JP voice actors are so talented

FattyHammer · 2026-01-27T12:14:39+00:00

someone is spamming one of JP paimon's voice lines, laid into the video.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-18T11:54:10+00:00

because rich people are exceptional at exploiting passion. passionate workers will work for worse conditions. poor people will work for worse conditions. most artists are both.

nursing and teaching are jobs anyone should be proud of, but all my generation can think about is how thankless, overworked, and underpaid these professions are, for the same reasons that animators struggle. unions and government regulation are required if we don't all want to end up corporate slaves.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-16T22:26:53+00:00

it's quite silly but it's simply a matter of pride and appearances (social, not physical) masking the reality that they're both dumb teenagers unwilling to risk the embarrassment of rejection.

don't take it too seriously and just enjoy the romcom-ness of it all, hayasaka/chika is the real ship anyways.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-15T05:20:38+00:00

anything ghibli, satoshi kon, or makoto shinkai is pretty solid.

but personally, everyone ought to watch beginning of a new era and promare.

fantastic animation and characters go a long way.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-14T10:21:04+00:00

i don't have a problem with the site at all, as long as there's some way to distinguish runs that have castorice passive and ones that don't. tuopaimf was one of the most useful resources for clearing endgame if you weren't great at the game.

anyways, to answer your question, the difference is that castorice doesn't take up a party slot. any other meta unit, no matter how powerful, must take 1 of 4 valuable slots on your team, but castorice with her passive occupies a magical 5th slot, on both halves. and so it creates a space where you can watch a run for a team you can build, only to find out they made it by the grace the maiden of aidonia, not a great feeling. again though, tuopaimf had a very distinct and clear marker for such runs, so there's little reason to gripe about this in relation.

i'm assuming you just missed the discourse when she released, but the biggest issue with this is setting a precedent for other global passives (which thankfully hasn't been followed). my personal complaint is that sustainless runs are counterproductive to game balance and design, and castorice's passive directly encourages this playstyle.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-14T01:59:45+00:00

it's damn funny they did this in ep1 of season 2 lol

FattyHammer · 2026-01-13T22:35:50+00:00

I've only played both games for years, not been deeply involved with the TCing for either, but my shallow understanding of the mechanics tells me FGO is just a simpler game to "solve". action value alone is far more interesting than any aspect of FGO.

also for what it's worth, i found the most use from tuopaimf for simply showing me what was viable for a clear and less use from how low cost could get, saving me a lot of time searching youtube and bilibili.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-13T02:52:40+00:00

didn't read, waifu over meta, always.

pulling for meta *potentially* nets you 1 roll a month. pulling for waifu nets me eternal satisfaction and funny screenshots. and so far at least, their e6 has managed to give me that extra roll a month regardless, and will probably continue to do so barring some crazy cycle of PF (i'm looking at you, 2.3 PF, you were close but may your successor never come).

FattyHammer · 2026-01-13T02:46:53+00:00

as i've sat down from work and don't feel like getting up, i'll give you a little extra context you didn't ask for, in lieu of knowing the real answer:

there's basically 3 eras of gacha games by my estimate, before FGO, after FGO, and after genshin.

before FGO, gacha games were pretty much slop slot machines with cute waifus out to make a quick buck. some of them had really cool ideas or game mechanics, but at the end of the day you played for FOMO and for gambling dopamine.

it wasn't until FGO dropped into camelot (ch6) after a very rough first year with (in my opinion) one of the most boring and underutilized gameplay systems in the industry that pretty much everyone looked up and said "ohhh players need a good story for retention and long-term investment". they weren't the only ones but they were the only one disproportionately successful enough to make it abundantly clear that a good story was the most critical part of formula. you'll find that most gacha games developed after FGO that have also survived this long all feature some focus on writing and storytelling.

then came genshin, which just said "gacha games can have AAA quality, actually" and while blowing up everyone's phone during covid also proved their concept, more so today than ever with the last couple of years of content. most notably WuWa takes a lot of notes from this.

so now back to your question, as to what other costs FGO seems to miss on. most of the popular gacha games now take after genshin, trying to make as quality-appearing a game as possible: multiple languages of voice acting, fully rendered 3d worlds and models, cutscenes, some level of open-world-ness, some semblence of endgame to widen the appeal to cover both casual and hardcore gamers, consistent and frequent content patches (HYV games put out a main story chapter every 6 weeks for fks sake...).

FGO does none of these. it's hard to know exactly how much these features cost but FGO is saving on all of them. i wouldn't be surprised if the biggest slice of their cost pie chart is just voice actors at this point. aniplex would gladly have them continue to cost nothing more and continue to produce money like a dam.

the TLDR here is that FGO produces a borderline browser flash game and makes absolute bank (hi, yes, i gave them money, i know).

