[0:00] On the last episode of Mother's
[0:03] Basement, Jeff Thu declared the golden
[0:05] age of anime to be right the now.
[0:09] However, while he was working on that
[0:12] video, one thing did keep bothering him.
[0:15] Well, two things actually. I hate
[0:18] talking about myself in the third
[0:20] person. And the second thing is, of
[0:22] course, thoseing things. You know,
[0:25] there's a guy in the hero's party. He
[0:27] gets banished for how his inconveniently
[0:29] huge car keeps tripping him up in
[0:31] fights. Right after leaving, he
[0:33] discovers he can blast ropes that take
[0:35] the head off a dragon at 50 paces. Three
[0:37] to seven gorgeous women start riding
[0:39] around everywhere on his dick. And
[0:41] either by design or by accident, he ends
[0:43] up trapping his former companions in the
[0:45] salty hot glue of revenge before the
[0:49] story's through. That sort of thing.
[0:51] though the sort of thing that I just
[0:52] described, you know, the one with the
[0:54] thing would probably be more fun than
[0:57] most of the actual [ __ ] things that
[0:59] get made these days. There's a lot of
[1:02] problems to talk about regarding this
[1:04] oddly specific subgenre. Not the least
[1:06] of which being how coliny the whole vibe
[1:09] can get. But the biggest problem for my
[1:12] money is how video gamey the vibe tends
[1:15] to be as well. Which, just so we're
[1:17] clear, Mr. Fox News has nothing to do
[1:20] with the Colombininess of it all. Those
[1:22] are two separate issues, far more so
[1:25] than even your average isekai, where it
[1:27] is still very much a problem. These
[1:29] things are absolutely lousy with RPG
[1:32] elements in their world building that is
[1:34] for the most part pretty lousy, too.
[1:37] It's not impossible to build a
[1:39] believable livedin world on video game
[1:41] logic, but it sure is a whole lot easier
[1:44] to just not do that. And the problem
[1:47] isn't limited to stat screens. It's all
[1:50] the blatantly artificial video gamey
[1:52] tropes that come part and parcel with
[1:54] them. Any one of which can rip you right
[1:56] out of an anime's world if you think
[1:58] about it for even a moment longer than
[2:01] the writer obviously did. Now, is the
[2:03] ubiquity of these things and isekai in
[2:06] the same vein enough to make me rethink
[2:09] calling this a golden age? Absolutely
[2:11] not. There is so much good fantasy on
[2:14] right now with none of this gamer
[2:16] nonsense in it. But as a gamer who does
[2:20] love him some nonsense, it pains me to
[2:22] see just how bad most of this stuff
[2:24] gets. Which is why today I want to do my
[2:27] part to fix the problem by exploring
[2:30] exactly what these anime are doing wrong
[2:33] and how some better stories do it right.
[2:36] And one of the positive examples I'll be
[2:38] using throughout the video also happens
[2:41] to be one of the most exciting sponsors
[2:43] I have ever worked with. Chrysalis by
[2:46] Rhino Z. If you haven't heard me gush
[2:48] about it before, Chrysalis is one of my
[2:51] personal all-time favorite lit RPG web
[2:53] novels, which follows this kid named
[2:55] Anthony who gets reincarnated as a
[2:58] monster ant in this dungeon the size of
[3:00] a planet and slowly builds his humble
[3:03] colony up into a utopian global empire
[3:07] where every citizen gets 8 hours of
[3:09] sleep a night or else. The books are
[3:12] just a delight to read and especially
[3:14] listen to, carried by rocksolid action
[3:16] writing, sardonic Aussie wit, and more
[3:19] beautifully tortured ant puns than you
[3:21] can shake an antenna at. All of which
[3:24] are further enhanced by the unrivaled
[3:27] audiobook performances of Sound Booth
[3:30] Theater, who also offer IMO the best way
[3:33] to get into the series through their
[3:35] phenomenally generous box set, which
[3:38] gives you the first three audio books.
