2069: Cardinal Sins

In between some lengthy Grisaia sessions today — I’m tackling Michiru’s route now, and my goodness is there going to be a lot to talk about there — I decided to check out some shoot ’em ups that hit Steam the other day: Eschatos and Judgement Silversword, previously available on Xbox 360 and, in the case of Judgement Silversword, the WonderSwan Color, of all things.

Judgement Silversword comes with a spinoff game called Cardinal Sins, and it’s actually that I’ve spent the most time playing today. Cardinal Sins takes the basic gameplay of Judgement Silversword and, instead of pushing you through a sequence of stages with difficulty that gradually ramps up (with a few big spikes along the way, if the first boss is anything to go by!) it challenges you to complete various objectives in the stage.

The game is themed around the Seven Deadly Sins, with each of the seven stages being named after one of them and providing you with a different means of attaining a strong grade or “judgement” at the end of the game. The first stage Envy, for example, tasks you with simply destroying as many enemies as possible, with your grade dependent on the percentage of all the available enemies you destroyed. Sloth, meanwhile, tasks you with simply grabbing as many extra life pickups as you can (and you can destroy them, so you have to actually ease off the shooting a bit), while Greed tasks you with “gathering data” on enemies by fulfilling various hidden conditions.

Greed is perhaps the most interesting of the stages as well as the most thematically appropriate, because getting too greedy for the “data” will result in your untimely destruction; instead, you need to learn moderation (or at least master the peculiar “shield” ability your ship has, which allows you to cancel bullets, but only from the front of your ship) in order to succeed.

After Greed comes Pride, where your job is to raise your score multiplier to x100 by destroying enemies as efficiently as possible — your multiplier increases by one for every enemy destroyed, but also drops by one every second or so. Following this is Lust, where you must clear as many enemy waves as possible; Gluttony, where you must destroy enemies for collectibles; and finally Wrath, where you are graded according to how many times your ship is destroyed during a horrid boss fight.

Interestingly, Cardinal Sins doesn’t kick you out to a Game Over screen if you run out of lives at any point; you always play through the seven levels in order, with your lives being reset at the start of each stage. Run out of lives and you simply get a “failing” F-grade on that stage, but you can carry on. There’s incentive not to do this, however; get through all the stages without any failures and you’ll be presented with the final battle, initially against a series of small but strong bullet-spewing enemies, and subsequently against a larger version with some seriously unpleasant bullet patterns to fend off. Only by defeating this “Mirror of Cardinal Sins” can you clear the game and sit back with a satisfied expression on your face.

I really like this game for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s nice to play a game that is genuinely retro rather than the fashionable faux-retro of much of the indie scene today; the game features some simple but deliciously crunchy chiptune music and sound effects as well as some limited but effective and clear visuals.

Secondly, it’s damn fun. The difference in structure from the usual shoot ’em up format of “survive as long as you can” makes it immediately stand out for me, and I’m a sucker for anything with an interesting grading and scoring system.

Thirdly, I’d never heard of it before, and now it’s on Steam a whole bunch of newcomers — including me — will get to experience it for the first time, along with its companion game Judgement Silversword and its pseudo-sequel Eschatos.

With Cave shoot ’em ups apparently on the way to PC via Steam soon, it’s starting to look increasingly likely I can finally retire the Xbox 360, which had previously been my shmup machine due to Japan’s bizarre rejection of the platform for everything except fantastic arcade shooters.

2060: A Fruitful Relationship: More Grisaia Impressions

In an effort to steer away from three solid days of ranting about games journalism, I asked my followers on Twitter for some suggestions of things to write about, and got a few nice ideas, so I’ll be making use of those over the next few days.

I thought I’d start with a request from my friend Mr Michael Cunningham, who wanted to hear a bit more about The Fruit of Grisaia, the visual novel I’m currently reading, and which I gave some first impressions of here.

So far, I believe I’m still in the “common” route of Grisaia, since I’ve only made a single choice so far, and that didn’t come until after a considerable number of hours of reading. The lack of interaction hasn’t been a problem, though; the early hours of Grisaia are clearly intended as a means of helping you get to know the characters and the context in which they find themselves, and the distinctly leisurely pace at which the early hours of your typical visual novel such as Grisaia unfolds allows it to dangle some truly tantalising mysteries in front of you, mostly with regard to the backgrounds of the characters and what has actually brought them all together.

Even the basic concept of Grisaia is still a slight mystery to me at this juncture. Although the early hours have been relatively typical high school slice-of-life so far, there’s clearly something more going on. From the protagonist’s frequent references to his mysterious “job” and use of military terminology and tactics to the unpredictable, trope-subverting nature of all the heroines, nothing seems quite “right” in Grisaia’s world, and that’s what makes it so intriguing. The fact that the school which they all attend has no-one but them in it — making for a student body of just six people — is perhaps the biggest mystery: why are they all there? What has pulled them out of “normal” life? What is the school for?

Amane initially appears to be the most “normal” of the cast. She likes to play the role of the older sister, and does so with great enthusiasm, particularly when it comes to protagonist Yuuji. Yuuji is initially resistant to her advances but eventually allows her to indulge a little for the sake of having a marginally quieter life, because even when she’s getting what she wants, Amane is forthright, frank, open and honest about everything — arguably to a fault.

