Novalaxia

postscript - "A Detailed Introduction to Assault Lily (& How to Get Into It)"

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 23:45:59 GMT

(This postscript assumes you've watched the original video. If not, go and do it now HERE.)

oh, little does Renka know...

I once again write a postscript at a very interesting period for the original work in question. As if Apollo herself has grafted her precognition onto my retinas through sheer force, I unintentionally time the publication of these postscripts to coincide with a laundry list of new developments for the target franchise. Sorry that my timing is impeccable as always, but I get sidetracked. (far too often, I may add)

Assault Lily is a franchise that has quickly moved into the center of my heart. Like what seems to be the case with virtually all English-speaking fans, my first encounter with the wider series stems from watching Assault Lily: Bouquet at the very end of a very hectic 2020. I thought it had potential, but that's all I thought of it for a long time. Though I later learned of the stageplays and growing continuity established in Last Bullet, I had unfortunately never found time to delve further beyond the confines of the animated space.

First, the Revue Starlight video took my attention.
Then I had reinvigorated my lost passion for rhythm games.
And in the present, I endeavoured to make Youtube videos.

That did not deter me from returning to this fledgling series. I dare say that nothing would have stopped me from picking up Assault Lily again.

I write this postscript as the final play in the original "Ludvico Girls Academy" series, "The Blade of Truth", finishes production. Please take this as an opportunity to start engaging with the stageplays - I can't guarantee your enjoyment, especially without some basic understanding of Japanese, but I can vouch for the devotion and passion within.

doing the groundwork

I don't think I've outlined this directly, but the Assault Lily overview was the first video that I essentially worked on from scratch. With the Revue Starlight video, the script had basically been "finished" for the better part of a year by that point, but this time around, I was working from square one. It helps that I had just finished making a forty-two minute video, so working on longer discussions of topics wasn't too bad this time around.

Prior to editing the previous longform video, I enlisted the knowledge of a reputable AL fan translator for some entry points to the franchise. (I credited her in the video itself, and you can narrow down said figure's identity fairly easily, but I will choose to keep her anonymous out of respect.)

This is what led me down a bottomless pit of content - between watching the Ludvico plays & The Gleam of Dawn, reading the various translated works out there (whether it was League of Gardens -full bloom- or the translation of Wunder, undertaken by said translator) or watching the anime for what felt like the fourth time, I spent about two full weeks just engaging with every last material I could find. By the end of it, I was completely hooked. Many of my previous questions about the series that started from misconceptions around the anime had very quickly disappeared, completely overwritten with a growing fascination for how the world and various casts could develop. It's rare that I encounter a series where the worldbuilding doesn't actively attempt to interfere with how characters grow and interact with each other, but I suppose that's to be expected when the focus is "the strong bonds people have for one another overcoming the end of civilisation."

Writing the script might have been one of the hardest parts of this entire process, and I owe it entirely to myself constantly bouncing off various ideas until I sat down and realised that 95% of my audience, present and future, barely even know what girls' love is. How was I going to frame the cool ideas that Assault Lily has to offer when most of my audience have no clue where to begin with the series? I forced myself to pivot towards an overview, because that's what ticks as many boxes as possible here.

Fun fact - I didn't actually write a true script for this video. It's basically bullet points for the most part. This will be in the exam paper.

working on the video

okay so here's where I think most of my sense went out the window here

The biggest issue with any video, by far, is gathering footage. I have mentioned this several times, but the AL video took a lot of fine work trying to get everything in order. It's very rare that you run into an IP that is as split as YGO with copyright ownership, but Bushiroad has varying levels of involvement with the Assault Lily series that makes using specific footage complicated, and I was in no right mind to play with fire by using too much footage for too long. Anything from the anime or Last Bullet seemed like fair game, so I wasn't too concerned there, but it did occasionally feel like I padded certain sections out just so I could keep reusing more clips.

