So I finished the new Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai game for PSP. Well, I didn’t 100% it but I saw all the “true” endings except for Manami’s and that’s good enough. It’s not a bad game if you are into AVG but its primary purpose is basically fan service.

Story

The game takes place about one year after the start of the anime. I have no idea what is its place in the novel timeline. There are two major changes that I think probably took place in the light novels: Kuroneko is now a highschool freshman in Kyousuke’s school and calls him “senpai” and Ayase is somehow acquainted with Manami and calls her “oneesan”. (She still calls Kyousuke “oniisan”.)

Kyousuke’s kawaii kouhai

The story is divided into two portions. The first part is common to all the characters and is relatively short. It consists of two major events: Kirino and gang taking part in a Siscalypse competition and Kyousuke going on a school trip to Kyoto.

The story branching depends on whom Kyousuke teams up with for the competition (or if he takes part in it at all) and the souvenir he decides to buy in Kyoto (every girl wants a different thing).

Kirino and Saori vs. Kyousuke and Kuroneko

After Kyousuke returns from Kyoto, the story branches into the respective character paths. The main branches are for Kirino, Kuroneko, Saori, Ayase and Manami. Each character has around 3-4 endings, usually with one true ending, one good/normal ending and some bad/weird endings in between.

Paths

Plenty of spoilers. Continue at your own peril or skip to the next header.

Kirino: In a subconscious bid for Kyousuke’s attention, Kirino loses all her otaku-related memories, including those of Saori and Kuroneko. Kyousuke has to convince Kirino, a fashionable girl with good grades and a modelling career, that she is actually an otaku. Hilarity ensues.

True ending involves a semi-kokuhaku from Kirino at Comiket. Bad endings include Kirino forgetting about her true self and her otaku friends forever.

Isn’t this from Tsukuyomi Moon Phase?

Kuroneko: Kuroneko is working on a new doujinshi for the upcoming Comiket. She sees herself as the tragic creator whose source of creativity is her suffering and loneliness. Although she is falling behind the deadline, she refuses to ask for help from the others and actively avoids Kyousuke. It is up to Kyousuke to smack some sense into her if you know what I mean — I don’t.

True ending involves Kyousuke pledging eternal allegiance to the fallen angel.

Saori ＠ω＠

Saori: Saori, who is actually the ojousama of a rich family, is pushed into an arranged marriage with a 40-year-old paedophile princeling of a large conglomerate who wants her to stop her childish hobbies. Not an assertive person and obedient to her parents’ wishes, Saori gives all her precious otaku goods to Kyousuke for safe-keeping and bids everyone farewell. Kyousuke has to convince her that her wishes are just as important and she should stand up for herself.

True ending involves Kyousuke and Saori getting married out of the blue. Seriously.

It’s cuter than a cat in a box

Ayase: She has arguably the most romantic path in the game, though still kind of weak by most AVG standards. She seeks Kyousuke’s help in her attempts to understand Kirino better but ends up falling for Kyousuke. She is afraid of revealing her feelings because she thinks that Kyousuke is only teasing her when he does things like calling her “Lovely My Angel Ayase-tan”. Unlike the other girls, Ayase gets a proper kokuhaku scene.

True ending involves Ayase getting knocked up and living happily ever after with Kyousuke. Bad ending is yandere ending with off-screen stabbing action. There is also a weird ending named the “Forbidden Yuri Ending”… I leave that to your imagination.

Manami: Did not play her path. Meh.

Kanako: There is an ending for her that branches out towards the end of Ayase’s path. It is actually somewhat interesting. Heh.

End of spoilers. Continue from here.

Gameplay

The gameplay is hard work if you don’t use a walkthrough. There are two main mechanics involved.

The first is collecting titbits of information called O.R.E. (I can’t remember what it stands for) and deciding whether to use them when prompted to change the direction of the story. The second is a system called Two Shot where you have a face-to-face conversation with a girl and have to decide whether to tsukkomi her via quick-time event or not at certain points of the conversation.

Example of an O.R.E.

O.R.E.s are high-lighted in yellow

The O.R.E. (silly acronym is silly) system is persistent across replays so you get to use information you obtained in previous playthroughs to change the direction of the story. For example, Ayase’s true ending can only be obtained if you have an O.R.E. obtained from Kirino’s true ending.

Two Shot

Press square to give her a piece of your mind

The Two Shot system is kind of arbitrary. It is more trial and error than anything. Sometimes an obvious tsukkomi produces a negative reaction for no apparent reason and sometimes an apparently hurtful tsukkomi is exactly what the girl wants. I suppose it’s like real-life except that there is a quick load button that lets you jump back to any of the last thirty scene changes or gameplay decisions.

These modern AVGs have it good. Back in our days we had to walk uphill both ways just to find a save button and we were happy with our three measly save slots.

Thoughts

There are some genuinely hilarious moments in the game, particularly if you get the otaku-related allusions and occasional 2ch lingo. The dialogues are witty at times and live up to expectations set by the anime.

The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Really? Really! which in turn is a derivative of Ace Attorney, except that it is not as fun. You will fail repeatedly at the Two Shot system until you learn the true meaning of hate and just wiki the solution.

Lovely My Angel Ayase-tan

The endings are kind of lacklustre. As mentioned, I feel that Ayase is the only one who gets the proper heroine treatment. I suppose this is why she calls herself the “hidden heroine” at some point in Kirino’s path. Saori looks really gorgeous without her ＠ω＠ glasses though.

Character ranking:

1. Ayase
2. Kirino
3. Kuroneko
4. Saori
5. Kanako
6. Minami

Ending ranking:

1. Ayase
2. Saori
3. Kanako
4. Kuroneko
5. Kirino

Yeah I really can’t motivate myself to play though Minami’s path.

