Some Random Stuff...

A place for the part of my brain that will literally not leave me alone unless I share the aesthetic somehow

[mozillavulpix]

new xenoblade has me going back and reading bits of the Xenosaga Perfect Works again and thinking about the bits and similarities that were reused (consciously or not) for Xenoblade

Like I think Noah and Mio are a bit more of an interesting take on the whole "constantly reincarnating star-crossed lovers" thing because really, if you think about it, all of Xenoblade 3 is taking place in a virtual world. Because "it's a game", the idea of reincarnation feels more logical. The idea of residual thoughts and feelings remaining in the 'game code' and eventually resurfacing as something else feels a bit more believable than actual reincarnation.

also mio wasn't made to be noah's mother.

I do honestly like Xenoblade 3's plot a lot, even though it loses momentum in the last few chapters and goes kind of "random bullshit go, here are all the leftover character arcs we didn't have time to implement properly"

But if you think about it actually a lot of JRPGs end up doing this. including maybe most famously Xenogears itself. Really, especially if they're Square, but not just them.

Whereas perhaps uniquely Xenoblade 2 has the inverse problem. It has a really good ending, but the beginning is kind of the worst part. At least when it comes to awkward anime tropes. Like, 2 doesn't really 'get good' until you get to Indol, and then at that point the subtext and more serious themes start hitting you so hard you wonder if you were playing the same game.

I do actually have to play 1 fully instead of watching other playthroughs of it to really compare it to 2 and 3, but I feel like 1's story is a lot more...gameplay-first? Like things happen to introduce new Monado mechanics and it's not until the last few hours it unveils the Tetsuya Takahashi Bullshit (Affectionate)

anyway, Xenoblade Genesis sounds up my alley. Girl protagonist, I think the school setting is neat actually because school tropes can be a great way to slowly introduce you to a world. Might end up avoiding the issue of dumping too much on the player at once to the point it's hard to remember important worldbuilding details.

also i saw like 2 pieces of joke yuri art between female protagonist and female ojou-sama rival and people making comparisons to Witch of Mercury and honestly that makes the characters sound fun. and this is coming from someone who doesn't normally like things taking a turn for yuri

[mozillavulpix]

unfortunately work tired me out so i don't have the energy to elaborate, but

by process of elimination and looking back through the staff interviews I had amateurly machine translated

I think the rabbit boys transforming (in the TV show too) was producer Maki Takahashi's idea

Because both the director and the head writer didn't initially expect it to happen, and they were also both brought on after they had decided that the cast would consist of four girls

so it could have been like, Takahashi felt a bit disappointed they couldn't do the boy Cure, so decided they should let them transform at least once as a way to make up for that

she was also producer for Hirogaru Sky, and while Cure Wing was Washio's idea, clearly she was also okay with it

Honestly looking through more staff interviews I used to assume producers are mostly just there to manage the staff and communicate between the executives and the production side, but the more I'm reading the more it seems like they sometimes have a lot of input in the creative process too

[mozillavulpix]

i mean really the problem was all on me for asking a dedicated subreddit but I didn't realise people were such avid defenders of the Xenoblade 2 localisation

the year is 2026 and people on the internet will still say "yes it was good that they removed this biblical analogy or turned this character's name into something meaningless because it sounds better in English"

of course there are some things that don't fully translate to an English audience, but you don't have to tone things down to localise it.

[mozillavulpix]

The Miniature Collection feels like a different sort of Precure toyline, especially compared to what they normally do.

I feel like it's aimed at a slightly older market than Precure's usual target of 3-6?

Although the website still says it's recommended for 3+ (even Pretty Holic isn't that), they're small, elaborate and more than double the price of a typical gachapon. It feels like it's aiming more towards a market that 'values' a toy rather than young kids who don't care if they break something by playing too hard.

Plus they're in blind boxes, and blind boxes are a popular trend right now, especially the ones from China.

It's almost like it's aiming for an audience who cares about the looks of Precure toys, but not the actual 'toy' part of the toy because the play is often very childish.

I did see something that said Star Detective is trying to capture a slightly older demographic, and maybe Pretty Holic has always been part of that, but this feels like it's another step towards it too.

A step I do actually like, mind you, because it doesn't stop them from doing the 3-6 age toys. It just provides an alternate option for kids who feel like they've outgrown playing with toys, but still like Precure and want to adorn their schoolbag with them.

[mozillavulpix]

What was kind of interesting about the Precure Conan episode was you honestly could have replaced everything with a stock magical girl parody and it would have been exactly the same. I've certainly seen plenty of manga and anime do that, or have a Suspiciously Different Enough To Not Get Sued Precure parody.