Stageplays were my primary concern. These comprised the bulk of Assault Lily's storytelling as a franchise, and also where much of the appeal would inevitably stem from. Getting footage for this would be considerably harder. From experience watching Kamen Rider stageplay footage on Youtube, it would be hard to use more than a few seconds of each play at the most without risking copyright strikes from AZONE (the company behind Assault Lily) or any of the various theatre companies involved in production. I understand this.

With the help of my friend/translator, I managed to find just enough footage for each stageplay portion, divide it up nicely, and fit it all into the video at the appropriate junctions. Perfect! The video didn't seem to get flagged by any legitimate copyright holders in testing either, so I'm satisfied with that conclusion.

Regarding the video format, I went with the easy guide approach. Start with a quick briefing of the series' core elements, talk about some shared aspects that people should probably remember, and then break it down by medium. I figured most people would skim through each section rather liberally for the core information and ignore the rest, so I tried to make sure I explained as much as was necessary without spoiling the actual stories themselves.

Talking about Bouquet and Last Bullet is fairly anomalous when looking at the wider canonicity of AL's events, a point I tried my hardest to touch upon throughout the video. These form their own separate canon with some crucial differences from the stageplays... until they don't. Discussing the story of these henceforth becomes much more confusing, because sometimes you remember an aspect from one timeline that sounds about right, only to realise that never happened at all in the other one. For what it's worth, I directly reference this issue once, and then move on. I figured people didn't want that kind of headache, and neither did I. (Last Bullet does have some good stories that are translated over at GEHENA Subtitle Labs, so don't let me dissuade you from checking it out. Even if the gameplay is middling at best.)

Let the record show that I have yet to watch the Odaiba stageplays to this day. I've been saving them for a good time, but I just haven't found a good moment to go through them yet LOL

Personally speaking, I was really excited to talk about the print works. I think the manga adaptation of League of Gardens (-full bloom-) and the two light novels are where Assault Lily gets to expand its chops in a dynamic way, and it is not much of a stretch to see why. You get a visual sense for how truly ransacked the post-Huge world is, while characters still maintain a near-infinite amount of expression that owes a fair deal from the franchise's roots in theatre. It's hard to downplay how someone of nominal importance reacts to basically any given situation in these portions of AL, because the illustrators do a very good job of highlighting that these are effectively kids fighting for their lives against all odds in an international war zone.

Editing the video was relatively uneventful. I wish that I had more polish to make transitions stand out more, but I am happy with the finished product. There are some weird audio ducking issues I missed, but that is moreso my own negligence, rather than a technical accident.

my thoughts on assault lily now

Assault Lily is a franchise that has potential. I use the terms "franchise" and "series" nigh-interchangably, because it's hard to define exactly what it is. However, I think that the way it uses different mediums to portray various aspects of its storytelling makes it remarkably interesting, because the ways in which the writing staff circumvent various limitations to their stage of choice leads to a greater focus on the people that make the world at large what it is in the present day. I sound sappy as hell here, but I often hear nonsensical criticisms of fiction regarding how much budget a work needs to fully express its core ideas. Assault Lily makes do with what it has, and the end result is magical beyond belief. Sure, the stageplays could look a little cooler. Perhaps the franchise needs more than a gacha game to expand the wider narrative.

But Assault Lily makes it work, with what they have. And it works well.

I went into the Ludvico plays not expecting very much. Most of my series knowledge is from the Assault Lily Wiki.

Schwester's Secret made me go "Assault Lily is GOOD."

It's unfortunate that there's a clear split between people who only play the gacha game, and those who enjoy multiple aspects of AL in various ways. Making the video made me appreciate the franchise so much more, because there is so much CONTENT out there. Wunder in particular stands out as a good example, because it is hard to find a protagonist who is as charismatic and also incredibly lacking in any sort of seriousness as you get in Misaka Kondo. She is truly the hero of another story (this one being the Odaiba Counteroffensive) and oh man does she just get in there and do all sorts of things that you cannot wrap your head around. It's like the final boss of Armored Core 5!

