turned to gold in the sunlight

even as a hardcore junepei shipper that i am, seeing her get delegated to one half of a straight couple is admittedly upsetting because she played such an instrumental role in the past 2 games so her behavior here does downgrade her coolness factor by a fair amount. in regards to her "true" personality though i don't have any substantial reasons for believing that she still retained some of her softer characteristics other than her core goal being a better future (cont)

for everyone which is a very altruistic pursuit. but your perspective on her character also makes sense as to how she basically transcended humanity and evolved into a higher consciousness. one thing to note tho is, following what she says to sigma at the end of VLR, she has no idea what happens in this game. so for the first time we're not seeing akane follow through with an exact plan but jumping headfirst into s/t and doing all she can to prevent catastrophe

my end point is people's reactions to her characterization is def understandable, i was just content with it for other reasons and the times her machiavellian nature does shine through was enough to satisfy me. but i think a lot of the fandom focused on those qualities of her character more, so all the surprise makes sense

Hey hey! 

You know I’m not fond of Junepei, but I think you put it very well here - part of my issue has nothing to do with Junpei at all. Setting my feelings on him as an individual aside, it could have been anyone else and my stance would remain the same. Draining away strong and thought-provoking characterization and replacing it with Awkward Straight Romance (tm) is my least favorite trend in fiction, and seeing it happen to my favorite character is, well... it’s a bitter pill to swallow. I may have also tolerated the Heteromance (tm) more if I felt like it wasn’t executed at the expense of her established character, and was instead integrated into the Akane we already knew.

She did definitely say that, and I would have been begrudgingly content with the return to her “June” behavior if it was coupled with a wink and nod... if there was an indicator that she was putting up a front for a perceived gain of some kind. Instead, I got pearl-clutching and general guileless incompetence. Just seeing her behavior in this ending compared to her fawning and fainting in Z T D - it feels like night and day, and not in a good way. 

Hey hey!

Solid question! The scenes I’ve most enjoyed are the rare glimpses of the characters as I used to know them, or areas where their growth is conveyed well. A few come to mind so far, most of them from D-End 1.

Sigma’s speech while strapped to the chair where he talked Diana through the relevant probabilities to convince her to shoot him. This was the first scene I saw from the game (given the prereleased footage) - I thought it was brilliant then and think it’s brilliant now. It’s a fantastic merging of his time-hardened intellect and his age-old martyr complex.

In the same vein, Sigma’s sleight of hand he used to trick Phi and Diana into leaving him alone while he attempted to disarm the bomb (...I guess something was disarmed, actually, but it wasn’t the bomb...)

Following that, Phi’s horrified attempt to get Diana to kill her and burn her body. A glance at Sigma should have told her that she already knew what was to come - she’d already lived through the latter half of this history. Still, her attempt was noble and was the sort of steely utilitarian pragmatism I expected out of Akane “Disappointment” Kurashiki - not Phi.

And bizarrely, I really liked Diana’s decision to release radical-6 - which is, in my mind, unquestionably villainous and an unparalleled act of deliberate evil. Diana knew what radical-6 was, who was infected with it, how it was transmitted, what the mortality rates entailed for mankind - all while she made the decision to prioritize her own feelings for Phi over the rest of the human race combined.

Prior to the game’s release, I had been under the impression that Diana’s release of radical-6 was accidental - maybe that she was tricked, or similar, into releasing it. What I got instead was an informed and deliberate choice to destroy the earth. I’ve criticized Junpei harshly for his choices at Door 3 - this is an analogous scenario, three billionfold. I was floored - I expected Diana to be a much more one-dimensional “tragedy bait” character than that.

...admittedly this post mostly references elements one scene, but from what I’ve seen to date, my pickings for “content I’ve enjoyed” seem fairly slim. That being said, this ending managed to continually impress me - something I’m grateful for. 

ok i didnt want to spoil, but one thing i didn't like about the portrayal of akane's character was she was way too volatile in this way. like she defaults to killing carlos way too fast whenever junpei dies, which is way ooc

mm i understand people being put off from akane's characterization but i always kind of expected that her "real" personality was a mix of her sentimental 21 y/o self in 999 and her calculating 67 y/o self in VLR because she i figured all that aging in an post-apocalyptic world would make her more jaded. but i do agree it feels unnatural after actually seeing her VLR self - i think a major problem is the sequencing of the games' releases themselves.

Chandler, hey dude!

