Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA Stray Thoughts

Yeah, I’m doing a stray thoughts rant for 1 of the most obscure RPGs on the planet.  Because, you see, I’ve got it all figured out.  All I’ve gotta do to never have anyone tell me I’m wrong ever again is to rant on games that none of my readers have ever played themselves!  What’re the haters gonna do, go out and play the game themselves just to prove me wrong?  Well, I’ve already highly recommended this one, so you can’t do that, either!  Big-brain strats, you see.

Anyway yeah this is a pretty indulgent one, but I had a lot of thoughts when I played Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and it was a pretty sizable game that I’d like to get some rant mileage out of, so you’re just gonna have to live with my indulgence.  Come back next time or play it yourself and then be let down at how my rant was definitely not worth the wait, either way’s good with me.

Oh, also, significant spoilers ahead!



- I appreciate the fact that there’s a lot more of an open and direct narrative approach to this game.  It’s no great secret that in the past, the level of complexity in the plot, lore, and characters themselves was high enough in LBS titles that I’ve frequently not been confident that I really got everything, which is something that gets in my head and drives me to distraction.  I really want to just fully understand the things that I enjoy, on every level they can be.  This time around, though...there’s plenty of stuff going on in the backstage of AAAVXA’s story and lots you still have to infer and puzzle out on your own--Saint Bomber builds and relays his lore and plots in a fashion mildly akin to a well-paced mystery novel--but there’s a lot more about the backstories and the plot’s facts and direction that requires less constant interpretation, I think.  I felt more certain that I was understanding everything I was meant to be, basically, and whether that was an intentional adjustment or just a natural development of his style, I appreciate it and think it’s beneficial.


- Related to this shift to more direct storytelling: AAAVXA actually gives us a definitive pronunciation of Hinoki Jr.’s name.  I doubt this was done specifically in response to my grousing about it in a previous rant, but Saint Bomber’s willing and direct committal to such a detail that he previously wouldn’t relinquish, minor though it may be, gratified me as much as it would if it had been specifically done for me.


- This game’s use of a Magical Girls premise of love-draining monsters as an analogy for that which trauma takes from us is very apt and even a bit ingenious, and it’s executed quite well.  Like, I’m not going to say it’s on a Madoka level of brilliance for using a classic premise of the Magical Girls genre as a symbol for darker and heavier concepts, but Angelic Acceptor Alouette is certainly swimming in the same pool.

...It’s a bit troubling that Magical Girls have so aptly found themselves to be vehicles of heavier, painful stories in recent times, with representatives like AAAVXA, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and Mamika from Re:Creators.  I mean for crying out loud, the most positive and feel-good magical girl media I've personally encountered in the last several years has been Gushing Over Magical Girls!


- It’s not all really thought-provoking and intelligent content in AAAVXA, of course, but honestly, sometimes the outright idiotic stuff is just as enjoyable.  The side episode about a bra going bad is pleasingly stupid, and reminds me of both Steven Universe attacking Frybo by commanding his clothing and underwear, and an episode of The IT Crowd.  Which, who knows, could have been intentional--it’s a long-shot, but on the other hand, I wasn’t expecting multiple references to the Pitch Meetings internet video series, so anything’s possible.


- While there's a lot to like about Miriam, somehow the thing I most weirdly adore is that her hobby is renting and watching 80s/90s movies, then finding and watching the pornographic lesbian parody versions of those movies, and writing essays comparing the differences between them and the changes in their meaning.  It feels like the kind of absurdly pretentious and self-gratifying nerdy obsessive stuff I do with these rants.


- There have been a lot--a LOT--of extremely singular, unexpected, unique characters and individuals and scenarios I’ve seen in RPGs that I was not expecting to, from a 1930s Japanese paranormal detective cockblocking a cyborg Rasputin, to every character on this list, to the developers of Wild Arms 5 expecting their audience to take the use of a giant monowheel as a mode of transportation seriously.  And right up there in the Most Genuinely Unexpected Things To See In An RPG category has got to be Clarissa from Clarissa Explains It All as a major antagonist.  Like, okay, it’s a legally distinct version of her, and the character’s more of an amalgamation of several troubled and/or washed-up child stars that the 1990s/2000s entertainment industry ground up and spat out than any one individual...but she’s still primarily using Clarissa Explains It All as the 90s show that forms the basis of this character.  That is a deep cut, there.


- And while we’re on the subject of said Legally Distinct Clarissa...1 single solitary conversation from a sidequest about a secondary character’s history as a child TV star, and already Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA has crafted a more compelling, realistic, and insightful look at an entertainment industry than the entirety of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, the game that threw away every other part of its premise to go all in on portraying exactly that.  It's crazy how the slightest bit of talent and effort can make all the difference, huh?


- I like the fact that the conclusion of the vacation episode includes a moment of Mille essentially doing the same kind of "trust fall" that the (sort of) villains had been experimenting with earlier, showing it working in real time.  It’s a neat touch.


- Ha!  Aunt Raye said “...Well, don’t that just beat all?”  I see what you did there, Saint Bomber.


