Ame’s parents bickered a lot. The mother seemingly retaliated by trashing one of the kid’s stuffed doll. Its sad, dark eyes looked up at her while the cold, bright “eyes” of the car waited to ferry Ame away. The doll would then take on a Rosebud-like significance the child. Even years later, we would see her use the doll as an online avatar. Maybe this is why reincarnation and transformation became so important to Ame. It would be too cruel to think that her doll simply died and left her forever. If it could reincarnate, on the other hand, then it is still out there somewhere, living a new, better life. Meanwhile, Ame’s father takes her to live with her grandmother. She seemed like a nice, gentle enough woman.

Karamazov’s follower counts are kinda paltry, aren’t they? Plus, followers themselves mean little. How many people are watching each stream concurrently? They’re not being view-botted, are they? How many superchats are they getting? KAngel has a serious follower count, but how many of those accounts are still active? How many of them watch every stream? How many of us sometimes click to follow someone just to never watch any of their content again? It happens a lot. Nevertheless, Karamazov claims to have the momentum. Maybe they’ve been growing super fast. Sure, but that usually slows down greatly once you’ve breached a million subs. If you can keep the momentum up after that, then I’d say that’s remarkable.

Even though I’ve owned the game for over a year now, I still haven’t started it. I haven’t even booted it up. After watching this opening episode, maybe I should. But going in blind for now is okay, I think, because the anime seems to be its own thing. Well, not exactly. It obviously has callbacks to the game — callbacks I can neither recognize nor appreciate — but I think I can still enjoy the adaptation without some of the context. And boy is the opening episode an information overload — an overdose, even. Blink and you’ll miss out. Is there a story? Not in the traditional sense. Instead, we bounce around like the terminally bored, clicking through various sites, looking and hoping for something to catch our attention.