[3:41] That's 55 hours of listening for just
[3:44] one Audible credit. As somebody who is
[3:46] addicted to audiobooks, it's like the
[3:49] best value I have ever found in the app.
[3:51] With the hotly anticipated latest book,
[3:55] Antindustrial Revolution, due out on
[3:57] Kindle July 15th, there has never been a
[4:00] better time to get into Chrysalis. And I
[4:02] was recommending this [ __ ] months before
[4:04] they paid me to do it. So, you know, I
[4:06] mean that. And having said that, my
[4:09] sponsorship obligation is now
[4:11] technically out of the way. So, you also
[4:13] know that every time I reference it from
[4:15] now on is purely for the love of the
[4:17] game and OF COURSE FOR THE COLONY. TO
[4:22] understand why so many modern fantasy
[4:25] anime are like this, you first need to
[4:27] understand why JRPGs are like that.
[4:30] Which all comes back to 1981 and the
[4:33] releases of Ultima and Wizardry, the
[4:36] most influential PC RPGs of all time,
[4:40] especially in Japan. That might come as
[4:42] a surprise since neither series saw an
[4:45] official release there until 1985 after
[4:48] homegrown games like Lizard, Mugan, No
[4:51] Shinszo, Tower of Duaga, Hidelide, and
[4:54] Dragon Slayer had already taken root and
[4:56] right before Dragon Quest would turn
[4:58] console RPGs into a full-blown
[5:00] phenomenon. But none of those games
[5:03] would exist in the first place if
[5:05] Japanese computer nerds like Yugji Horry
[5:08] hadn't fallen in love with import copies
[5:11] of Ultima and Wizardry earlier in the
[5:14] decade. Everything about Japan's
[5:16] divergent branch of the genre stems from
[5:20] that point. In the west, the fundamental
[5:22] ethos of CRPGs has always been emulate
[5:25] the tabletop experience with deeper
[5:27] character customization and eventually
[5:30] more role-playing options. But the
[5:32] Japanese never had that experience to
[5:35] begin with. Not until TSR tried and
[5:38] mostly failed to bring Dn D to their
[5:40] shores in the mid80s when the JRPG boom
[5:43] was already underway. So in Japan, the
[5:47] ethos for designing RPGs has always been
[5:50] build a better wizardry and or Ultima,
[5:53] which led them to more console friendly
[5:56] video game ccentric innovations like
[5:58] action RPGs and linear cinematic
[6:01] narratives told through complex in-g
[6:03] engine cutscenes much sooner than
[6:05] Western devs who were busy going allin
[6:08] on more textheavy playerdriven stories.
[6:11] But Wizardry and Ultima didn't just give
[6:14] Japan its first taste of role-
[6:16] playinging. They were also foundational
[6:18] to its entire fantasy fandom. Of course,
[6:21] Japan had produced plenty of fantastical
[6:24] films and shows in the preceding
[6:26] decades, inspired by various mythologies
[6:29] and fairy tales from around the world,
[6:31] but as far as that medieval European
[6:34] capital F style of fantasy went, Lord of
[6:37] the Rings was translated in the 70s
[6:40] around the same time as Earth Sea and
[6:42] some other influential Western epics,
[6:44] which did go on to inspire some
[6:47] important Japanese literature, most
[6:49] notably 197 79's Green Saga, a legendary
[6:53] light novel series that is still running
[6:55] today at 150 volumes and counting. But
[6:59] all these books were a niche within a
[7:01] niche at a time when genre fiction was
[7:04] almost entirely synonymous with science
[7:06] fiction to the Japanese. Aside from a
[7:09] few exceptions that emerged around the
[7:12] same time and out of the same nerdy
[7:14] zeitgeist as the first wave of JRPGs,
[7:17] Swords and Sorcery stuff only gained the
[7:20] cultural clout needed to justify, for
[7:22] example, making a whole mess of anime
[7:24] out of it after the gaming boom began,
