For those of you who don’t follow me on twitter, and that means pretty much everyone, I recently went to Japan. Two of my days were spent in Akihabara. Below are some of my thoughts on what some have referred to as the Anime holy land.
1 – Gamers and Animate are nice stores and they are definitely worth visiting, but unless you can read Japanese there really isn’t all that much for a foreigner to get here. While these stores do have some character goods, there are other places that you can get them for much less. I’d recommend going to places not on Chuo-Dori, even though you will feel drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Stores like Kotobukiya and the Cospa Gee Store have a lot of good character goods for a lot of popular/current anime, including T-shirts, wall scrolls, mugs, CDs, etc.
2 – While it was difficult to not have an otakugasm while walking in the many stores I visited, the most interesting things to me was how all of these stores were able to
constantly supply themselves and keep up to date. Since I went on the weekend I suppose it was likely less of a spectacle than I made it out to be, as I am sure there are less hectic days. Still, it seemed like the workers were constantly restocking shelves of manga, or putting in new merchandise while customers crowded the stores. Even more amazing was the way the arcades operated. Though my next note dives into more detail regarding the arcades, the constant turnover of what prizes offered was fairly amazing. As an example, I went to one arcade late Saturday night and then again Sunday morning, and it seemed like 75 percent of the prizes were different. I suppose this makes sense, given that people likely don’t want to win, or even play for the same prizes on a constant basis, but it was still pretty interesting. You could probably apply some of these concepts to a lot of big cities around the world in some way or another, the rest of Tokyo included, it just wasn’t something I think about on a day to day basis.
3 – If you have ever been to a Casino then you would probably understand what it is like to play in an Akihabara arcade. I spent most of my time trying to win prizes on some of the lower floors of the numerous arcades, as I have nowhere the level of skill to compete with the people playing video games on higher floors. Most of the prize games, if not all of them require the use of the UFO drop, and further require multiple plays to win. After someone does win, an attendant comes by to reset the game by putting the prize in a predetermined spot, which makes it sufficiently difficult but also equally alluring. Iwon’t get into the specifics of all of the separate games, but suffice it to say there are some that you just won’t be able to do. If you ever play in these arcades, i’d focus on the games you know you can win at that have the most personally alluring prizes, rather than basing your game choice on what you want the most. Everything can be bought somewhere else, instead of won, and it will save you some money in the long run. As for myself, after a disastrous first attempt, I readjusted to the above strategy and was able to win 5 pretty cool items, though not the one thing I really wanted.
4 – There is a lot of porn. No one is really that shameless about it, which makes everything somewhat comfortable, but basic man law still applies. Weirdest thing to me was that I saw what looked like a Mom with what was maybe her 15 year old son in the same store, with the son in the doujinshi section, and the Mom elsewhere, until he needed her to foot the bill. Of course, that could also be a description for a different type of arrangement.
5 – Mandoka really says everything I need to say about cosplaying in the Akihabara, but, more generally, there weren’t as many cosplayers as I thought there would be, and I even went on Sunday. That’s not to say there weren’t any, but just not a lot, aside from all the maids. Two things that stood out to me was that it seemed like there was a unexpectedly high level of cross playing going on, but that might just have been due to the smallish sample size. Secondly, those who did cosplay, whatever it was, really seemed to embrace the concept of the Absolute Area, but really, it seems like a large percentage of Japanese women do.
6 – I spent way too much money for my own good. As a side effect of this turn of events, I have realized that my fascination with Tomoe Mami from MSMM has already passed the danger zone. Further, I am glad that I went during the last part of my trip, otherwise I would have spent even more.
7 – Put three English letters together, followed by a 48, and you will probably name a girl group in the area. Obviously, that’s an exaggeration, but there were at least three. Didn’t bother to see AKB48, and I don’t think I missed much either.
8 – While there are a bunch of reasons to call this the Anime holy land, the one thing I found most enjoyable, and was easy to kind of overlook after a while was that there was anime shows and music playing all the time in the stores. To actually go to a place where this isn’t that out of the ordinary is a little weird, but it was alos kind of relaxing in a way. I don’t really know how to describe it, but it was nice. Also, it was kind of weird, but it seemed like every arcade I went to was required by law to play music from Seitokai Yakuindomo. I enjoyed it, but it still seemed kind of random.
9 – Did not have the balls to go into a Maid Cafe, considering that I went by myself. Don’t know if I would have wanted to either, though I suppose I might have under the auspices of being ironic.