I like Kuroneko as a character but her path is probably the least interesting one. Kirino’s path is more entertaining and emotional, but the ending is one huuuuuuge cop-out. Not that this is unexpected, but I was hoping for a more…unorthodox resolution.

Spoiler ahead.

I find the final scene in Ayase’s true ending strangely thought-provoking. (Click on the button to see it.)

Ayase married Kyousuke and is pregnant with his daughter. Kirino returns to Japan from her modelling career in Paris to visit them and to witness the birth of her niece.

In a way, Ayase is a proxy for Kirino’s love for Kyousuke. Ayase and Kirino both love Kyousuke and at the same time they also love each other, but only Ayase can cross the last barrier. The last scene feels almost touchingly poignant in a zen-like way, if you can remove your worldly preconceptions and that feeling of creepiness lurking at the back of your mind long enough to ponder over it free from prejudices.

Okay, maybe I am reading too much into this shit as usual.

If only…

When Kyousuke spills the beans about his relationship with Ayase to Kirino in the true ending, Kirino is initially upset and asks him if things would’ve still been the same if they weren’t siblings.

This is probably the most overt acknowledgement of the unspoken nature of their mutual love that can be found in the game, and of course it’s not even in Kirino’s own true ending.

Unrelated but amusing: in Kuroneko’s true ending, where Kuroneko and Kyousuke get together, Kuroneko proclaims herself the older sister of Kirino and teases her about it. Her closing line is, “watashi no imouto ga konna ni kawaii wake ga nai.”

End spoiler.

The game also comes a Breakout-clone mini-game, a short in-character voiced commentary for every single unlocked CG in the album and a full plot diagram to show you the paths/endings you are missing. Not too shabby in terms of extras.

Breakout clone

CG album

Screencaps

I took way too many screencaps so I’m just going to dump everything here. Some of them may be considered spoilerish even without context.

You can…almost…

Kirino’s channelling Konata

The bad bad ending is where you end up with him

A common sight at Comiket

The weird supernatural ending…

Obligatory scene in all AVGs

Come to think of it, there’s a swimsuit CG for every girl

;_;

AVIO

:O

ಠ_ಠ

Ayase emails this to Kyousuke as a “reward”

(*´д`*)ﾊｧﾊｧ

Train ride to Comiket

The only other proper kiss scene in the game

Kirino confronts Ayase and fights over Kyousuke

Sweet scene, still something sinister slumbers silently

Kuroneko places a curse on Kyousuke

Kuroneko speaks fluent geek

Obligatory sukumizu

Kuroneko collapses

Kuroneko R.I.P. 2011

(´・ω・｀)ハァ？

Ruri-ruri

Saori emails this to Kyousuke as a “reward”……

Saori just won the game

uguuu…

You can actually see her eyes if you look hard

Saori removes her limiter and goes over 9000

The glasses were there to protect your sanity

(*´д`*)ﾊｧﾊｧﾊｧﾊｧキターー

pettan pettan tsuru pettan

The only other kiss scene in the game what is this I don’t even

Phew. Most screenshots ever?

Now back to Valkyria Chronicles 3…

Tytania is a show that gives high expectations and fails to live up to them. It has so much potential for greatness but ends up squandering them faster than a glue-sniffing MIT grad. If Yoshiki Tanaka, the author of the original novels, were dead, he’d be spinning in his grave right now. But he isn’t, so he has to pretend on his blog that he likes the anime. It’s tough to earn a living.

The story is set in the distant future. Mankind has colonized vast sections of the galaxy, ruled over by a noble clan called Tytania. Although the details of their methods of oppression are not shown, it is implied that the Tytanians rule mercilessly through fear and power. The story begins when a small city planet Euria incurs the wrath of Tytania in a diplomatic incident and has to defend itself against a space fleet led by Lord Ariabart Tytania, one of the four dukes of the Tytania clan.

Most people would refer to Tytania as science fiction, but only because the “sci-fi” brand has been diluted by mainstream audience to include any story set in the future. In actual fact, Tytania has probably more in common with sengoku-inspired medieval operas such as The Twelve Kingdoms than hardcore science fiction like Isaac Asimov. In fact, there is essentially not a single critical element in Tytania’s plot that absolutely requires a futuristic setting, as compared to a true sci-fi story like Planetes where the setting is not merely a gimmick but a direct result of the central theme. Replace Tytania with Tokugawa to see what I mean.

Pew Pew Pew

And that is Tytania’s first missed opportunity: sci-fi credentials. Space battle in Tytania takes place in both zero-gravity and zero-logic conditions. All weapons are variants of generic laser guns. Absolutely no care is taken to give the series any morsel of technical authenticity and believability. In contrast, Banner of the Stars, itself more space opera than hardcore sci-fi, paints a much richer universe in its plausible depiction of space combat dynamics within an explicit technological framework.

One of the few hittable girls

I suppose this is forgiveable since Tytania’s main draw is supposed to be its character-driven epic storytelling and not abstract technological reveries. Unfortunately, it fails on that count too.

The characters undergo the same inevitable transition from alluring unexplored potentials to generic background fillers of ultimate boringness in roughly the same amount of time it takes for you to realize that the hot blonde chatting you up in the bar is actually a man. There is little depth in any of the characters except perhaps Lord Jouslain Tytania, who himself ultimately plays no important role in the series. I haven’t had any experience with the original novels, but I get the feeling that he is supposed to be the main character and the story is being written to set him up for that role. If true, this would of course help to explain why the story as told by the anime sucks.

