English Dub Review: Trillion Game “GOLDEN EGG; The Illusory Man”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Haru and Gaku finally sell their fake AI and start to make some good business…only for Dragon Bank to use their greater resources to steal the idea for themselves and make more money, so the group decides to pivot to making social games.

OUR TAKE

I actually forget if we got two episodes of Trillion Game last week, but if we didn’t, I guess we’re getting it now! And these two episodes just so happen to show the unfortunate ends of the fake AI arc and the beginning of a new arc involving making games, but it also may have saved my view of Haru as a character. Prior to this batch of episodes, I was actually starting to chafe against the guy quite a bit, as while he had proven to be pretty useful in certain situations with his sheer charisma ability to improvise, that really only served to make him seem like a get out of jail button for Gaku, the viewpoint character, when things got too tough. Now we get a clear view of the threat Trillion Game actually faces by being a small time company against a massive conglomerate. Even when they’re able to come up with a decent idea, if someone like Dragon Bank thinks it’s a good idea too, then they can take that idea, sell it faster and to more people who haven’t heard of it yet, and now it’s theirs. It doesn’t matter if someone came up with it first, if the bigger company can tell enough people they thought of it, they don’t even have to do it better, it’s just attached to their name now.

That’s where Haru’s infinite ability to bullshit comes in, as he immediately pivots to making a media empire to control the brand better, and his first step is buying up a smaller game company to make social games, specifically ones made for phones. Though that alone won’t be enough, so he pulls off an even bigger trick: faking the hiring of the developer of one of Dragon Bank’s biggest games (apparently they have a game company too?). This is based on a pretty old hiring practice for gaming companies that hide the identity of their developers, so hiring someone anonymous seems like a smart move since someone anonymous can’t confirm it one way or another…though the company that makes the game should be able to, but I guess they’re not. Either way, as we enter this new phase of the story, it’s clear the team is not out of ideas quite yet, and more importantly, the threat they face in playing against Dragon Bank is a lot more clear, so that will go a long way in keeping me invested.