Fandom: Love Live! School Idol Festival (Video Game) Category: Video Games Comments: Love Live! School Idol Project is an anime about nine girls who become an idol singer group in order to save their under-enrolled rural high school from shutting down, and how they end up good friends even though at the start they mostly had nothing in common but their love of their school. It's a fun little series with a thriving, although still Yuletide-sized, fandom.
But this isn't really about that, because I'm a weirdo and I nominated the tie-in cell phone game instead. It's a rhythm game with the same basic premise of school-based idol groups, but with a metric ton of characters from different schools, each of whom has several different scenes that you can unlock as you play the game. They run the gamut of character types--I've nominated a Takarazuka-like actress who plays male roles, her best childhood friend who's a ballet dancer, and a pair of Gothic Lolita sisters, the older of whom has a questionable grip on reality and the latter of whom is more sensible and a bit long-suffering, but there are many, many more and if I tried to give you a reasonable cross-section I'd be here all day. The scenes are pretty short, though, so the characters aren't explored in much depth, and while they often mention each other, we never really see them interact with anyone besides the PC--hence my desire for fanfic.
If you're in the US (or Japan), the game is available for free for Android or iPhone.
Fandom: Neon Genesis Impacts Category: Anime & Manga Comments: Neon Genesis Impacts is a seven-minute short set in the world of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but all you really need to know to understand Impacts is that fifteen years prior, monsters called Angels attacked and killed off about half the human population, and now (in the distant future year of 2015!) they've returned to finish the job. Impacts tells, very briefly, the story of three teenage girls in a pop-rock band who are separated when Tokyo-3 is evacuated due to the Angel attacks. Also, two of them kiss just before they have to part ways, so if canon (though bittersweet) f/f calls to you, there you are.
The whole thing is available to stream for free with English subs. Also, I mean, it's only seven minutes, so what have you got to lose?
Fandom: Ever 17: The Out of Infinity Category: Video Games Comments: Unfortunately, Ever17 is hard to sell given that it's hard to discuss in any depth what makes it appealing without running into spoilers. It's a visual novel which tells the story of seven (or more???) people who are trapped in an underwater theme park and have 119 hours to escape before the whole thing floods, but what seems like a simple accident turns out to be a whole mess of mysteries involving conspiracies, alternate timeline shenanigans, mysterious diseases, shady pharmaceutical companies, and other weird plot twists. It's a pretty crazy ride, and pretty much none of the characters are what they first appear to be.
If you're familiar with the Zero Escape series, Ever17 is an entry (the strongest one, IMO) in the creator's previous series and is... basically exactly what you'd expect from him. Sadly, the company that released it in English has gone under and so outside of Japan (where it's available for a million different systems including Android and iOS) there's no legit way to get it without paying $200 (I am not kidding) for a secondhand copy. There is, however, a complete Let's Play, and you can find ways to play it for yourself if you go looking.
no subject
Category: Video Games
Comments: Love Live! School Idol Project is an anime about nine girls who become an idol singer group in order to save their under-enrolled rural high school from shutting down, and how they end up good friends even though at the start they mostly had nothing in common but their love of their school. It's a fun little series with a thriving, although still Yuletide-sized, fandom.
But this isn't really about that, because I'm a weirdo and I nominated the tie-in cell phone game instead. It's a rhythm game with the same basic premise of school-based idol groups, but with a metric ton of characters from different schools, each of whom has several different scenes that you can unlock as you play the game. They run the gamut of character types--I've nominated a Takarazuka-like actress who plays male roles, her best childhood friend who's a ballet dancer, and a pair of Gothic Lolita sisters, the older of whom has a questionable grip on reality and the latter of whom is more sensible and a bit long-suffering, but there are many, many more and if I tried to give you a reasonable cross-section I'd be here all day. The scenes are pretty short, though, so the characters aren't explored in much depth, and while they often mention each other, we never really see them interact with anyone besides the PC--hence my desire for fanfic.
If you're in the US (or Japan), the game is available for free for Android or iPhone.
Links:
1. Official website
2. App on the Play store
3. App on the iTunes store
4. Fairly comprehensive resource for character information
Fandom: Neon Genesis Impacts
Category: Anime & Manga
Comments: Neon Genesis Impacts is a seven-minute short set in the world of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but all you really need to know to understand Impacts is that fifteen years prior, monsters called Angels attacked and killed off about half the human population, and now (in the distant future year of 2015!) they've returned to finish the job. Impacts tells, very briefly, the story of three teenage girls in a pop-rock band who are separated when Tokyo-3 is evacuated due to the Angel attacks. Also, two of them kiss just before they have to part ways, so if canon (though bittersweet) f/f calls to you, there you are.
The whole thing is available to stream for free with English subs. Also, I mean, it's only seven minutes, so what have you got to lose?
Links:
1. Announcement on AnimeNewsNetwork with translated blurb
2. Official streaming video (click the button that says "英語字幕" for subs--or if that just looks like boxes to you, it's the second of the three buttons under the video window)
Fandom: Ever 17: The Out of Infinity
Category: Video Games
Comments: Unfortunately, Ever17 is hard to sell given that it's hard to discuss in any depth what makes it appealing without running into spoilers. It's a visual novel which tells the story of seven (or more???) people who are trapped in an underwater theme park and have 119 hours to escape before the whole thing floods, but what seems like a simple accident turns out to be a whole mess of mysteries involving conspiracies, alternate timeline shenanigans, mysterious diseases, shady pharmaceutical companies, and other weird plot twists. It's a pretty crazy ride, and pretty much none of the characters are what they first appear to be.
If you're familiar with the Zero Escape series, Ever17 is an entry (the strongest one, IMO) in the creator's previous series and is... basically exactly what you'd expect from him. Sadly, the company that released it in English has gone under and so outside of Japan (where it's available for a million different systems including Android and iOS) there's no legit way to get it without paying $200 (I am not kidding) for a secondhand copy. There is, however, a complete Let's Play, and you can find ways to play it for yourself if you go looking.
Links:
1. Let's Play