girlfriends talk
very tangentially spun off a quote on an anime about making friends as a young kid through video games
Besides HSG’s characters, another potentially-controversial aspect is that the show is uncritical of old videogames. This is absolutely true, and something I love about it. It’s the same thing I like about GameCenter CX. I prefer to be critical and analytical but I think everyone is critical of games nowadays. Everyone in a post-AVGN world wants to be critical of games. Everyone in a post-dial-up western world has access to more games than they can play. Taking old games and instead playing the role of the youth who does not have the experience or ability to curate for themselves is inspired because when you’re a kid and a game has a really difficult boss or absurd load times or has an incomprehensible translation, you literally have no reason to suspect that’s unusual. You just assume it’s on purpose (if you’re even at the point where you understand that actual people make these things) and try to understand it. The holes of context are filled in by your imagination, the lack itself becomes meaningful. GCCX and HSG both exist in the innocence of assuming that all things are as they are, and anything that is meaningful to you is a masterpiece, and as such nothing is just dismissed and tossed aside. You could again argue that they obviously aren’t allowed to complain about these because they have to get permission from the companies that published these games to feature them in the first place. And yeah, there’s truth to that. [...] . But I think the lens of innocence has value despite that, and honestly I don’t want cynicism to drain the blood from everything in my life.