Can you guess that he is the cold-blooded ambitious bastard?

The major flaws in the anime can also be attributed in part to the fact that the novels it is based on were never completed. A lack of direction in the story is evident in the second half of the series, in which the producers try desperately to wrap up the wandering plot using a rudimentary climax that only serves to aggravate the feeling that you have been cheated by the tantalizing visions of grandeur promised by the first few episodes. In any case, The Twelve Kingdoms also ended on an incomplete note but nevertheless had an all-round epic run up to its premature death, so it’s no excuse for the shoddiness.

Tytania also suffers from horrendous animation. At this point, it is relevant to point out that its animation producer, Artland, is also responsible for such great masterpiece as Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino- and Happiness!, so you can imagine the level of consistency in the animation. The cost-saving techniques aren’t so bad when used in a down-to-earth setting like Bokura ga Ita, but it’s absolutely devastating when attempting to establish a believable sci-fi/fantasy setting.

State-of-the-art 3D rendering from 1990

This is as epic as it gets

There is nearly no attempt made to depict the futuristic world of Tytania. There is not a single screenshot I can find in 26 episodes of Tytania that can be described as “epic”. Without proper artwork consistency and setting-appropriate background design, Tytania is basically a bunch of drama queens in funny-looking psuedo European costumes. The whole thing feels more like a theatrical performance on stage than story set in space. That would be completely cool as an intended effect if the characters actually behaved interestingly enough to be the constant focus of the camera. Unfortunately, they remain mostly immobile on-screen to save on animation cost.

Tytania is interesting at the start but suffers a slow and tedious death. It has a sufficiently coherent, if not gripping, storyline that barely manages to drag the rest of its dead weight to the finish line. I am not a person who finishes every show he watches, so the fact that I did finish Tytania does say something (I was really bored?), but then again I watched the whole of Witch Hunter Robin too… *ducks*

Episode 5 is on hindsight the high point of the series

Ultimately, the series only serves to make you hungry for something better. My recommendation is to skip the long-winded middleman and go straight for a proper epic like The Twelve Kingdoms, Crest/Banner of the Stars or even Utawarerumono. Meanwhile, I shall continue to pray to the great forces of the universe for a new season of Twelve Kingdoms.

Here’s another ancient artefact unearthed during my idle excavation of anime past. RahXephon is an original anime series from the long-gone era of 2002, back when George W Bush ruled the free world with an iron fist and people thought Witch Hunter Robin was actually enjoyable. Those were simpler times. *switches on flame shield*

I enjoyed RahXephon the first time I watched it, so naturally when I recently had the chance to revisit the series, I assumed that like most good things from my (relative) childhood it would turn out to be a piece of turd. Fortunately I was proven wrong.

Boy meets girl

Ayato Kamina is a perfectly normal boy… Oh screw it. I’m too lazy to write a summary for this, so I shall plagiarize one from ANN:

In a world where time passes at a crawl and the blood of your neighbor runs blue, 17 year old high school student Ayato Kamina goes about his daily life within Tokyo Jupiter oblivious to the world around him, having been educated with the fact that the all civilization but Tokyo has been destroyed. But all that changes when the mysterious civilization “MU” invades his home, raining destruction down from the sky in the form of strange monsters called Dolems. The events that occur next will lead Ayato to the mysterious woman named Reika Mishima, to the truth of their existence, the discovery of what and who he is, and to the powerful angelic robot RahXephon.

Rei + Violin = Quon

Once again invoking my arguably paradoxical belief that all anime can be mathematically derived from preceding titles, the appropriate equation for this occasion is probably: Evangelion – Judeo-Christianity + Music + Mesoamerica = RahXephon

It would be somewhat of an understatement to say that RahXephon bares striking similarities to Evangelion. The influences are unmistakeable and a compelling case can be made that RahXephon was intentionally conceived to be an improvement upon Evangelion’s framework.

Boy meets girl… again

Let’s see here… Ayato is basically a cooler Shinji who is a gifted painter and popular with the chicks. During the attack on Tokyo, he meets Haruka Shitow, an agent working for TERRA, a paramilitary organization under the umbrella of a futuristic UN. Haruka is basically Misato except she is the female lead. After some love comedic ups and downs with the older woman, Ayato ends up at TERRA’s headquarters where he meets Quon Kisaragi, who is basically a hotter and cuter Rei, i.e. a constant source of mysticism and fanservice.

Boy meets yet another girl

The battle music in RahXephon is curiously reminiscent of Evangelion’s “Decisive Battle” and there’s a whole shopping list of other similarities that can be found between the two: a mysterious organization influencing global events, biomechanical mechas with dark secrets, ancient prophecies of world-resetting armagaddon and all the standard post-Eva existential essentials. Normally, I would be one of the first to reject these superficial similarities as merely the common features of an established genre, but RahXephon, I feel, goes beyond that.

Down the Geofront.. oh wait

Remember how when you first watched Evangelion, the ending left you confused and emotionally traumatized? I believe, with little evidence beyond my gut, that RahXephon’s producers set out to recreate the complex web of emotions that Eva gave us so as to give it the proper finality that End of Evangelion failed to provide for many. It’s kind of like how fan-fiction writers write alternative endings to match their wishes for the characters, although it sounds rather lame when I put it in that context. Haha.

Mulian weapon

That is not to say that RahXephon is trapped in the shadows of its source of inspiration — It is a story of human emotions that stand very well on its own. Perhaps because I’m not fluent enough in the language of the heart to fully appreciate the depths of Evangelion, but I found its presentation of human psychology rather incomprehensible at times, perhaps overly avant garde for the sake of it. RahXephon has its fair share of Alice-in-wonderland moments, but somehow manages to do a better job of tying things together while remaining relevant. In that sense, RahXephon provides a much more engaging and emotional experience.