[7:27] with some of the earliest hits being
[7:29] adaptations of Dragon Quest, Dragon
[7:32] Slayer, and Wizardry. While the west
[7:35] sees stat screens and other gaming
[7:37] conventions as an offshoot of an
[7:40] offshoot of the foundational works of
[7:42] fantasy, in Japan, games are the
[7:45] foundation. So when, for example, the
[7:48] adventurers inn and Gilgamesh's tavern
[7:50] from Wizardry 1 were amalgamated into
[7:53] Patty's party planning place in Dragon
[7:55] Quest 3, and the idea was then
[7:58] standardized as the adventurers guild by
[8:00] other games in need of party recruiting
[8:03] and questing hubs. It was only natural
[8:05] for fantasy books and anime to adopt the
[8:08] concept as well, often with very little
[8:11] thought put toward how such a thing
[8:13] might actually, you know, work outside
[8:16] of a video game. Now, guilds in general
[8:20] obviously had a place in the medieval
[8:22] societies that fantasy strives to
[8:24] emulate, but the logic that justified
[8:26] their existence doesn't necessarily
[8:29] apply to adventuring. And we know that
[8:31] because there were no guilds for the
[8:34] realworld equivalents of adventurers in
[8:36] wartime. Mercenary companies had very
[8:39] little reason to form regulatory bodies
[8:42] with other mercenaries they were
[8:43] probably going to be trying to kill next
[8:45] week. Plus, they already had a pretty
[8:47] standardized apprenticeship program of
[8:49] here's a spear, try not to die. And in
[8:52] peace time, most of them were too busy
[8:53] being bandits to build bureaucracies. Of
[8:56] course, having loads of monsters to hunt
[8:58] instead of killing people could
[9:00] potentially change that calculus, but
[9:02] historically speaking, hunting was the
[9:05] near exclusive privilege of the
[9:07] nobility. In part because wild game is
[9:09] full of valuable resources, and in part
[9:12] because the hunts themselves made great
[9:14] murder practice for knights. Two factors
[9:17] that are going to be even more
[9:18] applicable if we're talking about
[9:20] magical monsters rather than deer or
[9:22] foxes. None of that's to say that
[9:24] fantasy worlds have to be 100%
[9:27] historically accurate. That wouldn't be
[9:29] very fantastic. But historical precedent
[9:32] is vital to crafting even the most
[9:35] imaginative of worlds because history is
[9:38] the best model that we have for how
[9:41] civilizations tend to behave. And the
[9:43] mark of a great worldbuilder is how well
[9:46] they can justify deviations from that
[9:49] model with good answers to tough
[9:51] questions. So, what purpose does an
[9:54] adventurer's guild serve? Not to gamers,
[9:57] but society. What could possibly make a
[10:00] state want to let essentially an
[10:02] independent freelance militia operate
[10:04] within its borders? Why would the army
[10:07] not be dealing with monster related
[10:09] problems and reaping the associated
[10:11] rewards? What effect does seeding those
[10:13] resources and that authority to private
[10:15] individuals have on politics or the
[10:18] economy? On that note, who's even paying
[10:20] for all these quests in the first place?
[10:22] And what do they or the adventurers get
[10:25] out of running their monster part
[10:27] trades, surveying contracts, bounties,
[10:30] and such through these middleman
[10:32] organizations instead of just working
[10:34] with each other directly. Far too many
[10:37] gamer fantasies just completely ignore
[10:40] all that. The Adventurer's Guild exists
[10:42] because the protagonist really needs an
[10:44] instant support network after getting
[10:46] isekai or some governing body to manage
[10:49] the employment contract with the party
[10:51] that just banished him. And that's it.
[10:53] It's there cuz the story needs it there.
