Carry Your Hope And Go Forward.
Nov. 24th, 2014 06:05 pmAbsolute Despair Girls: Danganronpa Another Episode is a spin-off game set in the universe of Dangan Ronpa, a series of videogames best known for rendering me completely incapable of shutting up. Another Episode breaks away from the murder-mystery visual novel style of the main games; it's a shooting game,* although it's still pretty story-heavy. You play as Komaru Naegi, the younger sister of the first game's protagonist Makoto Naegi, as she tries to escape a city in which a war has broken out between children and adults.
I have mixed feelings about Another Episode.
( Thoughts on 'Danganronpa Another Episode'. Cut for vague spoilers and talk of (fictional) sexual abuse. )
The tragic thing is that the Dangan Ronpa series, in many ways, is so good with its female characters. The male:female ratio amongst its characters is almost exactly 1:1, which is shockingly rare for something with such a sizeable cast; I can name twenty female Dangan Ronpa characters without much thought. The girls in these games have distinct personalities and relationships with each other and roles in the plot! It's great! But the games have followed a trajectory of 'almost no creepy fanservice!' to 'quite a lot of creepy fanservice' to 'Creepy Fanservice: The Game', and it's starting to make me a little uncomfortable.
My other problem with this game is perhaps best expressed by the distressed e-mails I sent to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
th_esaurus immediately after finishing it:
( More 'Another Episode' spoilers! I'M PRETTY SURE NOBODY ON MY FLIST HAS EXPERIENCED THIS GAME AND THEREFORE NOBODY CAN ACTUALLY READ THIS ENTRY, BUT I'M WRITING IT ANYWAY. )
What I am trying to say is that I've spent an embarrassing amount of time hunting through the Internet for fanart or fanfiction in which Makoto and Komaru Naegi have a really good hug. The Internet has thus far failed to provide. I have an unsettling feeling that this may end up like my involvement with Waterloo Road, in which two characters so frustrated me with their failure to hug that I wrote no fewer than four stories centred on thinly-veiled excuses to go 'and then they hugged'. Brace yourself.
* Er, 'a literal shooting game', I should perhaps say. There's a fair bit of shooting in the main Dangan Ronpa games, but it's metaphorical; you use your evidence to 'shoot down' other characters' misconceptions and lies in the murder trials. The title Dangan Ronpa, if you were wondering, means something like 'winning an argument with a bullet'.
I have mixed feelings about Another Episode.
( Thoughts on 'Danganronpa Another Episode'. Cut for vague spoilers and talk of (fictional) sexual abuse. )
The tragic thing is that the Dangan Ronpa series, in many ways, is so good with its female characters. The male:female ratio amongst its characters is almost exactly 1:1, which is shockingly rare for something with such a sizeable cast; I can name twenty female Dangan Ronpa characters without much thought. The girls in these games have distinct personalities and relationships with each other and roles in the plot! It's great! But the games have followed a trajectory of 'almost no creepy fanservice!' to 'quite a lot of creepy fanservice' to 'Creepy Fanservice: The Game', and it's starting to make me a little uncomfortable.
My other problem with this game is perhaps best expressed by the distressed e-mails I sent to
th_esaurus immediately after finishing it:( More 'Another Episode' spoilers! I'M PRETTY SURE NOBODY ON MY FLIST HAS EXPERIENCED THIS GAME AND THEREFORE NOBODY CAN ACTUALLY READ THIS ENTRY, BUT I'M WRITING IT ANYWAY. )
What I am trying to say is that I've spent an embarrassing amount of time hunting through the Internet for fanart or fanfiction in which Makoto and Komaru Naegi have a really good hug. The Internet has thus far failed to provide. I have an unsettling feeling that this may end up like my involvement with Waterloo Road, in which two characters so frustrated me with their failure to hug that I wrote no fewer than four stories centred on thinly-veiled excuses to go 'and then they hugged'. Brace yourself.
* Er, 'a literal shooting game', I should perhaps say. There's a fair bit of shooting in the main Dangan Ronpa games, but it's metaphorical; you use your evidence to 'shoot down' other characters' misconceptions and lies in the murder trials. The title Dangan Ronpa, if you were wondering, means something like 'winning an argument with a bullet'.
