?" We already know that they're struggling with memory erasure on one specimen, so doing it for the entire town would likely prove difficult for them. Without memory wiping the entire town, you have the problem of the town's natural response to a disappeared student: law enforcement involvement. Search parties would be formed. Students would gossip. Soujuurou's homeroom teacher would worry. Aoko would be interrogated. With an entire town looking for a missing student, eventually either the Church or the Mage's Association would find out and get involved. It's just a mess. So Nasu says, "Okay, fine -- we won't disappear Soujuurou then. We'll say he can still go to school and his part-time jobs. That way, his friends don't miss him and no one goes peeking underneath the hood" of the metaphorical car. But this is even more ridiculous. What sort of "house arrest" is this!? It's none, that's what! Either Soujuurou is going to blab or he's not. Blab, you'll wish you'd killed him sooner and you'll kill him on the spot. Not blab, there was no need to relocate him to the Kuonji mansion in the first place.

The whole thing is just silly. It's a silly contrivance to justify what the author really wanted to accomplish, which was:
  1. get Soujuurou living under the same roof as Aoko and Alice for some fun, charming, heart-warming Three's Company moments
  2. set up for the tragic premise he likely started with in his head -- the premise that either Soujuurou's memories of Aoko are going to be erased ;-; or else they're not and Aoko and Alice are going to change their mind about using the memory-erasing rune on Soujuurou.
Whichever one it is that Nasu wanted, he clearly wants one of them (plus the Three's Company bit) and this was the best way he knew how to get us there.

Uh... Hm. ^^;

The laws of the universe: this chapter has a lot of Nasuverse rules dumping. A lot of it is neat. A lot of it is familiar. But regardless, it's all here to firmly establish the will of its universe's Creator. Below, I'll explore just some of these.

The more people know, the weaker magic becomes: Aoko explains to Soujuurou the inverse relationship between potency of magic and widespread awareness of magic. That is to say, quoting Aoko, "The more magecraft is exposed, the weaker it becomes." Magic and mystery go hand in hand, she explains, so the more common and ordinary that people perceive magic as being, the less mysterious it becomes; and the less mysterious it is, the less potent it becomes. This, she explains, is one of the reasons why mages keep their magecraft a secret from the muggle world. There's even the specific fact that the Mage's Association -- a self-appointed regulatory body, Aoko explains -- will kill you if they find out that you're a mage who is disseminating awareness of magic.

There's just one problem with this ... This, like a lot of Nasu's rules ^_^; , seems to go out the window the moment it would inconvenience the plot. A more concrete accusation would be, it contradicts a lot of examples we already know from Nasu's and other Type-Moon stories.
  • There is no shortage of mages who live on the run from the Association who violate this policy. You might say that this just proves Nasu's point, but Nasu makes the broader point that no mage really wants magecraft to get weaker, so it stands to reason that even the ones who dislike and are on the run from the Association would not want to do this. Easy examples of such mages include Aozaki Touko (it's unclear to what extent Mikiya is aware of the magic that Touko or his sister Azaka practice, but regardless Touko does little to prevent Mikiya from finding out) and Emiya Kiritsugu's father (who takes Shirley on as his second student).
  • When Waver Velvet discovers that Glen Mackenzie's hypnosis has worn off, he doesn't recast it on Glen nor does he murder Glen.
  • Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald doesn't seem to have any problem letting a rescue team in hardhats and construction vests bear witness to his Volumen Hydrargyrum.
  • The Church and the Mage's Association seem to be a lot more upset with Ryuunosuke's wanton murder of children than they do his wanton exposing these children to magic.
  • Chaldea employs a number of muggles who are all keenly aware of the realities of magic. Perhaps all are squibs? 🤷
  • In the world of Fate/Requiem, set in the future, every world citizen has a Servant all their own. That seems to be an amplification of the number of people that are aware of the realities of magic, don't you think? Importantly, Nasu argues elsewhere that the farther you go forward in time, the weaker magic becomes (as science & technology takes over); Nasu argues frequently in FGO for an "Age of Gods" that ended circa 0 BC and an "Age of Man" that started around that same time period. And he argues that the Age of Man is associated with the decline in the potency of magic. ...So how is it, then, that in the future from now, magic is seemingly stronger than it's been in millennia? To the point that everyone has their own personal Gilgamesh and Jeanne d'Arc? Like, come on!
And I could keep going. I think we can all agree, Nasu picks up ideas from other stories or universes that he likes, he tries to implement them in his own universe, and it's not always super well thought out or super well adhered to. The consequence, then, is that we eventually violate these rules for the sake of the story.

Because at the end of the day, the only Nasuverse rule which holds constant is the Rule of Cool. =p

Miracles: Aoko provides us two really good quotes back-to-back here that help to delineate the difference between magecraft and magic:
"Magecraft doesn't create miracles. It's only the process that's miraculous."

"To produce a real miracle, you need True Magic."
This is obviously setting up for the end of the game, I feel like. Nasu is broadcasting to us here in Chapter 06 that we're not only going to get to witness True Magic -- we're going to witness a miracle.

The three pillars: Maybe not the most interesting topic compared with the others, but I did like this bit: "The three pillars of what makes a successful mage are a strong workshop, lots of disciples, and fertile spiritual grounds." It's a fun little (addition to the) rule(s) that provides an easy roadmap for future storytelling. "The conflict is that Villain murdered all of Revenge-Seeking Hero's disciples, and the reason Villain did this is because [rule]." "The conflict is that Hero's home was taken from him and he wants to take it back, because [rule]." "The ooooh-aaaah moment is seeing Merlin's workshop, because a workshop is a big deal and Merlin is a big deal and so Merlin's workshop is oooooooh, aaaaaaah..." Stuff like that. =p

Okay. Let's hop back to Mahoyo plot and characters! ^_^; =p


Soujuurou: Still trying to figure this guy out. Who is he? What is he? One detail I noted was that, early on in the chapter, Soujuurou notes that Alice is beautiful -- but it seems to be an objective observation as well as an appreciation of beautiful art. There is zero lust or romance to it.

Soujuurou's neck: Interestingly, Alice is shown to have undone Soujuurou's neck bandage while he was recuperating. =o She asks Soujuurou if Aoko knows. Soujuurou offers a vague answer that seems to satisfy Alice.

The bottle: The more we see of Alice, the more I get the impression that Alice is not an especially proficient magus but that she is in possession of a large number of remarkable Mystics. Nasu seems to delight in the shock value of having Alice wantonly abandon or destroy these priceless heirlooms -- I almost gasped when she shattered the bottle ^^; -- but once you take the Mystics away, I don't see much yet out of this girl herself to suggest that she deserves to call herself a "witch" and not a magus.

Nasu seems to flounder with answering the very fair challenge that Alice should just keep Soujuurou in the bottle. Aoko agrees it'd be efficient. Alice agrees, clearly. And even Soujuurou admits the bottle feels safer to him than the city. So like ... why not just keep him in the bottle, then, for the next three months? Because that would interfere with our charming story, that's why. So then why introduce the bottle in the first place? Come on, Nasu. =p

Terms & Conditions: Aoko explains to Soujuurou that she and Alice are going to try and find a memory-wiping rune. They intend to use it on Soujuurou, erasing his memories all the way back up to the night at the park. Aoko explains to Soujuurou that if he can keep the girls' secret and doesn't die before the girls find this rune, then he gets to leave with his life intact. Aoko estimates that this will take approximately three months: one month for the girls to locate this rune, and two months to figure out how to use it.

This at least address's Yuki's earlier criticism that it seems like an awful lot of trouble to kill Soujuurou when all you have to do is erase his memories. "Well," Word-of-God Nasu argues, "turns out it's not so easy to erase someone's memories!" In the world of the Nasuverse, memory erasure is the domain of the gods. The gods and advanced magecraft, it seems like. So okay. At least the man's addressed it. =')

The Mirror: This has a lot of Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix vibes with the stone archway "veil" that Sirius Black falls through. I definitely wonder if this is simply what Nasu was borrowing from when he wrote this. Anyway.

