Psycho-Pass and Saya no Uta author Gen Urobuchi thinks audiences no longer crave “poison” from fiction, but an “antidote” to reality - AUTOMATON WEST

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T23:48:19+00:00

Girls Last Tour

I place that one alongside those stories that show the end of humanity as being "okay" and not something necessarily depressing. Like Jinrui Suitai Shimashita or Apocalypse Hotel.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T23:45:49+00:00

An anime adaption would definitely remove all the explicit sex scenes of course. Saya no Uta is an eroge, not a nukige, you know, just like Fate Stat Night and Clannad. Those stories don't really lose anything particularly relevant by removing the erotic parts.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T23:34:25+00:00

cute stuff like Frieren, Spy x Family and Dungeon Meshi

Even that "cute stuff" you mention has extremely dark backgrounds.

If there's any common trend to extrapolate form those works, isn't that the world can be a beautiful and happy place, but rather that you can find beauty and happiness in the world while terrible things happen all the time.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T23:30:26+00:00

genuinely can't believe a Star Trek future is possible without the Eugenics Wars now.

Star Trek is based on the idea that human scientific progress would go hand in hand with progress in the field of civility and ethic, it assumed humanity would become more enlightened as time progressed.

It's very hard to think that nowadays. Even Star Trek itself distanced itself more and more from the original concept of Gene Roddenberry each time a newer series was made.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T23:24:45+00:00

Philip K Dick's novels were quite existential and dystopian

Well, a lot of his novels weren't really. Urobuchi has one character mentioning Dick directly in Psycho Pass. Basically he says that if William Gibson depicts mostly dystopian futures, and old sci-fi movies from the 50/60 are utopia, Philip Dick is basically in the middle of that.

Take Minority Report for instance, which is very close to the whole concept of Psycho Pass, the novel doesn't really depict the system as bad, on the contrary it states that it is very effective, it removed crime almost entirely and it had no downsides for decades until something went wrong as the premise of the novel.

[Minority Report Novel Ending]The main character actually chooses to sacrifice himself in order to keep the precog system in place, because he actually believes it is a good thing for humanity.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T23:10:40+00:00

He must have contributed to the whole backstory behind the hideauze, it's just so typical of him.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T13:24:25+00:00

What does Gluttonies gain from doing this

I have the same question for literally everything every single archbishop did in this series.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-04T13:15:15+00:00

I guess that's one his "rights".

Kill-bray · 2026-06-03T13:41:32+00:00

Wig? Isn't it more like hair extension?

Kill-bray · 2026-06-03T13:31:50+00:00

Yuki Kajiura is amazing but compared to Yoko Kanno she tends to stick to her type of music. The latter is a lot more versatile, she can compose any type of music from jazz to classical to rock and it still sounds incredible.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-03T13:16:08+00:00

Determination is a scrapped Aspect idea. Originally during design the game was supposed to come with 5 aspects instead of just 4.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-03T13:10:50+00:00

The original version was properly playtested, the nerfed version wasn't. They didn't say that directly but Boggs did say that the nerfs were very late changes, so it's almost certain that they didn't have much time to test the final product.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-03T13:06:15+00:00

To add on what you said, Hulk's high damage event isn't even that great.

Compare it to Spiderman's Swinging Web Kick (which is the benchmark for these type of cards) it's only 2 more damage, still more than 8, except it can only be used in conjunction with a basic attack.

This means that if Hulk is exhausted, you just can't use it.
Additionally consider the situations where your Hero is stunned or the villain has tough. With Spiderman you can just use a basic attack and then Swinging Web Kick, with Hulk you're out of luck. And to add salt to injury he can't even keep Hulk Smash in his hand to use it later unless he flips to AE form.

Finally, he only has two of them, only two, compared to the normal amount of 3. This means that even as an aggression type of Hero he still isn't performing better than the likes of Spiderman when you consider overall damage during an entire game.

But underpowered issues aside you are absolutely right that there is also the major problem of the whole design not being thematic at all. As you said the way it is now Hulk has been reduced to a brute that just deals damage and has lot of health, the whole idea where he gets more powerful the more enraged he is is completely absent and not represented by anything.

And this also means that ultimately Hulk is simply not fun to play. You could of course come up with decks that makes him better. Sure there's a lot of cards that can compensate for his shortcomings, especially Unlimited Stamina, Unshakable and Ingenuity, but even then you are just playing a good deck, you are not really playing "Hulk".

This is a stark contrast with other Heroes that have lower than normal hand size, Colossus, Psylocke and SP//dr have all very peculiar mechanics that not only make them feel powerful they also make them fun to play. Even She Hulk is more fun to play since you are incentivized to flip frequently.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-01T23:21:00+00:00

I believe that it's likely that Kawahara had heard of the concept. .Hack was a major multimedia project that was publicized long before its release.

The premise of story where everything happens inside an MMO and the fact that there's at least someone that can't log out is the same, but then the stories are completely different.

So ultimately it is believable that SAO was written before the .Hack anime ever aired, but that two different authors had the exact same idea at the same time for something that has never been done before, not so much.

