I used to love Hajime, specially around Yuun but as of late I just want to quickly forget this whole arc

Incidentally, I'm curious about something- do Hajime and Hotaru qualify for "The Scrappy" status in TV Tropes parlance? They seem to be disliked, at least as of the most recently uploaded chapters, but it's hard to tell whether a character is outright hated or merely divisive merely by reading discussion forums, and I'd like to be sure which they qualify for before I edit the YMMV page for New Game.

I guess that’s sometimes hard to say because naming a character “The Scrappy” entails summarizing what another bunch of people appear to feel. At times that’s obvious, but sometimes it’s just that characters are not especially beloved or are seen as extraneous and unnecessary but aren’t necessarily widely despised.

My sense is that the latter is the case here—relatively few people have strong feelings about the characters, and for those that do those feelings are neutral or negative.

But my main point is that’s only one person’s impression, and The Scrappy is a title bestowed by the vox populi.

last edited at Feb 10, 2020 9:55PM

I like Hajime. She's just way over her head and out of her own comfort zone that she's struggling a lot.

Incidentally, I'm curious about something- do Hajime and Hotaru qualify for "The Scrappy" status in TV Tropes parlance? They seem to be disliked, at least as of the most recently uploaded chapters, but it's hard to tell whether a character is outright hated or merely divisive merely by reading discussion forums, and I'd like to be sure which they qualify for before I edit the YMMV page for New Game.

I guess that’s sometimes hard to say because naming a character “The Scrappy” entails summarizing what another bunch of people appear to feel. At times that’s obvious, but sometimes it’s just that characters are not especially beloved or are seen as extraneous and unnecessary but aren’t necessarily widely despised.

My sense is that the latter is the case here—relatively few people have strong feelings about the characters, and for those that do those feelings are neutral or negative.

But my main point is that’s only one person’s impression, and The Scrappy is a title bestowed by the vox populi.

That's essentially why I'm asking about it, rather than going ahead and adding Hajime and/or Hotaru myself. Personally, Hajime's one of my least favorite characters, but I've been hesitant to conclude that others feel the same way, and still am. At this point, while I did notice that a lot of the comments toward the two are negative, there doesn't seem to be enough of a consensus toward disliking the character to warrant Scrappy status.

last edited at Feb 14, 2020 4:30PM

FWIW I have no strong feelings about this matter whatsoever. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love how there are still dumb arguments here about trying to justify plot holes in an industry story written by a guy who has basically run out of experience.

It's still better than people who contemptuously dismiss people discussing the story as a few people here have done. One example is the person at the top of the page who claims that Tsubame, an "experienced programmer,"(in actuality, a talented newbie who's more experienced than Nene but less experienced than Umiko) "forgot" to test her code- more accurately, she did a half-hearted job, partly due to overconfidence-fueled carelessness and partly due to rushing. In that case, if she was convinced she wouldn't make a mistake and had a single-minded focus on getting done ASAP, it's only natural that she'd prioritize speed over quality.

To get things in a more positive direction, I personally liked this chapter, as it has a nice discussion of what it means to draw for someone else's approval, and shows that Catherine's other employees haven't given up on designing the King's Hand enemy just yet.

Has Hotaru landed herself a French waifu?

Has Hotaru landed herself a French waifu?

Maybe, but I doubt that her would be sisters-in-law, Christina and Catherine, would be at all happy about it.

By the way, it's astounding how large the age gaps between siblings can be in this series. Not only is Yun 21 while her twin siblings are 5-6 at the start of the story, but Christina and Catherine are at least in their late twenties or early thirties, while their little sister Sophie is in grade school (probably why Ko assumed she's Catherine's daughter). For reference, I'm two years older than my younger brother, and I grew up thinking such relatively narrow age gaps between siblings were more common.

more accurately, she did a half-hearted job, partly due to overconfidence-fueled carelessness and partly due to rushing. In that case, if she was convinced she wouldn't make a mistake and had a single-minded focus on getting done ASAP, it's only natural that she'd prioritize speed over quality.

There is not a single programmer who has worked in a professional environment for longer than a week who would write a bunch of code and not test it to see if it works before turning it in. That just doesn't happen, it makes no sense what so ever. Its clear you and the author have never done proper coding. There is no speeding through a project long before the deadline and not running it at least once to see if it works. And your "more accurate" is just made up, she isn't over confident at all. She is nervous and trying to impress her boss, and her excuse for not testing it was that she thought if it worked in one instance then it would work in all instances, which is a mistake no programming student after their first semester would make. And we are to believe that someone who already made at least one game made this stupid mistake? puh-lease... she should have been laughed out of the office and put on coffee duty until her internship was up.

