This is an open letter to any companies that are either currently localizing visual novels or are interested in getting into that market.

Imagine this. Some company like Manga Gamer or JAST USA that already adapts Japanese visual novels into English wants to bring out Fate/Stay Night. It is a highly demanded title with a ravenous and dedicated fan base. The problem is the licensing price on a high-profile game like Fate/Stay Night is equally high to the point where it would need to sell more copies than any other visual novel ever has in the English-speaking market to break a profit. Despite the number of people who say they would pay there is a readily available fan translation of the game from Mirror Moon so the question always is how many of them will actually buy anything. I know there are manga that English publishers won’t pick up because they feel the scanlations make them worthless to license. How many people will buy a game they already played for free?  I am sure many companies have run the numbers and discovered that the risk to reward ratio is far too great to take a chance on the title. As it is it might not even be viable at all. I myself can’t blame them. They just want to keep the lights on.

But now that Kickstarter has created a viable method of getting funding and support to what would otherwise be high risk niche projects. I wonder if a title like Fate/Stay Night could be viable. I am not going to even pretend like I am an insider. I don’t know what the licensing fee on visual novels are nor how much the assorted overhead costs are with releasing a title like Fate/Stay Night. Even with a Kickstarter it might still be ridiculously prohibitive to even attempt such an undertaking. But I feel a well orchestrated and promoted Kickstarter just might be able to make this a feasible idea. It removes a good deal of the risk involved in licensing such a big named title and lets the companies involved get a real sense of how many people would buy such a title before any money exchanges hands. It is a great time to run a kickstarter for such a project and a title like Fate/Stay Night will definitely get people talking. No one is assuming you are every going to raise Double Fine money but you could easily make Barbara money. And that just might be the boost the game needs to actual make it to its English-speaking fans.

I can’t help but be fascinated with this idea. If any one has any idea of how to make this happen let me know. If any company wants to take this idea I am leaving it on the table. If any company was toying with the idea before I wrote this post then I am showing that it has some support. Otherwise if you support this idea just leave a comment below and pass this post around to show this idea has support among the fans.

All good things must come to an end and so I wrapped up Carnival Phantasm season 3. Last week I wrote about Fate/Prototype but it was just an extra added in with the last disc of Carnival Phantasm. Otherwise the last 4 episode stick to the comedic tone of the rest of the series. We start with the best new episode right out of the gate. The Holy Grail Grand Prix is just amazing. The Lion-Go will win your heart with its cuteness, Gilgamesh pops in during the middle to ruin everyone’s day (like he always does), and it is nice to actually see Assassin get to participate in a sketch. A good deal of joke time bombs in this episode. The Akiha story is straight out of Take Moon with Kohaku up to her normal tricks but the Brainwasher Detective skits that end the episode were the star of the show. The third episode is a Final Destination homage all around Lancer and his Kenny like tendencies. The final episode wraps everything up with the conclusion to the dating plan from the first disc and a round-up of all the pieces of the Type-Moon universe. While they were not voice acted they included characters from Fate/Zero, The Garden of Sinners, the Mobile Site, and even Notes. I am sad to finish Carnival Phantasm but maybe one day down the road we will get another season after a few more games come out. Surely Mahou Tsukai no Yoru, Fate/Apocrypha, and maybe even Girls’ Work will warrant revival of the carnival.

Thermae Romae came to an end just after three episodes. But a delightful three episodes they were. In each subsequent adventure Lucias spent more and more time in Japan soaking up the culture. Because he celebrates each new experience in Japan with such enthusiasm, it spills over to the audience (maybe because so many of us non-Japanese fans long to go as well). And each time he returns to Rome things get weirder from smelly bandits to being courted by the emperor to a village of baths. Perhaps a few more episodes wouldn’t get stale but I definitely think they let the series go out while it was still a quirky surprise and that’s a good thing.

And so I finally put another Pretty Cure show under my belt with the conclusion of Suite Precure. Suite Precure distinctly had its ups and downs. It was an enjoyable little series but it has some distinct flaws. It is hardly the low point in the series but it is never be the pinnacle of the series as well. I did not have any problem with Cure Muse like some people did. I would go as far as to say she was one of the most clever parts of the series. The ending was fairly standard but enjoyable. There was a good bit of back and forth between the Cures and Noise. He did not just pummel them until their last second victory. Both sides got some good shots in during the last few episodes. The sooner they got Noise to be in his true form the better it was because as dorky little bird it was hard to take him seriously as the main villain of the series. Some of these scenes with him manically laughing were very silly when he was still P-chan. No matter what anyone tells you Hibiki’s ultimate attack is not Suite Session Ensemble Crescendo Finale but in fact psychoanalysis. Sh goes all Jungian on Noise in the end to finally defeat him. It also looks like she defeats him with the Brofist of Ultimate Friendship™ when the pull back during the climax. I was surprised the last episode was all falling action. While the Pretty Cure shows always have a little finale they don’t usually spend the whole episode on it. Still with all that time the Kanade, Ellen, and Ouji love triangle goes completely unmentioned let alone resolved. Overall I enjoyed the series despite some missteps. If you want to see Pretty Cure at its best watch Heartcatch but if you just want a solid little magical girl show then watch Suite Precure.

I took a look at the Johnnie Walker Keep Walking Studio 4C promotional video. A surreal dreamlike setting unfolds before us where things change and morph before you. It is a beautiful, vibrant piece of work though I can’t really say what is has to do with Whiskey.

After two separate recommendations I decided to check out some iOS games. Patz recommended Tiny Tower while Chaos Theater named dropped Where’s My Water. Both of them do a great job of being little time killers in their own way. I first heard about Tiny Tower due to the Zynga controversy but I only started playing after Patz suggested I try it out. It is much like SimTower but simplified for the hand-held experience. You construct a little building that has housing and shops using their profits to expand your tower. It is perfect for a hand-held device because you can play it for less than a minute if that is all the time you have but you can also sit down just kill some time if you want as well. You can update your shops and then put it down and not look at it again for hours or you can micromanage things if you just want to kill time. I really enjoy naming the little business even if you don’t have to.  It is free to play bu there is also in-game money that can be purchased. I am not sure why you would ever spend money on the game unless you were impatient but I suppose that is what this whole free to play game model is based around. The other game is the Where’s My Water demo from Disney. It is a clever little puzzle game. You try to dig tunnels so that the water can flow to a cartoon alligator so he can take his shower. The same starts of very simple but slowly adds new obstacles and tools as the game goes on in classic puzzle game tradition. Soon there is acid, poison water, locks, and other various complications. The learning curve is gently sloped so you always feel challenged but never overwhelmed. A great little distraction and like Tiny Tower it has the perfect quick burst of entertainment for its given platform.

The 4-6 Magic Kaito Specials aren’t really all that memorable. Episode 5 has a some good Kaito thievery as well as that sweet magic he is able to surprise you with. But 4 and 6 feature a new witch character prominently and it throws me off a little. Kaito’s magic is the world of illusion and sleight of hand, and both he and Conan employ plenty of super science, but actual mystic abilities just seems weird. These were mostly done as a 15th anniversary project so I’m not sure if there will be more of not. If not they didn’t go out on a particularly high note either.

It has been a long journey so see the conclusion of Umineko no Naku Koro ni. The story started in 2007 and finally concluded with 8 visual novels being released over the course of 4 years with over a dozen extra side stories being release up until the last Comic Market in December. It was a fun journey along the way that allowed me to try and figure out what was real, what was fantasy, and where the truth lied on Rokkenjima in October of 1986. When I finished Requiem of the Golden Witch I was filled with a mixture of hope and dread. The penultimate game was amazingly powerful so that I was hopeful that the end of the series would be just a great but at the same time I was worried that it could not live up to the expectations it had set.

So when Twilight of the Golden Witch came out to some rather negative reviews it was hard to tell if this was part of the normal cycle of Umineko reactions or if it was a horrible ending. The problem was when a new Umineko game came out there was always a flood of spoilers. When everything was sorted out due to fake spoilers and mistranslations there was invariably a negative reaction that the story had gone down the drain. But usually when the translation patch came out most everyone saw the story in whole new light when they actual read the story. But this time that negative feeling did not seem to go away. Many people (including myself) seemed rather frustrated with the ending as provided by the spoilers for a lack of answers. But now that I have finally played the game and seen the ending through I am going to give my spoiler filled thoughts on the ending and the series as a whole. This is a mixture of catharsis and celebration for a pretty wild ride. If you were curious for a simple spoiler free review then it is simply that I do not regret playing this series.

Even if you utterly despise the vagueness of vital parts of the ending you have to admit there are some great moments in Twilight of the Golden Witch. Anything involving Lambdadelta is just a wonderful mixture of thrilling and charming. She earns her 3rd place in the final chapter popularity poll with this chapter. Bernkastel and Erika Furudo prove themselves to be the unrepentant villains of the story and do their job well. There is also a good deal of meta commentary on mysteries and mystery fans. It has always been present in the series (and in Ryukishi07′s writing in general) but it is full display in this chapter. The goats attacking the island is hardly a subtle meta commentary on the fandom. Your mileage will vary on how much you think it is a clever jab at the reader and how much it is a bitter rant. Perhaps it is yet another case of, “Without love, the truth cannot be seen.”

It is also a powerful send off to the Ushiromiya family. They were all a mixture of horrible traits that had a human core at their center. It reminds me of that deleted scene from High Fidelity about the Top 5 Worst things you have done. Taken out of context the top 5 worst things anyone has ever done makes them seem like a monster. And in a way this final chapter reminds us that we have seen everyone involved with Rokkenjima at their worst as well as their best. But in the end while they have some major sins on their hands they were all just human. OK. Some of them came off a bit worse than others. It is hard to really find fault with too much that Hideyoshi or Jessica did in contrast Kinzo commits some unforgivable sins even compared to the rest of the family. Their crimes cannot be excused but perhaps they can be forgiven.

The most controversial part is the ending itself and what few things it does address and what it keeps a mystery. To say we get no answers is clearly a lie. On the other hand there are some major questions that go unanswered. As for the little mysteries we are given all the tools to solve them. To figure out who killed whom in the first 6 chapters we are given five important pieces of information. The most obvious pieces are the red text. While it is often deliberately misleading it is the first place to start looking. The second is that Beatrice, Shannon, and Kanon are all the same person but can be “killed” when their personality is killed. The fact that they are all the same person playing different roles makes many of the mysteries disappear. The third is Willard H. Wright black sword fight with Bernkastel. There are plenty of hints on how all the tricks were done through that. The fourth is Bernkastel’s purple truth puzzle game. It gives clear rules on how to use the fantasy and mystery sections to figure out what is going on. How the things we see in mystery scenes are the truth we need to examine when solving mysteries and how to figure out when characters are lying. The final clue is the Our Confession booklet from Umineko no Naku Koro ni Hane. It is pretty much a walk through of a mystery so you can see how they are done if the other clues were not clear enough.

The problem is there is no answer sheet. At no point does Ryukishi07 give the reader a simple breakdown of how everything was done in case you get stuck. This lets people write countless FAQs that use the rules to figure out how things were done but unless the author gives his definitive word you will always have people arguing the details back and forth. While this replicates some of the experience of the Witch Hunters in the game it will possibly always be a point of contention just the same. As Ryukishi07 himself said in Higurashi When They Cry Kai there is always something vaguely annoying about puzzle books that don’t give you the answers. I am not exactly sure why he broke his own rule in this case.

The biggest point of contention will always be that we never really know what happened on October 5th of 1986. We know that the only survivors were Battler and Eva. But how everyone else exactly died is a mystery. Thematically that is part of the story. It ends with Rokkenjima being a sealed mystery. If we consider Ange the true protagonist of the series than the whole story is about her learning both how to move on and let things go. Therefore sealing the mystery away is a vital step for her. While this makes thematic sense for her it does not make the blow of never truly know what happened to the player any less harsh. I know many a player just feels like there never was an answer and the conclusion and what we got was to cover up to this fact. Ambiguous answers are inherently controversial.

In the end this article was actually therapeutic. It has helped me work through a good deal of my conflicted emotions on the series. I went into Umineko with a good deal of anticipation due to my love of Higurashi. Each episode played only ramped up the expectations. So the bitterness I initially felt with the conclusion was equally harsh. It was almost like a betrayal. But after actually playing the conclusion and sorting out my feelings in this post I feel better about the whole experience. As I stated before my enjoyment of the first seven games could never be taken away by the eighth. They were just too much fun. But Twilight of the Golden Witch determined my overall feelings for the series as a whole. In the end while I did not agree with how Ryukishi07 played everything out I am glad that I experienced this story. In reflection many of the pieces of the ending were telegraphed from the start but part of me did not want to believe them. But perhaps the way things ended were for the best. We were never going to get a super happy Higurashi ending. I could have done with some more conclusive answers but that is the mystery of Rokkenjima. If nothing else the positive feelings outweighed my reservations about the conclusion and the bittersweet ending. If it can do that than it did its job. I close the lid on this cat box for now and hope that one day I may open it again get the same enjoyment and perhaps some new insights in the future.

Carnival Phantasm has come to an end. The grand Type-Moon cross over even ended with some little cameos by the cast of Fate/Zero, Kara no Kyoukai, the Mobile Site, and some rather minor Type Moon characters. The they even gave some love to Notes with V/V. But at the very end after the credit a mysterious woman picks up the phone to introduce the bonus movie. This woman is Sajyou Ayaka who is the original protagonist of an early draft of Fate/Stay Night. To celebrate the end of Carnival Phantasm the extra goes back to the origin of the Type-Moon universe with Fate/Prototype. This video is an animated version of some of the notes to the original unfinished story that would be used to make Fate/Stay Night.

There are some major changes that this prototype story went through before it became the game known as Fate/Stay Night. The most famous change is that originally Saber was a man and the young witch known as Ayaka Sajyou was his master. Takeuchi Takashi felt that visual novel fans would not like to play as a female protagonist to the genders were swapped. Ayaka Sajyou seems like a mix of Rin and Shiro with a bit of Enjou Tomoe thrown in for good measure. She is much more powerful and knowledgeable than Shiro but she has his softhearted nature while having the gloomy edge of Enjou. Also the religious theme around the Holy Grail War are much more pronounced. All the Masters have a different choir of angel they are connected to and the Grail itself has far more of a twisted Christian connotation. In fact the final secret Avenger style Servant is the Beast itself. Rider is certainty a new man and his master is equally different (as much as we might have wanted Shinji to be bed ridden.) Phahn Sancraid is definitely a creepy priest like Kotomine but he looks and feels creepy in his own unique way. Also while Saber was involved in a former Grail War this time his Master was Ayaka’s sister and she was not a very nice person.

On the other hand you also see many of the seeds that would go on to make Fate/Stay Night what it is. The basic framework is unmistakable. The structure and cyclic nature of the war is the same. The hidden tainted nature of the grail is still in the background. Ayaka and Saber’s relationship clearly went on to inspire Rin and Archer’s relationship. Also taking Ayaka and combining her with Misaya Reiroukan gets us the Rin we know in Fate/Stay Night. Saber’s tragic participation in a previous iteration of the war with his new’s Master’s family is also the same. Gilgamesh is still the same Gilgamesh. Also Saber’s battle with Gilgamesh was giving me vibes from the Saber and Rider’s battle from the Fate route.  Gilgamesh looks a bit more primitive but he is still spamming swords and wearing golden armor. He is still an arrogant king of nonconsensual relationships only this time he wants Ayaka instead. Lancer also looks different but he is still Cu Chulainn. I am sure being Lancer is still suffering. He even hunts down Saber’s master impaling them through the heart as the catalyst for summoning her servant. That results in a first meeting of Master and Servant that would be reproduced in Fate/Stay Night. And as the Type Moon wiki points out Manaka Sajyou looks like evil baby Arturia Pendragon.

