Get off work and become a magical girl

Chapter 168 "Magic Girl Squad"

Is "Magical Girl" a suitable theme for entertainment creation?

Around this topic, there has been a decades-long debate in the creation and publishing circles of the material world, and this debate has not yet had a clear result.

In the material world in the past, dating back to about 50 years ago, entertainment creations related to "Magical Girls" have always been popular topics.People are full of various imaginations about the mysterious magical girls, and try to pin all kinds of imaginations on these mysterious guardians.

Some of these imaginations are beautiful, full of admiration and longing for heroes; some are critical, questioning the origin and purpose of magical girls;

This kind of creative prosperity has lasted for a long time, and "magic girl" seems to have changed from a well-defined noun to a symbol of entertainment commodities.In the end, even real magical girls are endowed with certain idol and entertainment attributes, and some fans of magical girls will spontaneously organize and try to support their favorite magical girls in various ways.

However, anything goes too far.

When works related to magical girls become popular, there will naturally be some people with bad intentions mixed in, or they will seize the right to speak for their own personal gain, or spread rumors to smear dissidents.The people who are surrounded by public opinion can't tell the truth from the fake, and the term "magic girl" gradually begins to change in the field of public topics.

Faced with those disturbing rumors, most magical girls can only choose to turn a blind eye or suffer in silence.After all, their voices are too small in front of public opinion, no matter how they speak out, they cannot avoid being further misinterpreted.

However, even among magical girls, there are people with different personalities.In the face of increasingly outrageous rumors, gossip and entertainment works, a few magical girls with strong personalities were irritated.

"I can't control the mouths of most of you, can't I cure those unscrupulous paparazzi?"

This is about 40 years ago, when this conflict broke out, a retired magical girl from Xiluo State revealed her identity in an interview.

Thus, starting from Xiluo State, magical girls and retired magical girls began to confront positive public opinion in the publishing and distribution circles.This confrontation gradually spread to the eastern states, and in the end it was a mess, and no one took advantage.But on the surface, it seems that the magical girls have won.

Because the Magic Kingdom spoke out to the state and city governments, this dispute was directly terminated.

Works that misinterpret, spread rumors, or maliciously speculate about magical girls will not be published or distributed.In the following 40 years, commercial works created with the theme of "Magical Girls" gradually faded out of the market in the following years, and the only remaining ones were those magical girl animations created for young girls and children.

Of course, those works that create magical girls as positive images still exist in the world, and still have a lot of audiences, but they are no longer a topic of concern to the general public.

Today, 40 years later, people's perception of magical girls seems to have returned to the past: in reality, magical girls are heroes who guard the city; on the virtual level, magical girls are animations for children.

It was against this background that a few years ago, a mobile game called "Magic Girl Sentai" quietly started operating on the intercity network of Dongying Prefecture.

The mode of this mobile game is the very popular card drawing and development on the market, and the content is really lacklustre: it is to let players form and cultivate their own magical girl team, which is very common in the system. Development and turn-based fighting.The game screen is not so good either. The illustrations of the magical girls are all cute stick figures like children's picture books, and the game levels are pixel villains with 2 heads and body, which can't arouse the desire of others to try it out.

According to a later interview with the game producer, he said that he thought this was the magical girl in his mind.

It is a pity that his "magic girl in mind" has not been recognized by the market.Such an unremarkable, even unremarkable appearance, coupled with an extremely plain name, naturally failed to get corresponding feedback.This mobile game has been unable to make ends meet after a few months of operation, and has entered a state of loss.

This is also the normal state of the game market in the physical world. Too many games like this are released or server-launched and then disappear, and have never been noticed again.The same is true of this game, and even if it hasn't been heard from since, no one will give it a second look.

But the game didn't end its run, it miraculously survived.

Things turned around two years ago.

At that time, "Magical Girl Sentai" had fallen into a complete operational crisis. As a small company's test work, this game brought its producer to the brink of bankruptcy.Then, whether it was because of the acquisition of the company or new investors, the game came back to life inexplicably.

The game has been updated to a version 2.0. In addition to retaining the original picture book art style and developing gameplay, the game's screen expressiveness has undergone a significant evolution.Not only that, the producer also added a detailed game background and story to the game, which had almost no background setting and plot.

In the new setting, the player plays a creature called "fairy", who will look for magical girls in a fictional city, collect and cultivate them, and form their own team of magical girls.

A certain amount of management and strategy gameplay has been added to the game, and the original turn-based battle has been optimized and improved, making a game that is not fun finally become fun.

But this still doesn't make "Magical Girl Sentai" a popular game.

There are many games with excellent quality. Whether it is stunning art or interesting gameplay, there is no guarantee that a game will become a hit.What's more, "Magic Girl Sentai" is only a "violent death mobile game" produced by a small company. It has been in operation for a long time and has almost no topicality. Even the version update has not brought many new players to it.

What really made this game popular was a blog with only a few words posted on social media:
——"Is this me?"

There is a picture below the blog, which is the development interface of "Magic Girl Sentai".

And the owner of this blog is the current "Strongest Magical Girl"--Blue Star, who is well-known in the material world.

As the captain of the magical girl in Tiandu City, and the strongest magical girl in name, Lanxing's social media account can be said to have countless fans, and countless people express their support under her account with only a few words every day.

