On an unrelated note, I am extremely upset that Google Reader is being retired.

After disappearing off the face of this Earth for the past two weeks or so, I return from the mythical land known as “Northern Europe” to find a package left at my door step. Beware, for mere mortals cannot possibly withstand the power of geek that lies in this post.

As regular readers of my blog (an endangered specimen of magical creatures only slightly more numerous in numbers than unicorns) know, I recently got back into crack Magic: The Gathering after many years of sobriety.

As with anything I do by my own volition, the addiction comes in a sudden burst of intensity and slowly tapers off into a less freaky hobby. But anyway, during that initial rush, I stumbled across the altered art thread on MTG Salvation and was introduced to the insanely wonder world of customized Magic cards modified with acrylic paint. Most of these altered cards are known as “frameless”, which involves extending the original art by painting over the official card borders, but many also involve replacing the official art with fan art (usually involving some meme or pop culture reference).

I bought some materials and tried doing alterations myself, but needless to say my inability to mix paint dooms my abominable creations. So I gave up and instead commissioned two cards from Sandreline, a respected member of the community. Check out her awesome gallery.

So long story short, these are the results along with the original cards:

Death’s Shadow

Fable of Wolf and Owl

This is a textbook example of when two distant branches of geekdom collide, much like the classic GTA Lucky Star.

Anyway, this is really just a short post to let people know that I am still alive having survived the 13-hour flight back from Copenhagen, though at one point the plane made a sudden plunge in the midst of some serious turbulence and I was sure that my time had come.

I just landed in Singapore 4 hours ago. Will post more soon* after I adjust from the jet lag and sort through 3 GB of mostly terrible photos.

* The term “soon”, wherever it is used on this blog, is defined as any point of time between the time of publication and the end of the universe.

In yet another breaking development that casts a blinding spotlight on the unrelenting passage of time and my lost teens, Maaya Sakamoto, my favourite singer in all dimensions of space and time, got married at the ripe age of 31 to fellow seiyuu Ken’ichi Suzumura.

Seriously, do you people realize that the 90s was like twenty years ago? It’s fricking insane. Maaya is basically old school now. I don’t even know the names of any voice actors nowadays. Get off my proverbial lawn you damn kids. I am having a quarter-life crisis.

Anyway, I had just returned from a trip to Hong Kong two days ago and spent today finishing up my packing for my imminent house-moving, so I didn’t notice this piece of gigantic news until Kurogane messaged me on Twitter.

There’s a short personal message on Maaya’s official news feed announcing that the wedding took place on 8th August (incidentally a rather auspicious date in some East Asian cultures):

今日はいつも応援してくださっている皆様に、ご報告したいことがありまãã€‚
私、坂本真綾は、８月８日に声優の鈴村健一さんと結婚しました。

今までの自分の人生の中で
好きだと思うことや、嬉しい、心地いいと思うことを優先ãã‚‹è¡Œå‹•ãŒ
いつも未来につながってきました。
だから結婚についても、
私がそうしたいと心から思えるときが自然と来たので
その気持ちに従いました。
鈴村さんは、一緒にいるととても穏やかな気持ちになれる、優しい人でãã€‚
これからも私が私らしく歌い、演じ、そして生きていくために、
心休まるパートナーが側にいてくれること、とても頼もしく思いまãã€‚
皆様にも、あたたかく見守っていただけたら嬉しいでãã€‚

これからもより一層仕事に励んでいきたいと思っておりまãã®ã§ã€
どうぞよろしくお願いいたしまãã€‚

坂本真綾

Today I have an announcement to make to everyone who has long supported me.
I, Maaya Sakamoto, was married to voice actor Ken’ichi Suzumura on August 8.

Throughout my life, prioritizing the things I like and the things that make me happy and feel at ease has always turned out to be the right path to my future.
So when it came to marriage, the feeling that this was the right time came naturally to me and I decided to follow it.
Suzumura-san is a kind person who makes me feel calm when we are together.
I believe that as I continue to sing, perform and be myself in the coming future, it will be great to have a supportive partner by my side.
I would be really glad if everyone would also continue to watch over us.

I hope to strive even harder in my work in the future, so please continue to lend me your support.

Maaya Sakamoto

Interestingly, as noted by Kurogane, Ken’ichi Suzumura voiced Shinn Asuka in Gundam SEED DESTINY, alongside Maaya who voiced Lunamaria Hawke. This is like Nadesico’s Ruri x Akito all over again. Although Nadesico is by now so old in Internet age that I don’t think anyone online knows what I am talking about.

Real-life parallels fiction

Now to be clear, this is not going to be a fanboy rage thing where I desperately struggle in a futile attempt to not have to confront reality because the marriage of my favourite singer somehow symbolizes the lost of a part of my comfort zone for the past decade. But I have to admit that the timing of this almost too perfectly coincides with the start of a new chapter of my life.

Human beings are superstitious creatures like it or not, and it’s not unreasonable to perceive mutual significance in unrelated events as long as we keep it to poetic musings.

