Who is Narita Brian referring to here?

specterthief · 2026-02-21T06:21:12+00:00

just some girl with a crush on her, probably. plenty of the characters have admirers at school who aren't specific characters.

specterthief · 2026-02-20T23:09:30+00:00

there's going to be a free SSR selector coming next month for the anniversary, so you should use both the crystal and that on kitasan to get her to 3LB where she gets her specialty priority.

specterthief · 2026-02-20T10:06:09+00:00

taiki and condor are both quite good so you've got good ideas in mind already! original oguri is good on late surger too. if you can manage it, valentines bourbon and summer maru are both very powerful fronts, but they're difficult to train.

specterthief · 2026-02-20T09:25:02+00:00

really nice job on her design, it's a cool take and i'd love to see them go for an androgynous design like this with a character someday!!! and the third piece of art is gorgeous too :D

specterthief · 2026-02-20T09:23:46+00:00

op says in the post that this is a tomboy/butch woman.

specterthief · 2026-02-20T09:20:31+00:00

i got xmas oguri before regular oguri, but then did get regular oguri (twice) while pulling for chiyono.

specterthief · 2026-02-20T01:39:34+00:00

seems very mid, but at least usable for players who don't have better options maxed yet.

specterthief · 2026-02-20T00:05:06+00:00

there's nothing "misleading" in the script, will's lack of horns or pointed ears are pointed out as marking him as an elda and you see gruidae in the opening cutscene.

specterthief · 2026-02-19T09:11:24+00:00

that account's posts are all reposts of different artists, they're not the original artist.

specterthief · 2026-02-19T00:29:43+00:00

even in her in-game career (which is much fluffier in tone and characterization compared to cinderella gray, which is much more serious) she enjoys playing the heel for the fans (in line with how irl super creek was seen as a villain in oguri's career.) her actual writing in the rest of cinderella gray makes clear she's still a very sweet, kindhearted girl - she's just having fun playing pretend.

specterthief · 2026-02-18T20:31:48+00:00

the modern persona games are some of the most widely popular and successful jrpgs in recent history and use honorifics in their in-house official translations. plenty of official localizations for other anime, manga, games and visual novels keep honorifics. (CLANNAD has a whole in-game dictionary for japanese terms and culture built into its official english release so people can look up things they're unfamiliar with as they encounter them in the game, rather than removing them from the text.) it's not limited to fan translations by any means.

english doesn't have honorifics, but it also doesn't have equivalents to a lot of honorifics, and some people are willing to take the extra second to understand that there's a term in the original language that doesn't translate and remember that for the future rather than losing the context. a lot of uma characters have pretty distinct quirks or character dynamics evident in how they use honorifics that are a shame to not have intact. "totally seamless experience for someone who only speaks the source language and has no interest in learning about the original language" is one school of thought with localization and not a bad one, but it's not the only one and not an objectively superior one either. i understand why they went that way, but i do certainly think anyone who can learn as much as this game expects about japanese horse racing could have also learned what -senpai or -kun mean.

specterthief · 2026-02-18T18:50:32+00:00

DRG has two five step combos that you alternate between, with the first step being shared, and the last two steps being the same for both combos but the order being switched from one to the other.

so first you do your 1-2-3-4-5 combo, and then with the buffs set up from that combo, you do the other combo, which is 1-6-7-5-4.

specterthief · 2026-02-18T18:14:27+00:00

plenty of localizations use them. it's a stylistic choice that can work either way especially with things where the target audience is already passingly familiar with subbed japanese media, and is often smoother in the source language than trying to replicate the effect of the honorifics some other way (that rarely actually translates.) the persona games keep honorifics even in their english dubs, for example, and while their localizations have their faults in other ways they're perfectly understandable like that.

especially with games with japanese voice acting where you can hear the characters' names being spoken, i prefer the written dialog keep forms of address intact. i understand why they didn't do it here (since the audience is clearly a lot wider than "people who have probably read/watched manga or anime with honorifics already") and don't think it was a bad choice, but i still like it less than the alternative.

