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[Hide] (747.2KB, 780x956) >>10775
>I never did believe the little sisters would replace the main 4
They DID keep teasing it, though, as if that was their whole purpose. Being called Candidates in themselves, the whole deal with the Succession Ritual, constantly putting them through arcs about "growing up" and "coming into their own", you could be forgiven for believing they were being set up to replace the main four, especially in the beginning. Only thing is I think people rioted hard enough back then that they relented and put the focus back on the CPUs with the whole Candidate succession thing forced to the background to put them into more of a "emergency backup/vice CPU" role. But at this point and especially in light of Unlimited, I believe more strongly now that Compile Heart always had plans to replace the main four in some way, it just didn't work out that time, now they are going for attempt #2. They treat it like this is the only way of advancing the setting, as if they're sick of writing the old CPUs or something.
>With Ciel replacing Noire, I'd need to know the specifics of how that happened before juding Noire for it.
The way I see it though, it's hard to look at Noire passing Uni over for an honest-to-God literal who for succession as anything but an indictment of her. You really trusted Uni THAT little, Noire? Unless, of course, the succession wasn't actually fully voluntary, but then Noire probably wouldn't be on friendly terms with Ciel.
I'm sure you COULD spin this as her believing Uni would be a good advisor to Ciel, but even then, it says something that it turned out that way and not the other way around. If anything Ciel should be the one advising Uni.
>I would agree with you that all this as setting that happens off-screen before the main story starts is lame.
I want to see the how and why of these goddesses coming to be. Unlimited apparently just does the time reset thing and then acts like they were always there. How did they come to be? Was there a Shift Period? Did the people basically just decide they were tired of Blanc, Noire and Vert and decide to make replacements? Why did the seniors relinquish their positions to them? So many questions, and yet according to someone in /nepgen/ the closest to an answer we get is some meta bullshit. I think Unlimited deliberately avoids answering those questions because of the implications it would raise. Everything I know from Neptunia lore says new goddesses (not Candidates) inherently conflict with and eventually outright replace the old ones. VII and the Next Forms were bucking this cycle, only for CH to backtrack and basically force replacements.
>I know you don't like Nepgear but I hope you'll agree with me that her character development shouldn't have been deleted after we see how tough she can be.
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...I admit it, I liked Butt Monkey Nepgear. It was genuinely funny to me and I'm kinda sad they dropped the "mastering useless skills out of nowhere" skit because Nepgearfags got mad.
That said, I thought Nepgear was fine in the first arcs of VII. It was when they wrote the CPUs with their Next Forms to job in a laughably contrived manner just so she could get a "we're sorry for making fun of her in Victory, here's a rehash of mk2 where she plays hero again" arc was when she started grating me.
>The separate arcs in VII focused on the main characters for each country were a great idea
A great IDEA, yes. In practice, while the second part of the Lowee arc was alright, the first part was just Blanc playing babysitter to the stupid brats again. And it was too short to really make a serious impact. It needed to encompass a good part of the game. I've always said that with the different "factions"/settings, Neptunia could benefit from a route system, but everything has to revolve around Nep or Gear eventually. I'll admit, while I hate Hyperdevotion for being a giant Noire wankfest, it's also in part because it's an honest-to-God serious effort to pander to Noirefags and it makes me jealous as a Blancfag. The whole game is just about her and her alone, and even let's (you) romance her. Blanc doesn't really get that luxury even in Megatag which is supposed to be her game. Neither does Vert in 4GO; Neptune even makes a point of reminding her that it is NOT her game even though by all rights it really should be. Why was only Noire allowed that privilege?
>With the same number of spinoff games they have done a small-scale but real story focused on each main goddess, Nepgear, Uni, and Rom+Ram as a pair, and still had 2 more spinoffs left for Uzume, Ultradimension characters, and still another 2 more for random bullshit.
I've said before that the spinoff hell everyone complains about wouldn't have been so bad if the spinoffs were actually decent and/or used to focus more on specific characters instead of VTUMORS or random shoot-em-ups or reselling the bike minigame from GMRE as a full-price game. I think the early spinoffs were better about this than the later ones or the totally-not-a-mainline games like SvS. Producing Perfection had a good idea, that honestly I think should be applied to mainline games, but was instead basically wasted on being an IdolM@ster ripoff.
>You talk a lot about Blanc getting the shaft, but she's IN all the games. Your worries about her mattering are actual suffering of a Unifag, Romfag or Ramfag for years and years.
>It could even be worse, imagine if you're waifu was Chika, Financier or, goddess forbid, cursed spinoff-only character like Ester.
The old Blancbro did tell me that Candidatefags had quite a bit to complain about over the years. But I guess having the benefit of hindsight, I don't think the Candidates were ever really going to go away. Most of the games where they were absent were spinoffs set in another dimension. They are too embedded in Hyperdimension's setting to avoid when writing a game there. Yeah, you could always have it worse, I personally think Plutiafags have it the worst because she was a central character for one of the most prominent games and then basically just got told to fuck off. At least the others you mentioned were never really anything but side characters, there wasn't really the expectation that they would stick around.
Anyway, my central feeling and complaint as regards Blanc's roles wasn't really the fear that she won't be in (at least until now), but that being forced to share screentime with all these other characters butting into her roles is reducing the amount of space she has to have her own character moments, and to grow. For as much as I get emotional about Victory's Lowee arc, it was a genuine arc for Blanc, it was something that revealed the crucial elements of her character, allowed drama to unfold from them, and then allowed her to grow from it. There's the thing, since then Blanc has largely been static as a character, reduced to the simple formula of books, muh flat chest and babysitting Rom and Ram. And this, yes, has been a problem with all of the main characters and probably the whole franchise for a while. So I yearn for Blanc to have an arc, nay a whole storyline to herself again, damn those brats and being Neptune's cheerleader again, so she could reveal more layers to her character that I know she has. But now she's been saddled with a retirement and losing her prominent position to Rouge. Now it's ROUGE that's going to get all the development, while Blanc is reduced to just a stepping stone for her. Instead of trying to explore the main four and their characters more, Compile Heart basically just decided they couldn't do anything more with them and tossed them aside for a new cast. THAT's what I hate about all this. Even the Candidates got a better deal out of this because now they're just being Candidates to the new goddesses, with new characters to bounce off of, while Blanc and the rest are now just "seniors", the old goddesses who are on their way out and no longer have a formal position or obligation to the setting.
Ah, this took a while. But I appreciate you dumping all your complaints about the franchise here. I kinda expected you to be more with me on Uni's position in Unlimited here, but I guess I can understand being excited for basically anything when your expectations are already at rock bottom. In the end, maybe you do feel the same as me. All I really want is more focus on Blanc and a progression beyond the static characters we've been seeing for a decade or more now. But while Unlimited definitely shook up the status quo, it did it in just about precisely the way I DIDN'T want. I wanted Blanc to be her own character, if not her own protagonist, again, instead of these tired jokes. I want her to have a journey towards being more secure in herself and having more confidence as a girl, and to be more comfortable expressing her more hotblooded tomboyish side. I want her to win over Gamindustri and her rivals. I want to see more of Lowee and what its internal workings are like. Is Unlimited's path really the way to get any of this, or is she just going to get overshadowed by Rouge now like she was by Rom and Ram before?
Last edited by loweeanperspective