You can probably tell I had a hard time restraining myself from making this yet another piece about why I love Assault Lily so much. It's hard to be concise about it! That being said, that's kind of why I enjoy it so much. It's hard to find works that get to work on the kinds of stories they want to write, with a passion that you would best describe as childlike wonder.

I'll keep an eye on Assault Lily. I hope my video inspires you to do so as well.
The next video may not be so idealistic in tone.

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postscript - "Gekijouban Revue Starlight: Critique, or Contemporary?"

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 23:35:15 GMT

I can't shake my habits even here

It's been about four months since I uploaded my first "real" video of note to the Youtube channel. Initially intending for it to be a one-and-done might have been the smart plan in hindsight, but I'm afraid the wannabe video essay brainworms have finally infested my spinal cord like the world's most persistent tapeworm. Sorry.

My thoughts on the quality of my work have scarcely changed since I started, and subsequently, finished work on this video. The Assault Lily video will forever be my overall favourite product, if in part due to how much the series has caught my attention in recent memory. (I hear AZONE gave Kazuha even brighter blue hair, AND they/them pronouns, last I checked. Incredible.) However, the Revue Starlight video stands out as my own personal magnum opus - like the white whale that evaded Ishmael, my personal tribulations with manifesting this script into visual form are no less frustrating and long-winded. Nonetheless, I'm proud of what I could achieve, both with limited time on my own part, and the limited skillset available to me during production.

Rather than ramble for 10,000 words, I want to talk about some of the various factors that went into the Revue Starlight video. More specifically, what made the cut, what didn't, and how I feel about the video now that some time has passed. Let's la go.

the groundwork for the video, & writing the script

I mention this in the comments of the video itself, but this video initially wasn't intended for production so soon. The script itself started life as a review/analysis of the film, intended to be nothing more than an extended cut of my thoughts on what was otherwise an incredible movie. That being said, you can look through the finalised script yourself, quickly pinpointing where it stopped becoming an opinion piece, and more an overview on cinematography that many people would have rapidly glossed over in favour of "the yuri." I might have overdone it.

Well-established art critic Roger Ebert outlined the state of amateur film critique as such: "During any given week it's possible to read tens of thousands of words of evaluation and analysis about this show or that movie [...] without ever coming across one sentence that delves into form in any detail."

Many will dismiss his hypothesis as elitist bunk, designed to strip away any semblance of fun away from the normal people who don't know better. But when a friend showed me this article again during the editing process of the Revue Starlight video, I began to remind myself of the importance behind form in film. Why does this matter to an animated movie about drama kids? Hell, why should it apply to ANY form of animation?

This key detail is what separates a surface understanding of this series from much greater analysis.

I discuss form and mise-en-scène constantly in this video, because I think it's crucial to understanding HOW Revue Starlight as a series operates. Sure, there's some blink-and-you'll-miss-it scenes that require less technical understanding, but having a finer appreciation for the medium you're engaging with, especially with a work as freeform and open to interpretation as this one, allows you much greater room for how you understand the director's intent.

It's somewhat of a coincidence that I had taken a few "history of film" classes in university before working on what eventually became the script, because I think many of the finer details I mention would have otherwise missed my head entirely. One of the first concepts you learn in (what I imagine must be all) film study classes is of the elements that comprise mise-en-scène - composition, props, actors, costumes, lighting. They hammer this term into your head with all the finesse of a DeWalt power drill, and if you don't end up remembering some portion of it by heart when you're done with those classes, odds are you're not leaving with a passing grade. It's annoying, sure. But like virtually anything in life, fundamentals are key. Without this, I think my analysis of Revue Starlight as a series would have suffered far more, knowing that I lacked basic understanding of the mediums it portrays itself in, rather than having a mild annoyance that I have to copy and paste the exact accent every time.

My memories of writing the script are hazy. I remember having started work on the analysis the moment after I had watched VeggieSubs' v1 translation of the film in December of 2021, frantically typing on-and-off for the better part of three days alongside other obligations. The first real draft is a tad different from the final product I present today, but aside from some relatively minor changes to account for recording and video formatting, it's basically the same.