She’s also seemingly very much at ease with herself as a woman, happily stripping off and getting changed in front of other people (including Yuuji) and wearing clothes that emphasise her curves. She’s also rather sexually aggressive towards Yuuji even as they’re first getting to know one another, often grabbing him and pressing herself against him, and on one memorable occasion, sneaking into his room while she thinks he’s out and inhaling his scent from his clothes and his bed; Yuuji catches her just before she starts masturbating.

I’m not quite sure what to make of Amane yet. I certainly like her a great deal, but I have a feeling that her forthrightness may, in fact, be compensating for something. Exactly what, I couldn’t say just yet, but I’m pretty convinced that there is more to Amane than meets the eye.

Makina is brilliant. Initially presented as the dimwitted loli of the group, it takes a little time for Makina to take to Yuuji, but they eventually bond, much to the surprise of Amane, from whom Makina is otherwise almost inseparable. It transpires that Makina is far less stupid than she likes to make out, and that she may well be putting on an act for her own mysterious reasons.

This doesn’t mean that she’s entirely “normal”, though. Her impressive ability to take mental photographs of books she’s reading and instantly recall information from them — albeit only in black and white — reminds Yuuji of his deceased sister, who had a similar ability. Perhaps not coincidentally, Makina quickly starts calling Yuuji “Onii-chan”, despite his resistance; much like he softens towards Amane somewhat, so too does he eventually just let Makina continue along in her own bizarre little world.

Perhaps the most amusing and intriguing thing about Makina is the way she talks. Far from being stereotypically cute and shy, Makina is foul-mouthed and frequently comes out with things you’d expect a dirty old man to say. Amane occasionally admonishes her for this, but since she occasionally slips into her own Kansai region colloquialisms, she doesn’t really have a leg to stand on in this instance.

Again, I wouldn’t like to conjecture what brought Makina to Mihama Academy in the first place, but it’s clear that something traumatic happened in her past; so far, however, the conversation has always been steered away from it any time it looks like getting into dangerous territory.

In contrast to Makina’s front of stupidity, Michiru actually does appear to be pretty dimwitted. Obsessed with the tsundere character trope to a fault, Michiru deliberately tries to act as stereotypical as possible, but in the process frequently breaks character in order to seek the approval of others — and, to a certain degree, herself — on how well she’s doing at playing the spoiled princess.

In keeping with the other characters, though, there’s seemingly a lot more to Michiru than meets the eye. As time progresses, whenever she is alone with Yuuji, she seems to want to open up to him somewhat. In some instances, she drops the tsundere act completely and attempts to have a serious conversation, though her inability to articulate herself in anything more than the most simple terms sometimes means she finds it challenging to get across quite what she wants to say.

Michiru is clearly struggling with depression — perhaps as a result of a condition or illness she has. Her adoption of the tsundere personality is a coping mechanism designed to hide any outward signs of her pain and suffering; by being deliberately aggressive and contrary about everything, she puts up a formidable barrier around the truth that lies in her heart, though, of course, I’m sure by the end of her own narrative route we’ll get to the bottom of exactly what is bothering her so much. She is the butt of a considerable number of jokes throughout the common route, but I have the distinct feeling she’s going to end up being one of the most sympathetic characters.

Sachi (right) is something of an enigma. Sweet, innocent and largely emotionless to a fault, something in Sachi’s past has caused her to become someone who takes everything she hears absolutely literally. This means that a joke about how she should wear a maid costume all the time because of all the hard work she does for others means that she now wears a maid costume whenever she’s not in her school uniform; it means that someone requesting “the freshest milk possible” sees her catching a train out to the countryside to go and milk a cow.

Sachi’s initial impression is that she’s a thoroughly nice and considerate person, but there’s something else at work. Occasionally — particularly when she’s dealing with Michiru — some uncharacteristically hurtful, acidic comments will come out of her mouth. There’s evidently some bitterness festering beneath the surface, though for the most part, she simply refuses to talk about it and quickly puts her façade of being the perfect maid back up.

The other thing about Sachi is that her tendency to take things literally means that she has absolutely no sense of shame or propriety whatsoever. When Yuuji jokes with her about the power a glimpse of lingerie has over men, she turns up to school the next day in nothing but lacy undies, stockings and suspenders. When she and Yuuji are cleaning the dormitory bathroom together, she falls over and gets her maid costume wet, then subsequently decides that the appropriate thing to do — after another joke from Yuuji — is to take it off, attach it to her mop (“to cover more ground”) and continue the rest of the cleaning job in her underwear. I anticipate that this aspect of her character in particular will cause more than a few awkward situations by the conclusion.

Finally, Yumiko is the most obviously fucked up of the main cast. Initially refusing to even speak to Yuuji, instead preferring to first of all slap him when he approaches her, and subsequently attack him with a box cutter at every opportunity, the barriers around Yumiko’s heart are nigh-impenetrable, it seems, but Yuuji’s ability to shrug most awkward situations off — perhaps due to his own background, which he hints at regularly throughout the common route without explicitly explaining it — means that he takes her violence and anger in his stride. He eventually manages to get through to her enough to be able to speak to her and subsequently have an honest conversation with her, even spending some time with her alone without her trying to attack him.

Yumiko’s basic character trope is that of the perpetually grumpy “student council president” type, but rather than being a blushing, awkward individual beneath the façade, it’s clear that her outward grumpiness is a sign of outright rage and bitterness bubbling beneath the surface. She is, so far as I’ve read at least, the biggest mystery among the main cast — both to me and to the rest of the cast, too. She keeps herself to herself, and no-one seems to know anything about her history. No-one even seems to know where she’s going or what she’s doing at the weekends when she sneaks out of the dormitory in the early hours of the morning carrying a tote bag full of “wooden objects”. I’m looking forward to finding out more about her.