Alice's blue robin: The bird continues to be cute. I was on Team Familiar even when I shared some other theories, but I can report now that I am pretty firmly just entertaining the familiar theory at this point. If not flat-out claiming that it's been confirmed by this point. Regardless, he's a cutie -- if something of an asshole towards Soujuurou and fiercely servile to his master. ='3 I do like though how it seems like maybe he's not so bad after all / maybe he's starting to come around and like Soujuurou ... only for us to find out that the only reason he prevented Soujuurou from following the mist emanating from the mirror was due to orders from Alice five hours earlier. =p

I didn't notice until this chapter, but the blue robin has got yellow stars studded throughout his body. Huh. As if the color wasn't enough, the star studs definitely give him this other-worldly, fairy-tale look.

A small prediction: Alice is going to come around on Soujuurou, the enemy magus (the puppetmaster) is going to attempt to kill Soujuurou, and Alice is going to sacrifice another priceless family heirloom Mystic (or, at worst, the blue bird himself D= ) to shield Soujuurou.
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Old 01-09-2023, 12:28 AM   #17
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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
"The better Shirou": Yuki's right -- Soujuurou really is the better Shirou. XD =') None of the white knighting. None of the idiocy (ignorance MAYBE, but not stupidity). He knows his limits.... But like Shirou, Soujuurou is brave, has high moral fortitude, is resilient, and proves surprisingly capable. I'm by no means a Shirou hater, but Shirou has never been my preferred Type-Moon male protagonist (give me Tohno Shiki any day over Emiya Shirou; and Kokutou Mikiya's good too!), and so far Soujuurou has him comfortably beat. Do I think he's the best character ever? No. ^_^; Do I like him? Yes. Do I want to learn more about what's going on with him? Yes. Is he "just another male self-insert character"? Hell no.
Shirou's white knighting is one of his most recognizable character traits, and it directly feeds into his stupidity. It's what lets him ace the Plinkett Test whereas Shiki Tohno would probably fail. Granted, Shinji Ikari also passes the Plinkett Test, and while he's certainly unique and memorable, that isn't a good thing.

Also, of all the Fate media, I think Shirou's passive-aggressive mansplaining is what finally gets Saber to start feeling like a woman for the first time ever. Shirou is charming in the same way a dog is, unabashedly opinionated and none too intelligent but hopelessly loyal and dedicated.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
...So I've mentioned how I used to listen to Hoshi ga Matataku Konna Yoru ni while doing homework or studying Japanese on the lab hall floors at Purdue ... This is a song I've loved going back to 2011, thereabouts ... But what I haven't mentioned, and what you may not know about me, is that I absolutely love listening to well-transcribed music box versions of songs. Perhaps because of the bias of how music boxes are used in anime and other otaku media, I associate them by default with a sad, maybe tragic take. For example, "Sugar Baby Love" by the Rubettes features prominently in Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar and has a music box version that is played during some particularly tear-jerky scenes. ;~; ='> For a second example, "Shikisai" is one of the theme songs of Fate/Grand Order that has this music box version that plays one of the saddest moments in the game. T_T And of course, who can forget Clannad's "Negai ga Kanau Basho" 2nd version, which makes full use of this bias to great effect before powerfully transitioning into orchestral strings.

So yeah. I go looking for music box versions of songs all the time, be it "You'll Be In My Heart" from Disney's Tarzan or "Weight of the World" from Nier: Automata or "It's A Small World" of Disney theme park fame.
Music boxes or 'orgels' are only indirectly suggestive of sadness. The main idea with them is childhood, since music boxes are often played for babies. The other motif is that since most orgels are wind-up, they are stumbling towards an end, so the idea is "an impending end to childhood". I think the latter usage is where you see it in situations outside of evoking childhood.

I think what lends orgels to the mono no aware feel is that normal Andante-style minor music can evoke a reaction of fear rather than melancholy.

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Yet the real surprise here is Soujuurou. =o Soujuurou is the one who seemingly has zero capacity for romantic attraction. His writing suggests less that "he has yet to meet Miss Right" and more that "he is wired differently from everybody else." Soujuurou has made it very clear, both in his actions and in his words, that he likes Aozaki Aoko. But what does "like" mean, exactly? Is he fond of her? Does he yearn for her? Does he enjoy her company? What is it about this girl that makes it to where he's willing to risk his life for her, time and again, even when she's making moves to end his -- and yet when she asks him if he has a crush on her, he legitimately expresses confusion and naive rejection of the very notion?

Romantic and greedy, I would prefer it if we had a well-written romance here for me to once again enjoy and to celebrate. But altruistically, I can acknowledge aro representation in anime is very low, that aro representation in a leading role is rarer still, and that aro representation without the story or character focus being on that aro nature even rarer still. The love in Mahoyo is certainly not the star of the show. It takes a backseat to many things, like Nasuverse lore, Aozaki Aoko lore, displays of friendship and courage, and spectacle. Soujuurou, if he is aro, is not "Soujuurou the Aro": Soujuurou, if he is aro, is "Soujuurou the heroic sidekick of Aozaki Aoko, mysterious mountain 'farmboy' , possible cat, occasional Chinese food delivery boy, endurance runner darling ... oh, and I guess he might also be aro too."
In isekai works, having a dumb or dense male MC love interest is an insidious trope, and serves two purposes:

1. Allows the author to avoid having to address the romance directly whereby they might be exposed as being unable to properly write male love
2. Drags out the shipping moments well beyond what would be a normal resolution point

Something I didn't understand about myself for a long time is why I liked romances in the context of adventure stories while disliking melodrama like in stuff like...Tora Dora or Golden Time. I had zero tolerance for melodrama.

And the reason for that is plot/setting/adventure sidesteps the need for the author having to sort through complicated emotional dynamics. With "bigger fish to fry" in the form of plot, it's much easier for characters to have more practical and less complicated relationships.

-Shiki Tohno is a pretty gregarious guy, but without the events of Tsukihime he wouldn't have been able to bed Arcueid.

-Rin x Shirou could have still happened through proper school channels but the nature of their relationshp would be more shallow.

Now, in Fate and HF, Shirou is all about sorting through his feelings for the heroine. So I don't think Soujuurou is like this because Nasu is afraid to write romance from him. It's Aoko having a crush, and Nasu not ready to gearshift that romance into a full blown relationship.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Tsukihime ~a piece of blue glass moon~ does not allow you to take any screen captures after the opening movie file. It's disappointing and frustrating, and seems borne out of misguided intentions. So I was quite delighted to see that Mahoutsukai no Yoru's re-release on the Nintendo Switch changed course, allowing players to take screen captures in all but a very select few spots. It turns out, this was not the case: Mahoyo is very deliberately programmed to allow for a "teaser" period that covers all the way through Chapter 05 Part 2, and then it switches into a more "media blackout" mode from Chapter 06 onward. This is true regardless of whether you play on the Nintendo Switch or the PlayStation 4.
Visual novels (especially eroge) are basically ruined by reposting the assets, i.e. the graphics. In abstract you are essentially paying to view a slideshow exclusive to you, sort of like paying for access to a Pixiv Fanbox or Patreon.

The mentality in Japan is to not want to share something you paid exclusive access for. So this is just a formality enforcing to the de facto custom.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
It seems like Nasu encountered a problem, didn't want to deal with it, and came up with a solution that presents more problems than it solves. The original problem was, "How realistic would it be to expect Aoko and Alice to be able to keep Soujuurou under house arrest?" We already know that they're struggling with memory erasure on one specimen, so doing it for the entire town would likely prove difficult for them. Without memory wiping the entire town, you have the problem of the town's natural response to a disappeared student: law enforcement involvement. Search parties would be formed. Students would gossip. Soujuurou's homeroom teacher would worry. Aoko would be interrogated. With an entire town looking for a missing student, eventually either the Church or the Mage's Association would find out and get involved. It's just a mess. So Nasu says, "Okay, fine -- we won't disappear Soujuurou then. We'll say he can still go to school and his part-time jobs. That way, his friends don't miss him and no one goes peeking underneath the hood" of the metaphorical car. But this is even more ridiculous. What sort of "house arrest" is this!? It's none, that's what! Either Soujuurou is going to blab or he's not. Blab, you'll wish you'd killed him sooner and you'll kill him on the spot. Not blab, there was no need to relocate him to the Kuonji mansion in the first place.
I think the proper solution is a page from Takeshi Shudo's playbook. Defeat Flat Snark at the amusement park, but have Scratch Dumpty ambush Aoko and Soujuurou at Soujuurou's house, destroying the home and creating a huge magical ruckus.

Aoko can now threaten Alice to contact the Mage's Association if she doesn't take Soujuurou in, since her fingerprints are all over the destroyed home and damaged amusement park. Alice can keep watch over Aoko and Soujuurou if they blab since she knows where they live (with her).

