For the record: - I think Vlov looks really cool and I would definitely play him if I were interested in MBTL. I wish more characters were designed like him. - Roa's new haircut looks awful.
@@raikoedgymoto yea but i dont understand why SHIKI could't the the one wearing the short hair and Roa the long ones, especially since they are more symilar to Roa's original haircut. Also dunno if it was just me but, i always thought Roa's hair look like lightning snakes wich relate to his powers and alias perfectly
Oddly enough, the aesthetic of plainclothes supernatural people fighting in urban night cities feels unique and cool to me. I think it could be easy to fall into a trap by making Melty seem more bland if they made them look more like fighting game tropes. Then again, Melty does have clarity issues. Did you know Akiha has the highest health of all the characters? Nothing about her design communicates that. I think french bread did a good job with Undernight designs, they're subdued still, but communicate enough to tell players what each character "is".
yeah, i think seiichi yoshihara knocked it out of the park with hitting the same vibe as melty but still using the visual clarity of fighters. even if the character i play (nanase) doesnt exemplify that
I agree that UNI characters are generally better designed, and they better emphasize the idea of magical stuff lurking behind real life (although I do think many of them are guilty of "animu trope checklist syndrome"). I think a middle ground between Tsukihime and UNI would have been great, because I love designs like Hilda, Merkava, Chaos, and Carmine. Didn't know about Akiha having the highest life total. I would have thought Kouma or Hime would have had that honour. Then again, MBAACC has way too many system mechanics and a lot of meaningless mechanical bloat like all FB games, so that may be less of a visual issue and more of a system/balance issue. Like, there are three or four different levels of guts scaling applied to a character's life bar in MBAACC, but they're all tiny decimal fractions.
Akiha having the highest life total would make sense only because her power is to literally drain other people's life force through contact, which is implemented into MBTL where her grabs give her more blue health to recover. But diving deeper into lore also would make sense for her to have the lowest too because she shared half of her life force to keep Shiki alive. Hey, made for fans of Tsukihime BY fans of Tsukihime. FB just managed to make a fighter so fun that non-tsukihime fans hopped on. Making your average fighter to be sold worldwide was never the intent I imagine. But the overarching philosophy behind remains true, if you want in, you have to accept it. Doubly so for MBTL because it was made to release around the same time as Tsukihime's remake intentionally.
french bread had more restrictions when it came to adapting tsukihime into a fighting game without making the characters too distinguishable from the visual novel
6:30 funny thing is, Roa never actually used lightning in the VN. His whole thing was reincarnating into other people’s bodies when dying as a form of immortality while keeping his memories, accumulating knowledge of magecraft for countless years
Although I don’t 100% agree with you, I definitely see where you’re coming from and I respect it. For me personally I think the plainness of the characters is what makes them unique and stand out, I think it’s hecka cool that a kid with a box cutter is out here doing Vergil judgment cuts. I will say though I think Red Arc made a cool transition as fighting game character in Lumina, it’s a reference to her old design while also adding the heels and a slit in her dress to give her a more subtle villain vibe in contrast to regular arc, and even though she isn’t as demonic/feral looking like in old melty, her posture in the way she moves and attacks while also seeing slight glimpses of how psychotic she is in her EX moves gives you a good idea of the kind of character she is while still being consistent with the plain look of the rest of cast. Either way though fun video, it was nice to hear someone’s take that isn’t just something something drip, really enjoy your stuff!
I didn't figure I'd change anyone's mind, so it's good to hear that you at least got my point. FB characters almost always have good animations, so I'm not surprised to hear they did a good job with Red Arc in MBTL.
I'm coming into this discussion literal years after its relevance has expired, but here's my perspective. I think you're right when you say that the character designs make melty blood difficult to approach from an outside perspective. So, here's why I appreciate the designs from an insiders perspective. The aesthetics of Tsukihime are all about horror in the mundane. One of Shiki's classmates is a ghoul, barely repressing her urge to eat everyone she sees, a random woman he meets is a godlike super vampire who could destroy the town he lives in with a thought, there's an immortal, undead wizard guy living in his basement, and he, himself has this bizarro instant death vision that all of them fear by instinct. All of this is conveyed under an oppressive, Silent Hill like atmosphere; it's honestly unlike anything else I've ever seen.
Yeah, I understand how that aesthetic needs to be handled in a subdued way. The only problem is I don't think it can be done in a fighting game without very specific and precise consideration - something like the early SamSho games where everything is very deliberate and authentic to the mood of a samurai duel. I don't hate Tsukihime for what it is, but it just doesn't mesh with a fighting game.
@@DragonflySwamp It's a problem with no real solution imo. Fighting game players hear from their friends about a cool old game with crazy movement tech and a bunch of weird and unique characters, show up, see a bunch of school kids, and don't know where to start. But, take the persona approach, and suddenly you run the risk of hyper focusing on one or two minor traits of the character, totally flanderizing them and alienating your core audience.
RE: The point about Mario characters changing the way they dress for the sports games. They change the way they dress because the activities they do in the spinoffs are not typical for them, but that isn't the case for Melty Blood. Tsukihime has fight scenes, and these happen with characters in normal dress. If they changed attire for Melty Blood, some justification would need to be given for this, and the story would need to reflect that. The point is that the world presented is dangerous, and fights don't happen when characters are necessarily prepared for them. Hell, in Tuskihime, the main dramatic tension behind the fight between Shiki and Nrvnqsr is that Shiki isn't a fighter, and never feels prepared for it, and his plain style of dress symbolizes that fact. Now, Melty Blood isn't Tsukihime, I understand that, but it is intended to be a sequel (sort of) to Tsukihime, while the Mario spinoffs are just that: spinoffs. I know you aren't saying that redesigns would need to be on the level of the ones for Persona 4 Arena, but any redesign at all would come off as a pointless contrivance, in my opinion.
As reasonable as this point is, it just proves the counterpoint that Melty Blood has little business being a fighting game. Melty Blood Type Lumina strictly following the aesthetics of a visual novel is what made the initial hype the game gathered die down a little before and after release. Fans will understand the reserved aesthetics of the initial cast, but new people interested in Melty did not find these designs fun so a fraction of it dropped off. Visual novels hook newcomers with characters and story. Fighting games hook people with hype aesthetics and gameplay. In fighting games, plot and lore are secondary, mechanics and aesthetics are king so Type Moon and French Bread were supposed to treat Melty Blood according to the genre it represented.
@@brocksteele7475 so play a FG not based on a VN and let us real fans enjoy extra content.. Made by Tsukhime fans for Tsukihime fans, why should they cater to secondaries who don't actually care or even KNOW the characters? You just want them to sell out, you are and always will be an outsider
As you stated yourself, you don't quite know the cast of Melty Blood and that's honestly very important going in when trying to appreciate them. This franchise was a Visual Novel taking place in modern day through the eyes of a seemingly normal kid as things start to slowly go insane, and truth be told, it was initially made for the fans of the series. Shiki is a normal kid (only not at all when you learn more) but he starts off trying to be a normal japanese kid. Thus, he's often found in the plain uniform. Kouma, as you stated, is a man fighting to control his demonic blood. His story depicted him as once being a brute with no skill whatsoever, and twice he lost himself to the demonic blood and slaughtered two whole family clans. What's one of the things he did to prevent that? Take martial arts very seriously and became a zen Buddhist. So he actually does train his ass off in the mountains and is now very much a man who would wear that outfit that reflects his martial/hermit lifestyle. The coat he has being the symbolic tendency to never truly cut ties with the modern city he was born in, as he does still visit the city from time to time. (And what's cool, is that you can learn of his demonic tendencies through his gameplay animations, as his charge up animations shows him covered in an ominous shadow with a glowing red eye, or his skill cut-in art where he looks like a raging demon with crimson hair. These things showing that he is still very much learning to control himself.) Another large factor is that many of these designs were created by a 2000 low budget Visual Novel creator. But the story and characters are so beloved, they wanted to keep true to the designs. While they may not be fully appreciated by newcomers, which is 100% understandable, it does make the series stand out in a game genre where most characters are indeed covered in a thousand belts or have bright red boxing gloves. These are strange people living in the modern world, and only the exotic people who don't care to live normally dress with a bit of extra flair, like the demon martial artist, the ancient vampires, and the church full of demon hunters who dress to kill monsters. It's certainly not for everyone, and you are of course allowed your opinion to not exactly resonate with them. But there are many reasons for the designs to be as they are. Lore reasons, nostalgia, and honestly it being a game meant for man franchise fans. As even the arcade modes will NOT clue in newcomers as to what the hell is going on, you either know, or you don't.
Now I really need you to make an entire video of Persona 4 Arena's designs, because it doesn't seem like P4 characters have been redesigned for it, and I NEED to know what do you think of this dominatrix suit that Mitsuru is wearing and how you'd justify it. Good video man
I really liked your opinion on the designs in melty blood. Some of your points contradict themselves but you were fairly clear in your message. There are alot of different aspects that go into character design but there are a few major pointers that you're missing out in some of your examples. Design shape and line of action is very important in making compelling characters. Your argument is very focused on the literal design of the character and what they're wearing which is perfectly fine as everyone values specifics in designs more than others. But there is alot more to character design that you missed out on with your break down. If we take Raven from guilty gear. His outfit suits him perfectly but thats not where it stops for why he's a great character. His voice acting, His moves, His posture, His story. All of those things play into character design. I think melty bloods character designs are simple in a complex way when you factor in all of the importants that go into character design. The music, The line of action, The moves, The story, The setting. They all encapsulate and suit those characters to where they are. On the surface sure Shiki does not look like a wizard. But as you go deeper into the complexities of MB it does make sense. Surface level is important in fighting games but ease of surface level does not = good design or bad design. Its just a value in the design. Great video and interesting discussion. ;D
Melty Blood was my introduction to Tsuki, and a big part of what drew me in was the absurdity of what I was witnessing. These normally dressed characters doing all these cool moves was enticing. I've since gotten into Tsuki and Type Moon as a whole more, but I'll still always remember that initial impression of "what the hell is happening?" It's why the whole drip arguement never really made much sense to me. I was having similiar thoughts when you were discussing the Persona 3 boxer dude. His base design was a lot more appealing than the 4A design, since that classier look vs the boxing style gives him more elegance to me than "fight man". Your kart arguement felt a bit odd to me since the Princesses do still wear their dresses if they're in carts. It's on bikes where they ditch it. But now I want that idea of grease monkey wario and waluigi, so I thank ya for that. A portion I feel like people overlook a lot for this is body language, you meme on it a bit with Satsuki's walk, but her general motions convey that look of "pained monster", and this is coming from a guy who only knows she's an innocent turned into a vamp, haven't read the second half of the VN to kbow much more beyond "girl turned vamp". Akiha had similiar vibes for me. I didn't know she was a mage when I started, but her general hand motions and haughtyness sold me on the idea of "this character is more than meets the eye." All in all, this was a fun watch, it got me to think, which is a lot more than the drip videos. Thank you.
this comment is quite funny in retrospect because she is just 'girl turned vamp' and thats about it, she doesn't have a very big role in tsukihime at all beyond that.
@calb6109 Her big point is a big compare and contrast between the vampires and give shiki internal turmoil. You don't see her become a vampire until route 3 and you have to beat route 1 or 2 to access it. In those routes you spend more time with Arcueid and she shows she has none of the downside of being a vampire like no need to drink blood and has the all the upsides like super strength. While the other vampires aren't on her level they still shows a similar amount of control. Then enter Sastuki in the first half the 3rd route , she needs blood and she is a massive amounts of pain. With her overall, being much different then vampires from before. Next , In route 1 and 2 , Shiki's first kill was arcueid. She revived and forced him to follow her around. In contrast, Shiki's first kill in route 3 is Satsuki , she dies in front of his eyes after betraying his words. His guilt over killing her carries with him the entire route and greatly effects his willingness to kill people even vampires (In fact,I think he doesn't kill a single person after that point) even when he let's he nanaya instincts take over he only went for non killing blow against SHIKI. This bleeds over into OG melty blood's story with his stark refusal to kill Sion when she succumb to her vampirism. Her roles wasn't the biggest (that's probably akiha) but she does have a big role with it being more subtle than the others.
Obv the sans eye kouma would be ridiculous but I wonder if maybe aoko's magic being visible in her character art or shiki brandishing his knife in the character select screen would work as compromises.
But, i think French Bread got a pretty hardball on Kohaku. From the first look, Kohaku was just a cheerful maid of the sisters....HOWEVER, her animation with her costume change and even animation change tell me otherwise. If you didn't read Tsukihime, that's fine but I can't believe there are passion around the way they design Kohaku animation. It's like pocket fighters tier of animation dedication (constant costume change for each move) You can actually tell that she's hiding something behind her mischief nature but those animation that even the sound of her running animation is just so extra layer to Faust or Zappa level of madness.
I think a lot of the design faults could be resolved with just a couple little things. Like Akiha having glowing red hair at the roots or Shiki's eye of death perception being pronounced with some kind of lens flare or glow. You could also have a conspicuous knife holster tucked inside his uniform. This follows the intention that the characters are more than what meets the eye while displaying a hint of the more fantastical.
I mean, shiki does a glow in his eyes. Before he takes of his glasses his eyes are grey or brown color and then when he takes them off his eyes are a glowing greenish blue.
Yeah I just disagree. This isn't badly made (for the most part) but I guess you did say it was a you problem so fair enough. I think less is more in the case of MB. Not that anything's wrong with GGs approach but I enjoy the more grounded approach of the MB designs. You are right about them not communicating a ton from just looks but that's kinda what makes it interesting imo. You have to actually get the character to appreciate them instead of liking them for design alone.
One thing I love about Under Night is that plenty of characters wear normal stuff (Hyde and Nanase in their school uniforms), and the characters that don't either only wear their weirder in the context of the one night per month that UNI takes place (ie Gordeau usually wears a pretty formal suit during his bartending job, but decides go shirtless with an open jacket during the night) or just dress like that because they don't really care what others think (I'm pretty sure Carmine and Seth just dress like that most of the time). Even Waldstein, who is a giant, shirtless monster of a man just says that he's a foreign wrestler or cosplayer when questioned in public.
Fair points, I think the game being so damn tight instead of just fan-service makes secondaries get somewhat lost. I don't think redesigns would work on ANY of the main cast characters, other characters taking the chance to have more extravagant designs could be a welcome contrast. Powered Ciel is goat design though.
