>>1258786
>ER Ch2-3
Maybe it was because I was trying to binge through it all and just got tired and burnt out, but it just felt like I was going through the motions with it. I still didn't have a solid grasp on what Mei was trying to find in this simulation space, despite Mihoyo's usual writing method of repeating the same thing a dozen times over, which was very suspicious. The introductions of Pardofelis onward all felt like one big filler arc within a filler arc, Vill-V's was probably the most egregious one because she just interrupts the usual arena combat to make you do stage tricks for her - It continued the trend of me just being baffled by what I was witnessing. The whole Aponia mini-arc felt really pointless too, she just goes "Oooo I'm gonna kill you in ten days and you can't do anything ooooo", I mean, Mei challenging Kalpas to a fight was an interesting solution, but that doesn't go anywhere, I thought that monologue from Mei about taking control of fate was going to lead to some growth, insight, or even a cliche powerup but no, nothing happened, Aponia just intervenes so ultimately that whole sequence was pointless. Aponia's fight was kind of shitty too, some of the butterflies she throws out are barely visible, and she scrambles your controls if enough of them hit you. Playing as Raven for a bit was neat I guess.
Oh and Elysia's the 13th Herrscher, or
was rather. Sure I guess, just throw a wrench into my barely lucid mind at the last minute for me to wrack my head over. Two possibilities were in my head at the time of the initial reveal; Either she was always a Herrscher - which doesn't make much because you'd think MOTH or even other Herrschers would notice, and how would she be 13th in line if she came before any of the others? Or second, She became a Herrscher very late into the PE's timeline - which makes less sense because some of the log entries clearly imply that she's aware of herself enough to make jokes foreshadowing her own nature. Had other questions like; How did she keep it under wraps for so long? What kept her from being hostile? Mobius outright called her a traitor so clearly some of them had an idea, so why didn't they do anything, knowing how Herrschers were viewed back then? Annoyingly even after clearing
To the Flawless I didn't get answers to most of them.
Kind of a dead fish of an arc in my opinion, didn't feel offensive like the Kolosten torture city, but just felt like a wasted opportunity to learn about the PE and to see Mei grow a bit.
>To The Flawless
A weird chapter, lots of mixed thoughts on this. Some shitposters made it sound like it was the product of the antichrist but honestly while I didn't outright hate it I found it to be riddled with flaws that just made it awkward.
I did write/talk about it at length on the 'other' halfchan thread to probe for potential discussion - and surprisingly there were actual thoughts thrown around that wasn't just screeching, until the next thread had Elysia in the OP, opening the floodgates to the belligerents and completely killing any chance of rational thought there.
To re-iterate some of the thoughts I had 'over there' - but with a bigger character count this time, it just felt like a messy byproduct of a team of writers that never cleared up obvious narrative issues early-on. The whole thing about the Flame Chaser's is that they're
dead, their stories are
done, so dedicating an entire arc
just for them near the end of the main story's plot was never going to sit well with anyone invested in the game, not to mention that most of said FC's are just filler characters (see above). If anything the writers just doubled down on what flaws ER had, putting in more filler, more plot holes and inconsistencies, putting more focus on Elysia at the cost of everyone - including Elysia even, and
still no development from Mei. How does one get 'born a Herrscher' without the need of a host? No clue, the story never elaborates. How did no one catch on to Elysia's nature? Dunno, they were just dumb or something. It raises all these questions, yet answers none of them, there was no point actually thinking about anything at all, so ultimately I just felt unsatisfied and disappointed. The mini-arc with the HoC showing up and turning the chapter into a murder mystery
could have been interesting, but it drags on for so long across the huge cast that the final episodes just get rushed through and it just felt like a blur. Near the end they even slip in a line that seems to suggest that CE Herrschers being able to retain their humanity is thanks to Elysia, which is just weird, from what I (vaguely) remember PE Herrschers weren't that different, they were just more brutal in response to Humanity being more brutal and cutthroat, it just undermines the struggle Kiana, Mei, Welt, etc. went through to preserve their humanity when some writer just slips in that it was thanks to their OC. And the weird minigames before you actually fight Elysia in her Herrscher form, like the crane thing? The fuck was that, and why? Again, just baffling that someone actually implemented that.
I can't even bring myself to dislike the primary suspect - Elysia - either (I kind of like her even), if anything she's just as much of a victim of the writer's ineptitude as everyone else. They hint and tease all of these potential angles to her; secrets and burdens she keeps buried to uphold her facade, doubts that supposedly haunt her, some sort of fear of being forgotten, but they don't
do anything with them! They put so much effort into trying to make her out to be some flawless saviour that everyone in both eras owe thanks to that they
forgot the actual flaws they set up for her that would've actually made her character
more human and interesting. I mean, wouldn't it she be so much more interesting if the flashbacks actually showed her grappling between risking the MOTH torture machines or being remembered as a traitor, before finding the resolve to face death with dignity, and showing MOTH that they were in the wrong, even if too late? I at least think so. I was astonished that her VA managed to convey her buried melancholy in her final exchanges with Mei in those last minutes
better than the writer's could in the entire chapter.
I wish I could've seen a version of this that was written by someone with the skill to fully realise this, because there are
traces of a decent story (that might not need to retcon anything either), even with the handicap that it's still disconnected from the main plot. The mix of tedious padding and unanswered questions just made it really frustrating on a level I struggle to describe fully. The only other time I felt this way was when I read an equally contentious and heavily flawed chapter for another gacha
(Blue Archive), where the thought 'This could've been actually decent instead of kind of this mess' kept crossing my mind.