- Mille is a great character, and a decent part of that is the fact that she’s a rare demonstration that it's actually possible to have a well-written character who goes through a lot of her development off-screen. We can, for example, see tiny (often initially misleading) private glimpses and sentences of her personal growth throughout the game (and a few of her old diary entries in the Akashic Record), but we’re only able to contextualize the truth of these snippets retroactively as she and Simone talk after the fight in Episode 10.*  We’re only able to observe the tiniest moments of consternation and thought as Mille mulls over her feelings and herself through the majority of the game, and yet it’s handled well enough and leads the audience effectively enough that she still is ultimately a solid dynamic entity in the game’s cast.


- Much like what I've said in the past about never knowing when the random minor NPC or hench-villain in the background will turn out to be the person on whom the universe hinges, there's also never a moment so silly or innocuous in a Large Battleship Studios game that it isn't going to suddenly transform into a moment of shocking, overpowering significance and/or emotional gravity.  An absurd puzzle involving a succubus conga-line can suddenly reveal the most disturbing and tragic backstory in the game withinin the space of 1 textbox to the next, and an adventure about an isekai'd holiday icon can reveal that its jokes and absurdity are merely the cushion surrounding heavy pieces of lore and context to a previous adventure.  You’d think that the tonal shift would be jarring, but somehow it’s only ever intriguing.


- This game doesn't lack for sad and even morose moments and scenes, but the alternate moment in which Mille gives up on magic because she's been shut out of it for the last time is heartbreaking--shockingly so, considering how much worse things we've seen, but it’s an undeniable moment of wrenching disappointment.


- Funnily enough, for all the glazing I’ve done for it and its creator, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA is the Large Battleship Studios game with the most parts I disagree with or dislike.  There’s the incest thing, of course, my feelings on which I plan to really dissect in a forthcoming rant.  I think that considerably more cordiality is paid to Alice as a whole than should be--I do not like how glossed over her history of abusing animals is as the narrative moves along with what it needs from her.  While her role and characterization in this game are fine enough, I still can’t say I was pleased to see that Claudine survived the events of Quantum Entanglement; Saint Bomber makes more allowances for this particular creation of his than I feel are deserved.  Anastasia’s a boring pill on her own and is a surprisingly unconvincing love interest; her romance with Simone is the first time I can recall that a significant part of an LBS game’s love story has had less believable chemistry and development than the basic average RPG romance subplot.  It frustrates me a bit that so much of Mille’s role in the game’s later stages requires her to either hold herself at arm’s length or be adversarial, after so many chapters in which she was delayed from engaging in romance with Simone--I understand that with Mille’s easy and instant chemistry with Simone, a good bit of time had to be given to Miriam so she could play catch-up because otherwise she just wouldn’t be able to stand on equal romantic ground, but in the end, it feels like circumstances unfairly kept her and Simone from sharing the same depth of love (or at the very least, the same quality of romantic development) that Simone was allowed to form with Miriam.

I think that’s my full laundry-list of stuff I significantly didn’t appreciate about/objected to within AAAVXA, or at least all the things I can really remember offhand.  Which really isn’t that bad anyway, but it’s kind of funny that this game has the most components I’ve objected to in an LBS title when I also think it could be argued to be the best of them.


- You know, it was at around the time of the Alice scenario in AAAVXA that I got to thinking about something: there’s a lot of great, layered complexity to Large Battleship Studios games, this one in particular.  It’s very complicated, with many irons in the fire and pieces to its puzzle...but unlike games and series where the complications just stack up over and over into an incomprehensible mess (such as the Kingdom Hearts series, Xenogears, the Xenosaga series, and Chrono Cross, to name a few examples), it's all carefully coordinated to a definite vision and purpose, and it never gets bigger than its own cast, nor bigger than its audience wants to deal with.

At a guess, I'd say the difference is that Saint Bomber spent a long time after Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle constructing where he wanted his universe to go, and why, and while things are added on inevitably during the creative process, he's making sure that the structure is cohesive before any product is released.  The details and answers of LBS games are present and important (even if sometimes overlooked) all along and wherever they need to be, and learning their importance as time goes on puts already existing data into context, rather than flipping everything all over again.  By contrast, needlessly overcomplicated bullhonkey RPGs like Kingdom Hearts or Xenogears feel like the creators are flying by the seats of their pants, trying with each new step to make things bigger than they already are, layer more profoundness where it isn't, and outdo themselves at all turns.

KH and its ilk are a house that some child keeps hastily pasting new additions and oddities onto according to his newest whim, without caring too much about what it means for what was already there, only enough to keep the new stuff from outright collapsing the walls it's stapled to (and even that minimal care is not always given).  Saint Bomber, on the other hand, thinks of new ways to add to and punch up the structure he's made, but he does it by looking at the blueprint and adjusting it to account for and incorporate the additions.  Each new layer and detail of his story-house isn't just pasted onto it, it's incorporated into its design. He can even do it retroactively, as evidenced by AAA'VXAs frequent returns to Quantum Entanglement and A Dragon’s ReQuest, which is impressive.















* The version of Chapter 10 where you attacked Petanque rather than Delta, that is.