|
TheMcD posted:Yeah, I gotta be honest, I don't really have anything for the second occurrence of "hey here's a guy related to somebody you kno- oh whoops he's dead now" beyond "they really want to hammer it into your skull not to get attached to these guys". I will say that there's something that makes this make sense story-wise, but I can only talk about it after, like, the end of Chapter 5, which is the last proper chapter, and it's honestly just my interpretation of something. Somebody remind me when we get there and I'll bring this back up again. And this would be one of the problems with this game compared to the main DR games: UDG fosters a feeling of not getting attached to anyone, something that the main games do not do, specifically. Where here it is taken as more or less a given that only the main character and the characters we've heard of before are going to get out of this alive, you genuinely do not know who's actually going to turn out as a killer or a victim in the original Killing Games, because Kodaka is better at both mysteries and playing with the expectations of the same. Getting to know the participants for the free time events further muddies these waters, because they all seem to be fully fleshed out- people with their own stories, goals, and reasons for getting out- and you can try not to be hurt by the silly pixels and their struggles, you will be if you get invested... which you probably will, as Kodaka is a better writer (and Marutani a better director) than, um, Whoever. You might argue that UDG is trying to do a different thing then DR1 and 2 is, being more of a standard action game than a visual novel/closed room mystery, but it's trying to get to a similar place through the use of cruelty as a plot elements and... well, Kodaka is better at writing cruelty too. I have heard it said that he saves the worst fates for the characters he cares the most about, that his favorites tend not to live very long, and the past showing of this game has made me wonder if the creators here cared very much about any of these characters, and are simply aping the styling and appearance for cheap monetary value. ... there's something else I want to say regarding cruelty and nuance in writing, but it directly concerns the plot and what happens, and I don't want to steal TheMcD's thunder, so I'll keep mum for now.
|
#
¿
Dec 12, 2018 14:58
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 16:02 |
|
|
Bifauxnen posted:oh god what does this say about Teruteru I said "tend"; he's doing something a little different with the first cases, as they are supposed to set up the stakes and how the cases work. I would be surprised if he felt anything about the first Blackened at all, since it is the victims of those first cases, and the surrounding circumstance of the murder, that make them so interesting.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2018 01:29
|
|
|
Let's talk about it a bit!Lord_Magmar posted:Personally I actually think this game, like most Dangan Ronpa games, does have something meaningful and interesting it's at least trying to say. It's just also the game that fumbles it's message the hardest, and everything about this upcoming chapter is an example of them completely failing to handle the subject matter with tact or grace at all. This is how I feel, and a lot of the problem is centered in the way the narrative elects to deal with abuse... in that it doesn't really deal with it at all. It exploits. It doesn't go into the mechanics of abuse, or how the histories of abuse victims inform their behavior in the present, or the effects of damage over time- it just cuts to violence and then moves on with nary a by your leave from any character, even the alleged sympathetic ones, and that's the whole problem. It wants to be deeper than this, you can tell it does, but it can't, because somethings keeps interfering- the plot, or a need to be funny to "lighten things up." It puts me in mind of Goblin Slayer, and its treatment of... well, the thing it's famous for, let's say: it is meant to be horrific, and to the credit to the original author, the light novels treat it as the horror it is and move on. The anime and manga... don't. The Act That Shall Not Be Named is used for exploitation and titillation in a manner that would be hilarious if it wasn't so horrifying, and while the damage is shown, it's not explored: the victim cannot explore their horror or examine how the tragedy affected them and grow past it, they're just put on a bus and are never seen again. Not unlike Masaru and Jotaro: they were horrible till their boss fights, and then over a single scene they were revealed to be victims of abuse, after which they were... removed. It is an approach used for exploitative melodrama, not a sober reflection of the cycle of abuse. It's a shame, really, because you can see the authorial intent to say that abuse is bad. But when an author talks about a subject like abuse with no experience in the subject versus one who does... the difference is telling. Let me unpack this too: the author of the games and general series direction person, who's name is Kazutaka Kodaka, does care about abuse and is even knowledgeable about it, but it's a very specific, very general kind of abuse that a lot of people are familiar with: the Japanese school system. It was no accident that the setting of the three main games is a school, and that the characters involved are specialized geniuses that are referred to by the intentionally unwieldy title of "Super High-school Level": the entire point is to be a piss-take of the constant grind for perfection those students face daily in their lives, and to examine, in detail, what that does to people.