I got a notification for this a few days ago and have now gotten around to reading it yay!! This was interesting to see this as the new entry from you
My thoughts don't feel organised enough to leave a proper review & I am curious where the story could progress from here in later Acts, but I can still post a collection of some impressions I had while reading 🤔:
-I don't know much about sentai media actually so there's possibly a lot that I'm missing here contextually but it is interesting the names/associations that each of the Girlrangers have! Of course the girl named Lancelot would be hopelessly in love like this
-Actually, I wonder if it means anything that Lancelot's version of the leaf-shaped emblem looks kind of different from the other characters', the way it's like, seemingly broken in half?
-"Hellysium" is crazy... Hell+Elysium, it really does remind me of Gladsheim's Valhalla you know. Speaking of which there are many turns of phrase here regarding piles of skeletons.
-"I believe what she could command was some kind of zone within which objects were subjected to the full weight from all sides of a planet" That's so cool but tragic when considered as a metaphor for that Burden being borne
-And then red parrying THAT of all things...is she super strong or just super insensitive? T_T evidently a bit of both
-"Some kind of friction reaction at the points where myths made violent contact" is so conceptually interesting too... like this mythic/narrative allegory equivalent to how the lines of death from Tsukihime work lol
-"Benighted" is quite a word... Each side here thinks they have the real light of truth/civilisation/accumulated wisdom... by the end of the game it really leaves me thinking, what is Human Civilisation anyway? River of the Underworld Incorporated... I'm scared. That's scary u_u
-The background as soon as Pink's POV begins is so pretty
-Also the restaurant having those zebra/giraffe/etc chairs is kind of incredible
-Hmm...Red and Pink's blades of "kindness" and "faith" respectively. Interesting.
-The Jeanne gender stuff is curious as well...feels like a mixure of trans/nonconforming elements in multiple directions here between him and his Jeanne D'Arc hereditary kin memories. His introspections about his own colour were fun too... I hope he can find some kind of peace someday
-If the game is still being updated with art and such I would be curious to see what Hera-Izanami and Gille's designs look like...unless we're not supposed to know Yet 👁️
-Sophia's sprite in the fish tank scene seems to be a different variant hmm... I assumed that was her shield hanging from her back, and if so, then the shape of the part below her skirt looking like a pair of clasped hands is interesting for many reasons...
-"Unadorned, worn and weary from an indescribable burden and indisputably male but for these convulsions." is a sentence that successfully makes me feel sad
-"Free from something imposed upon me that I could never properly describe." the weight of the world itself suppressing her selfhood and womanhood...
-"My lady gave me the chance to be what I might have been. What I perhaps once was in a time long since forgotten with nary a scrap of evidence that remains." is so umineko also
-You know I kept thinking of the "women hold up half the sky" thing multiple times while reading this so when Atlas lampshades it herself I was like omg. too true
-the River Lethe of it all... & how "Because you make me forget myself and I don't know what to do about it." can tie into that. What a pathetic mirror between your own cruelty and the vulnerable love you can still bear for another. Is this what they call kino
^ Maybe my favourite little moment here though Patroclus is my favourite of the characters too.