[10:56] And once it's there, it is likely to
[10:58] warp that entire story and the entire
[11:02] story's world around itself because
[11:05] these guilds are just such darn useful
[11:07] writing tools. Can't figure out how to
[11:10] get your hero where they need to be for
[11:11] the next arc? Put it on the quest board.
[11:13] Need to create a sense of power
[11:15] progression? Give them a rank up. Need a
[11:17] place for them to meet a new ally or
[11:20] rival? Hey, the guild tavern's right
[11:22] there. In that way, this place that has
[11:25] no place within the world becomes our
[11:28] hero's primary point of contact with the
[11:30] entire civilized side of it. filtering
[11:33] every bit of the setting that the writer
[11:35] did bother fleshing out through this
[11:37] physical embodiment of a video game menu
[11:40] and giving it the same artificial
[11:43] aftertaste. And this isn't just
[11:45] detrimental to immersion. It also
[11:48] hamstrings storytelling as every major
[11:51] player in the fantasy world is now
[11:53] forced to play around this blatantly
[11:56] video gamey, often politically inert
[11:58] plot device. It becomes a spanner in the
[12:01] gears of organic character-driven social
[12:04] conflict that good worldbuilding is
[12:06] supposed to create and all but forces
[12:08] the writer to fall back on clichéed
[12:10] formula. Of course, it's not impossible
[12:13] to tell a good story around the guild.
[12:15] Mushoku Tensei is absolutely peak, but
[12:18] the guild is mostly a means to other
[12:20] ends there, providing funds for the
[12:23] actual adventures. The only part of the
[12:25] story that's really driven by just
[12:27] taking random quests off the job board
[12:29] is the arc where Rudy is profoundly
[12:32] depressed, which I think maybe says
[12:34] something about the emotional texture of
[12:36] that particular plot structure. Now, I
[12:39] did quite enjoy how sentence to be a
[12:40] hero handled its adventurer's guild,
[12:43] which was by uh basically just not
[12:45] having one. The organization that bears
[12:47] the name is really just a loosely
[12:49] affiliated band of thugs and killers
[12:51] working under a former pirate lord who
[12:53] went semi-legit. It's an explicitly
[12:56] amoral entity that causes problems from
[12:59] basically the moment it's introduced and
[13:01] ultimately betrays humanity in a
[13:03] desperate grasp for wealth and power as
[13:06] one would expect a bunch of mercenaries
[13:08] to do. If you think about it, it's kind
[13:11] of weird how often adventurers guilds
[13:13] are instrumental in saving the world.
[13:16] Now, I say that, but one of my favorite
[13:18] explorations of the trope, period, is in
[13:20] the Legend of Heroes Trails games, which
[13:23] are in no small part about the political
[13:26] complications of running such an
[13:28] organization and the ramifications of it
[13:30] existing at all. Smaller countries tend
[13:33] to love how the guild supplements their
[13:35] military and police, but those
[13:37] organizations have their own
[13:38] antagonistic relationship to the
[13:41] civilian contractors that are taking
[13:43] their job separate from public opinion
[13:45] or how the overall government feels.
