The Legend of Zelda

 

Finished The Legend of Zelda for the NES. The first Zelda game, released in 1986. I've played plenty of older games like this and the first thing that impressed me about this title is how merciful it is for a game of the 80s. You can save your progress, if you die you get to keep your items and money and if you die inside a dungeon you get to restart on the first room instead of having to walk all your way back inside. This encourages you to explore far and wide since you're not afraid to die in each step. Which is good because you'll die a lot, or at least I did.

Very soon you realize how fragile Link is. He is faster than most monsters in this land but boy his reach is awful when he's not in full health. While you are in full health, your sword shoots little sword bolts, giving you a ranged weapon as soon as you start the game. This is fine and well but once you get hit, you'll be dependent on Link's arms reach and he can only hit things that are an inch away from touching his nose. So if you get hit once you lose your ranged weapon and that means you'll be getting hit constantly from then on and die. Like I said this is not really a problem since you don't lose any money or items. And you get better as the game goes on, so it's all good.

Exploring is a major part of the game and it's a fun process. There's a little bit of trial and error in some dungeon locations but I wouldn't call it unintuitive. A couple of secret locations however I would call unintuitive. It's literally just random places you have to bomb to open a passage. The items you find there are optional but I would like to be able to find them without having to place bombs in every square of the overworld map. I ended up using a guide.

The meat of the game is exploring the overworld to find items and health containers, finding a dungeon entrance and proceeding to kill the monster inside and fetch a piece of the triforce. Here's the whole plot for this game, 2 lines you can read when you turn the game on but don't push start: "Many years ago prince darkness Ganon stole one of the triforce with power. Princess Zelda had one of the triforce with wisdom. She divided it into 8 units to hide it from Ganon before she was captured. Go find the 8 units Link to save her." And that's it. I don't think you need more than that, really.

The dungeons themselves are engaging, fun to run around and, again, they're quite merciful. I only had difficulty in about 5 or 6 rooms throughout all the 9 dungeons in this game. The only one that is really hard is the last one. And I only beat it in a reasonable amount of time thanks to save scumming, something you can do without but then you'll be replaying this dungeon for days before you either get good at it or get lucky. But that's not the only problem. You see, you can only carry 8 bombs at a time and in this dungeon you have to blow up holes in many, many walls. Which walls you should use a bomb on is a matter of guessing most of the time. That means you'll be running out of bombs to use constantly and will have to go outside the dungeon, fetch more bombs, return, kill all the monsters again and try different walls. It starts to feel like busy work fast. Usually I don't mind this type of thing but here I did. Still, for a RPG released in 1986, this is nothing. Try playing Faery Tale Adventure. It's insane how brutal and outright punishing games from this era can be.

There's 3 tracks for this game. Overworld music, a tune I'm certain you'll recognize, the dungeon track and the last dungeon track. All of them are excellent. They're all 10 second loops but I don't mind that at all. In fact I find repetitive music very soothing. And most importantly, it's all square waves and triangle waves, none of that generic symphony so many RPGs use these days.

Graphics are pretty good. Especially in the overworld map they managed to convey different biomes across the land which is quite nice. I find pixel art from this era endearing to look at. There is solid art direction here but I feel like Castlevania spoiled me forever on graphics for this particular console. Nothing looks as cool as that.

I would also like to quickly talk about the monsters here. If you ever played a Zelda game before, you'll be surprised how you'll find most monsters you come across in later games are already on the very first Zelda title. Famous ones like Stalfos, Octoroks, bats, mummies, those flying things called peahats, spider-like Tectikes, they're all already here in their beautiful 8-bit appearance. Even Dodongo, a boss monster you find in Ocarina of Time is already here as well, except he looks more like a triceratops in this one. But you kill him in the same way; feeding him bombs. What a terrible way to go.

So all in all, soothing music, nice graphics, good monster variety, nice enough map to explore, fun dungeons. Yeah I can see why this game was a hit when it came out, so much so that Zelda became one of the bread and butter franchises for Nintendo. I say it's well deserved.

Shiren the Wanderer 2: Oni Invasion! Shiren Castle!