Look, there's just one more confusing mess of a chapter to go before things start getting back to normal and we can all stop complaining.

Look, there's just one more confusing mess of a chapter to go before things start getting back to normal and we can all stop complaining.

I'm looking forward to the chapter after the next one. Of course, it's worth noting that A)some of the posters were talking about something the incident with Naru that happened late in the second season/the Peco arc, and B)the problem seems to be with said posters attitudes, given their rather condescending replies to my post.

I think it’s hilarious that anyone thinks that real-life coding experience has ever had the slightest relevance to this series.

It’s like paleontologists coming around being know-it-alls about the Flintstones.

please, please tell me we're finished with that dumpster fire of an arc

please, please tell me we're finished with that dumpster fire of an arc

Judging by the comments, there should just be one more chapter of that dumpsterfire

I think it’s hilarious that anyone thinks that real-life coding experience has ever had the slightest relevance to this series.

When it's used to inject drama into a mostly fluffy series I think it's important how believable it is. That coupled with Kou just dropping out and moving to the otherside of the planet just because the company didn't have confidence in a brand new employee to carry the art department for a brand new franchise was the start of the downward slope for the series.

I read the chapter, and it wasn't nearly as confusing as I'd feared. It has two separate but related plotlines and effectively brings the arc to a conclusion. I'm looking forward to seeing where things go from here.

Doesn't Kou coming back to save the day like that cheapen Aoba's "arc" in the first half of the chapter (and those before)? She seemed to be stepping up to the task only to end up still being saved.

How many chapters left before Aoba become main character again? And why do this chapter feel like Kou just come and said “It’s fine now. Why? Because I’m here”?

Wooohoo! She’s back!

I haven't been following this series, but felt like responding to this particular message:

There is not a single programmer who has worked in a professional environment for longer than a week who would write a bunch of code and not test it to see if it works before turning it in.

Is the source of your statements work experience? If it is, I'd like to work where you do. I find it very dangerous that some people really believe what you wrote is the universal truth.

That just doesn't happen, it makes no sense what so ever. Its clear you and the author have never done proper coding. There is no speeding through a project long before the deadline and not running it at least once to see if it works.

Once you witness it in practice, it makes sense, even if it doesn't make it any better. As an example, when in the development process people later manually test the integrated features and report the bugs, resulting in separate tasks for the developers, irresponsible programmers may feel inclined to just pass on what they wrote, without running it even once, being all confident in their abilities. This lets them very quickly finish their tasks, and "in the worst case" they get another, about a bug. Then they finish fixing only that bug, and wait for the next one to be discovered, while making good progress on other tasks. If the progress is not properly assessed and the supervisors don't see the relationship between the initial task and the endless fixes, people can get away with such an approach, or may not even realize how inefficient they do their job. The next step is to imagine what happens if the manual testing doesn't cover the feature at all, for one reason or another...

Quality control on all levels is still a massive issue for a lot of reasons, one being that writing the sufficient automated tests, despite all the available tools and libraries, tends to consume more resources than the features' development itself, and it's hard to prove how much work doesn't have to be done later thanks to them. Especially to people with little idea about software development.

Again, this isn't about the series; I'll yet have to eventually see how it unfolded in the story. Also, I'd rather not get into how to avoid these things. That would fill books and it's a constant battle anyway...

last edited at Mar 13, 2020 3:32AM

Doesn't Kou coming back to save the day like that cheapen Aoba's "arc" in the first half of the chapter (and those before)? She seemed to be stepping up to the task only to end up still being saved.

Depends on how the story from this point deals with it. Not all character development follows complete success, dealing with how she "failed" could be interesting to see as well. Perhaps Hifumi could do some comforting...

Yay, Kou's back!

Now hopefully Rin hits her over the head about her feelings and they get together....

I read the chapter, and it wasn't nearly as confusing as I'd feared. It has two separate but related plotlines and effectively brings the arc to a conclusion. I'm looking forward to seeing where things go from here.

Concurrent plot lines are fine by themselves, but the reason I call it confusing is because of how many plot details happen entirely offscreen and are either never explained or only hinted toward in a single line of dialogue.

