This is a frustrating work – perhaps a phrase I’ve gotten used to saying as of late.
This article was originally written on 8-3-2015. May contain mild conceptual/structural spoilers.
But, it seems that ‘frustrating’ is too versatile a word to replace. Indeed, it’s a word which manages to on one hand, signify annoyance. This is important, as a frustrating work is annoying at times. But, frustration, is a unique word in that it doesn’t judge’ absolutely (that is to say, something frustrating is not necessarily bad or good — i.e. a frustrating work is not a bad work, simply an annoying one). For these reasons, Sorcery Jokers (ソーサリージョーカーズ), 3rd Eye’s latest work, is a frustrating work.Brief Comments: I had previously written on Gensou no Idea (GnI), the ‘spiritual predecessor’ to this work. Within this review, I’ll likely be focused on comparing the two works (as the two works share nearly identical structures & concern similar subject matter), but I’ll try not to spoil anything.
Like GnI, Sorcery Jokers is a work with two protagonists. In GnI’s review, I mentioned how well the work used the dual protagonist set-up. On level of execution, GnI felt like a giant puzzle, with each respective protagonist gradually discovering pieces (some similar pieces, and some, entirely different ones) of it. This ultimately felt very refreshing & not dull. Further, on level of actually enjoying the work. I was still able to connect with both protagonists, showing no obvious favoritism (as each protagonist had their points of strength & weakness, their points of affability). Sorcery Jokers, in comparison, while excellent in replicating the former (it uses its dual structure meaningfully), it doesn’t have as ‘even’ a spread of likability between the protagonists. The prologue of the work is centered notably more on one of two protagonists — to make matters worse, one protagonist was developed more as being ‘human’ (i.e. interactions with heroines, a more personable, hospitable cast of friends), while the other protagonist for the greatest length of time, felt ‘dull’, like a cog existing for the sole sake of advancing the work. Now, this ‘favoritism’ (in terms of showing more ‘enjoyable’ development) did gradually level out past the prologue (and don’t get me wrong — each protagonist experiences a significant amount of personal growth). Nonetheless ultimately, I didn’t like Sorcery Jokers protagonists nearly as much as I did, GnI’s (perhaps it was a rough first impression). Granted that liking the protagonist is perhaps the ‘most important’ part of enjoying a work reliant on its characters, this was likely one of the larger reasons for my not liking the work as much as I should have.
And like GnI, Sorcery Jokers is a work with well-developed, interesting heroines. I considered this to be one of the greatest strengths of SnI; Sorcery Jokers, if nothing more, managed to accentuate its prequel’s strengths all the more. Sorcery Jokers, following the same structure of GnI, devoted an arc’s worth of time to each respective heroine — subsequently, each respective heroine experiences a great deal of growth. But, unlike GnI, the development of the growth of the characters within Sorcery Jokers wasn’t good only in itself (i.e. as a discrete story/an arc in a vacuum), but great in that it connected with the rest of the work on level of both plot (the superficial connection) & on theme/purpose (the more poignant, important connection). Indeed, I had been rather disappointed that GnI, while it managed to develop ‘well-written’ characters, cast them aside towards the end of the series (with some heroines having very marginal relevance to the work’s purpose). In Sorcery Jokers, each heroine is thematically relevant, connected to the plot, well-developed, and affable. I have no real complaint on this front. If anything, I’d only be able to complain that like GnI, Sorcery Jokers lacks an ‘actual pairing’ (each protagonist is set with two heroines; after the work’s completion, the player plays through h-scenes of whichever heroine, the story itself doesn’t leave off on a real, meaningful ‘paired’ conclusion).
Aside from the characters, Sorcery Jokers is a work with significant emphasis on the plot. I’d dichotomize the work’s plot on level of what happens (i.e. each respective event, their connections, the politics, the intrigue, the reasoning/logic of the world, the drama, etc.) and on level of what it exists to do (the themes of the work, what it tries to convey). I’ll commentate first on the latter category, as it’s the part of the plot that I liked more. Sorcery Joker’s main set of themes (or perhaps philosophies) is pretty optimistic– that is (in a rather sloppy paraphrase):
To make a change, a person must act. There is no such thing as an absolutely good or bad action, so a person must decide based off their own volition, and only on what they believe to be important. Of what they decide, they must be willing to put down everything for it, and they must stick to it. Furthermore, it is never to late to try again after failure (redemption is possible).