Frankly I disagree. I think you made some good points, but you started with a bad premise. Arcsys games don't use overtly expressive character design because it's intrinsically good, they use it because their game design requires it. In something like GG, characters are very different on a base level. Picking a slow character could mean lacking basic movement options (e.g Tager or Potemkin). It makes sense that you should be able to tell at glance which characters have which traits. In this context first impressions are paramount. But in MB, the fundamentals of the game are a little more rigid. With a few exceptions, every character uses the exact same pool of base mechanics. As such, differences between a slow and fast characters are generally granular. Furthermore, very few characters fit neatly into common archetypes. You could rushdown with Shiki, but he's also very good at playing lame and keeping people out. How can his character design reflect this in relation to the rest of the cast? The cast of MB are all somewhat similar, so you could say the same thing I said about Shiki about a good chunk of cast. And sometimes your choice of moon makes more of a difference than your character anyway. How would the character design convey this? Should each character have three absurdly bloated and different designs? I think the alternative, simple and unexpressive design is better for Melty. As great as it is the some characters can be understood at glance, I don't think it's reasonable to use this as a standard to judge every game against. Some games have characters with completely different playstyles and strategies, and others have characters the act like different spins on the same core gameplay. I'd drop Melty Blood into the latter group.
With your Mario Kart example, it's worth noting that the genre conventions were tweaked to fit the cast instead of the other way around. Namely, Mario and the gang are driving go-karts and not cars.
One thing I have noticed in the non-sprite artwork for the characters is that they have more expressive posturing and designs. Shiki Tohno’s character select art has a more serious expression and keeps his knife with his arms close to his body whereas Nanaya’s character select art is less guarded with his arms more lax and out while still holding his knife. He also has a confident smile on his face. I think the intention was to let those aspects speak for the characters instead but it doesn’t seem like Takeuchi really succeeded on that well enough. Either that or it never would’ve succeeded enough no matter what. Personally I don’t really care since I’m a huge Tsukihime fan. I’m just happy that these characters are playable in what I consider to be a fun fighting game but I can definitely understand why others consider the designs to be bland or plain.
I can’t help but think about how I have similar issues to KoF. With more than half the cast, I can’t tell what their general game plan is. I think a good middle ground for this issue would have to be something that also happens in P4A. The P4 characters don’t have their character designs changed at all. Instead you can read what they’re about through their character select art. For example, Yosuke is wearing is regular Yasogami high uniform, but his pose is very kinetic showing off his long limbs in an acrobatic fashion as he’s brandishing his twin kunai. It’s pretty easy to tell from that he’ll be an agile fighter with shorter range. If Melty Blood has taken this approach it would be much easier to get a sense of what each character is about without changing their visual design. Imagine if Akiha’s character select art had her wreathed in her flame magic while in a refined pose that doesn’t imply any physical strikes. With that would be easy to tell she’s some sort of magic user rather than the current art that’s just some plain looking schoolgirl.
Akiha's powers are actually SO CONFUSINGLY EXPLAINED that even the graphics and gameplay misrepresent them. Akiha doesn't use fire magic, she "plunders" your "heat", in reality, Akiha's ability is basically life steal that takes shape in hair shaped tentacles, the way it would be better portrayed would be to make the visual effects after hitting you go to her and gameplay wise, make her steal HP. The character select art should show Akiha passing her hand through her hair and it turning red where her fingers should be touching the hair.
@@jouheikisaragi6075 I would’ve never guessed that. I always assumed she used flames and sometimes imbued her fingernails with the magic to make her claw slashing attacks. Holy shit that’s such a missed opportunity.
@@jouheikisaragi6075 what i think they got right is that her grabs show blue to symbolise her stealing heat and life from her opponents, though I do think that they should be made it more pronounced as most people miss it
I’m glad you mentioned Tsukihime early in the video. I think some of the people in the FGC who just know Type Lumina as “that new anime game” probably don’t even know that Tsukihime exists, so they don’t appreciate how Tsukihime being a low budget indie VN from the early 00s would have impacted its character designs. Melty Blood stays true to those designs because that’s what fans of the series want. This isn’t to “excuse” the character designs or anything, because I do agree that they’re bland, but I still think that understanding the historical context is important.
while i think you bring up a fair point, melty blood was made as a fan work by people who loved the original novel, and made for people who liked tsukihime beforehand. while it’s absolutely true that the game’s designs doesn’t lend itself to someone whos into fighting games first, they weren’t supposed to. the game getting brought to america obviously muddles this, as most fans of melty over here either dont know the VN exists or will actively not read it because VN’s aren’t their thing (which is fair!) honestly, i think its worth looking at something like dragon ball fighterz as an example of another adaptation of media into a fighting game. while the source material IS based on fighting, someone who doesnt understand the material is gonna see goku multiple times on the roster and not be able to tell what their deal is, and will have trouble picking characters because of it. i do also think its worth talking about how redesigns of characters can overshadow some of the best parts of them as it can come with some major simplifications of what they previously were, and fans of said series can leave quite jaded with how the characters they loved got changed. i think this is a good video, but i do wish you could’ve gotten a bit more of the other side, though considering the time constraints, it makes sense why the video is how it is. thanks for making a well thought out video on the topic, and i look forward to future content!
I don't think the fighting game being a fanwork absolves it of wrongdoing, since FB clearly has a lot of talented artists who could have done different things with the characters without losing sight of what made them unique. Like I said with Kouma, even if all he did was keep his coat on during gameplay, I'd be fine with it; plain isn't bad, after all. It's interesting that VNs seem to get made into fighting games somewhat frequently (Tsukihime and Umineko are the two major examples, but I'm sure there are plenty of others from the dojin scene), because I wouldn't have thought the same people who enjoyed reading Tsukihime for 30+ hours would enjoy the hectic action of a fighting game in the first place. Perhaps it simply originated at a different time when fighting games were more commonplace. Umineko: Golden Fantasia has a similar "magic and real life coming together" art style and its characters don't bother me nearly as much. Perhaps it's simply because the colour palettes are more saturated and half the cast seem to have demented grins on their faces, as opposed to MB characters who just seem to stand there and look at each other. Glad you liked the video and cared enough to comment.
It speaks volumes as to how FB made a good-ass fighting game while mostly just trying to make a fan-game for a VN they loved and would have technically expect it to be played by people who read the VN to understand how cool watching the fights they could only read about be fully realized and animated
hearing how this discourse would apply to dengeki bunko fighting climax would be very funny, i guess that one's different since it's a crossover for marketing purposes
Yeah. An explicit crossover like that doesn't bug me when its characters clash since they're supposed to represent a lot of different anime series that have nothing to do with each other.
I’m not familiar with ANY characters/IPs from Dengeki Bunko, and I’m glad you brought it up! What distinguishes both Meltys from Dengeki is TONE. I really enjoy the tone of certain Japanese games I’ve played that incorporate silliness through physical humor, dialog, or jarring tonal shifts (Tekken, Yakuza, Guilty Gear, Rival Schools, Phoenix Wright). I’m also finding that I enjoy WACKINESS in Japanese fighting games (Umineko, Dengeki). These games create movesets for characters that reference the plot of their source material, or, translate a character’s personality into a repertoire of fighting game moves (Having a bookworm fight with bookcases and stacks of books). The parts of the story mode for Type Lumina I’ve played so far, most of it feels like a comedy. The characters have romantic crushes on each other, Neco Arc is pure silliness. Like many story mode plots, having a narrative that pivots into fighting every 2 minutes makes for a flimsy narrative. So to me, games that lean into how unrealistic this is is fine by me. I read serious books. I like cerebral literature. So, when a fighting game takes itself too seriously, I’m turned off (compare the more serious tone of later Tekken games with the earlier titles that I’d describe as 75% action, 25% comedy). I like all the games I mentioned above, for different reasons. But, more to your point, I like how Dengeki’s characters are dressed in everyday clothes, their moves communicate their personality (tiny girl who fights with basketball is a basketball player), and Melty Blood doesn’t use the moveset as a source of comedy and “storytelling.” The Maids in Melty are exceptions. Dengeki is a whole game full of characters built like the Maids! To me, Street Fighter & Mortal Kombat have some of the most boring character designs. Every shoto is bland to me. Every Netherrealm “ninja” is bland to me. I look forward to playing Tsukihime one day. quirky indie movies interest me, but watching blockbuster action films aren’t beneath me (I did walk out the theater in the middle of one of those horrible wolverine movies around 2010 though lol). So, fighting games that are quirky indies themselves interest me more. But I also consider Guilty Gear a quirky indie. But I’m also a feminist and a grownup, so I like that the girls in Tsukihime aren’t fighting each other half naked (like in Dengeki). I don’t look to fighting games for “waifus” (the last 2 people I dated were both part-time models) and I don’t need the fictional characters in the game to look like some teenaged boy’s power fantasy, or a zany villain, or a monster, or an alien. Having a game with regular-looking people is fine too. It’s a fighting game-actual fighting has little to do with how 2D fighters play, any fighting game is unrealistic by default (I think I’ve been in about 5 fights in the last 10 years, and none of them looked cool, except the one at the punk rock show. I knocked out so many people, concertgoers & staff lol). Seeing “normal” school kids battle is fine. I play Melty for the air movement.
EDIT: I didn’t mention getting in fights and dating bad bitches as a flex (they were the most insecure people I’ve dated, and all of us were emotionally unavailable, so it’s nothing to brag on. Plus, it sucks when you live with a baddie that’s bad at sex/can’t have sex sober. My last ex was raw widdit tho, but her unresolved got in the way). I’m a nerd myself, it’s just that before I stopped drinking, I wouldn’t back down from a fight. I was trying to be brave, but it’s braver to take care of yourself when no one is looking, rather than allow yourself to become enraged when your disrespected in public. #therapy
Great take. Personally I don't mind the designs in the original Melty Blood series that much since it was a very small project that ended up being way more popular than intended so I can't hate too hard on it even if I agree that they're bland and personally I don't like the artist's style too much either so even characters who on paper suit my preferences would look better drawn in a different style imo. I think the animations are the strongest point in terms of making the characters visually appealing, they're pretty fluid for a doujin fighter. Maybe making the character portraits in the select screen have some more subtle cues about the inhuman nature of some characters might have worked or doing this for their fighting stances. The new MB has better designs for the most part with the new Vampire zoner dude looking amazing although other characters like Roa look way worse, he looks like a small-fry/filler episode villain now. Guess they put too much of the budget into Vlov's fabulous hair so they had to cut corners with Roa.
Great video, always love when you upload. I think the weird liminal space the game lives in regarding normal & magic visuals can be very appealing. That said, it is definitely neglecting the visual language of fighting games that has been in place ever since World Warrior. It's foregoing approachability for faithfulness. The game was originally just sold on discs at conventions and had no arcade ports, so that decision starts to make a lot of sense. I don't think they expected anyone except Tsukihime fans to ever play this game. In fact, the game was announced at a Tsukihime-only convention called "Tsukihime Matsuri Himehajime". If you're a Tsukihime fan, your first instinct is probably to play as whatever your favorite character is from the source material. Same principle as me going Dante/Vergil/Trish every time I play MVC3 purely because I like Devil May Cry - I already know these characters, therefore the game doesn't need to give me any extra information. I don't play grapplers, but if Dante is a grappler, I'll play him cuz he's Dante. I think they did too much work with this assumption in mind, and there was no way to go back after the game got popular (if it's even something they've thought much about in the first place).
I knew FB started as a dojin development group but I had no idea the game was so closely tied to Tsukihime (or that Tsukihime was popular enough to have its own convention). I've definitely done what you're describing in games like MvC or TvC, but games like that which are obvious crossover fanservice games have a bit of a different flavour, I think. Compare MB to something like JoJo HTTF, which is an obvious fanservice game but only "crosses over" within its own series. HTTF seems like something people would play either because it's JoJo or because it's an immediate, flashy fighting game, not simply because of the JoJo name on the cabinet.
You can tell when a video is good when all the comments are long but never say the same thing. Anyway, Brand recognition is very powerful as you described. However, making a game and assuming people would be cool with certain aspects just because "they'll buy it for the name" is a terrible mentality. Would you buy a Devil May Cry dating simulator in which none of the characters act like how they're suppose to act? Would you buy a Smash Bros with Dante in it if all he did was spindash and fight like a fire emblem characters? You have to design your games well regardless of the audience. Some changes to the character's appearance may have been warranted here.
I can say as someone who likes fighting games too that I never really gave meltyblood a passing thought because of the character design. Only until I tried it out on a whim at the arcade with my friends did I see it was actually a fun game. Not every fighting game nor character design is for everyone ofc, but I agree with your passing glance appeal idea. Frankly even though I enjoyed my time with it I’m still not interested in going back to it because of the designs (but that IS just my taste haha)
I disagree, the whole reason I gravitated towards Melty Blood in the first place was because of the plain characters. Plain characters doing flashy magical fighting was an unforgettable contrast that was really cool to me. Also, compared to other fighting games like blaze blue or guilty gear, the plain character designs were a breath of fresh air to the extravagant over the top fighting game designs, Which I consider bland.
Thing interesting about Melty Blood characters that people forget or don't know is that alot of those characters didn't make their debut in Melty but Tsukihime, a VN. Now look a the designs of characters who debuted in Tsukihime to the Melty OC's (Eltnum, Warachia,Ries,etc) and you'll see the OC's have a bit flare to them. Hell, in the remake the character designs got updated a bit to add more pizazz and the new characters look way more appealing.
