Class 7 Part Two

[davidn]

I think this might well be the most schizophrenic part of the game yet. As the storyline becomes deeper and darker than anyone could have ever hoped to imagine when they started up a weird game about dating pigeons, we nevertheless have some of the largest laughs on individual lines here ever. Some of them are from the game itself, some are from the rather high number of missed lines, including a truly professional one at 16 minutes through the first part where I've had to put in a standby screen by its perpetrator, ravenworks. Many other missed lines are from me, but I can blame those on the translator seeming to have succumbed to madness by this point as well.

But not all of it is even our fault - throughout both parts, the mood of the game is clinging desperately to a giant feathery pendulum swinging back and forth in the only documented case of a computer program becoming self-aware and manic-depressive at the same time. The beginning is woeful and hopeless, the turnaround is glorious, and the ensuing fight... you have to see it for yourself. And then we turn the dial back to melancholy, for a new face (and voice) to a villain that had been completely irredemable moments before.

7-3: The Most Epic Battle That Birds Ever Told

1:05 The promise
2:35 Good mediators
3:35 A better wish
4:40 Lysosomes
5:20 Ryouta succumbs
6:15 Rescue
8:25 Protein supplements
8:45 Poltroon
9:25 Are you alive?
9:55 Miserable medical man
11:40 (Destruction)
12:20 Okosan away!
13:20 Certifiably insane
13:50 Sakuya away!
14:15 Anghel is useful!
15:30 This is madness!
16:00 A line goes a bit wrong
16:35 FIGHT!!!

7-4: Shuu's Memory

1:25 Not just his fault
3:35 Lovebirds
5:10 The line of the game
7:00 Game awareness once again
7:40 Bad father
8:15 Bright and Massive
9:10 Crazy Ryuuji
11:00 Regret

You're all phenomenal. Quite apart from the acting, I'm rather impressed that we managed to finish the fight in exactly the length of the boss music.

Comments

[kjorteo]

I was just going to comment on how serendipitous the timing on our boss battle was...! There is no way we could ever do something like that on purpose.

I agree with your assessment of this part--as we get closer and closer to the game's climax, it gets more and more erratic with throwing every single possible human (and pigeon) emotion at us at once, like one of those crazy action game bosses that get even crazier when low on health. If it continues on this trajectory, then surely the beginning of HolidayStar will be like those "someone had a zillion hits of LSD and ran through a sprinkler and accidentally took them all and is now permanently insane" urban legends, and the ending will be like gazing upon the Ark of the Covenant.

And for how absolutely monstrous Murderbeaks was just one update ago (and how perfectly your acting brought about this monstrousness, to the point where you had to stop because you were traumatizing yourself...!) you do a very good job suddenly making him ... it's too late to be truly sympathetic, I guess, but ... you know.

[kjorteo]

Oh God, shattered Ryouta at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyFypSIsZPI#t=0m16s , I just want to hug him so bad ;_; XAQ YOU ARE WAY TOO GOOD AT THIS

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Coo?
(Ummm.... ...sorry?)

[kjorteo]

Don't be! It just means your acting at that part was outstanding. Like I said before, what Ryouta may lack in specific "big scenes" like the Sakuya/Yuuya one, he makes up for in being just as broken in almost every single line he has throughout the entire rest of the route ... and you rise the occasion and bring out that crushing sadness beautifully.

(Also, I haven't seen how it actually turned out when posted and everything, yet, but I'm just going to venture out on a limb and guess that the team of David and I will be wrenching a heart or two in the next part, so, you know, there's some payback on the way.)

[davidn]

It is to me :( I'm having to relive it all as I edit it!

Although it's sort of strange listening to myself talking in anything approaching my normal voice, now.

[davidn]

Particularly as you manage to switch between the distraught Ryouta and the endlessly, naively confident Okosan so quickly! It's difficult to remember that they're the same person, sometimes.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Y'know, watching that again, I'm not entirely sure how I pulled that off without popping a blood vessel in my brain or anything. You try making that radical a gear shift in a car that quickly, and then switch right back again an instant later, the clutch is gonna erupt through the floorboard and gouge out your jugular! O_o;

(Side note: For some reason I can't help but read that sentence just now in anything other than the voice of Jeremy Clarkson.)

[xaq.livejournal.com]

BTW, if anyone still doesn't know, "poltroon" means "spiritless coward."

Which basically makes it the most completely wrong word to describe Anghel with ever.

[kjorteo]

Wow, that ... really is the exact opposite of Anghel, isn't it. Well, then, on behalf of Sakuya, sorry!