She's No Ghost, But She Is Hauntingly Beautiful.
More 13 Sentinels rambling! The main plot developments I discuss here are from Juro's route (which I've now finished!), Hijiyama's and Gouto's.
Juro was already thoroughly up my street as a character, and now I find out that his 'best friend' is in fact an alternate-universe version of himself only he can see, who keeps erasing and rewriting his memories for his own ends. I genuinely cannot believe this game exists and I had no part in its creation.
'Am I... going to disappear?' I am enjoying Juro's understandable existential terror enormously.
Very intrigued by Izumi and Morimura shifting back to 2089 and living outside society together for several years, with no way to prove their citizenship. Some excellent weird isolation there. I imagine this is the Izumi who eventually tells Morimura he's in love with her?
Fuyusaka has a crush on Yuki! (Fuyusaka has a crush on everyone, frankly.)
Sector 4 is 'another colony'? Sector 4, i.e. 1985?
I hugely enjoyed the Jpop in the final battle of the second area, and I'd have loved to have that sort of soundtrack for all the fighting.
Getting to see the moment Izumi transferred himself into Kurabe's nanomachines and created Shiba and overwrote his memory: great, great, great stuff.
So we're a human colony living in a simulated environment, and the environment designer got lazy and repurposed a bunch of code from a robot battle simulator? I genuinely love this as an explanation for why robots keep attacking the city. That's magnificent.
I realise that there was disagreement about the best era to simulate, but I have to question the decision to kick off one of the colonies shortly before the Second World War. 2188 Miura, you cannot doom this colony to conflict and food shortages just because you're a war fanboy.
You may have destroyed the last effort to preserve humanity with your coding techniques, Okino, but your relationship with Hijiyama is still delightful, at least.
(I was so pleased to unlock Hijiyama again. I'd missed this dynamic! Although the yakisoba pan change quest was a bit of a struggle.)
I love how smug Tomi is to have blackmail material.
HOW WAS MORIMURA 'CURRENTLY OUT OF THE COUNTRY' IN THE LAST 2105-ERA LOOP
EXCUSE ME, 426 AND FLUFFY ARE THE SAME ENTITY?
Aww, it's nice to see Juro Kurabe reach an amicable point with the past version of himself who's been living inside him and manipulating his memories. What a weird relationship. I'm enjoying it.
'He's a talking cat who's here to save the world.'
'What the shit are you talking about?'
I laughed aloud when I saw Hijiyama had bought four yakisoba pan. Live your dream, Hijiyama.
I enjoy Ida's incredibly bitter 2188 log. 'Because someone thought it'd be a great idea to give that guy senior admin ID.'
'Due to the incompatibility of the violent memories of Izumi that Morimura transplanted and the gentle artificial personality that Tamao created, Kurabe nearly had a breakdown.' Excellent. I'm so pleased.
As I mentioned in my last entry, I've been pondering a fic in which each character has a scene devoted to their own psychological breakdown. Juro's capacity for breakdowns in particular, though, is so rich that I'm not sure I can explore it to my satisfaction in a single scene of a larger fic. Maybe I need to write a fic focusing entirely on what a disaster Juro is.
I don't understand or approve of this 'oh, 426 Izumi didn't really kill the kids' business. If he didn't kill the kids, why is Kurabe struggling with memories of shooting them? Morimura's guilt over shooting him when he didn't kill them is interesting, I suppose, but I'm way more interested in Izumi/Kurabe having to deal with the horror of intentionally, cold-bloodedly killing all his friends when they're guilty of nothing in their control.
I feel canon is inconsistent on this point, so I choose to disregard the version of canon that's less interesting to me. You can't take my child murder away from me, 13 Sentinels.
I'm going to miss this game when I've finished it.
Juro was already thoroughly up my street as a character, and now I find out that his 'best friend' is in fact an alternate-universe version of himself only he can see, who keeps erasing and rewriting his memories for his own ends. I genuinely cannot believe this game exists and I had no part in its creation.
'Am I... going to disappear?' I am enjoying Juro's understandable existential terror enormously.
Very intrigued by Izumi and Morimura shifting back to 2089 and living outside society together for several years, with no way to prove their citizenship. Some excellent weird isolation there. I imagine this is the Izumi who eventually tells Morimura he's in love with her?
Fuyusaka has a crush on Yuki! (Fuyusaka has a crush on everyone, frankly.)
Sector 4 is 'another colony'? Sector 4, i.e. 1985?
I hugely enjoyed the Jpop in the final battle of the second area, and I'd have loved to have that sort of soundtrack for all the fighting.
Getting to see the moment Izumi transferred himself into Kurabe's nanomachines and created Shiba and overwrote his memory: great, great, great stuff.
So we're a human colony living in a simulated environment, and the environment designer got lazy and repurposed a bunch of code from a robot battle simulator? I genuinely love this as an explanation for why robots keep attacking the city. That's magnificent.
I realise that there was disagreement about the best era to simulate, but I have to question the decision to kick off one of the colonies shortly before the Second World War. 2188 Miura, you cannot doom this colony to conflict and food shortages just because you're a war fanboy.
You may have destroyed the last effort to preserve humanity with your coding techniques, Okino, but your relationship with Hijiyama is still delightful, at least.
(I was so pleased to unlock Hijiyama again. I'd missed this dynamic! Although the yakisoba pan change quest was a bit of a struggle.)
I love how smug Tomi is to have blackmail material.
HOW WAS MORIMURA 'CURRENTLY OUT OF THE COUNTRY' IN THE LAST 2105-ERA LOOP
EXCUSE ME, 426 AND FLUFFY ARE THE SAME ENTITY?
Aww, it's nice to see Juro Kurabe reach an amicable point with the past version of himself who's been living inside him and manipulating his memories. What a weird relationship. I'm enjoying it.
'He's a talking cat who's here to save the world.'
'What the shit are you talking about?'
I laughed aloud when I saw Hijiyama had bought four yakisoba pan. Live your dream, Hijiyama.
I enjoy Ida's incredibly bitter 2188 log. 'Because someone thought it'd be a great idea to give that guy senior admin ID.'
'Due to the incompatibility of the violent memories of Izumi that Morimura transplanted and the gentle artificial personality that Tamao created, Kurabe nearly had a breakdown.' Excellent. I'm so pleased.
As I mentioned in my last entry, I've been pondering a fic in which each character has a scene devoted to their own psychological breakdown. Juro's capacity for breakdowns in particular, though, is so rich that I'm not sure I can explore it to my satisfaction in a single scene of a larger fic. Maybe I need to write a fic focusing entirely on what a disaster Juro is.
I don't understand or approve of this 'oh, 426 Izumi didn't really kill the kids' business. If he didn't kill the kids, why is Kurabe struggling with memories of shooting them? Morimura's guilt over shooting him when he didn't kill them is interesting, I suppose, but I'm way more interested in Izumi/Kurabe having to deal with the horror of intentionally, cold-bloodedly killing all his friends when they're guilty of nothing in their control.
I feel canon is inconsistent on this point, so I choose to disregard the version of canon that's less interesting to me. You can't take my child murder away from me, 13 Sentinels.
I'm going to miss this game when I've finished it.