RahXephon is like a work of art, really.

Beyond its heavy use of music as an important plot device, it is also highly effective in its visuals. I think there are few episodes in any anime that left such a deep impression on me as RahXephon’s episode 19. As Ayato desperately tries to protect his childhood friend Hiroko from the attacking Mulian in an ironic gesture whose futility can only be appreciated by the audience, the entire city’s power grid became a flashing display for a young girl’s heartfelt affection. The word “goodbye” trails off into infinity and, after a moment of darkness, the city is once again lit up. A powerful and imaginative scene.

The final episode also does an excellent job in its surrealist presentation.

As usual, I shall end my post here in an abrupt manner before I end up spoilering the entire series. Oh yeah, Maaya Sakamoto voiced Reika Mishima, so huzzah! And with that, I leave you with a bunch of purdy pictures.

Maaya <3

Racial diversity ftw

Shinji has nothing on this guy

Guess the situation >_>

The angelic-wing motif plays rather heavily in the show

orz

Ayato, playboy extraordinaire

And so I continue my way. Life is once again settling into a comforting rhythm, though deep in my heart I sometimes wish for a beautiful girl to descend from heaven and take me to her world with her giant mecha. Maybe that is why I recently brushed the digital dust off this ancient relic from the classical era of 2005 and gave it a second spin after its premature deposition almost exactly four dozen months ago. (I think I watched the first episode then.) Whatever the reason, I’m glad I did it.

Eureka Seven, to put it in a deceptively simple metaphor that actually complicates matters, is the anime equivalent of chicken soup. It’s definitely not a masterpiece worthy of Michelin stars, but its down-to-earth warmth does so well to melt the heart. Sure, some of it is probably just artificial flavouring and monosodium glutamate, but even those in the know find it hard to resist the smell of such basic goodness.

Eureka Seven is a show that tugs at your heartstrings even as it hits you no the head with its blatant nature. Bones is quite good at this genre, I think. To continue with my awful culinary metaphor cum pun, Bones (marrow) makes good chicken soup. I promise this is the last time I use it. Let’s try something else…

If I were to describe Eureka Seven as a Frankenstein chimera assembled using the severed body parts of preceding Bones productions, I’d say that it is a composite of RahXephon, Scrapped Princess and Fullmetal Alchemist… Let’s throw some Kurau Phantom Memory in there for good measure too, if only because I think Ayako Kawasumi is awesome. I hope I’m not making things too confusing… I guess I should just stick to chicken soup.

Eureka Seven is set in a distant future where mankind inhabits a planet that is permeated with Transparence Light Particles, or Trapar waves, a mysterious energy source that shoots out of the ground unpredictably like geysers and whose existence allows thrill seekers and combat mechas to ride in the sky in a fashion similar to surfing. This is mostly just a cover story so that the mecha designer could draw cool robots with giant surfboards.

Human civilization found in Eureka Seven is a curious mix of simple 19th century socio-economic order and futuristic dystopia with a heavy undertone of WW2-style militarization. The fictional Vodarec religion in particular largely resembles the isolated feudal lifestyle of pre-Communist Tibetan Buddhism complete with a leader whose name fits the bill. And oh yeah, people drive giant rods into the ground to prevent sudden outbreaks of what can only be described as ground erections. Also, the planetary government is run by three old geezers who look like the witch from Snow White.

Set in this somewhat crazy background is a rather conventional growing-up love story. Renton Thurston is a boy living in a rather boring town. He dreams about “lifting” (surfing the Trapar waves), but the Trapar activity in his town is rather lacklustre. His idols are a ragtag group of anti-establishment thrill seekers called Gekkostate and he dreams of lifting just like them some day. His grandfather, his only relative, however intends for him to take over the family business and become a small-town mechanic. His life changes forever when a girl from Gekkostate lands her mecha, Nirvash, in front of his grandfather’s workshop and asks for repair. That girl’s name is Eureka. I still can’t figure out what the “Seven” part means.

Unlike my usual posts, I shall go all out on spoilers from this point on. Since Eureka Seven is a relatively old show that falls right into the viewing spectrum of most of my readers (all three of you left), I shall forego all the dancing about the point I always try so hard to do and get down to it.

There were a few parts in the story that left an impression on me. Surprisingly, the love story between Renton and Eureka wasn’t actually one of them. I mean, it is nice how despite the clichéd setup there is some substance in the relationship beyond “I like her, does she like me?” teenage angst that anime loves to fall back on, but ultimately I can’t shake off the feeling of artificiality that echoes each time they reaffirm their love vows. Perhaps a recent revisit to His and Her Circumstances gave me unrealistically high expectations when it comes to emo internal monologues, but Eureka Seven’s idea of romance just doesn’t cut it for me.

The first quarter of the series where Eureka and Renton first fall in love is particularly weak, to the point that when Eureka declared her love in words, I was literally shocked because I don’t see what made her feel so strongly about Renton at that time. I suppose I can be lenient and chalk this up to Eureka’s inexperience with human emotions, but that’s such a cop out.

I do love the small side stories that build up the overall background, such as the good-natured farmer who developed a strongly optimistic outlook to life after his wife fell ill to the Desperation Disease and essentially became a soulless empty shell. In some ways, he is borderline insane when he claims that his wife talks to him all the time, but somehow the show forces the audience (or at least me) to look beyond the cynicism and want to believe. It’s so sad and yet he looks so content. That’s some Kino’s Journey-grade material right there.

