The Other Side of the Fourth Wall

This blog entry contains Kaguya-Sama spoilers. Japanese honorifics can say a lot about social interactions, which is why it can be helpful for manga translators to leave them in, or at least have a good equivalent way of conveying the nuances of social interaction. Unfortunately, the localizers of Kaguya-Sama not only did not include honorifics, but changed the way characters addressed each other without realizing what significance their changes had on the story. Here are some examples involving the title character Kaguya Shinomiya, how her ways of addressing others sets the terms for her interpersonal relations and how the localizers fail to convey nuances. First is Kaguya's friend Chika Fujiwara. In the original Japanese, Fujiwara calls Kaguya "Kaguya-san," while Kaguya calls Fujiwara "Fujiwara-san." The fact that Kaguya uses Fujiwara's surname when Fujiwara uses her first name implies that perhaps Kaguya is less invested in their friendship than Fujiwara

Two years ago, I made a Mad Libs for the Tensei Isekai genre . Now, I'll do the same thing for a subgenre in which the character is reincarnated as a villainess in an otome game. Give your character a name, preferably a Japanese one, and decide the character's gender- male, female or nonbinary. The character will henceforth be referred to as " Protagonist ," or the pronoun "they" and its variants, which can be altered as appropriate. I know Mad Libs generally don't explain where each answer comes in, but this is a special case. A number A job- "student" or "unemployed" counts. Give a name of a game . Give another name to your protagonist, who will hereafter be called Villain . You can also choose another gender if you want, and it can be different from their first life, but the protagonist will still be called "they"(again, replaced with whatever pronoun you chose). Give a noble title Give a name of a character, known hereaf

  Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc spoilers follow It's been a while, but I decided to do another Danganropa Case File, this time for the first game's third case. It's widely regarded as the weakest case in the first game, but I can appreciate what it tried to do, a bit like Apollo Justice's Turnabout Serenade . Story Some time after Chihiro Fujisaki's murder, the surviving students find a laptop with an artificial intelligence known as Alter Ego, which is the Ultimate Programmer's final creation. This becomes of great importance to Kiyotaka "Taka" Ishimaru and Hifumi Yamada, and the two end up quarreling over it. One morning, Makoto Naegi finds Celestia "Celeste" Ludenberg attacked with a small hammer with a #1 on it, and she shows him a picture of a man in a "Robo Justice" suit dragging Hifumi away. A little while later, Hifumi is found injured, having been hit with a somewhat larger hammer labeled #2. Hifumi is taken to the nurse

One of the most important considerations in telling a story is to ensure that the flow of events makes sense, and that the path to the ending is neither contrived nor forced. "The Cold Equations," a 1954 science fiction novelette by Tom Godwin, is perhaps most notable as a shining example of how not  to do it, since it sets out to defy genre conventions of the time at the expense of storytelling logic. The Story The novelette is about a space pilot named Barton, who is using an Emergency Dispatch Ship(EDS) from the starship Stardust, to deliver vaccines to the planet Woden, which are necessary to save the lives of six men on a survey team. Midway through the flight, Barton discovers a stowaway- a girl named Marilyn- and under regulations, must eject her out the airlock lest the additional weight cause the ship to crash, killing them both and dooming the six other men. With no other choice, Marilyn voluntarily steps out the airlock, sacrificing her life to allow Barton to cont

Spoilers for Fire Emblem: Three Houses follow  If you've played Fire Emblem: Three Houses, you may recall that one of the highlights of Part 1 is the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, a three-way mock battle in Gronder Field between your house and your two rivals, in Chapter 7. The battle is repeated after the timeskip on Chapter 17 of the Azure Moon(Blue Lions) and Verdant Wind(Golden Deer) routes(but not on the Black Eagles and Church routes- Crimson Flower and Silver Snow), only it's an all-out war and the former classmates are fighting to the death. It seems like a good concept in theory- take a level that worked well as a mock battle and bring it back as a three-way battle to the death to show how grim things have become. Unfortunately, in practice, the level neither lives up to its full potential nor fully replicates what made the original Battle of the Eagle and Lion enjoyable. Gameplay First, let's look at the map from a gameplay standpoint. In Chapter 7, the enemy armi

Previously on Ace Attorney On the second day of defending his long-time friend Miles Edgeworth in court, Phoenix managed to pull through due to the help of their mutual friend Larry Butz, identifying a possible suspect for the murder of Robert Hammond. However, the specter of the DL-6 incident, in which Edgeworth's father was murdered in the courthouse and Hammond successfully defended the prime suspect- looms large, and the case threatens to awaken traumatic memories for Edgeworth... Investigation Day 3 Maya is confused as to what Edgeworth meant when he'd alluded to a crime he committed in the past, but Phoenix refuses to believe Edgeworth could commit murder. There's a reason why Phoenix believes in Edgeworth so much. When the two of them and Larry were in fourth grade, Edgeworth's money disappeared, and Phoenix, who'd missed gym class due to a cold, was accused of the crime, with a "class trial" being held. You'll probably be familiar with that phr