Old Artists being Washed Up...

 Last week was interesting, to say at least. The controversy of ZUN using AI for spell card backgrounds in Touhou 20 was a shocking revelation for the fans. I was, too, shocked and disappointed in ZUN for using AI, as he could at least ask help to someone who can do the backgrounds. But he's not the only one who had a controversy due to using AI. Kaneko Kazuma, one of the most well-known artist in the video game world from his works in the Shin Megami Tensei series. Unfortunately, he also used AI for some of the mobile games he's a part off (though they aren't Shin Megami Tensei related, thankfully). Though he said that training the AI how to draw the things he intended is proven difficult, so hopefully that his ventures using AI would be over.

So, what am I trying to say? Simply put...

The old and revered artists are slowly losing their grip and showing their age in this modern world. They are slowly aging, screwing themselves and their fans up due to their deterioration of their skills as artists because of age, being lazy or just being ignorant in what's going on with the controversial aspects of technology (NFTs, AI).

And while the person I'm about to talk about didn't do any AI stuff, the way he ended one of his manga made me really disappointed: Hitoshi Tomizawa. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the guy for giving us Alien 9 and some interesting manga in the past and he's the reason why I am slowly into the Sci-Fi genre; but the way he "ended" Alien 9 NEXT really, really pissed me off. The fact we don't know what happened to Kumi and the girl who looked like Yuri and what will Ms. Okada do after becoming crazy and murdered Kasumi in cold blood, made me disappointed. If Alien 9 EMULATORS was bit divisive from the reactions, the NEXT is the absolute disappointment for all the fans of his works. Add that with the fact that basically disappeared after that, just leaves a sour taste for me.

I've this saying that I like to think to myself when I see old buildings getting demolished: "The old will go away and the new will come to take their place." I really believe that we, creative people (whether in art, music, writing, etc.), have to take the place of the old ones, because it's just inevitable that they'll pass away, and we'll be the one who's responsible with the creative world.

Thank you for reading, and God bless.

How I feel about Shin Megami Tensei?

Shin Megami Tensei is probably a well-known JRPG game in the gaming world. It is basically thanks to it that Persona even exists for the first place. Everyone seems to enjoy this game series. So, what's up? Well... I'm not really a fan of its gimmick of using demons to assist you in battles, Baal being a popular character as one user posted in a thread of a Christian forum. Well, isn't that concerning? While I know this is not enough reasons (heck, I believe it is a small list of reasons,), the blunder is so big, that I can't easily accept that, and I'm a dude who make posts about Touhou!! I'll be bewildered if a Christian plays Shin Megami Tensei/Persona, since it has things that are so out of bounds, so demonic stuff in it, that I can't bring myself to even play it for a second. So, yeah, I don't like this game series, that's all. Anyways, it was short, but have a good day.

Addendum: Soooo, an update. So, one day I chatted with Christians on a discord server that is Christian anime server, and one of them told me in Shin Megami Tensei 2, you fight YHVH as the boss (basically God), and as expected, I wasn't happy about that, since you're basically fighting with an omnipotent God (And also blasphemous thing to do here). Just further deepens my distaste with it.

P.S., 2026: Well, well, well... the irony runs deeper here. Last year, I've played Shin Megami Tensei I on an emulator and it was really fun (besides the grinding, especially for the Jesus armor). It really inspired me especially with the mixture of modern technology and ancient religions and mythologies. I've tried Shin Megami Tensei II, but I got bored of it and I wasn't in summer holiday, so that's unfortunate. I'll try to make a new blog post how I perceive the MegaTen series nowadays. Hopefully.