Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA

My vacation year continues, but come on, the 8th day of the 8th month, on a blog that usually publishes on the 8s?  It just wouldn't be right to let today go by without posting a rant!



Large Battleship Studios has released another RPG, and given that its captain, Saint Bomber, has in the past half-decade become one of my favorite RPG creators, and because I like to encourage everyone to give small independent developers a fair shake, it was pretty much a forgone conclusion that once the game finished downloading, this rant was forthcoming.  Well, I mean, it might have been avoided if the game wasn’t very good, I don’t recommend-rant every Indie RPG I play, but the newest offering from LBS is as great as expected.  I mean, hell, it’s a game that’s slinging around quotes from Clerks, Ghost Stories, and Delita Hyral, while referencing The Musicians of Bremen and the save points in Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden; there wasn’t much of a chance that I wasn’t going to love it.

So, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA!  What can be said about it?  An RPG Maker creation with a heavy Magical Girl theme, AAAVXA tells a deceptively colorful and friendly story that follows and highlights an interesting, layered cast of characters with memorable personalities, and rich emotional depth and conflicts, as it expertly digs into their psychological foundations, and uses the tools of an expansive and provoking level of lore, and flippant, sometimes witty, sometimes simple, always charming humor and wordplay, to aid it in fully unearthing the myriad complexities its characters have to offer, both in their own right and in tandem with one another.  There’s romance galore, some of which is strikingly genuine and beautiful, for both how sweet and how bitter it is as lovers share their highest moments and bring one another out of their lowest.  There’s terrific banter and witty reactionary monologue, entertaining both in its own right and as meta-humor.  And there’s darkness and existential dread, twisted and chilling moments of selfish evil, terrible psychological hurt and trauma that makes your heart beat in painful sympathy for the suffering of these characters you’ve so organically grown to care for.  Angelic Acceptor Alouette is a poignant web of joy and life and hate and love and pain and callousness, and all the ways they intersect.

So, you know.  The usual!

Yeah, that’s the thing.  The fine qualities that I outlined in my enthusiastic recommendations of Quantum Entanglement and A Dragon’s Request, and that I managed to mention in my fumbling rant on Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, they’re all here.  So is the tenacity and gift for endless and authentic exploration of characters and relationships that I mentioned in another rant about Large Battleship Studios’s works as a whole.  The assortment of terrific virtues most prominent about Angelic Acceptor Alouette are largely the same as those of the developer’s previous works, and if all the glowing praise I’ve heaped on QE and ADRQ previously didn’t convince a reader that he/she should be checking out Large Battleship Studios’s creations before, I doubt retreading the same ground for a third or fourth time around is going to suddenly change that.  Now of course, AAAVXA is by no means itself a case of retreading the same ground, and the undeniably great story, characters and relationships, themes, purposes, and lore of Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA are very much its own.  But the reasons and behaviors through which it achieves its greatness are largely the same methods that made Quantum Entanglement so amazing, Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle so endearing, A Dragon’s ReQuest so touching, and all of them so fulfilling.

So then, instead of what can be said about AAAVXA, maybe the question is, what can be said about it that hasn’t been said about its predecessors?

At least a little, I think!  To start with, there’s some decent novelty to the idea of a Magical Girl RPG; I’ve only ever played 1 other before AAAVXA, and that was based on a preexisting franchise (Sailor Moon), while Angelic Acceptor Alouette is its own thing.  Not that it’ll be any less familiar for its being an original work, though--AAAVXA is by and large a sincere and comprehensive love letter to Magical Girl anime, and its story elements, concepts, and approach pay loving homage to a wide sample of the genre’s franchises.  Often directly and by name--the characters of AAAVXA are anime fans themselves, and frequently make mention of Magical Girl shows like (their legally distinct version of) Precure as they muddle through their own roles as warriors of love.

But even when not outright referenced, the influence of genre staples like Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura is easily seen in the trappings of the game and the execution of its premise, and the gradually increasing depth and darkness of AAAVXA’s plot likewise takes recognizable cues from series like Lyrical Nanoha and Madoka, cornerstones of the genre’s growth over time.  It even incorporates elements from animes that are more Magical-Girl-adjacent than true examples of the genre--there’s no way you could ever convince me that there wasn’t a lot of Revolutionary Girl Utena’s student council in AAAVXA’s antagonist coalition, for example.  Thankfully (and a little impressively), though, Angelic Acceptor Alouette always manages to maintain its own distinct personality through it all, and it makes that which is borrowed undeniably its own each time, making it a pleasing best-of-both-worlds combination of reference and original content for a Magical Girls fan.

Actually, it’s kind of just a love-letter to anime in general, really.  I mean, Magical Girls are obviously the predominant genre in the spotlight, but AAAVXA’s got entire significant sequences devoted to (legally distinct) Beyblade and Pokemon, protagonist Simone’s favorite anime that dominates her free time is of a more action-adventure 90s-esque variety, her school’s vice principal is over-the-top and amusingly obsessive in the fashion that more comical animes like Ranma 1/2 enjoy portraying school staff, there’s an entire lengthy isekai sidequest...and hell, during AAAVXA’s events, there’s also an entire other major Kamen-Rider-styled storyline happening in the next city over that overlaps with Alouette’s several times, which represents arguably a more substantial battle between good and evil than AAAVXA’s actual plot (by the game’s own admission, mind you).  Also, whereas the most frequent subject of Saint Bomber’s bread-and-butter referential and meta humor in previous works like A Dragon’s ReQuest and Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle was RPGs--much to my delight, of course--the lion’s share is devoted to anime this time around.  If you love anime and you’ve been a fan of it since it first got its real foothold into western geek culture in the 90s and early 2000s, you’re going to really enjoy Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA as it celebrates what you love.