* But with the wider scope of this game, we've left the school... and we have traded a general, depersonalized abuse for a highly specific, highly personal one that takes many forms and operates by different rules entirely. You can't treat one the same as the other; it feels... gross. Also, on a personal note: having said all that... I am glad that TheMcD is showing this game to the forum. For all of the parts that it does poorly, there are also parts that it does well (namely all of the stuff with Komaru and Toko and their relationship; one of Kodaka's great strengths as a writer is smaller scenes with two people), and even the stuff that went poorly should be discussed as to why it went poorly. And well... one hears about a game like this, and for folks like me, who are plagued with both a morbid curiosity and schadenfreude enough to appreciate a good trainwreck... there's an itch there, that only a good LP can alleviate without also spending money on a game you're not sure should be supported. So thank you, OP.  *Namely, that it breaks them; grinds them down to a nub until they feel there's no choice but to become a heartless monster or a nervous wreck if you want any kind of job, ever. This work is very much in the same vein as Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, in showing the disdain of society to teenagers and how burdensome the weight of expectation could be. That was what made Monokuma such a popular, well realized character: it wasn't the grossness or even the murder that people liked, it was the immediate feeling that such a character, and the situation invoked. Trapped in a place where the only authority is a fluffy cartoon mascot that tells you, in a most grandmotherly tone (remember, the original voice actress was Doraemon herself) that the only way to escape is to succeed in an impossible, monstrous task, or else die... It's enough to invoke, oh, you know that feeling, starts with a D, help me out here...
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2018 16:50
|
|
|
TheMcD posted:These kids play with corpses on the regular, and even they think this poo poo's fuckin' weird. Anyway, that'll be enough for now - short update this time. Next time, we might actually finish the whole chapter! Oh, and we'll also get to the part that makes everybody want to nuke this game. That'll be fun. I'd like to nuke this game right now, actually, for the casual sexualization of teenagers and prepubescent children... I really hope nobody is trying to view this at work.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2018 14:34
|
|
|
Psycho Knight posted:This is the absolute-no-good-this-game-is-the-worst-series-ruining moment that everyone has been building up to? It has less to do with the things that actually happen in this scene, and more to do with the execution of them and the treatment of the subject matter. Are these scenes as bad as they could have been? No, of course not. But it is deeply troubling to have a victim of traumatic abuse be the center of a pantyslip gag... or even to take part in similar abuse with someone else. Yes, a big theme of this game is how abuse breaks people and leads to further abuse down the line, but this specific portrayal of it is too... recidivist and intrusive. It either pretends to be a serious take of a serious subject, and exists concurrently with elements meant to be silly/blackly humorous, or it is meant to itself be blacky humorous entirely, which becomes even more reprehensible when one considers there's a minigame involved. (To head the obvious argument off: no, it it not enough that the point of the minigame is to stop Komaru from being molested, because the very inclusion of such a minigame makes the player complicit in the abuse even when not failing. And this is ignoring the wording of the rules. "Enjoy yourself"... go gently caress yourself, game.) As Fedule said above, it's an example of a game trying to have its cake and eat it too- to be against sexualization and abuse and then to indulge in it and make the player indulge too. Again, the question we asked in DR 2 and the DR anime must be asked: should a thing that is meant to be gross and uncomfortable and rejected by the author be so in our faces that we become sickened, and at what point does it become exploitation of the thing it is ostensibly against? A lot of people quit the game at this point, and I don't blame them; I'll probably never willingly pay money for this game myself. It is the nadir of the series, as far as I'm concerned... fortunately, I cant recall any other part that is quite this bad.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 20, 2018 17:18
|
|
|