It is fascinating to see how Fate/Stay Night morphed to become the visual novel we see today. While the basic structure might be the same you can see the initial concept went through many changes when it was adapted to another form of media. In the end I am somewhat divided. Part of me would love to see this expanded into its own series. Seeing how everything would have originally played out if it had stayed as a linear novel would be a great insight into how Nasu has changed as an author. There seem to be some very interesting concepts here that never made it into the final product. At the same time I wonder if these changes were not made for very good reasons. It is easy to forget the value of editing that takes a messy raw concept and refines it into a more complete product when done correctly. Maybe many of the ideas and plot that were changed were changed with good reason. Without the adaption we would not have the sexy sex machine that is Rider. Then again that scene of Ayaka getting out her witches’ broom seemed pretty cool as well. Overall while I would buy a full length Fate/Prototype series it would not break my heart if it were never made. This is a good enough sample for now.

I have finally completed my final play through of Fate/Extra. Having completed it with Caster I feel like I have closed out the game. While I did not go through every scenario possible in the game I think I saw the optimal amount of possibilities. I would be interested in a few tiny details like using Saber with a female protagonist or taking Archer through Rani’s route but those little details are what YouTube is for. In this final post on Fate/Extra I just wanted to give my thoughts on playing as Caster. I mean how could I not play the game as the cute little fox goddess even if that is dangerously close to furry country.

I will admit I tore through this play through whereas I savored the other two. The third time around I had to put in cheat codes because there was no way I was legitimately grinding through the game a third time. I love Type-Moon but I am not crazy. It was sort of fun playing through the game as a level 99 god. You can actually win several battles are supposed to either come to a draw or have you be outright slaughtered. Winning them never changes to plot but it does get you some bonus dialog as a pat on the back for your accomplishments. That said it was still quite obvious that Caster is the hard mode. That is not to say that she is worthless because at times she is a wrecking crew. The problem is she is really slow to power up and definitely a glass cannon. When you start the game she is definitely the weakest character you can pick. She does not deal much physical damage, she has paper-thin defense, and it takes awhile for her to get the spells she needs to rip things apart. When you have her full complement of spells she is a monster but no matter how high level you get her she is always fragile and cannot absorb too much damage. But her basic spells are a nasty one two punch as they do their standard damage and can stun the opponent if you choose wisely. If you set things up correctly she can tear into even the toughest opponents. I took out Saver in 1 round with a level 99 Caster and Ryougi Shiki without breaking a sweat. She is challenging but rewarding to play.

Caster is a cutie-pie little vixen with a deceptive appearance. She seems like an airhead but she is someone who will just as easily deceive, set up, and then assassinate everyone around her in a way that would make the Count of Monte Cristo slightly uneasy. She is definitely designed to have a mixture of Yamato Nadeshiko loyalty, ditzy charm, and vengeful possessiveness. It does give her an amusing appeal if a bit on the moe wish-fulfillment side of feminine appeal. She is definitely the most openly affectionate and playful Servant as well as the most sexually aggressive.  A bonny boom boom body does not hurt with features on the safe side of anthropometric. She was a refreshing sorbet after the sarcastic Archer. The most surprising part of her past was her connection to Twice H. Pieceman. It was set up in advance but like everything involving Pieceman I wish they had investigated it more. I also wish Caster was in other mediums as well. Her careful Machiavellian plotting combined with her harmless demeanor would make her an interesting character in a title outside of a tournament RPG.

That is it for Fate/Extra. I definitely got my money’s worth in the 3 play throughs I did. I admit that I certainly used the skip dialog button quite a bit in my third time through but Caster’s charm made it worth my time. I now have three max affection Servants to import into Fate/Extra CCC if that ever comes out. I hope that the game did well enough that Aksys Games considers picking up the sequel. I can’t wait to see how your characters transfer over and what rewards you get for playing the previous game. I can never get enough of the Fate universe.

I have been occasionally playing the little treasure that have come from Comic Market 81 including the two anime fighting games I cared the most about, those being Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code and Ougon Musou Kyoku Cross. Far be it from me to even pretend to be a serious Type-Moon critic but I must complain about Melty Blood. Playing both games back to back makes me realize that Melty Blood SERIOUSLY needs to upgrade their sprites. If you compare the crisp HD sprites of Ougon Musou Kyoku to Melty Blood’s wonderful but outdated character graphics the difference is so noticeable. I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy playing the new Melty Blood. Adding the new selectable fighting styles and added characters is very much appreciated. But I would rather the next addition of the game make minimal additions to any game play (which is already quite good) and instead work on the graphics. It would take a great game and modernize it into a spectacular game.

I realize that this is partially a selfish and very complicated request. Upgrading sprites is a major undertaking and fighting games are loathed to change the artwork on sprites that already work unless they have no other choice. The infamous example was the use of the outdated Morrigan spite until Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars. I also know that French Bread would probably wish to spend more time and effort on the graphics for the artwork of their own original property game, Under Night In-Birth. It might be a somewhat selfish request but it is one I make anyhow. I know it is a serious investment but it is one that I think would result in an equal amount of returns.

While this is slightly delayed I have finally got through my second play through of Fate/Extra this time with Archer, a female protagonist, and taking the Rin route. Essentially I changed everything you could change to see how much it actually effected the story and how the game played out. If you are looking for a proper review of the game you just check out my first article about my Saber playthrough. That has more analysis of the game proper. This is just a supplemental look at the viability of a replay and what bits of nuance I got out of using Archer. This review took about a month longer than it should have as I swear the universe did everything up to including making it so my PSP would no longer read UMDs to prevent this review. Le sigh. But here it is.

First of all while it is a nice option to play as a female protagonist in Fate/Extra as far as I can tell it is the one choice that has the smallest effect on the game. I am glad to see that you are going to make the protagonist be so much of an avatar you might as well let both sexes have a chance to be represented. But sadly unlike say Persona 3 Portable changing your gender does not change the way the game plays. You don’t get any different plot choices and most of the dialog goes completely unchanged. It also makes all the servants and a few other characters in the game strongly bisexual as they will develop romantic feelings for you regardless of your gender. I do find that a bit amusing. I am sure that pleases the yuri fans but the yaoi fans can get a little for themselves as well.

I will state this plainly. There is no way you can mistake Archer from Fate/Extra being anyone BUT Archer from Fate/Stay Night. He makes references to fighting in another Holy Grail War in a school setting, he recognizes Shinji and Rin but mentions her knew much different versions of them, makes a an off-handed reference to the traditional Saber we all know and love, and even has the same appearance, powers, and back story as the traditional Archer. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands. I am not sure why some people seem to insist that this Archer is not necessarily the Archer from Fate/Stay Night. While I am not sure the story of how he become a Counter Guardian counts as canon outside if this iteration of the franchise it is clear who he is supposed to be. If nothing else this means that Archer is the servant to play as if you are a fan of the original story. No one else will even come as close to the number of in jokes and references as picking EMIYA as your servant.

Playing as Archer at times feels like a whole new experience and other times feels exactly the same as playing as Saber. The big difference is the dialog. Any time the your servant speaks there is always a very distinct tone in their dialog. If you picked any line as just read it off with no other context you could tell who the line is from. Where as every statement from Saber is grandiose but affectionate all of Archers conversation is filled with sarcasm and ruggedness. Also Saber is without a doubt easy mode. Anything that Saber does with ease takes Archer a good deal more work to do. Archer’s real ace in the hole is Seven Rings of Heaven as it can just ignore one attack. But other than that he is just harder to play.

The same thing thing is true with the alternate servants when you do Rin’s path. While the dialog is different with other opponents the mechanics of what you have to do are exactly the same. How you transverse the levels, gather matrix information, and even get help from your female companion is identical. Lil’ Ronnie and her Lancer are even crazier and far creepier than Monji Gatoh but I miss the True Ancestor. I was a bit more conflicted when fighting Rin in Rani’s path but I enjoyed your little romance/friendship with Rani more. The servants on Rin’s path were far easier as a breezed through those battles despite the fact that Archer was not anywhere as powerful as Saber. But if you pick Archer as your servant you MUST take the Rin path. His reactions to Rin in-person and when you are alone are priceless. The amount he purposefully does NOT say is just as hysterical as what he does say. I am curious what he says in those moments if you take the Rani path but they can’t be as wonderful as his dialog for Rin. Also he has the One-True-Mana-Exchange-Scene™ in this route.

The biggest thing that is added to a second play through is you can fight Shiki Ryougi as a secret boss. As is the tradition with all secret bosses she is far harder than anyone else in the game. After my level 55 Archer died against her the 4th time I just cheesed her by rushing to get out Unlimited Blade Works so I could spam her with Fake Spiral Swords and used a bunch of elixirs so I could do that for 3 rounds. You get a useful little item from beating her= that lets you cancel your opponents next move but it mostly only useful if you are going for a 3rd playthrough. Shiki is a nice Easter egg that explains the presence of Touko in the game but all in all she is mostly just an Easter egg.

So the real question is if it is worth playing the game a second time. My answer is yes and no. There is a good deal of new dialog and story if you play a second time. The game makes sure to reward you for playing  with new elements and things to discover. Even the servants who were the same react differently to the companion you choose to fight at your side. But other than that the game itself plays exactly the same. Everything is mechanically unchanged. Also the grinding is far more annoying the second time around. I enjoyed the fact that you kept the learned patterns from the last game but it did not make the time killing the same monsters again and again any more interesting. They really should have just let you keep your levels from them last playthrough so you could focus on the story. I could tolerate as the hardcore Type-Moon fan but I see most people getting sort of frustrated. But you have to grind like that if you want to take out  Shiki at the end. I would say the second play though is worth it but I would play something else in between play playthroughs as it might help take the edge off doing the same thing twice in a row and let you just enough the changes with a little distance. I will do a hopefully shorter little follow-up article about Caster. I am sure I will have a lot less to say but I feel I should mention how she plays and what I think of her character.

I am making my way through Twilight of the Golden Witch, the final chapter of Umineko no Naku Koro ni. As I am still not done I will save my final review for the chapter and the series as a whole for a later date but I do think there is one major fact about the game worth mentioning. When this game was first released the reaction was divisive to say the least. Going mostly on spoilers it seems that there was a very vocal community of people who felt that Ryukishi07 shot the pooch with the ending. I may or not be related but it has taken quite awhile for the English patch of the game to come out. Purposefully or not this might be for the best. It has given people (including myself) sometime to distance themselves from that initial reaction and judge the ending on its own merits outside of the initial hype for the ending and then the backlash when the ending was finally revealed. So far I am enjoying it with some time to divorce myself from the initial reactions. A prime example is the Professor Layton style puzzle section is nowhere near as horrible as it first sounded. It has some of the most powerful scenes if you get the puzzles right. It gives a little insight into how everyone in the family was still a human despite the many horrible things they had done. That is thematically important given how I think they are building up this ending. It does not shy away from the terrible things they have done but if you think anyone there is a complete monster than it makes the ending somewhat disingenuous. I look forward to reading the ending and weighing on the series as a whole now. I think I would have been far more brutal if I did not have some time away from the series. This really shows the benefit of some time away from the gut reaction of a community.

After talking about Uta no Prince-sama Maji Love 1000% in my year in review, I decided I’d better watch some more! I watched up through episode 7 which is a good half way point before everyone goes to idol summer camp (oh yes!) and decides on their partners for their final exams. Each episode has focused on one of the guys who through Haruka’s positive attitude helps each feel more confident/find his voice/etc. Of course she isn’t able to melt the frozen heart of Tokiya upon first try but we do learn quite a bit about him and a few secrets are revealed. He gets a lot more attention for the obvious reason that he is the “true path” more than likely in the original game. It continues to be a far-fetched fantasy that knows it. Also the headmaster may appear infrequent but remains entertaining as Norio Wakamoto lends his voice to the bizarre antics. I’m hoping that perhaps they will focus on Haruka’s roommate in an episode but that may be unlikely in a show like this.

I enough people praising Chihayafuru has gotten me to go back and try to catch up with this series. It seems like one of those shows that has a small but vocal fanbase. I watched the first 8 episodes in which we finally get back to the present and watch Chihaya build a karuta team at her school. I have to wonder how much of the extremely Japanese nature of Karuta is responsible for this show’s reputation. It is so steeped in a Japanese game that all but the most dedicated anime fan will avoid the show but everyone else will eat it up. It also has to be well done to earn that fanbase but if it is competent it will get a highly devoted following. Plus since it is about such an obscure sport it can use many sports show story tropes without raising so many flags that it is using such techniques. But overall the show lives and dies on Chihaya’s manic energy. The show only shines if you are drawn into her vibrant personality but fortunately for the show she is a hard character to hate.

Twin Spica vol. 10 has a very sobering effect on a story that is full of youthful exuberance despite its melancholy reflections. As the kids reach another summer break and return to Yuigahama, we as well as them are starting to wonder, to question, who will really see this dream of space through to the very end. The realization that only a few can actually make it into the space program has long hung over the entire series, but this is more the internal conflict, doubts, and truths that all of them must face.

After a long hiatus Liar Game recently started up again. It seems to me that the current arc (chs. 139-144) that is starting up seems like filler to me. No new elements added. Mostly just a new game to show how Nao has grown but also needs to keep growing. It is early enough that I might be wrong but I do have to wonder if the series has just gotten popular enough that Shinobu Kaitani need to pad out what was initially planned to be a shorter series. I don’t really mind. As long as the game are exciting and logical then I will stay along for the ride. The break was also helpful because you do not want these games to be made up on the fly. The only way this series works is with a good deal of plotting out of the games in advance. This all does make me wonder one thing. Is the fact that VIZ never licensed Liar Game’s a great folly or a brilliant move. Was not releasing it just after Death  Note ended foolish because everyone would have picked this up when they were hungry for more Death Note? Did they let that audience slip away? Or would everyone have just unfairly compared it to Death Note never letting it gain its own legs. At this point Death Note will probably always come up whenever Liar Game is discussed but at least enough time has passed that it is a casual talking point and not the focus of all discussions about the manga. At this point what is done is done but it is an interesting thought experiment.

I watched the first four episodes of High Score which is based on an energetic shojo 4-koma. It centers around a bunch of strange individuals, many in relationships, at a high school. The main characters are two cruel narcissists who are also in love with each other which causes endless hilarity. They are surrounded by bizarre friends, enemies, and total nonsense. The jokes and incidents fly by in the 3-minute length which I realize may be the way to get to me enjoy 4-koma anime.

The Umineko fighting game, Ougon Musou Kyoku has been steadily adding characters to its roster with in upgrades and patches. Even the recently added Ougon Musou Kyoku Cross added three characters upon its release and promises three more sometime this year. Despite the fact that we have the most important addition on the way in the form of Lambdadelta there are still a few characters that are sorely missing.