10 – If I have one complaint about Akihabara, and all of Japan really, is that it is impossible to find a trash can. I mean, you have all of these vending machines all over the place, but no trash cans. It gets annoying, as I spent a lot of time just looking for a trash can. It’s like all the trash cans are in secret locations that only Japanese could ever possibly know about. I understand that trash cans are a security threat, and considering Akihabara’s past it isn’t that big of a deal. A lot of other countries I have visited have this same “problem”, but what can you do. This is one reason I kind of miss America, the land of the easily found trash can.
11- Even though the new season is only three/four weeks old I found it amazing how much Yuru Yuri was getting plugged. I’ve only seen the first episode so far, as the only thing I’ve watched in Japan was Steins Gate (interesting side note on Steins Gate: I was in a cab in South Japan and there was a radio program talking about Steins Gate. The cabby was getting pretty emotional about what they were saying, to the point he was slamming his fist at one point. The guy looked like he was over 50. No clue what was said on the radio about Steins Gate, as I can’t really understand Japanese people talking when it isn’t programming for someone under 5), but back on point about Yuru Yuri, I thought the one episode I saw was pretty good. Still, it seems like it is all over. It kind of also seems like Idolmaster was the next most popular new series, merchandise wise, but it was hard to tell. Inexplicably, in my opinion, Infinite Stratos is all over the town. Its merchandise is everywhere. Once again, I assume this means it’s popular, but I suppose it could mean that the stores are overstocked with its merchandise. It’s hard to tell. Madoka and K-On are pretty popular as well.
12 – You can spend 9 hours walking around the area, which includes a whole bunch of stairs, and who knows how many miles that equates to, but you won’t feel tired in the least.
13. Homura seems infinitely more popular than Madoka. Example: You put a Madoka shirt in a UFO drop table. No one plays it for a long time. Put a Homura shirt in, its gone in 5 minutes.
14. Didn’t bother going to the Tokyo Anime Center. It looked kind of lame from the outside, and it seemed like a tourist trap, but then again I suppose the same could be said about the arcades.
15. Anaru jokes are universal.
They say there is no greater love than to give your life on behalf of your friends. It’s a concept which not only appears in the Bible, but across many great literary works, including The Aeneid. Really, it’s a bit of a unique trait to have these days as well. Many look at a spirit of altruism, and by extension self-sacrifice, with disdain. “I’ve got mine!” Well, I suppose you do, but did you really get there alone? Where was I? Oh yes, self-sacrifice, and perhaps even more selfless is sacrifice on behalf of people you don’t even know. This, coupled with my penchant for unlikely heroes, has hatched this post. I warn you, this contains massive spoilers for the game Arc Rise Fantasia.
This post really has nothing to do with the main protagonist of the game. Instead, it focuses on Niko, the goofy yet lovable sidekick of the game. Niko is a soldier of the Meridian Empire, but he’s a pretty terrible soldier. From what the various skits say, his fellow soldiers picked on him constantly. His superiors disciplined him for his lack of, well, discipline. In addition, he’s perhaps the biggest coward I’ve seen in an RPG in years. Half of the boss fights he’s unavailable either because he ran away or got knocked out before the fight even started. In fact, his continuous retreats cause many problems in the game, including the event that jump-started the game’s conflict. You could definitely refer to him as a “problem character.”
Yet, despite his continuous shortcomings, L’Arc, our main protagonist, never abandons him. Sure, he gets miffed about the constant cowardice as well, but they’re friends. Niko knows this, but he also knows he’s been a burden upon the party since the very beginning. Eventually he decides to leave and return home, because he just can’t deal with the fighting anymore. Unfortunately, the fighting just keeps following him. Since he just can’t get away from it, he joins a resistance sect and acts as a courier. He gets to stay out of combat, and his successful missions give him a little more confidence. This leads straight into his first sacrifice. When the big bad comes to kidnap L’Arc’s mother and use her as bait, he gives himself up instead.
Niko probably figured no one would come to rescue him, and I’m sure he would have been okay with that outcome. Nope, your party goes after him straight away. After beating down the head of the resident assassination squad and the patriarch of an entire faith, they finally retrieve him. Not so fast! This big bad had a contingency plan. He activates a weapon to glass the major cities. To their horror, the party can’t stop the weapon from firing. Of all people, Niko has a plan. The party runs after him, and gets as far as the control room. Wait, is that an engine firing up?