SSNeoman posted:Man I can't believe how likable they made Toko of all people. Like she was compassionate and really effective here, and she genuinely bailed Komaru out of a bad situation. I will give the game this exact much: having played through the first DR, and having known Toko from the beginning and how she started out, this scene was... genuinely moving and affecting. And not just for this game, this is a great moment in terms of the rest of the series, too- not the best or most affecting, but up there. It's a shame it has to share a game with all the rest of the shallow gross nonsense that has already been talked about, but there it is. Good job, game, for this if nothing else.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2019 14:39
|
|
|
TheMcD posted:For more information regarding DRV3, stay tuned to this forum, for poster Solitair is currently preparing an LP of it!  My feelings about DR3 are complicated- I don't completely hate it, but I have huge problems with it that I will look forward to discussing at length- but V3 is very good, and possibly my favorite DR game, so really looking forward to that.Also looking forward to discussing my specific problems with DR3 in detail, as I do kinda wanna get them off my chest in a place where it maes the most sense. (... And because no one of my acquaintances knows what I'm talking about)
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2019 01:56
|
|
|
I remember enough about it to remember why I didn't like it (with the exception of one or two bits which shall be elaborated upon later). But all in all, the episode is decent as hooks go; provides enough to whet your interest if you happen to be interested in this franchise. And honestly... the shot of the Remnants as the Remnants is a pretty good one on its own.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2019 21:16
|
|
|
Blue Labrador posted:
While I hate this series myself (and you're all going to see why very soon), I will agree that it does have its moments and images like this are certainly one of them. You don't see much of the Dangan Ronpa magic here, but what you see is genuine and raises your hopes for a fitting ending. But you can't really lay these things at Kodaka's door; he might have contributed some ideas as to the direction, provided a framework, but he wasn't directing this, and nor did he write any of the episodes. The director of this series was a fellow named Seiji Kishi, and this is what he's done. And you're like: holy heck! He's done some anime! He's done some good anime; I mean, Seto no Hanayome regularly comes up in conversations about what are good comedy anime, and while I wouldn't quite call Ragnarok or Angel Beats "good," I certainly enjoyed myself. He's not an unskilled director, but... he is a very safe one. He has a very workmanlike quality to his shows, very point a to point b, and something happens to the production to make getting to these points a little bit faster than you thought... well, it shows. So, you get the idea that you have to tell him what's important, but you also get the idea that this man is an extremely poor choice to adapt 50+ hour games with a lot of slow character moments. You know, the thing DR is? This was the guy tapped to do the DR animation... which is only 13 episodes. And what was cut was more or less exactly the thing you think was cut: all of the free time actions, and most of the investigations, too. Oh, dear. This, in effect, is a lot of my problem with the anime here. The other part... we'll get to.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2019 18:10
|
|
|
Lord_Magmar posted:I disagree. Junko is at her worst in Dangan Ronpa 3, she isn't someone who can believably hide her madness in the slightest, she attacks Mukuro openly in a Taxi for pete's sake. The problem here is that Junko is not just "Junko" in the games, she's also Monokuma and Monokuma whilst a bit weird and disturbing does not act particularly crazy like Junko does when she's doing the personality swaps. Heck look at Shirokuma and Kurokuma, the Junko who that AI was based on is not even close to feeling like the Junko the anime goes with. All of this, pretty much. Junko is a lot of aspects coming together- an absurd silliness in character and aesthetic combined with a strong deductive intelligence and a terrifying purposeless cruelty, and all the anime gets right is the cruelty part. She doesn't give the impression of being all that intelligent and only succeeded in anything she tried to do not because of her successes, but from everyone else's failures. That's not compelling writing, that's lazy and cheap. There is only one part of this episode- this entire anime, really- when I really believed that Junko was acting like Junko, and you pointed it out. It was Ryota's scene, and let's face it: that more had to do with the actors involved than the writing and the circumstances. Because that's what I was led to believe Junko was like: someone who broke you not through violence or siccing other people on you, through psychology and a selective use of the truth. That Junko doesn't need brainwashing or loving lobotomies to get things done, nor does she need Mukuro- she just needs time and some strategy. But that takes some planning and effort, so that didn't happen here. And loving Mukuro- Jesus Christ, poor Mukuro. This is not at all the way she was characterized in the games; this is some character assassination in retrospect, which is the most unforgivable kind. And of course, the entire DR2 cast besides Hajime gets short shrift too. It should have been the entire class' slow descent into despair, not 10 episodes of happy(ish) shenanigans plus 3 episodes of... what we got. (I am ignoring the Future side, which has its own problems of introducing an all new, disposable cast and ignoring that we already had two whole games worth of good characters to play around with.) It's not good, is what I mean.