its been ten years since the "they removed her vagina bones" tweet which means everyone has once again decided to have an opinion about a game they didnt and never were going to play and the most disingenuous one that ive had the displeasure of seeing was something along the lines of "the changes made to the second chapter were problematic because the jp version set it up as a scathing critique of the gravure industry and replacing the swimsuits with (ugly) clothes removed that message". like. no part of tms was ever critical of the entertainment/idol industry. the most charitable readings of it are either "the issues in the industry are the result of the actions of individual bad actors; if they stopped being bad, everything would be okay!" (bad because the problems are structural and focusing on individual cases allows you to ignore the broad reforms needed for lasting change to actually occur) or "tms is tells an extremely optimistic tale about what the industry could look like if it didnt have those systemic issues" (kiiiinda problematic because its not choosing to engage with the Issues but there's already a million dogshit edgy idol series about the Dark Side of the industry so who the fuck cares if its mindless), but really the most realistic reading is more along the lines of "all the characters who get possessed have their possession broken directly through tsubasa's (or that side story's character's) growth as an entertainer, framing their prior victims as unskilled and deserving of their (metaphorical) exploitation ('if they were able to meet expectations, this wouldn't've happened!')" which is so far away from the slam dunk #empowerment moment that people act like it is that i have to assume they are doing this on purpose
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