They quickly patch into the communication channels. There’s Niko in the hangar, jacking a ship and preparing to sortie. The only way to stop the weapon from firing at this point is to destroy it. Not a whole lot of options exist, so he’s going to take the largest object he can find and ram it. Even to the very end, he’s still a coward. He can barely talk to his friends, and just cuts off the link instead. He’s sorry he’s always been a burden, even prompting this crazy rescue mission. For once, he’s running into the fire. In one action, at the cost of his life, he saves tens of thousands.
What measure is a hero, really? You could ask a hundred people and every person would give you a different answer. I think it all boils down to one criterion though. To be a hero is to give of yourself above and beyond the call of duty. Arc Rise Fantasia did a lot of things wrong in their storytelling, but they hit this one right on the head. Anyone can be a hero. Even if you are the biggest bumbling coward in the universe.
You could say I’m a pretty big rhythm game fan. I have a custom build Dance Dance Revolution pad and can pass some 10s on a regular basis. I play Expert guitar on Rock Band with little difficulty, for the most part. I even bought the rhythm indie-game pack on Steam today. The rhythm genre has come a long way over the years, and now a variety of gameplay mechanics have risen from using music as a base. When I first got into the genre, I never though something like Rock Band would end up becoming mainstream. However, I’ve recently determined developers have left a little something out of the equation: the story.
Please, sir, may I have some more?
Now, to be fair, I’m sure there’s a fair number of people out there who couldn’t care less about story in their rhythm games. They just want to play the song and get on with their lives. I’ve actually been of this mindset for a long time. When the newest installments of DDR added a “story” to the single player mode, all I wanted to do was punch the person at Konami who came up with it. I even played the new Guitar Hero game, another franchise which has added story to its career mode, and I just couldn’t bear it. No one seems capable of coming up with a good narrative, and perhaps this is why no one really cares.
So what changed? Well, I bought Elite Beat Agents and started playing it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, EBA is essentially a game about a cheer squad. People cry out for help, and the director of their organization dispatches a crew to pep them up with a strong beat and some snappy dancing. Each song has a little story associated with it as well, and naturally, much of it is ridiculous. The very first song has a character throwing hot dogs like footballs into a kid’s mouth. The insanity steadily escalates until you eventually have music hating aliens abducting the entire cast. All this said, one stage in the game plays the formula very differently.
It starts out very subdued, with a father about to depart on a business trip. His daughter makes him promise he’ll be home in time for Christmas. It jumps to six months later. The father never returned, he died in an accident. Unfortunately, the child doesn’t really understand what’s happened. All she wants is for her daddy to keep his promise. She doesn’t call for help, nor does the director bombastically dispatch his squad. It leads directly into “You’re the Inspiration.” Even the normal sound mechanics have changed from clapping to gentle chimes. When you finally get to the end of the song, the girl and her mother briefly reunite with the spirit of their love one. The whole package, from the introduction into the song and finally the conclusion, is completely in sync. It’s beautiful.
You the meaning in my life, you're the inspiration.
Reviewers have been clamoring for some sort of storyline in their games. It’s a reasonable request, when you consider the career mode for most of these games is literally playing songs in a certain order. Developers have only made half hearted efforts at meeting this criticism. Putting in a little narration between songs does not make for a good story. In fact, it can actually make things worse, as oftentimes the story and the songs don’t resonate with each other. They completely miss the point, and don’t see the potential they have in front of them.
Most songs tell some sort of story. Even beyond it though, we have joined songs to tell greater stories for centuries now. Opera has been around since the late 16th century, and the Broadway musical is the American take on telling story through music. Some musicians have even developed concept albums made up of songs with a single unified theme or story. In particular, the band Coheed and Cambria have built their careers on it.
Now, there have been games based largely on their music. Eternal Sonata is literally an RPG based on the life of Frederic Chopin, and has been widely praised for its scoring. However, I’m not asking for just any game. I want a rhythm game with a story. Take your narration and have it lead into song, just like EBA did with “You’re My Inspiration.” It doesn’t have to have some serious tone to it either. Some of my favorite games are lighthearted or ridiculous. This shouldn’t be terribly difficult when you look at the previous paragraph and think about it. Yet, to my knowledge, it hasn’t really been explored.
So, what do you think? Would you like to see a good story in your rhythm game? And if you know of any games which do tell a story through music, please, share them.