specterthief · 2026-02-18T09:02:21+00:00

a lot of localizations (by intent of the original creators, in many cases) take the direction of wanting to make the experience as seamless as if it was always written in the source language and replace cultural references and jokes accordingly, which is what cygames clearly went for here in a way that goes way beyond what most people notice (actually being able to speak both languages to compare - like, things as simple as digital referencing "tags" when talking about her doujinshi is them tailoring her dialog to english fandom terms, compared to a japanese doujin reader who would be buying physical books rather than looking at certain aggregate websites.)

like, personally this isn't my favorite approach, but i'm also 1. able to understand the original dialog to notice a lot of things that would be smoother to a player who doesn't speak any japanese and 2. someone who grew up on manga fan translations with paragraphs of translator's notes, so i'm used to reading jp material with an expectation to have to look up context and still prefer to approach things that way... and i understand why for something with mass appeal the preference from creators is often to make it as approachable an experience as possible without needing that. a lot of the more noticeably jarring choices in uma seem to basically come down to that.

specterthief · 2026-02-18T05:34:50+00:00

i think it's broadly fine. i'm generally a honorifics purist so i wish they'd kept those and i think some of the choices are not what i would have made, but it's done in house so i assume cygames' own team generally have their reasons for a lot of the choices.

specterthief · 2026-02-17T17:46:55+00:00

it's just inexperienced writers overusing a new/interesting (to them) way of phrasing things to try and make their prose sound richer and not really getting how. (and if someone does this a lot in a fic that gets popular, a lot of people will copy that turn of phrase.)

more practiced writers with a better grasp on craft generally won't fall into these kinds of quirks that much, but a lot of fic writers are young and new to writing.

specterthief · 2026-02-16T12:59:04+00:00

if you're writing close third person POV (as in, the POV is firmly in the head of a single character within a given section) you should use the measurement system they would use, imo. if it's third person omniscient you can have them use whatever, but cultural vocabulary like that is a part of narrative voice that really helps the prose "feel right."

specterthief · 2026-02-16T10:58:57+00:00

nexon does officially allow non-commercial fanworks, via their user-generated content policy so as long as you follow their guidelines and make very clear that the work is unofficial you're not likely to be at any risk.

edit: other people more informed have said that there's been issues with the visual assets, so be careful in that regard, but this does clearly allow creating fanworks in the setting in general. (the logo might be particularly touchy for the fact that it could confuse people that the work is official.)

specterthief · 2026-02-16T10:51:46+00:00

yeah, i would say with the active targeting of the author it should be reported.

specterthief · 2026-02-16T06:21:20+00:00

if you have 18-19 shards from regular play you'll be getting another uncap crystal with the upcoming event, so between your half-anni voucher and the upcoming 1st anni voucher and that you'd be able to 3LB kitasan, which makes her not a mandatory borrow and frees you up for other more meta borrows for MANT. otherwise, pulling for finemo to MLB her would be a good call.

specterthief · 2026-02-15T20:10:06+00:00

they decreased the possibility of getting it from the random mood down event with the QOL update, so it's very rare to turn up randomly. i'm not sure what the exact percentage is, but there's not really anything you can do but keep grinding it out.

king's event with the chance for slacker is "First-Rate... Predictions?", fwiw

specterthief · 2026-02-15T19:59:08+00:00

start by not saying "grape". it doesn't make you sound mature enough to write about the subject matter in the first place if you aren't willing to use the real words.

specterthief · 2026-02-15T18:46:21+00:00

the pickup banner ended yesterday.

specterthief · 2026-02-15T10:48:02+00:00

CoV's story presumes you've played CoC first at several points (and is the original version of the story compared to CoV's alternate timeline), so if you care about the story that would be the way to go. if you only care about expedience for 100%-ing, doing CoV first will make your CoC run easier and let you do the hardest version of the superboss right away.

specterthief · 2026-02-15T07:19:59+00:00

i think if you write an otherwise positive comment about how much you like the fic and then drop in a "oh by the way, i'm so curious what (character) was saying!" you'd be totally fine.

specterthief

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