Third general post (Christmas edition)

I hope you had a merry Christmas. I’ve decided to dedicate some of my time over the Christmas/New Year period to write this blog post, the third of my general blog posts. Like the previous two, it will discuss things I’ve been working on, and the things I’ve been following.

Innocence Seekers

For Innocence Seekers: April Light, I already mentioned that Episode 9 will be released on January 13, and that I will not release anything on December 30. However, there is a fair chance that I may release Episode 10 alongside Episode 9 on the same day, and release Episodes 11 and 12 alongside each other on January 27. That should be the first chapter completed, and I will take another break before beginning the second chapter.

As for the other entries, I am currently not working on them at the moment; most of my effort on Innocence Seekers has gone either into April Light or the Cave of Illusions project. In the mean time, I have started on the Cave of Illusions project. While it is nowhere near playable, I’ve released the code for the game on GitHub; it can be found here. Note that the code is released under the MIT license; as a permissive free and open source software license, it means that you can do anything with the code, as long as you preserve the attached copyright notice (found in all of the source code files) and do not claim that you wrote the code yourself.

Side projects

Related to the above, I may release some of the work I’ve done on Yume ni Aruku. I already mentioned before that I had another project planned which will be set in the far future of Yume ni Aruku. I’ve already detailed the connections between this project and Yume ni Aruku, but I will not mention anything here because it contains spoilers for both projects.

The name of this additional project is Chronicles of the Horunian War. Among the many themes in this project will be how Horunis, the titular planet, rose from the ashes of the former human galactic civilisation to forge a massive galactic empire, and how it fell in the first place. The main characters of each of the first three entries of this project will have some connection to Horunis, primarily through genetic descent (in fact, the protagonist of the first entry is herself a “Horunian wanderer”, one who is part of a group of Horunians searching the galaxy for a new place to live).

The names of the characters in this project will be “translated”, rather than “transliterated” from their original names. This is done to avoid speculating on how names are formed in the languages the characters will speak (no, they won’t speak English/Japanese/whatever). This means that names are expected to differ between translations. I will post official translations of names soon enough. Once I post the names, I will be open to additional ideas for translations of the names into other languages.

For From the Scattered Petals, to the Blooming Flower, I haven’t worked on it as much. However, I could rewrite the first episode and post it onto the wiki on the same date I plan to post the new episodes of Innocence Seekers: April Light.

Anime and manga

It is now the end of the current anime season, and most, if not all, anime not scheduled to run into the next season have ended. I will give my final impressions for Magical Girl Raising Project and Magic of Stella below:

  • Magical Girl Raising Project – A-
    This adaptation left a lot of unanswered questions. Additionally, it suffered from some significant flaws. Many people have commented on how the main character, Snow White, seemed quite useless for most of the anime’s run, and I think that’s a fair criticism (mind you, though, this somewhat parallels Madoka of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, who was similarly useless for 9+ episodes). Additionally, the way the anime adapted the backstories for each of the characters made it plainly obvious as to who was going to die next, and the deaths were somewhat gratuitous (although brutal, many of them didn’t seem to serve much purpose other than “this person must go to make room”). However, despite the anime’s flaws, it has gotten me interested in the original light novels, and I enjoyed it nonetheless. It did reveal why this turned out to be a bloodbath (I won’t say, because of spoilers).
  • Magic of Stella – A-
    I was initially a bit unsure as to how to grade this, but I’ve decided to err on the higher grade. Many viewers said that the comedy was “boring”. I don’t have much to say about what they said, as I don’t really know the difference between “good comedy” and “bad comedy”, only “decent comedy” and “offensive comedy” (and besides, “boring” is such a subjective term I refuse to use this in reviews). Even if the comedy wasn’t as great as I found it, I was able to sympathise (and maybe even empathise) with some of the characters, particularly Tamaki, and to me, being able to either relate to or sympathise with the characters carries more weight than the quality of comedy (although sympathy can occasionally be counterproductive, especially when I find the comedy “offensive”). With regards to the narrative, I enjoyed the two arcs which were adapted during the anime’s run, and I have to admit that Minaha (who was formally introduced in episode 8, kickstarting the second arc) was my favourite character. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, courtesy of FlyingDog Inc. (which also did the soundtrack for Magical Girl Raising Project).

I would do a review for Girlish Number, but I’ve yet to watch the final episode (thanks for delaying the international release of each episode by a week, TBS). So instead of resorting to piracy, I’ll give my in-progress grade (S-) and do my mini-review in a later post.

In other news, Miyuki Nakayama’s manga Blend S will be getting an anime. Serialised in Manga Time Kirara Carat, it follows Maika Sakuranomiya, who gets a job as a waitress at a café. All waitresses at that café are assigned a character archetype to act as, and Maika is chosen to be the “sadist”.

And finally, some birthdays over the Christmas period:

December 24:

  • From what I know, Aoi Sakurada of Castle Town Dandelion has her birthday on Christmas Eve.

December 25:

  • Voice actresses Aya Suzaki (now 30) and Aimi (now 25)
  • Teru Hayama of Three Leaves, Three Colors
  • Yukari Kohinata of Locodol
  • Shiina Murakami of Magic of Stella
  • Asuka Tanaka of Sound! Euphonium
  • If the replies of this tweet are anything to go by, Ruki Irokawa of Comic Girls may also have her birthday on Christmas Day.

December 26:

  • Voice actresses Arisa Noto (now 28) and Sora Tokui (now 27)

December 27:

  • Voice actress Maaya Uchida (now 27)