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2019 15:57
|
|
|
Well, yeah. There it is, I don't have too much more to add. For all the deserved shade I throw at these series, it has one good thing going for it, and that thing is Juzo. The entire plot of Future may have been overly convoluted and poorly implemented, but Juzo's whole arc across both series is great and genuinely affecting, and it's unfortunate that it's married to such dross because it just makes everything else even more frustrating. If everyone involved with this project came at it with the ability and enthusiasm of Juzo's writer and Junko's voice actor (both of them), this could have been something really special. Alas. God, to wash the stink of "mind hack anime" from my mouth. loving brainwashing bullshit, gently caress. I used to love brainwashing stuff, used to think it was so cool...and then I went to silly college and learned things like "critical thinking" and "thematic integration of elements". And came to recognize how... cheap this trope often is, how explorations of the fear of abuse, parasitism, loss of control or other allegorical associations that might actually say something are completely ignored in favor of just getting a character to do something they would not otherwise do. Usually having to do with sex or violence of course, like beating up your allies, or your SO, or dressing is skimpy outfits that are totally not supposed to get the audience hot, no sir (yes they are)... Just depresses me, man. (Not all bad, though. Jessica Jones, Season 2? There was a really good use of mind control, that was both thematically appropriate and functioned as an appropriate and understandable threat for the character...)
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2019 17:43
|
|
|
Hobgoblin2099 posted:- "Get over yourself, slut. We're dead!" is a great line. Junko may be kind of annoyingly handled in DR3, but she gets great one liners. It's kinda not, though. Not that I'm trying to shame the use of that word (OK, I tell a lie, I am- sex work should be destigmatized); I'm more concerned by what this shows about Junko's motivation. In that she doesn't have one; she just wants to watch and have fun, bro! But that's lovely; it's a poor interpretation of her character, and one more slap in the face to the people who got this far (even though those are coming too fast and sharp to notice). Because the writers here failed to understand Junko, much as people continually fail to get the Joker, Deadpool- any drat character who's fundamental defining aspect seem to be "is wacky!", because the idea seems to be that that means these characters don't have any motivations other than to "be so random, lol." This is false- the reason these characters linger so long in the popular discourse is because they were handled by a really good writer who could handle the balancing act of making them funny and still allowing them to be characters with motivations and goals that they care about. Junko did all this because she cares about despair- because she believes that the natural chaos that despair brings is the only thing that can make her happy because it's the only thing she can't predict- that's her argument to Izuru. She should care about that; it's only the reason she did al of this. So to throw in a line to imply that she doesn't care about the things she's done is just nonsense, completely unsupported by anything and amplified by her writer's inability to think about things seriously. Because this is the point about Junko: she is a good character. I like her a lot. And one of the things I like about her is that she fails. The entire point of the series is that her hypothesis about the nature of hope/despair (that was informed and supported by Hope's Peake and their emphasis on Ultimates) is complete bullshit, because she thinks she has the measure of people and she doesn't, any more than the Joker did in The Killing Joke. Adversity and horror can break people, yeah, but it can't break everyone; it can foster hope and resilience, as every DR videogame (yes, even silly UDG) has said at the end, and Junko can't grok that, so she eats poo poo. Junko ate poo poo, the Junko AI ate poo poo, McD's precious Monaca ate poo poo- they failed, and the reason they all work as characters is because they cared about that failure and then had their best moments as completely losing what was left of their minds. Which brings me to what is probably the thing I