RE: Omega Labyrinth Life

Now, I’m not going to say that Omega Labyrinth Life is the best game of 2019 -- far from it -- but in some ways, it is among one of the most interesting I’ve played this year.  The sort of thing I can’t help but want to put under the microscope, you know?  Which I did.  And, despite its nature…and history…and premise…and everything…I’m actually, genuinely kind of glad I took the plunge.

That said, this plunge cements the fact that I’m bound for the deepest, hottest circle of Hell.  So, yeah, I’ve been given one more reason to not die anytime soon.

Thanks, video game!

Here’s the setup.  Our heroine, Hinata, is the first student allowed to transfer into a prestigious, flower-laden academy in its storied history.  Despite her best attempts to blend in and make friends, it only takes 24 hours for the effort to get torpedoed -- mostly because the thousands of flowers that the student body idolizes dies overnight.  With the blame thrown her way (because boy, what a coincidence that the garden bites it once the transfer student shows up!), Hinata decides to investigate the mysterious caves that have begun emerging, and restore the academy’s flora to its former glory.

From a gameplay perspective, Hinata and her slowly-expanding posse of schoolgirls (which the game swears in this disclaimer are at least 18) venture into the titular labyrinths to gather the “Soma” needed to revive the dead flowers, patch by patch.  It’s a perilous journey, given that Omega Labyrinth Life shares DNA with roguelikes -- albeit with some RPG elements mixed in.  Basically, you’ll venture from floor to floor, fighting monsters, gathering gear, and dealing with traps, with the requisite leveling-up along the way.  The core gameplay mechanic -- or gimmick, if you prefer -- is that as you beat monsters, you’ll absorb “Omega Power”; stock up enough throughout a dungeon, and until you leave (or die), you’ll gain a cup size, which in turn pumps up your stats.

Not gonna lie: acknowledging that kind of makes me die inside.  Which, on some level applies to the entire game.  Because, you see, this is peak anime.

I should clarify, though.  I don’t entirely mean that to slam the medium.  Not all of it.  It’s just that there’s a very specific, very notable subsection of that industry that’s a little too good at earning revulsion from those that even give it a passing glance.  In the interest of keeping things simple (and overgeneralizing), this is peak anime trash.  The kind of modern-ish stuff, and fluff, that makes da real fans scuff and huff.  You know the trappings, I bet.  Cute girls!  Fanservice!  Idols!  Fanservice!  Friendship!  Fanservice!  Poppy presentation!  Fanservice!  Lesbian undertones and overtones!  F-f-f-f-fanservice!

For the naysayers out there, Omega Labyrinth Life has nothing for them.  Every move it’s made was, and is, a calculated attempt to earn gamers’ love and money -- a way to garner attention by any means necessary.  In doing so?  I’m actually sort of in awe at it.  Speaking strictly for myself, this is a macrocosm of all the moe moe anime tropes and trends over the ages, compressed until it’s as dense as a lead sphere the size of a McMansion.  It’s the sort of thing I, in my corrupted curiosity, couldn’t look away from forever.  I’ve known about the game since the first release in the franchise -- yes, this gets a franchise while The Wonderful 101 languishes in the shadows -- and I’d say that in the time since, I’ve been worn down enough by its trappings to dunk my head into the water.  I went from “I don’t have to know, don’t want to know” to “Gotta know.”

Put simply?  At first I was like:

But then I was like:

I actually want to thank this game, because it’s shown me what (for some studios) anime means these days.  It’s actually fascinating in its…well, for lack of a better word, repulsiveness.  And now that I have evidence, I can articulate some of the faults -- with this game, and with a decent chunk of anime in general.

Thinking back to the Red Letter Media video on Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Rich Evans brought up a good point with the rival heroes: what you want to do is create a contrast between them, so that their clashes become meaningful even before the punches start flying.  Make them too similar, and it turns a story into a pile of sludge.  The devs behind Omega Labyrinth Life didn’t get the memo.  Hinata is a pretty standard heroine: plucky, energetic, friendly, has a heart of gold.  She wants to make lots of pals and enjoy her new school life.  Which is fine, I guess, if helplessly trite and cloying.  Within the first hour, she’s bonding pretty handily with Berune (which by extension makes her your first party member/dungeon partner).  

