An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Sentai Reversal – Go! Go! Loser Ranger! Spoiler Review

Evidently, I’m not the only one who thought that despite their gacha adaptations landing squarely in the pile of mediocrity for one reason or another, Yostar Pictures seemed to have some decent talent attached to it. After all, said studio has branched out from their initial fare to adapt a manga called Sentai Daishikkaku – more or less literally “Ranger Reject”, but known in the West by its thrice-excited localized title Go! Go! Loser Ranger!.

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AFGNCAAP – Arknights Animation: Prelude to Dawn Spoiler Review

Here I go opening up on another Gacha adaptation. That… shouldn’t mean as much as it’s seemed to. Personally, I don’t like the sentiment of dismissing video games as a storytelling medium. Even outside Visual Novels, which are built a little different, games can have and convey powerful, moving stories. Obviously, not all of them actually do, but neither does every single book or movie. Even phone app gacha games, which seem to have a reputation of the lowest of the low, are capable of telling good stories.

But compared to other source material, those stories seem to take to the screen shockingly poorly, rarely rising above mediocre competence. I speculated on what some reasons might be when I tried to pick up the pieces of MWZ , but even aside from anything inherent, there’s the distinct possibility that it’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since, with the partial exception of VNs, video game adaptations “aren’t good”, they get less time, effort, and money put into them, resulting in an inferior product.

If that’s the heart of the matter, then perhaps there’s hope for Arknights.

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