A massive detail that I intentionally left out of the video is the Revue of Resentment between Futaba and Kaoruko. Though the scene is visually breathtaking in many respects, with the sudden contrast between wide and close-up shots throwing you around the action of life like a ragdoll, I confess that I couldn't find nearly as much insight to talk about compared to the other portions of the film. Being vindicated somewhat by director Tomohiro Furukawa describing Gekijouban through the lens of a "delinquent manga" puts me at ease, because for every scene where something has immeasurable significance, you also have scenes where what you see really is what you get. I imagine that'll attract the ire of many people who ship those two, but you can't win 'em all.

With regards to reading material, I did source a large majority of it from my time in university. I have an embarassing amount of secondary works that I saved out of personal interest, and they came up more often than I'd like to admit in the video, so if you have some time to read them, check them out. Maybe not Aristotle's Politics, though. Too long.

editing the video

I started editing the video roughly around the end of January. At first, I didn't really know how long it would take to edit a video of this scope, but as I continued working on it piece by piece, I had a rough idea of how much I could get done at a time.

Starting out was rough. I mean, really rough. I forced myself to learn DaVinci Resolve (my video editing software) from what is essentially scratch, having never experimented with it past basic transitions and cuts. I messed around with audio mixing for a whole week, just to get settings that sounded decent enough to cover for my horrid mic settings. Recording was probably just as stressful, as I quickly realised many noises that I never noticed making ended up slipping through the cracks, even in the final product. I'm embarrased that not all of the narration could be redone or cut, but it's a concession I ended up making before the video got stuck in development hell.

There's a few lessons I learned in the editing process that I wish more Youtube creators would take greater note of in those ridiculous "influencer guides" you often get fed with. The most important point I took to heart, especially early on, is that planning your ideas goes a long way. I'd often run into a portion of the script that didn't add much, so I ended up just cutting them entirely. Knowing what is and isn't crucial to the points you make in these kinds of analytical videos is super important, because when I watch similarly styled content nowadays, I can usually deduce whether someone's going to get to the point solely based on the video length. (I'm looking at you, YGO creators. Script your shit.)

In terms of footage, I didn't try going for highest possible quality, merely compromising with anything I had already. Apparently the free version of Resolve doesn't have native support for H.265 footage, so learning this was certainly a hoot. As a side note, you don't have to get the absolute best quality footage you can find, but taking some time to compile some decent quality that doesn't conflict with your timeline resolution beforehand will definitely help you out a bit.

There's... not much else of note I can talk about here...

additional thoughts

I've only grown more fond of the Gekijouban video with every rewatch. Unlike a lot of my YGO content, where it often feels like there was an ulterior motive behind them, this video feels much more genuine to me, by comparison. I honestly enjoyed the time I spent working on this project, because I think it answered a lot of doubts about my ability to make videos of such scale. It's still the longest video I've ever produced, and that will likely never change for a long while, but I'm satisfied that this one was quantity and quality. (As much quality as I can get right now, anyway.)

If the Assault Lily video is my most enjoyable project, then the Gekijouban video is my most rewarding. The relief and satisfaction I have in knowing this is a real thing that I have done can't be understated, plus it convinced me that making videos is fun! Even if I improve my editing and audio mixing in the months and years to follow, I don't think I'd redo this at all. It's probably more than fine, and I'm happy that the feedback was overwhelmingly positive all round.

This video was a challenge to myself, a test for whether I was capable of making such analysis. Perhaps, on some level, I found the achievement I was looking for.

I realise that I do not know how to end postscripts, but I hope this serves as some insight into how I formulate video ideas. Apologies if this sounds like pretentious rambling of a different nature, or if my words didn't ring true in much the same way they did in my creative output. Sometimes it's hard to find the right words when you're trying to describe a task you did in hindsight.

Thank you for continuing to watch my videos. I can't say when the next longform video will see fruition. I merely hope you will be around to witness it eventually bear fruit.

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