[13:47] There are also bigger countries where
[13:49] the guild has no presence at all because
[13:51] the leaders see them as a threat even
[13:53] though they have a strict policy of not
[13:55] interfering in politics. The series does
[13:58] so much to make this inherently fake
[14:01] concept feel like an organic part of a
[14:04] living, breathing world. I also think
[14:06] I'm a bit more inclined to like the
[14:08] Bracer Guild just because they don't
[14:10] call it an adventurers's guild. This is
[14:12] definitely a personal nitpick, but I
[14:15] find the idea of adventuring as a day
[14:18] job to be deeply philosophically
[14:21] underwhelming. It's not that I don't
[14:23] like stories about ordinary jobs in
[14:25] fantastical worlds. Drifting Dragons,
[14:27] Planetess, and Interspecies reviewers
[14:30] are all among my favorites. But
[14:32] adventure definitionally has to be a
[14:35] break from routine. If someone is
[14:37] fighting monsters and exploring dungeons
[14:40] every single day for a living, they're
[14:42] not an adventurer. They're a gold farmer
[14:45] or a delver, dunge engineer, mercenary,
[14:48] monster hunter, explorer, seeker, cave
[14:50] raider, bracer. Call them whatever you
[14:52] want. Just call them literally anything
[14:55] else, please. Or better yet, do
[14:58] something else. If you've got a big
[15:00] dungeon in your story and absolutely
[15:03] need a guild to manage access to it,
[15:06] fine. But instead of making them a
[15:08] catchall guild for every kind of dungeon
[15:11] explorer, maybe have them work with
[15:13] other guilds for mages, rogues, and
[15:16] warriors. Buy equipment from the armorer
[15:19] and fletchers guilds and sell materials
[15:21] to merchants and alchemists. Or better
[15:24] yet, let those guilds post their own
[15:26] quests in their own guild halls and hand
[15:29] out their own rewards for killing
[15:31] monsters outside the dungeon. You're not
[15:33] actually making a video game. You don't
[15:36] need one monolithic entity to act as
[15:39] your quest hub, temp agency, vocational
[15:42] school, and power scaling leaderboard.
[15:44] So all those things can be in one nested
[15:47] menu. Instead, try spreading those
[15:49] duties out to a bunch of different
[15:52] organizations with their own different
[15:54] needs, strengths, weaknesses, and this
[15:57] is the crucial part, reasons to [ __ ]
[15:59] with each other. Maybe the merchants
[16:01] don't like the thieves for self-evident
[16:04] reasons, or the mages and alchemists are
[16:06] competing for influence with the
[16:08] nobility. Perhaps the church distrusts
[16:11] the Delvers Union for their proximity to
[16:14] that obviously demonic dungeon. Or maybe
[16:17] some bishop is just using that rhetoric
[16:20] as a justification to have the Paladin
[16:22] affiliated warrior guild take their
[16:25] place as dungeon gatekeepers. The more
[16:27] you decentralize the power structures
[16:30] your world is built on, the easier it is
[16:33] to pit them against each other and make
[16:35] some interesting [ __ ] happen that
[16:37] doesn't have to start on the job board.
[16:40] In Chrysalis, there is both a
[16:42] semi-secret society of OP dungeon
[16:44] crawlers called the Abyssal Legion and a
[16:47] separate guild of adventurers who are
[16:49] really just monster resource farmers and
[16:52] rarely make it past the top layers of
[16:54] the dungeon, but still think they're hot
[16:56] [ __ ] The Legion has power and influence
[16:58] with the surface kingdoms, which it uses
[17:01] to heavily regulate the flow of
[17:03] resources in and out of the dungeon and
[17:05] try to stabilize its monster ecosystem.
[17:07] While the guild would very much like to
[17:10] usurp that power and milk the dungeon
[17:12] for all it's worth. All of which ends up
[17:14] coming to a head in some of the most fun
[17:16] and unpredictable moments of the early
[17:19] books. Don Machi does just have the one
[17:22] adventurers guild, but it's really just
[17:24] a mediating force between all of the
[17:26] different familias and the gods that
[17:28] lead them, who of course have their own
[17:30] rivalries and relationships with each
[17:33] other, and the adventurers under them
[17:35] have similar relationships, and it just
[17:37] creates a very messy situation where
[17:40] organic conflicts can naturally arise.
