「今そこにある聖戦」 (Ima Soko ni Aru Seisen)
“The Crusade Happening Over There”

There’s gamer pride over maintaining one’s reputation and then there’s obsessive compulsive disorder. In Keima’s case, the line between the two blurs badly when’s he’s faced with the buggiest romantic simulation game ever and still tries to get through it. While it wasn’t quite Endless Eight, there was a lot of looping going on as well. For those with traumatizing memories of that Suzumiya Haruhi debacle, don’t worry, it was actually funny here. I will admit that I wasn’t foreseeing one of potentially several episodes centering around a heroine in one of Keima’s games though. It came as a bit of a pleasant surprise too, seeing as the ending sequence had me believing we’d only have four girls featured in this adaptation. With the pace the producers have been going at of roughly a heroine per episode, I’ve been scratching my head about how that pacing adds up episode-wise, so it was nice to have that put to rest with the introduction of Azuka Sora (Sakurai Tomo of Macross 7 fame). Of course, I didn’t really consider that until the episode ended, because I was too amused over seeing Keima’s pride as the “Otoshigami” be his own downfall. The idea of maintaining some sort of reputation online isn’t completely foreign to me except in my case I’ll think “screw it” before I’m weeping in tears about not being able to cover EVERY single anime series out there. Yeah, I said it! Screw it all! I got some Divine Rage for you right here if you’re wondering why series X isn’t being covered! *Rawr*

Anyway, I was a pretty avid gamer back in the day and would torture myself trying to beat ones with horrible game mechanics or were clearly “broken” in terms of difficulty, but playing a spaghetti code written one that would crash two out of three times on boot up and has a save feature that would do the same has to be the metaphoric equivalent of putting the “dic” in “ridiculous” up your own ass. Some may say there isn’t a clear line between undying persistence and absolute stupidity, to which I’ll retort is because when you’re in Keima’s shoes, the line is so damn far away it’s a freaken dot. And no, I don’t mean he’s sitting all cozy in his throne on the persistent side for those cheeky smart alecs out there. However, I will say that as someone who had a bit of an obsession with being a “completionist”, the sight of that lunch menu he was faced with when he tried to explore every single possible choice and got Elsie to map it out in a decision diagram put a whole new profound meaning in the saying, “Better you than me.” Like seriously, “Oh my GOD!!!” doesn’t even properly convey how completely absurd that is without a save function. I don’t even think the obligatory, “You got to be f**king kidding me”, covers how badly one is asking for it from behind by trying to tackle that list. It’s only one decision point in the path too, meaning each addition option increases the possible combinations exponentially. Oh this is a “Play Field Personal” alright, where the field is your butt and the playing comes from giving it to you from every angle. “Do I want to see your drawing you ask?” I’m going to have to go with the third option Sora, which is popping this Sony UMD failure of a format out and breaking it in half. It’s a broken Sony now!

To Keima’s credit (of which he deserves a ton with the way his stupid brute force method paid off), I’m surprised he was only taken to the point of tears once. Granted, there were some pretty close calls where he was about to break, but he managed to keep it together and bottle up the rage while showing Elsie how retarded the looping was. Crashing on boot up? Unfortunately there’s no bottling that up, as all the built up blood in his head would have popped multiple veins. In the end, Keima did manage to “save Sora” from being featured in a game that two guys probably coded in their basement overnight, and went through some pretty damn trying times only to encounter a never before seen but equally buggy screen. (Hurray!) He probably should have documented how he managed to beat the Crayon game from hell on its Wikipedia page just to prove he had done it though. No one would probably care, but at least it’s a testament to the suffering he endured. Personally, if I were to actually try to make it through this game, I would’ve dumped the ROM and tried hacking it. That would’ve been much better use waste of my time. The first thing to be taken out would have definitely been the stupid dodge ball mini game with repeating characters in the background for player “griefing” purposes. In any case, this episode was a prime example of beating one’s self up for the entertainment of others, and Keima delivered wonderfully in that regard. We all know the real “victim” in all this was Elsie. 🙂

(On a blogging note, I do wish I made time to cover the 30th anniversary Gunpla special.)

 

ED3 Sequence

ED3: 「たった一度の奇跡」 (Tatta Ichido no Kiseki) by 櫻井智 (Sakurai Tomo)
Watch the 3rd ED!: Download, Streaming ▼

Preview

55 Comments

    1. Well, in the manga, there was still a ‘filler’ chapter between Mio and Kanon.
      They just used a different ‘filler’ from a later chapter.
      I think the correct Ch6 would have been better, but eh.

      runedot
    1. I understand where Keima is coming from. I don’t know if I would take it to the extreme’s he would, but it kills me to know that there are different options available to me. Sadly, I’ve only played one visual novel, Clannad! I didn’t beat it, and haven’t been able to get it to run since.

      Still, with The world only god knows and ore no imouto, I feel the spark to play not necessarily a eroge, but just a visual novel..