That’s what I know so far, then. They’re an interesting bunch of characters, to be sure, and I’m really looking forward to each of their routes to discover exactly what makes them tick and what has brought them to the strange circumstances in which they find themselves. I sense it’s going to be a long road to find out, but up until this point, it’s been a compelling and intriguing ride with a ton of tantalisingly unanswered questions.

Number one visual novel of all time? I couldn’t say with confidence as yet. But it’s certainly one of the most immediately compelling, well-written — and well-localised — ones I’ve read for quite some time, and if you have the slightest interest in the medium, I’d encourage you to support it.

2046: Reading Material

Since my post a few days ago about getting into manga, I’ve been well and truly bitten by the bug, as it were, and I’m also about to branch out into my first light novels, which we’ll come onto a little later.

So far, I’ve read the first volume of Monster Musume, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (better known as DanMachi) and High School DxD, and have subsequently picked up the subsequent five volumes of Monster Musume and two more of High School DxD. (The later volumes of DanMachi have proven surprisingly difficult to track down, a fact not helped by the fact that Amazon has its listings for the light novel and manga versions all squished together into a not-particularly-clear form.)

Longtime readers or those who know me will recognise all of the above titles as series that I’ve watched the anime of, and this was a deliberate choice. I was initially hesitant to do so, but it turns out that reading the manga having seen the anime (or, I imagine, vice versa — I haven’t done this way round yet) doesn’t particularly diminish the experience any. In fact, in many cases the manga, being slightly longer in form than your typical anime’s 13 20-minute episodes, goes into more detail than its animated counterpart, often with new story threads, deeper exploration of characters and sometimes even a different overall tone.

Light novels, meanwhile, are something I haven’t explored at all, and until recently I wasn’t even particularly sure if there was a distinction between them and, you know, just a plain ol’ novel. “Light novels” are very much a Thing in Japanese popular culture, though, with many popular series starting as a light novel and subsequently being adapted into other forms of media such as manga, anime, video games and visual novels, so I was curious to investigate this particular part of culture.

I haven’t read any yet, but I have picked up two volumes of Sword Art Online: Progressive, a retelling of Sword Art Online’s original Aincrad arc, focusing on more personal stories and a single “floor” of the game at a time. It’s an ambitious project, considering the Aincrad arc supposedly unfolded over the course of several years and 75 floors — the first two volumes just cover floors 1 and 2 — but I’ll be interested to see if it comes to fruition, plus the Sword Art Online anime drew some criticism from certain quarters for rushing through the narrative of the original light novel it was based on, so I’ll be interested to see the story retold (and tweaked a bit, from what I understand) from a new perspective.

Anyway, if you were wondering, a “light novel” appears to be the Japanese equivalent of young adult fiction: relatively short works, often illustrated, but primarily text-based rather than the visual nature of manga. I’m interested to dive in; it’s actually been quite a while since I’ve read any book (i.e. one with words rather than one with pictures and speech bubbles — not that there’s anything inherently “inferior” about that format) so this will be a nice return to form if the Progressive novels prove to be a compelling read; I used to absolutely devour books, but for one reason or another, I’ve not really found a lot of time for reading in the last few years.

Ironic, really, considering the number of words I’ve typed on this here blog over the last few years — including a substantial number of fiction prose — but perhaps this will give me some ideas of my own!

2045: Pondering Localisations and Translations

There was a bit of salt being spilled earlier today on the subject of translations and localisations. It’s clearly a topic that people feel very strongly about so I’m not going to give a “judgement” one way or the other on it, simply share my own thoughts.

The discussion surrounding this issue came about as a result of Gaijinworks’ recent release of Class of Heroes 2 on PSP. Gaijinworks is a company that specialises in localisations of Japanese games, and is made up of, among other people, former Working Designs staffers. Working Designs was a company from the PS1 era who also specialised in localising Japanese games.

The use of “localisation” rather than “translation” is important there, because the two terms refer to two distinctly different schools of thought on what to do when bringing non-English material into English-speaking territories. A translation is exactly what it sounds like: it’s taking the original text and, as literally as possible, reproducing it in another language. A localisation, meanwhile, takes the essence of the original text but takes varying degrees of artistic license with it in order to make it more accessible to people outside of its original audience.

The furore over Gaijinworks’ localisation of Class of Heroes 2 largely stems from the fact that, in the eyes of many people who prefer more literal translations, the team had taken unnecessary liberties with the original text, even going so far as to put in completely incongruous ability names for certain character classes — the most egregious being the Samurai class’ use of “Pimp Slap” and “Hammer Time”. The whole thing would have probably died down a bit quicker were it not for whoever runs Gaijinworks’ Twitter account turning on the snark and speaking to disappointed customers in a tone that… wasn’t entirely appropriate, shall we say. Consequently, the company has done a bit of damage to its reputation among fans of Japanese games; on the one hand, both Working Designs and Gaijinworks are known for their talent in localisation rather than translations, so people should have perhaps expected something like this to happen; on the other hand, however, responding to criticism with snark and the suggestion that people learn the original language (sure! It’s just that easy!) isn’t the best way to recover an unfortunate situation.

But I don’t want to dwell on that too much, because I’m sure there’s still plenty more arguing to do there — and anyway, to be perfectly honest, localisation that takes some liberties doesn’t really bother me all that much, so long as the essence of the original text and characters is left intact.

