So much anime game nonsense happened in September that your humble born-again weeb could no longer be contained in a group Postcard post, and had to break off and make up my own new thing instead. Maybe it’ll be a recurring thing? Who can say at this juncture, I guess it depends on whether my favourite anime-esque developers keep having wild ideas.
Also I totally forgot to make a header image until the last minute, so please enjoy my newest and somewhat-relevant Nendoroid tableu, which I have entitled “Apollo Justice Vs His Intrusive Thoughts” (you probably can’t tell but I edited the speech bubbles in Paint; I think we can all agree that its professional artistry is outshone only by its canonical accuracy).
So, Danganronpa 2×2, huh? Cool, cool cool cool cool cool
Good news for fans of murder mystery visual novel courtroom dramedy series that haven’t had a new entry in like eight years! Oh no, wait, did you think I meant… oh no, sorry, I meant the other murder mystery visual novel courtroom dramedy series that hasn’t had a new entry in like eight years.
Considering that I was just talking about times when the original creators left a beloved franchise in the hands of IP holders who attempted some wide scale fanservice that didn’t exactly get a glowing reception, I’ll admit I have some reservations here. I’m not the only person who initially mistook DR2x2 for a fangame, because it literally follows the premise of roughly 50% of all Danganronpa fangames already out there: “what if the same cast and basic premise but with different deaths?”. And much as I’m generally open-minded when it comes to follow-ups taking a favourite story somewhere unexpected, I’m all too aware right now that bending over backwards to try to make a fandom’s favourite ideas work within existing canon is mainly a good way to snap a series’ spine.
To that end, zeroing in on the middle game in a sort-of trilogy that also happens to be the franchise’s oft-cited highpoint is, on the face of it, a bit of a red flag for this sort of experiment. Reassuringly, Spike Chunsoft claim to have switched their initial plans for this project from the original game to its first sequel instead simply because it has the story you can reimagine most freely without rewriting canon entirely (iykyk, I’m still hoping to get Liam to play this series so I don’t want to get too far into spoiler territory!) — although they have indicated a greater willingness to de-canonify the concluding anime with this game but you know what, I’m not gonna be mad about it if that’s true. As far as “cash grab or artistically merited continuation of the story” goes, I’m not trying to convey a coded judgement here; it really could go either way based on what we’ve seen so far.
I guess my main concern is that — for all that Kodaka and co.’s writing isn’t flawless — I was always really impressed by the original creative team’s grasp of each individual character and what their defining traits were, especially since many went unspoken. The identities of the victims and killers in the Danganronpa games aren’t just the result of pulling names out of a hat and working backwards — if they were, I like to think these games would always have allowed for more player choice and branching outcomes. The deaths in this series were always there to serve the themes: both of the overall narrative and the individual character arcs. Admittedly I may not have loved every creative choice in practice, but I always understood what they were going for.
To remix that with the original characters and setting but with only the loose “supervision” of the original creator feels… risky, especially after the anime set the precedent of publisher-appointed writers fumbling the ball under exactly those conditions. I’m still taking psychic damage from the female characters’ transition to the anime: practically every one of them was stripped down to a shallow male-gaze-pleasing archetype, robbed of all the internal conflict and sense of authorial empathy that made them so appealing in the source material (even if it was pretty clear no actual women were directly consulted on the finer points of representation in the games either).
Alright, cards on the table: as quite possibly the fandom’s foremost Sonia enjoyer, I’m begging the writers of 2×2 to understand the values that are central to her whole character, and that if you miss them that can end up completely inverting the entire point of her even being there. You know, like her anime appearances did.
Still though, it turns out that the narrative lead on 2×2 is Yoichiro Koizumi, the writer behind some really good Danganronpa tie-in books like Ultra Despair Hagakure and Danganronpa Gaiden: Killer Killer, as well as the Danganronpa S spin-off boardgame (which was at least quite well-received for its handling of the characters, if little else…?), so that’s a good start as far as I’m concerned.
All else aside, is this an automatic Day One purchase for me? Obviously, especially since despite some ambiguous initial marketing, it’s now been confirmed by Nintendo as a cross-gen release for both Switches 1+2, so I can definitely play it on my platform of choice. The spit-shine on the visuals looks great, for one thing, and hypocritically enough I’d love to see Trigger Happy Havoc get a similarly wild remaster/remake/remix treatment after all if this one does well (I’m large enough to contain multitudes; so sue me). And if nothing else, this is a hilarious time to be a fan of both Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, because I’m basically obliged to make snarky disappointed memes subtweeting myself now that DR2x2 got announced in what some were convinced was going to be AA7’s slot at Nintendo Direct.
Meet Paimon Edgeworth, an affront to man and god
It’s Genshin Impact’s 5th anniversary, and even though I’ve fallen quite far behind on this game thanks to (motions to plenty of other live service nonsense to be on with), I’m still invested enough in the whole production to be getting involved in the festivities, which happen to include a completely unexpected one-sided official crossover into Among Us.
Yup, anyone logging in to everyone’s favourite lockdown social deduction pastime slash indie game slow-burn success story Among Us between September 10th and October 10th this year will be getting a free Paimon skin whether they care to or not – that’s one wig (hat) and one outfit, in case you’re unfamiliar with how Among Us cosmetics work.
This is pretty cool, but what I love best about it is that it’s almost exactly a year since a very similar promotional crossover to celebrate the release of the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection also turned Miles Edgeworth into a ‘Mongus. Naturally I logged in for that one back then too and so obviously, my first act during this year’s event was to dress my ‘Mongus in an Edgeworth wig and Paimon magical girl outfit to see if it was hilarious (it was), followed by the flip-reverse of pairing Paimon’s wig with Edgeworth’s iconic cravat (not quite as hilarious but still very funny).
But don’t just take my word for it! You can judge the results for yourself:
The new LaDS event featuring my #1 anime husbando is so apocalyptically horny I’m afraid to directly acknowledge it at work, so here we are instead
Surely there’s no better evidence underlining my belief in Love and Deepspace’s Zayne supremacy than the fact that in this four-and-a-half minute trailer for his latest myth date, I’m pretty sure there’s actual penetration going on for at least 100 seconds. Like holy shit, what’s happening over there, Infold? When did romancing Zayne go from yearning looks and mutually affectionate sarcasm to all this? Is our reward for taking the slow burn route the first canonical on-screen bang that doesn’t pan away and/or fade to black just when things are getting spicy?
This does go a long way towards making up for the little part of me that’s disappointed at Zayne’s new myth not being any sort of resolution or continuation of the last main story chapter. As it stands, the final scene in the entire game ends on such a heartbreaking cliffhanger that I was half-convinced Infold were going to bust out their second-ever main timeline Myth just to wrap up the whole Dawnbreaker saga for Zayne mains. I mean, they did it once for Caleb, and he sucks! (No, I will not be elaborating at this time.) Sadly, this is not that, at least not yet; but you do apparently have the opportunity to get railed by someone nicknamed the God of Annihilation, which is quite the consolation prize.
Believe it or not, since I wrote this a few days ago there’s been even more news from some of my favourite anime games and series! The Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is getting a huge QOL update in November and I for one actually prefer it to getting AA7 right now (boo hiss)! Honkai: Star Rail’s March 7th (my #1 anime best daughter) finally got her 5-Star kit, and now Dan Heng actually says something respectful about her on the party formation screen (after two and a half years of me telling him off for negging her when she’s objectively much better than him he finally listened?!). At this rate there’s definitely gonna be another one of these at the end of October…
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