Another episode I loved is when Renton, Eureka and Matthieu are stranded in Controrado, a country that resembles a Cold War-era South American banana republic. There Renton meets his uncle, Yucatan Iglasias, a former military man who is a true believer of glory and honour as prescribed by state propaganda. Yucatan recognizes Matthieu from the wanted posters and assumes that Renton is being held against his will, oblivious to the fact that Renton is a member of the rebel Gekkostate on his own accord. Yucatan attempts to help Renton, resulting in Matthieus’s arrest, but Renton rejects his help and mounts a rescue mission.

Yucatan, having spent his entire life as a soldier believing in the just cause of the establishment, cannot reconcile that belief with his love for his nephew who has willingly joined the Gekkostate, a supposed terrorist organization. As a coup de grâce, he is arrested for being a suspected terrorist after Renton and the rest successfully make their getaway. The crestfallen and confused look on his face as a group of soldiers, people whom he can never imagine betraying, ransacks his house for evidence and treats him like a criminal is simply heartbreaking.

People get hurt sometimes even if one makes a right choice. Powerful stuff if you pause to think about it.

My favourite part of the whole series is probably Renton’s run-in with the Beams couple, a loving pair of freelance pilots hired by Dewey to destroy Gekkostate and kill Holand. Villain couples who suffer tragic death and parental figures who later return as antagonists are both common themes in storytelling, but I simply love how human this sub-story feels the way Eureka Seven does it. When Darth Vader dies to save Luke (omg spoiler), it’s more of a surprise than a tearjerker since it’s hard for the audience to truly empathize with him.

Charles and Ray Beams however are very lovable characters who genuinely love Renton, offering him parental love that he never had in exchange for a child they can never have. The circumstance in which they are forced by their code of honour and the realities of the world they live in to face off Renton and the Gekkostate and ultimately suffer tragic deaths is profoundly stirring. Deep down, I think we all wished that the two of them could somehow have survived.

Beyond those three examples, the general war-torn state of the world, the persecution of Vodarec and the various personal ties that revolve around the Gekkostate offer plenty more to ponder about. (i.e. I’m lazy to write more.)

And oh, for some reason the final ending theme left a really deep impression on me. It’s not so much the music, but rather its combination with the slide show of “photos” that accompanies it.

They look a lot like photos from the European theatre in WW2 and really bring added realism to the story universe. Personally I find it a pity that the series itself doesn’t venture more into the back story of what appears to be a world with a tragic contemporary history. I think those faux photos show some great potential for further storytelling.

And oh right. What’s with the lack of character development for Anemone? I thought Dominic and her deserved way better than the slip-shot treatment they received from the script. So much is hinted at the emotional tensions that exist in the two of them, but ultimately all was for naught. It feels like the writer originally intended for them to play a bigger role, like an equal but opposite version of Eureka and Renton, but then decided there wasn’t enough airtime and just randomly prescribed a generic happy end for them. Well at least it was a happy ending.

And that Eva-seque berserking scene was just totally out of place in my opinion.

This post is getting way longer than I had intended so I shall cut it short here and just say that Eureka Seven was much better than I expected… So anyway, see you next week assuming my posting momentum holds up.

It’s been so long since my last post. It’s not that my schedule is too full for my to blog — it isn’t — but rather I feel my writing inspirations gradually drained from my soul in this mindless meat grinder that is involuntary national service.

It will be a journey of rediscovery as I slowly relocate my lost ethos. Full recovery will take a while. For now, I’d like to start off with a book review — I believe the first ever on this blog if you don’t count manga and light novels.

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami.

I have always been a sci-fi person. When my peers were raving over Khaled Hosseini, I was enjoying decade old works of Orson Scott Card (a crazy Mormon dude who tells good stories). When Neil Gaiman’s Stardust was enjoying renewed attention thanks to its rather decent movie adaptation, I was busy having my mind blown by Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama Saga.

So it’s no surprise that I kind of missed the Haruki Murakami train the first time. Having only finished Norwegian Wood recently, I suppose there is a tinge of regret that I kept myself out of the loop for so long out of genre snobbery. While my usual favourites of sci-fi are gripping works of conceptual imagination, Norwegian Wood is a breathtaking ride in emotive imagery.

A book is often judged by its story, but in that aspect Norwegian Wood is hardly epic. It is a simple story of teenage love and adulthood, one which in summary could be easily dismissed as mere pulp fiction. What the book does best is not the plot, but the overwhelming emotions Murakami conveys through his writing style that give life to the main characters.

The protagonist of this first-person narrative is Toru Watanabe, a somewhat unmotivated and cynical college student who is not too sure about where he is heading in life. He possesses a surreal detachment from the world around him, perhaps as a result of past pains. Although the story is told from Toru’s inner perspective, he nevertheless emits an aura of eccentric unpredictability in the way he responds to the things happening around him.

The bulk of the story took place when Toru was studying literature in a Tokyo college. In Tokyo, he met his childhood friend Naoko, whom he shared a painful past and with whom he was emotionally entangled (it’s complicated). Through his bond with her, he sought to regain normalcy and recover from the past. Unfortunately, things do not always turn out for the best and happiness is not guaranteed even in fiction. He often found himself unsure about his choices and uncertain of even his own desires. He also met Midori in school, a cheerful and eccentric girl who seemed to contrast heavily with both himself and the deeply troubled Naoko.

I’m sure my description is doing a horrible job at conveying the feel of the novel — partly because I like to keep things non-specific so as to avoid spoilers — so I’ll just stop here and add that this typical-sounding setup is surprisingly engrossing when read in Murakami’s words. You can almost reach out and touch the characters as they try to communicate their souls through the imperfections of language.

