※This article does not contain any spoilers for "Dating Wars", so you can watch it with confidence
Night Se glass丨Text
It's not easy to bring up Dating Wars again in 2024.
This light novel began to be serialized in 2011.,It's the second commercial work created by light novel writer Tachibana Company.,He collaborated with the super popular artist つなこ who was in charge of the "Super Dimensional Game Neptune" at the time.,Created this quite classic campus harem work together.,And it was successfully completed in 2020.。
But in this year, I think there are many people who can't remember what kind of work "Dating Wars" is, but fortunately, the Internet has a memory, and we can see what Robert thinks of the review.
Comment: Robert is a reply AI trained by Weibo itself
I have a deep impression of "About War".,10 years ago, when the animation just started.,Tieba happened to be in the popular signature file.,Half of the two-dimensional sticker bar is "Shiitono".,The other half is "Kurumi Tokizaki".,I was exposed to it.,In the end, it also became Kurumi's Gachi.。
One of Gachi's performances: Kurumi is my wife
This year, the animation of "Covenant War" has finally come out in its fifth season.
Released at the same time as the animation, there is also an article titled "The Covenant War IV. The animation company has disbanded...", the author of this article "The Covenant Elf Intelligence Department" is the official of the IP adaptation game "Covenant War: The Return of the Elves" launched in 2018.
For a long time, the mobile game "About War" has been regarded as a lifesaver for the animation of "About War", and this kind of IP mobile game feeding back animation is the only case in the circle of mobile game adaptation.
And now, at this delicate point in time, the official writing of this article can also be regarded as a kind of confession, a wave of goodbye to the times...... There are many people who have watched "The Covenant War", so I will not retell the plot today, but simply talk about this project that has been struggling on the line of life and death for more than ten years.
Let's start with the original.
Compared with the complicated settings that were popular at the time, the plot of "Covenant War" is relatively refreshing. The first half of the work is mostly created with the core of "Secret Organization Members Collectively Raid Beautiful Girls", telling the story of Gokawa Shido, who has the ability to seal elves, and in order to avoid the elves from causing disasters to the world, he dates the elves who are regarded as enemies and seals them shyly.
"The War" has the status of a founding school in the industry, the novel combines the campus, the harem, and the battle, and it has sold well after it was put on the shelves, attracting countless people to follow suit, but now this kind of theme is no longer common.
From the current point of view, "The Covenant War" can be said to be a cheesy routine work, a symbolic beautiful girl, a puzzled strategy logic that makes people scratch their heads, and a worldview that can't be thought about... But it was such a work that caused a sensation at the time, and when the third volume was published, animation information was released, and it became "the fastest animated light novel".
Unlike today's high-investment, high-quality animation, which attempts to attract widespread attention on social media, the essence of adapted animation ten years ago was the advertisement of the original work, and the investment in the copyright operation of the original work also directly determines the quality of the animation.
Fortunately, "Date War" was a new star at that time, and the first season of the animation was produced by AIC PLUS+ Studio, and the relatively exquisite graphics made it quickly popular in the domestic Internet community, and the explosion of animation also successfully further spread the highly recognizable character setting of the original work, and in 2013, "Dating Wars" once became the two-dimensional enlightenment of many people.
After that, it's a downhill road that doesn't end in sight.
Due to the long-term performance of the parent company Aplix, AIC was forced to become an independent company, and the new projects for many works were accepted by other animation companies.
AIC has not been officially responsible for Tv animation production since 2014, Production IMS declared bankruptcy in 2018, and the IP of "Covenant War" has been ridiculed by "Gram Company".
After learning about the animation of "About War", which was once popular in China, I think you can also understand why some people tried to adapt this IP into a mobile game in 2018.
At this time, 5 years have passed since the second season of the animation, but die-hard fans still continue to pay attention to the movement of the project in the community, too many two-dimensional people enlightened by "Covenant War" have a natural affection for it, plus there was no such heavy IP adaptation filter at that time, so "Covenant Battle: The Return of the Elves" gained a certain amount of attention when it first appeared.
What about the mobile game "Covenant War"?
Although it modifies the gameplay and does not directly apply the classic card battles, the side-scrolling battles with relatively rough completion are still not very replayable.
What it really does well is that it restores the charm of the characters as much as possible in terms of art, plus makes a dating system similar to Galgame, so that players can better get close to the characters.
"Covenant War" is a character-first work, and most of the content, including the original work, is centered around the characters, as is the case with the novel, the animation, and the game.
It is difficult for this kind of work to gain a high reputation in the industry, but it can really attract fans' love for the characters, so although the mobile game "About War" is not fun, it can also be praised by some players.
The intersection of mobile games and animation was in January 2019.
After many years of staggering, the animation of "The War" finally released the third season of the animation, and its quality is also visible to the naked eye, from the earliest promotional images all the way to the end of the animation.
The animation quality of garbage can actually show the importance that the copyright owner attaches to the promotion of the work, "About War" has been written since 2011, and the serial time is close to 8 years, and the plot has come to an end.
And the unexpected also happened. I don't know if it's because of the rough quality of the animation in the third season, or because of the love for the IP itself, Daliangshan, the mobile game production company of "About War", began to consider using mobile game revenue to support the production of the follow-up animation chapters of "About War".
They formed the copyright company GoodShow, joined the production committee and successfully promoted the animation of "The Legend of the Crazy Three", and finally announced the news to players at the critical juncture of the game's first anniversary of the national server.
