The Rice Digital Friday Letters Page – June 11, 2021

Good afternoon everyone! We’ve almost made it to the end of the week — a week which, for some people, has been emotionally draining — and what better way to celebrate than with some correspondence from our readers?

Don’t forget, any of you can drop us a line at any time, and time permitting, we’ll get to your letter on the next week’s Friday Letters Page. And as you’ll see from today’s first letter, this is your best means of making sure whatever you have to say gets heard!

Policy and procedure

Dear Rice,

Do you guys have a policy of not replying to comments under the articles? I’ve rarely seen any of the authors respond to people.

Regards,
Mr0303

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Hello Mr0303, and thanks for contributing to the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page! This is a really good question and I’m glad someone asked it, because it ties in with the very reason this weekly feature exists in the first place.

It’s not a matter of “policy” per se, more a matter of practicality. We’re a small team and we post a lot of stuff each week so, as much as we’d like to keep an eye on every single article for new comments, the truth of the matter is that the majority of our time is usually spent either researching new articles (read: playing games, reading manga and watching anime so we know what we’re talking about when we put pen to paper!) or actually writing those new articles in the first place.

We know it’s important for a community to be able to have its say, though, hence the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page. By starting this feature, we’ve set aside some specific time each week for people to be able to have their say, ask questions and give their thoughts on various issues. If you pen us a letter for this feature, you can guarantee it’s going to get read and responded to — which unfortunately we can’t always say for comments, especially those left on articles from a while ago!

The other thing is that comments left under articles can sometimes be left in haste in the heat of the moment, whereas in my experience someone who has taken the time to write an actual letter means they’re more likely to step back, think about what they have to say and express themselves in an articulate, considered manner. Everyone wins then, because we all get to have a nice, reasonable, civil conversation — by contrast, I’m sure you’ve seen comment threads devolve into… undesirable situations more than once in your time online. The Rice community as a whole is, of course, better than that — but y’know, better safe than sorry and all that!

So by all means please continue to use the comments to give your immediate thoughts and to chat with other members of the Rice Digital community — but if you want to make absolutely sure we here at Rice Towers see what you have to say, you’re best off sending us a letter, because we can guarantee those will be read each and every week!

Card-carrying Senran Kagura fan

Hi Rice Digital!

Could you solve the mystery of where the Senran Kagura trading card style pics come from?

I see them on Twitter a lot but they are not in any of the games I’ve played. Are they a Japanese only thing? Or from a website or somewhere else?

Thanks!
Retro Bossk

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I certainly can help you out on that one, Retro Bossk — and anyone else browsing this week’s installment of the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page may be interested in tracking these down, too if you’ve also been wondering!

They’re from the Senran Kagura mobile games, which sadly have never been released over here in the west. There are two of them: Senran Kagura New Wave was the first, and this was subsequently updated to Senran Kagura New Wave G Burst, because you know how much Japanese developers love adding suffixes to things. This was a relatively “old-school” browser-based mobile game that, to be honest, wasn’t very good — but it did give us a lot of those fantastic trading card images to enjoy.

Senran Kagura New Wave was followed up by Senran Kagura Shinobi Master New Link, which was built as a native application for iOS and Android and thus looks and plays a lot nicer. It’s still Japanese-only, sadly, but it looks a lot more like, for want of a better word, a “proper game” — though it’s still a gacha at heart.

Interestingly, while a lot of the characters depicted in the mobile games remain mobile exclusive, a few of the more popular ones do actually show up in the later mainline Senran Kagura games — most notably Peach Beach Splash.

You can find images of pretty much all of the cards on the boorus — or the lovely people over at the Senran International Academy community often post images of new cards (and sometimes complete downloadable archives) over on their Twitter and their forums. Be warned; collecting those images can soon become as addictive as collecting real trading cards!

A simple pitch

Dear Rice,

Need an artist?

Mischief Fox

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Hi Mischief Fox, and thanks for writing to the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page. Right now we don’t need an artist I’m afraid, and since you didn’t leave any contact details or a link to a portfolio I can’t share your undoubtedly lovely talents with the rest of the world!

The only Mischief Fox I could find on Twitter was… well, let’s just say I’m not sure it’s you and leave it at that. I will share the first Google Images search result for the term “mischief fox”, though, because look at him. What a good boi.

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And that’s your lot for this week! Thank you to everyone who took the time to write us a note; it’s great fun going through these and figuring out some responses, so keep your letters coming. And, as I say in the response to Mr0303 above — do feel free to use the comments as you see fit, but if you want to guarantee we’ll see what you have to say, the Rice Digital Friday Letters Page is the best way to do that!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone. Rice out!

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