The distinction is that without a public scene linking the destruction to Soujuurou, it's easy to simply remove him so he can't talk. One can't draw a distinct link between damage at an amusement park and a missing person. But with his house destroyed it's easie to draw that connection and harder to hide the evidence.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
There's just one problem with this ... This, like a lot of Nasu's rules ^_^; , seems to go out the window the moment it would inconvenience the plot. A more concrete accusation would be, it contradicts a lot of examples we already know from Nasu's and other Type-Moon stories.
  • There is no shortage of mages who live on the run from the Association who violate this policy. You might say that this just proves Nasu's point, but Nasu makes the broader point that no mage really wants magecraft to get weaker, so it stands to reason that even the ones who dislike and are on the run from the Association would not want to do this. Easy examples of such mages include Aozaki Touko (it's unclear to what extent Mikiya is aware of the magic that Touko or his sister Azaka practice, but regardless Touko does little to prevent Mikiya from finding out) and Emiya Kiritsugu's father (who takes Shirley on as his second student).
  • When Waver Velvet discovers that Glen Mackenzie's hypnosis has worn off, he doesn't recast it on Glen nor does he murder Glen.
  • Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald doesn't seem to have any problem letting a rescue team in hardhats and construction vests bear witness to his Volumen Hydrargyrum.
  • The Church and the Mage's Association seem to be a lot more upset with Ryuunosuke's wanton murder of children than they do his wanton exposing these children to magic.
  • Chaldea employs a number of muggles who are all keenly aware of the realities of magic. Perhaps all are squibs? ��
  • In the world of Fate/Requiem, set in the future, every world citizen has a Servant all their own. That seems to be an amplification of the number of people that are aware of the realities of magic, don't you think? Importantly, Nasu argues elsewhere that the farther you go forward in time, the weaker magic becomes (as science & technology takes over); Nasu argues frequently in FGO for an "Age of Gods" that ended circa 0 BC and an "Age of Man" that started around that same time period. And he argues that the Age of Man is associated with the decline in the potency of magic. ...So how is it, then, that in the future from now, magic is seemingly stronger than it's been in millennia? To the point that everyone has their own personal Gilgamesh and Jeanne d'Arc? Like, come on!
My understanding was that true magic gets weaker as more people become aware, but not "magecraft". Provided the art isn't lost by one generation failing to inherit a Magic Crest, magecraft actually gets stronger over time since more powerful mages are born and marry to use the magecraft. Rin being the most powerful Tohsaka ever and the product of centuries of selective breeding.

Magecraft only looks weak compared to the mythological era where true magic was more common. Medea's high speed words are the most powerful form of magecraft and she doesn't even use magic circuits, yet compared to the figures of her day she is horribly weak.

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Spoiler: show

A small prediction: Alice is going to come around on Soujuurou, the enemy magus (the puppetmaster) is going to attempt to kill Soujuurou, and Alice is going to sacrifice another priceless family heirloom Mystic (or, at worst, the blue bird himself D= ) to shield Soujuurou.
I think your prediction is bold and brave. There's no way that a story about a handsome guy with 2+ girls could turn into a harem where all the girls crush on the guy.

Not a chance! =p
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Old 01-09-2023, 01:28 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Shirou's white knighting is one of his most recognizable character traits [...] It's what lets him ace the Plinkett Test whereas Shiki Tohno would probably fail.
I don't think Shiki fails the Plinkett Test. I don't think he comfortably aces it either. I don't know that many characters reasonably fail it; one fan reasonably explores Qui-Gon Jinn as follows:
Quote:
"He has a generally serene demeanour that comes from his many years of experience. Although he's not given to strong emotional display, there is a kindness and warmth to him. He is guaranteed to do (what he perceives to be) the right thing rather than follow the letter of the law, or to find loopholes that let him do what he must. However, he does have a manipulative streak, and has no qualms about messing with people in order to achieve his goals. He is also a risk-taker, willing to put everything on the line and trusting in his instincts to guide him."
Another replies:
Quote:
Any character that is on any screen for more than a couple lines can be described without describing their appearance or occupation. It's a terrible test of character depth. Take Nute Gunray for example. Completely flat, uninteresting, poorly written character with nothing to him. "He's cowardly, whinging. He's sniveling, selfish, and stupid, but he thinks he's clever. He's smug and not very self-aware. He has a cruel streak and uses his social position to feed it." Mr. Plinkett's character test isn't a test of character depth. It's a test of your ability to describe something accurately.
I got the general idea of what you were trying to say -- character traits make the character -- but I think it's incorrect of you to argue that Shirou is a much more well-developed character than Shiki is. I would also argue that neither character passes your test especially well, that we can look to randomly-selected characters like -- oh, why the heck not -- Tsunemori Akane (honest, serious, hard-working, naive, brave) or Red Blood Cell-chan (hard-working, clumsy, indefatigable, cheery, optimistic, kind) and find it much, much easier to rattle off a list of defining character traits that are easy to identify because they feature prominently throughout the characters' stories.

For what it's worth, if I were to answer a Plinkett Test challenge for Shiki, my answers based only on the first three days of Tsukihime's story would include that he's "paradoxical, polite, private, not one for formalities, and sometimes scornful, even sardonic." While this passes the Plinkett Test, it also requires more defense and represents a much more abstract, much less fundamental character trait list than the ones just explored above for two Hanazawa Kana characters.

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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Also, of all the Fate media, I think Shirou's passive-aggressive mansplaining is what finally gets Saber to start feeling like a woman for the first time ever.
You make it sound as though Shirou is an incel's "alpha chad" who slaps some sense into this woman trying to be a man in a man's world. I don't think it's anything so red pilly as that, and perhaps that's not what you intended. On reflection, however, I do concede that Shirou is a surprisingly chauvinistic character. A lot of this subplot's development can be summed up as Saber saying or doing something to which Shirou, without an ounce of malice, replies: "But you're a girl." I think there are two things going on here at the same time -- the first is that Shirou does not treat Saber like a man, inasmuch as this means he treats men and women differently and he treats Saber like he would treat other women; the second is that Shirou does not treat Saber like a king, instead treating her like he would any other peer (i.e. middle class suburban Japanese teen). It would be dishonest of me to say that the plot of FSN doesn't have Saber feeling stifled having had to always present a (1) male (2) kingly face to the public, and that she is happy to get to be an (1) ordinary (2) female in the civilian life scenes of the story ... but I dunno. Something about the way you framed it just made it seem very, very red pilly.

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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Music boxes or 'orgels' are only indirectly suggestive of sadness. The main idea with them is childhood, since music boxes are often played for babies. The other motif is that since most orgels are wind-up, they are stumbling towards an end, so the idea is "an impending end to childhood". I think the latter usage is where you see it in situations outside of evoking childhood. I think what lends orgels to the mono no aware feel is that normal Andante-style minor music can evoke a reaction of fear rather than melancholy.
Don't agree that there isn't a clear, solid pattern of use of music boxes both in sad scenes and as a way to evoke sadness in the viewer in the anime of the past 25 years. Don't agree that they are primarily used to evoke a sense of childhood (sans sadness), as they would be in the West where they are more commonly associated with babies' play mobiles. Definitely don't agree that on either side of the Pacific are they frequently used to elicit fear. (Though you could certainly go for that if you wanted to. The one notable example that comes to my mind for this would be N's playroom in Pokémon Black & White.)

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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Visual novels (especially eroge) are basically ruined by reposting the assets, i.e. the graphics. In abstract you are essentially paying to view a slideshow exclusive to you, sort of like paying for access to a Pixiv Fanbox or Patreon.
If you haven't played Mahoutsukai no Yoru, you may not understand, but it is much less a traditional visual novel than it is a "self-directed film", a cinema piece where you direct the pacing. It's remarkable what they've pulled off here, and how well, but the net effect is that I have "an anime in the palms of my hands". Taking screen captures, even hundreds of screen captures, no more jeopardizes that experience than it would were we watching a television series or a cinema piece.