5. Eva Ushiromiya: She is a trained martial artist. She could not be that hard to throw into the game. You need more traditional Kung Fu fighters anyway.
4. Juza Amakusa: A mercenary makes for another good addition to the roster.  His sniper rile is clearly his big finisher. Plus you have to get some more testosterone up in the selection.
3. Maria Ushiromiya: While normal Maria would just be a gag character her witch persona would clearly make a valuable addition. He many ways of killing her mother is a whole move set in itself.
2. Gaap: A busty blond in a skimpy red outfit screams to be added on visual aesthetics alone.  Plus she too knows martial arts and can teleport. The only problem maybe keeping a degree of modesty with her flipping around in that outfit.
1. Kinzo Ushiromiya/Goldsmith : Another magical character just begging to be added. Plus he looks like Sean Connery. I would not put it past Kinzo to show up in the game.
0. As a bonus choice I am also throwing out anyone from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: While they are technically not from Umienko they are in the same universe and I don’t think anyone would mind them showing up. Rena and her cleaver or Keiichi and his bat would easily make fans happy.

I have made another guest appearance on The Digital Bug’s Visual Novel news podcast, the Eroge Bus. This time I go on to talk about the one subject that seems to be the most natural choice for me: Type-Moon. It is more an overview than a dissertation so I mostly touch a little on the history of the company and their more famous titles. If you were hoping for a lecture on Akasha, the Throne of Heroes, and Tohsaka Nagato you will have to request I come back for a more in-depth episode. Greg and I also chat about the latest news in the visual novel industry. Greg is the expert. I mostly make silly commentary. But it is a great podcast to see what is going on in the US and Japan when it comes to eroge.

Eroge Bus Episode 6

I had been waiting to watch Hayate the Combat Butler! Heaven is a Place on Earth since it was announced last year. So when it finally come with the latest volume of the manga I was thrilled to watch it. The movie much like the rest of Hayate is a pleasant and warm helping of comfort food. Heaven is a Place on Earth is a nice little story set right after Natsu-comi and the arrival of Kayura Tsurugino but before the beginning of the next semester. It perfectly captures the feeling of being out in the country during summer vacation. The story focuses on the Hayate/Nagi relationship so I am of course totally behind it. But there is a Hinagiku bath scene so all the fans of the pink student council president will be satisfied. The best part of the movie is it feels like a nice minor arc in the manga. While it is a bit surreal at points it feels like it was taken from the source. Too often these little spin-off movies miss any of that spark that make you love the manga but this one captures that je ne sais quoi perfectly. The oddest thing about the movie is it came out BEFORE Kayura was introduced in the manga but the movie makes no real attempt to introduce her. It goes along like she has always been a part of the cast. At this point it is clear who she is but I am sure there were many a Hayate fan trying to figure out who this strange new girl was. Kayura cosplays as Saber in the movie so she is 1000% OK with me though. I will also say that I cannot deny the appeal of Maria with twin tails in a summer dress. This movie is probably not going to win over anyone who is not already a Hayate fan. They don’t make an effort to introduce you to the plot other than showing some newly animated clips from the first episode during the opening song. Oh Ruka does not take part in the main plot but she sings a song and says a few lines of dialog during the movie’s opening. So if she appears in the 3rd season she now officially has a voice actress. I am now just waiting to watch it again when they release the extended cut on the Blu-Ray.

I went to see Arthur Christmas mostly thanks to an article about its production which also alerted me to the fact that Aardman Animations (of Wallace and Gromit fame) made the film with Sony. It really was everything it should have been: a delightful Christmas adventure with plenty of humor and holiday magic plus top-notch animation. It is the story of the one present Santa forgets to deliver on Christmas Eve which causes endless trouble for everyone. Arthur, youngest son of Santa, along with Grand-Santa take up the mission. Arthur isn’t the successor to the Santa mantle. Oh, he has plenty of enthusiasm but he is also absent-minded, clumsy, and afraid of just about everything; still he has a true heart that inspires everyone in true movie fashion. It even gets a little meta at points as Arthur realizes that Santa isn’t a person, it doesn’t matter who delivers the present, Santa is an idea and a feeling. One of the highlights to the animation production is just how Santa does deliveries which is very high-tech nowadays as they attempt to explain the ways in which it is all accomplished using military precision, thousands of highly trained elves, GPS, and a “sleigh” that functions much more as a space ship with the ability to camouflage itself in many ways. But the olden ways must be dusted off and put to use to fix the gift mistake. It has that classic bridging of multiple generations as a key element along with the realization that we each have a place in the world. While the story has some bumps, I didn’t understand how worrying helped Arthur get to the sleigh or why wrapping the burglar alarm did anything at all, it was a holiday film that left me in good spirits!

If it seems I have dropped off the grid recently it was because I have been playing Mass Effect 2. As everyone who has played the game has said Mass Effect 2 is just a clear improvement over the first game. The first game was incredibly awesome but the second game expands and tweaks so much about the first game. It was not that the first game was horribly flawed. It was just that they improved or smartly streamlined on almost every idea from the first game. They improved the combat, skill trees, and inventory system. There were a few less random missions but they went out of their way to give most of the random mission a unique feel via a combination of original maps and/or unusual mission parameters. Too often in the first game the story for the side missions were unique in story but the maps had a very cookie cutter feel. They layout of the hidden bases or spaceships felt the same unless there were main plot related missions. The layout and style of all the missions usually felt every distinct in Mass Effect 2. I never has a serious problem with the inventory in the first game but the upgrade system is just streamlined in such a satisfying way. The powers are also equally tightened to feel like you get to the core of what you wanted without losing anything vital. The story with the suicide mission feels  epic and fun. It is also just so fulfilling to see the choices you made in the first game pay dividends in this game and now that your choices in both games will have both major and minor impacts on the third game.  It is really everything you would want a sequel to be. I can’t pay to see the end of the trilogy in March. I will only be watching my roommate play through it but that will be good enough. (Plus you get all those nifty completion bonuses  when you are the second person playing the game.)

Kekkaishi 29 is the falling action from the major battle in 28 which makes it more of a transitional book in terms of forward motion, but we are flooded with information and characters. There is still much speculation within the pages about what the supreme leader’s final intentions are and how he is carrying them out. Still you get the feeling that Masamori is finally on the right track though I don’t trust everyone that is close to him. And while we do get better explanations about Karasumori the book continues to leave us in a bit of suspense. Yoshimori’s frame of mind swings wildly as he tries to control his new power and feel responsible for something greater. He gets back to cake baking with a lot of faked vigor hoping to negate his fears. The only thing rather unfortunate is that of late Tokine has really taken a major backseat to the proceedings. I don’t think it will stay that way as we make our way into the final arc, but it is a little frustrating.

As I was covering the Haruhi movie so I did not get to see the first Mardock Scramble movie at the NYAF. But for everyone who did not have a chance to watch the movie then you can watch it now on Hulu. I will say for the amount of nudity and violence I was flabbergasted that they did not require me to log in for an age check. I had to log in to watch Spice and Wolf and that ridiculously tame compared to this. On that note this is really a 80s OVA that just happened to come out in 2010. It has all the gritty ultra violence, dark introspection, and nudity that you remember from those old OVAs. They also do the old 80s-tastic by lightly touching on some philosophy but making sure not to go in too deep because there are action scenes to be had.  The Bandersnatch Company alone feels like a group that should have been in Ninja Scroll. Welldone sums it up succinctly. I would explain but his introduction is something you have to see for yourself. Since I saw it on Hulu is was dub only. The dub was decent but some of the Bandersnatch Company comes of as far more silly than creepy because their dub actors were a bit too hammy. Also I know that oeufcoque is just french for a soft-boiled egg but  it really leads to some odd accidental innuendo in the dialog. This is a great little throwback series that really caters to a type of anime fan that does not get as much attention anymore. The movie ends on a big cliffhanger that just dares you not to watch the next one and knows that you won’t be able to refuse.

Batman was one of my favorite relaunches from the New 52 and the second issue only enhances that feeling. We beginning again with Bruce explaining a piece of Gotham, this time the architecture of a tower and it places in the city before he is thrown out of it. There is some good action in these pages, and you get the feeling this version of Batman rather enjoys himself and the theatrics. This book also continues to feel like the detective portion of Bats that balances things as he goes over an autopsy and gets answers that he already knew from Dick. The page layouts sing! The art is spectacular of course, but it also has well placed breaths in the action as well as places with simple text on blank background that sent a little tingle through me. Bruce is cocky in this book but it feels like he is on the edge of having things pulled out from under him.

I’ve started playing Professor Layton and the Last Specter which is the start of the prequel arc featuring the first meeting of Layton and Luke. Since this is the case, the game begins with Layton meeting his new assistant Emmy who quickly became a favorite of mine. She is a new addition with her high energy and physical nature. At times she even acts as the audience to the strange happenings making comments like these villagers are so weird and the like. And it is a good thing I fell in love with her quickly, I just started a new chapter where she has broken off from Layton and Luke to go solo in London. So far the story has been in line with previous games which is a positive; I’ve been able to deduce small mysteries but the Specter remains elusive. The town seems more sprawling complete with canals and boat transportation but like the last two games it tends to box you into a path and only lets you explore at its discretion which I always take issue with. Puzzles are Layton puzzles and nothing has stood out though there does seem to be more real math than before. I’m happy to say the car path mini-game is back, but made way better because it is with trains! I haven’t gotten to London Life yet. If you’ve seen the movie Eternal Diva you know a little more about this game, but I’m looking forward to now go back and watch it with a fuller knowledge.

Mass Effect is a series that has a rich back story and world building aspects that can be totally ignored if you wish to play the game as a straight sci-fi action game. I being a Type-Moon fan of course am the sort of person who will pour over all the in-game encyclopedia entries and journals. So that fact alone won the game major bonus points with me. That aside I think the game lives up to all the praise the fans give to the series. It has a solid plot that you can play through fairly quickly if you skip all the side material. But half the fun is all the side missions you can do. The main plot line maybe be the entrée but the side dishes are equally important to the meal in its entirety although you might not want to do all the silly collect all the tchotchkes missions like I did. But the cool thing is so many of your decisions carry over to the next two games be it huge decisions you make in the main plot line or little choices you make in side quests. It gives you a reason to seek out missions just so you can impact the world as opposed to just collecting more money and experience. Knowing that the people you kill or tasks that you accomplish carry over give every decision you make a satisfying weight and consequence. The dialog and charterers are not War and Peace or Citizen Kane levels but you will get attached to most people and the writing is usually pithy. The morality system is one of the best for a modern video game. There are still some kick the dog ridiculously evil choices but most of the time picking the renegade choice is an acceptably gray moral decision. It makes playing the path other than the white knight choices viable to people who don’t just shoot the scientists in Half-Life because it is cool. As for the two biggest complaints I always hear about the game I agree with one and did not really care about the other. The Mako is sort of annoying as everyone says it is. It’s hardly unbearable but it is clunkier than it needs to be. When you are moving along it is fine but when you spend 10 minutes getting from one location of the map to another when is should have taken 30 seconds because of the terrain you quickly understand why people were glad they removed the tank driving from everything but some optional missions in the second game. The other major complain it’s the inventory system. I thought that about 90% of gear you pick up was just vendor trash but I did not find it that hard to deal with even on the 360. I just wish the shops were not just filled with random inventory as opposed to a fixed stock. I almost always had mediocre to poor armor because of this. Those flaws aside Mass Effect was pretty amazing. I beat it in about a week and missed quite a bit of sleep due to it keeping me up. If you any sort of American RPG fan it is worth trying it out.

The Zelda Skyward Sword comic with just five pages looks gorgeous but is really neither here nor there. It just leaves you wanting it to build upon what was done. Maybe once I play the game I’ll feel like it is a nice little intro.

I may be behind on some of my shows due to playing Mass Effect but I have kept up with Kamen Rider Fourze. It is still the goofy  Jojo’s Part 4 Kamen Rider it has always been. They finally have the team all assembled so they had their first real throw down match with a Boss character. Gentaro Kisaragi is still going along being an entertaining moron with a heart of gold. His character really exemplifies the appeal of the show. This is important because when the show goes into serious drama mode the Japanese acting makes the melodrama feel really odd and amateurishly cheesy. When they concentrate on the action or comedy it is sometimes surreal but always entertaining. I was slightly surprised by the big reveal in episode 13. It was a decently well executed reveal for a show that is normally so goofy. It is a fun little show that always manages to put a smile on my face. Worth checking out even if your are not normally a fan of tokusatsu shows. It has a strong charm that just cannot be denied.

I just discovered the Bad Machinery webcomic (sorry I don’t read many webcomics!) and I’ve fallen in love. I began with the current story Murder She Writes which doesn’t require prior knowledge to make you laugh and try to solve the spoof on the classic setup of a group of people stranded in a snowstorm where murders begin happening. Lottie our young sleuth is wonderfully odd and awkward. The artwork adds quirk to its already humorous trappings. What stands out for me is how well this comic does single pages with a beginning, middle, and end but also connects to the overarching story; it feels very satisfying rather than needing the whole thing at once in order to enjoy it.

And as soon as Carnival Phantasm Ex Season was translated I downloaded and watched it. It is the longest episode of Carnival Phantasm so far. It did make me realize one thing. I don’t really know all that much about Bazett and Caren’s actual personalities. Since Fate/Hollow Ataraxia still has not been translated I actually know them much more for their silly doujinshi personalities than who they actually are in-game. I wonder how odd it will be to play Fate/Hollow and see them how they were actually meant to be portrayed after seeing them as nothing but goofballs for so long. Still every time I see Bazett I have to wonder why she does not have more of a fan following. If it were not for Saber I am fairly certain I would be firmly on team Bazett. I am sort of amazed how much mileage they are getting out of this Phantasmoon joke but I think it needs to end here. Even I who have supported the Phantasmoon joke so far am beginning to wonder if they have any idea of when enough is enough. I wonder if I were a bigger Arcueid fan if I would change my tune or not. But to counter that they have a good deal of Robot Chicken style mini skits which work a bit better. Also the more Aozaki Aoko the better. Miss Blue is always wonderful. Now all that is left is to wait for the third season and the new version of Melty Blood for the PC.

I recently decided to take the plunge and play through the Mass Effect series. I was going to start a while back but my roommate’s 360 decided to retire with a dishonorable red ring discharge. But with the recent black Friday sales a new Xbox has found its way to the apartment again. So I decided it was as good a time as any to see what everyone was talking about. But as anyone who has played the game will tell you when you plunge into Mass Effect you have to make two major choices. The first is the gender of your character. A simple but important decision. While the game does not play entirely differently depending on your character’s gender there is enough of a change to be distinctly noticeable. The other major choice you have is to choose between a paragon or renegade style. You can play the game as a noble hero or as a loose cannon who gets the job done at any cost. While you can also play more towards the middle of the road the game encourages you mix up those play styles as you see fit but favor one over the other. Also playing someone who is true neutral is just boring.

According to Bioware only 20 % of the players play as the female Shepard. But as far as I can tell the fans of the female Shepard are extremely vocal where I personally have never seen anyone talk in favor of the male Shepard. Also most people prefer Jennifer Hale’s voice acting over Mark Meer’s as well. Both voice actors do a good job but Jennifer Hale really hits it out of the park. So I decided to go with a female protagonist for my first play through. It seemed like a nice change of pace from the macho action hero. All that was left to decide was I going to try the paragon or renegade path. Then I had a strange thought. I was suddenly massively aware of the two female archetypes of the action heroine. I was choosing between prim and proper lady of adventure and the in your face punk action girl. As I was trying to pick between these two archetypes I had another massive revelation. Why was I noticing this when I picked the female protagonist? The male hero is not any more or less nuanced. In fact when it comes to stories the male version of this dichotomy is perhaps even more cliché. Why did this thought come into my head when I was choosing my character?

