#bokurano

are you man enough? and it's a 12 year old boy shooting his father's liquor because he becomes bad when he drinks, because he is not his father standing near the fire, it's not his dad, it's something else. it has to be.

are you man enough? and it's a a young god dying over and over again for his mother, father, and everyone in his home, running and running and dying and dying

are you man enough? and it's a girl turning time into a mess over and over for the one she loves

are you man enough? and it's a young jewel breaking themselves apart for the fight of the others, losing their sense of self until they have nothing left

are you man enough? and it's a woman built just for her father's legacy, reconstructing herself, trying to find connection and using her intelligence day to day to figure out what to do with the world and herself

are you man enough? and it's a pair of twins that are looking for adventures and then have to bear the future of an oncoming apocalypse, save the people that they love

are you man enough? and it's a five year old girl lying on her day to day to cover up her parent's personas, saving her father from an imminent bomb, being put a bomb on her neck for her classmates

are you man enough? and it's a young teen wanting to overthrow an entire prophecy made by his kind to have a chance to save his father, lying to his back and staying away as possible so he can be close to him when danger's gone

are you man enough? and it's a group of friends discovering the unknown, fighting evils that no one can understand, tearing themselves apart for just a slim opportunity to save the universe, doing the unthinkable, and dying or getting lost in the fabric of the universe just to know someone else would be alive

are you man enough? and it's a little girl entering a death game with a demon so she can give her mother eternal happiness, so her mother can be at peace with herself, and telling her that she has to be okay, even if she's gone

are you man enough? and a group of kids lost among the world sit on their favorite chairs, where a robot is their body, and they fight until it takes their lives, one by one, they are all withering, they signed themselves back at the beach where they met, and now, they die staring at the battlefield

are you man enough? and it's a demon fused within a body of a victorian child that refuses his powers, lives the world a thousand times and more, and decides that the people that have taken him in as his family and the world he despised so far, should live another day

are you man enough? and it's a young boy who is told that he shouldn't be what he believed in, that he is a glitch on a perfect system of misery, that his father is meant to die for him to belong, or he would never belong at all

are you man enough? and it's a girl living far away from her brother, with death surrounding her, and a cage full of her beloved things that she can't help hoard because she can't help it when everyone is gone, when it all slips away

are you man enough? and it's girls and boys grasping themselves to save the people they love, because no one else can do it, because for some reason they have been chosen as a hero or a cruel joke

Revolutionary Girl Utena- episode 26

Puella Magi Madoka Magica- episode 9

Bokurano Opening

For anyone interested in tears

Toward the Terra

Bokurano

Hikaru no Go

Seirei no Moribito

Nitro Gen Omega launched into Early Access on Steam this week and after 4+ hours with it I’ve personally been having a terrific time with the game; rotating playtime between it, REMATCH & Tron Catalyst all of which are recent releases from my personal list of most anticipated games of the year.

Though it’s pretty blatant at a glance, Nitro Gen Omega is a heavily anime-influenced tactical Mecha RPG. You start as a quartet of young freelance mech pilots who share control of a heavy duty mech which your squad utilizes for assisting in the defense & odd jobs of the sparse remnants of humanity living within elevated cities out of reach of the dangerous, self-sustaining robotic menace which have made the surface their territory.

Since the announcement of Nitro Gen Omega, I have been absolutely entranced by the game’s art style, fluidity & dynamism of the animations for the Mechs & Pilots alike. All of the elements harmonize perfectly to induce the effect of playing through an episode of an obscure late 90s to early-2010s mecha anime series that might have shown up between episodes of G Gundam, Big O or Outlaw Star on Toonami/Adult Swim.

One simple yet extremely impactful element it includes, taking cues from XCOM, Darkest Dungeon, Etrian Odyssey etc, is the ability to randomly generate your pilots & name your ragtag bunch; a feature which goes a long way towards making me wholly invested in their adventure. I also find it astounding how the different poses & styles of the various pilots reflexively triggers one’s imagination to start characterizing them without the need for a lot of cutscenes or major dialog exchanges.

EDIT: The devs at DESTINYbit worked hard to also include a ground-up Character Creator function allowing players to not only craft & customize their own roster of characters in both the parameters of the physical to fashionable but include their created cast in either their starting company of pilots or pitched into the random pool of recruitable pilots that you can hire on from settlements during a playthrough.

The team you’ve fashioned also becomes even more dynamic & endearing due to the downtime moments on your freelancers’ personal airship. Post-battle you’ll get the chance to use a certain resource that grants you an opportunity to have one or a pair of your pilots do an activity to boost skills, raise their mood/build morale & enrich (or even possibly sour) the friendships amongst the crew.

If all that wasn’t enough to draw me in particular, then the novel timeline-focused, positioning-dependent battle system the game sports ultimately sealed the deal for me & led me to buying the Early Access release. This overview video from the developer DESTINYbit’s own YT channel breaks it down better than I ever could:

Honestly, my sole concern at this point is that I might burn myself out on the game’s Early Access before v1.0 launches 😅 Though I’m excited for the journey as an early adopter either way.

The quality on display in NGO so far has me genuinely optimistic that the game can increase in depth and worthwhile, amazing content. I know there are a lot of gamers who have a very understandable aversion to buying games in Early Access but regardless of a purchase or not, I still give my glowing support for the series & hope that anyone interested will at least keep an eye on the game, Wishlist it & share its existence with others as it sprints up the road to Full Release