[17:43] Speaking of dungeons though, how to do
[17:46] them right is really a subject that
[17:48] deserves its own full video essay. But
[17:50] if you'll permit me just one brief
[17:52] comment on the matter, please stop
[17:55] putting floor bosses in them unless your
[17:57] anime or book is actually set in a video
[18:00] game. You can have all the big cool
[18:03] monsters you want gating the hero's
[18:05] progression to the next floor. Just
[18:07] don't call them bosses. And especially
[18:10] don't have them infinitely respawn so
[18:13] that every party trying to clear the
[18:15] dungeon has to fight all the exact same
[18:17] big cool monsters as all the other
[18:20] parties in the exact same order. That
[18:22] [ __ ] feels so boring, low stakes, and
[18:25] video gamey. Sword Art Online didn't
[18:27] even do it. Look, I'm not saying your
[18:29] dungeons have to be ultra realistic and
[18:31] devoid of game logic. The idea of a
[18:34] self- sustaining underground magical
[18:36] ecosystem is one of my favorite things
[18:38] about Dungeon Meshy, Maiden Abyss, and
[18:40] Chrysalis for that matter. But if you
[18:42] just want to have a big evil magic hole
[18:44] in the ground full of monsters, puzzles,
[18:46] and maybe some lore, that's cool. I like
[18:49] those. All I'm saying is if you're going
[18:51] to make me spend a whole episode
[18:52] watching a guy kill a big cool monster,
[18:55] it should stay [ __ ] dead. Jack of all
[18:58] trades, stakes of none. Boom. Got him. I
[19:02] sat through like eight more episodes of
[19:04] that show as research for this video and
[19:06] I feel like I watched literally nothing.
[19:09] It's solo leveling minus the hype and
[19:11] aura. It honestly put in perspective how
[19:14] little of a problem stat screens and
[19:16] skill points really are in the grand
[19:19] scheme of immersion shattering video
[19:21] game nonsense. Even without any of those
[19:23] things, it feels more like watching a
[19:26] bad let's play than almost any other
[19:28] anime. and like half the dialogue in the
[19:31] game they're playing is tutorials. That
[19:34] said, putting a video game HUD in your
[19:36] anime is just about the most glaringly
[19:39] fake thing you can do to a nonVRMMO
[19:42] world, and it's a big pet peeve for a
[19:45] lot of fantasy enthusiasts. It even
[19:47] bothered me back in the day when these
[19:48] sorts of things first started coming
[19:50] into vogue, except in Overlord and Slime
[19:53] because those anime are, you know,
[19:55] actually good. I kind of just got used
[19:57] to it there very quickly. In fact, as is
[20:00] the case with any good anime that does
[20:03] such things. And while I do really like
[20:05] how, say, Don Machi makes its stat
[20:08] readouts a diagetic part of its world, I
[20:11] don't even think that's strictly
[20:12] necessary if you want to build an
[20:14] immersive fantasy setting around RPG
[20:18] systems like that. Ultimately, I've
[20:20] reached the conclusion that game UI is
[20:22] just another kind of signifier that
[20:24] tells the viewer, "Okay, this show is
[20:27] going to be like this other show you're
[20:29] familiar with." In the same way as
[20:31] seeing a glowing aura around a muscled
[20:33] up martial artist, or a mage spewing
[20:36] particle effects out of her staff, or a
[20:38] dude cutting a boulder in half with a
[20:40] sword. It's just one of many types of
[20:43] magical aesthetic that some people [ __ ]
[20:46] with. And if you use it, you just have
[20:48] to accept you're going to lose all the
[20:50] people who don't. Most of those people
[20:52] do still complain about Don Machi after
[20:54] all, even though it puts so much extra
[20:56] work into justifying the numbers on a
[20:59] lore level. Now, the numbers can suck
[21:02] all the tension and strategy out of
[21:04] fights by objectively confirming that
[21:06] Protagon is in fact stronger than the
[21:09] guy he's fighting and doesn't have to
[21:10] worry about anything. But that's just as
[21:12] true of power levels and shownen. By the
[21:15] same token, choosing skills and spells
[21:17] from a drop- down menu does kind of
[21:19] demystify your fantasy world, but not
[21:22] significantly more than any other kind
[21:25] of hard magic system does once the rules