At this point, it is important to note that I read the English translation of Norwegian Wood by Jay Rubin, which I believe is the more recent version. The original Japanese version is sold in two volumes and I have read the first one. As my command of Japanese is more or less functional, I find that I enjoyed the English translation a great deal more. I chalk it up to my inability to react in the intended manner to the emotive nuances in Japanese. Maybe I should study Japanese Literature in college. Or not.

Norwegian Wood is a great book about loss beyond death and love beyond lust. Whether you are a teenager still searching for answers or a grizzly old fart hungry for nostalgia, there’s something in it for you to take home.

Now I need to figure out which one of Murakami’s works to read next.

Tower of Druaga is like that ugly girl with the glasses whom you have never actually met in real life, and when you finally do meet her, you realize that she’s in fact very attractive and doesn’t actually wear glasses. Also, there’s probably a that’s-what-she-said joke somewhere in that title…

Now hold your horses. I know all those regular readers of my blog out there (all three of you) are probably going, “OMG DM is actually blogging about an on-going series (that’s not made by Sunrise)!” Wrong. Uh-uh. Sorry to disappoint you but this post is about the first season of Tower of Druaga which aired last year.

So why blog about it now? Because I just watched it (while fishing in Dalaran). It’s also cool to be non-conformist and blissfully ignorant of current blogging trends. At least that’s how I like to think of it.

So basically Tower of Druaga was an 80s arcade machine that probably no one other than hardcore Namco fanboys cared about until Gonzo randomly decided to make an anime out of it and even after that. Since the game was just an 8-bit maze with probably zero story to speak of, it is difficult to understand why Gonzo decided to license this franchise instead of making a new one. Maybe it was free, or maybe they really, really wanted to do 8-bit gags.

The punchline of the entire series?

The premise of the show is nothing to write home about — A group of adventurers with radically different personalities go on a long and arduous quest to climb a gigantic tower and slay the generic demon king who is terrorizing the land in ambiguous manners — which is why I was reluctant to give this series a try. Fortunately, I did.

The impulsive young boy, the silent mature lady and the likeable heroine

People who read my Gundam 00 ‘reviews’ probably think that I am a joyless cynic whose icy soul has frozen beyond the reach of the simple wonders of mainstream entertainment. That is actually quite true when it comes to anime. I find it difficult to sit through a 20-minute episode of Akikan! without mentally dismantling every line of dialogue down to its tiny core of cliché. This makes Tower of Druaga particularly worthy of compliment, considering that it managed to keep me distracted for the entire length of its 12 episodes and kept things interesting and fresh enough that I had little time to pause and deconstruct its entire existence. Bravo.

“This story is so stereoty… WAIT OMG TENTACLE SECHS”

So I shall do that now instead. Stripped down to its bare fundamentals, Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk (i.e. the first season) is essentially a cleverly-crafted gateway drug. The first episode is a blatant attempt at chipping away the hardened outer shell of even the most cynical critic with a non-stop barrage of gags and parodies that poke fun at the fantasy adventure genre, and for the most part it works remarkably well.

The core humour at work in the series is smart and, barring the first episode, seldom over the top. The clever use of cultural anachronism provides a focal point for the audience’s wandering attention until the larger plot eventually takes over. It also helps that the animation quality is rather good and does not distract from the story, except for maybe parts of episode 7.

And the opening sequence is just pure genius.

Probably go down in history as the most awesome OP ever

The entire story of the first season can probably be summed up in one sentence, but that’s because it is only the beginning of the real epic. After drawing the audience in with its charming humour, the first season eventually focuses on developing the main characters and to make the audience fall in love with them, so as to set the stage for the larger story.

I’m melting…

And in case I am giving the wrong impression with my bias selection of screen captures, Druaga is definitely not a gag anime per se. There are gags, but the overall feel is a lot closer to Scrapped Princess than Excel Saga, and my personal opinion is that things will only get more serious and emotional in season two.

I know this isn’t helping my case

It is still too early to judge Tower of Druaga as a whole, for a great appetizer is nothing without an equally enjoyable main course, but The Aegis of Uruk is no doubt one of the best appetizers from Gonzo in a long, long time. Let’s hope that the currently-airing Sword of Uruk will not turn out to be a let-down.

On another note, Fatina is so hot. I know that so far every single hint in the show, including the opening sequence (usually a rather accurate indicator of future plot direction), says that Kaaya is the heroine of the show, but I just can’t help but root for the underdog. I mean come on, Fatina and Jil make such a cute and entertaining couple.

She can climb my tower any time if you know what I mean. Well, high-rise public housing, but close enough.

P.S. I keep reminding myself to get down to writing my Comiket reflection piece, but I just—Oooh shiny thing.

But if you do manage to hold through, and unlike Tameiki, you will be rewarded for your patience. The second half of the story is well worth the effort. Of course, it’s not as perfect as it could’ve been with a better scenario writer, but it’s good enough that I have some regained hope for the anime, which BTW seriously needs to stop outsourcing its art to Korea.

Introduction

Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na is a 2005 game from August, a relatively unknown company with only five works so far. The PS2 version with new characters is coming out on 7 Dec.

Story

The story is set in very distant future, in a time when mankind is just recovering from decades of war fought between Earth and a terraformed Moon. The war was so devastating that it set technological progress back by decades if not centuries, which is why the settings don’t look futuristic (or maybe because the artist doesn’t like to draw sci-fi scenes…). Although the world is now at peace, there continues to be distrust between the Sphere Kingdom (Moon) and the Earth Federation. Travel between the two is restricted for diplomatic purposes and confined to a single spaceport on Earth.

