Tagged everyone except the girl next to Shinon at 0:22, the girl at 0:32 (might be Wakamo?), the girl under Chise at 0:46, the Seminar girl at 0:47 (probably Noa or Rio), and the black haired girl at 0:49.
P.S. Fully subtitled version is on Yanagikaze's channel on Youtube if you want to see what all the JP text says.
Edit: Wakamo Valentines Day story confirms that the girl at 0:32 is indeed Wakamo. Another unknown character I forgot to point out is the girl next to Satsuki at 0:59
Edit 2: 0:22 is K*rino, awkwardly censored by the building...
Love the attention to detail in the video, especially the part that the gourmet club (username EATORDIE) essentially livestreamed themselves eating through the entire food supply of Schale Kitchen to several thousand viewers, mostly Akari and Haruna's fans, and Fuuka just sitting on the side giving up. Junko even stole Iori's cake.
Also it's so interesting lore wise, as Schale went from a semi abandoned building on the outskirts of Kivotos to a thriving hub and a all welcoming neutral territory where the most wanted delinquents like Handyman68 gets to hangout with their respective archenemies.
Also I'm curious how big is Kivotos, or the 'District of Utnapushtim'? From last video we see that the DU has at least 3 direct airports and each academy autunomous districts also having multiple airports of their own, yet apparently students can just travel from one academy district to the next in a tank or a helicopter? Would love to see they release a settings book to see the full worldbuilding. Discounting the RNG-heavy, aneurysm-inducing PVP system, really interesting game so far.
A settings book would be interesting, but I feel like it'd detract a bit from the fun of figuring things out from random fragments of info we find here and there in all sorts of places, which also seems to be what the creators have been aiming for.
That being said, I'm also really interested in how big Kivotos is, like many others. One of the things that interests me the most regarding this, is the existence of Odyssey Maritime High School: the school that consists solely of ships. How much water is there to float their ships, and is it all part of Kivotos? Regardless of whether it is or not, there's also the question of what qualifies as their autonomous district. Is it the immediate area around each of their ships, or is it an entire body of water?
Well, regardless of just how massive Kivotos is, there's one thing we do know for sure: it's fucking HUGE.
Haven't gotten to the maritime school in story yet, but for scale: NYC have 8 million residents and three airports serving them. The Millennium Autonomous District from the art sure look at least comparable to Manhattan. From the art, Trinity, Hyakkaiyakou and Shanhaijiing are all the size of small cities in completely different locale, and if the desert biome Abydos and Siberian biome Red Winter is any indication, the entire size of Kivotos should at least be New York state plus New England big. Then again, in the story, if Trinity's artillery battalion can fire from its district's outskirts into the heart of Abydos desert, can we use that range for measurement?
Now consider that most of the population of Kivotos are students who effectively run and govern their respective autonomous districts, the several dozen students you recruit are truly the selected few, one in a hundred thousand, who most likely (and from the story) are already celebrities in their respective school. This certainly add interesting backstory to the characters. Were the gourmet club livestreaming all the time during their shenanigans? Even the part where you sniff Akari's truffle-infused panties ?? Also, if Kronos Academy holds a monopoly on the mass media and entertainment of Kivotos, would other schools have similar monopolies, Millennium for tech maybe?
Also the national analogies of the schools is interesting: Trinity for French (Catholic Angels), Gehenna for German (horny demons), Millennium for USA (Android students), etc. And students' halo and apparent invulnerability to bullets that probably would never be explained. Though I'd really like to see if the students get to design their own halos and powers, maybe similar to the Academy City in A Certain Railgun, I guess? Which in hindsight is an obvious inspiration.
Edit: lol I just noticed, it's not just that Fuuka is watching from the side, she and Juri has been physically restrained to the chairs by the gourmet club members, and Iori can't punish them because it's outside her jurisdiction. Love to see it.
The maritime school is where the events of Bunny Chaser take place, so you'll see it soon enough when the bunnygirl event (yes, that one) comes to EN. If you want to read through it early, Yanagikaze-sensei has the entire story translated on youtube, along with the rest of the events and the entire main story.
For your point about ranging, using the range on the L118s that Trinity uses as a scaling reference doesn't seem to be the most reliable way of gaining a measurement. We're not sure if they're firing from just barely the range limit or if they're well within the range limit of the L118s. Though, there is another range measurement that's plausible, which is (Vol 3 spoiler)using the speed of the cruise missile used by Arius (the NSM's predicted speed is between 537 and 690 mph, so I'll use the lower end to calculate the minimal) and the time until its impact (5 min) to gain the minimum limit of distance between somewhere in Trinity and the Old Cathedral, which is also located in Trinity. The distance derived from this is approximately 72 km at the very least, if my math isn't failing me. This means Trinity is at least 72 km long in one direction. Though, that's just my theory. I won't comment anymore on your analysis of the size of Kivotos since my focus is Lore Archive and not Geography Archive... But yea, Kivotos is definitely big as hell.