A good example is the Ace Attorney series by Capcom. In Japan, these are set in Japan, known as Gyakuten Saiban (Turnabout Trial) and star a character called Naruhodou Ryuuichi. In the West, they are set in the USA (albeit a version of the USA where there are traditional Japanese villages randomly scattered around the place) and their protagonist is called Phoenix Wright. There are all manner of other changes around the place — and the games aren’t any weaker for it. In fact, Westernising it made it a lot more accessible to a much wider audience — so much so that it’s widely renowned as one of the best mainstream adventure game/visual novel series in recent years.

The reason a lot of companies choose to localise rather than translate is to do with things that… well, simply don’t translate. In the cast of Ace Attorney, the protagonist’s name “Naruhodou” is based on the Japanese word “I see” — something that your average, non-Japanese-literate Westerner wouldn’t know. Making his surname “Wright”, though, opens up all sorts of potential for punning fun — potential that the games seize at every opportunity. Right, Wright? Or should I call you Phoenix Wrong?

Then there’s things like the fact that Japanese puns work in a completely different way to English ones; take Squid Girl, for example. In the Japanese original, Squid Girl ends all her sentences with the words “de geso” instead of the more common “desu” (roughly, “it is”), the former being a bastardisation of “desu” that incorporates the Japanese word for “squid legs”. Likewise, all the episode titles are expressed as questions, only using the word “ika” (squid) at the end of the sentence rather than the particle “ka” which denotes a question. Because both of these puns rely on Japanese grammar and particles, which are very different to English, it’s simply not possible to translate these things directly. So instead we get a localisation, where Squid Girl speaking in English instead takes the English approach to punning, shoehorning in references to squids and ink at every opportunity. Squidn’t that ink-redible?

Ahem. Anyway. The point is, in some circumstances, localisation works well and helps to expand the audience of something beyond what it would have if it remained more true to the original. This is particularly true when it comes to cultures that are very different from one another — such as, say, Japanese and American or English cultures. People like to be comforted by the familiar, and making something more comfortable is a sure way of getting people who might not have otherwise given a particular game a chance to actually try it out for themselves.

On the flip side, localisation loses some “authenticity”, and consequently isn’t entirely appropriate in all circumstances. Take the Persona series, for example; its third and fourth installments in particular are heavily based on Japanese culture, particularly surrounding teenage and high school life. While there are similarities between Japanese and Western high-schoolers, there are enough differences — particularly with regards to things like how people address one another — to make it worthwhile using a more literal translation. Not only does it make the experience more authentic for those who wish to use it as a means of immersing themselves in a culture they find fascinating, it also provides a very effective means of learning about that other culture from scratch.

Some games take this idea of education and really run with it. Visual novel Steins;Gate, for example, includes an in-game glossary that explains everything from otaku terminology to Japanese cultural norms as you work your way through it — the first instance of a non-English term or reference is highlighted, providing the player with the opportunity to look it up, and from that point on, it simply uses the term as it would be used in Japanese. In this way, you familiarise yourself with everything from elements of Japanese popular culture to ways in which people address one another — and again, it’s a fascinating way of learning something while you enjoy the story.

And then there are situations where either approach could work. A good example would be something like the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, whose English scripts over the years (initially by NIS America, now by Idea Factory International) have had a somewhat mixed reception from longstanding fans — particularly those familiar with the original scripts. There are some changes that just seem to have been put in for the sake of a quick pun that wasn’t present in the original — the English version’s use of “CPU” (Console Patron Unit) instead of the Japanese version’s “megami” (“goddess”), for example, as well as Neptune’s use of distinctly Western-style slang. Personally speaking, this sort of thing doesn’t bother me too much — it works as a pun, although arguably it’s making a bigger deal of the whole “look! all these girls are games consoles!” thing than the original Japanese script did — but there are some people who get pretty upset about this sort of thing.

I guess what we can conclude from all this is that, unfortunately, there is no one single optimal way to handle these things. Localise things too much and you risk alienating the purists who want something that is as true as possible to the original text. Conversely, translate something too literally and you either get something that reads very awkwardly in English, or something that isn’t entirely accessible to someone who isn’t already familiar with various aspects of Japanese culture. The ideal situation would appear to be somewhere in the middle, but very few people seem to get that balance absolutely right, and doubtless we’ll continue to see salt being spilled any time things tip a bit too far in one direction or another.

Me? I really don’t mind either way. I relish the opportunity to learn more about a culture I find fascinating through more literally translated works, but equally I very much enjoy a good localisation that remains reasonably true to the tone and intention of the original; in the latter case, it might perhaps help to think of it as a “remake” of sorts rather than a translation. Or it might not, in which case you can feel free to rant and rave about it as much as you like on social media. More often than not, though, I’m simply happy to have these games (and anime series, and manga series, and visual novels…) brought to the West in my native language so that I can enjoy them in some form, even if it’s not always quite the exact same as the original.

2039: He’s On the Manga

I decided today — and not for the first time — that with my interest in all things Japanese, it was high time that I got involved in manga: the print side of Japanese popular entertainment, and, in many cases, the original source of various series that go on to become popular anime series.

People who are big into manga are always going on about how the original manga (or, if you’re a real otaku hipster, light novel) is, more often than not, better than the 13-episode anime adaptation. And, to be fair, I can sort of see their point; while anime has a lot more immediacy about it thanks to the combination of colour, music, sound, voice acting and, you know, animation, the longer format of manga allows it by its very definition to go into more detail, to explore characters, themes and storylines further, and to provide a more “comprehensive” experience for fans. Plus it’s the otaku equivalent of watching a movie adaptation of a book and going “well, the book was better” (which it often is).