Is it because the male hero is so obsequious he is much like air to us. Is he so commonplace that we hardly think about it unless we go out of our way to do so? Do we mostly only notice the tropes of the male protagonist when we go out of our way to dissect the archetypes in first place? How much of it has to be with a hypersensitivity to a female protagonist? A general low-level sexism inherent in our culture combined with a general lack of action heroines makes it so they are constantly under the microscope. Do we constantly ask ourselves is this female protagonist actually a good female character? Is she strong enough? Is she well written enough? Does she fall into a simple stock formula or does she have her of flair that makes her seem real. Because female heroes are just less common and even rarer to be done well do we constantly examine the ones we get?

I don’t really have any answers here. I am curious how often this happens to other people. Am I alone in feeling this way or do other people notice themselves doing the same? Am I being subtly sexist? By automatically examining the heroine as opposed to the hero am I showing a subtle bias or is that me just reacting to the way we treat the gender of the characters we create? Am I being overly sensitive about a game where you pick most of the character’s dialog anyway? I am curious to hear our reader’s opinions on the matter.

When Rango first came out, I was skeptical, but great reviews poured in. Finally, I got the chance to decide for myself. Rango is the story of a great big fake who becomes a great big hero. Amazingly, when we meet our scaly friend we don’t know his name, and actually still don’t know it, because “Rango” he makes up along with a series of amazing exploits that he sells to the folks in a little desert town called Dirt. This is a town in trouble as their water supply is drying up and the mayor is plotting something. Rango is the stranger who appears and changes everything. All things after the accident that puts Rango into the desert is a riff on the classic Western almost as if he has been thrown back in time (though of course he hasn’t). There is a clear knowledge of the reference material and it gives a little bite to some of the twists that you expect as well as great humor. The animation is all out incredible, there is a particularly flying scene that blew my mind with detail. Great film and certainly one of the best animated features of the year. Oh, and the owl mariachies are the best. I need a shirt with them.

I just read Princess Knight volume 1. When Narutaki and I read volume 2 we will probably do a full length editorial about the manga as a whole but I thought I would throw out a few thoughts before then. The oddest thing about Princess Knight was that Osamu Tezuka almost seems of have ADD with his storyline. I always knew that Osamu Tezuka liked to do episodic series like Black Jack and Astroboy. When I read the somewhat scatter brained plot of Swallowing the Earth I assumed that the fact that the plot was all over the place had to do more with Tezuka being new to Gekiga. But in Princess Knight jumps from plot line to plot line without really ever stopping for a breath. It is very clear to me that he is making up Princess Knight as he goes along while borrowing from Disney every step of the way. The main character goes from trying to hide her gender, to being a prisoner, to fighting a witch, to being on a pirate ship with hardly any transition. I think he clearly Tezuka had a beginning and an end mapped out but everything in between seemed to be decided as he was writing it. You can’t ever say you are bored by the book but it does feel a bit disjointed. Still the story is worth reading for the fact that it is a major milestone in manga history. While it was not the first shojo manga it was highly influential in the foundation of the genre. The book is just best enjoyed if you know going into  it that the book reads very young and has a scatter shot plot. I think I enjoyed the book a bit more than Narutaki because I went in with a more informed view of the book and knew what to expect.

The new special Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown premiered on television Thanksgiving night. This story focuses heavily on Linus and his security blanket which most everyone is trying to relieve him of. Lucy and Snoopy are the biggest antagonists in this. Peanuts is built on a dry humor and mean-spirited undertone but I’m not sure this special hit a sweet spot. It just felt a little too torturous of everyone.

I finally finished Kara no Shojo. I was on a podcast with Greg about the game but I has not finished it at that point. What said Greg was right. No matter what happens you get a pretty depressing ending for a majority of the characters. Fortunately you can save the characters from Cartagra but otherwise everyone else except for one or two people you meet in Kara no Shojo is going to up dead or seriously messed up. Playing through the whole game did make me realize a few things. The first is that video game mysteries have a delicate balancing act even more than most mysteries. There is always the dance between showing the culprit too much and therefore making the mystery too obvious or not showing the culprit enough and making their guilt seem like it came out of nowhere. With any video game where you can run around and investigate it becomes even more insane. It is a hard enough to keep the culprit in focus the right amount when the writer has full control of the audience’s attention in a book or film. When the player has much more control of the camera it becomes insanely difficult to control how much they can see without the grand reveal seeming either cheesy or obvious. In Kara no Shojo there are three main murder mysteries. I felt that the two main mysteries were fairly obvious if you were paying attention. The grand mystery would really takes multiple play thorough to get unless you just happen to suspect one location of being up to no good and repeatedly go there to see a pattern. But actually the best way to play the game as a detective is to play through once and save before any investigation scene and then go EVERYWHERE using saves and loads. Then with all that information in your head play through again with a bigger picture of what is happening. But the game really demands several play throughs as it is. I still stand by my positive review of the game but it is not without reservations. Only after finishing the game did I realize it has an odd misogynistic streak. Most of the time if you pursue one girl in the series her sex scene is just before she gets murdered. That is not the case for everyone but it is still some really messed up sexual politics when you get right down to it. It made me really uncomfortable when I though about it. It is a good series, a solid mystery, and generally a more substantial than your normal eroge but the darkness will understandably turn some people off and that is perfectly understandable.

Sailor Moon vol. 2 reminds me how much faster this story moves than the TV series. That’s a good thing by the way. Our five main guardians have come together and now they are tasked with protecting the princess and finding out about the Moon Kingdom. There are a few parts of extreme expository dialogue thanks to this. This volume also propels the relationship of Usagi and Mamoru ten-fold and the melodrama is concentrated. As the true goal of Queen Beryl comes to light things become tense with less one-off “we are making humans into our minions” plots. There is an interesting balance of pure evil vs. manipulated to evil which gives some depth to the story.

As an old Sierra adventure game player I decided to check out The Silver Lining. It is a fan made game based on the King Quest series that attempts to be a 9th game that ties everything up. It is planned to be five parts long with four parts already being released. It is very much a fan made game for better and for worse. For a game that is entirely made by fans and is free it is quite an accomplishment. The graphics are impressive, there is full voice acting, and clearly a good deal of love and respect for the original series. On the flip side the puzzles in the first two parts are horrifically simple, the voice acting can be wonky and amateurish, and the story sometimes unmistakably reads like fan fiction. That said it clearly an insane amount of man hours went into this and it shows. As I understand the next two parts have much more complex puzzles because the only time I had any difficultly was because I did not notice an out-of-place necklace popping up in location I had previously been. In the end I suppose it is better to err on the side of simpler but understandable rather than challenging but nonsensical seeing is that is often considered one of the things that hurt the adventure game genre back in the day. I also know some people were complaining continuity and retcon issues with the game but I never noticed them. Then again it have been over a decade since I played the last King Quest game so I only remember the broad stokes of the plot and characters. The nit picky details are firmly lost on me. And this is coming from someone who used to own the King Quest Companion. If you are a fan of the adventure game genre it is worth playing if for nothing else a nice taste of nostalgia with a price you can’t beat. I am curious how it will stack up to the upcoming official new King Quest game from Telltale Games.

Leonardo B. Harwey is the climactic boss of Fate/Extra. You fight one more Master during the falling action of Fate/Extra but so much of the game is building up to facing Leo in the final round that he is clearly the climactic boss. Through out the game he is built up as naive tyrant. He has grown up his whole life being told that he will rule over a perfect world where there will be a place for everyone and everyone will be in their place. And he will be at the top of that hierarchy like he was the Kwisatz Haderach.

His actions are never malicious. He merely assumes the position of  tyrant because it is the only path he has ever known and does everything in the game without a hint of conscience. At first he seems like a simple character. A character that is so pure being raised in an almost Skinner Box like environment that his evil and sociopathic actions are just as pure. He does evil and heartless things because he has never learned that such actions could ever been construed as anything but the correct choices. But as I played the game I wondered if there was deeper social commentary in his character.

After playing a bit of Fate/Extra I began to wonder if Leo is partially a critique of modern Japanese leadership and society. It seems like a ridiculous idea at first. But consider the world of Fate/Extra that the Harwey controls. It is a stagnant highly hierarchical world where knowing your place and doing what you are told in the most effect manner is strictly enforced. On top of that the parts of the planet under Harwey control have a suffocating lack of innovation and horrifically low birth rate. These can all be seen criticism often levied at modern Japanese society and the leadership that keeps such broken systems in place. I think it would add an interesting dynamic to the game if this were the case.

I will admit that beyond what I mentioned there is not a horrific amount in the game to back up my theory. I can’t really think of any overtly political statements by Kinoko Nasu in any other material he has written. But he is only the scenario writer so it theoretically could be some added sub text by one of the ground level writers. Also Leonardo B. Harwey is pretty darn European when you get right down to it. If they were going for such a statement would they not have made him Japanese. It does make we wonder if such subtext exists is it entirely coincidental. Fate/Extra being a Japanese product means that such concerns might naturally flow into a story through no deliberate effort of the writers to make a statement. In the end I am bringing it up more as a talking point to anyone who has played the game more than a proposal for my graduate thesis. I am curious to here anyone else opinion on the character and if you think he represents anything more than curious foil for the main character.

While Tsukihime maybe have been the title that put Type-Moon on the otaku radar it is Fate/Stay Night that solidified their names in Otaku circles. The concept of legendary heroes summoned by powerful wizards in a secret war for a fantastic prize in the modern age is a powerful and wonderfully reusable idea. The original visual novel spawned a sequel visual novel, a prequel novel series, several fighting games, several anime and manga adaptations, and more merchandise than you can shake a Golden Sword of the Victorious at. Anyone who has played the Fate/Stay Night visual novel will see the clear table top RPG elements that influenced the game. So the next logical step in the Fate franchise is take the visual novel and fuse it with the table top RPG and get their child, the video game RPG. Fate/Extra is set in an alternate universe than the main Fate/Stay Night world. It takes the premise and some of the structure of the visual novel and combines it with the game play of a Persona style Japanese RPG with its own unique spin on both.

In Fate/Extra you are allowed to make several choices that majorly effect the story including if you are male or female, which legendary hero you choose as your partner, and who you choose as your main ally and/or romantic interest. For this review I chose to play as a male protagonist, with Saber as my champion, and the Egyptian alchemist as my ally. In this post I will go over all the basic game review points and my musings on the path itself. I plan to do at least 2 more posts looking at the Archer and Caster paths, the female protagonist, the Rin path, and how much you get out of replaying the game a second and third time.

The Holy Grail War has started once again but it is no longer is it 7 magi and 7 warriors. Next Sunday AD a mysterious supercomputer was found on the moon that has recorded all of human history. Many people are chosen to upload their avatars on this strange machine that is a mixture of magical and technological. There they fight for their lives in order for one of them to gain to power of a true wish. The player is one of the 128 participants that made it to the first round of this digital battle for the grail.

After you play through the rather lengthy prologue you get to choose your Servant and get to the brass tacks of fighting in the Holy Grail War. Unlike the Fate/Stay Night battles are more of a structured tournament than a free for all battle royal. In Fate/Extra you are assigned a fellow participant to fight each week until there is only one person left standing. There are three main parts to the game.  The first parts is the most visual novel like part of the game. You run around the digital school talking to people in hopes of discovering who your opponent is, what their powers are, and how best to fight them. The more information you get the easier your fight in the coliseum will be. You also use this time to upgrade your Servant’s stats and buy items.

There is the dungeon crawling section where most of the combat takes place. Every week you have to get 2 key cards to qualify for the weekly battle while fighting various digital creatures. The combat is a rock-paper-scissors system where you program your Servant to use a 6 long combination of attacks, blocks, and breaks against an enemy that does the same. At first you can only see on of the six moves your enemy is using but as you fight more of the type of enemy you begin to see more and more of their repertoire automatically. This means unless you are an incredibly good guesser you will often get your bum handed to you the few dozen or so times to meet a new enemy. After a few battles you can guess at what type of patterns any enemy uses as well as the game just showing you more of their patterns as well. You and your servant can also cast spells or use items which are often a great boon.

At the end of the week you will fight your fellow Master in the arena. While the combat system is the same as in the dungeons these battles against the Servants are boss battles. Of course like any boss character have tons of health and a wide variety of special moves as well as any spells their Master’s might cast. The only way to really have a decent chance in the battles is to do the full research on your opponents. Even with a full contingent of research you usually only get 1 to 3 of your opponents moves so realistically anything less than that is foolish. I suppose with some luck and major spell casting you could make it through but most of the time if you follow the plot and take your time you should be able to do all the research every week without any major game play gymnastics.

The combat system is definitely unusual. It is not the standard Attack, Magic, Item, Flee combination although there are elements of that. This unusual design leads to a strange variation of the normal difficulty curve for enemies. When you first meet a new monster in any section they are incredibly tough. But if you fight enough of them they become complete push overs. So learning the general form of the enemies attacks as soon as possible is usually in your best interest. I have a feeling that it will be a very divisive system to most people. You will either think it a very clever way to approach battles or an extreme annoyance you have to work around. I felt the system was functional but at times annoying. It sometimes just feels like a game of chance more than strategy. If you see it as a game of remembering patterns and choosing wisely you will enjoy it. If you see it as nothing more than a very fancy game of Jan-ken-pon you have a greater chance of being annoyed. But it never got in the way of the story which was the most important part for me.

For my first play through I chose Saber. They bill her as the game’s easy mode and from what I have seen of the other two servants this is no joke. She starts out as a powerhouse that easily mows down most enemies with a high attack power. She also has a good defense to help you weather many a beating when you are learning enemy patterns.  She also has an auto-resurrect spell which can be a godsend in boss battles. Also once you have her Nobel Phantasm (her most powerful spell) she can easily tear through bosses like they were tissue paper.  I would go into her personality but I already wrote a whole article on that. She is fun in her hedonistic and pompous manner. She does a good job in making you enjoy a historical character you might not usually have a good deal of fondness for otherwise.

The biggest turning point in the game other than which servant you choose is who you ally yourself with in the 4th week. You can either choose to save Rani or Rin. Saving one means you develop a relationship with one and  have to fight the other. This also changes your fights completely for two weeks of the seven weeks and changes some of the details of the game as well from that point forward. I chose Rani with my first play through. She is a very Rei Ayanami like character. Rani is an artificial human who learns what it is to have feelings though her interactions with the player. I would have liked to learn a bit more about the wizards of Atlus through her but sadly that was not meant to be. She is a strong character and she has a good character arc though the game when she is your partner.

While I have already touched on it through out the post there are some major nudges and winks to any long time Type-Moon fans. There are the obvious shout outs like Arc or Aoko and Touko Aozaki. There are also many subtler jokes like the fact that Lancer is Rin’s servant and the fact that the student’s think that Taiga is having an affair with a certain student she often visits at home. The last Boss is even a pretty big in-joke if you catch it. They even mention a certain cross dressing king of England. I could easily do a whole article just explaining all the sly little Easter eggs. They are not enough to alienate anyone just coming in to the Nasuverse but they are rich rewards for the old fans.

