Today’s deck is the Little Pigeon Tarot.
Could’ve sworn I’ve used this one before. Maybe I’m thinking of crows, though. Japan’s pigeons are funny because they’re not as jumpy or wary as Venezuela’s pigeons, I’m always lowkey afraid I might end up kicking one.
Today’s reaing reflects a fear of being reckless in chasing inner joy which… a few things come to mind with that, yeah.
It was a slow Saturday but shockingly a new game I didn’t even know was on the table came out so let’s jump onto that.
Yuusha to Jashin no Destiny was a 2024 game that made me become aware of the circle Fantasy Game (written in hiragana as ふぁんたじがむ). It’s something that’s tricky to talk about without sounding codescending, but there was something in the roughness of the game that I found appealing… especially since it was in the eve of the AI nonsense of nowadays exploding.
By the way, I just saw today a fucking shaver being advertised as having an AI on its bluetooth app.
ANYWAY. I’ve kept an eye on the circle ever since. After the first Yuusha to Jashin they released SEVENSTELLAE which I still like a lot and from there a barrage of shorter games where you can definitely tell a lot of improvements were happening. In fact, let me line up all of the covers one after the other so you can see what I mean.
And that’s me picking things starting from YtJ, they made games before this too.
Which leads us to the topic of today.
YtJ2 is a sequel but not one that continues the story. It’s more like you have similar building blocks and do something different with them. Think Breath of Fire and such.
The first game was about Marsh and his childhood friend Mia, Mia gets kidnapped by evil forces and Marsh embarks in a quest to recue her alongside blonde Elenore, pink-haired Remifa and blue-haired Puria.
This game instead focuses on Marc, who lived in a sky island with Luciel. One day instead of feeding magic to the World Tree they decide to have sex and this makes two entities break free and take Luciel away, throwing Marc into the regular world where he ends up travelling with blonde widow Remna, red-haired fighter Manarie, and blue-haired mage Levian.
If you squint and only take it at the briefest of face values, it might look like a repeat, but it’s more refined. It truly feels like reexploring an initial draft a second time in a way. It kinda reminded me of the differences (and similarities for that matter) between Suikoden and Suikoden 2.
The gameplay remains the same, which is to say… simple, but one detail I like in that front is that it has a skill tree that reflects each character’s personality.
Marc comes from the sky so his tree looks like two wings of equal colors, Remna is a widow so hers is a red and blue hearts connected, Levian’s look to me like two books? But my favorite is Manarie’s. Not only are they single-track trees that show her musclehead personality (a trait also shown in Marc’s), the left half of it is LOCKED until you solve the plotline with her sister, giving more meaning to both halves of the other characters’ trees.
All of this is a means to say that the game put a lot of effort into the personalities of everyone and I actually wanted to see their journeys to the end. Sure, they were sluts with huge tits, but they were sluts with huge tits you were cheering for.
In terms of kinks, this game doesn’t have anything too extreme or too crazy that I’d feel the need to warn others about. Though I guess I should clarify where Marc falls in the equation.
Basically the way things go is that Marc only cares about his girl Luciel, and aside from a couple of special game overs and a “we have to literally fuck the power overflow out of him” sort of scene, he has no sexual interest in his travel buddies. It’s actually kinda funny (in a way that feels deliberate mind you) to see him be like “aight, I’ll wait here, you girls have fun” or be conveniently knocked out.
Also, it’s a very small detail but I do appreciate that Marc isn’t the one to break the girls free when stuff happens and they can free themselves just fine after getting some dick.
Now, the thing that stuck out the most to me was actually something I’ve left out until now.
Yes, the art evolution is fun to see and also encouraging. Yes, the writing improvements are awesome to see. But the thing that didn’t leave my brain while playing was something a bit more…discreet.
Refinement Of Kinks.
What I mean is that even beyond the quality improvements and experimentation (there’s a few CGs where I can see the artist experimenting with adding veins to the skin, for example), compared to the first one you can tell the artist has honed in harder on the specific things that get them going in terms of face expressions and such.
As an example, after being familiar with the rest of their catalog, the hooded-eyed black-haired Luciel of the game’s cover made me go “ah yes, this checks out” before I even started the game.
Even artists laser-focused in a single fetish go through this process where, either through experimentation or research, they discover bit by bit specific angles, or faces, or poses that hit them harder than the rest and then take it from there.
Mind you, when I say something gets them going it might just be a non-sexual thing on top of the regular kink, but it’s an important part of the creative process that I feel is more evident when you talk about fetishes and sexual preferences.
Anyway, Yuusha to Jashin 2 is great. Especially because the first I felt like I liked with the asterisk of the slightly rough art, but this one feels like I can recommend it including considerations about the art. It doesn’t have any particularly mindblowing mechanics but it had me invested from beginning to end and I enjoyed my time with it so hey…
Also, while I’m still wary of harping on the point at risk of sounding codescending somehow, I need to also emphasize again the sheer contrast in quality in just two years between releases and how giddy that makes me.
In case it wasn’t obvious I’ve always (since I was a kid, actually) loved seeing artists evolve in their craft. Be it from those volumes of Condorito that had the really old comics by the original author on them and comparing to the more recent ones, or watching the Bleach anime and then reading the manga and seeing what changed as the style developed.
There’s not that many chances nowadays to see this sort of improvement happen in front of me, and admittedly part of it is having the artist or the work catch my attention, and even the titfuck fetish that I have, that can be tricky. But the thing that immediately caught my eye about the original YtJ was that it had this sort of ambition where even if a pose was hard and the landing wasn’t quite landed, fuck it, they at least tried.
So I guess there’s an element of remembering that and seeing it pay off that’s really fun to see.
Point being that while this is a game that I would’ve enjoyed just on principle of it being well-made and engaging, it happening with an author I’ve been quietly cheering for on the sidelines adds a lot to it.
I’ve always been one to cheer for that, but I feel like in the current year Creative Hell it’s even more important to cheer for that.