I like how the Melty Blood characters look, I think it's part of the charm. I think that if they looked fancier, MB would stand out less among other fighting games to me. Maybe I'm a weirdo, but when I first played it, I thought the imagery was so intriguing that I actually played the VN. Then I discovered both've got WAY different vibes, but I still liked it anyways
(Large comment) I enjoyed the way the videos organized and def gotta give props to making it interesting with the limited editing although I definitely disagree The thing is I actually wouldn't like a persona esque aproache as a fan Thats because I am a huge fan of the source material and I just want to play Shiki as well, the Shiki I know, the highschooler that looks like a normal boy but is secretly *spoiler*, and the examples brought up are great in my opinion On the point of view you are seeing that is I personally play Melty Blood as a spin-off of one of my favorite stories, in my fav genre, I wanna see my favs fighting, not my favs in a "what if..." fighting, if that makes sense Like you do have a valid point of view if ya view it "fighting game first, spin-off second" in my opinion But I like it more in a "spin-off first, fighting game second" sort of way Any way excelent video (also something I would like to point out, you forgot one thing, a piece of art has more than one component, and I like it when the designs of the characters show something when put together, Especially positions in such story like Roa, Nero and Vlov if we compare them to the rest, after all they have much less screentime dedicated to them)
i find one of the largest turn-offs for fighting game characters in my experience is if a character is "just a dude". their gameplay could be something i mesh well with or hate, but i'm really inclined against trying to indulge certain characters if they're just regular human persons. the only "just a dude" character i've really been interested in was Alex from street fighter, who sells me on the prospect of being a Very Big Man and having the most impact on what would otherwise be regular wrestling moves. even still, i'd like it if his design was a bit less "just a dude". i guess people are allowed to prefer their own aesthetic tastes, but i've always thought things like the street fighter 3 games are the best in the series roster-wise because the roster is like, 40% inhumans or by-the-standard weird characters, which makes up for other characters being "just dudes". though there is a kind of cautionary tale in guilty gear because having really interesting character designs presents high variance, and you can get higher highs than anything else but also lower lows. i agree with a lot of your opinions, Melty Blood seems to be one of the fighting games i've had the lowest interest for off of the aesthetic/feeling of it, though i can say none of the character designs are like.... actively poor or something i directly dislike, just, boring. i'd rather have a roster that includes some characters i actively dislike looking at but includes especially cool stuff i click with than a roster that's composed entirely of nonoffensive regular people with muted colours and no experimentation or pushing of atypical ideas.
That's almost exactly how I feel. If a character's entire personality is "he trains hard and doesn't wear a shirt," then I fall asleep. Characters like Faust are so much more stimulating it's almost unfair.
Great video! I would love to see more videos where you discuss your opinions on different fighting game topics. I imagine you don't have infinite time to make videos but the ones you've made are really good.
Seeing the pinned comment gave me a bit of inspiration to give my own two cents on the topic, seeing as this video and the discourse are since now long forgotten. The entire point and design philosophy are that you aren't supposed to know who these characters are, as everyone is trying to conceal themselves in some sort of way. If you had to fight them in real life you probably wouldn't even assume that they are fighters (which is pretty bad in the context of a fighting game but i go over that sentiment a bit later) Trying to redesign the characters in a way that makes it more apparent to what they represent would be a bit disingenuous to the base VN. Doing that in a way that doesn't conflict with the source material would probably turn the game into something new entirely. I view melty blood as an aditional piece to the main VN, i think a majority of the fgc community (during that time anyway) viewed melty blood to tsukihime like they viewed persona 4 arena to persona 4 itself. A spinoff of sorts. Its almost like melty blood is a visual novel trying to put on a mask and market itself as a fighting game, compared to taking the P4AU route and just create its own story, whether itc follows the canon or not. Like you said visual novels naturally have much more time to market their characters to you, as opposed to said fighting game. Although i do feel like melty blood is almost a bit of an outlier in this regard, as all your points are valid and in any other situation would make sense. I took a look a Shiki's fandom page and it says there was a year timeskip between the VN and the first Melty Blood game. Nowhere would you know that without going to the games story. (Also P.S, Wouldn't hunching forward be a personality trait though? For example take a look at something like Granblue's belial and his walking animations. He struts forward chest up, stretching out his hands in the air and waves them around. The average person would be able to infer that he's a bit of a snarky asshole flamboyant without needing to know that he's a fallen angel who respects no one. When you look at Satsuki hunching forward and holding her chest i'd expect the average person to think that theres at least something wrong with her. You of course could just say that they could only have guessed that because his regular outfit has his chest out, following the argument of your entire video. And i just wrote an entire paragraph explaining why melty should be exempt from that type of criticism sooooo....)
iirc the persona redesigns were receptioned negatively, especially akihiko. many people blame that game for making aki kind of a, meathead walking joke
I absolutely AGREE with you. But I think the problem goes deeper than just not redesigning the characters I think the problem is how the art style is REEEEALY simple. KoF also have simple characters as Kyo, or Robert, but all of their illustrations are top notch, and they also illustrate a lot about the characters, like how a bunch of Kyo arts show his fire powers Also, it is not about quality, I think the more "chibi", or dare I say it "lolly" approach that Melty Blood has really doesn't help them. First, you can recognize anyone on the character select screen, because everyone has the same face, with giant eyes and no nose (the older characters look way better, but the lighting on those arts are still very simple, and doesn't make them look that cool, and it doesn't have really exaggerated proportions and expressions like Alpha 3 to compensate). And also, most of the girls in the game have a REALLY irritating voice, and that makes me never watch this game lol
To summerise, I don't think the art style is helping with such simple characters. Lets take other games as examples: Strive - They simplified the character designs a lot, but the Illustrations and art style are TOP NOTCH. Axl is using his most simple and boring costume ever, but the art work really sells it and make this his best version Kof - There are some extravagant characters, but the simpler ones really shine, again, like Kyo, Robert, Rock... They might just wear simple clothes, but they are expressive, and their illustrations are way more detailed Persona - You picked the best example possible, and I always asked myself why Melty Blood bothered me so much, and yet I liked persona's visuals. It really comes down to having way cooler illustration
I plain look i think really helps the presentation, it all looks very clean and still manages to be distinct i felt compelled to try other characters, while in other fighting games, not really, i don't want to look at something i don't like, but melty's art is perfect
As a Melty Blood player who has read the visual novels (and the much more involved stories of the original Melty Blood and Re-Act): *No.* Although exceptionally well-spoken in every conceivable regard, your opinion isn't a very good or useful one when you consider what Type-Moon and French Bread were trying to achieve with the character designs, and I'm going to explain why in extensive detail. I care a lot about the lore of both the Nasuverse and MegaTen, so the proper and coherent aesthetic representation of both IPs is important to me, which is why I think that the outsourced Servant designs of F/GO and the outsourced tokusatsu-based demon designs from SMT4, which don't portray the heroes or demons respectively they're meant to represent with the same understated authenticity of earlier titles, are generally so shit. You're correct in saying that, while the redesigns of the P3 characters can seem jarring to fans of the original game, they're nevertheless appropriate and justified... but not simply for the pragmatic meta-level visual representation reasons you state. It's because the P3 cast has grown up. They're not in high school anymore. They've matured into who they are and can wear their identity on their sleeves. On top of that, they're all members of the Shadow Operatives, and how flamboyant what you're wearing is matters a lot less when you're fighting in places that are incarnations of the collective unconsciousness like Tartarus or the Midnight Channel. There are very appropriate narrative reasons for the characters to look different, so ArcSys had an excuse to make their appearances more visually distinct. This is doubly relevant when you consider that the designs of the P4 characters are not nearly so altered as the P3 characters - they do already jump out more than the more restrained outfits that Soejima designed for P3's characters (because Inaba and Iwatodai are very different places), but with the exception of Teddy, who was always weird, they still don't do nearly as much to convey the playstyle and what they're about as the P3 cast's redesigns. Ultimately, it's all left up to their postures, their weapons of choice, and to a lesser extent the designs of their personas, and while those do a good job of conveying mood (Chie is sporty, Yukiko is elegant, Kanji is boisterous), you still wouldn't get a clear picture of their overall powersets, at least no more of a picture than you'd get from a Melty Blood character. You'd practically need to be familiar with the characters beforehand. And it's clear just from how you're able to describe the details of Persona's characters vs. Melty Blood's that you _are_ more familiar with those characters outright, because you either have only a superficial understanding of Tsukihime's storyline or don't spare nearly as much effort attempting to read into MB's character designs. For example, Roa: the character isn't just a lightning wizard. In fact, his outfit is meant to convey a much more complex idea, because the lightning wizard is possessing the body of what is essentially a homeless teenage boy from the same family line as Akiha and Kouma (and struggling mentally with the same demonic blood). That's why he's wearing superficially nice clothing like a crackhead from off the street, with an open shirt and unbuttoned pants; Roa's refinement as a high-ranking executor and archmage is showing through his host's grunge, pieced together from whatever was on hand. Frankly, you wouldn't even be able to tell Roa uses lightning from the character selection screen (though you may get that impression from the intro movie) - the fact that he's dressed wildly is much more obvious. His design conveys that he's superficially coolheaded and calculating, but is also the guy who is going to drag you into a back alley and make you his bitch. Or Kouma. You say he's a "cursed nobleman who's restraining his inner demonic blood" as opposed to a "martial arts man who trains very hard who you've seen a hundred times before", but to be frank, Kouma _is_ still very much the latter archetype. He is Tsukihime's version of that guy, because he doesn't really live like a nobleman (and never has; he was raised like a fucking animal): he lives up in the mountains training his body and focusing his mind all day to restrain that inner demonic blood, isolating himself from society in case he ever loses control. Which he's cool with, because his oni blood is so strong that his brain just doesn't work like a regular person's from the start, and going off to live innawoods like a savage feels great to him (like it would for an oni). In fact, the Kouma in Act Cadenza and Actress Again isn't even the real Kouma, but a TATARI manifestation of him born from Shiki's repressed traumatic memories of when Makihisa (Akiha and Roa's host's dad) ordered him to slaughter his original family of oni-slayers. So why, you might ask, if Shiki is from a clan of assassins specialized in slaying humans with the blood of oni within them, is that background not more obviously conveyed in his character design? Because that wouldn't actually fit the lore _at all._ Shiki is estranged from his heritage and with one major exception after the slaughter of his family, lived an entirely normal life until the events of Tsukihime itself. Even if he is not a normal boy, he consciously tries to live a normal life because of the influence Aoko had on him. And that's a major theme of the Nasuverse as a whole, from Kara no Kyoukai (where Ryougi comes from) to Tsukihime to F/SN (where Saber comes from): the supernatural encroaching upon and distorting daily life. The supernatural side of the Nasuverse in its original visual novels and stories was dangerous to self and sanity. It wasn't something you wanted to be involved with unless you were at least a little crazy. Roa, Nrvnqsr, and Wallachia basically represent what you can expect from the pinnacle of supernatural attainment in the setting's modern day, and they're all fucking monsters willing to sacrifice anything, both themselves and others, in pursuit of their completely batshit insane mystical theories and ideals. Even to the point of giving up their very senses of self and essentially becoming quasi-sapient systems, because it doesn't matter to them if they lose their personhood as long as their _intentions,_ their _wills_ carry on. That's why they look so fantastical and terrifying compared to everyone else; by their natures, they've rejected normalcy. By contrast, you have Aoko, who _also_ represents the pinnacle of supernatural attainment in the setting, being one of the vanishingly rare "True Magicians" capable of a form of magic that distorts reality in ways totally beyond humanity's current comprehension, but it's a plot point that she's retained her sense of normalcy - _clung_ to it against all odds, because the Fifth True Magic she inherited wasn't even something she wanted in the first place. She doesn't even use anything resembling her True Magic in Melty Blood (except _kind of_ in her Last Arc), she uses a branch of the same magecraft tradition as Roa (magecraft, which can do impossible things in the process of achieving a possible result, like letting you fly on a broom to get you from one place to another or instantaneously repairing a damaged object, but can't do utterly impossible things like sending you back in time or to another timeline, is different from True Magic, which can do these things). And maintaining one's humanity as a True Magician isn't a done deal: the Einzberns from F/SN are the technical inheritors of the Third True Magic and they've collectively become a system that's just as insane and abominable as the Dead Apostle Ancestors mentioned above. But Aoko just goes around in a t-shirt and jeans, on one hand because when you're as badass as she is, you don't have to give a fuck and can swagger around with mass murdering death monsters like the DAAs dressed as casually as you want, but on the other hand, it's because she's still trying to cling on to normalcy. She's still trying to be the spunky, cheery girl she was before she became a Magician, even though the implications of her original story (which Nasu still hasn't actually finished lmao) and her appearance in Melty Blood mean she probably lost the ability to go back to her former life and the people in it she cherished a long time ago. All because they were entangled with the supernatural. That's why she sympathized so much with Shiki, whose power can and will fucking kill him, and ingrained in him a dogged appreciation for living every day to the fullest while avoiding relying on his Mystic Eyes if at all possible. Compare that with Sion, someone who has grown up immersed in one of the major secret societies of magi, who draw their power from the occult mysteries of the past, so her clothing looks unusual - slightly antiquated and just a little bit gaudy. Riesbyfe also wears unusual clothing, looking almost like a knight, but that's because she was wearing her equipment as a vampire slayer of the Church when she was consumed by Wallachia, so since her appearance in MBAA is as a TATARI manifestation based on when she 'died', she's naturally geared up. Ciel, also a member of the Church's supernatural backstage, likewise has dedicated combat outfits which set her apart from the rest of the cast (and even dons them in her character intros). (cont)
Doesn't this just prove his point though? That the Melty Blood character designs are incomprehensible to a newcomer picking the game up unless they've read a lengthy visual novel (or at least a lengthy wall of text) in order to understand the subtle nuances that inform their designs?
@@protolad2458 And that's fine because that's the intention behind it. It is a setting and a story where that approach is 100% called for. I also pointed out places where the guy's argument is hypocritical. P4A actually shows less details to players in its character select screen than MBAA does; it's clear he's just inherently more familiar with Persona and its characters than Tsukihime from the get-go, yet he's holding Melty Blood to a standard beyond that which he's set for P4A in the first place.
The blandness of the Melty Blood cast character designs are the #1 reason why I passed on playing the most recent one. As someone that has very little knowledge of the series and has no desire to read the novel(s), first impressions are really important in order to get me to try the game. That's not to say that having "Plain Jane" characters is bad, it's just that (at least for me) the gameplay now has to do a really good job of pulling me in because I've already hit a hurdle since most of the characters don't intrigue me at a glance.
One thing I'd like to point out for the Persona Ultimax segment is that the redesigns aren't actually redesigns, but rather extensions of previous designs already present in Persona. Not to say that they're one for one or that they didn't do it intentionally, but most if not all of the redesigns come straight from their battle designs when they're in the metaverse. They often change clothes to match their armor when going into these things, and in the P4 character's cases they gain something a bit more visually striking with the inclusion of their glasses and/or signature weapons. Melty doesn't have this sort of tonal shift save for the holy church members who often don a battle garb quickly when going into battle. Hell, Ceil technically does this twice ala her regular battle garb and her Full Powered mode. I think this lends more to your final notes in your video than it did when you brought it up as Tsukihime is a series without set battle scenarios, thus limiting them from changing character designs for the Melty Blood entries.