That was a mistake.  There aren’t enough degrees of separation between the two to justify making them the core/first duo, so what happens is that they end up stepping all over each other’s toes, and fulfilling the same role in the cast.  Granted, Berune does get a mini-arc later on about her feelings of inadequacy and fear over holding the team back -- which is more than I can say about Hinata at this point -- but for the most part, the biggest difference between them is their hair.  And even then, it’s like…

The core problem with Omega Labyrinth Life, from a story perspective, is that there’s no conflict.  Well, there is one, thanks to the academy’s withering garden, but what I mean is that whatever interpersonal drama is present hardly feels substantial.  It’s not even a problem of the seven girls being archetypal (though you can be damn sure that every slot is filled).  It’s that when they come together, there’s very little in the way of clashing.  Everyone’s hell-bent on being friends (and/or lovers, because anime).  They’re all so well-mannered and pleasant and friendly with each other that huge swaths of dialogue come off as filler.

I mean, you’ve got seven wholly disparate heroines coming together to venture into the ever-shifting depths of a magically-blessed academy; archetypal or not, there’s plenty you can do here besides “friendship” and “lesbians”.  I lay most of the blame on Hinata in this scenario, because as the main character, she’s the pacesetter for the entire game -- and she doesn’t have enough of a presence to justify being the leading lady.  The others are better, even if they’re being strangled to death by the chains of friendship.

Up-and-coming pop star Juri injects some life here, because she’s the main one out of the seven who butts heads.  Underneath her kawaii idol act, she’s paranoid, insecure, intolerant, and envious of anyone who dares to take the spotlight off her (plus she’s so spicy, the localization lets her belt out an uncensored “fuck”).  It actually reaches a point where she’ll head into a dungeon first and set traps to “get back at that goody two-shoes Hinata”, seemingly unfazed by the fact that she could end up killing someone.  Being an idol is serious business, y’all.

I’d praise Juri more if she was more of an active participant in the plot (such as it is), but it takes a while before you hit her chapter, and thus is more of a sour usurper in the shadows.  Plus, I suspect it’s only a matter of time before we straighten her out and make her join the Friendship Brigade.  In the meantime, the other girls try to pick up the slack.  Tryhard edgelord Mei is second-best at mixing things up, because she wants to prove she’s a better hero than Hinata (which she is, because I can’t say no to a girl that does sick Kamen Rider poses and practices her hissatsu waza).  Silver-haired heiress Nanami is your typical proper lady, though there’s not much to her so far besides disdainfully bankrolling the academy’s renovations.  Then there’s Yurika, who outside of radiating that ara ara energy like she’s gone Super Saiyan 3, also apparently wants to have sex with everybody.  Possibly everything.

Among the cast, my favorite of the bunch is Mio.  Partly because she wears cool shoes.  But mostly because of the seven, she talks the least.

This isn’t a problem exclusive to Omega Labyrinth Life, but it is one exemplified here: there are so many characters with squeaky-ass voices trying to be cute and peppy, I’m tempted to mute the dialogue the next time I boot it up.  It should be obvious by now that I’m not a native Japanese speaker, so I don’t know much about intonation and the like.  That said?  Again and again, when I listen to these characters speak, I can’t help but wonder “Who talks like this?” 

Hinata, Juri and Berune’s voice actresses sound like they had a bowl of helium for breakfast, with tons of inflections and stretched-out syllables to try and sound cutesy or whatever.  Guess what?  Didn’t work.  Mei acts tough and cool, with the husky voice to match…until she gets embarrassed, whereupon she reveals she has a voice so high-pitched you could use it to send every dog at a pet shop into a frenzy.  Then there’s the headmaster Rinka, who despite claiming to be an adult (and is the older sister of a previous character in the canon) could pass for 12 and has the voice of a shrieking 6-year-old. 

It’s not that I have anything against girls with high-pitched voices -- Mio is definitely in the soprano range -- but the implementation is what matters here.  Is this just a trend that’s appealing to Japan?  Is it what the fans desire?  What they expect?  What they believe is, or should be, the norm?  I can’t say for sure.  Then again, I don’t need to dwell on it.  There’s a bigger issue at play here.

