# Episode of Pirates !!! note Event Title エピソード・オブ・パイレーツ　海賊島の呪われし遺宝 [TOC2] ## tl;dr !~ The Story Itself ~! - Fun story about a lighthearted adventure, though it feels less like a pirate story but more of a detective story. - The trials were fun, but Kasumi "carrying" one of them feels a bit forced. - Kasumi played a bigger role here than I thought she would, should've also given her a pirate alt. - The ending...it's the very stereotypical "the real treasure was the friends we made along the way" bullshit. Still somewhat acceptable. !~ Difficulty ~! - Quiet hard, because... - There's long stretches where Kasumi just goes back and forth trying to figure out the culprit. The game just spells it out in the end as usual. - The...pi...rate...sp...irit...tal...king...li..ke...th...is. What he meant is outright uttered at the end, still. - Anna's chuunism isn't that hard because she's mostly just blabbing English words, but it does contribute to making an already hard story to go through slightly harder. ## The Story Itself After establishing why the characters are going to the island (Shinobu needing to cure her dad, Kasumi being bored, Anna needing inspiration for her writing), the story immediately throws the spotlight into Kasumi by making the NPC spirit medium mysteriously disappear. From here, the vibe of story already changes from a pirate story to a detective story. The trials the character went through together to get the keys for the treasure were fun to read. It highlights what each character are good at (Shinobu's affinity with spirits, Anna's magic, Kasumi's agility(?)) and seeing them interact by working together was nice. Going back to Kasumi's agility(?), I'm really not sure what they were trying to highlight from Kasumi here. The story went like this: After figuring out how to get to the cave by getting the dog statues out of the way by finding which dog to blow the whistle to, a three-headed dog monster was blocking the way. Kasumi devises a plan to have Shinobu and Anna distract the monster while Kasumi makes a run for the key. So...is it Kasumi's agility that they're trying to highlight? Her ability to come up with risky plans on the spot? Regardless of their intention, I think it would've been better if Kasumi was one of the girls left behind trying to restrain the monster. Did the story forget that Kasumi has restraining magic, her Root of Binding? She really should've just stayed behind to restrain the dog while one of Shinobu or Anna go for the key. Hell, she even used her Root of Binding later in the story! ![RUUTO OBU BAINDO](https://imgur.com/a4G5QBo.png){429px:239px} This is what happens when you try to make all characters have a "spotlight" in the story instead making some of them take a full support role. Similar issues can be seen in the Tribal Spirits event and the Liberate the Eden event. Compared to them though, it's way, WAY less severe in terms of this issue stretching the story. Here, they actually show it and it's not just the characters talking their way out of their problems, unlike the former and latter. They actually show Shinobu leading the dance, they actually show Anna being afraid of not being able to control her magic at first, and while I don't quite like this last one, they actually show Kasumi making a run for the key. Kasumi is already taking enough of the spotlight by being the driving force behind finding the truth about the pirate's curse. Why are they generous enough to also make Kasumi carry one of the trials but not generous enough to actually give her a pirate alt? ![it's still quiet sex though](https://imgur.com/ONXYiDF.png){429px:239px} The design is on the plainer side, but I guess it could still work as a welfare unit. As for the ending it's...yeah. I personally don't know if it could go any other way, though. At the very least, each character got their resolution. Shinobu cured her dad, Kasumi had fun and Anna got her inspiration. Still quiet the enjoyable story, and the journey matters more than the destination, I guess. ## Difficulty Notice how I barely talked about the mystery regarding the pirate's curse? That's because I absolutely struggled on that part. I really only understood what was going on from the accused' reactions, one guy literally taking off the pirate costume, and another guy just dumping why he tried to find the treasure. You see that I only understood things when the story decided, "alright, time to spoonfeed context just in case this guy hasn't understood things yet". I wish I could start piecing things by myself together when Kasumi does her deductions because that's what mystery stories are all about, but alas my skills aren't there yet. Regarding the pirate spirit, this is what I meant. ![the hell is this](https://imgur.com/LSFMB12.png){429px:239px} There are other characters that speak like this, namely Ranpha and Precia. What makes this old guy harder is that his words are also fragmented. At first, I thought the わ・・・・・ち was わっち in the sense that he's saying "I". I thought like this because Nephi also uses わっち to refer to herself. ![i guess](https://imgur.com/RaWFAz9.png){429px:239px} It was fully revealed in the end. Turns out, the ち was actually 血 and he was giving instructions to his descendant on how to find the treasure. And of course they just had to omit the の too, I probably could've guessed if it was there. Compared to him, Ranpha still speaks in full sentences and still uses kanji, just slowly. Precia barely uses kanji (hell, I think the only kanji she has used so far is 兄), but still uses full words. Also, I simply prefer to hear the voice of Ranpha and Precia than some random dead pirate. As for Anna's chuunism, she may drop this bomb every once in a while: 熾炎戦鬼煉獄血盟暗黒団 It's so convoluted you might think you're reading Chinese and not Japanese, but her voice line when saying this is simply "the order of gehenna". Just keep your ears peeled when dealing with Anna. I kinda struggled during the second animated scene where she's doing her chuuni mantra though, there, things are still in Japanese, but I managed to get through them slowly. One last thing, I got 1190/1208 (98%) comprehension which is still pretty nice, but I've blanked out on 10 lines. And again, I couldn't figure things out before it was spelled out, which kinda sucks for me since it's the entire point of a mystery story like this. That's all for this time. See you on the next blogpost. ![i guess](https://imgur.com/XyaP9ry.png) I guess I need to get my ass kicked every once in a while so that I actually learn.