But even were it a more traditional VN -- say it were Katawa Shoujo, modestly simple in its assets -- I would not expect anyone to argue in good faith that screen capturing the entire game, down to the last period of the last sentence, would produce a reasonable replacement for the game itself. It might produce an unreasonable replacement, for misers and the poor! Again, this feels like an argument in bad faith -- if not from you, then from Nasu himself. I can go out and screencapture the entirety of The Wizard of Oz, subtitling it for dialogue, but no one in their right mind is going to say that "Because he can do that, he can jeopardize Wizard of Oz sales; so we must prevent him from doing that; and to do so, we must therefore prevent him and anyone like him from taking any pictures of The Wizard of Oz period. Not for use in news articles, not for use in news blogs, not for use in social media -- nothing! No screenshots of Oz!" Ridiculous.

The fact that literally every other game on the Switch lets you take photographs, and that the feature is even built into the base console and advertised as a feature, as a perk ...

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous to think that some screenshots are going to hurt sales. The sort of person who is going to settle for a 5,000-picture photo album of Mahoyo was not going to buy it in the first place, and may be persuaded to buy it now. NO ONE who was going to buy it in the first place is going to decide to save their $40 and replace it with a photo album of crude screenshots that bit by bit show you every line of dialogue in the game, sans music, sans visual effect.

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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
My understanding was that true magic gets weaker as more people become aware, but not "magecraft".
"The more magecraft is exposed, the weaker it becomes." This is a verbatim quote, the Word of God. I'm not sure what else you want me to say.

Spoiler: show
Nasu (by proxy of Aoko) explores how the Mage's Association primary raison d'ętre is to prevent the dilution of magecraft. Full stop. That is why the organization formed. (Not to reach the Root -- that's the goal of all magi.) Aoko explains that even if you choose not to affiliate with the Association, they will still require you to follow all of their rules and regulations or else they will try to kill you. She explains that this is why she and Alice are taking the Soujuurou situation so seriously -- it's not simply "up to them" to let Soujuurou live, they don't get to decide that: the moment the Mage's Association finds out about this, they will kill Aoko and Alice for not doing their part to keep magecraft undiluted. The expectation is that if you allow a muggle to see your magic, then you make it so that the muggle can't talk. You have various ways you can do this -- killing the muggle, wiping the muggle's memories, so on and so forth. Just make it so that he can't tell others what he has seen. If you don't make it so the muggle can't talk, then the Association sends agents to kill you. Whether you couldn't silence the muggle because of your incompetence or whether because you chose not to, the Association determines that they need to kill you, for the sake of all other mages. They're not going to let mages live who either refuse to keep magic under wraps or who are too inept to do so. That's the gist of it, anyway.


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Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Provided the art isn't lost by one generation failing to inherit a Magic Crest, magecraft actually gets stronger over time since more powerful mages are born and marry to use the magecraft.
So, these are two separate things, and both can be true despite being in opposition to one another. Think of it like this:
  • TRUE: when you stir a hot bowl of soup with your spoon, you are introducing energy into the system. (+5)
  • TRUE: when you stir a hot bowl of soup with your spoon, you are increasing the effective surface area of the volume, allowing heat to escape faster (-100)
Both are true, but the amount of energy introduced into the system by stirring is negligible next to the amount of energy removed from the system by stirring. The net effect is "Stirring a hot bowl of soup helps to cool it down faster", even though there is a slight introduction of heat by stirring. 5 - 100 = -95, it may not be -100 but it's still pretty dang close and is clearly in the negative.

I think the same thing is true for your point of confusion here. Yes, it's true that a family's Magic Crest (theoretically, and in most practical cases) gets stronger over time as it is passed down through the generations from one inheritor to the next. That's true on a local level -- on a local level, this family's magic is getting stronger/more efficient/both over time. But like a little fish swimming 5 mph upwards against a river flowing 20 mph in the opposite direction, that family's efforts exist within a world whose magical potency is over time declining. As time approaches infinity, science replaces magecraft -- that is one of the central tenets of Nasu's writings, as I understand it. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. This is something he visits frequently in Fate/Grand Order, and it's showing up again here in Mahoyo.
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Old 01-10-2023, 02:19 AM   #19
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I got the general idea of what you were trying to say -- character traits make the character -- but I think it's incorrect of you to argue that Shirou is a much more well-developed character than Shiki is. I would also argue that neither character passes your test especially well, that we can look to randomly-selected characters like -- oh, why the heck not -- Tsunemori Akane (honest, serious, hard-working, naive, brave) or Red Blood Cell-chan (hard-working, clumsy, indefatigable, cheery, optimistic, kind) and find it much, much easier to rattle off a list of defining character traits that are easy to identify because they feature prominently throughout the characters' stories.

For what it's worth, if I were to answer a Plinkett Test challenge for Shiki, my answers based only on the first three days of Tsukihime's story would include that he's "paradoxical, polite, private, not one for formalities, and sometimes scornful, even sardonic." While this passes the Plinkett Test, it also requires more defense and represents a much more abstract, much less fundamental character trait list than the ones just explored above for two Hanazawa Kana characters.
The test isn't of character development - I'm with you there that Shiki changes more than Shirou does, save HF - but how strong the character is. "Strong" being how quickly and easily an audience is able to pick up on a character's personality. The test is intended for film characters since a script's length requires as much shortcutting as possible to tell the audience what a character is like. This applies to anime too.

A pessemist might say the Plinkett Test also is a measure of if it's a character or a caricature or archetype (since caricature pass the Plinkett Test 100%). The test is biased towards characters who emote more or are dominated by a handful of character traits. Qui-Gon and Nute Gunray ae indeed terrible characters in the films because their personality has to be imagined by the audience. They do not emote so what they are feeling at times is vague. It's Lucas' responsibility to communicate what type of character they are through action, inaction and dialogue and he fails or causes contradictions.

Both Shirou and Rin are hard working and loyal. Rin might be even more so! But hard work and loyalty are more closely associated with Shirou since it's informed by his origin story (a talentless magius trying to preserve the tradition of his father, the man who saved his life). Rin's traits have a more tenuous or...dramatic? connection to her goal of bringing glory to the name Tohsaka. The more personal the motivation the stronger it tends to be (with Shirou being very personal, while Rin's being on behalf of her clan).

The Tsukihime cast is far more multifaceted and understated than the FSN one. That might make for a better read, but it's a challenge to bring to the big screen without losing some dimensionality.

So yeah, Shrou's chauvinism definitely works into his favour, as far as needing a big character trait for the audience to latch on to and understand his personaity quickly. It also invites clash with Saber to complicate the plot.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
You make it sound as though Shirou is an incel's "alpha chad" who slaps some sense into this woman trying to be a man in a man's world. I don't think it's anything so red pilly as that, and perhaps that's not what you intended.
It's not, I was being flippant. You got my intended point.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
A lot of this subplot's development can be summed up as Saber saying or doing something to which Shirou, without an ounce of malice, replies: "But you're a girl." I think there are two things going on here at the same time -- the first is that Shirou does not treat Saber like a man, inasmuch as this means he treats men and women differently and he treats Saber like he would treat other women; the second is that Shirou does not treat Saber like a king, instead treating her like he would any other peer (i.e. middle class suburban Japanese teen). It would be dishonest of me to say that the plot of FSN doesn't have Saber feeling stifled having had to always present a (1) male (2) kingly face to the public, and that she is happy to get to be an (1) ordinary (2) female in the civilian life scenes of the story ... but I dunno. Something about the way you framed it just made it seem very, very red pilly.
So there's a lot to unpack here. I'd argue that Shirou's treatent of Saber is unique, caused by beliefs he's always held but could never act on + her triggering him.

Shirou has other women in his life pre-HGW (Taiga, Sakura, Ayako) but he doesn't force them into gender roles. iirc Ayako being a tomboy is actually one of the reasons he's not into her, but is into Rin. Recognizing Sakura as literal perfect waifu material who just fell into his lap is the entire premise behind HF.

Shirou also doesn't know Saber's identity until after Rider is killed, he's able to deduce she's a knight but I think he and/or Rin speculate she's Joan of Arc. He doesn't know she's a king and has absolutely no compulsion to treat her as one. By the time they get a breather to sort through Saber's backstory it's post-coital.

I think the magic crest gave Shirou a boldness towards Saber akin to what we see in isekai with transmigrator owners and female slaves - he's able to, perhaps subconsciously, live out some of his deep-seated fetishes now that he has control. And that fetish is that women shouldn't be tomboys. Taiga and Ayako are both, arguably, tomboys with major unfeminine red flags. But with Saber he can actually impose his worldview somewhat, and his lack of boundary due to the weird circumstances and his ignorance is why he can press that view.