I am actually quite happy for Maaya. 31 is kind of old for a woman to get married by Japanese standards and, in typical Japanese fashion, all sorts of social complexities evolve past 30 for a single working woman. Hope she continues to sing.

I guess officially Maaya Sakamoto is now Maaya Suzumura even though she probably keeps her maiden name as her stage name for branding purpose.

So I am moving soon and I have been spending the past week stacking things (mostly books) into boxes. Sifting through all the stuff I have accumulated in the past ten years really takes me back.

It’s been just about 10 years since I first watched Evangelion, which was kind of how everything began. I would link to my old blog post on it, but I wrote it on my old b2/cafelog (WordPress’ predecessor) blog and it’s stuck somewhere in my site database inside an unconverted b2 table. Just as well, since the post was probably shit.

Games and DVDs. An R1 Evangelion box set is buried somewhere underneath

I’m off to Stanford in just about a month or so and the house-moving will actually take place after I leave. The next time I set foot on Singapore, I’ll be walking into an unfamiliar room with all my precious stuff stacked in boxes covered with (at least) one year’s worth of dust. That ought to be fun.

Crap ton of Haruhi stuff

I am still hanging on to the slim hope that one day pristine limited edition Haruhi goods from the series’ golden age will be worth billions of dollars. But I think the chance that I will make a profit on this collection is probably only slightly higher than this guy’s long-shot investment.

Crap ton of Maaya Sakamoto stuff and other CDs

Honestly speaking, I think my Maaya collection can objectively be described as pretty darn sweet, especially considering I do not live in Japan. I basically have all her singles and albums (including her releases from when she was half of the teenage duo Whoops!!), often two copies of each, plus limited edition and all that jazz. I also have a bunch of posters that CD shops in Japan put up to promote her new CD releases, some related DVDs (including the short movie 03+ she starred in) and some concert memorabilia.

Bunch of manga and Japanese books

I am kind of a compulsive hoarder, but mainly in the sense that I like to collect more things. I don’t actually mind throwing away stuff I don’t need. Not shown in the pictures is a rather large mountain of old magazines and books that are destined for a glorious second life as rolls of toilet paper.

Random English books

Mahoro packed in her box

I actually do not own that many figurines in spite of my urge to collect stuff. PVC figures in particular do not preserve well in Singapore’s hot and humid weather unless you keep them in the box, so I had to throw away some over the years. But the few I keep around are pretty awesome. Maybe one day I’ll finally get a proper dust-proof display case for them and save them from the cruel fate of spending eternity in their boxes.

Kan’u Unchou and Tony Taka’s C73 releases

Haruhi Bunny and Tony Taka’s C75 releases

Going through my collection makes me feel old. I can’t believe that it’s already been a decade since Evangelion first raped my mind. A few days ago, I heard people on the radio reminiscing over 90s pop songs, referring to them as “retro”. Moments like that really turn your perspective upside down.

Speaking of Evangelion, check out my sweet new Esc key

I guess house-moving and college in the States are two huge changes waiting right around the corner that will mark an end of an era for me personally. I have no idea what the future will hold, but things are definitely going to be different soon. Part of me is feeling uneasy (and lazy) about the changes ahead, but mostly I am looking forward to California. Hopefully I will retain the essence of who I am, even as I grow into a new environment.

Manga and CDs

But no matter what happens, I’ll definitely still find time to finish the occasional volume of Kimi ga Iru Machi. That damn thing has more twists than a Taiwanese soap opera. I wonder if the San Francisco Kinokuniya is any good. I hope Maaya performs at Anime Expo again some day…

Anyway, I’ll be in Hong Kong from the 4th to the 10th and spend ten days in Scandinavia towards the end of the month. Things are getting kind of busy around here, but I’m sure I’ll be able to find the time to post some photos from the trips, even though I have yet to finish posting all the photos from my last trip in April…

Magic: The Gathering, the most successful trading card game ever, and I have an on-again-off-again relationship spanning more than a decade since the time of 4th Edition and Ice Age. Recently, I have been reintroduced to the game in the form of the digital version and spent quite a bit of time and money on it. Magic: Not Even Once.

Magic is an amazing game because the game allows incredibly complex interactions to be created on the foundation of relatively simple rules. One of the fundamental ideas in the game is card abilities can actually alter the rules of play, allowing players to do things that are not normally expected.

On the basic level, cards with bigger numbers that do bigger damage help you to kill your opponents faster. All TCGs get that part of game design. But in Magic, expectations often get flipped upside down in a single move and a single card can alter the entire board. For example, players start with 20 lives and lose when they hit 0 in a regular game, but a card such as Transcendence can drastically change the dynamics when it hits the board unexpectedly.

Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO) makes Magic so much more addictive than before because it makes it so easy to play games. Being a trading card game, it was often difficult in the past to obtain all the cards you require to build a deck exactly as you require. This involved meeting up with people over the weekends and engaging in time-consuming banter trade. In Magic Online, the economy is much more fluid and the supply of cards in the secondary market is consistent and there are always sellers online ready to fulfil your capricious needs. It’s almost too easy to buy cards and the only barriers are your self control and Wizards of the Coast‘s (the creators of Magic) abysmal interface design.