hate most about this series, indicated by that line: where's the poo poo eating? You got this elaborate plan to cause all this despair by crushing the Future Foundation, the worlds last hope, and... who exactly is at the wheel right now? Who's left to eat poo poo, now all of the planners are now dead? There's Ryota, but he was a victim as much as anyone, and his entire inclusion in this anime is shoehorned in and stupid, so there's no satisfaction in anything that could happen to it, and everyone else is loving dead or gone off to space. What was wrong with Chisa staying alive and playing everyone against each other until we got to this point? What was wrong with Monaca? We got no one left, which means the only one left we had is deadass Junko who's plans all camwe together perfectly, and she doesn't even give a poo poo about that. gently caress off, DR3. Just gently caress off forever.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2019 18:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 16:02 |
|
|
BlazeEmblem posted:In that bonus episode, it is said that Hajime was the one who brought them all out of it. There are worse handwaves than saying "the Ultimate Every Single There are a lot better ones too... the best one being not making the wave at all. No, I don't like that there was no one who didn't come out of the coma. Or that they took the blame for the future foundations actions for essentially no reason. Or that they apparently have the memories of all the things they did as the Remnants of Despair, and... essentially look and act the same as they did before being despaired, just like 5% sadder and sporting a robot arm or two. That is the biggest bullshit of all, because these guys ended the world. They killed or Despaired their family and friends, spread as much chaos and destruction as they could, and mutilated their own bodies- do not tell me that doesn't leave the heaviest scars imaginable. Teruteru probably killed his own mother, Kazuki built the machines that razed entire cities, and Akane is implied to have eaten people. And before you start, no, it shouldn't matter that they had all been brainwashed at the time- if anything, that should make it worse- and no, it also doesn't matter that Hajime is now the Ultimate Everything Ever- no one's so good that they can make scarring not have happened. And here they are, alone on an island with the corpse of their teacher, the guy who created the technology that caused all this, and the guy that made them live with the memories of what they had done instead of killing them. I don't have to see them on a 24-hour suicide watch or crying or cutting themselves all the time, but I should believe that they are suffering, or have suffered. And I didn't, at all, because apparently nobody cares about anything. The saddest part about all this, is that even with the stupid brainwashing, this could have worked. Not with the silly, convoluted plan and not with Ryota (at least not this last part, because I do kinda dig his thing with the Imposter), but the bones of this are all salvageable: Makoto coming to an island to answer for his decision and being caught in a killing game, and his trying to defend his decision while the FF_well, the Juzo and Kyosuke portion of it-tells him that they played him for a sap- that's all fine. But instead, why not bring the remnants in earlier, and throw doubt on whether they're part of the killing game or not? Heck, they could not be a monolith on this: some could arrive and seem to be assisting the killing game, others could have beef with Makoto specifically for saddling them with memories/watching their comatose friends for the rest of their lives, others might just want to find the other despairs and bring them back to Jabberwock. Why not have them appear suddenly and seem to save Team Mokoto one minute and hurt them the next, and refuse to answer if they're part of the killing game or not, and why not have them go more into detail about the things they did? It's one thing to hear Hajime say "we've done terrible things"- why not have Mikan, for example, describe the horrible ways she killed men in that placid, airy tone she used when in Despair-mode, and come back to one question- why did you let us live, knowing what we've done? Because as I recall, Makoto did know what they've done and tried to cure them anyway, so that's a completely valid question, and this would also give Makoto a little bit more time to unpack his decision. Was it really to give them a chance for redemption, or was it to make them suffer with the memories of their actions until they did the honorable thing? Can somebody who ended the world be forgiven, even if they weren't in control of their actions? That's the question I thought this anime was going to grapple with, but I guess we're all done with struggling here. And while I'm on a tear: how weaksauce was it that we just cut away whenever Hajime was about to do something cool? I got through all this poo poo and don't even get Izuru-Hajime dispatching entire teams of armed guards with his bare hands, after 3 games and an anime of build up? Come on.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2019 18:37
|
|