Anyway. The manga I decided to jump into are ones that I’m already reasonably familiar with the anime adaptations of. I considered picking up the Sword Art Online manga, but I kind of want to check out the light novels rather than the manga, since that was the original original version, and most people say that it explores the storyline at a much more manageable pace than the breakneck speed of the anime. Instead, then, I picked up the first volumes of Monster Musume and High School DxD.

I haven’t checked out DxD yet, but I’ve read the first couple of chapters of Monster Musume. So far I’m impressed with how true the anime has stuck to the tone and feel of the manga, though the manga itself is a bit more explicit in a number of ways — most notably with the presence of nipples, but also in another sense in that it fleshes out the storyline and characters’ inner thoughts a lot more. So far it hasn’t been vastly different from the anime, but I understand that differences between anime and manga tend to come a little later as a series progresses; anime often skip out large chunks of the manga with varying degrees of success, and I believe in Monster Musume’s case there are characters who are in the manga who aren’t in the anime. Possibly. Maybe.

The other advantage of reading the manga — assuming you stick with it through multiple volumes, of course — is that you can read further on in the story than the anime tends to go. A lot of 13-episode anime seasons end just as they’re getting interesting — DanMachi (aka Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?) was the last show to do this — and then present their audience with a substantial and frustrating wait before they can see any more. Meanwhile, in many cases, the manga comes out first, allowing you to continue following your favourite characters’ (mis)adventures well before the adaptation hits the airwaves.

So far I don’t know how long I’ll stick with these series or any others I decide to pick up. I’ve enjoyed the couple of chapters of Monster Musume that I’ve read so far, and it’s a fun, different way to engage with a series that I’ve come to enjoy a whole lot since it launched. So we’ll see!

I should probably reorganise my bookshelves in anticipation, though…

1959: High School DxD is Exactly What I Want From an Anime

For a while now I’ve been seeing numerous images from the anime High School DxD that were, shall we say, somewhat on the titillating side. I follow a lot of anime and Japanese gaming fans on Twitter; a number of them are fans of this show and rather fond of posting pictures of it. And with good reason: it’s a very “photogenic” show. Particularly if you like pretty ladies.

Despite the numerous sexy pictures that had been shared, though, one thing was clear: the people who enjoy this show regard it with genuine affection and enthusiasm rather than treating it as the softcore pornography that so many people outside of the various otaku fanbases tend to write Japanese popular media off as. And so I was curious, for several reasons: first of all, who was the intoxicating redhead who seemed to dominate so many of the pictures; and secondly, what exactly was this show all about?

I’d been meaning to check the show out for some time but it’s only in the last couple of days that I’ve finally started investigating it. And, what do you know? Within just three episodes, it’s already abundantly clear to me that this is exactly what I want from an anime — and I already understand why those people who are fans of the show are quite so passionately invested in it.

The basic setup runs thus: Issei is a particularly obnoxious horny teenage protagonist who is obsessed with breasts, but, as is usually the case with this sort of character, finds himself unable to convince any self-respecting young ladies to show theirs to him. Everything changes for him when he meets a girl on the way home from school, though; she claims to have been watching him, and desperately wants to be together with him. The two begin dating and all appears to be going well for a while — Issei even manages to rein in his baser urges for long enough to appear almost respectable.

Then the shit well and truly hits the fan for our Issei. After a thoroughly enjoyable date, his new girlfriend kills him by stabbing him through the chest with a spear of light, and leaves him to die in the park. It transpires that she was a fallen angel, and that Issei has a mysterious power within him called “Sacred Gear” that the fallen angels very much wanted to dispose of — and for a moment it looks as if they were successful.

Given that all this happens in the first episode, though, that would make for a very short series, and as such it will probably not surprise you to hear that Issei is rescued from his plight by red-haired beauty Rias Gremory, a young woman held in high esteem by everyone at the school they both attend, and president of the school’s Occult Research Club.

The Occult Research Club is a not-terribly-subtle front for the fact that Rias and the other members are actually devils, and in allowing Issei “rebirth” from his murder they turn him into one, too — specifically, a servant devil of Rias. From there, Issei gets drawn into a situation that is clearly well beyond his understanding — at least in the early stages of the series — as a three-way holy war unfolds between the forces of Heaven, the devils of Hell and the fallen angels attempting to usurp the devils from Hell to claim it as their own.

What’s interesting about High School DxD is that it presents the devils — typically depicted as evil, monstrous creatures prone to the most dreadful acts of depravity in anime — as the most sympathetic, relatable of the characters. Rias and her companions are for the most part very “human” in terms of their attitude towards their situation and towards Issei, with a few exceptions; Issei, for example, is extremely surprised to wake up from his initial ordeal with a naked Rias in his bed next to him, with her seemingly completely unperturbed by the fact that they are both nude. Rias is absolutely in control of herself and clearly takes pride in her appearance — and this sort of overt sexuality is not at all uncommon in numerous mythological depictions of devils. Rias isn’t a succubus or anything — I don’t think, anyway; I may stand corrected after a few more episodes! — but it’s clear that, for her, she has transcended such petty human concerns as being embarrassed about being in the nude, or being seen by someone with whom she doesn’t have an “intimate” relationship.