[21:27] are fully explained. It just has that
[21:30] effect quicker because anyone who's
[21:32] played a video game before has a head
[21:34] start on understanding those rules,
[21:36] which also means they have a head start
[21:38] on getting to the fun theory crafting
[21:41] power scaling stage of enjoying those
[21:43] rules. So, it is definitely a tradeoff
[21:46] on your fantasy world's overall level of
[21:49] immersion, but it has some serious
[21:51] upsides. Part of the reason that gamer
[21:53] isekai, those [ __ ] things, and lit
[21:55] RPGs are so addictive and share so many
[21:58] fans between each other is because so
[22:01] much knowledge is transferable from
[22:03] series to series. As soon as you finish
[22:06] one, you can jump right into another and
[22:08] get more of what you were enjoying on at
[22:11] least a basic level. Problems only
[22:13] really arise when a story fails to move
[22:16] past that basic level and just gives you
[22:18] yet another guy who's really strong and
[22:20] fast and good at everything cuz his
[22:22] numbers are so big. That's all fine and
[22:24] dandy for Baby's first lit RPG, but as
[22:27] soon as you get a taste for the harder
[22:28] stuff, it loses its appeal. The best
[22:31] gamer fiction uses that shared knowledge
[22:34] pool as a jumping off point for dreaming
[22:36] up hypersp specific builds and weird
[22:39] broken synergistic skill sets that could
[22:42] never exist in a real game because it
[22:44] needs to be balanced and it would be too
[22:46] hard for new players to understand. In
[22:49] shownen power system terms, it lets you
[22:51] jump right into coming up with part five
[22:54] and six level stand concepts without
[22:56] having to lay the groundwork of parts
[22:58] three and four first. And those systems
[23:01] succeed or fail by a lot of the same
[23:04] metrics as a shownen power system. So
[23:06] long as the skill sets or spell lists or
[23:09] what have you are tailored to reflect
[23:11] the main characters personalities and
[23:14] their foes challenge them to use their
[23:16] powers in interesting and creative ways
[23:19] that the viewer or reader is able to
[23:21] follow and anticipate by paying
[23:23] attention. They're probably going to
[23:25] have a fun time and that's all you
[23:27] really need. You can of course go
[23:30] further with it in the same way that
[23:32] shownen like Hunter Hunter or Jujutsu
[23:34] Kaizen can integrate their power systems
[23:37] much more deeply into their settings and
[23:39] themes. So I'm a Spider, so what has a
[23:42] whole religion that worships the skill
[23:44] system, which is a fun logical
[23:47] extrapolation of what might happen if
[23:49] everyone in the world had a magic voice
[23:51] in their head that gave them magic
[23:53] powers. Chrysalis takes the idea several
[23:55] steps further with multiple dungeon
[23:57] worshipping sects and cults split by
[24:00] vehement dogmatic disagreements on
[24:03] optimal build strategies and the ethics
[24:06] of exp farming. But all of that is just
[24:09] meat. So long as the gravy is tasty,
[24:11] folks will eat your gamer slop right up.
[24:14] For the tastiest possible gravy, though,
[24:16] it is best to add a little bit of visual
[24:18] spice. Aside from making it play boring,
[24:21] I think the worst thing you can possibly
[24:23] do to your fake game is make it look
[24:25] boring. And holy [ __ ] do a whole lot of
[24:29] Gamer Fantasy anime ever look like Excel
[24:31] spreadsheets and default RPG Maker
[24:34] templates. Just a teensy bit of UI
[24:37] design in your menus can go a long way,
[24:39] and you can go a whole lot further with
[24:42] that design because, of course, nobody
[24:44] actually has to interact with them. I
[24:46] think my all-time least defensible
[24:49] nitpick of Sword Art Online has got to
[24:51] be saying that the menus should have
[24:53] been thought controlled. Nah, those
[24:56] drop-down touch interfaces are
[24:58] absolutely fire. It is never not fun
[25:01] watching Kyito flick through a menu,
[25:03] which is more than I can say for
[25:05] watching Kyito fight. In many cases,
[25:07] game UI also comes part and parcel with
[25:10] flavor text and system voices, which can
[25:13] do just as much, if not more so, to kill
[25:15] the fun if they read slash sound boring.
