July 9 
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More バディミッションBOND today! Lots of fun character interactions and drama, as always. I’m making some good progress on the main plot and I really just need to know all the things 
it’s always a cool feeling to be so invested in something in Japanese! All is good 
BOND things
I learned a cool new specific phrase today, courtesy of チェズレイ, go figure アーロン was calling him out on always picking fights with モクマ and he had this to say:
To which both me and アーロン were like ??? lmao, but I did some googling and it’s apparently an old saying: 人の恋路を邪魔する奴は馬に蹴られて死んじまえ。So basically if someone’s getting in the way of your romance, you should get kicked by a horse and die
Today had lots of チェズレイ drama; he’s a very complex character actually. This whole thing with his mom not only committing suicide in front of him, but him trying to stop her and her just saying like “let me go, hanging in the air by my leg like this is worse than dying, and you’re a child so there’s no way you can pull me back up” like?? That’s such a horrific situation, if that’s any indication of his life to this point then no wonder he’s like this 
He messed with モクマ as usual, but like in a really rough way today? Imitating the voice of モクマ’s old master that he killed or whatever happened there? Ouchies, モクマ sure reacted to all that:
That’s a face! チェズレイ really brings out sides of モクマ no one else does, in all senses The reverse is true too; チェズレイ’s starting to actually face his feelings a bit, whatever they are? 
I don’t think he really knows either, but this is certainly also a face you don’t see in other contexts:
There was some アーロン angst too for good measure:
Oof how’s it feel アーロン, that your biggest adversary at the moment has the same worldview you claim to have! His already complex feelings about heroes just keep getting more complicated
Obviously I’m all for this If you do I hope you enjoy it!! And I look forward to seeing your thoughts 
AI: The Somnium Files digression
On a related note I see you mentioned AI: The Somnium Files as well; I would generally estimate AI as being harder than the Zero Escape games, but not like a lot? And there’s certainly crossover language between them. I played AI right after the Zero Escapes and by then they’d prepped me pretty well for it. The main language differences with AI are that it tends more towards slang and very specific words for the sake of jokes than Zero Escape does, and there are brief cutscenes that auto-advance, though they’re generally fairly simple.
All this is to say that if you play and enjoy Zero Escape, AI is definitely a good next choice! I absolutely adored it, and I feel like I got a lot out of it language-wise too 