For Saber's case, her actually tolerating Shirou's insolence and stupidity shouldn't happen...except that Shirou also checks off a lot of fetishes on her side too.

Self-sacrificing, self-isolating idealist? Check.
Intimate noble confidant who she can express her inner thoughts to without getting ridiculed (Merlin, Iskander, Gilgamesh)? Check.
Exotic hunk close to her physical age? Check.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Don't agree that there isn't a clear, solid pattern of use of music boxes both in sad scenes and as a way to evoke sadness in the viewer in the anime of the past 25 years.

Don't agree that they are primarily used to evoke a sense of childhood (sans sadness), as they would be in the West where they are more commonly associated with babies' play mobiles.
Okay, well, I don't necessarily see a solid pattern, but I will concede that Japan's usage might be divorced from the "shorthand" use in Westen music. There is an oregel theme in both Futari wa Pretty Cure and in Muv-Luv and both appear in different scenes, the former emphasising romance and the latter meant to draw connection between Takeru-Sumika's childhood. Both are unambiguously melancholic, but there's more going on in context than just sad stuff.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Definitely don't agree that on either side of the Pacific are they frequently used to elicit fear. (Though you could certainly go for that if you wanted to. The one notable example that comes to my mind for this would be N's playroom in Pokémon Black & White.)
So, I wasn't arguing that music boxes = fear, I was saying that music boxes = loss. Music box sounding themes are slow and lack harmony, they are just melody. If you had no idea what a music box was, those 2 points would be what you'd pick up on in a theme.

Solo melody = isolation, and at lest for me, I associate isolation with forboding or fear.

"All or None" is probably a poor example now that I think about it. I wanted it to show that it opens with isolation, then transitions to sadness, but listening again during the bell segment in the opening before the piano takes over, there's a clear harmony, so that argument falls apart.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
The fact that literally every other game on the Switch lets you take photographs, and that the feature is even built into the base console and advertised as a feature, as a perk ...

It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous to think that some screenshots are going to hurt sales. The sort of person who is going to settle for a 5,000-picture photo album of Mahoyo was not going to buy it in the first place, and may be persuaded to buy it now. NO ONE who was going to buy it in the first place is going to decide to save their $40 and replace it with a photo album of crude screenshots that bit by bit show you every line of dialogue in the game, sans music, sans visual effect.
It's Japan. They have an artificial collector culture that encourages this kind of gatekeeping.

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
"The more magecraft is exposed, the weaker it becomes." This is a verbatim quote, the Word of God. I'm not sure what else you want me to say.

Spoiler: show
Nasu (by proxy of Aoko) explores how the Mage's Association primary raison d'ętre is to prevent the dilution of magecraft. Full stop. That is why the organization formed. (Not to reach the Root -- that's the goal of all magi.) Aoko explains that even if you choose not to affiliate with the Association, they will still require you to follow all of their rules and regulations or else they will try to kill you. She explains that this is why she and Alice are taking the Soujuurou situation so seriously -- it's not simply "up to them" to let Soujuurou live, they don't get to decide that: the moment the Mage's Association finds out about this, they will kill Aoko and Alice for not doing their part to keep magecraft undiluted. The expectation is that if you allow a muggle to see your magic, then you make it so that the muggle can't talk. You have various ways you can do this -- killing the muggle, wiping the muggle's memories, so on and so forth. Just make it so that he can't tell others what he has seen. If you don't make it so the muggle can't talk, then the Association sends agents to kill you. Whether you couldn't silence the muggle because of your incompetence or whether because you chose not to, the Association determines that they need to kill you, for the sake of all other mages. They're not going to let mages live who either refuse to keep magic under wraps or who are too inept to do so. That's the gist of it, anyway.
OK, but this is established in Mahoyo, which I would have no way of knowing otherwise. This is the new canon and Notes (which was always just pseudo-canon) is now non-canon.
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Old 01-21-2023, 11:33 PM   #20
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Chapter 07: Are you for real?

Spoiler: show
Alice: I don't have too much to say here. Nasu insists on keeping Alice shrouded in mystery. Mystery is fine -- after all, the entire reason this game exists is because we all wanted to know more about the mysterious Aozaki Aoko -- but the level of mystery Nasu insists on keeping Alice shrouded in is preventing her from feeling like a character. Still, when we do get to learn a little bit more about Alice, it tends to humanize her and bring a smile to your face. She's lazy, procrastinatey, and/or stubborn (as seen with her lack of motivation when it's her night to prepare dinner). She likes to play dumb a lot, something Aoko picked up on long ago in their relationship but which we get to see a clueless Soujuurou encountering this very chapter (the "sleeping" Alice in the second sleeping encounter). Her complex relationship with the loss of priceless Ploys is mirrored in the complexity of her reaction to Soujuurou having used her very best tea. (Hooray, consistency!) And we learn that Robin is not just any Ploy but was Alice's mother's familiar. (Well, "familiar" may not be technically correct, but de facto that's the role he served. So basically: Robin is the Kuonji family housepet and is fiercely protective of Alice.)

Not really sure what to make of Alice's being asleep midday on the lobby floor like that. Narcolepsy? Fatigue? Illness? Other? I can see it being plot-related just as easily as not plot-related. Only time will tell.

Broom Girl: We finally meet Broom Girl from the trailer! :'D She's one of very few box cover characters we have yet to meet. Aaaaaaaand ... her debut scene is comically unfocused on her. For one, she's not even given a name. For a second, she's presented as being one of several of Soujuurou's coworkers whom he consults in that scene. Kumari, I think, is her name. Not wanting to look it up yet in case she's a Big Deal side character being kept in reserve until now for some big purpose. I do think it is strange that the two voice actors they had promote Mahoyo's re-release all last year were her and Soujuurou's voice actors if/when Kumari turns out to be the most minor character with a unique character design in the entire story. Like, TsukiRe they promoted with Kohaku and Hisui's voice actresses. Perfect. But this would be like promoting TsukiRe not even with Satsuki and Shiki but like ... I don't even know. ^_^; All I'm saying is, yay we got to meet her finally \o/ but strong HMMM's otherwise since we got to learn so little.

Alice's attempts on Soujuurou's life: For as much as we were warned that these would happen, or that Soujuurou was at least in jeopardy of them happening, we've seen surprisingly little thus far. In the previous chapter we had the nighttime fog emanating from the mirror that Alice had Robin shoo Soujuurou away from. In this chapter, we learn from Aoko that there have been at least two occasions in which Alice has tampered with Soujuurou's food and drink. One time, Alice put mescaline in his drink; and another time, she put rowan in his salad. Both of these I had to look up. Mescaline is the hallucinogen associated with peyote. Doesn't seem like it'd be expressly toxic, but I don't know, maybe it would fry Soujuurou's brain. (shrug) Rowan I read can be nephrotoxic, but appears to be commonly eaten when prepared properly? So again, I don't know? These seem like kinda half-assed and muggly attempts at killing Soujuurou for someone we're told is such a "witch" as Alice. Hmm.

Bad English: Hoo boy. This chapter continues what Chapter 06 started, and sees the game's English-language translation just riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. For the most part, the translation itself is pretty sound -- even when they take liberties with some phrases or sentences, they always seem to have meaning on their mind first and foremost, and are always sticking at worst a close landing if not the best landing. But no, it's the spelling and grammar that's falling apart. We're not quite there yet, but I feel that pretty soon we'll be seeing a guaranteed error on every single page. For right now, I only bothered to record one especially atrocious example: "hang a side around his neck". I've since moved on to the next chapter, but for another example there, Alice has a line where she says "Who knows. If can't see them, there must not be any birds." Contextually, I'm guessing that the original Japanese is written like this (with an unspecified but implied subject) and the translator either forgot to specify the subject in English or else agonized over the guess between Alice and Soujuurou and ended up leaving it blank when submitting their final draft of the TL.

To be clear, the English in this game is generally good, and the translation is generally great. The vast majority of the English errors are less so "translation errors" and more so just plain misspellings and word omissions. If anything, the script is filled with examples of advanced English vocabulary -- "mending", "accustomed", "garnered", "ruminated", "rampant", and "inscrutable" are just a few examples from the last few pages of the chapter I am currently on, all are used correctly and most are used where more rudimentary synonyms could have sufficed. I don't doubt that the translator is either (a) an English-speaking native, full stop, or else (b) a Japanese native whose command of English is native-level. Their fluency chops aren't what's in question. It's just the state of the script itself. =\ People make mistakes -- that much is forgivable -- but it's a shame to see a book of all things, a book that costs forty dollars, with so many errors.