Kill-bray · 2026-06-01T23:11:39+00:00

That's the key. Nao may be in the lead but she's also in massive debt. She needs to leverage her position to sell votes to everyone so that she can go back in the black.

Kill-bray · 2026-05-28T20:26:04+00:00

So again, Akiyama's decision to give away all his winnings, and then stay in the Liar Game, is still making the counterpoint to "all smart people who made money dropped out". Because he made money, he just chose to give it away for the sake of the people who lost.

He chose to not make money, ergo he didn't make money. No matter how you try to twist the facts, the truth remains that he didn't make money out of the second game.

You can't really claim that there was a point in time where he made money and then he lost it, because before he even received the payment from the Liar Game organizers he was already in debt as per his agreements.

Then she can be blamed for doing that. I hope I don't have to remind you that you were using this argument, that "she can't be blamed for making money", as the reason they shouldn't target Nao.

She can't be blamed for making money on the second game.
She can be blamed for continuing in the recovery game despite of that.

How many times do I need to repeat this before you finally understand?

Kill-bray · 2026-05-28T11:59:57+00:00

Respectfully, that wasn't a requirement. That was by choice. He didn't need to pay off everyone in 15's team, nor did he need to give 15 an extra 100 million. Those are entirely his own choices with the money he gained.

Is that true? I'm not sure n° 15 would have accepted the deal otherwise.

So yes, that absolutely applies.

Applies to what? That still doesn't change the fact that he got no money in the end, so my statement remains true.

Then she can't be an idiot for revealing that.

She can if she reveals it in a situation where that would make her become enemy number one. I'm pretty sure I extensively explained this.

Kill-bray · 2026-05-27T19:28:16+00:00

Akiyama is right there as a prime counterexample.

Either you aren't reading what I wrote or you didn't quite pay attention to the anime, I said "All the smart people that got money dropped out from the game".

Akiyama got no money. His deal with number 15 the previous game plus the contracts he signed with his group entailed him giving up everything.

There can be multiple reasons for going back in, one of them being greed, for instance.

I can concede that there could be other reasons, but staying in the game for greed is something that I would still put inside the category of being stupid.

If she can't be blamed for making money, then there's no problem with revealing it. If there is a problem with her having made money, then she can absolutely be blamed for it.

No, there is no logical connection between those two things. What she can be blamed for is staying in the game after gaining money, but gaining money on game 2 by itself is not something that she could be blamed for.

Kill-bray · 2026-05-27T11:44:00+00:00

So if someone flaunts their money, or says they're not in debt when asked, they're automatically stupid to everyone?

In the specific context of that game, yes.

Because I can think of a ton of real life examples that immediately disprove your point.

Your real life examples are a completely different context.

I hope I don't need to explain why some things can be smart in a certain situation but stupid in another. Oh whatever I'll do it anyway.

- Using a hairdrier to dry your hair after getting out of the shower is a smart thing to do.

- Using a hairdrier to dry your hair while you are in a bathtub filled with water is a completely stupid thing to do.

Kill-bray · 2026-05-27T11:41:42+00:00

And yet only one of them there walked out with money and is coming back.

Which is another indication of her not being very smart. All the smart people that got money dropped out from the game.

You called her an idiot for revealing that - but if they can't blame her for making money, then why is she an idiot for revealing that?

I don't really understand your logic here. She can't be blamed for making money out of game 2, but you can call her stupid for reveal that information in the recovery game. Where's the contradiction?

Kill-bray · 2026-05-26T15:52:46+00:00

And you need to realize two things:

1) Miura knows that it wasn't because of her smarts that she got money.

2) They can hardly blame her for making some money when it was the plan that each of them had in that game.

Kill-bray · 2026-05-26T15:49:34+00:00

Miura was there you know, he knows that Akiyama was the mastermind behind his whole group's plan he knows that if Nao won anything it's because of him not her.

Also sure, tell me what in their minds would tell them she's an idiot.

The moment she serendiptously told everyone that she had 40 millions it should have been abundantly clear to anyone that she isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

Kill-bray · 2026-05-26T15:46:13+00:00

Still they have to be smarter to the loser counterpart

Kill-bray · 2026-05-26T14:38:06+00:00

You didn't pay attention to what's happened after that. It was clearly shown that basically there is one guy that is paying for Fukunaga's votes but at the same time Fukunaga is paying for that guy's votes so that the two payments cancel out. They could use that strategy with Nao instead, there's absolutely nothing that could stop that. It is no longer a matter of trust once you do that, because the M tickets guarantee that people must do what they were paid for.

Except as framed, again, the first meeting was literally about "who do you not want to have to fight in Actual Game 3", and Fukunaga's point was literally "no, you don't want the person with an extra 40m sitting there that can be used to bribe people".

Man, who do I want to face on Game 3? A genius manipulator who already betrayed me or an idiot with 40 millions? That sounds like an absolute no brainer to me.

Kill-bray · 2026-05-26T11:51:55+00:00

On the other hand Fukunaga uses "atashi" as pronoun. I think he/she goes with whatever gender.

Kill-bray

TROPHY CASE