So anyway, one day the lunar princess (TSUKIHIME!), Feena fam Earthlight, comes to the main character’s house for home stay…

Gameplay

The game play of YoakeMae is standard ADV fare. The first part of the game is divided into about three months or so, from May to August, and you pretty much make all the decisions needed by July.

During the span of Feena’s home stay, there are various small events (eating bento together, going to the beach, etc) that try to develop the characters but fail horribly. They are seriously boring and a huge waste of time that could have been otherwise spent on developing the main story.

Assuming you go for Feena’s story path, which is really the only route that is worth playing, the actual story only starts to reveal itself near the end of July, which means that two in-game months were wasted away on useless character events. Gao.

But once the main story starts, it’s Good Stuff â„¢. The second half of Feena’s normal path deals with the various problems faced by Tatsuya and Feena as they realize their feelings for one another. Since Feena is the princess of the Moon and Tatsuya is just a regular guy from Earth, there are of course many obstacles preventing them from obtaining happiness.

One of the obstacles is Karen Clavius, the person in charge of Feena’s safety and entrusted by the King to select the person who would be Feena’s husband and the future king.

But needless to say, the couple manages to overcome all odds and prove to Karen and everyone else that the two the truly love each other and etcetera etecetera. The game ends with Karen heading back to Moon to recommend Tatsuya to the King.

Happily ever after? Not yet! But I won’t tell you why… yet.

Characters

When it comes to bishoujo games, it’s all about the characters and their stories. Sadly, YoakeMae is lacking in this department. Other than Feena, the other girls are uninteresting and undeveloped. I guess it’s a double-edged sword to have such a prominent heroine who is so cool, cute, moé, beautiful, exquisite and generally perfect in every way possible.

I mean seriously, who the hell plays YoakeMae for anyone but Feena-sama? :P

Game Paths

There are a total of six paths for the six girls, Feena, Mia, Mai, Natsuki, Sayaka and Wreathlit.

• You must play Feena’s path first in order to unlock the rest
• You must play all the other five girls’ paths in order to unlock Wreathlit
• After finishing all six girls’ paths, the final scenario “Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na” will be unlocked

Because all the other girls are so boring and uninspiring, the game creators have to force you to play through all of them in order to get the final scenario, which contains the true Feena ending.

Let me just get this out of the way first: The true ending is the BEST PART OF THE GAME. The scenario is almost as long as the normal paths and it continues from the end of Feena’s normal ending. For Haruhi’s sake, the scenario is named “Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na” for a reason! It’s without doubt the most vital portion of the game!

I shall not spoil anything here, except it’s an (somewhat) epic story of love and self-realization involving an azure-coloured gems passed down from the late Queen and “Lost Technology”. Plenty of passionate Hitomi Nabatame-voiced love-making too of course…

And yes, this is the ending where Tatsuya and Feena really live happily ever after. :P

As you can see, you need to waste a lot of time to get to the best part of the game. What I did instead was to finish Feena’s normal path, download a completed saved game, and then skip right to the ending scenario. I am smart!

Seriously, judging from the way Feena’s normal path is like, I have to conclude that the rest of the paths are probably not going to be very interesting, especially since they are not tied into the main story. I may try Wreathlit’s path someday because she’s voiced by Shizuka Itou and I have a weak spot for Tama-nee… <_<

And, as I said, they live happily ever after. :3

Feena in wedding dress = instant win!
Then again, Feena wins no matter what she wears (or doesn’t wear…). :P

“Another View”

During gameplay, the perspective often changes to allow the player to see important events that are happening away from the main character. The game calls it “Another View”.

It is by no means a new concept and many games have used it before, the most recent one that I can recall being Scarlett. But it is pretty well-implemented and I like it.

Art

The art is awesome. Enough said.

Compare these to the anime, especially episode 3. Doesn’t it make you feel like crying? ;_;

Music and Sound

The soundtrack is nothing outstanding, but the theme song “Lapis Lazuli” does leave an impression. I like the part in the final scenario where it was played… Good stuff.

The voice-overs are generally well-done but not particularly outstanding. Feena by Hitomi Nabatame (Arcueid in Shingetsutan Tsukihime, Yuuna in Maburaho, Nanaka in D.C. II) and Wreathlit by Shizuka Itou (Tamaki in To Heart 2) set off my fanboy alarm. :3

Karen by Yuu Asakawa (Itoko from School Rumble, Motoko from Love Hina) is awesome too.

Conclusion

Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na is an enjoyable game with excellent graphics and an engaging story (towards the end), but it’s nothing special compared to most games of recent times. The main selling point is, of course, Feena-sama and that was enough for the game to clinch the 3rd spot for 2005’s 18+ game sales rankings at 70k units sold, behind Fate/hollow ataraxia and To Heart 2 XRATED.

And indeed, Feena-sama (and her story path) makes the game worth playing.

P.S. wondering why is the title “Yoake Mae yori Ruri-iro na” (“Brighter than dawning blue” being the creative interpretation)? For that, you have to refer to the final line in the entire game, spoken by Feena.

FEEEEEEEEEEENA!!!

After watching the first episode, I’m happy to say that Tokimeki Memorial ～Only Love～ is not at all the cheap game advertisement I thought it would be! Recommended viewing for TokiMemo fans! Sayuri ftw!