And for that matter, as well as celebrating the anime that you love, AAAVXA also celebrates that very love you have for it.  The story that it tells is subtly one of both the power of fiction, and the importance of that power.  Protagonist Simone frequently contextualizes her experiences through pop culture, memes, and most of all anime shows and tropes, and while this behavior is most often the tongue-in-cheek reference humor and lampshading signature of Large Battleship Studios’s brand of comedy, it’s also frequently a way that Simone deals with stress, panic, and the darker side of both her current life and her past.  In his expansive and ongoing quest to explore trauma and how we react to, handle, carry, and attempt to resolve it, Saint Bomber displays the value of anime, and fiction as a whole, for its ability to help us cope with the harder parts of our reality and what has happened to us, not just as a means of escape, but as a tool to help us process our life and experiences.  Events of importance to fans, such as the death of one’s favorite character, are shown with care and weight, and in some ways the ultimate purpose of AAAVXA’s tale is the triumph of fiction gaining a life of its own.  Angelic Acceptor Alouette takes a fan’s investment in what they love seriously, which is perhaps a little too rare a thing in RPGs and media as a whole--even when well-meaning, such as, say, Conrad Verner from Mass Effect, invested fans are usually portrayed ultimately as punchlines in a manner too close to that of the graceless Big Bang Theory’s exploitation.  But as the true ending of AAAVXA concluded, not only did I feel that I’d witnessed a game that recognized the depths to which I care about the art that I watch and play,* I also felt that my being an audience has worth.  And that was a really neat thing for me.

So, yeah, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA is another game from Saint Bomber that I highly recommend.  I recommend it for the usual laundry list of reasons that have made his stable of offerings unique and great, and have made him one of my favorite RPG creators--possibly my favorite, period.  And I recommend it for anyone who especially loves, and/or has been greatly influenced by, anime and fan communities.  It’s at its best if it’s not your first foray into Large Battleship Studios’s works, mind you--the events and lore of AAAVXA, and even parts of its cast, are built very directly and significantly on Quantum Entanglement and A Dragon’s ReQuest, so at least a fair bit of the pleasure of experiencing AAAVXA is found in the context they provide and the ways in which its storytelling intermingles with those titles.  But if this recommendation has resonated more than the ones I’ve done for its predecessors, if you just really like the idea of a Magical Girl RPG to a degree that QE and ADRQ didn’t appeal to you, then AAAVXA stands more than well enough on its own, too.

As usual, of course, I do have to at least give a couple caveats to my recommendation.  As with all of Saint Bomber’s creations, the game has some sexually explicit content--but you can turn it off at the start, and it’s actually unexpectedly less prevalent in AAAVXA than in the previous Large Battleship Studios games (which there’s actually an in-game reason for), so that shouldn’t be much of an obstacle.  Additionally, as usual for LBS titles, AAAVXA both is heavily invested in romantic relationships, and has an almost entirely female main cast,** so...if you don’t like it when girls are in love with girls, then this ain’t it for you, chief.

There is, however, 1 aspect of the game that could turn off a potential audience that I do think is somewhat legitimate: Simone harbors some pretty deep romantic interest in her aunt, and the feeling is revealed to be mutual.  These feelings aren’t really consummated physically or emotionally, but they’re a real and significant part of both characters and their relationship to each other, and I...can’t say that it hasn’t been a stumbling block for me for a pretty substantial portion of the game.  Which might be a little surprise, I suppose, given that, while I roll my eyes and constantly crack wise at Fire Emblem’s expense for all the incest it will make any stretch to include, I generally don’t let the presence of in-family romance prevent me from being able to enjoy something that’s well-made.  Hell, I’ve said that the romance between Corrin and Camilla in Fire Emblem 14 was the best love story the game had to offer, even, and the fact that Revolutionary Girl Utena contains multiple instances of blood-related attraction and beyond certainly hasn’t stopped it from being 1 of my favorite animes of all time.  But Simone and Aunt Raye’s feelings nonetheless bothered me on a level that other instances of incestuous feelings in fiction rarely have, and while I did eventually get past it, grappling with my discomfort over it was enough of a process (one which I’m probably going to write about in a later rant, in fact) that I definitely think it worth giving fair and full warning on this point.  I was able to get over it--or resign myself to it, at least--but Simone and her aunt’s feelings for one another is a point which I can understand being a deal-breaker for some of AAAVXA’s potential audience.

So long as those factors don’t scare you, though, I can’t think of much reason not to play and enjoy Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA.  Whether you’re out for some great romance, an insightful and earnest exploration of trauma, a celebration of anime and those for whom it means something important, a well-written, thoughtful, and emotionally provocative story as a whole, or just a generally solid RPG on a budget (have I mentioned that AAAVXA, as with all of Saint Bomber’s creations, is free?), this is a solid choice for your next game to play.















* Very specifically and personally recognized, in fact; Simone’s aunt has a whole story about her reaction to Nei’s death in Phantasy Star 2 that could almost have been an adaptation of my own experience with that moment.  My old friend Angahith, the generous benefactor who gifted PS2 to me to begin with, could testify that I would, for months afterward, occasionally just spontaneously open a conversation between us with a text-scream of “NEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIII!”

Can’t say I’m on Aunt Raye’s wavelength very often, but man, I was there with her in that particular memory.


** Which actually is quite sensible, considering this is a Magical Girl themed RPG.