That could definitely be a problem. I think to me the problem is largely that her behavior seems ridiculous on a conceptual level. She is hundreds of thousands of years old as a modest estimate - Uchikoshi puts her at a million in the VLR Q&A. He plays at answers that suggest that Akane is beyond mortal understanding as an entity. I personally don’t perceive her growth as linear, which is why I don’t really buy the “she’s just acting like a lovesick kid” thing as a concept. After her escape from the incinerator, Akane’s consciousness branched out to infinity - we even hear her calmly explaining the nature of nonlinear time as the “bottom screen” narrator as a young child in 999.

It is certainly reasonable for a 22-year-old, under normal circumstances, to grow and develop into a different person by the time they’re pushing 70. But I see Akane’s circumstances as so atypical and her nature as so fundamentally incomprehensible that seeing her pushed into the “dimwitted love interest” box at any point is incredibly disappointing to me.

And as you said, defaulting to killing Carlos is absurd. The whole premise, even, was absurd. The entire thing is established on false pretenses. Who killed Junpei? Well, rationally we have three options: Akane, Carlos, or some third party - Zero, or another person who has gained the ability to travel between the wards. The game’s “well, you don’t know Zero’s name so it doesn’t count!!” is nonsense. The possibility exists and examination of that possibility was warranted. They expect me to buy that a time god who had herself personally set up this exact scenario in the past - dropping bodies under dubious circumstances - wouldn’t think to consider that? It’s garbage. Intellectually, she’s a shadow of her former self. 

Hey there Si!

Our wild card team has been an unexpected safe haven for me - with no prior attachment to any of the characters, they can all do their own thing without me crossing my fingers and hoping for consistent characterization across games.

The flipside of that, though, is that I don’t have much to say about them yet. I can compare established characters to their earlier iterations, but I haven’t seen a finished arc out of any of these folks yet. Because none of them had a prior role, any commentary on them thus far is unfinished and speculative at most.

From where I’m standing a bit over halfway through the game, Mira turned out exactly as I’d anticipated (though I was hoping for a bit more subtlety out of her). Eric is a fairly complex character - he’s not entirely sympathetic (by a stretch), but I still anticipate a few elements of his character hitting home for people. My hopes for Q were that he really was a child and wasn’t Kyle (of course, this was contingent on Kyle being in the game). I’m still suspecting shenanigans on that front - I’ve never seen him bleed (or even really die - he wasn’t marked ‘dead’ when Mira shanked him), so I suspect a GAULEM body out of him at minimum. We’ll see.

I’m not especially attached to any Q-Team member yet, but their fragments are a nice place to duck into when the other teams have put me the emotional ringer - though probably not in the way that the writing team intended.

Right? What an unmitigated disaster.

the sympathetic glance crew: me and nick

You bet! And Steph, and Adrian, and Ivan and a number of others who aren’t on tumblr. When I’ve completed the game I’d be curious to see if anyone I know actually regards the game positively, and what their reasoning for that may be. I haven’t run into anyone who does yet, so it might be an interesting perspective to hear.

merouses replied to your post “snakeassassins replied to your post “Oh so ZTD doesn’t strike right...”

uuugh I dont really know about akane but my biggest disapontment came from the reveals. to me this was zero time disappointment

I haven’t seen the big endgame reveals yet, though I do know Kyle and Aoi’s roles are dropped entirely. I made a joke about “Zero Klim Dilemma” a bit before release because I couldn’t make heads or tails of where Kyle was. If only I knew...

decisiongame replied to your post “snakeassassins replied to your post “Oh so ZTD doesn’t strike right...”

"apocalypse" was the only good fragment featuring akane imo

I don’t think I’ve seen that one yet either. I’ve been jumping around a lot - I was initially extremely cautious because my hope was that I could minimize casualties.

Honestly I feel like Akane's shining moment of glory was in the ambidex fragment, and even that was kind of a whimper tbh

Ambidex! There’s a term I’ve sorely missed.

I’m glad to hear I have something to look forward to, even if minor. I dropped the game for a while after whichever fragment had her playing lumberjack with that chainsaw.

“Even if the world went topsy-turvy, I would never hurt Jumpy!!!”

Hi there!

Your sympathies are appreciated. I’ve been off tumblr in order to avoid the looming threat of spoilers, so I actually have no idea how the fandom has processed this outside of the overwhelmingly negative reactions I have witnessed in my immediate friend group.