Really good analysis video! However, I disagree on the conclusion that Melty Blood should try to be unique and the analogy used with Mario Golf. Melty Blood should just have the characters wear themselves(their personality and abilities) on their sleeves, similar to how Shrek Superslam portrays their characters. For example: Shrek is generally a calm character, but in this party game he is much more playful and disgusting. This is evident in his exaggerated battle stance and constant nose picking, something he canonically does but not to this extent. It would have been hilarious if Hisui held a chair in her idle animation or ROA constantly electrocuted himself like Pichu because he enjoys how it feels during his walk animation. Not 100% Canon, but references who the character is in an exaggerated way. I also like the Golf depictions of Mario characters or Skylander's depiction of DK and Doug. However, I would loathe if every spin off reused the same designs or if the default designs aren't an option. Golf only works because it subverts expectations, not because the old designs don't work in the new context. TL;DR: Ken doesn't act exaggerated while at work as shown in SF4 arcade mode, but does in actual matches. Melty treats their characters as if they aren't about to fight, which is the issue. Not that the characters need to be changed/redesigned so simpletons can misinterpreted their character depth.
I did not expect the Shrek Superslam comparison, but kinda do and don't agree. For someone like Roa, maybe more like scratching himself a bunch, showing that he's kinda a skinwalker. But on the other hand, how far can you get with this without either spoiling or ruining the character's personality.
I think you did a fantastic job with this video and actually discussing view points of this topic. Personally I'm fond of the loyal designs to the VN, but that's only because the discovery of the character comes from first play, rather then first look, which is unique for FG's. And while it's cute that MB is the type of game where I pick "high schooler with knife" and he's a badass, that doesn't nullify the fact that Shiki's (and by extension a lot of characters) design lacks good tells to let you know how he plays and what he's about for the most part, I just like it anyway, he's not even that great of an example of this issue to be fair. UNIB by contrast really does feel like French Breads take on doing proper FG VN designs, and they kinda killed it if you ask me, the designs still emphasise the modern setting and "more is less" approach, but now have a much clearer identity as to the characters role within the roster, using various design tropes and more confident colours and outlines. I still think the loyal approach to the source material was ultimately a valid choice, as while we sacrifice design, it keeps with Tsukihime's theme of characters being "more then meets the eye" and keeps the series identity strong. But then the characters identity as FG characters is much more depended on how they play and how they fight, rather then their pure visual appeal. I'm into both, but I'd be lying if I said I put so much time in GGST just cause it played well, y'know what I'm saying?
Interesting you bring up Mario Kart as your example, but not a Smash bros. Characters are not redesigned in any way but it seams to work somehow, even for non-fighters like Isabelle or Villager.
Overall I really enjoyed this videos structure, while I appreciate they were faithful to the source material I must say I can understand the opposite side a lot more so thanks for that. As someone who read a shit ton of visual novels I must say the bland designs for me hark to my days reading vn's or watching anime. So for me Melty Blood feels like playing an anime more than any other fighter game that comes to mind. That comes with a huge set of cons, my friends taking a look at the designs and picking them apart when showing them but Im thankful for it regardless. Its nice to see you uploaded man, hope ya been doing well.
alright first of all, great video, i didnt expect to like it but i can definitely see your points, that being said i'll give my own take cuz i can. I want to argue characters do feel distinct even in the character select screen (note that i am a biased tsukihime fan). Also sorry if this is unreadable, im bad at explaining opinions, also i suck ass at fighting games so i might misunderstand archetypes. So first i'll start with where i agree with you/ talk about the designs that arent amazing, i think akiha tohno's design in (specifically lumina) is horrible and shows nothing about her character, she looks so generic it hurts. If you look at the tsukihime remake and check akiha's design there (she wears these simple but elegant clothes in it) i think it would already have worked way better to sell her character. Akiha in the visual novel is very uptight, strict and a bit of a tsundere, Her remake design gives her this very classy vibe and it allows you to instantly realize what kind of person she is. Even then though i think its a hard sell to show what kind of character she is in terms of playstyle. (maybe by making the end of her hair on fire or something like that it could sell her character better. Either way thats not what they did and it looks generic. (i do think akiha vermillion in mbaacc shows what she is about very clearly tho, more so due to pose and expression than anything)) Next is shiki, shiki i think does kinda give of this normal anime protag vibe about him, he looks like the basic bitch character for new people and i do think thats kinda what he is about, the subversion of his nanaya form is pretty smart, that being said it does not fit a fighting game all that well. if i can give it some kinda credit, intentional or not his legs look really long which might clue into him having big buttons, idk tho thats the best i got, i think his character art having his eyes in death perception mode (like in kara no kyoukai if you've seen that) might have been more telling about the character. arceuids design is kinda eh, i dont even like it in the visual novel so yeah red arc i think is kinda cool, she clearly sells her personality giving of this sense of being an absolute psycho with the ripped skirt and that smile, she gives of the vibes of someone who really controls you or something like that. Which kinda fits cuz her screen control is pretty good, that being said it's quite a stretch to say her playstyle is super clear. i like ciels design, it looks very dynamic imo but i dont think its too clear what her deal is so it doesnt translate that well into fighting games kouma is also one of those thats kinda weird, i think he looks badass but type lumina does not sell how scary he is, i think actress again with his pose does sell this unhinged personality better. Either way its not clear he is a grappler. The only reason he looks like a grappler at all is cuz no one else in the cast looks like one now for the designs i think do work like you mentioned, roa is fucking awesome and i dont think i need to say anything more about him, i do wish we got the long hair back tho vlov i dont think i need to say anything, fucker looks like the most badass fighting game villain out there now i want to get to the maids cuz i think design wise they are very intresting, first is hisui. Hisui's design is really simple, she wears a classical maid dress and nothing about her really stands out, but her expression and pose (more so in mbaacc than lumina) shows a very calm and collected person. a very typical kuudere. You can tell she is a zoner, also her maid design lets you in to the type of moves she uses, mostly consisting of pots and that kinda stuff, i think design wise she sells her gameplay. Even better than hisui, kohaku really sells her personality, from the way her dress is a kimono combined with a maid apron breaking i think every rule of common sense (unless this is actually a thing in real life and i dont know about it) to her big grin and the fact she fights with a broom that she holds like a katana (which it basicaly is). You know this character is gonna be kinda all about being fun and weird, which i think is in line with her gameplay. Her moves are super varied, she has a stance with her broomkatana, she uses plants for super strong oki, she turns into a witch and throws molotvs, etc. her design might not tell you she will use these specific moves but it definitely gives off the sense that she would use weird moves like these idk too much about noel lore wise, but i think her big ass weapon makes it clear she is a character with big buttons that are strong in neutral, and she also has that casual personality thing going on. I think her playstyle is very clear tho even by just looking at her design saber is well saber, her design is popular for a reason, i think we can both agree its a good design here. miyako really sells what she is about by how small she is, she is a rush down that either gets in and fucks you up or dies trying. I love how her design is all about contradictions between serious clothing and very childish clothing. She is a child after all, her fighting clothes are very serious and functional looking but then she wears these cute ass pink shoes and you instantly realize oh yeah she is acting serious but she is also a child that likes childish things. it's simple but i think its a subtle design that works really well. i shortly wanna mention aoko cuz i think her design is sick asf, she really strolling up as casually dressed as anyone can be and starts dbz shooting beams, its so unexpected and her design doesnt fully sell it (though i think the red hair is a small clue, only by comparison to most of the cast who have more basic hair colors) but it works so well in game, its such a suprise and her having the time of her life really sells it, also im an aoko simp dont judge me. for a more clear aoko design, check out her fifth magic form from mahoutsukai no yoru, i think that would also translate really well to a fighting game (note mahoutsukai no yoru aoko is way younger than the one in melty and so is very different in personality) that being said, what i think sells melty really well is how bland and unassuming it all is, people say it looks like a basic fighting game but i cant name a single succesful fighting game that has this aesthetic and i think its a very different aesthetic from under night. All of the melty character designs look believable for who the people are, like most of these people could be walking on the street (exception being the maids, who generally dont go out on the streets anyway and some of the villains who generally stay hidden in the night). like sure hyde stands out more as a design than shiki but i can imagine walking next to shiki never realizing he has the power to murder everything, in comparison if i saw hyde irl id be like, this guy is a main character. And while yes you could argue that makes hyde a better design, i think what makes melty so unique is this sense that these characters live in the same world as i do and that these fights are just happening in the dark alleys deep into the night. It's a aesthetic i dont think any other fighting game really has. also i think its cool how most characters color palets are not as vibrant as most fighting games, combined with the realistically colored backgrounds i think it gives the game a very mysterious vibe. all that considered, they are still visual novel designs and i do not think they are perfect, i think there are other urban fantasy story's with a similar kind of concept that have more memorable designs (boogiepop, kara no kyoukai, fate stay night, kagerou project, are a couple of examples of shows/ vns that capture this aesthetic better imo). anyway thanks for reading, despite disagreeing i do still think your video was great and you did earn a sub from me
Thanks for not using the word “drip,” the FGC is corny enough as it is! All these nerds currently talmbout RIZZ is hilarious to me. What is also hilarious is this: people who talk about DRIP in the fgc usually dont possess a sense of STYLE. Think about it: would couture based on street fighter characters’ standard outfits be more likely to be worn during a Paris fashion show, or those of Melty Blood? I think Balenciaga & Vetements could remix EITHER collection of character outfits and create bold fashion. But the average fighting game player is a nerd that can’t dress himself and wants a video game to serve as a proxy for personality. The STYLING of a game is so much more than outfits. Fighting games aren’t known for their stylistic COHESION, which is one thing both Meltys possess far above any fighting game. All these character obviously come from the same vampire filled world. Monsters, robots, aliens, various schools of fighting styles, characters from around the world, disparate stages. Shit is silly. If you make a fighting game based on the film, The Godfather, duh, it’ll be a lot of Italian men in suits, stages set in unremarkable places, and nerds will complain about the blandness of the roster. Why? I don’t know. When you have style in REAL LIFE, you don’t need your fictional characters to provide it for you.
That is another big problem, but it's more of a character select screen problem rather than the characters themselves. Since you can see the characters when you highlight them, it's not that much worse than something like +R (which has AWFUL portrait tiles) or Xrd or BB.
I completely agree with altering tsukihime character designs to better fit an FG. They did exactly that with Sion(Eltnum) in Under Night and she looked amazing. If they could have done something similar for the more "normal-looking" (for lack of a better term) characters while keeping their identities intact, that would have been really cool.
Weirdly enough, Sion was already designed to be more fighting game esqe than the others since she was original to Melty Blood. I think her UNIST look was more a modernization than anything else.
As much as I love Tsukihime, I can agree that they could have adjusted the designs a bit for Melty. Coincidentally, I think French Bread's previous game Under Night is the perfect example. Its setting is also an "Urban Fantasy" like most of Type Moon's visual novels but the character designs are much more elaborate and stick out more. I think it was a perfect middle ground.
TRUE! I remember when I was trying to find a main in melty I just had to randomly choose character after character but once I understood what I wanted in my character after getting my ass kicked I was looking for a character with big attacks and stronger defensive options like a traditional DP or something unique. I was immediately able to think of Riesbyfe who carries this big shield pile bunker thing and it was the perfect fit. It's frustrating that we have examples of strong fighting game design's in the melty blood style that fit but it's for only the tiniest portion of the cast.
That's because Risebyfe, Wallachia, and Sion were fighting game characters designed from the ground up for Melty Blood and not present in the VN compared to literally everybody else.
Yeah in order change the genre of some media you need to redesign something on order to make it work, and you right Persona4 arena is the perfect example of redesign because different genre of product
I agree. Made a coment a while back in the sugar punch design works chanel a while ago that the problem in the designs of Melty blood is that, like you said, they didn't embraced the fighting game astetics and the lack of visual comunication to deliver what the characters are all about except for some animations. Yes, they have cool backstories, but is meaningles if you can't comunicate it trough the visuals of the characer, which is key in character design
For the record:
- I think Vlov looks really cool and I would definitely play him if I were interested in MBTL. I wish more characters were designed like him.
- Roa's new haircut looks awful.
Totally agree on Roa’s haircut. He looks awful in MBTL.
I do miss the Tommy Wiseau design of Roa. *hit*
Dunno why Roa tried to rip off Terumi instead of keeping his Michael Jackson locks
@@nelomalkevain4129 if there's any consolation is that SHIKI's consciousness owns the Michael Jackson locks in the remake before Roa takes over
@@raikoedgymoto yea but i dont understand why SHIKI could't the the one wearing the short hair and Roa the long ones, especially since they are more symilar to Roa's original haircut. Also dunno if it was just me but, i always thought Roa's hair look like lightning snakes wich relate to his powers and alias perfectly
Oddly enough, the aesthetic of plainclothes supernatural people fighting in urban night cities feels unique and cool to me. I think it could be easy to fall into a trap by making Melty seem more bland if they made them look more like fighting game tropes.
Then again, Melty does have clarity issues. Did you know Akiha has the highest health of all the characters? Nothing about her design communicates that.
I think french bread did a good job with Undernight designs, they're subdued still, but communicate enough to tell players what each character "is".
yeah, i think seiichi yoshihara knocked it out of the park with hitting the same vibe as melty but still using the visual clarity of fighters. even if the character i play (nanase) doesnt exemplify that
I agree that UNI characters are generally better designed, and they better emphasize the idea of magical stuff lurking behind real life (although I do think many of them are guilty of "animu trope checklist syndrome"). I think a middle ground between Tsukihime and UNI would have been great, because I love designs like Hilda, Merkava, Chaos, and Carmine.
Didn't know about Akiha having the highest life total. I would have thought Kouma or Hime would have had that honour. Then again, MBAACC has way too many system mechanics and a lot of meaningless mechanical bloat like all FB games, so that may be less of a visual issue and more of a system/balance issue. Like, there are three or four different levels of guts scaling applied to a character's life bar in MBAACC, but they're all tiny decimal fractions.