For a more extensive look at the scene from Elite Beat Agents, check out this post from Destructoid.
I haven’t written a game review in quite some time, and I can attribute it to not playing anything particularly noteworthy. However, I managed to come into some Xbox games recently, and one of them stuck out to me. I remember years ago I played a demo of Jet Grind Radio for the Dreamcast, and I always wanted to really play it. I had my opportunity with its successor, Jet Set Radio Future. It’s been nearly a decade since its release, so let’s see how it holds up over time.
The game has a fairly simple framework. The city of Tokyo-To has come under siege by various gangs vying for control of the major city sectors. In addition, a corporate enterprise led by the mayor of the city wants to enforce police rule and take away the people’s freedoms. You play the role of the GGs, a group of teenage skaters intent on taking back the city. Really, the story does nothing more than provide a means to move you from point A to point B to point C. Along the way you seize control of sectors by tagging over your rival’s graffiti. Taking the area prompts them to come out of hiding and confront you for a challenge. In addition, you have to fight off the corrupt officers who want nothing more than your body on slab in the morgue. All of this roughly translates to 10-15 hours of game play to complete the chapter-formatted storyline.
You might easily mistake this for one of the great number of “extreme sports” games like the Tony Hawk series. You would make a terrible mistake. JSRF is actually an action/adventure game with roller blades glued onto your feet. Thus, you work with a stripped down control scheme. The analog stick moves you around, and it must always be engaged to move. Touching a rail with your feet immediately attaches you to it, and you do not need to deal with balance. Pressing the X or Y buttons in a rhythm changes your grind and increases your speed. You can only attain max speed while grinding, so you want to stay on rails as much as possible. Air tricks automatically execute when you jump with enough speed, and you can again press X or Y to chain more air tricks together. You need to pick up spray cans to tag objects, and you can sacrifice 10 of them to activate a speed boost. Two big problems exist with the control scheme. First, everything in the game handles loosely, including collision detection. Second, the only way to disengage from a rail is to jump. This can make for a frustrating time trying to get off a rail to land in a specific area.
You spend much of the first half running around the city reclaiming areas by tagging them. This sounds very simplistic until you realize these gangs put their graffiti in the most out of the way locations. A mechanic like this almost demands some level of customization. The game provides many premade tags, and also gives you the option to design your own. When the police show up, you switch into combat mode. Your objective is to make the targets vulnerable and then spray them with paint. Rival skaters and gangs will pose a variety of challenges. Some areas naturally resemble a circuit, and so they challenge you to a lap around the area. A team race also exists, where you and a CPU ally have to complete a lap without losing possession of a ball. At other times, they literally challenge you to a game of tag, where you must spray them down until they submit. All of these different styles of play help keep the action from becoming too repetitive.
In a game about the streets, much of the experience rides on the style and atmosphere provided by the game. Over eight years, the graphics have lost a bit of their edge, but they still look decent. The designers went with cell-shaded models, and all the characters have their own special touches. The game also plays up the slightly futuristic setting in the main character designs. The total area covered spans over a dozen different maps. Each one of them contributes to a cohesive whole while incorporating new designs to make them unique. You start in the bright streets and bustling bus station of the city. Over time, you expand your influence to cover the suburbs, sewage system, slums, and skyscrapers. My favorite area is a continuous hill made up entirely of houses, which you navigate by riding crisscrossing power lines. The game provides a decent variety of music with 30 tracks in total, mostly in the hip-hop and techno genres. Each area has a preset selection of tracks it plays in a cycle. The soundtrack has some real winners, such as Aisle 10, Funky Dealer, and I Love Love You. It also has a few very poor choices, like Birthday Cake, which made me want to mute the game every time it played. Since you have no control over the playlist, you just have to take the good with the bad here.
Time for the bottom line. The game will turn some of you off right away with its style and themes. I can’t blame you, it’s not for everyone. The game can be difficult at times, but for the most part, it maintains a fair difficulty curve. They developers also packed the world with optional goals and collectables to keep you playing after the credits roll. JSRF does have flaws, but they never detract too much from the experience. If you can find the game used, it is definitely worth the low price of admission.
