So, here's the issue (according to me, an aggressive Kasumi naysayer). Kasumi is a character with two distinct, parallel characterisations: the most perfectest perfect girl ever, with a figure everyone loves to discuss for some creepy reason; and a girl who isn't the gymnast she wants to be, suffers from anxiety, and is collapsing under the pressure of all the expectations on her. The writing volleys so violently from one to the other at any given moment with zero cohesion that it leaves me feeling nothing but utter irritation that this is what I paid a second amount of $79.99 (plus tax!) for. The dance scene is pretty much the microcosm of that: for her storyline up to that point, it would have made much more sense for her to fall on her face, but instead she acquits herself perfectly... because as much as the game likes to tell us about Kasumi's issues, it has no interest in actually showing them.
It also doesn't make a terrible amount of sense that she was invited to perform when the game repeatedly implies she's fiercely disliked at school due to how, uh, pretty and kind and athletic she is? Ugh, whatever. Basically, the game wants to eat its cake and have it too... and I will not allow it! I will be here, festering impotently in my own salt mines, until the end of eternity!
Also, the fact that the school threatens to, and I quote, 'revoke [her] honour student status' is fucking stupid. And a borderline incomprehensible threat. I looked it up and couldn't find any indication that an honour student in Japan is anything other than a student who earns especially high grades, like it is everywhere else. I guess the school was going to start systematically lowering her grades until she, idk, danced with a ribbon better? Good luck with that, Shujin. I'm sure her television producer father wouldn't threaten to leak that story or anything. The intent behind that gibberish threat was never clarified in any helpful or remotely intelligible way so I'm angry that the game wasted my time with it.
AND ANOTHER THING. RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS ARE THE MOST BORING FORM OF GYMNASTICS. Fuck you and the balance beam you never actually balance on, Kasumi!
no subject
It also doesn't make a terrible amount of sense that she was invited to perform when the game repeatedly implies she's fiercely disliked at school due to how, uh, pretty and kind and athletic she is? Ugh, whatever. Basically, the game wants to eat its cake and have it too... and I will not allow it! I will be here, festering impotently in my own salt mines, until the end of eternity!
Also, the fact that the school threatens to, and I quote, 'revoke [her] honour student status' is fucking stupid. And a borderline incomprehensible threat. I looked it up and couldn't find any indication that an honour student in Japan is anything other than a student who earns especially high grades, like it is everywhere else. I guess the school was going to start systematically lowering her grades until she, idk, danced with a ribbon better? Good luck with that, Shujin. I'm sure her television producer father wouldn't threaten to leak that story or anything. The intent behind that gibberish threat was never clarified in any helpful or remotely intelligible way so I'm angry that the game wasted my time with it.
AND ANOTHER THING. RHYTHMIC GYMNASTICS ARE THE MOST BORING FORM OF GYMNASTICS. Fuck you and the balance beam you never actually balance on, Kasumi!
I... I'm done now. Probably. For tonight.