But hey, if you managed to get the green light to have Actually Precure in, you might as well use them, even if you don't get more specific than just using their likeness and catchphrases.

kinda feel bad for the Conan staff who had to try and redraw the transformation bank that probably took Itaoka months to do

[curestardust]

『わんだふるぷりきゅあ！』 Blu-ray vol.4 (x) (x) (x)

[mozillavulpix]

At the end of the day, they are still only on the back of the cover. A lot of merchandise doesn't include them and won't include them in the future. But it is actually kinda crazy over the course of the year the staff went from "there's also a random boy in the show because we want to do a romance plotline" to "the boy and his pet are the fifth and sixth members of the team".

[mozillavulpix]

recently, when I've been thinking about places where Detective Precure could have Jett-senpai play a bigger role, I wonder like

Do I care a lot about boys in Precure because I like the idea of breaking down gender boundaries and diversifying the cast

or do I care about them because I know they will always be supporting characters, and so it's more fun to watch to see if the staff throw them a bit of fanservice

after all, besides Yui, we do not have supporting cast characters who are girls. if a major character is a girl, they are going to be a precure. otherwise there is no reason for them to even exist.

whereas if you choose to make them a boy, we know they aren't going to be a main precure unless that's revealed from day 1 because there's no way bandai is going to give one of their later seasonal toy slots to a boy.

so it is like...it's like the boys are your oshi who you're 'supporting' because you know the plot by default won't give them as much love. so you're going to cheer them on hoping that somehow convinces the staff to make them a precure temporarily or something

Kaito at least made me know for sure I will lose interest in supporting them if I find them boring, though.

[mozillavulpix]

the tension between wanting the Detective Precure movie to spend more time doing Detective things and focusing on its season and wanting Wonderful to get a better appearance than last year because honestly they didn't get a chance to do much. they're kind of in direct opposition to each other

this was the benefit of having the spring movie as well, but I don't think Toei can physically handle doing two Precure movies in a year anymore. some of those all-stars movies were pretty conservative, too.

[mozillavulpix]

I'm still trying to figure out why I really like Hana, but I still don't really care for Haruka.

Because if you think about it, they basically have the same dream - to be some kind of vague mature grown-up lady figure in the future, and do a variety of things aiming to get closer to that ideal. And their design as a Precure is basically them as that ideal.

So why do I really like Hugtto's plot but Go Princess's just doesn't vibe with me?

I keep thinking of reasons, but they don't feel like they stand up to scrutiny.

Like, 'being a mature adult is something anyone can achieve, but being a princess isn't something anyone can define and acknowledge' - but you could say the same thing for Hana's dream really, the only real difference is 'princess' has another literal meaning that you have to ignore because in Haruka's case it's more of a metaphor.

I guess it's like, Hana's dream is a bit more specific, whereas Haruka's story is more about the idea of having dreams themselves, no matter what they may be.

That the Princess Precure are these mysterious fairy-like figures who fight to protect the pure dreams of young children everywhere even if they're unrealistic or don't make sense. Whereas Hugtto Precure show up only if the future is in danger to save the world.

There's also the fact that a lot of the stuff Haruka tries to do in her episodes to become more like a princess are things I'm not really interested in. Like table manners, dress-making, dance. I'd be down for learning violin, but for Haruka it seems like it's more about the vibes of it looking elegant than actually wanting to express herself with music or something.

I did do ballet as a kid so maybe I did actually like stuff like that, but then again, when my mum was ill for a bit and couldn't take me to practice, I remember thinking "I enjoy having free time a lot more than doing ballet, so I don't want to go back". So maybe that was a sense of "I'll do it if it's part of a routine, but if I have other options I'd rather do those instead".

By comparison Hana's episodes have a lot more variety and are a lot less...gendered? They go to hardware stores, food markets, pools, bakeries, kindergartens, hospitals...and the plots for those episodes aren't really centered around Hana's dreams a lot of the time. That's more just another motivation for her.

so does haruka rub me the wrong way because she implies that you need to be into 'stereotypically girly things'? Or is it because her story is like 'we should protect the dreams of children especially if they're immature and don't make logical sense'? Is it too girly, or is it too infantile, is my question, I guess. My question to myself.

It could be both.

Or some secret third thing I haven't considered.