The work does an excellent job of showing the applicability of these set of principles (demonstrating its tenets on both individuals who fail to ‘abide’ by it, and on individuals who literally devote their entirety to it). In fact, the protagonists, and the consequent heroines begin with only a partial (or no) understanding of this philosophy, and throughout the work, gradually learn more and more of it. Further, the work ‘extends’ the applicability of these principles also to minor characters (some of which are given a second chance of redemption, like some of the more major characters). Of course, note that it’d be a drastic exaggeration (as well as a rather crude insult to the work in itself) to say that the work’s purpose in its entirety could be summed up by a mere paraphrase. The main point to take away here is that the work’s themes are not only meaningful, but intelligible, not-to-out there, and encouraging. They’re well told, explained, and justified.
On level of what actually happens (the hard plot ), Sorcery Jokers is a little less straightforwardly praiseworthy. In comparison to GnI, we could call Sorcery Jokers an exponentially more ambitious work in that it tries to both tell a thicker, more layered story (it’s effectively several stories under the umbrella of the true route). It has philosophy (as discussed), a noteworthy amount of politics, its fair share of twists, a world with very convoluted ‘magical’ mechanics (this may be an understatement), well-executed drama, and the occasional more lighthearted, warm ‘slice of life’ scene. All of this ‘chaos’ is held together by the true route, which in a typical work, serves to provide ‘centrality’ to the work. But, in Sorcery Jokers case, I felt that the true route was meaningful only in that it managed to ‘tie’ together the themes of the work (on what it tried to do), but rather useless in serving as a direct, and enjoyable linchpin to what actually happens in the work. The true route concerns confronting the ultimate ‘antagonist’ (and prior to that, his second-in-command) of the series. For lack of a better phrase, the ultimate antagonist of the work is crap, and nearly a ‘deus ex machina’ (if not, then his existence is almost certainly breaking some story-telling element). On one end, he’s partially a ‘deus ex machina’ in that he’s effectively developed as being an antagonist only prior to the final arc of the work. While we could justify that his existence was ‘logical’ and not ‘random’ (as he had been introduced beforehand), the work had not effectively foreshadowed his existence. If the work were a mystery, and the antagonist, the mystery, then the readers could not have figured it out on their own.
Consequently, I felt that the antagonist (and his second-in-command) undermined what the work wanted to do on level of its themes. While we could perhaps make the argument that each respective character were literal manifestations of the philosophies of the work (with one being the most ardent follower, and the other, entirely disconnected from it), this ‘extreme’ symbolism felt entirely off-putting to read (it’s simply not enjoyable reading extremes — it’s more enjoyable to read about people, not symbolic manifestations of whatever idea). So in the end, while I appreciated what the work tried to do (its ends), I disliked a lot of what actually happened (the means). I’d blame this on the fact that the work’s far too ambitious (I cannot envision a work, even one with twice the length of this already lengthy ~28 hour work, pulling it off in a similar fashion). Ironically, while GnI as a whole, was far less ambitious, because its scope was narrower (and arguably, comparatively less interesting), I felt that it more elegantly (or with less obvious flaws), told its story.
It should also go without saying that like its prequel, Sorcery Jokers has excellent aesthetics (alongside the utilization of these aesthetics in telling or executing the story). At the present, EGS has this work at an 88 (median). At an impressive sample size of 112, I’d consider this to be a ‘moderately accurate’ picture of popular opinion in regard to the work. While the mean of the work is an ~80, I’d consider this to be somewhat accurate, as a great deal of the lower scores (especially the ones between 0-30) were from nonplussed readers that disliked that the work had two protagonists. All in all, I likely enjoyed the work as much as I did GnI (if not, a little bit more). So to reference my earlier words, Sorcery Jokers is a frustrating work. It seems plain contradictory at times. But all in all, frustration is an emotion, and to feel something towards a work is a notable feat in itself. Of course, in this case, I felt much more ‘positive’ emotion than I did negative. I didn’t not like the work. I simply didn’t like the work as much as I could have.
