Lilisionnach posted:
I’m more curious if they will end up going the harem route or if they’ll actually let the characters have their own relations, i.e. Franka/Liskarm, Texas/Lappland, etcs, though I doubt there’ll be much in terms of romance.
I doubt there will be any harem etc. because game never forces all their characters to be in love with Doctor and instead let them just be themselves. And honestly the story doesn't really have time for romance anyway. It's very dark and serious story for the most part and there's very little levity in it. Romance is just not focus at all and even if we get something, it'll probably be kept to a subtext in the background. That being said, while personally I'm not going in expecting anything explicit, I wouldn't outright cross possibility we could get something more either, as there's at least 1 canon lesbian operator in the game. She's a not really relevant 4 star with dead girlfriend in her backstory though, so you could argue she's just a token representation, but it's there and game do have a lot of chemistry between characters, even if nothing is ever confirmed.
Honestly I'm not sure how much of it is that they can't (or aren't allowed) to show it and how much it is just simply that it's not the focus of the story. In fact one of ships that people very clearly felt that they have the divorced couple feel (Saria and Silence) got a spin off backstory manga which have them openly flirting and Silence is literally acting as a maiden in love trying to win Saria over. Words "I like/love you" never are said, but reading it as something else than them being attracted to each other and getting closer, but later having a falling out is impossible. If they allowed for something like that to appear in official manga, then to me it says that they're not really against making blatant subtext, that's meant to be canon.
All in all, whatever we get anything or not, it's not anime you watch for romance. You watch it for amazing characters, very complex political story and deep world-building. Also anime fights. Lots of anime fights. And it's not happy story. Despite it being a fantasy world that's very different from ours, it often feels exactly like ours. It's full of injustice and exploitation, good people, bad people and just normal people who simply try to live their day to day lives in peace. If you're not in mood or in bad place in live, it can actually be very upsetting to watch at times, so I really only recommend it to people who are ready for that and don't mind some very heavy themes of discrimination in their fiction.
Also one of strong points of Arknights is that it has a very varied cast that isn't full of overly sexualized girls in skimpy cloths. Developers treat their characters with respect and in fact the way characters dress and the way their skins look are very tasteful and often look like something you might want to wear yourself.
Yeah, I’ve played through chapter 2 (not much, I know) The game is definitely on the heavy side, it being full on war and all. I agree with your statement on character designs. I will applaud them for that. As much as I love the MiHoYo games, they’ve definitely restricted their characters based on the preset character models they have. Arknights can have more variety in size and design since the gameplay itself uses the smaller models. Can’t wait to see those designs in the anime.
Part of the reason I was curious is because of those backstories in the game. I will say, we probably won’t see anything more than subtext. MiHoYo has the same issue of riding the line between showing the relationships but not being to obvious with what they are doing.