Deck construction

In Magic Online, you can purchase booster packs from the company directly and “open” them up just like in real-life, but the better option is to simply buy the exact cards you want directly from sellers. Due to the abundance of supply of cards from regular drafting, most common and uncommon cards go for a few cents or less, a much better deal than buying a booster pack of 15 cards for 4 bucks hoping that the rare card is worth more than that (which is usually not the case). With some smart buying, you can build rather competitive decks for cheap. And best of all, you only need 4 copies of any card ever because all your decks share the same virtual card pool and you don’t need multiple 4-copy sets of the same card if you want to reuse it in other decks (which is another reason why the secondary market is so well supplied).

Trading screen

However, the secondary market also plays host to one of the fundamental problems in Magic Online: the trading system is incredibly rudimentary. Wizards of the Coast apparently doesn’t want to lend too much aid to the secondary market, because the game client features no auction system, no direct transaction of currency between users and no autosell function like certain trade stalls in MMORPGs.

The entire economy runs on “event tickets” that cost 1 USD each and are nominally used to pay for entry fees to tournaments and premier events. These serve as the de facto currency used in transactions between players when direct card-for-card trade is not possible. The problem with event ticket is that the minimal denomination is 1 USD, making it incredibly cumbersome as a currency when most cards cost between 1 to 8 cents. All these deficiencies led to the creation of commercial third-party trade bots that automate the trade process using image recognition and keep track of partial credits for individual users.

For example, I buy a card from Sellbot1 for 8 cents and the bot takes 1 ticket from me. The bot will then credit $0.92 to my name, so the next time I try to take cards from Sellbot1, it won’t charge me any tickets and will instead deduct the value from my stored credits. The owner of Sellbot1 may also be running Sellbot2, which sells different kinds of cards, and stored credits will also work on it.

Titan Forge

While it’s remarkable how the community worked around the asinine limitations to develop a thriving economy, you can’t help but wonder how much healthier the MTGO economy would have been if Wizards had implemented proper auction and trading systems found in every major MMO game. The current system, while workable, creates artificial trade barriers by giving incentive to people to consistently trade with the same bots they already have credits on instead of searching for the best price for each individual card. Also, there is no real way to search for card prices across the whole market, so you pretty much have to check all the major bots manually. This non-ideal availability of pricing information again creates artificial inefficiencies in the market that simply shouldn’t exist.

Of course, when it comes to TCGs, the common concern of having to procure over-expensive rare power cards in order to win is also present in Magic. This is partially alleviated by multiple tournament formats, in which the most popular format only uses the most recent core set and two recent expansion blocks, thus ensuring that all cards in the format are in print. Personally, I find that prices in this format are generally acceptable, especially on MTGO where the prices are much lower and more optimized than its hard-copy counterpart.

In Magic, there is a concept known as the “metagame”. Some cards are useful all the time, but some cards are dependent on the state of the metagame. For example, a card that destroys all red creatures is normally of limited use because you don’t know what colour(s) your opponent is playing beforehand and it is only valuable in a metagame where many players run red cards. In real-life, games tend to be played amongst the same group of people week after week, hence winning often entails knowing what kind of decks they play and specifically play cards that may not be generally good but are highly effective against those specific decks. The anticipation of what your opponent will play based on experience and knowledge of the current pool of tournament-legal cards is the so-called metagame — the game outside the game (cue Inception music).

A good thing about MTGO is that you can always find someone to play with and the kind of decks you play against can vary a lot. You get to see very creative builds and combos and the metagame is ever changing due to new combos being discovered and new decks being tested in tournaments. And best of all, you can keep playing for as long as you want any time of the day.

Hero of Bladehold. Awesome card

Of course, it’s not all roses and sunshine. The current iteration of the MTGO client features the worst interface design since the 90s and even then I am pretty sure that Micropose’s Magic: The Gathering computer game from the late 90s featured better design than this. It looks like the client was made with Visual Basics and there are simply so many wtf design choices. Fortunately, a new client featuring modern technology is scheduled to enter beta and be released sometime this year. If it is anything similar to the Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 game recently released for Xbox and PC, it should be good.

If anyone wants to duel me on MTGO, add nadesico. I couldn’t believe that name wasn’t taken considering how many Japanese players are on MTGO.

On another note, there will be a “Digital Face-off” tournament held through Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 pitting employees of eight tech/gaming companies, including Valve, Google and Microsoft, against one another.

Japan National Tourism Organization made a simple map showing the locales of some popular anime titles and the major anime retail hotspots across Japan.

While an interesting initiative, the map itself is rather light on details, so this is more of a standard tourism brochure with a twist than an actual guide for people looking for information.

Incidentally, I have been to all the areas indicated in the pink section of the map excluding Sapporo, and there seems to be a lot of marketing hyperbole involved for everything that is not in Tokyo or Nipponbashi, Osaka.