By contrast, the fallen angels and the representatives of Heaven have so far been thoroughly horrible pieces of work, with an exorcist priest in the third episode even going so far as to sadistically murder someone who had attempted to make a pact with one of Rias’ household of devils and then threaten to rape his own assistant, herself also a member of the clergy, all because she had met Issei earlier in the episode and believed him to be a “good person” despite being a devil.

There seems to be a pretty strong anti-religion sentiment underpinning the series — or, to be more specific, an anti-fundamentalist sentiment. The fallen angels and the forces of Heaven — with the exception of Asia, the aforementioned exorcist’s assistant — have so far been pretty much psychopathic in how devoutly they follow the tenets of their faith, while the devils themselves are more philosophical and deliberate in the way they go about handling things.

There’s a strong amount of chess imagery used throughout the series, too, with it being explicitly lampshaded and spelled out for the viewer in the third episode. Rias is the “king” of her little group of devils, and her companions fulfil the roles of the knight, queen and rook. (Even odds that Asia shows up again later to fulfil the “bishop” role.) Issei is dismayed but unsurprised to discover that even with his mysterious Sacred Gear power, he is no more than a lowly pawn who has yet to prove himself — but even with his low status, it’s clear that Rias wants to protect him and help him grow stronger. Whether this is due to her own self-interest — his Sacred Gear would clearly be a potent weapon in the holy war — or whether she actually cares for him remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an interesting setup.

And my God — no pun intended — is it ever a beautiful-looking anime. Gorgeous women doing sexy things aside — and there’s plenty of that — the animation and design is spectacular, with some gobsmacking battle scenes in just the first few episodes. The more monstrous foes Rias and the gang face are truly hideous to behold, but even in its more mundane moments the show simply oozes style.

Wonderful use of colour helps give cues to the viewer as to what is going on, with each of the main factions involved in the holy war seemingly having their own colours associated with them. Most things the devils get up to seem to be bathed in red light, for example, while the fallen angels tend to bring an ominous, sinister, high-contrast purple light with deep shadows in their wake.

This beautiful visual design is perfectly complemented by a Gothic-cum-rock soundtrack — it may be a cliche by now for this sort of “good versus evil” affair (particularly if you’re a Castlevania fan) but it really works wonderfully, giving the show a fantastic sense of energy and a feeling that it’s had some real love, care and attention poured into it.

Yes, it’s dripping in fanservice and I’m disappointed to admit that I know all too many people out there who will write this show off purely on these grounds regardless of whether or not it’s actually any good. But there’s a strong argument for the heavily overt sexuality of the show to very much be part of its overall aesthetic, with it being used both to reflect Issei’s forever sexually frustrated teenage desires — which are still very much intact even after becoming a devil — and the common depiction of devils as something erotic, exciting, tantalising and well and truly off-limits to the “normal” people.

So why do I say it’s exactly what I want from an anime? Well, it has all the things I enjoy: light-hearted slice-of-life character interactions (yes, there’s time for that between all the Good Versus Evil Versus A Bit of Both shenanigans), thrilling action sequences with kick-ass soundtracks, memorable characters and a whole lot of sexiness. My dream anime, in other words.

I’m really intrigued to see where the show goes from here. After just three episodes, it’s already a favourite, and I’m absolutely in it for the long run.

Rias is love, as they say.

1924: Journeying Ever Onwards

So One Way Heroics Plus has pretty much devoured my soul with its wily ways and new features. I’ve been playing it a whole bunch, dying a whole lot and having a great time in the process.

I made a video of two unsuccessful runs earlier; here you go:

I’m really impressed with the additions to the base formula. In particular I’m excited about the fact that there are a number of new quests involved in unlocking the additional character classes; these quests replace the standard adventure to defeat the Demon Lord (or win in a couple of other super-secret ways) and task you with additional objectives, confronting you with new challenges and powerful foes on the way.

The small additions to the game’s interface are great, too. The hotbar in particular is an excellent addition, even if you only use it to quickly access skills like Awakening (your default “stop time for three turns” ability, which is very useful for getting out of a pinch) and Lockpicking. It’s also great to be able to customise the interface somewhat; it’s still a little cluttered thanks to it running in 640×480 (or upscaled 640×480 now, at least) but simple changes like being able to put your gauges at the bottom of the screen and the minimap up the top make it a lot easier to see where you’re going.

More subtle changes only become apparent if you’ve played both games. The pace of levelling has been considerably increased, but in exchange the “Goddess Statues” at which you can “spend” levels to get numerous benefits are considerably more expensive to use, and no longer provide the same possible bonuses every time. Skill merchants offer the ability to learn new abilities in exchange for stat levels, Iron Hags will make a random item for you (including “air”, which just means you’re out of pocket), benevolent Force practitioners will teach you defensive, utility or restorative spells… the list goes on.

And the game is still absolutely packed with charm and a surprising amount of depth. Most notably — and this was true of the original, too — is the fact that, despite initial appearances, the game does have a plot. Or, more accurately, a number of different intertwining narrative threads that only become apparent if you come into contact with the recruitable NPCs, figure out a way to stop the Demon Lord trying to set fire to you long enough to have a chat or try some of the daily “special campaigns” that add small but significant tweaks to the basic formula. A particular favourite that I had the other day was a world where every normal attack had a massive knockback effect on it, so you had to take care not to fight with your back to the encroaching Darkness lest you get slammed into it by your foe landing a blow. It shook up the way I played a great deal; unfortunately I didn’t quite get far enough to take full advantage of it by whacking the final boss of the Force Knight unlock quest into the Darkness — the main means through which you deal damage to this rather unpleasant adversary — but it was an enjoyable journey nonetheless.