There are two big examples of this. The first being the entire situation with the company they're outsourcing to. I've already seen a number of people completely misunderstanding it, such as thinking that this chapter represents all the work the company ever did and that it was a mistake to ever get them involved. Because it's never mentioned that the company has been turning in models that were just fine the entire time before the shit ones came in. Nor is it made clear that there is still a portion of the work coming from them that doesn't have any problems.

The other is the whole situation between Catherine and Kou. Going from "too bad you'll have to give up finishing your design, but Hotaru is plenty capable of doing it" to just casually stating "Hotaru failed, Kou won" as if nothing happened is whiplash-inducing, for one. I get that the author wanted to have Kou coming back be a surprise, and I get that he also wanted to have Kou winning the design war be a surprise. But the end result of him tacking a surprise onto a surprise doesn't seem to be thought out beyond "this'll surprise people!" so the resulting timeline is, at best, nonsensical. Why did Kou decide to give Catherine an answer when she still had so much tine before she was required to give one? Why did she decide to do it apparently a day before she finished her design (given that she was able to finish it overnight)? Why did Catherine already have a ticket for a flight back to Japan leaving the next day prepared? Was she expecting Kou's sudden decision, as well as foreseeing what that decision would be? Why did Catherine send Kou back to Japan one day before Kou finished her design? Why did Kou even have her unfinished design at the house? She clearly wasn't planning in finishing it until Hotaru said something. Did Hotaru just stand there and watch as Kou finished the design in the bedroom they share and not think anything other than "well, I guess I lose now, better give up and not even attempt to finish my own design"? Despite having just reaffirmed her drive to work? Did Catherine, upon seeing Kou's finished work, just tell Hotaru "no reason to finish your own design anymore. You've lost"? That doesn't really fit with how she's acted toward it up til now.

The next chapter only really makes the situation more confusing by claiming that Kou can't help directly on the dodgeball game because she still has work she needs to do for Catherine. Seriously, why was she sent back to Japan when she was? And what other work? Nothing outside of the boss design was ever mentioned as being her current project.

Also notice Kou's wearing the same clothes when she arrives back at Eagle Jump as she was when she departed France. Did she step off a 12-hour flight, go through customs, take an hour-long train ride into Tokyo, then head straight to the company, not even stopping to shower and change, or even drop off her luggage?

I'm sure people can make guesses to the answers to some of those questions, but that's just it; they're only guesses. There's a distinct lack of information not only about what happened, but how and why. It was all specifically excluded for the sake of making a bigger surprise.

last edited at Mar 12, 2020 10:44PM

^Kou never takes showers or change clothes if she doesn't have to, that was established in the first chapter.

Perhaps Hifumi could do some comforting...

You're too optimistic if you think Tokutaro still remembers AobaxHifumi is supposed to be a thing.

Is the source of your statements work experience? If it is, I'd like to work where you do. I find it very dangerous that some people really believe what you wrote is the universal truth.

Because it is. Developers who don't test their code once don't get hired after an internship.

Once you witness it in practice, it makes sense, even if it doesn't make it any better.

No, it doesn't. It goes against the very first lesson taught in every basic beginner coding class. Test your shit, you get nothing out of sending in code you have no idea even works, especially when you are just adding a feature onto a program you were just introduced to.

This lets them very quickly finish their tasks

Except they don't. They are extending the required time and pushing deadlines by constantly having to have someone else recreate and report basic bugs. Then bugs with specific causes will never be fixed, just requiring more manpower and adding more crunch for later.

If the progress is not properly assessed and the supervisors don't see the relationship between the initial task and the endless fixes, people can get away with such an approach, or may not even realize how inefficient they do their job.

Sorry to hear that you had literal children fresh from high school with zero coding experience as supervisors.

The next step is to imagine what happens if the manual testing doesn't cover the feature at all, for one reason or another...

Yeah, would love to know what reason or another they would not test the only feature the programmer was responsible for.

Quality control on all levels is still a massive issue for a lot of reasons, one being that writing the sufficient automated tests, despite all the available tools and libraries, tends to consume more resources than the features' development itself, and it's hard to prove how much work doesn't have to be done later thanks to them. Especially to people with little idea about software development.

Not remotely true in game development, especially when working with a well established game engine. Not testing will always take longer than simply testing the feature, not testing just adds more work for the developer in the long run.