Concerning national analogies of schools, Trinity seems more based on Britain than France, considering the primary armament for their school seems to be variants of the L85; this can be seen through not only the playable characters, but also the mob girls that appear in V3Ch3. The L118 that Hifumi supports the Countermeasures Committee with, as well as the Crusader tank she rides in her swimsuit variant, are also from Britain as well. Though, Trinity also has some things from other countries, with the Sisterhood in particular carrying Israeli-produced firearms (Mari with her Deagle, Sakurako with her Tavor 7, and the mob members with their Galils). As for monopolies, Millennium definitely have a monopoly on tech, but that's mainly because their students value logic and technical skills more than pretty much any other schools. There's probably other schools like that too, but as Millennium is the largest, they naturally have the most influence over the technology sector. So far, the only school comparable to Millennium's technological level that we know of is (Vol 3 spoiler)not a school lol. It's Gematria.
Regarding the halos, their secrets are actually slowly unraveled as more stories are added. I'll censor this whole chunk since it has spoilers for the story. In the prologue, we learn that bullets do inflict damage onto the students, when Yuuka notes the JHP rounds hurt a lot more and can leave scarring. In volume 1, we learn that the halos actually aren't invincible, and can indeed be destroyed, when Hoshino requests of the Countermeasures Committee to destroy her halo if she ever turns against them. Volume 2 and Decagrammaton show us that the halos can be produced through artificial means, though it's unsure how powerful they are in comparison to ones that the students have. The ShiroKuro and Hieronymus raid intros also introduce us to the idea that these things (most likely includes halos), which Maestro refers to as the Sublime, have either two natures: mystic or terror. Spoiler separation since this is JP content only so far (Volume 3). In volume 3, we learn the true implications of a destroyed halo, and also the means to destroy one. All and all though, it's not as if they won't ever reveal the whole story about them. There definitely will be a point when enough information is out there to make a proper theory as to what they really are and how they give the students their insane physical resilience. Though, currently, there's not much on the actual halos themselves, so there's only enough info for a rough guess.
Really interesting conversation so far ,so thanks for bearing with me. Ch. 3 just got released in global today and i haven't got the leisure (or capacity) to read ch. 2 yet, as i prefer to read everything in one go. Although i always thought that Hoshino was being figurative when she requested to have her halo broken, sort of "kill me before I'm forced to kill you" type. So ill see how the stories goes about their halo mystery. Ch. 1 did break me in tears, but the themes it explored really felt like a missed opportunity. (How would megacorporations work in the utopian kivotos society? How does capitalism operate if service androids are seen as commonplace and how was the wealth distribution? For example.) though these are probably too dark or serious for the lighthearted tone the game seems to aim for, and probably limited by the medium too.
Several other curious points from the story too. What was the "card of the grown-ups" actually for, were you actually trying to bail Hoshino out by paying with a credit card? What brought all the angels, demons, catgirls and androids living in harmony together, or were they just nanomachine-cliche enhanced humans? Or is it just a big simulation/experiment/god head situation? Most interesting is the "wolf god" remark by Maestro, which presumably mean Shiroko as her surname is literally Sand Wolf, so she's a physical embodiment of a species or a patron god of sorts? Does it mean other students are also separate embodiments? The girl shown in flashback in prelude chapter presumably responsible for FSC president's injury and disappearance, is she Shiroko herself or her sister or variant? will update as i clearup my thoughts and read more in the story. Again thanks for bearing with me.
I actually need to go reread volume 1 since all I had at the time was Valiant's partially MTL translation to go by, but I'll try my best on some stuff lol.
Concerning the androids, you should think of them as normal people. For the most part, many of them act and behave like normal people, and they're one of the ways that adults are depicted in Blue Archive, with the other significant method being animals like Master Shiba from Shibaseki Ramen. There's a few examples of ones that are truly robots though, such as the robots guarding the "Ruins." I won't touch too much about Kaiser Corp's influence as a megacorp though since that's not something I'm very well versed in, and I'd rather save myself from sounding like an idiot wwww.
Regarding the "grown-up card," all I can give are speculations about it. In a literal sense, it is indeed a credit card. However, the implications of it play a far more significant role than just being a credit card in Blue Archive. That's why JP and KR label it as "grown-up card" instead of straight up calling it a credit card like EN did. It seems kind of funny, especially with how it's described in volume 1 and 3 as basically an overexaggeration of a credit card. However, that's only if you think about it from the perspective of someone outside the universe. There's a reason why Maestro was elated upon seeing it in volume 3, proclaiming it as "A power obtained for the price of your life and time...... an incomprehensible thing whose source and limits even we cannot know......!!" If you think about it from the perspective of someone within BA's universe, the grown-up card allows Sensei to produce miracles. In fact, when Sensei uses it in volume 3 against a hopeless struggle otherwise, we're allowed to use our own units for the very first time in the story. When we think about it as our credit card too, it's what allows us to buy gems and packages and tickets and all sorts of other things. To us, it's just whaling. To them, it's an object with the power to create miracles. Though, that's just what I see it as. There's people out there who've unpacked a lot about the "grown-up card" (people who didn't fail literature and analysis kekw), so you should try looking around for that. As for my thoughts about why it's there, it's likely there as a symbol for the game's message about the responsibilities of an adult towards "children." The "grown-up card" is definitely something that both physically and symbolically makes a separation between what it means to be an adult vs a "child"/student.
Unfortunately, for the reason I stated earlier, I can't really say much about Shiroko being called a wolf god. Though, it probably has to do with Shiroko's real life parallels of the Egyptian gods Anubis and Wepwawet.
Probably should've said this earlier, but do take everything I say with a grain of salt. After all, I'm not the brightest when it comes to analysis, sadly.
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