I’m well and truly hooked then. And if you’re yet to discover the fun for yourself, I recommend giving it a look now. It’s just $6.99 and it will keep you busy for a very long time. You can grab it from publisher Playism, or soon from Steam, too. (If you buy it now at Playism, you’ll get a Steam key when that version releases.)

1907: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

I have a large backlog of TV, games and anime to plough through, so it’s pretty rare that I will come to something the moment it’s released, particularly if I have to wait a week between new episodes. The last time I did it was for the first season of the anime Sword Art Online which I don’t care what anyone says, I enjoyed a whole lot.

Appropriately enough, it’s another anime that’s got me doing it again this time: the somewhat cumbersomely titled Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, also known as Danjon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darō ka or DanMachi for short. (I shall refer to it as DanMachi hereafter for the sake of brevity.)

DanMachi is, like many anime, based on a light novel series, and the first episode of its anime adaptation recently aired. It seems to be picking up a lot of buzz already (some of which is admittedly due to little more than the physical appearance of heroine Hestia) and is looking like it will be one of the “biggies” this season if the early enthusiasm is anything to go by — and judging by the first episode, it looks like being a lot of fun, too.

It’s a premise and setting that appeals greatly to me. Set in what appears to be a typical Japanese role-playing game world — complete with various humanoid races including the obligatory catgirls — DanMachi’s protagonist is a young man named Bell, a level 1 adventurer and the sole member of the “Hestia Familia”. The “Familia” business involves the gods having come down to the mortal realm to give up their powers and live among their people; adventurers pledge allegiance to a particular god or goddess’ familia in order to receive special powers to fight monsters and grow stronger through their experiences. Levelling up, in other words.

Young Bell, as previously mentioned, is the sole member of the goddess Hestia’s familia. It’s not yet clear after one episode why Hestia only has Bell, but she doesn’t seem too upset about it; in fact, she seems rather taken with him. Hestia herself is an energetic, impetuous tsundere of a goddess who so far seems to be pretty open about most things but quick to anger, somewhat jealous and rather possessive of Bell.

Hestia is kind of adorable, to be fair; she seems to be the main reason a lot of people have been drawn to the show.

As you might expect, this sets things up nicely for some tension. In the opening moments of the show, Bell is rescued from the fifth level of “the dungeon” — far too difficult for an adventurer of his calibre — by an experienced female warrior named Aiz Wallenstein, whom he is immediately smitten with. His rather hasty obsession with her manifests itself as his first ever “skill”, which Hestia immediately does her best to try and conceal the presence of: it allows him to grow in strength considerably more rapidly than other adventurers, so long as his feelings remain strong. Wanting Bell to succeed, Hestia encourages him to do his best, but is somewhat hurt when the huge amount his “stats” jump up by reflect seemingly very strong feelings for Aiz.

Late in the episode, Bell is sitting in a pub enjoying a meal, when Aiz’s adventuring party comes in. They don’t notice him, but they knew of his initial encounter with Aiz, and one particularly obnoxious member mocks and insults him for being “too weak” for Aiz. While DanMachi isn’t explicitly intended to be a reflection of modern online games like Sword Art Online was, it’s difficult not to read this as a reference to overconfident elitist players of games like Final Fantasy XIV who see themselves as “superior” to newcomers, even when it’s not a fair comparison. I don’t doubt that Bell will see this obnoxious scrote of a catboy get his comeuppance before the series is out, and I already know it will be a satisfying moment.

I’m glad I checked out the first episode, then. So far, despite the inane-sounding title (particularly when it’s in English, as Crunchyroll has it) it’s shaping up to be a really interesting show, and I’m already looking forward to seeing how it develops. Oh, and I want a game of it already.

1508: Learn Through Play

Learning through play is not just something for pre-schoolers; it’s something you can continue to do throughout your life, and I absolutely love it when you twig that it’s happened.

My earliest memories of genuinely learning something from a video game that wasn’t explicitly an “educational” title came in the mid-’90s when MicroProse was on top form churning out flight sim after flight sim. I learned that the F-19 wasn’t real and the F-117A was; I learned how aircraft carrier takeoffs and landings worked; I learned about the physics of flight — though admittedly, most flight sims that weren’t made by SubLOGIC and subsequently Microsoft didn’t have particularly accurate flight models — and I learned about real-world conflicts around the world, primarily in Libya and the Gulf.

More recently, my love of Japanese games has equipped me with a surprising amount of knowledge about Japanese culture and how people go about things over there. Shenmue taught me to take your shoes off when entering a Japanese person’s house; School Days taught me about saying itadakimasu before starting to eat; Persona taught me about national holidays and the way schools work in Japan. Granted, relatively little of that is what we might term “useful” knowledge (unless, of course, you’re going to live or work in Japan) but it’s still pretty cool to learn it.

My Japanese class this evening showed me that even Final Fantasy XIV has successfully taught me things, primarily through its seasonal events. Currently running, for example, is an event called “Little Ladies’ Day”, which I discovered is actually a real-life Japanese celebration in March known variously as Girls’ Day, Doll’s Day or hinamatsuri. In the questline for the seasonal event in the game, you’re tasked with taking a doll around and showing it to people, and references are often made to it being far too expensive for most people to afford. Coincidentally, the real-life dolls displayed as part of hinamatsuri celebrations are often elaborate creations that are well out of the price range of casual collectors.

