HI HI HI sorry for the dr thoughts but. sdr2 is the most frustrating piece of media i have ever encountered b/c the plot has so many inconsistencies and there are genuinely so many poor writing moments, both with characters and storyline and relationships. and yet within SDR2 is not only the most insane potential for a plot that haunts people (incl me) for years but also it has some of the most interesting and well-written characters within it. like the same game that is really bad at writing character grief is also able to come up with characters like hinata (one of the most compelling protagonists in a piece of media i've encountered), komaeda (one of the most interesting characters of all time), koizumi (one of my favorite characters in any piece of media and i'll stand by her forever), and then like so many others. how is sdr2 simultaneously a trainwreck of a game and also one of the most interesting and good pieces of media that i have literally not stopped thinking about for at this point eight years. isnt that so bonkers
ITS FUCKING BONKERRRSSS like one of the top games that really has no right being this good considering how bad it is everr š please donāt apologize for dr thoughts do you know. how little anyone in my life cares about this damn game. itās zero. my beautiful mutuals are all i have left and i need to scream somewhere about how elegantly sdr2 presents hinata as like this kind of normal boy with some hangups but who is overall very confident and strong willed and then reveals in the end that he is actually the most fucked up person in this cast by a surprisingly wide margin. heās like if the universe had looked at komaeda and said āyou know what actually you CAN be special. we DO choose you. have funā and then he successfully psychically killed himself and all he got was superdepression and this cool tshirt. like i said i think the concept of hinata on his own isnāt that compelling (heās a shinji!) but put into the context of how the game paces itself out w him, developing this tension of who he is without the player realizing, comparing and contrasting him with komaeda & the rest of the kids whose favorite activity is self sacrifice, and just how & when the game chooses to show its hand w himā¦ā¦.. itās literally fucking goooood itās fucking good
i feel like my opinion on the sdr2 cast (minus hinata komaeda nanami trio they are all so important to me) flips between being unimpressed and completely enamored, bc even for characters i donāt love or who have more consistently bad writing looked at w a wide scope (tsumiki my fucking beloved they did you so bad.), everyone gets these moments or scenes of just jawdropping dialogue writing so i canāt help but be like. waow <3 waow <3 itās like sdr2 is TRYING to be bad but thereās this supernatural force dragging the lagging components forward and forcing it into competency like i genuinely canāt think of how it happened except divine intervention. like in terms of making a plot actually Move the way it needs to i admit kodaka is very good at what he does and itās just. man.
also ugh yes it does rlly struggle with writing grief thatās exactly it iāve been trying to articulate why it sometimes lacks that oomph but yeah. i miss you asahina aoi and ishimaru kiyotaka for. no reason in particular haha ā¹ļø but even soā¦.. even so!!!!! itās good!!!!! and not just in a way of it being fun to analyze after the fact (well maybe it is that a bit i remember being so put off by ch3 motive when i first read it but whatever) itās genuinely rlly enjoyable to move thru and watch how the cogs turn & how it sets itself up!!!!! like the story structure itself is steeped in mystery convention where itās so careful about what to say and when and it rlly rlly works
anyway i hope that made sense i am a bit sensory overloaded right now (loud sounds + strange smell + recovering from traumatic snap pea incident)