Akiha having the highest life total would make sense only because her power is to literally drain other people's life force through contact, which is implemented into MBTL where her grabs give her more blue health to recover.
But diving deeper into lore also would make sense for her to have the lowest too because she shared half of her life force to keep Shiki alive.
Hey, made for fans of Tsukihime BY fans of Tsukihime. FB just managed to make a fighter so fun that non-tsukihime fans hopped on. Making your average fighter to be sold worldwide was never the intent I imagine. But the overarching philosophy behind remains true, if you want in, you have to accept it. Doubly so for MBTL because it was made to release around the same time as Tsukihime's remake intentionally.
french bread had more restrictions when it came to adapting tsukihime into a fighting game without making the characters too distinguishable from the visual novel
less restrictive on under night cause it was their own ip, not type moon's
6:30 funny thing is, Roa never actually used lightning in the VN.
His whole thing was reincarnating into other people’s bodies when dying as a form of immortality while keeping his memories, accumulating knowledge of magecraft for countless years
It seems Type Lumina agrees with you about Kouma's jacket
I was so happy to see Kouma wearing the coat in his reveal trailer, and immediately devastated when he threw it off in his round intro animation.
@@DragonflySwamp french bread is the new king of trolling
Although I don’t 100% agree with you, I definitely see where you’re coming from and I respect it. For me personally I think the plainness of the characters is what makes them unique and stand out, I think it’s hecka cool that a kid with a box cutter is out here doing Vergil judgment cuts.
I will say though I think Red Arc made a cool transition as fighting game character in Lumina, it’s a reference to her old design while also adding the heels and a slit in her dress to give her a more subtle villain vibe in contrast to regular arc, and even though she isn’t as demonic/feral looking like in old melty, her posture in the way she moves and attacks while also seeing slight glimpses of how psychotic she is in her EX moves gives you a good idea of the kind of character she is while still being consistent with the plain look of the rest of cast.
Either way though fun video, it was nice to hear someone’s take that isn’t just something something drip, really enjoy your stuff!
I didn't figure I'd change anyone's mind, so it's good to hear that you at least got my point. FB characters almost always have good animations, so I'm not surprised to hear they did a good job with Red Arc in MBTL.
I'm coming into this discussion literal years after its relevance has expired, but here's my perspective. I think you're right when you say that the character designs make melty blood difficult to approach from an outside perspective.
So, here's why I appreciate the designs from an insiders perspective. The aesthetics of Tsukihime are all about horror in the mundane. One of Shiki's classmates is a ghoul, barely repressing her urge to eat everyone she sees, a random woman he meets is a godlike super vampire who could destroy the town he lives in with a thought, there's an immortal, undead wizard guy living in his basement, and he, himself has this bizarro instant death vision that all of them fear by instinct. All of this is conveyed under an oppressive, Silent Hill like atmosphere; it's honestly unlike anything else I've ever seen.
Yeah, I understand how that aesthetic needs to be handled in a subdued way. The only problem is I don't think it can be done in a fighting game without very specific and precise consideration - something like the early SamSho games where everything is very deliberate and authentic to the mood of a samurai duel.
I don't hate Tsukihime for what it is, but it just doesn't mesh with a fighting game.
@@DragonflySwamp It's a problem with no real solution imo. Fighting game players hear from their friends about a cool old game with crazy movement tech and a bunch of weird and unique characters, show up, see a bunch of school kids, and don't know where to start. But, take the persona approach, and suddenly you run the risk of hyper focusing on one or two minor traits of the character, totally flanderizing them and alienating your core audience.
@@gilles4prezudent650 this is why i read tsukihime and planning to read fate stay night
outsiders deserve nothing.
RE: The point about Mario characters changing the way they dress for the sports games.
They change the way they dress because the activities they do in the spinoffs are not typical for them, but that isn't the case for Melty Blood. Tsukihime has fight scenes, and these happen with characters in normal dress. If they changed attire for Melty Blood, some justification would need to be given for this, and the story would need to reflect that. The point is that the world presented is dangerous, and fights don't happen when characters are necessarily prepared for them. Hell, in Tuskihime, the main dramatic tension behind the fight between Shiki and Nrvnqsr is that Shiki isn't a fighter, and never feels prepared for it, and his plain style of dress symbolizes that fact.
Now, Melty Blood isn't Tsukihime, I understand that, but it is intended to be a sequel (sort of) to Tsukihime, while the Mario spinoffs are just that: spinoffs. I know you aren't saying that redesigns would need to be on the level of the ones for Persona 4 Arena, but any redesign at all would come off as a pointless contrivance, in my opinion.
As reasonable as this point is, it just proves the counterpoint that Melty Blood has little business being a fighting game. Melty Blood Type Lumina strictly following the aesthetics of a visual novel is what made the initial hype the game gathered die down a little before and after release. Fans will understand the reserved aesthetics of the initial cast, but new people interested in Melty did not find these designs fun so a fraction of it dropped off.
Visual novels hook newcomers with characters and story. Fighting games hook people with hype aesthetics and gameplay. In fighting games, plot and lore are secondary, mechanics and aesthetics are king so Type Moon and French Bread were supposed to treat Melty Blood according to the genre it represented.
Every time I read an explanation that involves "in Tsukihime. . . " I wind up becoming more convinced that the VNs are holding the FG back.
Melty is the prequel of tsukihime stated by nasu himself that this happens 3-4days before the start of tsukihime in non canon route.
@@r3zaful I was referring to MBAACC, not MBTL
@@brocksteele7475 so play a FG not based on a VN and let us real fans enjoy extra content.. Made by Tsukhime fans for Tsukihime fans, why should they cater to secondaries who don't actually care or even KNOW the characters? You just want them to sell out, you are and always will be an outsider
As you stated yourself, you don't quite know the cast of Melty Blood and that's honestly very important going in when trying to appreciate them. This franchise was a Visual Novel taking place in modern day through the eyes of a seemingly normal kid as things start to slowly go insane, and truth be told, it was initially made for the fans of the series. Shiki is a normal kid (only not at all when you learn more) but he starts off trying to be a normal japanese kid. Thus, he's often found in the plain uniform. Kouma, as you stated, is a man fighting to control his demonic blood. His story depicted him as once being a brute with no skill whatsoever, and twice he lost himself to the demonic blood and slaughtered two whole family clans. What's one of the things he did to prevent that? Take martial arts very seriously and became a zen Buddhist. So he actually does train his ass off in the mountains and is now very much a man who would wear that outfit that reflects his martial/hermit lifestyle. The coat he has being the symbolic tendency to never truly cut ties with the modern city he was born in, as he does still visit the city from time to time. (And what's cool, is that you can learn of his demonic tendencies through his gameplay animations, as his charge up animations shows him covered in an ominous shadow with a glowing red eye, or his skill cut-in art where he looks like a raging demon with crimson hair. These things showing that he is still very much learning to control himself.) Another large factor is that many of these designs were created by a 2000 low budget Visual Novel creator. But the story and characters are so beloved, they wanted to keep true to the designs. While they may not be fully appreciated by newcomers, which is 100% understandable, it does make the series stand out in a game genre where most characters are indeed covered in a thousand belts or have bright red boxing gloves. These are strange people living in the modern world, and only the exotic people who don't care to live normally dress with a bit of extra flair, like the demon martial artist, the ancient vampires, and the church full of demon hunters who dress to kill monsters.
It's certainly not for everyone, and you are of course allowed your opinion to not exactly resonate with them. But there are many reasons for the designs to be as they are. Lore reasons, nostalgia, and honestly it being a game meant for man franchise fans. As even the arcade modes will NOT clue in newcomers as to what the hell is going on, you either know, or you don't.
Now I really need you to make an entire video of Persona 4 Arena's designs, because it doesn't seem like P4 characters have been redesigned for it, and I NEED to know what do you think of this dominatrix suit that Mitsuru is wearing and how you'd justify it.
Good video man
red is a STIMULANT COLOR
You get the picture.
I really liked your opinion on the designs in melty blood.
Some of your points contradict themselves but you were fairly clear in your message.
There are alot of different aspects that go into character design but there are a few major pointers that you're missing out in some of your examples.
Design shape and line of action is very important in making compelling characters.
Your argument is very focused on the literal design of the character and what they're wearing which is perfectly fine as everyone values specifics in designs more than others.
But there is alot more to character design that you missed out on with your break down.
If we take Raven from guilty gear. His outfit suits him perfectly but thats not where it stops for why he's a great character.
His voice acting, His moves, His posture, His story. All of those things play into character design.
I think melty bloods character designs are simple in a complex way when you factor in all of the importants that go into character design.
The music, The line of action, The moves, The story, The setting. They all encapsulate and suit those characters to where they are.
On the surface sure Shiki does not look like a wizard. But as you go deeper into the complexities of MB it does make sense.
Surface level is important in fighting games but ease of surface level does not = good design or bad design. Its just a value in the design.
Great video and interesting discussion. ;D
Melty Blood was my introduction to Tsuki, and a big part of what drew me in was the absurdity of what I was witnessing. These normally dressed characters doing all these cool moves was enticing. I've since gotten into Tsuki and Type Moon as a whole more, but I'll still always remember that initial impression of "what the hell is happening?"
It's why the whole drip arguement never really made much sense to me. I was having similiar thoughts when you were discussing the Persona 3 boxer dude. His base design was a lot more appealing than the 4A design, since that classier look vs the boxing style gives him more elegance to me than "fight man".
Your kart arguement felt a bit odd to me since the Princesses do still wear their dresses if they're in carts. It's on bikes where they ditch it. But now I want that idea of grease monkey wario and waluigi, so I thank ya for that.
A portion I feel like people overlook a lot for this is body language, you meme on it a bit with Satsuki's walk, but her general motions convey that look of "pained monster", and this is coming from a guy who only knows she's an innocent turned into a vamp, haven't read the second half of the VN to kbow much more beyond "girl turned vamp". Akiha had similiar vibes for me. I didn't know she was a mage when I started, but her general hand motions and haughtyness sold me on the idea of "this character is more than meets the eye."
All in all, this was a fun watch, it got me to think, which is a lot more than the drip videos. Thank you.
this comment is quite funny in retrospect because she is just 'girl turned vamp' and thats about it, she doesn't have a very big role in tsukihime at all beyond that.
@calb6109 Her big point is a big compare and contrast between the vampires and give shiki internal turmoil. You don't see her become a vampire until route 3 and you have to beat route 1 or 2 to access it. In those routes you spend more time with Arcueid and she shows she has none of the downside of being a vampire like no need to drink blood and has the all the upsides like super strength. While the other vampires aren't on her level they still shows a similar amount of control. Then enter Sastuki in the first half the 3rd route , she needs blood and she is a massive amounts of pain. With her overall, being much different then vampires from before. Next , In route 1 and 2 , Shiki's first kill was arcueid. She revived and forced him to follow her around. In contrast, Shiki's first kill in route 3 is Satsuki , she dies in front of his eyes after betraying his words. His guilt over killing her carries with him the entire route and greatly effects his willingness to kill people even vampires (In fact,I think he doesn't kill a single person after that point) even when he let's he nanaya instincts take over he only went for non killing blow against SHIKI.
This bleeds over into OG melty blood's story with his stark refusal to kill Sion when she succumb to her vampirism.
Her roles wasn't the biggest (that's probably akiha) but she does have a big role with it being more subtle than the others.
Obv the sans eye kouma would be ridiculous but I wonder if maybe aoko's magic being visible in her character art or shiki brandishing his knife in the character select screen would work as compromises.
Shiki IS brandishing his knife in the portrait, it's just very small.
But, i think French Bread got a pretty hardball on Kohaku. From the first look, Kohaku was just a cheerful maid of the sisters....HOWEVER, her animation with her costume change and even animation change tell me otherwise. If you didn't read Tsukihime, that's fine but I can't believe there are passion around the way they design Kohaku animation. It's like pocket fighters tier of animation dedication (constant costume change for each move) You can actually tell that she's hiding something behind her mischief nature but those animation that even the sound of her running animation is just so extra layer to Faust or Zappa level of madness.
I think a lot of the design faults could be resolved with just a couple little things. Like Akiha having glowing red hair at the roots or Shiki's eye of death perception being pronounced with some kind of lens flare or glow. You could also have a conspicuous knife holster tucked inside his uniform. This follows the intention that the characters are more than what meets the eye while displaying a hint of the more fantastical.
Strangely enough, some Shiki colors seem to add the type of strap where a knife holster could be.
I mean, shiki does a glow in his eyes. Before he takes of his glasses his eyes are grey or brown color and then when he takes them off his eyes are a glowing greenish blue.
Yeah I just disagree. This isn't badly made (for the most part) but I guess you did say it was a you problem so fair enough.
I think less is more in the case of MB. Not that anything's wrong with GGs approach but I enjoy the more grounded approach of the MB designs. You are right about them not communicating a ton from just looks but that's kinda what makes it interesting imo. You have to actually get the character to appreciate them instead of liking them for design alone.
One thing I love about Under Night is that plenty of characters wear normal stuff (Hyde and Nanase in their school uniforms), and the characters that don't either only wear their weirder in the context of the one night per month that UNI takes place (ie Gordeau usually wears a pretty formal suit during his bartending job, but decides go shirtless with an open jacket during the night) or just dress like that because they don't really care what others think (I'm pretty sure Carmine and Seth just dress like that most of the time). Even Waldstein, who is a giant, shirtless monster of a man just says that he's a foreign wrestler or cosplayer when questioned in public.
This video is wonderfully structured. The way it effectively presents information and reason is quite persuasive
Thanks!
Fair points, I think the game being so damn tight instead of just fan-service makes secondaries get somewhat lost.
I don't think redesigns would work on ANY of the main cast characters, other characters taking the chance to have more extravagant designs could be a welcome contrast. Powered Ciel is goat design though.
Frankly I disagree. I think you made some good points, but you started with a bad premise. Arcsys games don't use overtly expressive character design because it's intrinsically good, they use it because their game design requires it.
In something like GG, characters are very different on a base level. Picking a slow character could mean lacking basic movement options (e.g Tager or Potemkin). It makes sense that you should be able to tell at glance which characters have which traits. In this context first impressions are paramount. But in MB, the fundamentals of the game are a little more rigid. With a few exceptions, every character uses the exact same pool of base mechanics. As such, differences between a slow and fast characters are generally granular. Furthermore, very few characters fit neatly into common archetypes.