This isn’t the first time Final Fantasy XIV specifically has taught me something like this; last month, the Valentine’s day celebrations had a distinctly Japanese flavour about it, too, particularly when it came to the whole “exchanging chocolates” thing. That and the costume you received as a reward for completing the questline there made you look like you were heading off to work at a maid café — no bad thing, indeed.

I find it pretty fascinating to consider video games being used in this way — to passively impart knowledge without you realising it — and am particularly inspired by the prospect this raises of my favourite entertainment medium being a brilliant means of encouraging understanding and empathy between different cultures. The industry as a whole still has a very long way to go with regards to diversity, of course — while it’s possible to learn a lot about Japanese culture through games, you’re less likely to be able to interactively immerse yourself in, say, Middle Eastern or African culture, or even subcultures from closer to home — but I have faith that over time, we will start to see more and more interactive experiences that genuinely have something to teach us, whether that’s knowledge we can actually apply in the real world, or simply a means of better understanding our fellow human beings. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?

#oneaday Day 975: The Chaos that Always Crawls Up to You with a Smile

With all the Japanese media (mostly games) that I’ve been voraciously consuming recently, I quite naturally figured that I may as well go full-on otaku and investigate some anime too.

I’ve tried to get into anime in the past. In theory it should push all my buttons — Japanese video games and visual novels are based very closely on the tropes and conventions of anime, after all — but somehow I’ve never managed more than a fleeting investigation into the medium.

The problem, you see, is knowing where to start. Anime is not some small, little thing you can just jump into at the “beginning” and follow a set “canon” of things you simply must see. If you’re unfamiliar with the medium, saying that you want to “get into anime” is like saying that you want to “get into movies” or “get into books” — it’s not a single, simple, easily-defined thing, as within itself it carries a huge collection of genres and formats, and is aimed at all ages from young to old and everything in between.

The first time I investigated anime was back when I was still living with my parents. My brother, who was working on PC Zone at the time (if I remember correctly — it might have been PC Player. One of those two, anyway. Not that it really matters.) had been given a metric fuckton of promotional anime videos, as the fledgling Manga Video label in the UK was just starting to come to prominence, and PC Zone had run a feature on anime-themed games too. The box of videos contained a diverse array of anime ranging from the bizarre (Ultimate Teacher, the story of a schoolgirl who could only fight well if she was wearing her modest Velvet Pussy Panties rather than skimpy cotton knickers, and her quest to defeat the genetically modified teacher Ganpachi) to the horrifying (Urotsukidoji, which gave me my first taste of tentacle porn and the subsequent confused feelings said first taste tends to evoke) via titles more grounded in “reality” (Crying Freeman, a drama about an assassin who sheds tears after every kill). I got quite into some of these but also became frustrated at videos that came in partway through a series, or ones which I didn’t have any real means of finding subsequent episodes of. As such, I didn’t really pursue my investigation of the medium any further.

When I got big into visual novels relatively recently, I started following J-List on Twitter and Facebook. Peter Payne, the guy behind the site, posts all manner of stuff on those accounts at seemingly all hours of the day and night, ranging from interesting descriptions of life as a Westerner living in Japan to pics of hot anime girls (and, occasionally, guys) — and, of course, discussions of what is worth checking out in the land of anime in general.

One show that Peter mentioned recently that caught my attention was Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, a show that takes the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft (specifically as depicted in the Call of Cthulhu pen-and-paper RPG), runs it through a mangle and inexplicably decides to make some of the most horrifying of the Old Ones into moe anime characters, beginning with Nyarlathotep (aka Nyarko) and following shortly afterwards with Cthugha and Hastur. A rather large degree of artistic license is taken with these characters — Nyarko is just one of a race of Nyarlathoteps, for example, and it turns out they’re not as evil and horrible as popular opinion might have it — but there’s just enough lip service paid to Lovecraft’s work to please fans while remaining totally accessible to those who have only a passing familiarity with the Cthulhu mythos. (You’ll miss quite a lot of the jokes if you have no familiarity with it whatsoever.)

The show is hugely entertaining, and manages to get the viewer hugely engaged with the weird and wonderful cast of characters very quickly while not taking itself seriously in the slightest. There’s a lot of fourth wall-breaking, a lot of self-referential humour and some truly inspired episodes that lampoon aspects of popular culture such as the console wars and the “dating sim” visual novel subgenre. (There’s also a lot of people stabbing each other in the head with a fork as a means to get them to be quiet, for some reason.) Much like how My Girlfriend is the President consistently raised the bar on how crazy it got as it progressed — and yet somehow remained coherent, engaging and touching at times — so, too does Haiyore! Nyaruko-san. It starts with an utterly absurd premise and only gets more ridiculous from there — but at the same time it draws the viewer in with endearing, well-defined characters (most of whom initially appear to be stock characters but who subsequently tend to reveal a strong degree of ironic self-awareness) and quite a touching — if painfully awkward and immensely frustrating — romance story.

It also has the most infuritatingly catchy intro and outro songs I think I have ever heard. This is either something you will be into or something you will never want to sully your ears with ever again, so I present both to you now in order that you may make up your mind.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYlAq-NhR1w] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1qX5GsBfuI]

Basically, if you can deal with those two credits sequences, you’re in the appropriate demographic to enjoy Haiyore! Nyaruko-san. If they make you want to vomit, then perhaps you should go and treat yourself to something a bit more gritty.