Final Score: 8.5/10 GGs
Never before have I felt such adoration yet jealous rage in the same moment:
Three of perhaps otaku’s most beloved celebrities, all within 1 meter of each other (and looking so fabulous). ;A; Kojima’s influence on our lives continues to have boundless impact. And in addition to the two pictured above with him, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker will also feature the voice talents of Kobayashi Yū, Inoue Kikuko, Mugihito, and Paku Romi (plus more that I’m less familiar with). Don’t get me wrong — Konami has done a terrific and acclaimed job with the English voice acting (David Hayter is equally unforgettable), but the amount of awesome in the Japanese cast is almost too much to bear. Will I break and buy the import?
Catch the character single for Paz (Mizuki Nana), “Love Deterrence” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7aACDTi278
Then try out Sugita’s take on it — http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm10419530
Follow their awesome lives:
Sugita Tomokazu – http://twitter.com/sugitaLOV
Kojima Hideo – http://twitter.com/Kojima_Hideo
To my knowledge, Mizuki Nana does not use twitter. There may be some user accounts with her name, but I believe they belong to other people who share the same name … or are just outright fake. On a side note, Tamura Yukari has one.
Needless to say I’m also a fan of the Metal Gear series. For a time, Kojima said he was going to quit developing games, but the calling was perhaps still there. Or maybe he set himself free of restrictions that were formerly stressing him out and caused him to go on the quitting path in the first place. Now he knows how to live out his passion much more enjoyably — and in great company.
Mizuki Nana’s popularity has been rising each year, but I don’t forsee it ever going over the top (like perhaps with Hirano Aya). She’s just too adorable to me, and I wish her all the best in her life and career.
~Crisu
Shinmaru made a post about how Angel Beats closely resembles a video game over on his blog. It’s an interesting post, and it culminates in comparing Tenshi to an old school AI such as Mike Tyson or the Weapons. It’s a fairly good comparison, but I decided I would take the thought a bit further by fleshing out what makes Tenshi tick. Today’s lesson deals with a bit of programming logic, but I’ll explain how it works.
Most adorable program ever made.
First, we need to consider how Tenshi acts. Yuri says that if you stick to the program, Tenshi just observes and generally leaves you alone. Now, if you deviate from the program, she confronts you and asks you to return to your proper station. When you start to attack her, she spawns a blade to defend herself and slowly advances to melee range. When the attack intensifies, she spawns a second blade or a shield, depending on the situation in front of her. If, instead, you put yourself in melee range, she starts executing Lag commands, which either speed her up or slow you down. I’m not sure which is the case because the battle is shown from Yuri’s perspective, but there’s a difference. The latter leaves her vulnerable to other attackers.
You should notice two aspects of Tenshi’s power. The first is all her commands are reactive . She does nothing unless someone gives her a reason to act. Second, she slowly escalates her attack. Tenshi doesn’t immediately start lagging her opponent to make easy work of them. Instead, she uses a specific level of force proportional to her opponent’s.
Never bring a knife to a gunfight... unless you're Tenshi.
In short, Tenshi acts just like a computer program. Every program in existence requires some sort of user input, even if the means aren’t entirely obvious. A program that seems to execute entirely by itself requires action from you to start. That action usually generates an empty String, or blank input, which tells the program to execute with default conditions. Thus, if Tenshi is a computer program, then the SSS gang members are either users or programs providing input. For example, she might have the following, very basic, code:
while(meleeTest(targets)){
delay(targets);
}
What happens here? This is a while loop, a conditional statement that repeatedly runs so long as the condition remains true. In this case, the condition comes from the function meleeTest. meleeTest accepts targets as its argument, or input. A good programmer creates programs a normal person can read. Therefore, you can assume this function checks for any person on the list of targets stands in melee range. If true, the function returns the value true, which causes the loop to execute. The loop body runs the delay function on the target list, and it will continue as long as the condition continues returning true. Once meleeTest fails, which returns false, it continues past the loop to the next statement in the program.
Stand still so I can gut you properly!
Clear as mud, right? Well, she does have an AI program for combat, but it doesn’t seem very sophisticated at this point. You might see enemies in Halo or Gears of War who do things like flank or take cover when the situation calls for it. Tenshi just walks in a straight line and has her way with you. You might wonder how she could be so deadly, and it goes back to classic gaming architecture. Back in the day, developers had little memory or processing power to use when making a game. They could only design rudimentary encounters. To compensate, they made their bosses tough as nails. These enemies can hit unreasonably hard, spam attacks, and take incredible amounts of punishment before dying. This has the bonus side effect of taking all your quarters at the arcade.
In conclusion, if Angel Beats takes place in a video game, Tenshi is That One Boss.
Yeah, she's gonna be just fine.
