Your Desperate Attempt to Be Praised Really Makes It Hard for Me to Praise You Years ago, when ANIPLEX.EXE entered the Galgame market as a Sony brand, a bunch of people were shouting “the big one is coming.” I sourly wrote a piece for Dimensional Fanaticism, roughly arguing that Sony was just dabbling and never had much expectation for this market anyway—that the day ANIPLEX.EXE stops putting out products purely through outsourced white-labeling and actually becomes a so-called “first-party developer” is when “the big one” truly arrives. And you’ve seen the results. “The big one” never came, and ANIPLEX.EXE went nearly two years in obscurity, until this year it started rolling out new titles again—still “outsourced” and “white-labeled,” except this time the label says “Looseboy.” The most famous title under ANIPLEX.EXE is of course ATRI (ATRI -My Dear Moments-). The game is a thoroughly formulaic Japanese sci-fi-future work—which doesn’t mean it’s bad. Clichéd stories can still land well, just like how we keep getting moved by formulaic hot-blooded action. Maybe to replicate ATRI’s success, the original team regrouped outside ANIPLEX.EXE and put out GINKA (GINKA). The art style, the scenario writer, the studio, even the title all scream “tribute to the predecessor.” So does GINKA deliver the same feeling as ATRI? Objectively speaking, yes—it even delivers far more content than ATRI. But is “more” good? That I’ve always doubted, and it’s exactly what I find most baffling and worth criticizing about this game.