#also hi dirtbrain love u too <3

[aranarumei]

hi kiri What’s the deal with a3’s timeloop day. you shouldn’t be surprised that I am asking this. okay I love you bye

ok this is actually a pretty simple answer! but i got rambly so here's a readmore.

A3! (which stands for Act! Addict! Actors! <- don’t ask me why it’s this. idk) is a gacha game where you play as the manager, Izumi Tachibana (I’m doing first name, last name here) and you work to revive a dying theater company called Mankai. there’s 3 Acts, each with like, 4 big stories in them. and a bunchhhh of shorter event storiess which imo are crucial to experience. The first 2 acts, along with the interceding events, have been completely localized, and were run on the now-defunct English server. There is, however, an archive—if at any point in time you are ever interested, feel free to shoot me a message. And I’m serious. Even if it’s like two years later. It’s been like almost 3 years since I started going thru a3 and I haven’t even finished act 2. I’m slow

Anyways, Act 1 deals with establishing the company—in its former glory, there used to be four troupes that rotated by season. Izumi’s dad also used to run it, and he disappeared. So that’s why there’s four big stories each act: it’s one per season. In Act 1, each story deals with gathering the members for each season troupe together, and then pulling off their first play. And it also deals with like, the issues all the characters are facing. It is like, within the yumejoshi genre so there’s definitely that vibe of like. wow look at all these pretty boys who are kind of into me!? but I think it’s pretty mild on that point and like. something I enjoy is that I can see Izumi as like. an actual Character as opposed to just a self-insert. Which is nice. but the real selling point for me is that there’s a lot of like, found family and rich character dynamics within the cast. It is even homosexual sometimes.

One thing I find really interesting about a3 is that I think it has really strong character writing and development. And it’s really good at establishing different “moods” across each troupe, which works well in creating dynamics and also because each troupe specializes in something different. So spring is like, the “classic” troupe—they tend to do lots of reinterpretations of classic works, though that’s not exclusively their thing… but anyways. they do like. nice fantastical stories in my opinion. Summer does comedy, autumn does action, and winter does drama. and winter HAS drama.

Now up until winter there’s been some wackiness in a3 but it’s been like, pretty grounded in how it’s played out. and then winter rolls around and. see the issue with winter is that unlike some of the younger members they’re all composed of adults. so they’re bad at talking about their feelings, because instead of just shouting things out loud they will just shut down and like. Leave. I love this about them and I think it’s such a good writing choice.

Enter Tasuku Takato and Tsumugi Tsukioka. Tasuku and Tsumugi used to be like, the best of friends. they acted together and followed their passions together. and then they both auditioned for the God Troupe together, which is this prestigious famous troupe (it’s also evil.) and while tasuku got in and became one of the lead actors, tsumugi failed his audition. This left a deep scar on Tsumugi, who ended up kind of running away from acting as a vocation all together. now, Tasuku quit the God troupe because they were engaging in some shady stuff, and ended up joining Mankai along with Tsumugi, who coincidentally was inspired to try acting again. tsumugi’s been elected the leader of winter troupe, and therefore the person who’s meant to take the lead role in their first play. Tasuku is constantly snapping at him whenever he’s unconfident, and it’s just not great vibes. To top it all off, they’ve been issued a challenge by the God troupe, where they’ll both perform and the audience has to vote on which play they like better. Tsumugi is not really confident he can stand up to them for obvious reasons. Tasuku gets mad at him about it. Tsumugi runs into this weird doll, and the next day, they wake up in a time loop.

See, the thing is, they’re on such a tight deadline for the play, and winter is So Bad at talking about their feelings, that magic is real now. this is somewhat of an oversimplification, but it’s funny to say it like this. Anyways, there are like, seven mysteries in Mankai (have I mentioned they all dorm together! they all do! Each of them has a roommate and they all live in a big dorm that’s connected to their own theater and stage. It’s part of why they’re in such big debt and trouble at the beginning—its really hard to maintain those facilities) and one of them is about this doll that will put you in a time loop unless you become friends. essentially. And this is what happens… eventually they end up talking to each other for real due to the time loop, and each affirms just how much they respect the acting of the other. later on when Tsumugi slips back into being unconfident tasuku is able to resolve his past mistakes, because part of why he was so angry at Tsumugi was also because he was angry at himself for like. not reaching out. And telling him how much he loved him and his acting. Because their styles are very different—tasuku is loud and commanding, and Tsumugi is a more understated and subtle.

A3 is also very very cool in that parts of its plays mirror real life? so like. this play, sympathy for an angel, has two leads: Michael (Tsumugi) and Raphael (Tasuku). In it, Michael becomes interested in this woman on a list of people who are about to die, and ends up visiting the human world. He writes letters to her. His friend, Raphael, warns him against this, saying that he’s foolish for going so far for someone he can’t even meet. And each time he steps into the human world, his own soul gets weaker, and his wings begin to wither. Still, he persists against objections. Eventually, the woman recovers, gets a fiancé, and he returns to heaven. Thinking he’ll just wish for her happiness even with his unrequited love, he looks at the list and finds out that despite recovering, she’s still on the close to death list. Despite the danger to himself, he descends into the human world, and takes her place in a car accident. As he’s dying, his soul about to be obliterated because he’s been in the human world too often, Raphael descends and holds him in his arms. Michael says that he’s happy he got to do something for the person he loves, and he’s happy to be held by his best friend. Raphael says that though he’d called Michael the fool, it was him that truly was one: because he stood by, unable to protect both the person he loves and his best friend. Because he was in love with Michael the whole time of course. And then Michael dies in his arms. Now this makes me weepy as does the accompanying character song but what I really love most about it is like. Raphael’s regrets in that he didn’t protect Michael kind of directly mirror Tasuku’s own regrets in being unable to help Tsumugi when he was going through a tough time? only Tsumugi isn’t dead and so Tasuku has an actual chance to fix things, which is sweet.

It should be mentioned that one guy in the spring troupe WRITES all of these plays which is deeply funny to me bc it means that 1) he is probably gay and doesn’t know this and 2) he has precognitive abilities regarding the inner psyche of all of his castmates. and that’s a3 timeloop day. some of these a3 characters have me by the throat btw I just get beamed visions of them chatting and introspecting like constantly. I definitely haven’t explained everything but I think this is enough?