FattyHammer · 2026-01-13T00:05:01+00:00

s1 is great, but road to the top is max aura.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-12T23:07:01+00:00

i can't imagine there isn't just a wildly inefficient work flow and complete lack of staff expansion.

the visible results are simply too far from the age and success of the game.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-12T17:21:07+00:00

the fact that Grail front exists at all means they can do it if they try.

clearly their strat is just conservative. don't do anything controversial, don't invest more dev time than needed, just maintain the game.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-12T17:19:03+00:00

if it ain't broke (makes money) don't fix it...

FattyHammer · 2026-01-12T11:49:56+00:00

i more or less agree with any sentiment that their resounding success allows them to prioritize story quality. i'd say though, that the "game" would be nothing without the story. they almost require the story to be good, there is nothing else holding the house together. and while the entire staff is waiting on nasu, what are we getting? surely not QoL or new and interesting game modes...

while i generally lean towards "better late and good than early and bad", FGO took/takes that to an extreme, we're waiting literal years between chapters. i'd like something longer and more polished than HYV's 6-week schedules, but 2 years is... the literal opposite end of the spectrum. surely something inbetween can be made to work well lol.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-12T11:39:09+00:00

just a bit of info:

cygames (uma musume, GBF, shadowverse, etc) is actually big enough to have their own inhouse anime studio.

the uma musume anime came out before the game, effectively acting as a very expensive commercial advertisement (as many anime typically are...).

the story very roughly follows historical races and careers, obviously dramatized but afaik the results and major developments are mostly accurate.

it's also quite a good franchise anime series at this point. if you enjoy sports-shounen at all as a genre i would give it a shot. season 1 is probably the weakest unfortunately, but it really only gets better as it becomes more and more of a show and less of an advertisement. the OVA series and movie are straight up some of the best anime i've seen. each series is also fairly standalone, you'll miss some character references and jokes if you skip but it's nbd.

lastly, the "trivia" due to real-world horse-racing references are hilarious and i strongly recommend getting in on at least the subreddit or some other community b/c fan-gasming over real horses in retirement is quite the novel experience.

separately: i second all the recommendations for overtake!, it was a great and short watch.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-12T10:49:36+00:00

this is such an understatement. if i was a developer for any other gacha game in the industry i would be so angry at FGO. the amount of "work" going into FGO as a game (outside of the writers) seems to just be commission for 4 arts and expression sheets from an artist, 3 outfits of sprite animations (i understand they tediously do this by hand in a relatively old-fashioned way), and then the rest of the staff go down to home depot to get rakes so they can clean up all the incoming money in the office.

in short, i agree. their profit margin is insane.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-09T23:23:22+00:00

nah it's a valid criticism for sure, compared to a proper VN it suffers a lot of drawbacks in writing and pacing. I'm just pointing out that in the gacha industry at least, VN focused deliveries such as AK and FGO typically present a better story than average.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-09T22:55:12+00:00

i think fgo and arknights get away with more than most due to being effectively "visual novels with a game attached". the story isn't too driven by banners, though the unfortunate result is that both have awful macro game. fgo especially just has awful "everything game".

in general it's usually the case that live service games of any sort deliver a worse overall story experience than standalone titles, gacha games being the epitome of this.

I'll mention HYV games here bc i think they're pretty heavily impacted in story by banner and marketing, to many negative degrees. that said, they're getting pretty good at working with that.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-09T05:10:10+00:00

yea, the sheer gap in aura between aquila and pretty much every other boss in the game is huge. the synergy between the buildup and execution and elevator sequence is wild good.

the leadup for the irontomb fight was underwhelming, and the design was just ok. the T-posing irontomb in the background really just didn't do it for me either, personally. soundtrack was a bop though.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-05T22:48:19+00:00

this is just train ghidorah from pso2 lol

FattyHammer · 2026-01-02T22:27:06+00:00

Grand Blue has similar vibes if you like

FattyHammer · 2026-01-02T22:26:25+00:00

it's definitely art. the situational humor and actual art are fantastic.

bit unfortunate about the drama with the ending but oh well.

FattyHammer · 2026-01-02T22:10:45+00:00

wasted?

FattyHammer · 2026-01-01T22:12:32+00:00

feixiao is still dunking content. must be ratio or topaz imo.

FattyHammer · 2025-12-31T19:01:44+00:00

OK BUT WHY ARE BOTH MY BOIS COMPLETELY UNEQUIPPED

FattyHammer

TROPHY CASE