It just so happens that story is an alternate point-of-view to other cyberpunk stories. To put a point on it, VA-11 HALL-A is a Slice-of-Life story. I will not pretend to be some expert on the subgenre, but what makes Slice-of-Life stand out as one of the pillars of anime and manga is that it either provides an exemplary character study or it takes place in a setting that makes the story naturally interesting. It’s going to be boring.’ To which I say, that is a very narrow-minded view of Slice-of-Life. Let’s pause right here and take a moment to discuss the Slice-of-Life subgenre as well as the concept of ‘nothing happening’, because there will be some who looks at their opening statement and say, ‘Well, duh JP. After the events of her route, our GMP decides to spend Christmas with Kaori and her family for week of, well, little of nothing. Taking place after the events of the main game, you resume the role of our Generic Male Protagonist in an epilogue focused on the finale of his relationship with Kaori : the game’s resident tsundere. But first, let’s go back to the amazingly boring world of 2049 for a sequel to a story I’m sure someone asked for. Now, Crystalline is on my radar: its day will come, believe me. Despite being vanilla as sin, it did well enough to warrant interest far after the project was over. It simply existed to fit into a trend within the anime market at that time: the aptly described ‘There is a High School for Everything’ subgenre. Ace Academy was not a bad game, but it was far from a good one. We talked about this group a few times before and reviewed their first big project Ace Academy here. For now, let’s turn our attention to Pixelfade. We’ll come back to it at the end of the review. When that happens, where does it lead? What comes out of a community that refuses to apply standards to their media? And, to reiterate the previous question, does that lead to an audience putting together a mental test to judge whether or not the media they’re consuming is good or bad? However, that doesn’t mean someone has low standards or even no standards just that they’re selective in applying their standards. I think, for the vast majority of fans for any entertainment medium, they have standards and can have a reasonable discussion on said medium…just not on the Internet where the immediate emotional validation of being in a tribe, any tribe, is more appealing than critical thought. The pull of the emotional against the rational is so ingrained into the human subconscious that I’d bet most people who get involved in arguments over their personal preferred media in this digital space walk away from them in a similar haze to that of someone waking up from being under anesthetic.
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