Summary and screenshots after the jump~

Riku Aoba is a new transfer student at a private school that gives its students plenty of personal freedom with hilarious results. He ends up in the same class as Sayuri Amamiya, the school idol and the cover girl of Tokimeki Memorial Online. On the first day of school, he gets set up by the student council president, Haru Sakurai, and ends up having to run for his life from the entire male population of the school…

Long story short: Riku’s life is saved by a little yellow furball thingy that is supposedly a chick(?). Watch the first episode if you want to know just WTF is up with the kemonomimi on everyone’s head…

I have to say that I was not expecting much from this series at all, so I am quite pleasantly surprised to find the first episode to pretty decent. WAAAAAAAAY better than the horror that is Lovely Idol episode 1… (Let’s not speak of that again)

It’s a pretty good deal considering the printed retail price is ï¿¥6,800 and I got it for S$75 (about ï¿¥5,500). Still, can’t say that it didn’t hurt a little…

At 1/6 and standing nearly 30cm tall, this Saber is quite eye-catching and her smile makes my heart melt like PVC left under the sun for too long. Mmmmm… burnt plastic… Anyway, most of the stores seem to be selling this at S$90++. If not for the S$20 dollars discount I probably wouldn’t have bought it, at least not today. I probably would have succumbed eventually.

I’m not sure if it’s Saber’s smiling face tinted with a hint of red, her totally awesome ahoge or her frilly off-shoulder top, but there’s just something about her that’s done right. Hmmm… I am not experienced enough at this figurine business to say what exactly. Maybe it’s just my inner Saber fanboy influencing my perceptions. :3

Look! No hand!

hawt

And of course, no figurine review is complete without the obligatory pantsu shots, except possibly the male and non-human(oid) ones. But alas, Saber’s skirt is too tight to allow my camera to obtain a good shot… <_< >_> <_<

ecchi nano wa ikemasen!

Fortunately, Saber—like all bishoujo figurines—is designed with a removable skirt. The companies know their customer base.

ecchi nano wa ikemasen!

Now we know why she’s blushing

Saber’s supporting her weight mainly with her right foot and it looks kind of unstable. But fear not! The clever folks at GSC screwed her feet to the base (ouch) instead of using those lame plastic protrusion thingies.

Of course, since her legs are made of PVC, she might just start to lean more and more to her left as time goes on and tropical heat does nasty things to the plastic… But ithe legs do feel quite sturdy compared to PVC legs on 1/8 figurines, so hopefully everything will be just fine. Only Haruhi knows.

S$75 well(?)-spent. I think that’s all my figurine purchases for this month. At least, I hope it is. Of course since it’s only the first day of the month, unexpected things may happen and blood money will flow.

Saber is available from Amazon for ï¿¥5,229.

The first novel took me about three days to finish. For comparison, it took me a few weeks of half-hearted reading to complete Suzumiya Haruhi no Tameiki. Either Zero was that good or Tameiki really really sucked. Anyway, read on for my thoughts and some comparisons to the anime.

In case you have yet to watch the anime, the basic story of Zero goes like this: Saito Hiraga wakes up in an unfamiliar world and finds himself face to face with Louise Françoise le Bran de la Valiel, a student of Tristine’s magic academy. She was trying to summon a familiar but somehow Saito appeared instead. With no way home and no other options, Saito ends up becoming Louise’s familiar and spends his days washing her pantsu.

I only realized that I had previously read a title by Yamaguchi before when I was looking through his short biography. Apparently he wrote Green Green ~ Kanenone Stand By Me based on the original Green Green adventure game from Groover. It was one of my favourite light novels, although I may just be biased since it’s a novelization of Futaba’s story. <3 Anyway, the point is that I was quite excited about the Zero novels because of this.

After finishing the first volume, I have to say that I was not disappointed. It’s easy to be engaged by Yamaguchi’s style of writing and feel yourself immersed in the fantastic kingdom of Tristine. It’s a lot more story-centric as compared to the Suzumiya Haruhi novels and more reader-friendly than Nagaru Tanigawa with his blockbuster-length noun modifiers and random analogies.

The illustrator for the novels, Eiji Usatsuka, has quite a unique style. Some of the character designs are quite different from the anime, such as for Siesta. Speaking of Siesta, she barely gets any lines at all in the first novel. In fact, I get the feeling that she’s not really an important character at all…? Well, maybe in the later volumes. But somehow it seems that the anime is giving her a lot more screentime than necessary when you consider her role (or the lack thereof) in the story so far. I guess they realized the importance of a meido and that it’s not enough to just focus on the tsunderekko.

The first novel basically covers up to the capture of the thief Fouquet. Other than the lack of Siesta, there are a few differences from the anime that I noticed.

• Princess Henrietta is not introduced yet. I’m guessing she’s in Vol.2.
• Saito fantasizes naughty things about Louise during lesson…
• …gets locked out of Louise’s room and subsequently invited (and not taken forcefully by a giant salamander) into Kirche’s room.
• Kirche buys her sword for 1,000 instead of 500 gold.
• Louise and Kirche have a duel (of sorts) in the middle of the night to decide whose sword Saito will use.
• Fouquet steals the Staff of Destruction during this duel.

The second novel is titled 「風のアルビオン」 or “Albion of Wind”, which probably refers to the story arc involving Princess Henrietta and Prince Wales of Albion. The anime is currently at Albion and nearing its end. Considering the fact that the first novel only covers up to Fouquet’s capture, I am guessing that a lot of the episodes in between, such as Siesta’s and Tabitha’s, are actually taken from more recent novels. Judging purely by title, the fourth volume 「誓約の水精霊」 (“Covenant of the Water Spirit”) seems to be where the Tabitha/Charlotte and love potion episodes come from.

This rearrangement is unlike Suzumiya Haruhi anime where although the episodes air order was shuffled, the timeline itself is kept unchanged. In the case of Zero, because the stories have been cut and resequenced to create a new timeline for the anime, this might make a second season less plausible.

Anyway, can’t wait till I get my hands on the next book.