Remember what I said about the disclaimer that all the girls here are over 18?  True, their voices make me “press X to doubt”.  More than anything, though, there have been plenty of instances where the cast rarely seems interested in acting its age.  Sure, 18 isn’t exactly the fount of maturity and experience-born wisdom, but it’s something.  It’s when children make a definitive slide into adulthood, with their eyes opened to the way of the world -- for better or worse. 

Here?  Four out of the seven girls still feel like they’re trapped in an endlessly-looping semester of high school, if not middle, or even elementary at some points.  There’s no sophistication to their thoughts or dialogue.  No attempt to show any insight or awareness.  It’s all about taking on problems with blunt-force methodology, in the name of friendship and smiles and all sorts of saccharine pleasantries. 

I wouldn’t bring this up, but there’s a massive dichotomy here because of what Omega Labyrinth Life is trying to be.  It’s a fanservice-heavy game that I suspect many a lad wouldn’t want their moms around to see.  Even setting aside the core gimmick of boosting your favorite girl’s bust size, entire game mechanics focus on touching, poking, and rubbing girls down until they explode in…well, let’s call it imagery…complete with all the moans and dialogue you’d expect. 

Your armor is whatever bra and panties your character’s wearing, you get in hot springs to restore your health -- complete with lavish art of your heroine in the buff -- and you appraise items by jamming them in your chest and jiggling your yabbos around.  Two of those three points are skippable after the first time, thank God (for the sake of expediency as well as spot-dodging any skeeviness), but they’re still in the game…and also, the touch minigame is used to buff your characters’ stats, and you’ll get more EXP out of it if you do the rubbing manually.  Perfect.

Here’s the thing: a not-insignificant amount of content in this game is for mature audiences only.  So given that, why is almost everything else so immature?  It’s a disconnection that grinds at the corners of my brain; you’ve got all this overt sexuality on full display, but displayed by characters less complex than the cast of Arthur.  It’s like…okay game, if you want to say your characters are 18, then fine.  But have them act like it -- routinely, and with the entire cast instead of a choice few every so often. 

Play up the disagreements between them.  Their concerns.  Their foibles.  The whole game is built around breasts, so why not explore that through the lens of your heroines?  Even if the magical boob job is only temporary, wouldn’t it be possible to use it as a springboard for each character’s body issues?  You know, something actual girls (or women in general, regardless of age) deal with regularly?  As the resident wallflower, what’s Mio’s stance on steadily standing out?  Does Nanami think that being too busty is unbecoming of a conglomerate heiress?  And Yurika starts as a G-cup regardless, so does she think that getting even bustier boosts her sex appeal?  Or is she dismayed by the figure she’s cultivated for years being forcibly thrown off-balance?  Hell, there’s a whole subplot -- or main plot -- in making Juri get drunk on Omega Power, deluding her into thinking stardom awaits if she hoards the power and becomes the bustiest of all, even if it means knocking off any competition that dares to challenge her bra size.

Those are scenarios I came up with in one sitting over the course of three minutes.  Why couldn’t you do the same, game devs?  Is it because you’re brave enough to make a game built on boobs, but too scared to challenge your audience or yourselves?

I will be fair, though.  I will be fair.  I’ve made enough progress in the game (FML) to know that there are side dungeons that basically makes each of the girls run through a Persona 4-style metaphysical nightmare, right down to such a blatant “I am a shadow” encounter that Atlus has enough grounds to sue.  If these girls are going to develop more than adipose tissue, then it’ll probably be there.  I mean, they should be doing it in the main story, spurred by internal struggles, external conflicts, and engagement with social mores whether they accept, nurture, or reject them, but maybe I’m asking too much.

I should look at the game for what it is, not what it isn’t (or what I want it to be).  Even if there are tons of missed opportunities and grating elements, there have been occasions where Omega Labyrinth Life has gotten a smile out of me, and a mild chuckle.  Mio’s a benchwarmer of her own volition, but endears regardless.  Mei’s committed to her bit of being a dark warrior, and upgrades to loyal soldier once Hinata wins her over.  Yurika’s the level-headed voice of reason, even if I half-expect her to mount every single student by game’s end. 

There are a lot of ways to improve Omega Labyrinth Life.  A whole lot.  That said, what’s here isn’t 100% worth discounting.  There’s a reason I’m still playing this game and not regretting my purchase -- and it’s not just the obvious one.

And I’ll explain why…another time.  But first?  There’s one more thing I have to do this year.

Time to settle this.