Toranoana at Otemachi, Hiroshima

Otemachi, Hiroshima is a just regular shoutengai that happens to have a few shops like Toranoana (large chain of doujinshi speciality shops) and Yellow Submarine (chain hobby store with outlets selling everything from Magic: The Gathering to anime figures to model trains) scattered across it. You can find such loose shop clusters in nearly every major Japanese city and there’s nothing remarkable about the one in Otemachi. Hiroshima is a nice city to visit though.

Yokohama Landmark Plaza has the mainstream brand-name stores for Ghibli and Shueisha that serve as a convenient focal point for the brochure, but you can find a lot more real anime stuff elsewhere scattered around the main Yokohama station, such as a decent-sized Animate and smaller Gamers (the large anime chain store whose mascot spawned the Di Gi Charat series) and Melon Books (doujinshi speciality chain store) branches hidden away inside random buildings. But ultimately, you are better off enjoying the sights and sounds of Enoshima if you find yourself in Kanagawa prefecture. Save the anime stuff for nearby Tokyo. There isn’t much in Yokohama.

The Animate branch in Nagoya stands alone behind Nagoya Station, but everything else is found in Osudenkigai

I didn’t spend much time at Nagoya’s Osudenkigai, but I thought it was about on par with Eastern Ikebukuro and Otome Road in terms of number of shops and level of activity. It’s worth checking out if you are in Nagoya, but it’s definitely not worth travelling to Nagoya for. Well, basically there is no real reason why anyone should visit Nagoya. It’s a boring place.

Classy underpass at Tenjin

The Tenjin area in Fukuoka is a major shopping area with many large vertical shopping centres. If you are in Hakata, you will definitely end up there. As Hakata is the centre of commercial activities in Kyushu/Western Japan, it has the largest regional outlets for Kinokuniya, Animate, etc. The caveat being that they are the largest in Kyushu, which is not really saying much. As far as I remember, there isn’t really any single location where the anime stores are clustered together, so you will just come across some of them as part of normal tourist shopping.

Look for the giant Melon Books sign to find Ota-road

Nipponbashi, Osaka is definitely worth visiting. It is much smaller in scale than Akihabara, but significantly larger than Ikebukuro Otome Road. The important thing to know is that the main road, where the exit for Nipponbashi subway station is located, has nothing but regular electronics stores. You need to find your way to a smaller parallel street, colloquially known as “Ota-road” to find outlets such as Gamers and Toranoana. I believe that K-Books (nationwide chain stores specializing in second-hand manga, doujinshi, goods and collectibles) is the only one with presence on the main road.

And of course, Akihabara, Otome Road and Nakano Broadway are the classics you shouldn’t miss. I find it interesting that the Akihabara blurb features the maid cafe Mai Dreamin, which seems to have materialized out of nowhere and cornered a huge share of the market with multiple outlets in Akihabara and Ikebukuro. I had always thought that @home cafe was much bigger, given that it has a longer history in Akihabara. Perhaps Mai Dreamin is more savvy at marketing. I did notice that they have an “English” version of the pre-recorded advertising blurb they play at their outlet next to Akihabara station.

When it comes to visiting real-life location of anime settings, it is important that you only do it if you enjoy sightseeing by itself. Most anime titles are set in boring, unremarkable small towns and some of them can be quite mind-boggling rural for an urban dweller. For example, Summer Wars is set in Nagano, an entirely unremarkable prefecture as can be surmised from its Japan Guide article. If you travel there just to visit the anime locations, you’d better learnt to enjoy looking at mountains and fruit farms.

On the other hand, the ones set in easy-to-access parts of Tokyo usually feature no landmarks distinguishable enough to actually visit, other that the standard tourist fare: Tokyo Tower, Shinjuku area and Shibuya scramble crossing. That said, I did enjoy how Durarara!! featured Eastern Ikebukuro — one of my favourite places in Tokyo — with many of its familiar details.

Source: scion_cho on Flickr

Also, I love going to the Starbucks on the second floor of Tsutaya across the scramble crossing from Shibuya station. It was featured in an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and it just looks so iconic.

This is where Kagami and Tsukasa work as miko

Outside of Tokyo, the easiest locations to visit are probably Lucky Stars scenes set in Omiya, Saitama and Washinomiya Shrine. You can cover both in a day trip from Tokyo. Well, and there’s School Days too.

I have been to Hakone a few times, but I have somehow never made the mental connection to Evangelion. Hmm.

I caught SDN48 live performing in Singapore at Scape last Friday. I was going to wait for the official concert photos to be distributed to the blogosphere before I write about it, but the PR minions are taking forever and my recollection of the event is growing faint as the curse of old age silently obliterates my memory.

So yeah, this is what I think. I’ll just add in photos later if they ever show up.

SDN48, or Saturday Night 48, is AKB48‘s more “adult” sister group. It is the most recent entry in AKB48’s growing idol empire and the only group of the four that is not regional-based. SDN48 members are generally in their 20s and older than the members of the other three groups, with some of them being former AKB48 members.

