Yeah, just saw someone post this on Twitter. Better late than never, I guess!

Quite possibly… but then these sites will happily cover some indie game in which you watch videos or read text or whatever. (Her Story, Depression Quest, Christine Love's work, etc. etc. — not saying any of these are bad, but many are about as interactive as a pure visual novel.)

Danganronpa actually gets coverage from the mainstream games press for the same reason why Ace Attorney and Zero Escape do- it has actual gameplay beyond watching the story go by and occasionally making choices, which makes it appealing to a wider audience. I don't think identity politics/culture war bullshit has that much to do with it.

Yeah, I love Danganronpa as well, but it's a good example of the overall theme. In the Western media horrifying brutal violence is fine, but a nipple or cuss words are not, especially among teenagers. Hunger Games, thumbs up, Fruit of Grisalia, thumbs down. Also, diversity in gender and ethnicity is all that matters in your editorial building, not actual diversity in the views of the media in which you cover. After all, it's not like Ebert actually ever sought out anyone that disagreed with him… or did he? Hmmm… >.>

On a less wiggy conspiracy theory note . . . my goodness something about the art and character design in Muv Luv strikes a tremendous cord with me. I think probably because the lines and colors are so bold. I'm not a big fan of more soft, painterly anime styles. Thematically, it's super in-line with the type of Japanese media I like to consume. I'm not sure if I'm more in love with the girls or the robots, and that's my favorite position to be in. I'll have to look into the anime.

Yeah, I only put that in there as a bit of snark because last time I criticised Mackey (the purported "expert" in such things) when he wrote something terrible, Kat Bailey came and whinged at me in the comments.

It kind of baffles me that sites will trip over themselves to praise Danganronpa — which is fabulous, to be fair, but certainly not free of the "problematic" stuff they love to moan about — but will totally ignore or outright berate other stuff.

Oh well. For this sort of thing, it's up to word of mouth and specialist sites, I guess. Although judging by the success of the Grisaia, Clannad and Muv-Luv Kickstarters, that doesn't seem to be working out too badly…