  1. Strong PFP battery life.

    Gotta admire the perseverance but like Divine said, why not include the step-by-step walkthrough in the wiki? It is really hard to believe he went through all the torture only to prove to /himself/ that he is the eroge god…

  2. im a little surprised they pull this out so soon. I also wounder when they will get to catching more spirits-and seducing more girls. That is one of my favorite things is each episode he has to get another girl.

    chaos42
  3. by computing the “n” possibilities, the result is

    invitation to eat (2 selection Y or N) > 30 (menu list) > invitation to show the painting (2 selection still, Y or N)that would result to about 240+ patterns… this doesn’t include the flag/event before the invitation to eat, and the flag/event before the previous event ahhh… can’t think of it anymore… assuming it follows the regular galge format: it would have 15000+ pattterns (computation done by estimates… a regular galge would have 70+ events for a single girl with 3 selections… professional? well don’t ask.)

    Animeniac
  4. Boring episode.I am disappoint.I got tired of the looping gag about halfway in.Since I do have a basic idea of how these games work,coding wise,I knew that there was no point in Keima playing the game.Unless he somehow learns to read machine code and successfully modifies it with a decompiler,the chances of a game that fucked up having a reachable ending is too slim.Which also makes me scoff at the ending where he Show Spoiler ▼

    .It was just ridiculous although certainly possible.

    GodKnows
    1. well the game doesnt hang so keima just simply goes on by predicting the selection through his godly experiences… well you said its slim but IT DOESNT ITS IMPOSSIBLE… we’re talking about keima here.. the capturing god…

      Animeniac
  5. I really, really want to go to Japan. Then, I want to become an English teacher in Japan. Following the years of rigorous study it would require to do that, I would promptly explain to all my students that most english speakers don’t speak like robots.
    Then I’d springboard into a career of becoming a seiyuu for only english speaking roles during anime.

    A guy can dream right?

      1. I have some friends who have done the JET program. It’s probably the easiest way to get a working visa in Japan. The requirement is a Bachelor’s degree, which if you have, means they’re almost guaranteed to accept you and have a job waiting.

  6. A filler, and yet not so much. o: Brilliant episode. If it were me trying to finish that kind of game I’d be just as persistent as Keima, but I’d probably be spewing profanities the whole time. 😛

    Pao
  7. there were some bugged games in my life, but none on this level… btw, can he finish the game on one battery life? with no save option this is the marathon game, and I am not sure if he would get on time.

    ewok40k
  8. Well i know how it feels to play games with loop+ no save game but in keima’s chase thats pretty insane. Game that has a old hag heroine drawing and saying cute line OMGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!. Well at least i can tolerate the upside down of the heroine and the choppy voice. it sometimes makes the player think why is the heroine like that or it might be that your pc/psp is to slow. I will really be angry if the ending was just some rubbish encrypted text with messy background. That will really piss me of after all the hard work you did and paid for the game.
    Overall i really like this chapter being improved by animation. i got to see all kinds of funny stuff.

    Croosboy シ
  9. “i’m collecting souls for you, You will help me right?, riiiiiight?!”
    And how she called him demon _|O|o
    Everytime i see that scarf by the way i think how it can turn into a transparant “bathing” suit 😛

    outcast
  10. The alluding game is not other than 0verflow’s Summer Days, which not only was delayed “X” times, but when was released, it was totally buged, at the point that it needed a huge set of patches (one of them as big as 1.5 G’s!)

    I kinda understand Keima’s obsession of completing a game, no matter how flawed is, just because it’s the gamer’s pride in any kind of games (RPG’s, STG’s, Sims, etc.). In this particular case, because is a dating game. A good example of this could be finishing the latest incarnations of the Final Fantasy franchise (uber-crap games, by the way)

    SeedStriker
  11. filler…. but why don’t I hate this filler?!?! 🙂
    I feel the paper I am writing now is kind of like this bugged game…
    write-criticism-ask for rewrite-write… it is a loop in real life… Grrrrrr…. 🙁
    that ending in the game was hilarious though… 🙂

    jrj
  12. If I’m Keima I won’t bother with that game at the same disappointed with the game company who made it maybe they hired the likes of Tatsuhiro Sato and Kaoru Yamazaki from Welcome to the NHK.

    Keima probably have lots of PFP batteries beneath his uniform (similar to Meru Otanashi of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei), since its a waste of time to let the viewers see how Keima replaces the battery, they didn’t bother to show it.

    irony of life
  13. i just about cried when the wiki article said nobody believed keima. you’d think he of all people would think to take SOME kind of proof, even if it’s just a picture of that new screen.

    diet otaku
    1. Obviously written by someone who doesn’t actually know English.
      Most likely direct translation word for word.
      The subject is often skipped in Japanese, so that explains why it’s missing.
      Probably meant to be something along the line of:

      New students learns English or Study English for new students.

      Znail
  14. Why on earth didn’t he just patch the ISO himself I have no effing clue. Unless it really was spaghetti code, there was no way he could’ve gotten past that just by doing different choices – I remember Valkyria Chronicles 2 freezing my PSP when loading saves, but then loading them just fine after doing the exact same thing (there’s only one way to load a save). But hey, reality aside.

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