Overall I am unsurprisingly going to give this game a solid thumbs up. A great story with competent game play. It is fun take of the Fate universe that takes the solid premise of the Holy Grail War and creates something that works well on a handheld game platform. The story and dialog are very clearly written by Nasu Kinoko. There is even a manga exchange scene although it is distinctly P-13 so we do not get any long seafood metaphors. It has the feel of the original premise but adds a new series of concepts to make it feel fresher than just a RPG rehash of Fate/Stay Night. It really has me excited for what they are doing do with Fate/Apocrypha now that project has been restarted.

A few quick spoiler thoughts. I mention that this paragraph is full of spoilers just in case anyone is really bothered by them. The first is the decoy protagonist in the prolog. I was definitely a bit thrown off by playing as a character who dies in the preliminaries. It seems like a just an artistic way to start the game and a bit of a tip of the fate to Rin’s prologue in Fate/Stay Night. But by the end of the game the significance of the prologue is even more profound. Also Twice H. Pieceman is a bit of  odd last boss. He reminds me of a great deal of Zeromus in Fantasy Fantasy IV. He comes off as this last boss that pops out of nowhere as the true villain. While Pieceman does not totally come out of nowhere he is nowhere nearly as well established as Leo. He is not totally jarring but it is worth mentioning.

There is one reason for any Type-Moon fan to play through Rani’s path and that is during the 4th week you go up against a very unusual Berserker named Arcueid Brunestud. Anyone who has played Tsukihime will instantly recognize the Princess of the True Ancestors. She is definitely a fun the bonus even if most of her dialog is grunts and screams. As I understand she is far harder than the Lancer you would fight on Rin’s path.

It was a little heart breaking to have to fight Rin as well. As a beloved character from Fate/Stay Night it is a bit of a twist of the knife for anyone who is familiar with the original game. I would say the same thing for Lancer but Lancers historically get the short end of the stick in ever Fate game so I am used to that by now. Lancer was one of the hardest bosses I had to fight as his Nobel Phantasm is on of the few attacks that you resisted with luck and I had never raised that stat. I would have to do some major grinding if it were not for Saber’s incredible spell set.

Once again I want to thank Aksys Games for working on this title. They did a super job with the game and clearly put a great deal of effort into it. If you have not already gone out and picked up the game then I suggest you make haste to the store and get a copy. With smaller titles like this it every sale that really counts. Plus I really want to play a legitimate version of Fate/Extra CCC and they are only going to pick up that license if this does well. Don’t you want to learn who the Strange Tail Girl is or see Archer’s totally bad ass new outfit?

Over the years as an anime fan I have picked up a few skills from just watching enough anime. They include the ability to notice animation errors, an eye to detect directorial styles,  and an understanding of Japanese trends and tropes. You always have these abilities to some degree but the more you watch the better you are at it. The one skill that Narutaki and I have never been that great at no matter how much we watch anime is the ability to instantly recognize voice actors. We are far better at it then when we started the blog but honestly that is because the only direction we could head was up. We have the basic detect Norio Wakamoto and recognize Rie Kugimiya skill set but we are far below the proficiency of any decent seiyu aficionado.

But there is one voice actress I can always recognise and it is very unsurprisingly Ayako Kawasumi. While I remember her playing Melfina in Outlaw Star but she really caught my attention as Lafiel in Crest of the Stars. She has played roles I love like Megumi Noda in Nodame Cantabile and Kanako Ohno in Genshiken. She also starred in shows I have much less love for like Mahoro Ando in Mahoromatic and Aoi Sakuraba in Ai Yori Aoshi. But to cut to the heart of the matter the character that trained me to recognize her voice is very clearly Saber. If there is any character that is going to make me remember your voice it is her. So when Fate/Extra came along they announced that while the playable Saber maybe very familiar looking she would be a very different character to the point where she would be voiced by Sakura Tange. So hearing this new Saber leads me to an odd bit of cognitive dissidence which is what this post is all about.

Past this point is spoiler country. While I assume the identity of Fate Stay/Night Saber is firmly entrenched in the “No. *I* am your father ” territory for anime fans the identity of Fate/Extra Saber is far less a piece of common knowledge.

In Fate/Extra you are given the choice of three different servants one of which is a red clad warrior of the Saber class who is similar to the iconic blue themed King of Knights. But if you choose this red swordswoman the difference is made very clear very quickly. The original Saber is stoic and reserved. A woman of duty and honor she is very spartan in her lifestyle. While she can be very proud she can be very humble depending on the circumstance. She is not a big talker and prefers deeds to words. She goes out of her way to be gender neutral and is very reserved in her few dramatic emotional moments. Even then is usually small changes in tone and speech. While Fate/Stay Night Saber is revealed to be Arturia Pendragon the Fate/Extra Saber is in fact Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus and their personalities are like night and day. Fate/Extra Saber is a hedonist who does everything with an overindulgent gusto. She fights like a demon when she is on the battlefield and indulges herself in vice twice as much when at rest. She is very openly bisexual saying the only things she cares for is what is beautiful. She is loud and opinionated often butting into conversations, throwing around advice, and insulting your enemies as she sees fit. She boisterous and arrogant and all her proclamations are that of an empress that is partially divine. Each seiyus puts that unique character into their respective performance. Ayako Kawasumi plays Saber in a very understated manner with a regal but reversed tone. She allows occasional variations to sink in when appropriate but has them be understated so they are noticeable but not out of character. Sakura Tange on the other hand is just eating up the scenery in her performance. I often felt like she is channeling Megumi Hayashibara’s performance of Lina Inverse. I mean just compare the two and see how frighteningly similar they are.

This all leads to the odd surrealness to my current media. Ayako Kawasumi is ingrained in my head as the voice of Saber from anime, movies, visual novels, video games, drama CDs, image albums, and variety of other places where they can stick a talking Saber. So hearing a strange voice coming out of Saber even is if is Permanent-Panty-Flash-Saber™.  It is like meeting your best friend after a week’s vacation as hearing them with a different voice and personality like some silly soul swapping episode of a series.  I got used to it after a few battles but I was surprised how much it threw me off at first. I never realized how I had imprinted that character design with that voice. It makes me understand a little better why people get so up in arms when the seiyu for the drama CD is different from the seiyu for the anime.

Several people have asked me how can there be two Sabers. I usually give them a rather long explanation of how the Holy Grail system work in Fate/Stay Night but I won’t bore you with the detailed explanation here.  Sufficed to say it is like a Dungeons & Dragons character class. Saber is merely a class like fighter or rouge. Any one can fill the slot as long as they meet the requirements. So there can be any number of Sabers. But why do they both look the same? If I want to be cynical I think it is because the Saber character design is one that sells. I have heard several people say they love Saber by looks alone but have never seen anything of the Type-Moon universe. But the fan in me wants to believe it is also partially to invoke this reaction I just explained. Giving you something you think you know but changing it enough that it becomes a strange but intriguing new flavor. Hoping for a Cherry Coke reaction and not a New Coke disaster. Overall I think Fate/Extra Saber is not as divine as the original but she is not a flavor I mind sampling from time to time.

It should come as no surprise that I per-ordered the Aksys Games release of Fate/Extra so I could get all the limited edition goodies. The question for anyone who did not already get the game might be is it still worth hunting down the limited edition or the Fate/The Fact booklet that was only available by pre-ordeing the game through Gamestop? I will review the game itself when I have gone through at least one play through. Until then I don’t think I can give it a fair review. This is just a look three pieces of Limited Edition material for anyone who knows they want the game but is still curious about the additional material and if it worth the additional cost.

If you got the limited edition release of Fate/Extra you received a hard cover book with two premium items in it. The first extra is the Fate/Extra Visual Works art book. It contains 5 pieces of art from Arco Wada and a bonus drawing of Fate/Extra Saber by Takashi Takeuchi. There are also a few words from Takashi Takeuchi about his take on Busty Roman Saber as well as commentary about all the pictures by Arco Wado. The art work all involves either Saber, Rin, Rani, or the female version of the protagonist. There is unsurprisingly two cheesecakey illustrations but they actually have Lancer of all people in one picture as well. They are fairly well done and there is even a reproduction of the famous meeting of Saber and Shiro done with Extra characters. I was super surprised that there were absolutely no pictures of Caster or Archer in the art book. Caster is pretty darn cute and Archer has to be the most popular male Type-Moon character. All the other side characters were left out as well. Rider has a convincing pair of reasons to be featured and they are not her pistols.

The second bonus item is a CD with selection of ten songs from the soundtrack. It has the themes of the three playable servants and 7 other pieces of incidental music. The music is entertaining and lively. It is better than generic RPG music but not breath taking along the lines of the Umineko soundtrack. And of course since Archer is in the game it means another remix of Emiya. But Emiya is so intense it would be criminal not to include it. The most notable exclusion from the soundtrack is the opening song Ranse Eroica from the Ali Project. I am sure that the licensing cost for that song by itself is why we did not get a full soundtrack added but it is still a sad omission.

The last oddity is the hardest to get: The Fate/the Fact booklet. It is a little  magazine written as if it were a magazine from the Fate/Extra universe. It has quite a bit of background information about the setting and some surprisingly revealing details about some of the cast and the world the game is set in. In fact is straddles the line between being a supplement you should read before you play the game and a big old book of spoilers depending on how you look at it. It is a great book if you are one of those people who goes out of their way to read every data file in a game like Mass Effect to fully immerse yourself in the setting. Otherwise if you are someone prone to pound X when exposition comes on the screen so you can get back to the action it is just going to be a wall of words. I am curious how much of the information contained within is explained within the game and how much you can only learn from reading the book. Note: The author LOVES to use foot notes for all the articles. Each of the 5 articles have at least 6 footnotes. So strange.

So the big question is should you splurge for the full set or are you better off just buying the game via digital download. Back in the day I know my roommate and many people like him would buy strategy guides for games they had already beaten. This seems silly but the reason to do this was often those books had art you could only find casually in those books and so they worth their weight in gold to fans of the series. Now in this digital age it is not that hard to find pretty much all the art in Visual Works and any of the songs on the CD with a minor about of web searching. So then what is the value? The value is they are well made. Every part of the limited set just looks good. If you have an appreciation for the tangible there is something here to sink your teeth into even if we did get truncated versions. If you are any level of serious Type-Moon I am slightly shocked you have not already picked up the prestige edition. For everyone else while there is much to like about the bonus material it is not vital for the experience. Still I must applaud Aksys Games for this release. It was above and beyond and quite appreciated. A little spectacle at a reasonable price goes a long way to winning my praise.

Finally a podcast where I get to talk about Fate/Extra CCC for an hour. Oh wait. That would be horrible. So instead I did an appearance on the Eroge Bus podcast with the Digital Bug from Reisen Goes to School by Bus. The main topic is Kara no Shoujo which I already discussed the demo of on the blog but now we talk about the full release from MangaGamer. It is an unusual erotic detective visual novel with a strong emphasis on the player actually solving the mystery. We also discuss visual novel news and upcoming releases in the visual novel world. Also since it is me Type-Moon comes up like 20 times and we discuss Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney. I might also eat up the news that Key’s Rewrite sold way below expectations like sweet candy.

Eroge Bus – Episode 3

I suppose I should have a picture of what I actually spent a bulk of my time talking about.

Sadly this article is not about Emperor Dornkirk and the Fate Alteration Engine but about how it is a wonderful time to be a Type-Moon fan. Carnival Phantasm season one recently came out and was hysterical. All was right with the world. Type-Moon then announced that the limited edition of the third season would come with the newest version of Melty Blood for the PC. All was even better with the world. Good Smile made-over their cafe to have a Carnival Phantasm theme. All was awesome with the world. While Type-Moon might be constantly pushing back the date for A Witch on the Holy Night, Girls’ Work seems more mysterious than real, and the Tsukihime remake seems like dream there is tons of good news for Fate/Stay Night fans. Saber fandom über alles!

At first there was great rejoicing at the news that the Fate/Zero prequel novels were being adapted into an anime. Considering how poorly anime and manga novels have done in English the commonly held sentiment was that the only way US fans would get to experience the story beyond summaries was if there was anime. But now not only is the anime coming out but it is being simulcast in 8 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES (Korean, Chinese (Traditional & Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish) all over the world via Nico Nico Douga. Aniplex and ufotable are truly embracing an international market and I appreciate their efforts. The episodes will only be up for one week but that is just a good indication that they wish to release the DVDs and Blu-Ray Discs overseas as soon as possible. While I fear that means we will probably have to pay prices like with the Kimi ni Todoke boxsets it is better than nothing. Hopefully they will be as nice as the Kimi ni Todoke boxsets as well. Also not to be outdone there are also Fate/Zero cafes in Japan just to put a cherry on top of everything.

And in the same trend of getting translations of Type-Moon properties that no one really thought we would ever get came the announcement of an English version of Fate/Extra. At Anime Expo everyone was shocked when Aksys Games announced that they had picked up the license for Fate/Extra. But they did not stop there. Aksys Games are also releasing a limited edition box set and the Fate/the Fact Booklet if your preorder the game through Gamestop. Fate/Extra is a Persona style RPG that takes place in a parallel universe to the traditional Fate/Stay Night universe. Saber may look mostly like everyone’s favorite Saber (except for the larger breasts) but she is voiced by Sakura Tange and her true identity is quite different. (And before you guess she is not Joan of Arc.) Kinoko Nasu is the scenario writer on this game so I am confident it will be pretty darn fun.

And if that were not enough Image Epoch and Marvelous Entertainment announced that Fate/Extra was getting a sequel entitled Fate/Extra CCC. While there are not a good deal of details out it seems the story is more of an alternate path to Fate/Extra than a full sequel. The Heaven’s Feel of Fate/Extra, if you will,  including an increased emphasis on Sakura. As a bonus you can carry over information from the first game for bonuses in CCC. And of course there is a special edition box set with a slew of extras including a wedding dress Saber figure. I really hope Fate/Extra does well enough in the US that we can get this as well.

I can’t tell you how much all this news excites me. The only thing that would be better would be the US release of the Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Hollow Ataraxia visual novels. Maybe we could also get an English version of Decoration Disorder Disconnection. But I am not that greedy. Everything here is beyond my expectations. Plus it makes the wait for A Witch on the Holy Night so much easier.

P.S. Considering who Fate/Extra Saber is how can anything related to her be called the Virgin White Bride.

I am always a bit hesitant to start visual novels. I don’t mind some sex in my story telling and I know that the way the Japanese PC game market works is that the conventional wisdom is that you have to throw in some sex to get people to play. I just want to play something with more story than sex and the sex should not make me throw up in my mouth a little. I was interested in Kara no Shojo because it is a historical murder mystery set is post WWII Japan. The question in my mind was is this murder mystery with some sex thrown in for flavor or a sex game with some murder mystery for an air of legitimacy. So when the demo came out I was curious to test the game out to see how much of an impression I could get.

Reiji Tokisaka is a Private Investigator who is investigating a series of brutal serial killings of young women as a consultant for the police. To crack the case Reiji goes undercover as a teacher at a the Ouba Girls Academy where two of the girls disappeared from. At the same time a student at the school named Kuchiki Toko asks that Reiji to take the puzzling case of finding her true self. Who is killing these girls? Are these murders related to the death of Reiji’s fiance years ago? How does Kuchiki Toko’s missing self tie it all together?

To MangaGamer’s credit they give 5 and a half chapters play so you get a good feel of what it is like. The game is somewhat in the middle of the plot vs sex divide but there is a strong enough narrative that is perfectly acceptable to play this for the plot. For one thing you actually have to play detective. You get a notebook that keeps track of what you have learned about the cases you are working on. You often have to use that information to decide who to talk to, what leads to follow, what to focus on at crime scenes, or what information to research. From what I have read about the game there are many endings some of which depend on making the right investigative decisions during the game. So you can’t be asleep at the wheel to get the good endings or the true ending. The mystery itself seems intriguing and ties in with the Divine Comedy so it seem to have some degree of substance to it as well.