AKB48 is really the only group with any significant overseas fan-base, so it was rather surprising for SDN48 to hold a live in Singapore. After all, AKB48 itself belongs to a small niche outside of Japan, while SDN48 remains a niche even within Japan. Last Friday’s live was actually SDN48’s first ever overseas performance.

SDN48 posing in Orchard Road, Singapore’s take on Venice’s Grand Canal

The performance was actually rather enjoyable, despite my near-complete ignorance of everything AKB48 and its spin-offs. The songs are standard pop fare, but faster paced, more rhythmic and with more dance beats than most of what I’ve heard from AKB48.

Being the so-called “adult” version idol group, SDN48’s music videos and stage presentations are slightly more risqué than what J-Pop idol groups like Morning Musume usually go for (e.g. soap-bubble bath, revealing costumes and implied lesbianism) but nothing that will incite pitchforks and angry mobs. Might be kind of pseudo-provocative thirty years ago.

That said, one of SDN48’s numbers last Friday had a dance routine that included sexy corsets, stockings with garterbelts and — wait for it — three pairs of black panties being thrown into the audience. I’m guessing you wouldn’t see that at an AKB48 concert. Heh.

SDN48 members who performed last Friday

The interesting part for me was that, of the twelve SDN48 members sent to perform in Singapore, there were Chen Qu, a native of Shenyang, China, and Sayaka Kondo, who grew up in Detroit, Michigan. Between the two of them, they had both English and Mandarin Chinese — the two main languages spoken in Singapore — covered. Heck, SDN48 has a main single whose title is partially Korean (Ai, Chuseyo) and one of their other songs has Chen Qu doing verses in Chinese. Talk about market research.

It’s quite clear that the whole 48 franchise is just raring to make it big in the international (ala East Asian) market and a lot of groundwork is being done by the producers attempting to pull it off. SDN48’s dance routines and presentation styles are noticeably influenced by the current tide of Korean pop dominating the market, which in turn draws on international and Western influences more than past Japanese idol groups. Yasushi Akimoto has definitely been taking notes and learning from Japan’s past successes and recent failures.

Still, the inclusion of two Chinese members did not save Morning Musume from its free-falling descent into obscurity and niche-dom, and I think it’s still too early to tell if AKB48 and its sister groups can successfully become J-Pop’s new messiah and growth engine in the international market, a position that has been unfilled since Ayumi Hamasaki.

The Caucasian guy is a metaphor for the overseas market

I estimated about 800-1000 seats in AKB48’s permanent live venue in Singapore. At 50 SGD a pop, that’s $50,000 per gig at the maximum, which is probably barely enough to pay for return Business class tickets from Japan for 12-16 girls and their entourage of manager(s) and make-up artist(s). Yasushi Akimoto is definitely investing for the long-term here.

Frankly, now I am thinking of catching one of the upcoming AKB48 lives in Singapore, purely out of academic curiosity. This could be (pop culture) history in the making.

Oh, one more thing: I am kind of obligated to inform you that Animax Asia is holding a contest called “AKB48 Watch & Win” to give out AKB48 Singapore live tickets, merchandises and meet & greet opportunities. From now until 26 August, a name of an AKB48 member will be shown on Animax between 8pm to 12am everyday from Mondays to Fridays. You have to submit the correct name to the official site to enter the lucky draw.

Kids, this is what happens when you sell your soul.

P.S. I still think Momusu was better in its heydays. D:

Wii U is the sound you make when you try to whistle but you don’t know how. It is also Nintendo’s new console announced today during E3 that finally brings them up to speed with Sony and Microsoft in terms of HD graphics and multi-platform titles.

Personally, I am not feeling it.

Nintendo’s strategy at the start of this console cycle was cheap + mass appeal + photogenic gimmick = money printing. Both the NDS and Wii were technically inferior to their competition but sold like hot cakes. Nintendo won big betting on casual gamers, but the groovy train is coming to an end thanks to the mobile gaming market. Games like Phoenix Wright can easily be played on the iPhone now and dedicated gaming devices have to set their sights higher.

It’s quite clear that the 3DS and the Wii U represent a subtle but significant shift in strategy to bring so-called “hardcore” gamers and 3rd-party developers like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft back into the fold. I use the term “hardcore”, but I really mean 13-year-old kids playing Modern Warfare 2. These core multi-platform games usually feature standard HD graphics and extensive online gameplay, both of which are not Wii’s strong suits. Wii U is trying to play catch-up and the E3 demo is just screaming, “Look how hardcore we are now.” See: blood-soaked Ninja Gaiden footages.

Nintendo is caught between a rock and a hard place. (That’s what she said.) The traditional casual gaming market it once dominated is now a massive free-for-all deathmatch where any indie developer living in his mother’s basement can potentially create the next Angry Birds and sell it on Apple’s App Store. On the other extreme, Nintendo’s years of disengagement from the “hardcore” gaming scene have left the PS3 and 360 comfortably cashing in on generic multi-platform shooter sequels that are too graphics-intensive for the Wii. I am not sure Wii U can modify that balance and still be successful.

