天下制覇

To be fair, the hamster deserved it.

Has the site been slow for anybody else? It seems like there's an issue lately with the redirect between blog.seiha.org and tenka.seiha.org (former is fine, latter is very slow/laggy). It's inconsistent and could just me and hitting all the admin stuff though. Let me know if you've noticed slowness. 

Random Thoughts:

First up, I'm skipping this (and Material Brave) next week due to new season stuff. These posts generally take ~3 hours. This was technically the first chapter outside of the common events and what better time to introduce new mechanics! And only one more new one to go that I'm aware of! Next chapter has the fork between the two possible endings for the 'Justice' route, which is the default to start things off. Basically, when you complete one route, you unlock the next (and can skip straight to ch5 where the differences supposedly begin). You have to complete Justice (Kururu Bad) to unlock True (Wet Towel Bad), and complete that to unlock Hero (Kururu Good/Wet Towel Good). Ringo's ending is in the Justice route (only?) and cuts off WAAAAY before the actual route completes. Once a route is complete, you can skip straight to chapter 5 to begin the next one from the title screen. Completing anything unlocks a little Karen sidestory thingy where you go on a date and then have sex. Exciting. You can tell exactly who wasn't really a main character in the writers' heads.

The next chapter is quite long, and contains no battles (and if you choose Ringo's route, no more battles for the rest of the game), so it'll likely be split across a couple weeks regardless. At a glance, Ringo's ending looks abortive and dumb, so I'm fine with skipping it. It seems to basically be the "screw magic, let's be muggles and have muggle sex and muggle babies" ending, while the rest feature going to Magic Land to fight dragons and evil adults, plus lots of blood and evil magic, so I'm assuming that's where the supposedly good writing starts to kick in. Unless there are major objections, we're just going to skip Ringo and go right on to more interesting things… in like… two weeks when I get to about the halfway point of the next chapter because it's huge… and then chapter 8 is ridiculously HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.

Our Story Thus Far:

We're dreaming of blood, surrounded by bodies. Lillian taunts us and tells us everyone's dead. She puts a blade on our neck, and with a splatter of blood, we wake up. Ringo's up and worried about us. Blondie and Wet Towel are asleep in there too. Ringo brings up that it reminds her of an old thing, before she could swim. We jumped in to save her and nearly drowned. She almost breaks into tears. We try to comfort her but get rebuffed, so we tell her to stop acting tough and simply try to princess carry her to her room, but she thrashes so we put her back down. Sidekick wanders in and wants to help us carry the sleeping girls back to their room, but gets rejected by us both because he's already got a stiffy thinking about it. After delivering them, we have flashbacks to the nightmare.

Everyone's sleepy in class the next morning. We thank them for taking care of us. Kururu still hasn't figured out that Papirin is Wet Towel. Lillian's sleepy too. Kururu hasn't figured out that Lillian is Lillian either. After lunch, we deliver Wet Towel's report on us to Lillian, who falls asleep reading it. Her only problem with the report is that it's stapled badly, so agrees to be our advisor, and makes the call to ask for permission, but apparently not only do we already have it, but she's already been assigned to be our advisor.

Ergo, we're a real club or whatever and get to recycle a CG. We review our activities, most of which are synonyms. In the process, we ask about what dark magic really is. Light is freedom and hope, dark is shackles and despair. We declare we need to get stronger, because that's how they do it in RPGs. Blondie says one way is to commune with elementals. Or you can train for about a year. Blondie comes up with another idea, familiars. She's not actually sure that'll work though, just that magic girls are totally supposed to have them. Karen steps in and explains that they are good conduits for magic and this will work.

Kururu wants to get the familiar thing going right away. She has hers (Mike, the cat), and asks if Ringo and Wet Towel have pets they get along with. Karen says she already has her hand puppet, which counts apparently. Ringo's favorite is being kept at home with her sister. Wet Towel is very evasive because pets are prohibited at the dorm and admits to nothing. We dismiss to reconvene later with animals in tow.

At night, patrol ends without incident. We see Ringo chatting on her cellphone, so sneak up behind her, cover her eyes, and get kicked for it. Ringo was talking to her family, and basically has a huge crush on her little sister who's cutesy and girly, unlike her. After leaving her, we run into Sidekick, who's making some spare scratch repairing the fountain. After we wander away from her, Blondie pops out of nowhere to bludgeon us repeatedly. For practice. Then she zaps us. For practice. We agree to train with her, her casting spells for her to bounce back, at least until Wet Towel makes us stop. The next day, we're feeling much better. In class, Sidekick informs us all that he had a wet dream last night. Thanks. Blondie wants to know what that is. Karen explains it as an ephemeral banquet of flesh. Fair enough.