You could rushdown with Shiki, but he's also very good at playing lame and keeping people out. How can his character design reflect this in relation to the rest of the cast? The cast of MB are all somewhat similar, so you could say the same thing I said about Shiki about a good chunk of cast. And sometimes your choice of moon makes more of a difference than your character anyway. How would the character design convey this? Should each character have three absurdly bloated and different designs? I think the alternative, simple and unexpressive design is better for Melty.
As great as it is the some characters can be understood at glance, I don't think it's reasonable to use this as a standard to judge every game against. Some games have characters with completely different playstyles and strategies, and others have characters the act like different spins on the same core gameplay. I'd drop Melty Blood into the latter group.
With your Mario Kart example, it's worth noting that the genre conventions were tweaked to fit the cast instead of the other way around. Namely, Mario and the gang are driving go-karts and not cars.
One thing I have noticed in the non-sprite artwork for the characters is that they have more expressive posturing and designs. Shiki Tohno’s character select art has a more serious expression and keeps his knife with his arms close to his body whereas Nanaya’s character select art is less guarded with his arms more lax and out while still holding his knife. He also has a confident smile on his face. I think the intention was to let those aspects speak for the characters instead but it doesn’t seem like Takeuchi really succeeded on that well enough. Either that or it never would’ve succeeded enough no matter what.
Personally I don’t really care since I’m a huge Tsukihime fan. I’m just happy that these characters are playable in what I consider to be a fun fighting game but I can definitely understand why others consider the designs to be bland or plain.
I can’t help but think about how I have similar issues to KoF. With more than half the cast, I can’t tell what their general game plan is.
I think a good middle ground for this issue would have to be something that also happens in P4A. The P4 characters don’t have their character designs changed at all. Instead you can read what they’re about through their character select art. For example, Yosuke is wearing is regular Yasogami high uniform, but his pose is very kinetic showing off his long limbs in an acrobatic fashion as he’s brandishing his twin kunai. It’s pretty easy to tell from that he’ll be an agile fighter with shorter range.
If Melty Blood has taken this approach it would be much easier to get a sense of what each character is about without changing their visual design. Imagine if Akiha’s character select art had her wreathed in her flame magic while in a refined pose that doesn’t imply any physical strikes. With that would be easy to tell she’s some sort of magic user rather than the current art that’s just some plain looking schoolgirl.
Akiha's powers are actually SO CONFUSINGLY EXPLAINED that even the graphics and gameplay misrepresent them. Akiha doesn't use fire magic, she "plunders" your "heat", in reality, Akiha's ability is basically life steal that takes shape in hair shaped tentacles, the way it would be better portrayed would be to make the visual effects after hitting you go to her and gameplay wise, make her steal HP. The character select art should show Akiha passing her hand through her hair and it turning red where her fingers should be touching the hair.
@@jouheikisaragi6075 I would’ve never guessed that. I always assumed she used flames and sometimes imbued her fingernails with the magic to make her claw slashing attacks. Holy shit that’s such a missed opportunity.
@@jouheikisaragi6075 what i think they got right is that her grabs show blue to symbolise her stealing heat and life from her opponents, though I do think that they should be made it more pronounced as most people miss it
I’m glad you mentioned Tsukihime early in the video. I think some of the people in the FGC who just know Type Lumina as “that new anime game” probably don’t even know that Tsukihime exists, so they don’t appreciate how Tsukihime being a low budget indie VN from the early 00s would have impacted its character designs. Melty Blood stays true to those designs because that’s what fans of the series want.
This isn’t to “excuse” the character designs or anything, because I do agree that they’re bland, but I still think that understanding the historical context is important.
while i think you bring up a fair point, melty blood was made as a fan work by people who loved the original novel, and made for people who liked tsukihime beforehand. while it’s absolutely true that the game’s designs doesn’t lend itself to someone whos into fighting games first, they weren’t supposed to. the game getting brought to america obviously muddles this, as most fans of melty over here either dont know the VN exists or will actively not read it because VN’s aren’t their thing (which is fair!)
honestly, i think its worth looking at something like dragon ball fighterz as an example of another adaptation of media into a fighting game. while the source material IS based on fighting, someone who doesnt understand the material is gonna see goku multiple times on the roster and not be able to tell what their deal is, and will have trouble picking characters because of it. i do also think its worth talking about how redesigns of characters can overshadow some of the best parts of them as it can come with some major simplifications of what they previously were, and fans of said series can leave quite jaded with how the characters they loved got changed.
i think this is a good video, but i do wish you could’ve gotten a bit more of the other side, though considering the time constraints, it makes sense why the video is how it is. thanks for making a well thought out video on the topic, and i look forward to future content!
I don't think the fighting game being a fanwork absolves it of wrongdoing, since FB clearly has a lot of talented artists who could have done different things with the characters without losing sight of what made them unique. Like I said with Kouma, even if all he did was keep his coat on during gameplay, I'd be fine with it; plain isn't bad, after all.
It's interesting that VNs seem to get made into fighting games somewhat frequently (Tsukihime and Umineko are the two major examples, but I'm sure there are plenty of others from the dojin scene), because I wouldn't have thought the same people who enjoyed reading Tsukihime for 30+ hours would enjoy the hectic action of a fighting game in the first place. Perhaps it simply originated at a different time when fighting games were more commonplace.
Umineko: Golden Fantasia has a similar "magic and real life coming together" art style and its characters don't bother me nearly as much. Perhaps it's simply because the colour palettes are more saturated and half the cast seem to have demented grins on their faces, as opposed to MB characters who just seem to stand there and look at each other.
Glad you liked the video and cared enough to comment.
It speaks volumes as to how FB made a good-ass fighting game while mostly just trying to make a fan-game for a VN they loved and would have technically expect it to be played by people who read the VN to understand how cool watching the fights they could only read about be fully realized and animated
hearing how this discourse would apply to dengeki bunko fighting climax would be very funny, i guess that one's different since it's a crossover for marketing purposes
Yeah. An explicit crossover like that doesn't bug me when its characters clash since they're supposed to represent a lot of different anime series that have nothing to do with each other.
I’m not familiar with ANY characters/IPs from Dengeki Bunko, and I’m glad you brought it up! What distinguishes both Meltys from Dengeki is TONE.
I really enjoy the tone of certain Japanese games I’ve played that incorporate silliness through physical humor, dialog, or jarring tonal shifts (Tekken, Yakuza, Guilty Gear, Rival Schools, Phoenix Wright).
I’m also finding that I enjoy WACKINESS in Japanese fighting games (Umineko, Dengeki). These games create movesets for characters that reference the plot of their source material, or, translate a character’s personality into a repertoire of fighting game moves (Having a bookworm fight with bookcases and stacks of books).
The parts of the story mode for Type Lumina I’ve played so far, most of it feels like a comedy. The characters have romantic crushes on each other, Neco Arc is pure silliness. Like many story mode plots, having a narrative that pivots into fighting every 2 minutes makes for a flimsy narrative. So to me, games that lean into how unrealistic this is is fine by me. I read serious books. I like cerebral literature. So, when a fighting game takes itself too seriously, I’m turned off (compare the more serious tone of later Tekken games with the earlier titles that I’d describe as 75% action, 25% comedy).
I like all the games I mentioned above, for different reasons. But, more to your point, I like how Dengeki’s characters are dressed in everyday clothes, their moves communicate their personality (tiny girl who fights with basketball is a basketball player), and Melty Blood doesn’t use the moveset as a source of comedy and “storytelling.” The Maids in Melty are exceptions. Dengeki is a whole game full of characters built like the Maids!
To me, Street Fighter & Mortal Kombat have some of the most boring character designs. Every shoto is bland to me. Every Netherrealm “ninja” is bland to me. I look forward to playing Tsukihime one day. quirky indie movies interest me, but watching blockbuster action films aren’t beneath me (I did walk out the theater in the middle of one of those horrible wolverine movies around 2010 though lol).
So, fighting games that are quirky indies themselves interest me more. But I also consider Guilty Gear a quirky indie. But I’m also a feminist and a grownup, so I like that the girls in Tsukihime aren’t fighting each other half naked (like in Dengeki). I don’t look to fighting games for “waifus” (the last 2 people I dated were both part-time models) and I don’t need the fictional characters in the game to look like some teenaged boy’s power fantasy, or a zany villain, or a monster, or an alien. Having a game with regular-looking people is fine too. It’s a fighting game-actual fighting has little to do with how 2D fighters play, any fighting game is unrealistic by default (I think I’ve been in about 5 fights in the last 10 years, and none of them looked cool, except the one at the punk rock show. I knocked out so many people, concertgoers & staff lol). Seeing “normal” school kids battle is fine. I play Melty for the air movement.
EDIT: I didn’t mention getting in fights and dating bad bitches as a flex (they were the most insecure people I’ve dated, and all of us were emotionally unavailable, so it’s nothing to brag on. Plus, it sucks when you live with a baddie that’s bad at sex/can’t have sex sober. My last ex was raw widdit tho, but her unresolved got in the way).
I’m a nerd myself, it’s just that before I stopped drinking, I wouldn’t back down from a fight. I was trying to be brave, but it’s braver to take care of yourself when no one is looking, rather than allow yourself to become enraged when your disrespected in public. #therapy
@@oyoyoyo7624 idk why you felt like i needed to know all of this but have you played blazblue
Great take.
Personally I don't mind the designs in the original Melty Blood series that much since it was a very small project that ended up being way more popular than intended so I can't hate too hard on it even if I agree that they're bland and personally I don't like the artist's style too much either so even characters who on paper suit my preferences would look better drawn in a different style imo. I think the animations are the strongest point in terms of making the characters visually appealing, they're pretty fluid for a doujin fighter.
Maybe making the character portraits in the select screen have some more subtle cues about the inhuman nature of some characters might have worked or doing this for their fighting stances.
The new MB has better designs for the most part with the new Vampire zoner dude looking amazing although other characters like Roa look way worse, he looks like a small-fry/filler episode villain now. Guess they put too much of the budget into Vlov's fabulous hair so they had to cut corners with Roa.
Great video, always love when you upload. I think the weird liminal space the game lives in regarding normal & magic visuals can be very appealing. That said, it is definitely neglecting the visual language of fighting games that has been in place ever since World Warrior. It's foregoing approachability for faithfulness. The game was originally just sold on discs at conventions and had no arcade ports, so that decision starts to make a lot of sense. I don't think they expected anyone except Tsukihime fans to ever play this game. In fact, the game was announced at a Tsukihime-only convention called "Tsukihime Matsuri Himehajime". If you're a Tsukihime fan, your first instinct is probably to play as whatever your favorite character is from the source material. Same principle as me going Dante/Vergil/Trish every time I play MVC3 purely because I like Devil May Cry - I already know these characters, therefore the game doesn't need to give me any extra information. I don't play grapplers, but if Dante is a grappler, I'll play him cuz he's Dante. I think they did too much work with this assumption in mind, and there was no way to go back after the game got popular (if it's even something they've thought much about in the first place).
I knew FB started as a dojin development group but I had no idea the game was so closely tied to Tsukihime (or that Tsukihime was popular enough to have its own convention). I've definitely done what you're describing in games like MvC or TvC, but games like that which are obvious crossover fanservice games have a bit of a different flavour, I think.
Compare MB to something like JoJo HTTF, which is an obvious fanservice game but only "crosses over" within its own series. HTTF seems like something people would play either because it's JoJo or because it's an immediate, flashy fighting game, not simply because of the JoJo name on the cabinet.
You can tell when a video is good when all the comments are long but never say the same thing.
Anyway, Brand recognition is very powerful as you described. However, making a game and assuming people would be cool with certain aspects just because "they'll buy it for the name" is a terrible mentality. Would you buy a Devil May Cry dating simulator in which none of the characters act like how they're suppose to act? Would you buy a Smash Bros with Dante in it if all he did was spindash and fight like a fire emblem characters?
You have to design your games well regardless of the audience. Some changes to the character's appearance may have been warranted here.
I can say as someone who likes fighting games too that I never really gave meltyblood a passing thought because of the character design. Only until I tried it out on a whim at the arcade with my friends did I see it was actually a fun game. Not every fighting game nor character design is for everyone ofc, but I agree with your passing glance appeal idea. Frankly even though I enjoyed my time with it I’m still not interested in going back to it because of the designs (but that IS just my taste haha)
michael jackson being the crazy electric wizard final boss is great character design doe
I disagree, the whole reason I gravitated towards Melty Blood in the first place was because of the plain characters. Plain characters doing flashy magical fighting was an unforgettable contrast that was really cool to me.
Also, compared to other fighting games like blaze blue or guilty gear, the plain character designs were a breath of fresh air to the extravagant over the top fighting game designs, Which I consider bland.
Thing interesting about Melty Blood characters that people forget or don't know is that alot of those characters didn't make their debut in Melty but Tsukihime, a VN. Now look a the designs of characters who debuted in Tsukihime to the Melty OC's (Eltnum, Warachia,Ries,etc) and you'll see the OC's have a bit flare to them. Hell, in the remake the character designs got updated a bit to add more pizazz and the new characters look way more appealing.
babe wake up, new Dragonfly video
I like how the Melty Blood characters look, I think it's part of the charm. I think that if they looked fancier, MB would stand out less among other fighting games to me.
Maybe I'm a weirdo, but when I first played it, I thought the imagery was so intriguing that I actually played the VN. Then I discovered both've got WAY different vibes, but I still liked it anyways
(Large comment)
I enjoyed the way the videos organized and def gotta give props to making it interesting with the limited editing although I definitely disagree
The thing is I actually wouldn't like a persona esque aproache as a fan
Thats because I am a huge fan of the source material and I just want to play Shiki as well, the Shiki I know, the highschooler that looks like a normal boy but is secretly *spoiler*, and the examples brought up are great in my opinion
On the point of view you are seeing that is
I personally play Melty Blood as a spin-off of one of my favorite stories, in my fav genre, I wanna see my favs fighting, not my favs in a "what if..." fighting, if that makes sense
Like you do have a valid point of view if ya view it "fighting game first, spin-off second" in my opinion
But I like it more in a "spin-off first, fighting game second" sort of way
Any way excelent video
(also something I would like to point out, you forgot one thing, a piece of art has more than one component, and I like it when the designs of the characters show something when put together,
Especially positions in such story like Roa, Nero and Vlov if we compare them to the rest, after all they have much less screentime dedicated to them)
That was the best disclaimer I've ever watched
Disclaimer: This video actually has quality and isn't made for children.