According to the official article of the mobile game "About War", after the launch of the Gaiden animation, the game's revenue returned to the level of half a year after the service was launched, which is very rare for a two-dimensional game adapted from IP, and it can once again confirm the influence of "About War" animation in China.
Outside the game, you can see all kinds of publicity for animation in the mobile game, and in the game, you can also brush up on the promotional slogan similar to "Krypton Gold Helps the Battle Four".
The complementary publicity is not annoying to fans, on the contrary, if the mobile game Krypton Gold will really promote the fourth season of the "Covenant War" animation, and many players are also happy to do so.
Under this kind of "unity", the fourth season of "Dating Wars" was successfully launched in 2022, and although the quality of the adaptation is still not satisfactory, the fact that this project can be continued after 10 years can be regarded as a miracle in itself.
But on the back side of the miracle, Daliangshan is also facing the dilemma of having nowhere to show.
In the self-reported article, the official of the mobile game "About War" mentioned a series of changes faced by the game after joining the animation production committee, one of the most important of which is the supervision of game content.
Before joining the production committee, the game development faced relatively loose supervision, and after joining, it faced more restrictions, which directly affected the subsequent development of game content, including but not limited to the multiple forms of new characters, and the further expansion of the dating system.
In fact, this restriction also indirectly killed the scalability of the follow-up operation of the mobile game "Covenant War".
As an IP adaptation, "Covenant War" is fundamentally different from well-known IPs such as "Naruto" and "Pirates", and the original work of "Covenant War" almost completely abandoned the plot to shape the characters. However, the mobile game cannot apply the original plot, and the original content will be limited by various tricks, which leads to the plot of the mobile game "Covenant War" almost always going back and forth in a small circle.
I don't think that the limitations encountered in the development of "The War" are all due to the supervision of the original IP, in my opinion, they may not have envisioned the popularity after the launch of the project at the beginning of the project, let alone the content output of long-term operation.
Let's take a less appropriate example. There is a music game with Hatsune IP overseas, called "World Project Color Stage", and the worldview of the game exists in the "real world" and the stage "world" born from thoughts, and the two worlds are different from each other.
Under this worldview, there are not only virtual singers such as Hatsune in the game, but also music groups that are original to the game. These original contents have also become a favorite of players in the future, and they have also been able to make "World Project Color Stage" more subtly show its own content.
However, unlike Hatsune, which cut the original project early in "PJSK", Daliangshan chose to deepen the connection with each other under the original IP and make himself one of the IP talkers, which allowed them to successfully revive the dead animation project, and also made it more difficult for them to produce original new content.
In the official self-report, they mentioned that it is not difficult to supervise the original characters, but it is almost difficult for new forms and original dating plots to pass the supervision, and this helplessness may also be a part of the IP adaptation.
If it ends here, then "About War" may have a certain degree of discussion among fans and players like ordinary second- and third-tier mobile games, and maintain a low, but relatively stable revenue.
But Daliangshan hopes to reactivate the IP of the domestic "Covenant War", so it is far from enough to maintain the mobile game stably. They began to develop a sequel to the sequel, Battle 2, with the goal of being a 3D action game, while remaking the existing Wars: Return of the Elves, including but not limited to the game UI, character operations, and development methods.
The 2022 "About War" mobile game has passed its fourth anniversary, which is rare for an IP-adapted game with an average life cycle of less than 2 years, but even if the operation is stable, the "About War" mobile game has undoubtedly entered the end of its life.
At this time, the remake was launched, and the cultivation materials were returned, but the cultivation content was changed, and the pressure on krypton gold rose, and the earlier reliance on the "dating system" was also removed in this remake, and these changes that shook the basic disk were fiercely resisted by players at the same time as they were implemented, but until the end, the official still did not choose to callback, and finally stopped updating the game content after the basic completion of the remake.
The reviews left on TapTap show the clear change in attitude before and after the remake
It was also after that that it may be difficult for you to swipe content related to "Covenant War" in China until the fifth season of the "Covenant War" animation was launched this year.
What is ironic is that in this year when the animation is used as an advertisement, the mobile game "About War" can't even help domestic friends watch it by uploading videos, and in the end, it can only be pieced together intermittently into a complete episode by constantly splitting it.
Now it doesn't make much sense to dwell on the rights and wrongs of the early years.
In my opinion in 2024, "Dating Wars" is not a complete IP, there are few characters created in depth, the daily description is as bland as water, and the world view and detail settings are all at the level of Tu Yile, in this case, it can be regarded as a smash hit and become a phenomenal work in 2013, which can already be regarded as a big luck.
But if I go back to 2013, I think I might still like "Promise Wars", and I will like several characters such as "Kurumi Tokizaki" and "Miku Yoiyo", even if I can't say how much I fell in love with them at the time, and I can't remember the reason why I liked them at the time.
Hey, human memory is a very unreliable disk. Whether it is what you once liked or what you once hated, it will become blurred and ambiguous with the washing away of time, and the intrusion of life will become blurred and ambiguous...... In the end, you may even completely forget why you used to hate it and loved it.
But I don't think it matters, because even if it's blurred, it still leaves a beautiful image or two in the depths. It's hard to describe this feeling, like two people who have been together for many years are familiar with each other's personality shortcomings, and after arguing, they habitually overlap the now distorted him with the beautiful outline in their memories in the middle of the night......
It's the same when I watched "About War 5", seeing that Kurumi Shizaki in the camera couldn't fit in with the mysterious and crazy appearance in his memory, but he would think of himself who liked her ten years ago according to her delicate appearance now, close his eyes, think back to this not a short period of time, and finally the corners of his mouth rose "Okay, so be it".
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Selected from previous issues