#aini negative

[winkpsync]

revisited aini and was driven to such immediate extremes of frothing despair i had to rant about it. obviously aini-negative so maybe don't look if you like aini

[argentsunshine]

nirvana initiative has so many issues but i think the decision to have the "two halves of a whole" thing carry over to its character relationships leading to 1. every character only being allowed to have one really developed relationship with only lip service being paid to their other relationships 2. a stronger focus on romantic couples to the detriment of most other types of relationships is really a detriment to the story especially given how important ai1's relationships are to that game. and then the romances are creepy also

[alto-tenure]

"without you I am only half / I need to be whole" as a thematic thesis for aini would work better if aiballs worked the same as they did in aitsf. aiba and date literally need each other they ARE two halves of the same person and aini separates them both for reasons that are like. acceptable. and reasons that are frankly pretty contrived

[winkpsync]

aini is like... okay so i'm replaying aitsf at the moment. iris route just finished; aiba has so many lines like "i exist to support you, date" (emphasis included) and "my mission is to support you"... as well as that, to my memory she never intentionally employs her electric shock on date; it only happens when pewter forces it to. meanwhile you get to aini, and aiba is zapping date constantly for slight misdemeanours, and their bickering feels so much more mean-spirited, and aiba 'runs away from home' over date's porn fixation of all things which i should assume she would very well be used to by now after five years and how often she advantages it in aitsf anyway (we all know it's just a contrivance for the bibi twist really)...

combining this with how aiba's aforementioned lines are basically reused for mizuki eg. ryuki's somnium ("something something my purpose is to support you", i don't remember the exact line), and how date and aiba's relationship is diminished by aini overall in the endgame especially (aiba shows little to no relief that date is alive, nor any concern for his wellbeing despite being his partner; her admittedly sweet "i'm home" is undercut by saying the same exact thing to mizuki 2 seconds later once she leaves date's eye again), it almost seems to me as if aini's treatment of date and aiba is intentional, in order to clear way for her partnership with mizuki. as if saying, "hey, don't aiba and date argue a lot? aren't they so mismatched? aiba never argues this much with bibi/mizuki!". i doubt this is actually the case, but it sure comes across this way, when aiba and date used to mean the world to eachother and we knew it. now, they barely seem close at all.

to clarify: my problem isn't that aiba and mizuki work together, or that they get along well (although i do think their dynamic isn't quite as contrasting as aiba and date's, and mizuki likely would have been served better with a unique ai-ball of her own); my problem is that in order to prop mizuki/bibi and aiba's dynamic up, aini appears to feel as if it has to tear aiba's relationship with her first partner down to the ground—although, aini does a lot to tear all of date's relationships to the ground, so i guess it's not totally new.

[alto-tenure]

ever17/aini rant

somehow despite the timeskip being way longer in ever17 it feels like it wrecks the characters less than aini's six years? I recently revisited the final parts of aini, and it really sucks how character growth never gets to be fully fleshed out because of the timeskip! even the characters that get changes in designs don't change much as people (Iris, Ota). the status quo is preserved.

it's seventeen years in ever17, and somehow it doesn't feel quite so bad. ofc there's the fact that you & takeshi are both just different people from how they appeared in takeshi side (with youaki and kaburaki taking their places), but even the characters that are the same people are either changed in ways that make sense for the story as presented then without the twist (Tsugumi) or have reasons to not be altered at all (Sora). ofc ever17 isn't free of sin (as I've said before I think both Hokuto and Kaburaki are, too, underwritten) but its characters are allowed to have changed over the course of the timeskip.

and of course I can't talk about this without talking about The Reveal. I really love ever17's true ending buildup, the rocketing back and forth between the past and the present until everything comes together. there's still explanations and all...but there's also a point to why all this was done. and the way it's done in aini feels like an anticlimax rather than the culminating point of the story.

maybe ai3 will prove me wrong, and introduce an external reason for tokiko needing to escape the simulation. but right now, it feels like everything naix did was ultimately for nothing. and if the series continues the way it does, with the refusal to spoil previous games for new players, it's going to end that way, too.

[anotherindividual]

Posting this bc I'm reminded that I really liked AITSF and everyday I wish I was more of a fan of AiNi.

But like I love the frayer as concept is the thing. Especially in the confines of AITSF's themes of love and how it drives people?

Cause the frayer is you, the player (Hi!) and you (the player) love the people within the story I hope?

You love these fictional characters and want the best for them, you also experience a form of love there.

It's just... Aini is so mid in my opinion that despite the really cool concept and decent execution it just... doesn't do much man.

[alto-tenure]

one of the things that makes me sad about aini is like. just how mean mizuki and aiba are to date :( it doesn't even feel playfully mean like the first game!! this is not the dynamic I loved!!