Aoko's family: Soujuurou asks Aoko about her family at one point in this chapter. Aoko tells him that: "They're alive and well. They own a place in Toukawa, four stops from Misaki. I learned everything I know from my grandfather, who's retired now and lives with them."

This is riddled with apparent contradictions.
  1. "I learned everything I know from my grandfather" would seem to strongly rule out that she is talking about her maternal grandfather here. "Everything I know"... Aoko seems to place so much of her identity in her witch/magus self rather than her muggle self. It's possible that both of her grandparents are magically gifted and that she inherited the inheritance from the one (paternal) but learned everything from the other (maternal). But ehhhh... this is a stretch. Occam's razor for now would say that Aoko is likely talking about Grandpa Aozaki. But there's a problem with this is: we already know that Grandpa Aozaki is dead. =\ That he died at some point in the last two years. So how could this be? Either Aoko is talking about her maternal grandfather here and Nasu is proud of himself for some very deliberately orchestrated misdirection ... or Aoko is flat out lying to Soujuurou. Hmm.
    (Later in the scene, I believe Aoko does say something to confirm that she was talking about Grandpa Aozaki. SINCE I DON'T HAVE SCREENCAPS TO RELY ON T_T, I'd have to go back and find it some other time. Sorry.)
  2. "They're alive and well. They own a place in Toukawa, four stops from Misaki" strongly begs the question, "Then why doesn't Aoko live with them in Toukawa? " Why is she living here, in Misaki, a guest in someone else's home?
  3. "[Grandpa]'s retired now." What? One doesn't "retire" from being a magus. Again, either Aoko is speaking about her maternal, muggle grandfather or else she is lying to Soujuurou.
It's even more interesting when you think about it from an in-universe perspective: Aoko has no established reason to lie to Soujuurou, and several established reasons to be honest with him:
  1. He's pure-hearted in the extreme. It is unlikely that he would intentionally sabotage Aoko with this information.
  2. They're planning to erase his memories going all the way back to the night in the park. So what does it even matter secrets you tell him, he's going to forget it all in a few months anyway! (That or you're going to be dead at the Association's hands and not in a position to worry about it anymore, either/or. ^^;; )
So again, why lie? I really hope this is deliberate by Nasu and that it's setting up for a cool plot surprise that this was part of the groundwork for. =o But I'll not get my hopes up. =')

Soujourou's baffling ignorance about the world: Nasu keeps trying to present Soujuurou as this "mountain farmboy" who doesn't know or who can't comprehend highfalutin city life. But like ... Come on, man. This?
  1. He doesn't know what a crocodile is until high school.
  2. Upon learning that he's been taking poison, and after expressing that taking poison would be a not-good, he downs the pills anyway without any resistance. #what
  3. He doesn't think to get a blanket for the sleeping Alice. He thinks instead to make her tea ... set it down ... and not wake her up to drink it ... and then leaves it all out there on the floor, where it gets cold after he leaves for work.
  4. Aoko remarks that his education level is at or beneath that of a middle schooler.
I don't know, man. Whether Soujuurou is a cat or not ("IS HE THE CAT!?"), I definitely think this is all super suss. I don't buy that he's a "mountain boy". His erratic behaviors are not all explainable by this (e.g. the time he thought to exit the high school from the 2F classroom window), nor does he especially demonstrate mountaineer savvy. He's got stamina, sure. He's got stamina in spades. But so does a cross-country athlete or an Olympic swimmer. It doesn't mean you're a mountain ascetic who was raised in such secrecy from the world that you don't even know what a crocodile is until your high school classmates tell you. Is he an alien? Is he a homunculus? Is he already under the effects of some other spell? IS HE THE CAT!? Only time will tell. =')

Purity: This chapter sees Nasu mentioning again just how pure Soujuurou is. I think I'm onto something regarding his Origin possibly being Purity. It would explain a lot of things about him, like:
  • his poison resistance, because his Origin keeps him pure and purges his body of impurities
  • his love for others, which is presented so far as traditionally "pure" i.e. devoid of any lust or other sexual yearnings; taking it a step even further, his love appears to be, if not "unconditional", at least "without conventional conditions", as evidenced by his ability to do right by Aoko even amidst Aoko's serious attempts to kill him, as well as not abandoning Aoko, "his would-be killer", when the going got tough.
  • his naivety, which we often associate with purity, innocence, etc.
  • (speculative) his difficulties with academic learning and retention could be because "his brain purges his mind of impure information, thoughts, ideas, knowledge, etc." ... but Soujuurou is not a complete amnestic, he does learn and retain (e.g.) the names of his classmates, his route home, his tasks at his part-time jobs, etc. , sooooo... if it is something like this, it can't be 100% what I've presented here
I would need to revisit the scene, but one particularly interesting possible clue could be the cram session in Aoko's bedroom. Aoko prepares tea for them and Soujuurou informs her that (paraphrasing) he doesn't take caffeine and therefore he doesn't use it to stay awake. After the all-nighter (which Aoko had not expected it to be), the narrator notes that Aoko went through like 4 to 5 times the amount of tea she had intended to. IIRC we aren't told whether Soujuurou did or did not partake in the tea. But I would assume that he didn't. And if he didn't ... Soujuurou is shown to be quite awake and alert, as though it were 10am on any normal day. Soooo... I'm starting to question, does Soujuurou even require sleep? (shrug) We know that Aoko clobbered him at the end of Chapter 05 and that he didn't come to until several days later at the start of Chapter 06. But like ... is that our only case of Soujuurou ever being depicted as sleeping, rather than simply retiring to his bedroom? I'm really, really starting to wonder ... If the boy doesn't even require any sleep (because he's not a normal human; see above guesses ), perhaps this could be how and why he's able to work multiple part-time jobs and go to school and be around for mansion life scenes with Aoko and Alice and get his homework done (if poorly). Hmm...
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Old 01-22-2023, 02:39 PM   #21
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Chapter 7.4: Martha

After you complete Chapter 07 and it's added to your bookshelf, this fourth subchapter never before seen is snuck in. I decided to make a separate post for it for that reason, since Chapter 07 technically ends (and you can technically proceed directly to Chapter 08​) without ever reading this. That stated, it would be a big mistake to miss out on "Martha". So let's dive in, shall we?

Spoiler: show
Kumari Kojika: She has a name! Broom Girl's name confirmed: Kumari Kojika. ^-^ So who is she?
  • Kumari loves animals
    • she tells Soujuurou to not hurt Robin
    • she shares loads of animal facts with Soujuurou
  • Kumari can't be honest / is a tsun
    • despite clearly loving animals, she claims to "hate them", apparently in a strange bid to get Soujuurou to break off their conversation and leave her alone ^^; 🤷
    • she is constantly frowning, sighing, and otherwise demonstrating exasperation with Soujuurou ... despite helping him get a job, answering his questions, teaching him, being patient with him ... I dunnoooo ... I think she likes him! ;3 =p Or at least cares about him enough to tolerate all of his ignorance. ='3 (There's a line near the end of the subchapter where the narrator tells us, "The more they spoke the more she felt drawn to him." ;o (shrug) Who knows what this could mean...!)
  • I mean she literally looks almost identical to Aisaka Taiga of ToraDora fame


I mean ...

Don't know much else about her yet, but so far, she's a cute little rock of salt. :> =p

Robin attacks!: The chapter actually opens with Soujuurou investigating a commotion he hears in the dining room, something that sounds like an entire flock of birds that has somehow become trapped indoors. After a brief exchange with the ladies of the manor, Soujuurou's attempt to gain more information from Alice is interrupted by Robin, Alice's faithful bodyguard, who BRAAAAAAAAAAVE BIRD!s himself into poor Soujuurou's head. ^^;

It's Robin that Soujuurou is asking Kumari for help with. As Nasu writes:
"Words alone were not enough to convey the bird's plump body or the sound of its chirping."
This amusingly peculiar quote was selected as one of the sample screenshots for the game on the official Mahoyo website. But pulling back to poor Soujuurou, yes: plump borb is yeeting itself at him throughout the day, and he asks Kumari for advice.

