News for November

SweetPrincess doesn’t deliver any big scoops, unfortunately. Anyway, some new news and some old news, if that even makes any sense.

Danzai no Maria: this is how I like my otome heroines

I’ve got a lot of complaints about Danzai no Maria on the whole – for one, it seems like Karin Entertainment splurged half of its budget on famous seiyuus and then tried to cover it up with stylish gothicness ( ﾟ,_ゝﾟ ) The scenario alternates between “fucking awesome” and “wtf is this shit” pretty often, most of the time averaging out on “passable”, but really, that can be said about each and every aspect of this game. (Except for the text box. If I’ve been playing this game for some six hours and still can’t figure where quickload is, then there’s something wrong with the interface design here.)

But anyway, one thing that Karin did exceptionally well (in my perspective, that is) is making Maria an actual character.

With her name right up there in the title, it would probably be stupid to think she’d be just a proxy for the guys’ own stories a la Kanon, but still, it’s refreshing to see a game so unapologetically centered on the heroine. Karin plain throws out the window several industry standards that severely annoy me. In particular, I like how they include the heroine-naming gimmick just to ignore it for the majority of the game by refering to Maria by her baptismal name. She has a face, a voice, a past and a personality, which just shattered my expectations, in a good way. She’s not a doormat! She’s cute! She actually acts on her own initiative! That’s a whole lot more than I’m used to expecting. Just for that, I’m willing to forgive Karin for the many, many ಠ＿ಠ-inducing moments in the scenario.

Now if only this trend would catch on… Don’t think that’s possible, though, seeing how Princess Nightmare for the PS2 flopped massively （；_；）