In what I played there was only one sex scene although apparently I could have gotten another one had I hunted around for it. It seemed a bit gratuitous but there was nothing objectionable about the scene and it was consensual. It did seem like the scene could have been removed and flow of the story would have been unharmed so I wonder if they ever had console adaptations in mind with this title. I can clearly see several other girls who you are surely going to sleep with (it is centered around serial killings at a Catholic girl’s school) so there are clearly going to be more sex scenes in the future. So while there is a strong narrative you have to be willing to put up (or conversely just enjoy) with several sex scenes to play this game. On the flip side of the controversy coin the gore is present but much more graphic in the descriptions than in the visual. There are mutilated bodies and some sinister events narrated but while the graphics are bloody they don’t go into any amount of detail I could not handle. The text descriptions are far more gruesome but I am oddly more comfortable with that.

As someone who has mostly played doujin visual novels I have to say that Kara no Shojo has a professional feel. There is a distinctly classy vibe to the audio and the visuals. The graphics are fairly elegant and have a soft warmth to them. Most of the characters have realistic features so almost all the girls have black hair which given the art style can making figuring out who is who a bit of a challenge at first. I got used it quickly and most of the girl stand out due to personality if nothing else. The music  set the mood well and is well composed. It is very atmospheric and gentle. Not as great as the Umineko soundtrack but what is.

A quick note. This game is actually a one story in a series of games by Innocent Grey. As far as I could tell this is a stand alone story and  no previous knowledge of the earlier games in the series was needed to play this game. Shugo and Kazuna from Cartagra are minor characters but they are more there as a nudge and a wink to anyone who played the previous games.

Overall I have to say I was reasonably impressed. It is something I look forward to picking up when it comes out to see if it lives up to my initial expectations. My overall verdict would depend on how well the mystery plays out but that is only something I can judge with the completed game.

I mentioned last week briefly that I started watching Brave Police J-Decker which is kinda like if Tranformers was about police robots. I am up to 20 episodes thus far, almost half-way, and it is wonderful to see that is has a range. There is plenty of silliness to go around with like the fact that Deckerd (the main robot) uses a six-shooter a lot of the time, or the odd neighbors, the strange robots and their mysteries, and the many women who I’m pretty sure are in love with some of our robot heroes. Let’s not forget the names of these sentient hunks of metal like Power Joe (Kung-fu Detective) and Drill Boy (Soccer Detective) or McClane (Combat Detective) who claims to be a pacifist or the combined form Super Build Tiger! And of course the series is continually adding new robots and transformations for toys sake. But it has also had some fairly compelling episodes like the two-part story that introduces Shadowmaru (Ninja Detective) which gets a bit philosophical as we see freedom, what is means to be sentient, and sacrifice. Also you can’t not love the commissioner because he has amazing hair and responds that it “looks cool” when asked why they designed a robot in a certain manner. This show is tons of fun, sometimes engaging, has a fab opening, and is absolutely worth watching.

It came out a little too late for the spring preview but I finally got around to watching the first episode of Moshidora. It is an odd little series when you get right down to it. It is born from the idea of how do you make Peter Drucker’s Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices palatable to an audience of Japanese salarymen. The answer is obviously to center it around a schoolgirl. Minami Kawashima is the high schoolgirl in question who volunteers to take over as the manager of the baseball team in place of her sickly friend, Yuki Miyata, who has been hospitalized. After accidentally picking buying a business management book  she decides to apply the principles within towards her team. The team itself has a mixture of members with various levels of talent but they all seem to have broken spirits and various hangups. Minami herself used to play baseball but some incident in the past soured her on playing. The setup itself is a fairly standard baseball anime story of the new unsure manager has to whip the team that is a diamond in the rough into shape for Koshien. It is slightly amusing to see them cut to slide show styled title card when ever they mention certain business related key words. I am watching just because it is such an unusual blend sports and business anime. I am curious to see them play a game because I feel that is where this series will could prove its worth beyond a mere oddity.

I watched the animated short Paraphernalia by Sabrina Cotugno which is elegant and gracefully in its animation of a girl who gets an unexpected visitor dropped into her cluttered house. The lighting is also worth noting. People seemed divided on the whether the construction lines on the characters faces fazed them any, personally I found them to be a little distracting. Overall a lovely and memorable piece.

Although I have played Devil Survivor beyond that I have not played much of the wildly popular Megami Tensei series. I decided to try out Persona 3 since there was a portable version which is far more conducive to my current play style. This was the first Persona game to throw in dating sim elements which makes the number of games I have played with dating sim elements lately pretty high. You start as student who recently transferred to a new school. You were recruited due to your ability to summon demons like all the other student at the dorm. Apparently there is a secret 13th hour in which only demon summoners can remain awake during. In this time you must fight the monsters that prey on people in this hour between midnight and 12:01. During the day you investigate how the monsters are effecting the area and use those clues to fight them at night. You can also make friends and romance women to create spiritual bonds that will power up your demons. So the day is the dating sim and the special hour is the standard RPG. Other than that it sticks to the standard Megami Tensei formula. Beating monsters lets you capture demons (demons and monsters are two different things) and you can combine them to create more powerful demons giving it a very Pokemon like vibe. Everything in the game has elemental weaknesses so finding an enemies elemental alignment while guarding your own is very important. Also getting a hit with an attack that exploits an elemental weakness lets whoever used that attack go again making elemental strategy doubly important. The big bonus to playing the portable version is they added a new story line where you can also play as a female protagonist in addition to the standard male protagonist. They highly recommend you play her storyline AFTER you play the original story so I have not tested out that addition. It is a fun game that I would have probably otherwise missed had it not been on a portable system as that is how I do almost all my gaming. If nothing else I am curious to play the equally popular Persona 4.

I have been pleasantly surprised by Hanasaku Iroha as I figured things had completely changed after episode 3, but things calmed down for the most part in 4-6. Some of the comedy I feel they are trying too hard with, like the misunderstanding goes all kinds of which way in episode 5. But the bonding between the girls and the slow opening up of the Grandmother is positive. I especially enjoyed seeing the learning about the Grandmother a bit in the last episode though I found it a bit dumb that after the old kimono idea went over so well they just packed them away again it seemed.

Votoms Finder is an odd animal. Most of then Armored Trooper Votoms series is centered around the adventures of Chirico Cuvie. But with Finder instead they decided to tell a different story in the same universe much like they did with Armor Hunter Mellowlink. I think it is a sign that they have all but stripped bare the mine that is the life of Chirico Cuvie. This takes place in a very Battle Angel like world where the privileged elites live in glamorous cities on the mountains and the huddled masses live in the scrap heaps of the valleys below. You have a hard-working goofball named Aki who gets involved in a kidnapping and political struggle between some high-ranking elite politicians.  He winds up helping the kidnappers who double cross him and so he then teams up with the kidnapped girl’s bodyguard to save her and get back at the sleazy politician who set him up. Overall I had fun. The story was not that complicated but is was sufficient for a 40 minute OVA. The mecha battles were good and pretty constant which is always good in an OVA. The real question is who is this for. I know a lot of big Votoms fans are going to be PISSED. In fact this might do better with people who have never seen the original. They keep many of the things that made the original interesting but the changes they make are changes to some vital things that people loved about the original. In the original the suits were disposable and battles came down to the pilots skill not who has the best robot. While this is still true the suits were originally very utilitarian and bulky. The mecha in Finder are so much more flashy with a more Gundam influenced flair on the designs and suits that are much more acrobatic as they jump around. Also they went with the standard teenage protagonist rather than the grizzled military veteran. Aki is much more Judau Ashta than he is Char Aznable if you catch my drift. The politics are also much simpler and cleaner than the gritty worlds of the original.  I think they are hoping to make Votoms a bit more hip for a new generation but I wonder if any of the old fans will be able to accept the changes. It did seem like they might be trying to use this as a backdoor pilot as they make hints to a  greater world throughout the OVA.

I love the addition of Yuina from the rival inn.

If there are two current Shonen Jump properties that would easily integrate into one another, they are One Piece and Toriko. What with Luffy and crew’s constant island hoping, and penchant for eating large quantities of food, meeting Toriko is right in line with things. So just when the Strawhats find their cupboards bare they spot an island. Luffy, Chopper, Nami, and Sanji head out to find food and run into giant pigs that while still alive already have that yummy barbecued smell and flavor. This is also where they meet Toriko who mistakes Chopper for another piece of rare cuisine. Let the fighting and eating commence! This was actually my introduction to Toriko and it was a lot of rambunctious fun! And that’s all it is, though I don’t know if there is any over arching plot beyond discovering these foods to worry about later on, it just doesn’t need it.

Before we kicked off watching Toriko for the season preview we decided to watch the one hour One Piece/Toriko cross over special. The purpose of the cross over is simple. Toriko is new and they want to build an audience for the show and One Piece is insanely popular so it will draw viewers by default. Despite that cynical reasoning the two shows cross over easily in a very organic fashion. It begins with the One Piece pirates and the Toriko gang landing on the same fantastical island of food. Since both groups are gluttonous little gourmands the fact that they would team up to get delicious but dangerous dishes the logical conclusion of their meeting more than a forced plot device. They have to do the prerequisite fight that is quickly broken up to turn into a team up rather quickly. After the initial misunderstanding is cleared up Toriko and Luffy band together to take down some tasty monsters and rescue their weaker party members when they are kidnapped. I did notice that the Strawhats got a bit of the short end of the stick. Half the pirate crew was on the boat most of the special and Luffy seems to be underpowered in order to let Toriko shine. But this was really made to hook people on what a manly man Toriko therefore if Luffy is destroying everything he meets than people will forget Toriko before they even get a chance to know him. But that does not diminish this fun little side quest. It is recommended for fans of either series or anyone who likes humorous shonen fighting shows.

Finally picked up Solanin manga-ka Inio Asano’s What a Wonderful World vol. 1 which is a series of mildly connected short manga stories. Each one has the theme of living, what it is to really live, at its core. That sounds rather sobering but the series has a buoyancy to it perhaps because it recognizes that in real life not every moment is dramatic. There is also bits of musicians in here too making me aware of Asano’s favor of them.

I decided to check out Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes for the DS. Might and Magic has been one of the stalwart franchises in the fantasy role-playing game pantheon so I was curious to see what the modern entry into the series was like. Clash of Heroes is a mixture of your bare-bones  strategy RPG and a puzzle game. The plot revolves five children who are at a meeting attended by their parents that is scattered when demon attack. The story revolves around recovering a MacGuffin called the Blade of Binding that can send the demons back to their own world. Every chapter has you playing as one the 5 children as they try to find the Blade while foiling any plans the demons and their allies have. The battle system is unusual in the fact that you control small armies that randomly line up on the bottom of your screen in 6 by 8 grids. You get units to attack by connecting them together in rows on three in a bejeweled manner. You then try to get your troops to smash through his troops. You can also buy bigger units that will be randomly added to your normal troops. They take more to activate but they do more damage and have special abilities. This means that there is a small amount of strategy involved in which units you take into battle and which units you activate on the field. Each of the heroes also has their own set of units and special powers that lets them play slightly differently. It is a fun little game. Nothing amazing as the plot is pretty standard and the game play is simple. On the other hand an excellent portable game because you can finish anything but boss battles in a few minutes. As I understand they recently improved the graphics and released it as a downloadable game on the Xbox 360  and PS3 as well.

Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi: Onodera Ritsu no Baai is an OVA that came out just a little while before the TV series began. In this we actually get the back story hinted at in the TV version; the beginning of Ritsu’s and Masamune’s relationship in high school. There is a refreshing quality here as both of these guys fall rather easily into their coupling neither needing to be “shown that he is gay” which is a frequent starter. As might be imagined this OVA is more sweet rather than the humorously warm feeling of the TV series. Nevertheless a very satisfying piece to the story.

I stopped by the Borders near where I work to see what manga deals they had and I picked up Maria Holic 4 and 5. Maria Holic continues to be a guilty pleasure of mine no matter how trashy it gets at points. Kanako is still the punching bag of the plot but when the humor is on it can be extremely funny. The part where everyone is playing the Japanese history CCG is hysterical and they have a good number of cards with scarily realistic abilities as if it were a real CCG. I also love the joke where Kanako mentions that no matter what the card they play things turn out like they did in history which is an extremely clever little joke. The 4th book has a bit of reflection on Mariya and touches a bit on the serious side of the story as well. Now that Tokyopop is gone I have a feeling that this will not be license recused any time soon which is a real shame because I know it has it detectors but it also has its fans of which I am one.

As can be imagined Toriko fan-art is spilling out like crazy!

It is confession time. For all my Type-Moon discussion on the blog there was a distinct hole in my studies of the translated works of Kinoko Nasu in the fact that I had never played Kagetsu Tohya (Ten Nights of the Singing Moon). When I first checked the status of the translation it was incomplete and so playing the game slipped my mind. But I finally got off my duff to play the game for my Type-Moon panel. Kagetsu Tohya is as sequel to their original visual novel Tsukihime but it has a different feel and mechanic to it than the original which is a trend that would carry over to Fate/Hollow Ataraxia as well. Unlike Tsukihime that has 5 different paths than are mostly linear within their own storyline Kagetsu Tohya only has one path but it branches and loops in a variety of ways. It also has quite a bit of side stories and bonus materials that you can unlock as well.

Shiki Tohno has been experiencing some strange days.  Recently he finds him self in a bit of a haze as he can’t remember what he has been doing for the last few days. Everyone he meets seems to be slightly confused as he is and claims to have seen him in multiple places at once. While Shiki tries to regain his memories he learns that there has been a rash of murders in town like last year but they seem not to be vampiric in nature. On top of that he learns that he is trapped in a Groundhogs Days style time loop. What does his fuzzy memory, a doppelganger, and endless day, and a mysterious but familiar girl in black all have in common?

After the opening you find yourself stuck in a loop every day. You get to make several choices and if you are killed, trigger certain confrontations, or go to bed the day will end and you will find yourself back at the main screen. You soon learn that while it seems you are making no progress in fact by triggering certain scenes will be given new choices or given different results to old choices that will eventually lead you to a way to break out of your endless nightmare. The main game if played optimally is rather short. By making all the right choices to unlock all the content with a guide it only took two days for me to play through the main storyline. Since you are stuck reliving the same day again and again much of the text can be auto-skipped after a few iterations. The story is about equal the  one path in the original game. The main problem is that while you will eventually find the right events to get to the ending it is very possible to miss unlocking content unless you have a guide. So it comes down to a choice of discovering things for yourself or being sure to get everything as it is not that hard to miss some of the side material.

As you play though the main game there are a bunch of side stories you can unlock.The content covers a wide variety of material including canon stories like Red Demon God and Crimson Moon that contain valuable world building side stories,  Imogirisou and Hisui-chan, Inversion Impulse! that are mostly gag stories, and Flower of Thanatos which is salacious story involving everyone’s favorite twin maids. There are also some cute little summer festival stories and hidden story if you unlock everything. On top of that there are little daily message screens when you load up the game  or go back to the title menu. Apparently there are over 200 of these and contain everything from information about unseen Dead Apostles to who was the first Kohaku cosplayer.

