Resonating what others have said; Dorm Wars are great, but any future implementation needs to either step it up a notch or at least maintain the same standard the 1st Wars has established. Otherwise, why do we keep observing something that isn't even unavoidable like national holidays?
There are two things all Dorm Wars except for the 1st are guilty of that I can nag about:
- The lack of conclusion/aftermath
Till this day, only the 1st Wars honors the winning dorm with something worthwhile. 2nd Wars is somewhat excusable; 3rd Wars is not; 4th Wars is such an incoherent mess that isn't worth thinking about.
This is not about "why don't my choices matter"; I am fine with every contest result being scripted. What I am not fine with is going through a supposed contest with no real impact. If making two versions of the same event becomes too much, don't. Make one event for the scripted winning team and be done with it.
- The decreasing amount of interesting contests and contestant pairings
In the 1st Wars, many of the contests are either effective segues to showcasing characters traits, deliberate pairings, or at least exciting takes on common competitive plays. In my eyes, there are well-tailored. The problem is that these good elements will eventually run out; even reusing them reduces their appeals. When it does, we have contests that either feel repetitive without new blood, or feel rambunctiously thrown together for the sake of novelty.
From what I am seeing, the major source of these unsatisfaction is the fact that Selly frames what is essentially Class A group outing into a form of competition. A competition means a little less than a dozen minigames (that are hopefully all exciting) and a prize that everyone (the girls and the viewers included) gives a fuck about. Perhaps Dorms Wars is the only activity Selly can think of that is motivating enough for all 20 girls to participate. Perhaps Dorm Wars becoming a routine is a part of the circular timeline design. Or, perhaps this framework allows easier workstreams for Selly to come up with events. Either way, it has become more and more difficult to deliver everything with comparable excitement as each Dorm Wars goes by.
Meanwhile, beach trips are also self-invented and repetitive, but every single beach update has been a banger. Without needing to frame activities into dumb competitions, beach trips often are more liberal to really utilize the rare opportunity to have uncommon pairs of characters interact that results quality events (for example, some good heart-to-heart conversations or the recent reset talks). Imho, Selly should just let go of Dorm Wars as an excuse to let all 20 girls hang out if he can't consistently come up with exciting things under that premise. They can just...hang out under a lesser cause as long as the gathering itself is interesting enough. I know he can do it if he can pull off all the beach trips, but I am not sure if his ego allows him to give up this cute but outdated idea he came up by himself that is called the Dorm Wars.