[curestardust]

[mozillavulpix]

man

how did they cook so hard with this plotline

there's like more funny expressions in this episode alone than all of You and Idol (this is an exaggeration), and it actually does this while telling a story

and the quality keeps going for two more consecutive episodes

and there isn't even a new toy to promote

[mozillavulpix]

it's funny watching other anime and realising that even though precure abuses a lot of stock footage, it probably still has more and better animation than all of its competitors

at least when it comes to weekly anime

even princession orchestra tried to have intense fights but had zero resources to actually pull that off

[mozillavulpix]

guys

we have to be honest here

when the first episode of You and Idol Precure was basically barely about idols and spent most of its time making gags about being extorted by Purirun and mistaking sumo wrestlers for Precure

I think people should have realised they weren't going to do some grand idol story

[mozillavulpix]

It would be really ironic if Three Houses had a children feature

the plot and support conversations going on about how Crests ruin people's lives because nobles try to pass them down and favour children who have them, meanwhile you're looking at ability sheets and saying "if I pair these two characters together, the combination of this Crest and this ability would make a great child unit"

Finding out that the children feature was inspired by racehorse breeding makes it feel like maybe Three Houses is a bit of a critique of that system.

That and the fact that it scraps the idea of the 'good and evil dragons', instead having the dragons as their own race who do the things they do because of trauma from being the survivors of genocide

Is Three Houses supposed to be some kind of deconstruction of early Fire Emblem plots? At the very least, it takes a really mature look at the usual conventions the stories use in a way that's subtle enough that it doesn't feel like it's trying to shock people.

[mozillavulpix]

so it was a great idea to start following kasumi on twitter, he(?) often has links to interviews and stuff when he brings up things instead of just saying things as fact

like he just linked to an old hugtto interview when talking about how "the preproduction of a Precure series takes about 2 years"

『HUGっと！プリキュア』完結、「S.H.Figuarts キュアエール」発売記念スペシャル鼎談 | TOPICS | 魂ウェブ

Finally, the final episode of "HUG To! PreCure" will be broadcast on January 27. We invited two directors and producers who worked on this f

I definitely want to read more hugtto interviews

It seems like (especially in comparison to the Murayama Star Detective interview they posted online today) Fumi Tsubota was very heavily involved in Hugtto's production and concepts. I'd heard that she was the reason behind Emiru's 'nano desu' manner of speech, but even Hana's design concept and backstory seemed to be her idea as well. That's not always the case with a series composer (head writer, not music).

At least, it doesn't seem like it.

With Wonderful, the staff seemed to go producer first, then the director, then composition. Although if preproduction takes 2 years, and they mentioned they had to rush into preproduction for Wonderful due to circumstances...yeah, I guess it probably does line up with the ransomware attack at Toei Animation.

[mozillavulpix]

we do not tolerate mitsuru aoyama slander in this household

people do not realise that when aoyama retires the show will actually look significantly worse

[mozillavulpix]

I guess the big talking points this week are the Detective Conan collab (which is pretty neat) and whether Kurea is Eclair or not, but something I was thinking about was

It's kind of interesting how they're keeping the whole "Anna still gets homesick" angle to her character

Even if she has people around to support her, she still has moments of loneliness and tries to hide them, although sometimes all she needs is a little moment to feel better. Or something to remind herself of home. Like cake.

It's interesting because Precure is supposed to be this kind of power fantasy for young girls, but Anna's situation isn't exactly the kind of fantasy kids would find appealing. Obviously being in a place without any of your parents where you're free to go on adventures would be nice sometimes, but you'd be lying if you said kids wouldn't miss home sometimes if they were put in the same situation. When you think about it from a realistic point-of-view, it's pretty traumatic what Anna has to go through in this children's show.

Like, compare it to Mahotsukai, where the girls can just go between the Magic and Non-Magic worlds whenever they need to during the series itself. Or Star Twinkle, where they can go off to another planet for a day but be back in time for dinner.

(coincidentally, all three are isao murayama scripted seasons)

The only kind of similar situation I can think of is, like, Digimon Adventure, where they just get isekai'd at a summer camp. But even there it's like, a completely different fantasy world where they have magical talking pets as companions with the expectation they'll get to go home once they save that world. Anna is stranded in a world that's not very different to where she grew up but with none of her family and friends, and the only person who could explain how to get her home is a toddler who can only speak in 3-word sentences at the moment.

It's like, normally you wouldn't do a children's show like this because when you think about the implications it would be a scary situation for kids to be in. And they do soften it a lot by having Anna be with Mikuru all the time and not bringing up her loneliness too much, but since they brought it up again here it's like, the problem hasn't been 'resolved'. It'll never be fully resolved until she can go home.

It just gives the whole series this slightly sad undercurrent, and I don't really think I've ever watched a kids show that's like that.

[mozillavulpix]

to continue later maybe

"Satoru's Confession Plan" was a crucial turning point in Wonderful Precure because it showed that Satoru had a whole backstory that had in fact had been determined from the character design phase and so it validated that it was alright to consider Satoru a major character. he wasn't being written up on the spot to fill whatever role would help the plot of that episode. he had almost as much thought put into him as the girls

(I say 'almost' because they never had finalised ideas for his parents, but the staff did at least have discussions about what they could be)