I don't know Ibara that well, no love for Danmakus here, but getting rewarded for suicide in a Japanese game doesn't surprise me at all. My opinion surpasses kamikaze pilots and also covers seppuku/harakiri rituals, as well as it includes Japanese life philosophy expressed in all their "the end is a new beginning" axioms. It's a whole new concept to acknowledge death as something more worth than life, certainly as something more honorable.
In games like V-V or Garegga, you get rewarded, thus honored, for committing suicide (the game gets easier), but punished for persisting to play with one life only (difficulty increases hellishly). In other games you get high scores through milking, but they get even higher, if you, instead of destroying your foe, destroy yourself and reiterate your fight.
You may call my examples too specific, but even if we look at games from a general point of view, they all hail death by letting your experience grow with each passed life, till you mastered the game. And your price? A "Game Over", or simply death again, but this time its ultimate form.
So in the end, all creature will die and all the things will be broken. That's the law of playing games. A very Japanese way. And if you disagree with my kamikaze comparison, then only because you perceive suicide pejoratively. But that's just not the way Japanese developers do.
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