He has returned
i find one of the largest turn-offs for fighting game characters in my experience is if a character is "just a dude". their gameplay could be something i mesh well with or hate, but i'm really inclined against trying to indulge certain characters if they're just regular human persons. the only "just a dude" character i've really been interested in was Alex from street fighter, who sells me on the prospect of being a Very Big Man and having the most impact on what would otherwise be regular wrestling moves. even still, i'd like it if his design was a bit less "just a dude".
i guess people are allowed to prefer their own aesthetic tastes, but i've always thought things like the street fighter 3 games are the best in the series roster-wise because the roster is like, 40% inhumans or by-the-standard weird characters, which makes up for other characters being "just dudes". though there is a kind of cautionary tale in guilty gear because having really interesting character designs presents high variance, and you can get higher highs than anything else but also lower lows.
i agree with a lot of your opinions, Melty Blood seems to be one of the fighting games i've had the lowest interest for off of the aesthetic/feeling of it, though i can say none of the character designs are like.... actively poor or something i directly dislike, just, boring. i'd rather have a roster that includes some characters i actively dislike looking at but includes especially cool stuff i click with than a roster that's composed entirely of nonoffensive regular people with muted colours and no experimentation or pushing of atypical ideas.
That's almost exactly how I feel. If a character's entire personality is "he trains hard and doesn't wear a shirt," then I fall asleep. Characters like Faust are so much more stimulating it's almost unfair.
Great video! I would love to see more videos where you discuss your opinions on different fighting game topics. I imagine you don't have infinite time to make videos but the ones you've made are really good.
Soon™.
the king is back im saved
Seeing the pinned comment gave me a bit of inspiration to give my own two cents on the topic, seeing as this video and the discourse are since now long forgotten.
The entire point and design philosophy are that you aren't supposed to know who these characters are, as everyone is trying to conceal themselves in some sort of way. If you had to fight them in real life you probably wouldn't even assume that they are fighters (which is pretty bad in the context of a fighting game but i go over that sentiment a bit later) Trying to redesign the characters in a way that makes it more apparent to what they represent would be a bit disingenuous to the base VN. Doing that in a way that doesn't conflict with the source material would probably turn the game into something new entirely. I view melty blood as an aditional piece to the main VN, i think a majority of the fgc community (during that time anyway) viewed melty blood to tsukihime like they viewed persona 4 arena to persona 4 itself. A spinoff of sorts. Its almost like melty blood is a visual novel trying to put on a mask and market itself as a fighting game, compared to taking the P4AU route and just create its own story, whether itc follows the canon or not. Like you said visual novels naturally have much more time to market their characters to you, as opposed to said fighting game. Although i do feel like melty blood is almost a bit of an outlier in this regard, as all your points are valid and in any other situation would make sense. I took a look a Shiki's fandom page and it says there was a year timeskip between the VN and the first Melty Blood game. Nowhere would you know that without going to the games story.
(Also P.S, Wouldn't hunching forward be a personality trait though? For example take a look at
something like Granblue's belial and his walking animations. He struts forward chest up, stretching out his hands in the air and waves them around. The average person would be able to infer that he's a bit of a snarky asshole flamboyant without needing to know that he's a fallen angel who respects no one. When you look at Satsuki hunching forward and holding her chest i'd expect the average person to think that theres at least something wrong with her. You of course could just say that they could only have guessed that because his regular outfit has his chest out, following the argument of your entire video. And i just wrote an entire paragraph explaining why melty should be exempt from that type of criticism sooooo....)
Haven't read yet but glad to inspire you!
Man you were the 4 days ago person!
I didn't know
Deepest lore
My dude
iirc the persona redesigns were receptioned negatively, especially akihiko. many people blame that game for making aki kind of a, meathead walking joke
All of the Arena characters were flanderized, that's just a fact of Persona spinoffs in general
@@starbreaker6441 many found the redesign off character to be fair lol
watching your video made me legitimately upset
I absolutely AGREE with you. But I think the problem goes deeper than just not redesigning the characters
I think the problem is how the art style is REEEEALY simple. KoF also have simple characters as Kyo, or Robert, but all of their illustrations are top notch, and they also illustrate a lot about the characters, like how a bunch of Kyo arts show his fire powers
Also, it is not about quality, I think the more "chibi", or dare I say it "lolly" approach that Melty Blood has really doesn't help them. First, you can recognize anyone on the character select screen, because everyone has the same face, with giant eyes and no nose (the older characters look way better, but the lighting on those arts are still very simple, and doesn't make them look that cool, and it doesn't have really exaggerated proportions and expressions like Alpha 3 to compensate).
And also, most of the girls in the game have a REALLY irritating voice, and that makes me never watch this game lol
To summerise, I don't think the art style is helping with such simple characters. Lets take other games as examples:
Strive - They simplified the character designs a lot, but the Illustrations and art style are TOP NOTCH. Axl is using his most simple and boring costume ever, but the art work really sells it and make this his best version
Kof - There are some extravagant characters, but the simpler ones really shine, again, like Kyo, Robert, Rock... They might just wear simple clothes, but they are expressive, and their illustrations are way more detailed
Persona - You picked the best example possible, and I always asked myself why Melty Blood bothered me so much, and yet I liked persona's visuals. It really comes down to having way cooler illustration
The Mario Golf analogy made your whole argument click. It's a great inclusion.
I plain look i think really helps the presentation, it all looks very clean and still manages to be distinct
i felt compelled to try other characters, while in other fighting games, not really, i don't want to look at something i don't like, but melty's art is perfect
It's weirder considering how well known Persona is compared to whatever Melty is based on lol
As a Melty Blood player who has read the visual novels (and the much more involved stories of the original Melty Blood and Re-Act): *No.* Although exceptionally well-spoken in every conceivable regard, your opinion isn't a very good or useful one when you consider what Type-Moon and French Bread were trying to achieve with the character designs, and I'm going to explain why in extensive detail. I care a lot about the lore of both the Nasuverse and MegaTen, so the proper and coherent aesthetic representation of both IPs is important to me, which is why I think that the outsourced Servant designs of F/GO and the outsourced tokusatsu-based demon designs from SMT4, which don't portray the heroes or demons respectively they're meant to represent with the same understated authenticity of earlier titles, are generally so shit.
You're correct in saying that, while the redesigns of the P3 characters can seem jarring to fans of the original game, they're nevertheless appropriate and justified... but not simply for the pragmatic meta-level visual representation reasons you state. It's because the P3 cast has grown up. They're not in high school anymore. They've matured into who they are and can wear their identity on their sleeves. On top of that, they're all members of the Shadow Operatives, and how flamboyant what you're wearing is matters a lot less when you're fighting in places that are incarnations of the collective unconsciousness like Tartarus or the Midnight Channel. There are very appropriate narrative reasons for the characters to look different, so ArcSys had an excuse to make their appearances more visually distinct.
This is doubly relevant when you consider that the designs of the P4 characters are not nearly so altered as the P3 characters - they do already jump out more than the more restrained outfits that Soejima designed for P3's characters (because Inaba and Iwatodai are very different places), but with the exception of Teddy, who was always weird, they still don't do nearly as much to convey the playstyle and what they're about as the P3 cast's redesigns. Ultimately, it's all left up to their postures, their weapons of choice, and to a lesser extent the designs of their personas, and while those do a good job of conveying mood (Chie is sporty, Yukiko is elegant, Kanji is boisterous), you still wouldn't get a clear picture of their overall powersets, at least no more of a picture than you'd get from a Melty Blood character. You'd practically need to be familiar with the characters beforehand.
And it's clear just from how you're able to describe the details of Persona's characters vs. Melty Blood's that you _are_ more familiar with those characters outright, because you either have only a superficial understanding of Tsukihime's storyline or don't spare nearly as much effort attempting to read into MB's character designs.
For example, Roa: the character isn't just a lightning wizard. In fact, his outfit is meant to convey a much more complex idea, because the lightning wizard is possessing the body of what is essentially a homeless teenage boy from the same family line as Akiha and Kouma (and struggling mentally with the same demonic blood). That's why he's wearing superficially nice clothing like a crackhead from off the street, with an open shirt and unbuttoned pants; Roa's refinement as a high-ranking executor and archmage is showing through his host's grunge, pieced together from whatever was on hand. Frankly, you wouldn't even be able to tell Roa uses lightning from the character selection screen (though you may get that impression from the intro movie) - the fact that he's dressed wildly is much more obvious. His design conveys that he's superficially coolheaded and calculating, but is also the guy who is going to drag you into a back alley and make you his bitch.
Or Kouma. You say he's a "cursed nobleman who's restraining his inner demonic blood" as opposed to a "martial arts man who trains very hard who you've seen a hundred times before", but to be frank, Kouma _is_ still very much the latter archetype. He is Tsukihime's version of that guy, because he doesn't really live like a nobleman (and never has; he was raised like a fucking animal): he lives up in the mountains training his body and focusing his mind all day to restrain that inner demonic blood, isolating himself from society in case he ever loses control. Which he's cool with, because his oni blood is so strong that his brain just doesn't work like a regular person's from the start, and going off to live innawoods like a savage feels great to him (like it would for an oni). In fact, the Kouma in Act Cadenza and Actress Again isn't even the real Kouma, but a TATARI manifestation of him born from Shiki's repressed traumatic memories of when Makihisa (Akiha and Roa's host's dad) ordered him to slaughter his original family of oni-slayers.
So why, you might ask, if Shiki is from a clan of assassins specialized in slaying humans with the blood of oni within them, is that background not more obviously conveyed in his character design? Because that wouldn't actually fit the lore _at all._ Shiki is estranged from his heritage and with one major exception after the slaughter of his family, lived an entirely normal life until the events of Tsukihime itself. Even if he is not a normal boy, he consciously tries to live a normal life because of the influence Aoko had on him. And that's a major theme of the Nasuverse as a whole, from Kara no Kyoukai (where Ryougi comes from) to Tsukihime to F/SN (where Saber comes from): the supernatural encroaching upon and distorting daily life.
The supernatural side of the Nasuverse in its original visual novels and stories was dangerous to self and sanity. It wasn't something you wanted to be involved with unless you were at least a little crazy. Roa, Nrvnqsr, and Wallachia basically represent what you can expect from the pinnacle of supernatural attainment in the setting's modern day, and they're all fucking monsters willing to sacrifice anything, both themselves and others, in pursuit of their completely batshit insane mystical theories and ideals. Even to the point of giving up their very senses of self and essentially becoming quasi-sapient systems, because it doesn't matter to them if they lose their personhood as long as their _intentions,_ their _wills_ carry on. That's why they look so fantastical and terrifying compared to everyone else; by their natures, they've rejected normalcy.
By contrast, you have Aoko, who _also_ represents the pinnacle of supernatural attainment in the setting, being one of the vanishingly rare "True Magicians" capable of a form of magic that distorts reality in ways totally beyond humanity's current comprehension, but it's a plot point that she's retained her sense of normalcy - _clung_ to it against all odds, because the Fifth True Magic she inherited wasn't even something she wanted in the first place. She doesn't even use anything resembling her True Magic in Melty Blood (except _kind of_ in her Last Arc), she uses a branch of the same magecraft tradition as Roa (magecraft, which can do impossible things in the process of achieving a possible result, like letting you fly on a broom to get you from one place to another or instantaneously repairing a damaged object, but can't do utterly impossible things like sending you back in time or to another timeline, is different from True Magic, which can do these things). And maintaining one's humanity as a True Magician isn't a done deal: the Einzberns from F/SN are the technical inheritors of the Third True Magic and they've collectively become a system that's just as insane and abominable as the Dead Apostle Ancestors mentioned above.
But Aoko just goes around in a t-shirt and jeans, on one hand because when you're as badass as she is, you don't have to give a fuck and can swagger around with mass murdering death monsters like the DAAs dressed as casually as you want, but on the other hand, it's because she's still trying to cling on to normalcy. She's still trying to be the spunky, cheery girl she was before she became a Magician, even though the implications of her original story (which Nasu still hasn't actually finished lmao) and her appearance in Melty Blood mean she probably lost the ability to go back to her former life and the people in it she cherished a long time ago. All because they were entangled with the supernatural. That's why she sympathized so much with Shiki, whose power can and will fucking kill him, and ingrained in him a dogged appreciation for living every day to the fullest while avoiding relying on his Mystic Eyes if at all possible.
Compare that with Sion, someone who has grown up immersed in one of the major secret societies of magi, who draw their power from the occult mysteries of the past, so her clothing looks unusual - slightly antiquated and just a little bit gaudy. Riesbyfe also wears unusual clothing, looking almost like a knight, but that's because she was wearing her equipment as a vampire slayer of the Church when she was consumed by Wallachia, so since her appearance in MBAA is as a TATARI manifestation based on when she 'died', she's naturally geared up. Ciel, also a member of the Church's supernatural backstage, likewise has dedicated combat outfits which set her apart from the rest of the cast (and even dons them in her character intros).
(cont)
Tbh this doesn't really help your case
@@captainmega6310 Yeah? Well my side won anyway, so go cry about it.
@@Kageryushin I don't have any tears left. I'll just sit in silent instead
Doesn't this just prove his point though? That the Melty Blood character designs are incomprehensible to a newcomer picking the game up unless they've read a lengthy visual novel (or at least a lengthy wall of text) in order to understand the subtle nuances that inform their designs?
@@protolad2458 And that's fine because that's the intention behind it. It is a setting and a story where that approach is 100% called for.
I also pointed out places where the guy's argument is hypocritical. P4A actually shows less details to players in its character select screen than MBAA does; it's clear he's just inherently more familiar with Persona and its characters than Tsukihime from the get-go, yet he's holding Melty Blood to a standard beyond that which he's set for P4A in the first place.
The blandness of the Melty Blood cast character designs are the #1 reason why I passed on playing the most recent one. As someone that has very little knowledge of the series and has no desire to read the novel(s), first impressions are really important in order to get me to try the game.
