Jet Lag: Japanorama

Warning: Spoilers for Season 19 of Jet Lag: The Game. No winners will be named.

Woah, a quadruple post. How exciting! I guess that's what happens when you have a lot of things in your life going on at the same time, eh?

People have been raving online about this season in particular, so I don't really have anything to add in that regard. Yeah, yeah, the game was tied up all the way to the end, something something game design, something something Japan is beautiful, whatever.

I am not really an analysizizer, I don't really analysizize the media I consume, so my only metric is whether or not the team that I'm rooting for wins. In fact, I'd rather be spoiled and know who wins before I watch the season. We all like a happy ending, right?

Unfortunately, I was watching Japanorama as it released, so spoiled I could not be. I even joined the unofficial Discord server's speculation channels to see if anyone could sniff out anything from OSINT before the finale, but no one could come up with a decisive verdict. The stuff they do there is crazy, by the way, you have no idea.

Anyway, this was the season where I finally caved and bought a Nebula subscription just to watch the finale one week early. I'm not sure if I'm utilizing it as much as I could be. The only thing that really stood out is that they don't bleep out the swears in their podcast. Despite being an adult (allegedly), that shit fucking caught me off-guard.

In the end, I still knew the winners before watching the finale (those who watched it live in theaters had already updated Wikipedia by then), but it was suspenseful all the same. So you know they've done a great job with the season as a whole.

One criticism I've seen is how the game was basically decided by a few lucky card pulls. And I mean, yeah, I agree, but I can't exactly complain, because my favorite team won. The conspiratorial extension of this is that these pulls were scripted: you can't fabricate the whole game, of course, but you can certainly fake a card shuffle.

Honestly, I'd rather not be cynical about it and just enjoy the show for what it is. Probability is a weird thing that us meatbags can't wrap our heads around.

That's all from me for now. You've unlocked a new ending.

Ending 2/4 – Never Believe in Yourself