Fifth general post

It has been well over a year since my last general post. In that time, I haven’t had much time to focus on my side projects, and have focused quite a fair bit on Innocence Seekers: April Light. This post will be like the previous general posts.

Innocence Seekers

While my main focus is on April Light, I’ve decided to tweak a few aspects of the battle system that will be implemented into my games. Previously, I had envisioned the ability to absorb and completely resist elemental attacks; however, I felt that I should remove the feature entirely, given the overhaul of the damage formulas. Instead, absorption must be done via passive abilities, and immunity can be simulated with a combination of high (e.g. 95% or higher) elemental resistance and high DEF/RES (DEF/RES is one of the last things to be factored in, after elemental resistances). Also, to prevent breaking the games wide open, I may consider capping the total amount of elemental resistance a character may have.

If you look at the wiki, you may have seen an “unnamed entry” to be set in 2019. While I have yet to give a name to this entry, I have envisioned some of the main characters. The protagonist will be Naomi Otohane (音羽 直美), the daughter of Kaori. While she has yet to appear in April Light (although she may not make an appearance at all, given that she is only three in April Light), I have mentioned her by name in my plans for Akari of the Light. Other main characters will include Olivia Benson, Natasha’s younger sister (who has been mentioned in April Light), Satsuki Miyana (宮奈 皐月), who is Uzuki’s younger sister, and a yet to be named Korean magical girl (I haven’t thought of a name largely because I need to do more research regarding names).

On an unrelated note, I may name every student in Mimori class 4-7 and Mihara class 4-7 in April Light. The former would be easy (given that I have an entire database of Japanese names to look up), but the latter is harder, given that Namari is a multicultural society (only around 15 of the 25 students will be of Japanese descent).

Side projects

I haven’t done much work on my side projects, but I may post more information in the future. Regarding Chronicles of the Horunian War, the main focus of the first chapter of the first entry is the resurrection of a particular girl who died ten years before the story. And that brings me to what I’ve come up with regarding magical girls in the Yume ni Aruku universe. In this universe, unlike the Innocence Seekers universe, magical girls (and boys who possess Innocence, who cannot use magic at all until puberty) do not reform their bodies if their original body “dies”. Instead, the spirit, now separated from the body, wanders, never growing, never aging, and unable to be seen by most people, including mages. However, there are a few individuals (usually magical girls or former magical girls) who are able to see these spirits and can lend some of their mana to give the spirit a temporary body. Full resurrection is possible, but the method is a spoiler (for both Yume ni Aruku and Chronicles of the Horunian War), so I won’t state it here.

Anime and manga

This season, I’m currently watching four anime. Of the four, the standout for me would be A Place Further Than the Universe. This proved to be better than I thought it would be; the story is about four high school-aged girls heading to Antarctica, but the story handles this realistically. I won’t mention more because of spoilers, but my in-progress grade would be an S-.

The other three I’m watching are Laid-Back Camp, Slow Start and Mitsuboshi Colors. The first of these I’m enjoying quite well; I particularly enjoy not only the scenery, but the fact that the two main characters are foils to each other.

There are other anime I’d considered picking up this season, but I haven’t. At least one was because I need to rewatch an earlier anime (in general, I don’t do sequels unless I’ve (re)watched the earlier entries/seasons).

Anyway, to upcoming anime. Very little from the Spring season has taken my interest; in fact, it’s possible that the only thing I’ll watch for that season will be Comic Girls. The last time I had zero or one full-length-episode anime to watch for the season was Winter 2016 (in which the only full-length-episode anime I watched I dropped). For the Summer season, it’s too early to say what other anime I’ll watch, but I am planning to watch the third season of Encouragement of Climb.

With regards to manga, my backlog has grown even more, but lately I’ve only read volumes 2 to 5 of Slow Start, and bits of the last three issues of Manga Time Kirara Forward (Hanayamata will end in the next issue, by the way). I have these issues mainly to read Hanokage’s new manga Cosmo Familia (as well as catch up on School-Live!), but if I felt like it I could read something else as well (such as Anne-Happy).

In an earlier post, I mentioned how there seems to be a trend to cast new voice actresses for main roles in Manga Time Kirara adaptations. I noticed that this trend continued in Harukana Receive, whose two main characters, Haruka Ōzora (大空 遥) and Kanata Higa (比嘉 かなた), are voiced by Kana Yūki (優木 かな) and Saki Miyashita (宮下 早紀) respectively (the latter doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page as of writing).

Talking about casting, the Comic Girls official Twitter account just announced additional cast members:

  • Aya Endō (遠藤 綾) as Ririka Hanazono (花園 莉々香)
  • Minami Tsuda (津田 美波) as Mayu Amisawa (編沢 まゆ)
  • Ayaka Nanase (七瀬 彩夏) as Miharu Nijino (虹野 美晴)
  • Reina Ueda (上田 麗奈) as Suzu Fūra (怖浦 すず)

All four of these voice actress have actually worked on other Manga Time Kirara-associated material before (not necessarily adaptations, though):

  • Endō voiced Yuuki Minami of Kanamemo and “Garden” Engi Threepiece of Dream Eater Merry, among others.
  • Tsuda voiced Yui Ichii of Yuyushiki.
  • Nanase voiced Yoshino Koharu of Sakura Quest and Shizuku Hozumi of Magia Record.
  • Ueda voiced Naru Sekiya of Hanayamata, Shiori Shinomiya of Sakura Quest and Aimi Eri of Magia Record.

And finally, the latest issue of Manga Time Kirara Carat announced that Unohana Tsukasa’s Anima Yell! will receive an anime adaptation.

Site issues

Concerning the ongoing maintenance, it is to mitigate the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities that became public last month. As such, a bunch of stuff needed to be done, both on my side and on DigitalOcean’s side.