Lillian's exhausted again. We're on self-study for the day, with her yelling randomly to not goof off at any conversation at all, until she falls asleep. We have to choose which haremette should wake her up. If you're curious about the results: Wet Towel shakes her awake and gets thrown out of class. Ringo is egged by the class into kicking her, and misses completely. Kururu zaps her, then has to zap her to start her heart again, repeat 3-4 more times. Karen attempts to fireball her a couple times, Lillian sleeps through it, so Karen transforms and nukes the entire classroom. We went with Karen… for reasons. During club time, Karen is unrepetenant and just chews on her donut.

Today, we're going to contract with familiars. Sidekick comes by to deliver Kichiemon, Ringo's pet fat penguin. Turns out, we won him for her ten 10s ago at a festival, thinking it was a stuffed doll. Wet Towel unveils her pet as well, a fat hamster, which she insists she ordered by overnight delivery, but nobody's buying it. The cat wants to eat it. Its name is Hamchu. In order to contract, they need to talk to them, so the cat pulls out Intepretation Konjac, which is a reference to Doraemon's Translation Konjac. Don't ask me how I know that. They feed it to the animals. Karen's hand puppet is first to get its agreement to contract. She asks it to contract. It says yes. Done. The penguin starts talking, and makes fun of Ringo for being flat. The others say pets resemble their owners. Flatty and Blondie start fighting over it. It agrees to be her familiar, under one condition, it gets fed well and sleep a lot. That's how it already lives, so Ringo doesn't care, but Wet Towel is shocked by how well it eats because she's a filthy, penniless peasant. That's two down.

Blondie says that for stuff like rats and bats, they need blood, so everyone turns to Wet Towel and her hamster which we're all still calling a rat. It's crawled down her shirt and groping her breasts while talking about how great they are and how much it likes doing it. Also, how much it likes watching her masturbate. She pitches it at the wall. Everyone agrees that the hamster's a perv, and pets resemble their owners. It demands a blowjob to contract and gets tossed at the wall again. So instead, it demands to see the chests of the whole magical girl club. Ringo's mad, but it goes cutesy and she squeals at it. Blondie agrees to do it FOR WORLD PEACE.

That convinces Wet Towel to do it too. Ringo relents as well, but Karen's disappeared in the commotion. They tell us to leave before they strip, but the hamster says that we have to stay. They strip their tops and gather around the hamster and us. Immediately, they start comparing breasts and nipples. Yeah, that makes sense. Everyone, us included, says that's enough, but the hamster tells us to pull out our dick and give them a semen bath. Yeah, that makes sense. And yet, we immediately whip it out. Karen wanders back around this point and begins giving us a magic girl handshake because she's so entranced by it. We end up with a choice of who gets the first bath, so we drench Wet Towel. Karen doesn't stop, so we get to give a second bath, this time, we're allowed to take the egalitarian approach, so we do. And yes, if you're curious, the amount of yogurt covering them is additive depending on who you spread the butter on for the first choice. This is so, so, so not healthy. Also, Karen's gone semen crazy and licks our whistle clean, so we give her a mouthful too. All this in about a 5 minute span.

We pass out from that. 30 minutes later, the hamster is impressed and agrees to keep its word. It wants to see some pussy too, so gets Team Rocketted. As do we for some reason. Come nightfall, it's time to actually contract. Kururu casts the spell, everyone swears their contract, and kiss to seal it. Everyone kisses their animals/hand puppet. Contract done. We're interrupted by Lillian showing up, calling herself the villain boss. The cat calls her Midboss. Great joke, guys. No clue where you stole it from. She sends out five magimon all at once and then hides.

There's a tutorial for Extra Attacks. They trigger at random, but can be affected by various things, and it's only at this point that they explain the spinning hearts thing from choices. It affects their mood in battle, and a better mood means more Extra Attacks. There are other ways to trigger them too, but they don't say how (pretty sure combo gauge and anything that scores points). Each familiar has a different effect. Kururu (Starlight Heal): Heals. Ringo (Aqua Boost): Extra Damage. Wet Towel (Blood Lick Touch): Drains HP. Karen (Dragon Shoot): Extra hits to combo.

As for mood, (well, Condition), it's pretty similar to the way Galaxy Angel's works, except simplified a little. Depending on plot events and choices made, some will naturally have a higher level for the battle than others. Besides Extra Attacks, I'm pretty sure it also affects damage output. There are five levels. From memory (ie, don't quote me on this) and top to bottom, there's "Go! Go!", *smiley*, Normal, Grumpy, and *sob*. I don't think there's any space whale-like way to see them prior to the battle though, and they really don't have that big of an effect compared to just getting the card choices right anyway.

After killing them, Lillian throws a tantrum about working day and night to make five magimon at once. We beat Lillian up too and she runs off. Blondie says that if we drive Lillian back to magic land, everything will be good again… WITH A MEANINGFUL PAUSE. Up on the roof, Lillian says to herself that she just needs to hang in there until SENPAI OPENS THE GATE, and when they do, we'll all be helpless. *gasp* Then she panics about forgetting to get ready for class.

Next Episode:

Little girls. And god, Lillian's voice is nasal.