Brolaub said:Also is it just me or did the animation quality drop quite a bit these last episodes? Personally didn't notice anything jarring last few episodes, maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. But for this particular episode, I felt the drawings and animation got a bit sloppy during some of the latter Toya confrontation scenes this episode. It wasn't too bad, but it might have broke the immersion a bit for me.
Brolaub said:I honestly really liked the show when it focused on Game development and its creators. It was full of interesting characters and you could learn a lot of new stuff about 90s games! That ship seems to have sailed quite a few episodes ago. The last proper Alcohol Soft gamedev episode we had was probably Ep 7.
I enjoyed it a lot up till that point too, and I got disappointed when Ep 8 was something else entirely, and Ep 9 skimmed through the development so quickly.
From Ep 10 onwards, it seems it has pivot-shifted to the topic of "the future of games".
I find that this show always tries to cover topics that are very relevant and current in the olden eras of bishoujo games, and putting our curent era in juxtaposition to those days. It really embraces and appreciates lots of the little things, which makes you feel like you're getting a very interesting glimpse into that era.
So this is just my opinion, but that is precisely why the creators have decided to make the last few episodes about the future instead of the past.
What are relevant and current topics in the present-day bishoujo game industry?
The topic of AI and advancing technologies is easily one the biggest elephants in the room. These technological developments have been pervasive enough that a decent number of doujin games that have already been created, released and sold with AI-generated graphics. Are the creators who don't use AI losing out? Should we just all switch to AI? Are we as the community losing something by relegating things to AI? These seem to be some of the questions the anime wishes to touch upon.
I haven't read much of it yet, but the manga that this anime is a spin-off of, 16bit Sensation, doesn't seem to have any time travelling elements at all. It very likely fleshes out the olden era of bishoujo game development much, much more than the anime. So that might be what you are looking for instead, though it is a lot heavier on the topic and quite a different beast.
This anime is a spinoff of that manga where a brand new character, Konoha, time travels and meets the characters of that other manga. The element of time travel didn't exist in the manga. Therefore, when the question is posed "Why add time travelling?" and "What can we do with this time travelling mechanic?", it makes a lot of sense that the creators will want to use this time travelling mechanic to its fullest.
"Let's cover predictive topics about bishoujo game future", "What if we go sci-fi since we can put Konoha far in the future", and "Let's pay homage to some sci-fi themed bishoujo games". I presume this was the sort of ideas and mindset they had they chose to go this route.
I also loved very much what the show was till Ep 7, with the cozy game development setting. And I agree that so much more could have been fleshed out and done there. It's a pity the 1-cour runtime is what it is.
But at the same time, I really love that they are asking questions about the future, and I feel this is the right approach to take when you have made the deliberate choice for a time travel show. Ironically, in changing gears and going off-course so drastically, they also stayed true to their time-travel theming. By changing from a cozy gamedev show, they stayed faithful to something else.
But it is completely understandable that people will feel that everything has gone out of whack and makes absolutely no sense. Because it pretty much has! |