When all is said in done there is a reason this is not called Tsukihime 2. Everything in the game including the main story of Twilight Glass Moon, Fairy Tale Princess feels like a side story. That does not mean that Kagetsu Tohya is superfluous. About half the material from Melty Blood come from here and if does round out many of the characters  (unless your name is Yumizuka Satsuki) and the Type-Moon world in general. Also most of the stories are great. The main story is told in an interesting manner and does have some major changes for a few characters.  The Tohno Family Con Game was my favorite story with its mixture of humor and sentiment especially for any Kohaku fans. The sex scenes are even a little more wonky than they are normally for Nasu but the translation patch lets you cut them out if you want so you can enjoy the game without those interruptions and the fact that there a not that many naughty scenes all in all in this game. Definitely worth a look especially considering how quickly you play through it if you set your mind to it. My only regret was not playing this sooner.

I would like to proudly announce that recently I finished off two video games in one day. Although I started them on different days  coincidence made it so I finished Galaxy Angel and Radiant Historia at the same time. Finishing both games back to back made me realize one thing. I would easily recommend both games so the next statement comes from someone who was thoroughly satisfied with his gaming experience (although if the last mission of Galaxy Angel were not an escort mission I would be happier.) Both games are sort of thin when it comes to their characters. They were enjoyable but in realized that had these character been from an anime or manga I would have considered them much weaker.  We simply accept a smaller amount of characterization in video games than we do from any other medium of entertainment.

We all know that video games have changed and evolved quite a bit over the years, but its been in many different directions. Even excluding the change in graphics capability and the potential length of games, plenty of growth in how people perceive games and how the creators make them has happened. They are a new and special type of storytelling, they are art to some and entertainment to many, and by any standard they have become integrated into the fabric of people’s lives on some level. But let’s go back to the storytelling element, certainly there have always been goals and structures for games, but we’ve seen epic stories come to life, too. And things just seem to grow more complex, with bigger ideas, and greater casts. But how characters develop in the story and through the player is still another idea all together.

Even as a huge Galaxy Angel fan I am the first to admit that the girls from Galaxy Angel seem like they come from a cynical boardroom meeting of Broccoli executives trying to cast their net as wide as possible. It that sense they are very reliant on their archetypal personalities. But when you interact with them in the game they come more alive despite being somewhat defined by simple personality quirks. When you put those same characters in the Galaxy Angel manga it is much more obvious what simple characters they are. I have to wonder if that is why so many anime and video game adaptions are so reviled. When they are adapted you see exactly how much the narrative and characters relied on interactivity to fill in the gaps. I many of the same ways Radiant Historia has a very intriguing plot involving time travel and politics but the characters equally broad stereotypes. Many of the characters personalities and back stories are only really learned through hunting down optional quests and what could be argued as the main romance in the game can be missed entirely. It can be argued that even with those little details that you can hunt down there are still only half as fleshed out as rich as even a shallowly explored anime or manga character. Since you have to hunt down these side missions and little asides it gives them a more rewarding feel. You attach more significance to finding out this information when you find it on your own.

My own experience with video games stems mainly from RPGs through the 90′s (okay, and Professor Layton of late) so those are really my core for talking about character. One of my (and many other’s) best-loved characters, Link from the Legend of Zelda is someone I love because of the adventures I go on as him; in the beginning he was your vessel and you got out of him whatever you put in. But as the game’s started to expand, so did the character. He has friends, motivations, and a past depending on what game you’re playing. Despite A Link to the Past being my favorite iteration, it is impossible to say that Link was all that fleshed out as a character. What he is thinking or feeling that is still up to how you interpret him and what you want out of his actions (or your actions). I would say Link has the most personality in The Wind Waker; I’d describe him as rather jaunty in that title, and subsequent ones in that world. But if you recall The Wind Waker had a ton of backlash initially because it didn’t look as serious as people had hoped when riding on the coat-tails of Ocarina. Who we had come to believe Link was being reinterpreted.

The greatest example of how much the interactive experience fills in gaps is any game with a silent protagonist. While this is very prevalent in RPGs it can also bee seen in almost every genre of game. This character is almost always a tabula rasa with a majority of the dialog provided supporting characters, a few characters reacting to unsaid lines, or the protagonist’s minimal dialog. One one hand this allow almost complete self insertion or visualization. The player is either able to imagine themselves as the main character or  make a personality for the character out of whole cloth. This explains the popularity of characters like Master Chief and Link despite the fact that they are hardly verbose. Many RPGs so far as to have you name the character so that you truly can make the character your own. In and anime or manga a silent protagonist is almost utterly unforgivable. Even some of the most closemouthed heroes have their moments to shine with memorable lines and stories.

All forms of story that I enjoy, I want to be engrossed in, feel connected to it, be apart of. And that is the key, in a video game you are connected immediately because you are playing, you are in control. If you lose that inactivity, you’ve lost everything. But I don’t think that means you must refrain from creating fleshed out characters apart from the player. A title like Tales of Symphonia comes to mind for its little conversations that happen while traveling the world map giving everyone their own quirks. It isn’t really about uniqueness as much as the game telling you a bit of who they are. The danger zone seems to occur when a pre-existing character becomes too fleshed out at the expense of the experience, the reactions to the latest Metroid game for example. In any case, it is a balancing act. Do I want to know more, yes, but do I need to know more to think a game is excellent, probably not.

As much as I might seem to be very critical of video games I must point out that I often play and enjoy the stories and characters of many a video game. Every medium has its strengths and weakness as well as narrative techniques. The way that a book, graphic novel, movie, or game attach us to someone vary on how we interact with it. The level to which things are given to us and how much we have to fill in for ourselves changes our expectations and reactions to each medium. Even silent blank slate characters can connect deeply to an audience. Crono and Gordon Freeman are beloved characters making many a top ten list. Fighting game characters and the entire cast of the Touhou Project games are iconic despite the fact that we only learn a sliver of information about the cast in their games. Games like Mass Effect and the Ultima series are famous for their stories and characters. This is less a condemnation and more of an examination of the medium.

When I think about video game’s many fanbases, two passionate ones came to mind in regards to character development: Touhou fandom and the general fighting game community. Besides being very vocal and large groups, both of these territories have games where much of the story, lore, and characters are filled out by the fans themselves based on hints, small details, and of course character design provided by the actual games. Many times supplemental material is created later (or never), to varying degrees of success, but in the meantime plenty of discussions and fan-fiction go on. Of course these communities originated out of playing and enjoying the games, but have since grown to include vast other topics. It’s that interactivity that seems to allow characters to function at a different level in video games. The blanks don’t feel blank when you are playing.

I finally finished up Part 1 of Saint Seiya: Lost Canvas thanks to Crunchyroll. The destined for tragedy friendship between Tenma, Alone, and Sasha and the fate of not just the world of Gods but also man maintains its level of melodrama very well. And the violence and battles that the series is so well known for is here at an enjoyable rate. It doesn’t come off like Saint Seiya for the modern viewer, it is just another line in the Saint Seiya world which is fine by me. However, this doesn’t make it very new viewer friendly as the series is filled with the familiar faces of the Gold Saints with little explanation. New additions though get a good amount of screen time like the amusing Yato, totally cool Yuzuriha, and of course head strong Tenma. These three are a lot of fun as a team, though nearing the later half of the series we don’t see them as much. However, the final episode promises excellent moments to come. Part 1 ends at a turning point, but by no means has any closure. I’m looking forward to Part 2 which has recently started up.

One of the main purposes of Ongoing Investigations is to talk about things that might not warrant a whole article but show what Narutaki and I read and watch outside the articles we write. It is also where we talk about things we utterly hate. And so I talk about Vampire Cheerleaders which has to be one of the worst thing I have read in recent memory. It is actually two stories in one with the first part being the titular Vampire Cheerleaders who are a squad of catty blood sucking mean girls who take a shy goody two-shoes girl and turn her into an undead ho to fill a hole in their squad. For an OEL manga it is remarkably like its Japanese counterparts in the sad fact that it is one of those racy comedies that it is smutty enough that it feels it does not need a good plot but never quite racy enough to be good as pornography. So you are inundated with cheap fan service strung together with lame jokes that never goes all the way. One of the characters actually uses the phrase “riding the meal missile to Mars” as a euphemism for losing your virginity. Theoretically none of this has to be this bad. I always thought that Exploitation Now did this formula right but I found every one of the jokes in Vampire Cheerleaders fell flat due to annoying characters and tepid delivery. After the main feature and the threat of a sequel there is the bonus story called the Paranormal Mystery Squad. While this was not as bad as Vampire Cheerleaders it is still light years away from good. The Paranormal Mystery Squad starts of as all girl squad mostly so they can be the PMS girls which is a joke I thankfully missed at first but the comic helpfully beat me over the head with. The PMS is a monster slaying service that is hounded by a PETA analog (cleverly named PETM) with a nerdy overseer who wants them to capture monsters alive. One of the girls fails to heed the words of Friedrich Nietzsche and winds up becoming a werewolf. This causes conflict in the group and leads to the stories’ oh so charming title that I will not torture you with besides saying it is quite awful. In fact the whole thing is quite awful. The art in Paranormal Mystery Squad was slightly more detailed but the character designs were less attractive. It is very obviously try to sell itself as manga as it reads right to left despite its American origin. But in the end it does not really matter if it is a bad manga or a bad comic; all you have to know is that it is just bad.

Wandering Son continues to impress as its slowing unfolding character story goes along. Each episode is this moment when you see characters take a step forward. I’m pleased with everyone’s portrayal, and as selfish as Chiba becomes her growth out of it is amazingly thoughtful in recent episodes. I almost don’t want to watch episodes because I don’t want it to end!

A good game can be great game with a good gimmick and Radiant Historia has a great gimmick. You could call it Vagrant Story meets Chrono Trigger if you want a simple pitch. The game is set in the world of Vainqueur that is slowly dying as the world increasingly becomes covered with desert which is leaving the remaining countries fighting for arable land. Stocke is a spy for the country of Alistel who receives a blank book from his superior but when his mission turns sour and he is about to die he learns that the book lets him jump back and forth though any time he has had the book and even jump between parallel worlds. Stocke is tasked by the guardians of the book to prevent the death of the human race. Stocke soon discovers that things done on one timeline sometimes have effect on other timelines. So he travels back and forth in-between key scenes in his life in hopes of defeating a mysterious stranger who has a similar book. The basic plot of the world is not completely original but it is well done and the time travel twist make it feel really fresh. It has some good if somewhat simple politics and a very engaging pace. The combat system is turn based but rewards the player for creating combos when you push enemies around a 3X3 gird. The makers of the game thankfully make it very simple to skip dialog and enemies which if not added would make jumping back through time to old scenes insanely tedious. The ending much like Chrono Trigger can be very different depending on which side quest you finish and which you don’t. I am curious how many people will prefer the normal endings as opposed to the complete ending. I see groups being in both camps but I found either ending very satisfying. When it is all said and done this is a wonderful RPG for the DS that should not be ignored.

I recently rewatched Road to El Dorado from Dreamworks before they went exclusively CG. The story of two gold-loving con artists, goofy Miguel and more serious Tulio, who end up with a map to the lost city of gold and a shipwrecked in the New World is a delight. The adventure is filled with fun and tension plus it has an appeal to both kids and adults. With a wonderful cast, spot on comedy, great music, and vibrant style it is a very bright spot in the Dreamworks catalog. Road to El Dorado is one film I often hold up as the potential of the studio, rewatching only confirmed that it is indeed one of their best works.

The first half of Princess Tutu confirms to me two very important facts. The first is that this show deserves all the praise it gets. Princess Tutu is innovative and wildly entertaining while having a rich and complex plot underneath a seemingly fluffy exterior. The second is that the comparison to Utena are not made lightly. While both shows are very different there are some common elements that make them comparable. They are both a deconstructive look at stories by way of the magical girl genre. Princess Tutu has a bit more comedy in every episode where as Utena mostly saved the comedy for a few key wacky episodes. You have Professor Cat being very much a comedy character and Duck’s friends are far more helpful to making the audience laugh than giving her any help.  On the other hand Princess Tutu does not have all the super creepy sexuality that can easily turn off some viewers to Utena. What Princess Tutu does have is a world of ballet which means wonderful music and a bit of education as well. Like Utena the oddity of the world can turn some people away. Anthropomorphic animals are just naturally part of the cast and the is always a certain oddity inherent with all stories within stories. This is a wonderful anime that breaks the mold and shows its audience the power that animation can have to tell a story in a way that only this medium could ever do.

Not too many women in Saint Seiya, but at least they are mostly awesome!

While not revolutionary HeartCatch PreCure! was one of the best crafted magical girls series I have seen in quite a while. In many ways, Suite Precure the newest entry in the Pretty Cure franchise, has impossible shoes to fill. I have already seen some negative reactions to this series which I think is slightly unfair. With any series this long you are going to have your ups and downs and some parts are going to be so great that you could show them to anyone, some are going to be watchable only by super fans, but most will be in the middle.  Suite Precure is a simple show where evil bad guys want to capture magical notes to the ultimate song to plunge the world into despair. Hibiki and Kanade are two friends who are recruited by a talking cat to become magical girls and use the notes to make beautiful music together. To enjoy Suite Precure you must go in with reasonable expectations about it. If you are predisposed to magical girls shows I think that Suite Precure is enjoyable. The fights have the energy and fisticuffs the Precure series is famous for which is always very welcome. The main characters are simple but fun. On the other hand other than that it is all very formula and anyone who does not like or is burnt out on magical girl shows is not going to find much to be hooked on. I am curious to see if they will have the plot take any major turns. The series should run about 50 episodes so they have plenty of time to throw in a few curve balls if they want. If nothing else I am curious to see if they add any new girls as the show progresses. There is already a masked girl in the opening who looks like she could easily be a third Precure.

The first three episodes of Suite Precure are fairly typical magical girl fare done very straight-forward. Since I haven’t seen HeartCatch Precure, I don’t have any over-high expectations going into this new series. The world is all music-themed as should have been easy to guess, but it makes for some rather silly names throughout (i.e. the animosity between Major and Minor land). I was led to believe these Precures would be more like rivals and I imaged perhaps some face-offs and competition when trying to collect the notes that have been scattered across the land. But that is not the case, though I do find their strained friendship a little refreshing and not as generally displayed in these series but nevertheless important and true. I really enjoy that they have to transform together and attack in harmony. You can really see the push for understanding each other more so than normal through Suite Precure. At the moment Suite Precure is a good magical girl show, but not excelling in any direction yet. Though with a long run series that can sometimes come a bit later on.

There are a few games that I have always wanted to play but the cruel barrier of not knowing Japanese has kept me from jumping in. Last year I finally got to play a Sakura Wars game but there is even one series that I have wanted to play even more. I always joke that this is the Type-Moon and Galaxy Angel blog but I hardly talk about Galaxy Angel. Despite this my prayers were finally answered with a translation patch for the long running Galaxy Angel series. I am ecstatic to finally be able to sit down and play though the first game in the series. It like the previously mentioned Sakura Wars games this is a visual novel and strategy game hybrid. The bulk of the game is a story mode where you see the story and talk with characters but the meat of the game is your character commands fighters in real-time space battles. So far the battles have not been that hard but if I remember correctly the first game is considered the easiest. They are fun and a good break from all the dating sim elements but they will not tax anyone like they were playing StarCraft. The characters are mostly simple characters but I have always found them fun and energetic. They are moe before it was really cool to be moe so anyone who can’t stand that element in their games will despise this game. On the other hand my love for Forte is an easily documented fact but I enjoy the antics of all the characters in the game. If nothing else Tact remind me of Captain Tylor and that is no faint praise.  I did notice that there is a good deal of the crew of the ship that never appears in any of the spin-off material such as the ships doctor and chief mechanic. Since most of them are cute women I would have thought they would have been talked about more. I would like to thank the owner of Tenka Seiha for translating this and Moonlit Lovers which I will surely play when I am done with this. I really appreciate his efforts and the splendid job he has done. Also on the off-chance that anyone who runs a convention is reading this I have always wanted to see Kanan as a guest at a convention. I just figured I would throw that out there.