That's not to say that having "Plain Jane" characters is bad, it's just that (at least for me) the gameplay now has to do a really good job of pulling me in because I've already hit a hurdle since most of the characters don't intrigue me at a glance.
glad to see people enjoying the border i made!
It's a great help for getting the game to fit into modern aspect ratios.
P4 Arena redesigns are peak fighting game character designs
Oh man, love the F-Zero GX music, takes me back. Gotta boot up the Gamecube again, hahaha!
love this vid
Thanks!
One thing I'd like to point out for the Persona Ultimax segment is that the redesigns aren't actually redesigns, but rather extensions of previous designs already present in Persona. Not to say that they're one for one or that they didn't do it intentionally, but most if not all of the redesigns come straight from their battle designs when they're in the metaverse. They often change clothes to match their armor when going into these things, and in the P4 character's cases they gain something a bit more visually striking with the inclusion of their glasses and/or signature weapons. Melty doesn't have this sort of tonal shift save for the holy church members who often don a battle garb quickly when going into battle. Hell, Ceil technically does this twice ala her regular battle garb and her Full Powered mode. I think this lends more to your final notes in your video than it did when you brought it up as Tsukihime is a series without set battle scenarios, thus limiting them from changing character designs for the Melty Blood entries.
Really good analysis video! However, I disagree on the conclusion that Melty Blood should try to be unique and the analogy used with Mario Golf. Melty Blood should just have the characters wear themselves(their personality and abilities) on their sleeves, similar to how Shrek Superslam portrays their characters. For example: Shrek is generally a calm character, but in this party game he is much more playful and disgusting. This is evident in his exaggerated battle stance and constant nose picking, something he canonically does but not to this extent.
It would have been hilarious if Hisui held a chair in her idle animation or ROA constantly electrocuted himself like Pichu because he enjoys how it feels during his walk animation. Not 100% Canon, but references who the character is in an exaggerated way.
I also like the Golf depictions of Mario characters or Skylander's depiction of DK and Doug. However, I would loathe if every spin off reused the same designs or if the default designs aren't an option. Golf only works because it subverts expectations, not because the old designs don't work in the new context.
TL;DR: Ken doesn't act exaggerated while at work as shown in SF4 arcade mode, but does in actual matches. Melty treats their characters as if they aren't about to fight, which is the issue. Not that the characters need to be changed/redesigned so simpletons can misinterpreted their character depth.
I did not expect the Shrek Superslam comparison, but kinda do and don't agree. For someone like Roa, maybe more like scratching himself a bunch, showing that he's kinda a skinwalker. But on the other hand, how far can you get with this without either spoiling or ruining the character's personality.
How would you personally redesign the bland characters?
I think you did a fantastic job with this video and actually discussing view points of this topic. Personally I'm fond of the loyal designs to the VN, but that's only because the discovery of the character comes from first play, rather then first look, which is unique for FG's. And while it's cute that MB is the type of game where I pick "high schooler with knife" and he's a badass, that doesn't nullify the fact that Shiki's (and by extension a lot of characters) design lacks good tells to let you know how he plays and what he's about for the most part, I just like it anyway, he's not even that great of an example of this issue to be fair. UNIB by contrast really does feel like French Breads take on doing proper FG VN designs, and they kinda killed it if you ask me, the designs still emphasise the modern setting and "more is less" approach, but now have a much clearer identity as to the characters role within the roster, using various design tropes and more confident colours and outlines. I still think the loyal approach to the source material was ultimately a valid choice, as while we sacrifice design, it keeps with Tsukihime's theme of characters being "more then meets the eye" and keeps the series identity strong. But then the characters identity as FG characters is much more depended on how they play and how they fight, rather then their pure visual appeal. I'm into both, but I'd be lying if I said I put so much time in GGST just cause it played well, y'know what I'm saying?
Interesting you bring up Mario Kart as your example, but not a Smash bros. Characters are not redesigned in any way but it seams to work somehow, even for non-fighters like Isabelle or Villager.
No fan of Tsukihime would like this video
I guess that checks out since I'm not a fan of Tsukihime or VNs in general.
@@DragonflySwamp Would you mind stop being a fan of Melty Blood?
nice to have a new vid from u. honor and a pleasure to watch. also u said drip at the begininng and u said u wouldnt say it
damn they typing PARAGRAPHS in these comments lmao 😂
Overall I really enjoyed this videos structure, while I appreciate they were faithful to the source material I must say I can understand the opposite side a lot more so thanks for that. As someone who read a shit ton of visual novels I must say the bland designs for me hark to my days reading vn's or watching anime. So for me Melty Blood feels like playing an anime more than any other fighter game that comes to mind. That comes with a huge set of cons, my friends taking a look at the designs and picking them apart when showing them but Im thankful for it regardless. Its nice to see you uploaded man, hope ya been doing well.
Its funny because French bread can make restrained yet interesting designs as we’ve seen with uni.
Great video
alright first of all, great video, i didnt expect to like it but i can definitely see your points, that being said i'll give my own take cuz i can. I want to argue characters do feel distinct even in the character select screen (note that i am a biased tsukihime fan). Also sorry if this is unreadable, im bad at explaining opinions, also i suck ass at fighting games so i might misunderstand archetypes.
So first i'll start with where i agree with you/ talk about the designs that arent amazing, i think akiha tohno's design in (specifically lumina) is horrible and shows nothing about her character, she looks so generic it hurts. If you look at the tsukihime remake and check akiha's design there (she wears these simple but elegant clothes in it) i think it would already have worked way better to sell her character. Akiha in the visual novel is very uptight, strict and a bit of a tsundere, Her remake design gives her this very classy vibe and it allows you to instantly realize what kind of person she is. Even then though i think its a hard sell to show what kind of character she is in terms of playstyle. (maybe by making the end of her hair on fire or something like that it could sell her character better. Either way thats not what they did and it looks generic. (i do think akiha vermillion in mbaacc shows what she is about very clearly tho, more so due to pose and expression than anything))
Next is shiki, shiki i think does kinda give of this normal anime protag vibe about him, he looks like the basic bitch character for new people and i do think thats kinda what he is about, the subversion of his nanaya form is pretty smart, that being said it does not fit a fighting game all that well. if i can give it some kinda credit, intentional or not his legs look really long which might clue into him having big buttons, idk tho thats the best i got, i think his character art having his eyes in death perception mode (like in kara no kyoukai if you've seen that) might have been more telling about the character.
arceuids design is kinda eh, i dont even like it in the visual novel so yeah
red arc i think is kinda cool, she clearly sells her personality giving of this sense of being an absolute psycho with the ripped skirt and that smile, she gives of the vibes of someone who really controls you or something like that. Which kinda fits cuz her screen control is pretty good, that being said it's quite a stretch to say her playstyle is super clear.
i like ciels design, it looks very dynamic imo but i dont think its too clear what her deal is so it doesnt translate that well into fighting games
kouma is also one of those thats kinda weird, i think he looks badass but type lumina does not sell how scary he is, i think actress again with his pose does sell this unhinged personality better. Either way its not clear he is a grappler. The only reason he looks like a grappler at all is cuz no one else in the cast looks like one
now for the designs i think do work
like you mentioned, roa is fucking awesome and i dont think i need to say anything more about him, i do wish we got the long hair back tho
vlov i dont think i need to say anything, fucker looks like the most badass fighting game villain out there
now i want to get to the maids cuz i think design wise they are very intresting, first is hisui. Hisui's design is really simple, she wears a classical maid dress and nothing about her really stands out, but her expression and pose (more so in mbaacc than lumina) shows a very calm and collected person. a very typical kuudere. You can tell she is a zoner, also her maid design lets you in to the type of moves she uses, mostly consisting of pots and that kinda stuff, i think design wise she sells her gameplay.
Even better than hisui, kohaku really sells her personality, from the way her dress is a kimono combined with a maid apron breaking i think every rule of common sense (unless this is actually a thing in real life and i dont know about it) to her big grin and the fact she fights with a broom that she holds like a katana (which it basicaly is). You know this character is gonna be kinda all about being fun and weird, which i think is in line with her gameplay. Her moves are super varied, she has a stance with her broomkatana, she uses plants for super strong oki, she turns into a witch and throws molotvs, etc. her design might not tell you she will use these specific moves but it definitely gives off the sense that she would use weird moves like these
idk too much about noel lore wise, but i think her big ass weapon makes it clear she is a character with big buttons that are strong in neutral, and she also has that casual personality thing going on. I think her playstyle is very clear tho even by just looking at her design
saber is well saber, her design is popular for a reason, i think we can both agree its a good design here.
miyako really sells what she is about by how small she is, she is a rush down that either gets in and fucks you up or dies trying. I love how her design is all about contradictions between serious clothing and very childish clothing. She is a child after all, her fighting clothes are very serious and functional looking but then she wears these cute ass pink shoes and you instantly realize oh yeah she is acting serious but she is also a child that likes childish things. it's simple but i think its a subtle design that works really well.
i shortly wanna mention aoko cuz i think her design is sick asf, she really strolling up as casually dressed as anyone can be and starts dbz shooting beams, its so unexpected and her design doesnt fully sell it (though i think the red hair is a small clue, only by comparison to most of the cast who have more basic hair colors) but it works so well in game, its such a suprise and her having the time of her life really sells it, also im an aoko simp dont judge me. for a more clear aoko design, check out her fifth magic form from mahoutsukai no yoru, i think that would also translate really well to a fighting game (note mahoutsukai no yoru aoko is way younger than the one in melty and so is very different in personality)
that being said, what i think sells melty really well is how bland and unassuming it all is, people say it looks like a basic fighting game but i cant name a single succesful fighting game that has this aesthetic and i think its a very different aesthetic from under night. All of the melty character designs look believable for who the people are, like most of these people could be walking on the street (exception being the maids, who generally dont go out on the streets anyway and some of the villains who generally stay hidden in the night). like sure hyde stands out more as a design than shiki but i can imagine walking next to shiki never realizing he has the power to murder everything, in comparison if i saw hyde irl id be like, this guy is a main character. And while yes you could argue that makes hyde a better design, i think what makes melty so unique is this sense that these characters live in the same world as i do and that these fights are just happening in the dark alleys deep into the night. It's a aesthetic i dont think any other fighting game really has. also i think its cool how most characters color palets are not as vibrant as most fighting games, combined with the realistically colored backgrounds i think it gives the game a very mysterious vibe.
all that considered, they are still visual novel designs and i do not think they are perfect, i think there are other urban fantasy story's with a similar kind of concept that have more memorable designs (boogiepop, kara no kyoukai, fate stay night, kagerou project, are a couple of examples of shows/ vns that capture this aesthetic better imo).
anyway thanks for reading, despite disagreeing i do still think your video was great and you did earn a sub from me
8:10 it’s because you have good tastes as Hisui is best girl after all!.
Thanks for not using the word “drip,” the FGC is corny enough as it is! All these nerds currently talmbout RIZZ is hilarious to me.
What is also hilarious is this: people who talk about DRIP in the fgc usually dont possess a sense of STYLE. Think about it: would couture based on street fighter characters’ standard outfits be more likely to be worn during a Paris fashion show, or those of Melty Blood? I think Balenciaga & Vetements could remix EITHER collection of character outfits and create bold fashion.
But the average fighting game player is a nerd that can’t dress himself and wants a video game to serve as a proxy for personality.
The STYLING of a game is so much more than outfits. Fighting games aren’t known for their stylistic COHESION, which is one thing both Meltys possess far above any fighting game. All these character obviously come from the same vampire filled world. Monsters, robots, aliens, various schools of fighting styles, characters from around the world, disparate stages. Shit is silly. If you make a fighting game based on the film, The Godfather, duh, it’ll be a lot of Italian men in suits, stages set in unremarkable places, and nerds will complain about the blandness of the roster. Why? I don’t know. When you have style in REAL LIFE, you don’t need your fictional characters to provide it for you.
Surprised you didn't comment on how uninspired the character select is. All you have to go on is the characters hair and eye color.
That is another big problem, but it's more of a character select screen problem rather than the characters themselves. Since you can see the characters when you highlight them, it's not that much worse than something like +R (which has AWFUL portrait tiles) or Xrd or BB.
Yes there is a point you missed and thats giving us the sauce for all the music used in this video (pls give :>)
I completely agree with altering tsukihime character designs to better fit an FG. They did exactly that with Sion(Eltnum) in Under Night and she looked amazing. If they could have done something similar for the more "normal-looking" (for lack of a better term) characters while keeping their identities intact, that would have been really cool.
Weirdly enough, Sion was already designed to be more fighting game esqe than the others since she was original to Melty Blood. I think her UNIST look was more a modernization than anything else.
hmm, good video
As much as I love Tsukihime, I can agree that they could have adjusted the designs a bit for Melty. Coincidentally, I think French Bread's previous game Under Night is the perfect example. Its setting is also an "Urban Fantasy" like most of Type Moon's visual novels but the character designs are much more elaborate and stick out more. I think it was a perfect middle ground.
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TRUE!
I remember when I was trying to find a main in melty I just had to randomly choose character after character but once I understood what I wanted in my character after getting my ass kicked I was looking for a character with big attacks and stronger defensive options like a traditional DP or something unique. I was immediately able to think of Riesbyfe who carries this big shield pile bunker thing and it was the perfect fit. It's frustrating that we have examples of strong fighting game design's in the melty blood style that fit but it's for only the tiniest portion of the cast.
That's because Risebyfe, Wallachia, and Sion were fighting game characters designed from the ground up for Melty Blood and not present in the VN compared to literally everybody else.
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Thank god, someone agrees. Melty Blood characters look boring af.
tbh tho Kouma does looks pretty nice with a few belts
I would have bought melty blood but can't find any character that appeals to me.
Yeah in order change the genre of some media you need to redesign something on order to make it work, and you right Persona4 arena is the perfect example of redesign because different genre of product
Slight caveat: The P3 redesigns. Everyone from 4 looks the same.
debatable
I agree. Made a coment a while back in the sugar punch design works chanel a while ago that the problem in the designs of Melty blood is that, like you said, they didn't embraced the fighting game astetics and the lack of visual comunication to deliver what the characters are all about except for some animations. Yes, they have cool backstories, but is meaningles if you can't comunicate it trough the visuals of the characer, which is key in character design
I don't really care what others think. Melty is boring looking and messy to watch. That's enough for me