I’ve heard any number of rumors - that Uchikoshi only wrote D-Team’s fragments with the others done by auxiliary writers, that the base ‘skeleton’ of the game’s plot was all that remained after a dramatic shift (SHIFT?) in the game’s direction, that there were budget constraints they needed to adjust the story for... who knows the truth? I certainly don’t. 

I agree that Akane seems to have taken the brunt of it, though. Is there a more condescending way to handle a powerful, terrifying and otherworldly female character than to reduce her to a motivational plot object for an uninteresting male character? She has been my favorite character in fiction for the better part of half a decade, and I can’t imagine I’ll ever be able to convey my disgust and disappointment with her handling here in light of that.

Hi anon!

I’m around fifteen hours in. You’re right, it doesn’t quite ring true to me - to put it mildly.

Don’t get me wrong - the mechanistic flourishes are right up my alley (like the nonlinear presentation and general toying with probabilistic themes). The characterization, though, is sorely lacking in my view.

People who have known me for a while might know that when it comes to ZE, I have three strikes, and they’re named ‘Akane’, ‘Sigma’ and ‘Kyle’. Unfortunately, from where I’m standing at present, this seems like three swings and three misses.

Akane feels like an unambitious and vapid specter of her former self. The previous games, the Q&A, even the promotional material flat-out state her ‘real character’ in contrast to her behavior in 999. Even ZTD’s release info paints her as a “shrewd and Machiavellian woman operating under the guise of a yamato nadeshiko”, a feminized Japanese ideal. 

Needless to say, this is a lot of fun. Lady Macbeth said it best - “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it”. Which, great, but where’s the serpent? All I’ve seen so far is scene after overwrought scene where Akane has been reduced to whispering “J-Junpei” in hushed tones as the man in question pitches an almost impressive number of pointless tantrums.

Please do pardon my language, but who honestly gives a shit? This is the best we could do with the multiverse’s most powerful time god? Being the perpetually aghast girlfriend-accessory to some obnoxious dude? For the life of me I cannot imagine a less ambitious, less interesting direction to take her character in. 

The absolute best-case scenario says this is a return to 999 and the June guise was necessary for whatever she’s hoping to achieve - but even if that is true, it still means I had to suffer through a bunch of glurgey, overwrought drama for every single C-Team segment. 

Sigma doesn’t seem like he was narratively annihilated to the same extent Akane was, but he hasn’t escaped unscathed either. Bluntly, he feels all over the place. We do see glimpses of the Dr. Klim of legend - like his speech while strapped to the incinerator room chair, or his bluff to get Phi and Diana to leave him as he attempted to defuse the bomb.

Just as frequently, though, we see him acting erratic, impulsive and ignorant. It feels like he is written less like a consistent character and more like whatever is needed to nudge the plot along in a given direction. He’ll do whatever it takes to protect himself and the other D-Team members, until there’s a random button he has to push, or any other equally ridiculous contrivance.

It feels like the writing team said “Phi makes the rational choice, so we need Sigma to represent the other choice” - repeatedly. Reckless impulsiveness may be representative of the 22-year-old Sigma, but you expect me to buy that the 67-year-old Dr. Klim planned this for 45 years only to follow every bizarre whim that came to mind? The worst of this I’ve seen to date was “I didn’t have time so I hit a random button!!”. What in the hell happened to ruling the infinite time, Sigma? If your destination is some point in spacetime, it doesn’t matter how long you take from your initial point to chart out your trip. 

This isn’t even beginning to address the deeply uncomfortable family dynamic we’re seeing between Diana, Sigma and Phi. What I’ve seen of Sigma’s “first-ever experience with unconditional love” would be poignant and touching if not for the fucking family he already had and utterly abandoned. Even Luna gets a few paragraphs tossed in her direction... seeing Sigma “start a family” as he doesn’t even waste the breath to mention his son has been an unsettling experience to me - again, put mildly. Incidentally, wasn’t Kyle supposed to have a significant role in this game? 

So, anon, it’s less a matter of the content not making sense on a conceptual level so much as it is a general distaste for what I’ve seen from the characterization thus far. It may be that this is all tied up in a bow by the end of the game, and if that happens I’ll take whatever chidings people want to give me for lacking faith in Uchikoshi. But from where I’m standing, there is a significant hole to dig the relevant characters out of and precious little time to do so. Personally, I won’t be holding my breath.