I'm Not Okay, And Neither Are You.
More notes on perfect videogame 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim! I'm up to Ogata and Ryoko's first locks, and I'm working through Miura's story.
I wasn't sure how I felt about Ogata, but I like him a lot more now that I've seen him being compassionate with Tomi and finding supplies for the others in the ruins of 2025.
omg, is Ogata in a time loop, I'm excited
Yes, I am definitely more into Ogata now that he's trapped in a time loop and desperately trying to save Tomi's life.
I said this game couldn't get any more designed for me, and now there's a character caught in a time loop that keeps ending in tragedy, trying to prevent this terrible fate. This is ridiculous.
The way the game visually reflects Ryoko's headaches is pretty cool.
Okay, I'm kind of into how fucked-up Ryoko's storyline is. She's in constant pain and the pills Morimura is giving her for it are erasing her memories, as intended, so she can have a different personality implanted. I was fascinated and horrified when I replayed the scene on the stairs with Amiguchi and this time Ryoko couldn't remember who Amiguchi was.
(I don't like the fact that Amiguchi reminds her so strongly of Mr Ida. I don't want Amiguchi to be Mr Ida, because Amiguchi is basically a good kid, under the slightly obnoxious flirting, and Mr Ida is a dick. Don't grow up to be the teacher who seduces a student in order to manipulate her into fighting in a giant robot, Amiguchi. You're better than that.)
I love it when Miura unknowingly jumps to 1945 to 1985, assumes from the skyscrapers that he's in America and then gets really confused by the fact that everyone seems to be Japanese, but he can't understand anything they're talking about. It's great that we get to see the reactions of characters going both forward and back in time to the 1980s.
Good of Amiguchi to take Miura in after he got knocked out, although, to be honest, it'd probably be wiser to get him medical attention.
(Natsuno-san... ... Get it together, Keitaro. She certainly is quite... yes.) Oh, my God, Miura, you loser. (I am saying this with great fondness.)
Every time I go 'ah, I'm probably not going to be that into this character's storyline' I turn out to be wrong. Every time!
Side note (she says, before rambling for three hundred words): it's always interesting to see the Second World War through the eyes of Japanese characters in Japanese media.
As a European, when I think about the war, I think about the Holocaust, and naturally the participating countries fall into fairly black-and-white categories if I think of them as either 'for the Holocaust' or 'against the Holocaust'. But that's not necessarily how the countries involved saw it. After all, do countries really tend to consider themselves responsible for the actions of their allies? How aware would they have been of what was happening?
(I did not realise until just now, looking it up, that the United Kingdom gave permission for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shit.)
As a Japanese soldier fighting in the war, Miura isn't thinking about Europe or the Holocaust at all. It's 1945, so in fact the war in Europe may already have ended. He doesn't condone or even contemplate anything that's happening in Europe; it's not relevant to him. All he knows is that he's fighting to protect his home, and, if he doesn't change the course of history, the atomic bomb will be dropped.
Of course, I was already aware that individual Axis soldiers probably weren't aware of what they'd later be seen to have been fighting for, but it's also striking to see a narrative of the war that excludes Europe, when I'm much more used to narratives of the war in Europe that exclude the rest of the world. At school in the UK, I learnt very, very little about the Pacific War; the participation of Japan and the US in the Second World War was barely touched on.
I don't really know what I'm trying to express here. It's just interesting to see the perspective of a character on a different side, in a different part of the world, and discover a completely different narrative of the war from the one I'm used to.
I wasn't sure how I felt about Ogata, but I like him a lot more now that I've seen him being compassionate with Tomi and finding supplies for the others in the ruins of 2025.
omg, is Ogata in a time loop, I'm excited
Yes, I am definitely more into Ogata now that he's trapped in a time loop and desperately trying to save Tomi's life.
I said this game couldn't get any more designed for me, and now there's a character caught in a time loop that keeps ending in tragedy, trying to prevent this terrible fate. This is ridiculous.
The way the game visually reflects Ryoko's headaches is pretty cool.
Okay, I'm kind of into how fucked-up Ryoko's storyline is. She's in constant pain and the pills Morimura is giving her for it are erasing her memories, as intended, so she can have a different personality implanted. I was fascinated and horrified when I replayed the scene on the stairs with Amiguchi and this time Ryoko couldn't remember who Amiguchi was.
(I don't like the fact that Amiguchi reminds her so strongly of Mr Ida. I don't want Amiguchi to be Mr Ida, because Amiguchi is basically a good kid, under the slightly obnoxious flirting, and Mr Ida is a dick. Don't grow up to be the teacher who seduces a student in order to manipulate her into fighting in a giant robot, Amiguchi. You're better than that.)
I love it when Miura unknowingly jumps to 1945 to 1985, assumes from the skyscrapers that he's in America and then gets really confused by the fact that everyone seems to be Japanese, but he can't understand anything they're talking about. It's great that we get to see the reactions of characters going both forward and back in time to the 1980s.
Good of Amiguchi to take Miura in after he got knocked out, although, to be honest, it'd probably be wiser to get him medical attention.
(Natsuno-san... ... Get it together, Keitaro. She certainly is quite... yes.) Oh, my God, Miura, you loser. (I am saying this with great fondness.)
Every time I go 'ah, I'm probably not going to be that into this character's storyline' I turn out to be wrong. Every time!
Side note (she says, before rambling for three hundred words): it's always interesting to see the Second World War through the eyes of Japanese characters in Japanese media.
As a European, when I think about the war, I think about the Holocaust, and naturally the participating countries fall into fairly black-and-white categories if I think of them as either 'for the Holocaust' or 'against the Holocaust'. But that's not necessarily how the countries involved saw it. After all, do countries really tend to consider themselves responsible for the actions of their allies? How aware would they have been of what was happening?
(I did not realise until just now, looking it up, that the United Kingdom gave permission for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shit.)
As a Japanese soldier fighting in the war, Miura isn't thinking about Europe or the Holocaust at all. It's 1945, so in fact the war in Europe may already have ended. He doesn't condone or even contemplate anything that's happening in Europe; it's not relevant to him. All he knows is that he's fighting to protect his home, and, if he doesn't change the course of history, the atomic bomb will be dropped.
Of course, I was already aware that individual Axis soldiers probably weren't aware of what they'd later be seen to have been fighting for, but it's also striking to see a narrative of the war that excludes Europe, when I'm much more used to narratives of the war in Europe that exclude the rest of the world. At school in the UK, I learnt very, very little about the Pacific War; the participation of Japan and the US in the Second World War was barely touched on.
I don't really know what I'm trying to express here. It's just interesting to see the perspective of a character on a different side, in a different part of the world, and discover a completely different narrative of the war from the one I'm used to.