To a gamer looking for new experiences, the “innovative” controller this time is far less visceral than the obvious appeal of motion controls. Multi-platform games from 3rd-party companies are not going to use the controller screen for anything more than stats and HUD elements. The controller layout also looks terrible for shooters, or at least even more terrible than what consoles have now.

I really don’t think the new controller will really be a huge advantage now that Wii U has to compete at the same level (and possibly price point) as the PS3 and 360. There’s no price announced yet, but performance costs money and those controllers look pricey. The Wii U is not going to be cheap, even if they try to cut cost with resistive screens.

The Wii U will still sell and make money just because it’s Nintendo, but I am quite certain, judging by the 3DS’ faltering sales, that the set of conditions that made NDS and Wii so massively successful no longer exists today. The casual gaming market has left the building and Wii U is fighting an uphill battle to win back core gamers. If it can compete for multi-platform games in terms of online infrastructure (there’s a PS3 joke in there somewhere) and technical capabilities, then the added Nintendo first-party magic can help the console thrive.

But all that aside, the name is fucking ridiculous. Seriously I am pretty sure Reggie was thinking about how silly he sounded when he stood on the stage at E3 trying to sell the name as something profound and meaningful.

I’ve been spending the past two weeks burning my way through a long list of backlogged games I want to clear before school starts and I lose my NEET badge, including Shadow of the Colossus, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 2 and L.A. Noire.

Valkyria Chronicles 3 is one of them. And this time I am actually reviewing it in an almost timely fashion and nowhere close to the release date of the next game. Go me.

Story

VC3 takes place at the same time as the original VC, during the war between Gallia and the Empire. It’s a side story about a black ops Gallian military unit that was secretly responsible for many of the greatest blows dealt against the Empire that were never made known; this kind of makes you wonder just how much good Welkin and friends really did if so much important shit went on behind the scenes without them knowing. This is the problem with side stories.

Conscripts and cadets, I could understand. But war criminals? Really?

The unit, known as Nameless, is basically a place where the army sends misbehaving soldiers to die in futile suicide missions. But many (i.e. all) of these criminals were actually misunderstood victims of military politics or corruption and all they really needed was the competent leadership of Kurt Irving, the main character, to lead to them to great untold glory. What a heart-warming story.

Silver hair and red eyes…

The squad members consist of the usual assortment of anime stereotypes who definitely do not look like they belong to such a sinister secret military unit of ill repute. Breaking with the franchise’s tradition, there are two heroines this time: Imca, an unfriendly emo Darcsen girl who ends all her sentences in negatives, and Riela, a long-haired red-eyed girl who somehow survived the total annihilation of all the units she had ever been assigned. (Can you guess who is the Valkyria in this game?)

Imca is an adorable tsundere with a giant ahoge

The writing is okay. It’s definitely a huge improvement from VC2, but that’s not saying much. The missions are much more story-driven this time, but overall the epic feeling of the original VC is just not quite there.

Interestingly, the Calamity Ravens, the main antagonists in the game, are a secret Imperial military unit consisting entirely of Darscen soldiers who are fighting for an independent Darscen state. This sounds insane when you consider that the Darscens are supposed to be the Jewish people and the Empire they are working for is based on Nazi Germany.

Calamity Ravens

That is until you realize that this was exactly what the Zionist militant group Lehi tried to do during WW2 when they asked to be included in the Axis team in return for Nazi assistance in expelling Britain from the Palestine Mandate. And of course the real hilarious part is where former Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir later became the Prime Minister of Israel. Oh nationalists, you so silly. But I digress.

Gameplay

Valkyria Chronicles 2 was quite a huge departure from the original VC; pretty much the entire battle system was revamped in order to accommodate PSP’s technical limitations.

The changes from VC2 to VC3 are however more evolutionary than revolutionary, which is unfortunate in my opinion as I had expected a bigger shift back towards the feel of the original. I suppose it can’t really be helped.

Strategic map showing cutscenes and missions along the way

There is a long list of small changes, but they don’t really add up to much. For example, you can now have 9 units on the map compared to 6 in VC2, but you still can only have a maximum of 5 per area so the tactical considerations aren’t that different. In fact, many of the area designs are copied wholesale from VC2 with some cosmetic changes added to make things look darker and grittier. There are some new area designs that look bigger at first, but are really the same size stretched thinner; imagine if the original areas in VC2 were 4×4 units big and in VC3, you get some that are 2×8 and 1×16. Big whoop.

One of the reused mission areas from VC2

One of the new longer areas

There are some new types of mission objectives but they aren’t that different. Also, all vehicle chassis only consume 1 CP now, so the trade-off between heavy and light tank is now limited to speed. This makes the heavier chassis viable options for those tough missions with tight S-Rank requirements.

Revamped Classes

VC2’s horrible, horrible branching class system that forces you to train four of every class in order to get all the elite class types has been completely abolished and replaced with something that more closely resembles the original VC.

The list of classes in VC3 is: Scout, Shocktrooper, Sniper, Support, Lancer, Machine Gunner, Armour Tech, Fencer.

