Making game design interesting to read about sounds pretty hard to me
Hakutaku
(Kouki Ishikawa)
September 2024 to February 2025
18 Chapters
What I Liked
- Mizuki was a cool little sister
Where I Think Things Went Wrong
- This might sound weird, but I think Noto wasn’t deranged enough. I felt like she was going for the Hiruma (Eyeshield 21) evil genius kinda vibe, but she wasn’t quite intense enough to fit the bill
- Hikuma was a bit too blank. The bullied timid boy MC isn’t new but I think he didn’t react enough to Noto’s antics which made both him and the series kinda boring
- Seo was both too arrogant and too emo to be likeable. The best thing about him was his little sister haha
- The games Hikuma came up with were interesting in theory but it was hard to imagine them being fun to play. And this is where I think the challenge of showing game dev as entertaining lies.
- The genius game dev also wasn’t as weird as the series tried to hype him up to be. Playing lots of games whenever he can doesn’t seem that weird or quirky to me. And getting pushed around by his mate so he can game came across as lazy, not whacky.
Conclusion
I thought from the beginning that this would be a hard sell. And it didn’t even have pretty art to fall back on.
I feel like I ended up comparing it to some other recent stories which were more entertaining:
- 64Bit Sensation: Another Layer (anime) – maybe this was more interesting because it looked at game dev using older technology. Also the premise was way more bizarre and stupid which ended up equalling entertaining (honestly it was a very fine line but it managed to do it somehow LOL)
- Girl Meets Rock (manga) – if we’re talking manipulative female ‘producer’ type characters, Rin is the current poster girl for this position. She is amazingly devilish.
I didn’t hate Hakutaku though. If anything, I guess I was waiting for it to get into the groove. Maybe it would have been better if the team was larger, with all the other members who would have eventually joined. But WSJ really needs some hard hitters out of the gate given the recent series that have ended and Hakutaku just couldn’t live up to that expectation.
Categories: Simulpub Review
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