Inori's SOS!

tl;dr

The Story Itself

• I like how the present and past Inoris and Kayas interact, but...
• I think this event feels a little...budgetless.
• I also dislike how the story doesn't take ruined Landosol seriously. Missed opportunity.

Difficulty

• Timelabe time travel exposition dump is annoying, but nothing I couldn't handle.

Translation Differences

• Just some grammar corrections.

The Story Itself

Short rundown

Just to get us onto the same page. I like the story and how the characters developed here because of the encounter with their past selves. I just think it would've worked better if the story were taken a bit more seriously.

Inori discovers a secret room in Dragon's Nest guildhouse. She finds a vase and breaks it. In a state of panic, Inori doesn't realize she's holding onto something and throws it. That something is Timelabe, the thing that allows the master of it to time travel. Kaya becomes the master and gets that really hot stewardess outfit. They decide to time travel back to the time before the vase broke, unaware of the shenanigans that will occur...

(If you haven't pieced it together by now, the shenanigans involve them encountering their past selves.)

Inori and Inori

Inori and Kaya encounter their past selves on the first time time traveling. Kaya and past Kaya almost fought, but the present dragons decide to retreat. Back in the present, Inori is suddenly hailed as the new boss of Dragon's Nest. While not explicitly stated, it might be because the present dragons guided the past dragons into Dragon's Nest's secret room. And from there, past Inori got a hold of Dragon's Nest's treasure, Homare's cane. This causes an inconsistency in the flow of time, and in turn, made present Inori the boss of Dragon's Nest.

Also, unrelated, but Inori's new outfit came from herself. Not because of Timelabe or anything. She's definitely been preparing for this.

Inori being Inori, lets the power get into her head. She overworks Kaya and keeps abusing time travel to solve gang-related matters. Kaya eventually gets tired of it and decides to fuck off for a bit to rest.

Inori immediately blunders her next gang-related skirmish because it involves monsters and the one person used to fighting monsters is gone. Inori decides to walk around town to clear her head but notices that things are different. The shopkeep she usually buys sweets from is scared of her, and the kids she usually plays with run from her. Inori finally realizes being a boss isn't all it's cracked up to be and decides to time travel to fix it. However, since she isn't the master, it took some forcing to get Timelabe to do its thing, and even then, it only did so out of self-defense.

Inori time travels forward into a ruined Landosol, I'll talk about this part later. From there, she kept time travelling until she ran into the time before she joined Dragon's Nest.

Past Inori lost her doll to a monster. Present Inori decides to use a shitty disguise and help her. They work together to defeat the monster and recover her past self's doll. Present Inori suddenly gets sucked back into the time tunnel before past Inori could learn who she is. Past Inori comments that she wants to be just like her. Does she know?

So, that's about it for Inori. I like how she gets humbled by being shown the consequences of being a boss. And by being shown the time before she joined Dragon's Nest, she remembered that there's a worse thing than being bossed around by Homare, being alone.

Kaya vs Kaya

Now in her holiday, Kaya doesn't know what she's supposed to do. Kaya suddenly gets sucked back into the time tunnel and put back to the time where she first encountered past Kaya and Inori. They actually fight this time. Present Kaya notices that past Kaya isn't going all out, then the former realizes that's because the latter is more focused on covering for past Inori. Present Kaya wonders if she should exploit this, but she spends too much thinking about it and doesn't realize past Kaya is going for it. Present Kaya braces for the hit...only for past Kaya to stop right before landing the blow. Past Kaya then says that a 2v1 isn't unfair and lets present Kaya escape.

Well, that's about it for Kaya. I mostly like this exchange because of how boisterous the two is with each other. Like praising each other and not wanting to disappoint the other, things like that. I also like how Kaya realized how precious of a friend Inori has become to her by seeing how past Kaya covered for past Inori instead of going all out.

What about the budget?

I just find it strange that most of the exchange is done through the same characters. It's Kaya talking to Kaya and Inori talking to Inori. The voice actresses are just talking to themselves. Compared to later events, Twinkle Wish and their wish-granted counterparts have different VAs. Ameth (well, I guess I'll acknowledge that she has the same VA as Fio) and Sumika have different VAs. This is definitely an unfair comparison, comparing a normal monthly event to anniversary events. But still, I can't help but be bothered by it.

I tried looking into this game's event history to see if I could find anything to do with it. I found out that this event first ran in April 2021. The nearest big event that happened near that date is the Legion War raid, which happened in August 2021. I guess they cut corners here so they could go all out producing the raid event? Considering that a lot of characters appeared in it. Could also explain why the WAoi event was so shit (imo).

Despite that, I think they managed to produce quite the enjoyable story here despite the limited resources. This may also explain why future Landosol in this event is kinda written as a joke. They probably didn't have the resources, and probably didn't want to write anything serious before the raid as not to take spotlight away from it. Could also be that they wanted to "mentally prepare" the audience for the raid by writing low-stakes events right before the raid.

Regarding Future Landosol

As mentioned before, Timelabe sent Inori into the future in self-defense. There, she sees a ruined Landosol overrun by a gang, HER gang. Obviously, Inori freaks out and is confused why a gang under her command would stoop to such a level. She runs into some gang members...who promptly got swatted away by future Hatsune and Misato, who have gained the reputation of being saviors in the now-ruined Landosol. Seeing the opportunity to run...Inori runs. Timelabe suddenly sends her further into the future where...Landosol is okay. It's all fine now because the saviors Hatsune and Misato figured things out.

...And that's it.

You know, I was at the edge of my seat when ruined Landosol came onto the screen. I was like, ooh, is Inori going to face her corrupted future self!? That didn't happen. Okay, maybe Inori will assert herself and wrangle the gang members that are shitting on Landosol using her authority!? That didn't happen either. She just travelled further into the future and things are suddenly fine.

And those are the two things I wish happened. The story showed too little, and spent too little time in ruined Landosol.

Overall Thoughts

The story definitely delivered in terms of character interactions and development. But in terms of stakes? Kinda failed to stick the landing. Having a convenient exit button really muddled all the potential tension. That's the point of the story, I know. But I think the story could've benefitted from having at least 1 instance where Timelabe broke or something, forcing the characters to stick to the time they travelled to for a bit. I wonder where this instance could be placed? How about...future Landosol? To force Inori to do the two things I mentioned above.

Difficulty

Not much to say, easy. Kaya speaks very informally and Inori is a child. 100% (1065/1065) comprehension.

Timelabe was a bit annoying in the sense that it was very formal. Admittedly, I just held shift and dragged my mouse through all of its line, kek. But in the end, I still ended up understanding all of it. So, I still counted those lines as comprehended. Another character with similar speech style of "really fucking formal" is Nephi, and she's a whole lot harder to the point where sometimes I still don't understand her lines even after running them through MTL.

Timelabe also had a lot of repeated lines. Which could further support the argument that this event was half-assed.

Translation Differences

Not a lot to talk about. If translated 1:1, the Japanese version would sound something like Inori SOS!! Time Travel Dragons. The EN translation just made minor adjustments there and there as not to make it sound awkward in English. Inori's SOS!! The Time Traveling Dragons.

That's all for this blogpost. See ya on the next one.

MFW Inori just zoomed out of future Landosol without doing anything