[25:19] Far too many anime, web, and light novel
[25:22] writers treat those aspects as an excuse
[25:24] to fill some time with dry, repetitive,
[25:27] loweffort technical descriptions when
[25:29] they should be using them as an
[25:31] opportunity to inject some extra flavor
[25:34] and personality into their worlds. I
[25:37] don't think it's controversial to call
[25:39] the AI from Dungeon Crawler Carl the
[25:41] definitive example of how to make the
[25:44] systems voice a compelling character in
[25:46] its own right. Its sadistic game show
[25:49] host personality and not at all
[25:51] disguised fetishes imbue every item and
[25:54] skill description with delightfully dark
[25:57] humor from the word go. And the gradual
[26:00] unraveling of its psyche is one of the
[26:02] series most compelling subplots. It
[26:05] makes every new item and skill we
[26:07] discover feel as rewarding for the
[26:09] reader as it does to the characters. And
[26:12] that being my intro into the genre did
[26:15] kind of set me up for disappointment
[26:17] with almost every other lit RPG audio
[26:20] book I've tried. But thankfully
[26:22] Chrysalis wasn't one of them. And that
[26:25] was one of the first things that really
[26:26] sucked me into it. It makes it clear
[26:28] very early on that the system voice
[26:31] Gandalf is a dude with his own agenda
[26:33] that may or may not line up with
[26:36] Anony's. And while it doesn't quite have
[26:38] that same laugh out loud factor as the
[26:40] system AI, it is still very rewarding
[26:43] every time Anthony unlocks one of the
[26:46] full monster profiles with design notes
[26:49] from Gandalf that reveal more about his
[26:51] plans and personalities. And the full-on
[26:54] conversations he gets to have with
[26:56] Gandalf whenever he evolves are a
[26:58] brilliant way of tying milestones in
[27:00] Anony's power progression to some of the
[27:03] story's most interesting lore reveals.
[27:05] Low-key, one of my favorite things about
[27:07] this season's The Strongest Job is
[27:09] apparently not a hero or a sage, but an
[27:12] appraiser provisional is how it handles
[27:14] Protag's support voice, Sappochan, who
[27:17] gradually evolves from a neutral
[27:19] exposition dispenser into a proper
[27:22] character over the early episodes. I
[27:24] also really like how it mixes things up
[27:26] by having the gods speak directly into
[27:28] his brain, a conceit the show frequently
[27:31] mines for comedy gold. You don't have to
[27:33] go the funny route with this, though.
[27:35] You can also make it a little scary,
[27:37] like roll over and die, or put some Dark
[27:40] Soulsy lore tidbits and mystery
[27:43] breadcrumbs in your descriptions. I just
[27:45] need some reason to care. If you can't
[27:49] make your system voice at least as
[27:51] entertaining as a Pokédex, your story is
[27:54] probably better off without it in much
[27:56] the same way that it's almost certainly
[27:58] better off without an adventurer's
[28:00] guild. At the end of the day though,
[28:02] even that is a matter of how you use it.
[28:04] Game elements are narrative tools just
[28:06] like any other trope that serve to
[28:09] streamline some aspects of storytelling
[28:12] while restricting others. The key is
[28:14] understanding their utility and
[28:16] limitations and making them work for the
[28:19] story you want to tell instead of
[28:21] against it. If you are a storyteller,
[28:24] then I hope this video helps you do
[28:26] exactly that. And if you're just a gamer
[28:28] slop enthusiast, I hope it makes you
[28:30] better able to identify the really good
[28:32] [ __ ] when you see it. I'm Jeff Thu, the
[28:35] system voice of anime watching, signing
[28:38] out from the sitting on my ass guild.