Blue Star updated her blog, which is an extremely rare thing, but Blue Star posted a screenshot of the game on the blog, which naturally caused a large number of her fans to download the game.On that day, the game server of "Magic Girl Sentai" was directly paralyzed.

Later, as some players got a deeper understanding of the game, they gradually discovered an astonishing truth in this game—many settings in this game are too real to be true.

Leaving aside the urban legends of "fairies" that have been associated with magical girls for many years, the content about magical girls' abilities and combat in this game can be described as too detailed.Some people who claim to be retired magical girls even stated on the Internet: The person who designed the 2.0 version of this game is likely to be a retired magical girl, because those settings are too real.

But if it's just that, it doesn't seem to be a big deal.There are not many retired magical girls in the material world, but there are definitely many. It is not too unusual for someone to enter the game industry.

The further fermentation of the matter is also because people have found many characters based on real magical girls in this mobile game.These characters more or less have some archetypal characteristics, and they will show a shocking level of detail in some detail settings, and there are many character settings, even fans of those magical girls never heard of that.

Take the game character that "Blue Star" took screenshots on social media as an example. The appearance of that character is not very similar to that of Blue Star himself, but whether it is the setting of combat ability or some personal files, The details are exactly the same as Blue Star.There is even a lot of information that Blue Star has never disclosed to the outside world.

It is also because of this that Lan Xing used interrogative sentences at the time, after all, she was also quite confused about this.

If it’s a leak of privacy, the game doesn’t actually mention anyone by name; if it’s a rumor to smear, the images of magical girls in this game are very positive.

It can be said that "Magical Girl Sentai" completely circumvented the various restrictions on magical girl works before, and found a way that would not be banned from distribution, but could satisfy people's desire for gossip.

Since then, this game has really become popular among magical girl fans, and based on magical girl fans, it has gradually gained a large number of passerby players.

In this way, two years have passed, and version 2.0 of "Magical Girl Sentai" has been in full swing. It was not until recently that it finally affected its original target users-teenage girls.

Not just Jiang Yuan, but several girls in Class [-], Grade [-] of Xizhao Middle School were discussing this game between classes.

And Lin Xiaolu, a girl who is not very interested in games and prefers to lie on the sofa and watch magic girl animations, also because of the theme of "magic girls", downloaded this game under Jiang Yuan's strong recommendation.

After school, Lin Xiaolu took the lead to return to the secret base after a brief patrol around the Luoming District, lying on the sofa and opening "Magic Girl Sentai".

After watching the opening animation blankly, Lin Xiaolu waited for the hot update of the game while eating snacks.However, it seems that because of too much data content, she couldn't update it until she finished eating a pack of snacks, which made her gradually become impatient.

Playing games is so troublesome, why don't you watch TV?
She couldn't help thinking so.

However, her interest in the theme of "Magic Girl" overwhelmed her impatience, making her wait until the game was updated.

After entering the game, after reading a confusing opening plot, and going through a series of yawning tutorials for beginners, Lin Xiaolu was finally able to play it by herself and began to feel the gameplay of the game.

Holding the mobile phone, she was expressionless at first, then frowned, and finally sat up abruptly, baring a pair of canine teeth and shouting: "Ah! So boring! Stop playing!"

She was still thinking, under the banner of "Magic Girl", the commercial performance is still so popular, what kind of strange work this game will be.However, after actually entering the game, the slow turn-based combat and complicated skill data instantly emptied all her interest.

Throwing the phone aside, she picked up the remote control to turn on the TV, and tuned to her favorite animation channel on weekdays, only to find that it happened to be a program she didn't like very much, and she felt even more bored.

In desperation, she had no choice but to take her phone back and continue her game with a look of reluctance.

After controlling the most basic team to beat the novice level, and went through a completely uninspiring storyline, finally, the system reminded Lin Xiaolu: It's time to discover a new magical girl.

It is said to call the team, but in fact the form of the game is to draw cards. This kind of thing seems to be a common practice in the mobile game industry, so Lin Xiaolu has no idea, just follow the prompts and click into the game's card pool.

Then, her eyes were attracted by the cover of the latest card pool.

On the cover of Kachi is a magical girl in a purple bubble skirt, with a slightly shy expression on her face, but also inexplicably resolute.

The magical girl holds a weapon that looks like a notebook. According to the explanation in the game, this is called a "spiritual outfit", which seems to correspond to the magic outfit of a magical girl in reality.

This seems to be a new character that has just been installed. Kachi's name is "Missing Reappearance", and the code name of the magical girl on the cover is "Morning Bull". There is also a small text written on the side of the cover picture : "The blooming magic power is used to protect the unfulfilled thoughts".

For some reason, Lin Xiaolu always felt that this magical girl had an inexplicable sense of familiarity. She was obviously not someone she knew at all, and she looked like an ordinary picture book cartoon character, but she always felt that she had seen her somewhere.

After all, this sense of familiarity was fleeting, and soon disappeared without a trace. Looking at the magical girl on this cover, she no longer had this strange feeling in her heart.

Because she was just playing a game, Lin Xiaolu only thought that these were her own illusions, and quickly put the matter aside.Following the guidance of the novice teaching, I went to the game card pool dedicated to novices.

Then, with inexplicable excitement, he clicked the button of "call team members".

(End of this chapter)