After reading the first two volumes of Otomen and knowing its popularity, I’m surprised it doesn’t have an anime yet. In any case, these books are a lot of fun and just over-the-top enough. It centers around manly Asuka who secretly likes cute things plus enjoys sewing and cooking. He ends up falling for Ryo who is a rather masculine and dense girl and they both end up wanting to protect the other. Inserted in the middle of this is playboy Juta who is a manga-ka writing his popular story, Love Chick, based on Asuka (but as a girl) unbeknownst to anyone but the audience. Yup, totally ridiculous in a very delightful way! Most of the stories revolve around Asuka trying to win Ryo’s affections. Some highlights include the times when he meets her dad. And Asuka is kinda too perfect to be believed because he is pretty manly even if he does get scared sometimes. I hope to pick up more soon!

After countless people recommended  it to me and enjoying Durarara!! I finally decided to watch Baccano!. Like Galaxy Angel it was thankfully something that lived up to the expectations I had going into it. The show has everything that made Durarara!! so good with none of the flaws of the second half of its successor. The show is a series of intertwined stories set mainly during the Roaring Twenties in America. Baccano! has quirky and somewhat psychotic but always fascinating characters, great action, wonderful twists, a cheeky sense of humor, and a very unique setting. I don’t want to spoil too much but there is some great supernatural action along side mysteries, crime drama, with a dash of romance. I guarantee there is at least once character that you will get attached to and for everyone that character will be someone different. There is a reason that it was one of the most recommended and universally loved shows for Secret Santa last year. This show is great for anime clubs and even some people who are not normally into anime. It is a show you should watch on Hulu if you have not already done so.

I read Jiro Taniguchi’s Ice Wanderer which incorporates some of Jack London’s life as well as his stories plus original narratives into an anthology of man vs. nature tales. Four take places in very cold weather environments such as the Yukon during the gold rush of the late 19th century. While one takes place at the seaside in the summer and then one more takes place in a city where I’m not sure of the season. This one in the city about a manga-ka doesn’t feel like it fits the theme of the book and as it takes place between stories it felt jarring. Despite that, each story is thoughtful and very harrowing (minus the manga-ka which has a different feeling all together).

If anyone knows me they know I could not resist making this the picture of the week:

After listening to the podcast about the Tokyo Youth Ordinance, we realized there was even more to be discussed and there will continue to be more to be talked about for many moons to come. In some ways I feel like a crazy fear-monger but at the same time I worry lots of fans don’t think this bill will impact them. But despite any of that, I personally am very worried about it and it’s not going away so I just have more questions. Always more.

Heck, right after the podcast was recorded we already had a slew of new points of conversation. We were sill debating various points of the bill and what we think they mean. Now that Bill 156 has been passed everyone is waiting to see what exactly the ramification will be. How much is the bill is just a dog and pony show to make international critics happy? How much is this going to used as tool to beat certain unpopular groups and artists in submission? How many of those are groups that the bill was supposedly designed to regulate? How much of an immediate economic and creative impact with the bill have on anime, manga, and video game industries? How much will of an impact will it have down the line? Everyone watching the bill has an opinion on what will happen but until the first round of enforcement takes place it is all speculation. Lets dig a little deeper until we have some answers.

The biggest question for me, when I really started mulling it over, was exactly how could a committee execute this plan to moderate titles being produced in a timely manner? Let’s look at manga, hundreds of magazines come out over the course of a year, some as much as once a week. That is literally 100,000s of pages of manga over a 12-month period. If we use all-mighty Weekly Shonen Jump as an example, the problems become evident. As the name suggests, it is released weekly, and averages close to 500-pages an issue. The schedule is very tight, some pages not being sent off to the print house until the night before a printing is scheduled so what time would be allowed for a committee to review these pages? There are many more weekly magazines that would present a similar problem. Heck, the manga industry in general runs on a very fast schedule (compared to books that are put to bed practically a full year in advance). I can only imagine that it would require a small city’s worth of people to review this volume of manga in the time needed to have it published at its normal rate and that’s not even including all the anime that comes out in a week and video games to a smaller extent. And I don’t imagine the speed of manga releases will change, it is a huge revenue stream, so this is just another unknown when it comes to the bill.

The fact that they cannot read it all makes me think that they will just use this to go after a few key titles. They don’t need to monitor everyone. They just need to make a public example of a few people. If you make a big enough of a spectacle the threat of prosecution looms over everyone like the Sword of Damocles. In my opinion the worst case scenario is that everyone starts out defiant but is quickly worn down by the legislation into compliance. We start with people going out of their way to purchase items effected by the law outside of Tokyo while businesses in Tokyo do their best fight the law when they can. But laziness, apathy, and costs will force people into playing along. It is an easier law to enforce than to fight. Consumers will tire of having to spend time and money to travel out of Tokyo to get their titles and will move onto other media options. Publishers will bank on safer titles that can get in a wider area of distribution. Also from what I understand Japan has not embraced online sales like the US has with many consumers till preferring cash. Also credit and debit cards are nowhere near as prevalent in Japan and most people only by rare or out of print items on-line if at all. So unless this changes the way Japan approaches shopping it will most like just kill sales of anything restricted by Bill 156. Now this is the worst possible outcome but I think it is an also to realistic possibility. I have heard that certain titles are already being passed over for reprints because of the bill and the first shot has not even been fired.

Another piece of the bill has confused me, this may be caused by not being able to read the legislation in its entirety, but much of the regulations are about unlawful unions. If this was the case, two under-age characters, say 16-years-old, could theoretically have consensual intercourse together without it violating the regulations, I think? But I don’t actually imagine that will be happening much, especially not very graphically. And also one assumes they couldn’t stop creators from inferring strongly that certain things are happening. Part of me wonders what kind of story telling tricks we’ll begin to see.

If anything the Japanese entertainment industry has always been inventive with their ability to find loopholes and boundary pushers with whatever restriction you put on them. But will as many people try to push the boundaries with the press against them? As Ed Sizemore and The Digital Bug mentioned to me on Twitter the fact that the foreign press are only covering the surface story does not help at all. The recent New York Times article by Hiroko Tabuchi clearly makes the bill out to be the anti-loli bill it is reported to be. Hiroko Tabuchi won a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times so it is not like she is some no name blogger running off Internet rumor on their personal site. The press is all too willing to run with the surface story that Ishihara is selling which is utterly detrimental to fight against the bill. I know that the press love to do articles on lolicon manga and rape games because they intriguingly salacious topics but one would hope that journalistic integrity would demand that the look a bit deeper to see what is going on beneath the surface. As long as the press outside otaku circles perpetuates the party line about the bill it will continue to be hard to fight.

Of course there is no way to know how it will all play out until it does, but it is worth discussing. Our site is rarely, if ever, political so this bill is about as far as it will ever get to being so, I promise. My dearest hope is to be able to look back at this post (and podcast) and laugh about how ridiculous it was; how we were worry over nothing!

My biggest complaint I did not bring up was some of the American’s fans eagerness to throw out the baby with the bath water with Bill 156. I was greatly upset that so many anime and manga pundits were in favor of the bill as some sort of tool to get rid of what they hated by any means necessary. As long as the bill targeted what they did not care for what else got caught in the crossfire was unimportant. That seems like a short-sighted approach to the problem of overly racy manga about taboo and uncomfortable topics. While even I am tired of the prevalence of lolicon, incest, and glorified rape in popular otaku titles I am not willing to carpet bomb the freedom of expression in the off-handed hope  of catching the titles that disgust me in the process. And as it turns out you don’t even have to actually target those titles. As long as you invoke their names you will get people to blindly follow your cause which is even more disturbing. There is also a strong contingent of people who seem to be only reluctantly against the bill. I know the ANNCast disapproved of the bill but they seemed to do it through gritted teeth. They seem to treat the bill like a vigilante. They like what it does but that can’t approve of its method. But with any luck this is all unimportant bickering within the community. Hopefully this is just a toothless act that was made to quiet some international criticisms  and convince the  anime and manga industry to show a little restraint. I would hate to see this bill do permanent damage to entertainment industries I love. We will just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best in the time to come.

Anime 3000 presents The Speakeasy Podcast:
Drink #014: Kill Bill, The Tokyo Youth Ordinance Bill

Get comfortable because our first podcast with guests is over 2-hours long so it is perfect for long commutes or a hard day at work. Our two guest are Ed Sizemore of Manga Worth Reading and Eeeper of the Eeeper’s Choice podcast. We also started our mailbag segment, the Interrogation Room, so feel free to send in your questions and comments so we can discuss them on the next podcast!

The Tokyo Youth Ordinance Bill was passed at the end of 2010 and goes into effect this April. It has been a controversial bill in the anime and manga communities for both the U.S. and Japan. Is this a bill that will act as a savior that clears the industry of harmful perversions or is it a stifling straitjacket on the creativity of a medium? We talk about the history of the bill, the facts and misconceptions surrounding it, and what we think ramifications of the bill will be.

(Listen) (Show Notes)

And now your helpful bartenders at The Speakeasy present your drink:

Kill Bill

Since the 7th game of Umineko is so game changing I am going to try to just discuss the essence of the episode without giving away major spoilers especially for people who read the blog but are a few games behind. The two new characters seen in the portrait above are Willard H Wright and Lion Ushiromiya. Lion is a fascinating character that is essentially several huge reveals just by existing. Will is the Battler stand in for this chapter and I thought his big entrance was fairly entertaining and cool. Lion and Will’s interaction is playful although all the butt pinching going on has solidified that they will be shipped forever. When we get into the meat of the story we learn Kinzo’s back story, the identity of Beatrice, Battler’s sin, get some hits as to the solutions to some of the locked room mysteries, and the probable confirmation of one of the mostly hotly debated theories in the series. We also get some powerful scenes that I thought were quite moving. Also unless we are being misled there is some seriously twisted relationships in Umineko and the people involved do not realize are as twisted as they are.  It probably makes me a weenie but I found parts of the end of Requiem of the Golden Witch really hard to read. If you have come to love these characters the last chapter is brutal. Although how authentic how authentic that ending is has yet to be seen.  When the last game comes out I will probably do a total spoiler filled review of the series a whole but until then I just have to wait to see what answers 2011 finally gives us with Twilight of the Golden Witch.

I picked up How to Train Your Dragon in a Black Friday sale but didn’t get around to watching it till the Christmas holidays. The animation of the film really stands out, especially from some of the other Dreamworks properties, it was lush and gorgeous; the dragons were very animated and their designs were quirky; plus the flying scenes were breath-taking. The story is a simple one of trying to fit in to your dragon-killing village of vikings (we’ve all been there, right?) but Hiccup is much happier inventing things which often gets him into trouble. After one of his inventions actually works and takes down a rare dragon, their fates become intertwined when he realizes he can’t bring himself to hurt the creature. This story has a classic feel of acceptance, growing up, and having the bravery to do what is right. While I did find the relationships between Hiccup and the other kids a little too easier resolved, it was enough. I found it a very enjoyable ride! After seeing it, I do imagine it will be an Oscar contender this year.

The next chapter in Higurashi is Tsumihoroboshi-hen or the Atonement Chapter. Like the previous Eye Opening Chapter this chapter got cut in the anime and is much more effective in the visual novel. As always we are able to get to know the characters and see their mental break downs much clearer in the visual novel than in any other form. This chapter is a departure from the chapter it is answering but it still gives resolution and explanations to what happened in the Spirited Away by the Demon Chapter. In fact this chapter gives much more answers than the anime ever did. This chapter is downright mean because it throws out a lot of information that is actually vital for understand the greater story and then makes you think they were merely red herrings when Rena’s theories go into a layer of total insane paranoia. But as always the biggest trick is this chapter seems to have a somewhat happy ending until you read the afterward and find out despite the hard-won ending it turns out everyone dies anyway because the underlying causes of the tragedy of Showa 58 has still not been discovered. This was another chapter that was distinctly worth the money for anyone who is a fan of the series for the greater insights it gives you. I will say that the author’s afterward is this bizarre public service announcement that seems to come out of nowhere. So very odd.

I finished up Yumeiro Patissiere Professional TV. After the gang returns from their stint in New York City, they feel ready to take on the task of opening their own store. But before things can really start, alliances are changed and (new, new) Team Ichigo must revise their tactics. To make the stakes higher, Miya and Johnny make bets about dating Kashino and Ichigo respectively. Henri is notably absent in importance through these last episodes as well. Once again we aren’t privy to as much baking and creative endeavor with more of a concentration on business. As one would suspect things turn out for the best, sort of, but without any resolve to the love relationships going. This sequel really didn’t hold a candle to its predecessor.

After seeing a few intriguing ads for 999: 9 Hours, 9 People, 9 Doors I decided to pick it up because I am always interested in translated visual novels. 999 is the story of 9 people who were kidnapped and placed on an ocean liner as part of a mysterious revenge plot by a masked villain know only a Zero.  They have bombs in their bodies that can be triggered in a variety of ways so they are forced to solve puzzles in groups to survive. As they try to escape they also discover a murderer among them that is taking them out one by one. The game itself is hybrid visual novel puzzle game. You solve puzzles in an Myst style fashion to get to the next block of visual novel text and decision. Overall the game is entertaining but there are some really annoying things that way it down. First of all there are multiple endings depending on paths you take. To get the best ending you have to get a particular bad ending that unlocks the best ending. When you replay the game to get a new ending you can fast forward through text you have already read but that a still takes a bit of time. You have to replay all the puzzles you figured out which is really annoying since they are major time sinks. The puzzles are not that hard but the 5th time you have to do the puzzles in the first room are 3 times too many. If you don’t have a guide to do everything effectively it could be even a bigger pain. It is a fun game and the story is interesting but that repetition can be brutal enough to make some people walk away.

I was surprised to see the first live-action Nodame Cantabile movie available with English subtitles on my flight back from Europe. This is the first of two movies that will conclude the fairly lengthy romance story of aspiring conductor and accomplished pianist Chiaki and eccentric pianist Nodame plus the merry band of misfits they call friends. I have read a good portion of the manga so I had a decent understanding of what was going on, but this isn’t the place to start if you are new to the franchise; nothing is explained and this is the (beginning of the) final stunning conclusion to it all. However, this is the first time I’ve seen any of the live-action adaption. I was surprised by the cartoony additions like people getting bonked on the head and animated little things, which work fine in manga form but have potential to throw you out in live-action. But what I found most jarring was Chiaki’s personality portrayed as much more tame which only made Nodame seem annoying and petulant. I mean, Nodame is petulant, but when Chiaki is a crazy, controlling, ego-maniac it all balances out; that balance wasn’t happening. The music was quite a highlight though, as it should be, and was played in full for most sequences. I’m curious how the story ends but I’ll be picking up the manga to find that out rather than the films.

Two Birds. One Stone.