#Am I complaining about low stakes in a gacha game made for general audiences? Yes.

[wretchedbirdthing]

I don’t want to hate on Lost Word for any reason, that’s not what this is about; I don’t actually care all that much about the game. I just want to put out my own thoughts on their “version” of Aka or what I'll refer to as Shikigami Aya (cause they're wholly two different entities).

(I’ll probably put this under a thingy if it gets too long) (it got too long)

Now, I want to preface this by stating that I am very biased. Very very very and obviously biased towards Aka over Shikigami Aya. So keep that in mind! This is also just my opinion. I believe that despite this, my points still stand.

I also don’t want to talk about the characters themselves, mostly because I’m not fully comfortable in evaluating that (I don’t know if Yukari would wait for someone’s permission before doing something though I’m leaning towards “no” but I’m not comfortable with making a definite answer).

I also haven’t read the event yet cause I’d like to finish all the CDs first just in case the characterization sucks and I don’t want a bad impression of Merry and Renko. So I’ll just be going over the themes from the youtube trailer and the screenshots so graciously posted by neoaya. (I’ll read the story later once I’m done with the CDs.)

Let’s start with the “permission slip” that Yukari obtained from the Tenma. The concept by itself as a plot device is underwhelming to say the least. Having permission given by another character removes Aya’s agency in the process thus making the stakes lower and the story as a whole all the less satisfying. It could’ve been Hatate or any other tengu because it wasn’t their decision, it was the Tenma’s. 

It shifts the characterization towards one of circumstance, rather than being directed by the characters themselves. This isn’t because of Aya’s failings or her character faults or anything she did, it’s because the Tenma said so. But what of Aya? What are her thoughts on it? I don’t know about anyone else, but the Tenma’s reasons and justifications are far less interesting to me than Aya’s reasons and justifications, maybe because we barely know anything about the Tenma. 

It’s not fair to say that it’s bad writing but it’s just unsatisfying and unfulfilling, and just kind of lame. 

Disregarding what I don’t know about shikigami, it’s safe to assume that “becoming a shikigami” is a much greater deal than what’s presented in her profile on the account of what a shikigami is (to put it extremely simply, a shikigami is a spirit shoved into a youkai to make said youkai into a living computer). Aya is stated to be curious about what it’d be like to be a shikigami and that she could always “expose the truth” “if things went awry.” I won’t harp on it too much, but it seems like shikigami aren’t things that shouldn’t be taken so lightly. 

Aya as a shikigami brings such burning questions to my mind. Why would she do such a thing? What made her trust the least trustworthy (probably) youkai in Gensokyo? Did she know what she was getting into before she was turned into a shikigami? Did she know that she’d essentially be a servant to Yukari? Someone who you’d definitely not want to be a servant of? Does she even know what a shikigami is? What could have transpired for a typical youkai to give up their entire life to serve as Yukari’s servant? What do her friends think? What about the other tengu? (I acknowledge that these last two questions could be answered by the event and probably are but the others still stand.)

All these questions and more don’t matter because it wasn’t her decision. She had no control over how she ended up. All the tension and conflict that could arise vanishes. 

And that’s just such a shame.

Before I move on, I just wanted to focus on the “permission slip” given to Yukari by the Tenma. I’m giving it the silly name of a “permission slip” because that’s what it is; a document signed by the Tenma that explicitly states that Yukari has permission to turn Aya into a shikigami. I gave it that name because it’s also infantilizing to the characters involved. Having Yukari not only ask someone for permission but getting a signed note stating that she has permission, as if she’s a child asking their parents if they could go on a field trip, feels so childish, as if she doesn’t have any agency herself. Having Yukari act so cocky towards Aya about having permission and having Aya’s first thought be if Yukari forged the signature and not something that reinforces her position as an independent person reinforces this almost childish nature of the characters.

It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

(I said I didn’t want to harp on this but I did anyway, sorry! I will admit that I don’t know much about the tengu and their system of governance but I do know that Aya isn’t too fond of it. I also could be wrong about all of this if it’s discussed in the event.)

Moving onto the next point, that being Aya’s relation with Zenki, the oni that “possesses” her. It seems that Aya isn’t normally “possessed” by Zenki and Zenki only really makes their appearance when Aya uses her “phantasm-level power.”

My feelings and arguments are less concrete and more subjective than the previous point.

I don’t know, as a narrative device, it just seems kind of lame. She’s just normal Aya when she’s not using her powers? Sure she has to listen to Yukari’s rules and everything to keep the powers but still. Aya herself says that she’d “become pathetically weak” if she breaks Yukari’s rules, but her profile states that she’d just go back to having her normal power. I’d probably trust her profile over Aya herself because that's probably what Yukari told her. 

It seems almost “too easy” for Aya to just remain Aya. 

It has potential at least. There’s the irony being so power hungry that you’d do all these (potentially) terrible things to keep it yet you could go back to being normal at any time if only you abandoned that power.

Though it seems like Aya has had some alterations to her personality. She states that she “feels a bit like Ran” occasionally. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and not harp on this point too much.

I feel like Shikigami Aya has missed potential at a narrative level due to how her transformation into a shikigami is set up. It makes her backstory and character underwhelming due to her lack of agency and control.

But at the end of the day, it’s a fun, goofy character written for a fun, goofy game for fun, so it doesn’t really matter all that much (I say as I finish writing all of this).

#If I am wrong then I am wrong and I will be the first to admit that #Am I complaining about low stakes in a gacha game made for general audiences? Yes. #aka yakumo #I guess this is my first real akapost huh.. #Once I read the story and if my opinion changes I'll update it #I wrote this at like 3am last night so I apologize if there's any errors #In other words the yuri isn't toxic enough