Of Mages & Birds: Kumari remarks to Soujuurou that it isn't a surprise that he saw starlings on the mountain but not in the city. She explains that there are few birds in the city, and tells about how there used to be a forest where present-day Misaki City is located, how the birds all used to live there, but then Man came in and bulldozed the place and laid concrete and built buildings... and now all of the birds are forced to live in the woods on the mountain, because that's the closest thing they have to their old forest home. Some of the details of her explanation will be lost here, but in general the story she told and the manner in which she explained it struck me as something --

"Nasu is telling us an allegory about mages. :o"

The "birds" are mages. The "Men" are muggles. "Birds" were driven out of "Man"'s society and made to live on the fringes, in seclusion and hiding. The birds on the mountain, Kumari tells Soujuurou, might not make it past 100 years due to competition, hunting, and other factors impacting their survival. Sounds an awful lot like a metaphor for mages, if you ask me. =p =')

Passenger Pigeons: I was surprised to discover this poetic, touching cautionary tale here. =o Through Kumari, Nasu tells us the story of the passenger pigeon. He tells it in surprisingly eloquent detail, skillfully weaving much information into a flow that felt narrative and light. I was especially impressed by this line (in bold, with context text preceding):
"But if there were so many of them, how could humans wipe them out?"

"Good question. No one back then thought it was possible, either. But it's simple when you realize that passenger pigeons were both a threat and a cheap commodity. All the flying was what made the meat of migratory birds so delicious to humans. And all you had to do was point your gun in the air. Bang! And there's dinner. What would you do in their shoes?

"This might sound heartless, but the passenger pigeons were a species that could easily be converted into cold, hard cash. Naturally, the hunting went on and on. People would pluck their feathers, stick them in a barrel with salt, and ship them out.

"It wasn't hunting after a point, just consuming a resource. It didn't feel like work or labor to the people doing it. In those days, you could get a whole passenger pigeon for one cent. That's roughly equal to one yen. Can you believe it?

"The smallest denomination of currency in society was enough to purchase an entire life."
Dang ...

Apex Predator: Kumari explains to Soujuurou:
"Passenger pigeons managed to build an empire of five billion only because they lacked natural predators. Indigenous people didn't hunt them either, apparently. It was the settlers who wrecked the local ecosystem. No one ever imagined in their wildest dreams that so many birds could just go extinct. The passenger pigeons couldn't have been prepared for a predator showing up centuries later out of the blue from across the ocean."
This got me thinking about the parallels between the pigeons and Man. An empire of eight billion humans ... only because we lack natural predators. What will we do if the day comes that predators show up out of the blue from across the "ocean" -- the deep sea of space?

Martha: Kumari's story builds towards the extinction of the passenger pigeons. She describes how it wasn't until their numbers had dwindled to 250,000 that the United States government identified the problem and passed legislation to try and save the species. However, people ignored the laws, with 200,000 pigeons shot and 40,000 injured in just a few years. When the numbers were down to just 5,000, Kumari explains that the passenger pigeon could no longer live in the wild. And eventually ...
"Eventually, there were only *three* passenger pigeons left. Two males and one female were kept in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo, but within the year both the males had died. Then only the female was left. At that moment when the other two died, she became the single loneliest creature on earth.

"Her name was Martha. The last of her species that had once soared over North America, she would never fly free again, trapped forever in her cage. At the age of twenty-nine she finally passed. It happened at one o'clock on September 1st, 1914. The only case in all of Earth history where we know the exact moment a species went extinct."
;-;

What a beautiful memorial. I'm sure the story of Martha the passenger pigeon is well known, as her Wikipedia article shows. But boy did Nasu do a great job with this bit. It was poetic. Sincere. ...The last two lines, I actually teared up. ^^; Very sad story, very lovelily memorialized here.

I have no idea what compelled Nasu to include this story of Martha here at this place and time. Maybe he'd just watched a documentary on passenger pigeons. Maybe he'd studied them in school. Maybe he has an interest in doves. I have no idea.

All I do know is, this was lovely, heartbreaking, educational, and a joy to read. I'm glad Nasu included it.

Soujuurou's response: After Kumari finishes her story, she is surprised to find that Soujuurou shows no sign of emotional impact. "Aren't you angry," she asks him, "as someone raised around nature in the mountains?" Soujuurou replies:
"Oh... It was definitely an amazing story. But it doesn't make sense. Why would humans keep passenger pigeons in captivity after working so hard to kill them?"
...

Typical Soujuurou. ^^;

He absolutely sounds like an alien observer of humanity when he makes statements like this. His point is valid, but Kumari is right -- that's your focus, Soujuurou!? That's where your mind went as Kumari told the tale of the passenger pigeons' extinction, and of Martha? HMM... (shrug)

Kumari herself remarks after Soujuurou's left: "I should have flat-out asked him if he cares at all about human morality." Indeed! :o

Robin: As the chapter is wrapping up and I feel like we're past the biggest shocks and surprises of the evening ... All of a sudden ... Robin screams in human language and a wacky voice! O_O He can talk!? Apparently so!

What follows is a pretty cute, silly ^^; scene that establishes a few nuggets for us and further cements Chapter 7.4's place as one of the most important chapters to read yet and definitely not to be skipped!
  • Robin refers to Alice's mother as "the Goddess Mum" and to Alice as "the Angel Mum".
  • Robin loves Alice. To offer a more accurate representation of what Robin calls Alice, quote -- "my beloved Miss Alice! The Angel Mum herself!"
  • Robin is jealous of Soujuurou.
  • Robin believes that Alice is fascinated by and fixated on Soujuurou, that she watches him with every available moment of her free time.
  • Robin discloses all of this to Soujuurou.
  • Alice discovers that Robin has disclosed all of this to Soujuurou.
  • (Per the narrator's possibly unreliable take), Soujuurou may fancy Alice. :o Something about "He is a high school boy, after all." ^^;
  • Robin's English script dialogue reads like he's Cockney working class. Robin's Japanese script audio sounds like Kaneda Tomoko's impression of such an accent. It's something. ^_^; (Robin is voiced by Fukuen Misato.)
Huh. This is an awful lot of important stuff for an easily-missable "side" chapter!
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Old 01-26-2023, 08:43 PM   #22
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So we just going to pretend that Talon didn't just come back?

You killed upnetwork by leaving!
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Old 01-27-2023, 01:56 AM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
"Oh... It was definitely an amazing story. But it doesn't make sense. Why would humans keep passenger pigeons in captivity after working so hard to kill them?"
...

Typical Soujuurou. ^^;

He absolutely sounds like an alien observer of humanity when he makes statements like this. His point is valid, but Kumari is right -- that's your focus, Soujuurou!? That's where your mind went as Kumari told the tale of the passenger pigeons' extinction, and of Martha? HMM... (shrug)
I remember reading a review of Tom Hank's Big some time ago, I'm not sure where. But a central criticism was that the script forgets Hanks is portraying a 10-year old and has him at times act or think like a 5-year old.

Soujuurou's comment there has me thinking this character is poorly written. Soujuurou by Aoko's assessment has below middle school education but inabiity to distinguish between different parties of humans is literally toddler intelligence. Being an alien or a mountain man isn't a good enough excuse for this one. He completely misses the point of the conversation and then asks a question that's beyond basic.

I'm fairly certain this guy is like Kuzuki. Aliens, mountain men, you know what actually has child-like social-moral intelligence?

A gun.



What I'm saying is that he's a robot. Like, literally.

Quote:
Originally Posted by McSweeney View Post
So we just going to pretend that Talon didn't just come back?

You killed upnetwork by leaving!
Nobody's pretending, or ignoring for that matter. You want to see ignoring...



bruh.
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Old 02-02-2023, 02:17 AM   #24
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Chapter 08: ARE YOU FOR REAL!?

Spoiler: show
Soujuurou's neck: The first note I jotted down while playing this chapter was: "Soujuurou's neck bandage is so obvious ... ^^;" Having reached the end of the chapter, I have to question if that wasn't deliberately orchestrated by the team -- subtle but profound placement that draws the eyes to the character's neck early on in the opening scene, the solid blue track suit contrasting heavily with the bright white of Soujuurou's starchy linens, that then subconsciously sets the stage for what's to come. No, sadly, we don't yet get a final answer this chapter. But what we do get are more developments.

But first...