Imca doesn’t give a shit about using class-appropriate weapon

The veteran and elite statuses unlock access to new equipment like in VC; variants such as grenade-launcher scouts, anti-tank snipers and anti-infantry mortarers are back to being weapon options instead of class options.

There are some minor adjustments done to the retained classes, some good and some horrible.

There are many, many cameos in VC3

Scouts have been nerfed and die a lot faster now so they can’t do point rushes like they used to, at least not until you train them to elites and upgrade their HP enough. This actually makes some of the earlier missions quite difficult if you are used to the weak damage enemies dished out in VC2.

Armour Tech deploying shield

Armour Techs now deploy their shields in front of them at the end of their turn, forming a barrier that other characters can hide behind. This makes them a heck lot more useful than in VC2. Also, their hammer attack is needed to deal insane damages to a new type of mission objective that you have to destroy.

Armour Tech shield protecting my sniper from boss rape

Fencers are no longer bulletproof like they used to be when they were an upgrade from Armour Tech. They basically take damage from bullets like Shocktroopers now. They still move as slowly. I have no idea why they were nerfed so horribly in this way as they were already highly situational in VC2. Now they are utterly useless and you are almost always better off with a Shocktrooper instead.

Battle Potentials

For the perfectionist gamer out there hell-bent on maximizing his characters’ Potentials, VC3 introduces a new system that allows every character to become any class in the game. A new class-specific Potential is unlocked with each level of class progression.

Many cameos…

For example, you can turn your elite Scout into a newbie Lancer and retain the Scout-specific Potentials that it has earned, such as “Power Scout”. This creates many cross-training combos where certain Potentials work best with a class they do not belong to.

The game keeps track of the level attained by every character in each class and it is possible to train a single character to be an elite in every class and gain all the Battle Potentials in the game. (But you can only have four active at a time so that would be a really dumb idea.)

Special Attacks

The three main characters, Kurt, Imca and Riela, also have access to personalized special attacks after certain points in the story are reached. Using special attacks consumes 1 CP and 1 SP (Special Point). Unlike CP, the number of SP is restricted per battle and does not regenerate between turns. You usually get anywhere from 1 to 3 SP per battle.

Direct Command

Kurt’s special attack, called “Direct Command”, allows him to have any two squad members to “group up” with him and assume direct command of them. They will move together with him for that turn and shoot at whatever he shoots at, excluding classes that do not normally perform suppressing fire, such as Lancer and Fencer.

Assuming direct control. o_o

This is a possible way to kill some enemy named elites or to have slow-moving units like Fencers move forward quickly. However, once you unlock Imca’s special attack, Kurt’s becomes just a complete waste of SP.

Also known as the Pew Pew mode

Imca’s special attack is called “Open Fire” and it’s basically like one of those multi-target-missile-lock-on thing that mechas in sci-fi do. You have to get all her targets into one single screen, so the angle and position matters, but if you do it right you can wipe out the whole area in one cluster shot. Tanks hit by her Open Fire attack take damage as if they were attacked from the back.

Everyone of them is dead

I’ll leave it to your imagination what Riela’s special attack entails…

Consuming an SP also causes the character to ignore the diminishing returns of AP and he/she can move for a full AP bar for that turn. This can be used tactically to great effect, especially if the character is a Scout.

Thoughts

The problem with me and Valkyria Chronicles 3 is that I played the first game. On its own, VC3 is an amazing PSP game and a fine improvement over VC2. The in-game art and atmosphere are so much more stylized and detailed compared to VC2. Unfortunately, it does not ever quite manage to recreate the same feeling of epic-ness of the original PS3 classic. It’s just too immersion-breaking when battles are confined to tiny claustrophobic rooms masquerading as villages or valleys.

The difficulty curve and balance in VC3 are also much, much better than facerolling VC2 and many of the fights pose a genuine challenge.

At the end of the day, VC3 is really not that different from VC2. The improvements are mostly cosmetic and the combat and class changes do not alter the basic feel of the gameplay.

I could not remember if this was a VC2 or VC3 screenshot…

So yeah, definitely pick up VC3 if you loved VC2 or if you are just a Valkyria fan boy like me. But if you hated VC2 and hoped for a shift back to the original, you will be sorely disappointed. Even with the tweaks to the class system and a better story, VC3 is ultimately just VC2 in a fresh coat of paint.

More Screencaps

A crap load of extra screencaps because I overdid it as usual.

Character portrait placements during dialogues are more interesting and varied than in VC2

Look away and say no. Classic tsundere

Oh hey another cameo

Of course

Eddy is here too

Wait a minute…

…

Apparently the whole damn cast of VC and VC2 has met Kurt but no one mentioned a thing in the past two games

There are two different romantic endings for VC3

One of the Calamity Raven commanders

Not quite the giant boss fights from VC

All Nameless “uniforms” are customized by one of the girls

On second thought, maybe this whole game was just an excuse to give Selvaria another chance to shine :D

I am really itching for Mass Effect 3 after finishing the second game. Damn it. I just want to see Tali’s face…

Sharp is releasing an Aquos Android clamshell phone with a 16-megapixel camera running Gingerbread. This is the latest step in Android’s quiet and gradual takeover of the Japanese phone market. I believe that Japan will eventually become a strategic stronghold for Android and in turn this will serve to shore up Google’s historically weak performance against Yahoo in search and online services in Japan.

