Loopers Review

Lately Key seems to have lost its mind, suddenly dropping a bunch of projects, mostly short and quick little pieces. And the weird thing is, Jun Maeda — Key’s star player — is nowhere to be seen. After his latest anime blew up in his face, maybe his ass really did split in half and he retired for good. Either way, this is a good thing for Key. I’ve been sick of Maeda for a while now. Every story he writes follows the exact same pattern: set up something super compelling, some really interesting premise, then once the premise is laid out he starts padding the daily-life scenes, and finally he realizes he’s running out of time and can’t hold it together, so he slams the accelerator on a roller-coaster super-twist, wraps it up in a hurry, and leaves the Key fans who watched it shit the bed screaming impotently into the void. Anyone who’s seen Angel Beats and Charlotte knows exactly what I’m talking about.

Good news is, none of Key’s recent projects have that dumbass Maeda in them～ Fantastic. This month they even released the first one, and I was instantly hyped. It’s called Loopers, and the scenario is by Ryukishi07. I don’t particularly like Ryukishi either, but hey, better than that dumbass Maeda! Plus the artist for this game is seriously good, so I dove right in.

And then… after playing it, I’ve got a bone stuck in my throat. I have to talk about this.

Let me start with the story. The protagonist is an idiot who’s into AR treasure-hunting games like Pokemon Go and Ingress. The story: our male and female leads suddenly get caught up in a special incident. The incident is that this group of people inexplicably finds themselves trapped forever on August 1st. No matter what you do that day, the next day it’s back to the same date. In other words, these people are stuck repeating August 1st forever, unable to move forward.

Then, as the protagonist and heroine wander around doing whatever, they discover plenty of other people stuck looping through this day too. The leaders are a handsome young guy and a mysterious girl named Mia — they’ve even formed an organization called Loopers, all searching for a way out of this “infinite loop.” Then the story enters an endless stretch of padding: every day is just eating, drinking, and messing around together. Since today keeps repeating, no matter how much money you spend, no matter what you do, even if you die, once the day ends everything resets. But living like that gets old eventually. The season’s the same, the events are the same, the news is the same, everything’s the same. Sure, whatever you spend comes back, but you can’t actually earn anything either…

So the Loopers start figuring out how to break the cycle. Eventually, after the sexy handsome guy’s analysis, they finally get it:

“This endlessly looping world is a barrier created by someone.”

Then, after a bunch of flailing around, they finally find a way to escape the barrier world. One night, in some shithole, they find a portal that looks like a quest node from a Japanese RPG or old GTA4, and supposedly stepping through it takes you back to “reality.” The protagonist gets ready to drag everyone back, but then little Mia from the Loopers chooses to stay, saying she “has no tomorrow.” And that’s when our dumbass protagonist finally realizes: this so-called “barrier created by someone” belongs to little Mia.

Next the game enters the beloved tearjerker segment: little Mia has some illness that keeps her asleep for long stretches, and her loneliness triggered some kind of miracle that dragged a bunch of people into her dream to loop and play with her. Eventually Mia lets go too, sends the Loopers back, and stays there alone.

Simply put: a sick girl in a coma creates a virtual dream barrier where every day repeats August 1st, and the protagonist and his group just got sucked into it.

The ending is predictably clichéd too: the protagonist and company find the comatose Mia in reality, and, well, true love conquers all, everything works out, everyone meets again.

After finishing, I went back through the credits several times. I really didn’t find the words “Jun Maeda” anywhere. But no matter how I look at it, this game feels like something Maeda made. Isn’t the whole structure just a pure low-budget mashup of Angel Beats and Little Busters? You’re telling me Ryukishi07 wrote this — did he just copy Maeda’s old games?

Okay, let’s calm down and talk about where this game goes wrong.

1. The protagonist is an absolute dumbass. His character concept is someone who likes AR treasure-hunting games like Pokemon Go, but maybe to fit the title, he constantly has “let’s search for treasure” (宝物を探しよう) hanging off his lips like a catchphrase. It’s genuinely insufferable — like a “treasure” broken record. And whenever he meets Mia or the Loopers and the rest, he’s always going on about “treasure hunting” like some dumbass who can’t read the room. Maybe the game wants to convey his optimistic nature, but this extremely “classic” way of expressing it really… nobody’s buying it in 2021. The protagonist isn’t Hayate from F-Zero or Go Seiba — blind hot-bloodedness like this just makes him look like a retard.

2. The midgame drags on forever. The game isn’t long overall, but it spends a massive amount of time in the middle. What’s in the middle? A bunch of Loopers flirting and chatting aimlessly every day, going out together and stuff. Honestly, none of this contributes anything to the plot. If you just want to use this content to deepen the “Loopers” friendship, the length is nowhere near enough. And the way to deepen these people’s bonds — rather than eating, drinking, and playing every day, I think going through hardships together would work better; after all, true feelings show in adversity. It seems the game’s premise is supposed to be that, but for some reason the whole group suddenly starts living it up in luxury despite being in crisis. It feels like a sudden tonal shift, completely out of nowhere. The game sets up a clichéd Loopers organization with tons of characters, but most are just extras; the real core is the protagonist and Mia. Honestly, cut everyone else — I don’t even know what they’re doing. The game also awkwardly shoehorns a romance between the protagonist and Mia. Our handsome boy Kimura Ryouhei lived alongside Mia all that time with no results, and then this dumbass who only repeats “treasure” swoops in for first blood? That’s not science. It makes Kimura Ryouhei look like a gay.

3. The story development is extremely clichéd. I briefly introduced how clichéd it is earlier; anyone paying attention can see it. The otherworld of Angel Beats, the friendship-building of Little Busters, all that’s missing is Charlotte’s superpowers. This story is basically a mashup of Key’s talking-point works. Supposedly Ryukishi07 has written some good stuff too, so how did he end up making this? Did someone guide him? The scenario is by Ryukishi07, but was the planning really without Maeda? Or did Key think Maeda’s formula works and ask Ryukishi07 to write this kind of thing?

All things considered, I can’t flatly say Loopers is bad, but it’s clearly not for people who are tired of Key’s old tearjerker formula. For that crowd, this game offers nothing but clichés. And I don’t get why Key is still doing such clichéd stuff in 2021. Do they think their fans like it, or that fans just can’t forget Maeda, or maybe the Maeda formula we’ve always known wasn’t his idea at all but something pushed by some higher-up at Key?

Anyway, in my personal view, Loopers is:

Clichéd as hell!