"IS HE A CAT!?" "IS HE A ROBOT!?": While I don't think that Soujuurou is a robot, it's certainly an interesting hypothesis and a welcome one to add to the table. Well spotted for a man not even reading the book proper! =p =) There is a solitary breadcrumb offered by Kinomi early on in this chapter when he remarks: "A normal human can't work in these snowy conditions unless they're some kind of robot." He and Soujuurou are working outdoors in the cold, and while the other students are all milling about, with several pockets of boys tending to makeshift campfires, Soujuurou is steadily clearing the landscape of brush and litter, seemingly unhindered by the elements. Is it because he's a robot? I doubt it. :p But he could be a robot. Or he could be a mountainman. Or he could be a cat! XD Who knows. =') Anything's possible at this point. The only thing not possible is that he is an ordinary human.

There's a really good bit here, as cryptic as it is poetic:
Tobimaru felt a touch of concern as he looked at Soujuurou. He saw within him homesickness and retrospection. He also saw a dark shadow looming over him, like a stranger in a foreign land without a home.
Hmm.


Soujuurou & Aoko: There's a line in here where Nasu declaratively states:
Though Soujuurou and Aoko were living together, there was absolutely no chemistry between them.
Hm. Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii... doubt that. While Soujuurou is pretty inert, Aoko appears to exhibit some clear signs of physical and romantic attraction to him. Is she hopelessly in love, hanging on his every word, following him around every corner? No... ^^; But when she sees Soujuurou in a topless state of semi-undress, she doesn't react as though she's seen a neutral subject. She becomes flustered, whereas it's Soujuurou who is completely emotionally neutral and objective. She frequently teases Alice regarding any affections Alice may be developing towards Soujuurou, and it comes across less in the way of a supportive friend who is encouraging her bestie to admit her feelings both to herself and to her crush and more in the way of a teenage girl clumsily expressing her natural jeolousy towards a rival for her own crush's affections; it has that classic projection.

I dunno, I feel like this "word of God" here is deliberately misleading. Why deliberately deceive, I have no idea, take it up with "God". But I just don't buy it. =\

The Puppetmaster: We haven't heard much recently about the mysterious magus who has been attacking Aoko, and seen even less. No new attacks since the night at the amusement park...although that isn't entirely true, we have heard that the magus has been taking down the sigils planted throughout the city that establish Kuonji's claim to the land.



The mystery antagonist, scouring Misaki City for sigils

But Alice says something this chapter which is rather fascinating. Some good, ol', classic character lore-building:
"...Even my mother wasn't able to touch this Bounded Field.
The only person capable of getting through Misaki's Bounded Field would have been your grandfather or an even more capable mage.
But someone exuding that level of magical energy would find it that much harder to cover his or her tracks.
...It could be some kind of unique concealment ward, but I haven't heard anything about any new faerie circles forming these past few years."
Hmm... ()

Putting aside character lore-building, I do like at least that for readers of all knowledge-levels this bit does raise the stakes a little. The enemy magus has gone from being "Aoko's chump change challenge" in Chapter 03 to being "a difficult adversary, but Aoko managed to overcome!" in Chapter 05 to "This person might be the most powerful magus we've ever met o_o;" in Chapter 08. It's nice to see Alice's respect for Aoko's grandfather, someone we still know precious little about, and the fact that she's willing to place the enemy magus on the same level as venerable Ojii-sama is exciting. This is good, effective, simple storytelling.


Soujuurou's body: In this chapter, we get to see Soujuurou's body from the waist up. And what we discover is:
  • he's very muscular/toned
  • he has large, vicious scars on his left arm
  • even in undress, he has the neck bandage on
Regarding the neck bandage, it's unclear whether it's "He keeps it on even when he takes a bath" or whether it's "It's the very first thing he puts on after he takes a bath," but either way it's intriguing for its importance. Given that Alice easily(?) removed it and reapplied it in between Chapters 05 and 06, I'm of the impression that it isn't magically affixed to him. It's likely "ordinary bandage". But in that case, all the more reason to question why it's so important for him to have it on at all times. Soujuurou's been in Misaki City for several months now. If it were a neck brace from surgery, it'd probably be coming off right around now. And it's not -- it's simple dressings. What is taking so long to heal under there? Or is it not about healing -- is it concealment? What are the bandages hiding?

But the arm scars are interesting too. Soujuurou offers a plausible explanation that he was mauled as a child by a ferocious mountain animal -- a dog? a bear? -- and that these scars are reminders of his survival. But is that so? Is that really the case? Japan does have populations of bears in the mountains, but like... could it be something else?

What about his tone? Sure, you don't lose muscle tone overnight... but you also "don't use it, you lose it." What has Soujuurou been doing to justify that level of muscle retention? I can't think of anything, can you? He walks up and down the hill every day to go to school. He walks to and from a variety of part-time jobs. Okay. So the dude walks. Is that going to give you the level of muscle definition that this young man has? The dude seems ripped. All over his body. His back, his sides, his arms...

I've mentioned several times my hypothesis that Soujuurou might have an Origin that we will be learning about and that his Origin might be Purity, or something to do with it. That could make sense of his base state muscle tone. Excess adipose is exactly that -- "excess". "Impure." It has no place in a "pure specimen"'s body. But what then of the scars? Aren't the scars "impure"? Aren't they a blemish on an otherwise immaculate body? Sure. I don't have a great answer for you there. I think it could be that these are competing narrative elements -- his Origin:Purity on the one hand, his body mangled by a car engine when he was a little kitten on the other hand, the scars on his human arm a permanent evidence of this trauma. Who can say? 🤷



Yes, I re-used the same picture twice. Making posts is effort. T~T

The dog collar: So this is something. Aoko "gifts" Soujuurou a dog collar as a replacement for the food she was having him eat every day, the food that is laced with a chemical that once the recipient starts eating it they will have to continue eating it or else they will die. Supposedly she did it as a hazing joke and didn't think he'd seriously go through it ... but if that's the case, then how come the collar is already functionally ready to go? =p (Plot hole? ^^; ) Regardless: not too much to say here, other than that this is +1 example of Aoko being romantically attached to Soujuurou -- she is literally placing her dog collar on him in front of Alice to lay claim to him, "He's mine. >o" And I guess also +1 example of IS SOUJUUROU THE KITTEN!? ^^; "IS HE THE CAT!?"

Soujuurou and the contraband green tea: Alice forbade Japanese tea three days ago after spotting Soujuurou using a tea cup intended for black tea being used to make green tea. So Soujuurou has snuck contraband into the Kuonji mansion -- his own private stash of green tea. Not too much to say here other than that if this were a more traditional Type-Moon game with bad ends around every corner I could easily see this being one of the ways in which Soujuurou meets his end at Alice's hands. ^^;


Soujuurou & Alice: Meanwhile, undettered by Aoko's brazen (if silent) declarations of war, Alice continues her descent into being hopelessly in love with Soujuurou. ^^; I won't lie -- Alice flustered by her conflicted feelings towards Soujuurou is probably the cutest thing in the game so far. =p

Soujuurou cooks poorly, on the level of a stay-at-home child or college student. What he made came out "tasty" enough that Alice ate it, sure... But Alice also nursed it; and she seemed to mostly be eating it out of affection towards Soujuurou. We're flat out told it's an instant ramen pack that he just threw some ingredients together for. We're also told that it took him one hour to make the sauce. Would you really expect it to take one hour for a seasoned mountaineer to make sauce!? (Likewise, would you expect thrown-together ramen to take an hour?) Hmm...

I would expect a mountain man to "live off the land" and cook using all-natural ingredients. None of this instant ramen crap. I would also expect the very notion of "instant ramen" to be alien to Soujuurou. Nothing in the game had so far indicated to us that he lives off of instant ramen. He made homemade riceballs for the student council vice president, Tobimaru. He works at an authentic Chinese restaurant. He's supposedly a mountain boy to whom the city is so alien he's been having a hard time adapting. ...Where is this knowledge of, never mind predilection for, instant ramen coming from!?
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Old 02-02-2023, 03:43 AM   #25
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It sounds like Nasu just retconed away any romance between Aoko and Soujuurou and is shipping the young man with Alice instead.

I remember reading about what makes Re:Zero's Rem such an endurng character with such a strong romance with Subaru, and it boils down to where she started. Rem hated Subaru and tried to kill him at first. When her opinion flipped positive, then super positive, it's fueled in part due to a very deep desire for atonement.

Rem realizes that her initial treatment of Subaru hurt him and now that she's legitiately infatuated with him, that guilt just seasons the eagerness and willingness to please through an escape from acknowleding that guilt.

Sound familiar? Alice is checking off all the boxes. And I approve, she's cuter than Aoko anyway.
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