Japanese Market

The mobile phone market in Japan has always suffered from the Galapagos syndrome. Clamshell phones developed in Japan by companies such as Casio and Sharp can find little demand in other markets, while on the flip-side, international titans like Nokia and Blackberry never had any significant presence in Japan.

Some believe that Japanese consumers simply dislike foreign products because they are not Japanese while pointing to examples such as the Xbox 360, but Apple’s success with iPod demonstrates that that is a superficial argument. The more likely explanation is that Japanese consumers have quirky demands that are often not part of the design considerations for overseas companies.

Most phones in Japan still look like these

The iPhone has found greater success in Japan than any other foreign-made phones, but its presence is nowhere close to the level of ubiquity it commands elsewhere. That is because as much as iPhone and Apple are considered hip brand names in Japan, Apple’s brand philosophy does not allow the iPhone to be customized for the Japanese market beyond adding emoticons to the soft keypad. The poor-performance camera, the lack of Mobile FeliCa contactless payment and the lack of 1seg digital receiver are severe disadvantages in the Japanese market and these cannot be resolved without custom hardware.

At the same time, Japanese keitai phones are rapidly falling behind in terms of software, a traditional area of weakness for the Japanese tech industry. New keitai models being released today are still running heavily modified variants of Symbian, an outdated platform that has been dead for years and recently abandoned by its primary proponent Nokia in favour of Windows Phone 7. The Japanese industry needs a new platform fast but is incapable of creating one.

Android’s Rise

This is where Android comes in. Unlike iOS, Android is flexible enough to be adapted for all the range of hardware required by the Japanese market.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 doesn’t even have support for Japanese input yet. Microsoft has traditionally been inept at marketing for Japan and its mobile division clearly does not see Japan as an important market. Furthermore, WP7 also comes with stricter hardware guidelines (e.g. capacitive touchscreen) that are unlikely to fly well with the clamshell phones that Japanese school girls love so much.

Android au KDDI selections

The process has already begun. Android has already replaced Windows Mobile 6.5 in the smartphone market in Japan. Just take a look at the smartphone offerings for the three major providers: Docomo, au KDDI and Softbank. They are dominated by Android, save for maybe one WM6.5 and one Blackberry. The only real competition in this sector is the iPhone, which is doing quite well as Apple products enjoy the cool factor even in Japan.

For the past few months, KDDI has been running a series of Android ads called “Android au” in multiple media formats, a campaign that is reminiscent of Verizon’s successful Droid campaign which is often cited as the reason for the sudden explosion in popularity of the Android platform. The KDDI Android ads include endorsement by boy band Arashi and prime-time TV spots, suggesting that KDDI is rather serious about committing to the platform for the long term.

Android’s Dominance

Last year, it was reported that iPhone took up 72% of the smartphone market in Japan in FY 2009. This sounds very impressive at first, until one realizes this is because a smartphone market didn’t exist and even high-end keitai phones are not considered smartphones. In actuality, Apple’s overall 2009 mobile marketshare in Japan amounted to a mere 4.9%. (Source: MM Research Institute)

In the fiscal year 2010, which had just ended, Android sales exploded and took up 57% of the Japanese smartphone market with 4.91 million units sold, while Apple fell to 38% with 3.23 million units. (Source: Bloomberg) With the support of KDDI and OEM giants like Sharp, Android’s lead in the smartphone market appears to have been secured. But beating Apple is just the first step.

The real battle lies in the keitai market, the vast majority of the Japanese mobile industry, and this is where Android will cement its dominance. The iOS is not even in play here due to its hardware dependency and there is no other competing OS platform with the same long-term potential and developer support that Android has. Furthermore, Japanese users expect their keitai interface to conform to certain norms and Android is really the only modern smartphone OS malleable enough to fit that mould and displace Symbian. Sharp’s new clamshell phone marks the beginning of this process.

Implications

For Japanese keitai manufacturers such as Sharp, Android is the most obvious way to leap-frog their phone firmwares to modern specifications without compromising on the traditional user experiences that Japanese users require.

This also has the long-term benefit of finally making their products export-ready (e.g. Sharp’s Galapagos is heading to the US with Android) and cutting down unnecessary R&D previously spent on replicating modern OS features on Symbian. Sharp’s new Android smartphones, such as the IS12SH with 3D cameras, are basically ready for the overseas market with a simple firmware change.

Sharp IS12SH Android smartphone

In the long run, Android is essentially going to win by default in Japan simply due to the lack of alternatives. One day, Japanese school girls will be buying Android clamshells and they won’t even notice the difference. This transition may also prove to be an excellent opportunity for Japanese hardware makers to re-enter the international market after losing badly to companies like Samsung and Nokia.

I for one welcome our new Android overlords.