 

This is a classic dungeon crawl game with the ‘you move they move’ type of system. It’s a basic one at that but it works. Along the way you’ll collect herbs, scrolls, staffs, food, weapons and building materials, but more of that later. Weapons come in a huge variety since you can combine their magical properties, the seals, using a special item called synthesis pot. The weapons you have are the most enduring aspect of your character since everything else you carry are consumables. Even your levels reset at the end of each run. That’s how it works in this game; there are 16 floors with one stop at the middle of the path. Once you enter the dungeon you can only return to the village with your stuff if you beat all the floors. You can choose to go back before that but you’ll lose your items by doing so. At the end of the run your level resets to 1 again, making your weapons particularly important and valuable.

 There are over 160 types of monsters lurking the corridors and rooms of Shiren’s world and they really make the crawling varied and interesting. They go from your basic slime that in this game kinda looks like a cat, all the way up to magic users, demons and heavily armored spiders. They can also evolve and gain levels and even the slime can become pretty tough if you find them in their more powerful forms. The monsters are not the only thing you have to worry about while adventuring. Often you’ll find traps on the ground and here’s my only complaint about this game.

 

Traps are plentiful, interesting and some have very cool animations. The problem is you’ll have to step on them, even if you can clearly see where they are. This game happens in a grid and sometimes you’ll have a trap right inside a corridor with no way of walking around it. Shiren can’t jump tiles and the only way to deactivate traps is by destroying them, but you need a particular weapon for that, a mallet, and you only run into those very, very, very late into the game. To add salt to injury, they eventually break, so even mallets are not a permanent solution to this. Basically you’ll be walking right into traps that you can clearly see and that always makes me a little annoyed. The other problem I have with the traps game is how to detect them: you swing your sword in front of you and if there’s a trap there, it will show up. Sounds simple enough, but swinging your sword takes a move. That means the game gets twice as slow if you’re swinging your weapon after every step you take, making trap detection a very dull, time consuming chore. There are some spells that reveal the location of traps but I felt those spells are rare to come by. Best solution is to just walk right into them and take the damage. Only a few traps are truly dangerous so you’ll be able to deal with the damage 99% of the time.

To help you on your quest you’ll find companions along the way and they add some interest to the gameplay, but their main function in the game, I believe, is how they’re involved in the story. You’ll find a total of 5 buddies to join you as you progress to the game. Some of them have their own special abilities, some are pretty much like you and you can even give them equipment. The only really useful one in my opinion is the walking drawer that can help you with carrying items. This is a major aspect of Shiren 2: what to carry and what to leave behind. To talk about your inventory I have to explain to you the plot a little bit.

 

So you’re Shiren, a type of wanderer warrior that goes around helping people. One day you and your friend Koppa, a talking weasel, end up in a village at the foot of a mountain. You go in for a nice bowl of udon and while you’re enjoying your meal demons attack. Apparently this is going on for a while and after a little bit of talking to the local prophetess and the mayor, Shiren receives the task of building a castle to protect the villagers from the attacks. Due to plot convenience, at the summit of the mountain there lives a group of castle builders… bear with me here. Those guys can make really good castle parts, but they need building materials, more specifically, 5 of them, that would be soil, water, wood, rock and iron sand. And, you guessed it, you can find that stuff by going inside the mountain where the dungeons are, and collect all that stuff as you go up the mountain. That’s how the story justifies the gameplay and it’s done rather well. Not that you needed a particular excuse. It gives you enough reason to keep going inside those dangerous places and it’s satisfying to reach the end with lots of building materials for the castle. You give them to the master builder, he builds the castle parts you need and toss it downstream back to the village, where a nice spot is ready to do some castle building.

Your inventory has very limited space, so you’ll be constantly struggling with it. Should you take a risk and toss that herb or food in order to bring one more iron sand? That’s the type of decision you’ll be making all the time and it adds some difficulty to the whole thing. It doesn’t end there. Building materials are not all made equal. Each of the 5 materials come in 3 varying degrees of quality: regular, good and perfect. This is important because the demons will be constantly attacking your castle and the quality of the materials you use have an impact on how sturdy the construction is. Only parts built entirely of perfect materials will be indestructible.

 

 

When going up the mountain you can choose what trail to take. Easy, mid or hard. The easy trail will only have normal quality materials, mid will have good and sometimes perfect and hard has more perfect and good materials. So you have the monsters, the traps, different items that you can combine, trail difficulties, the companions and different types of materials you should find and bring up to the top to the builders. All of this makes for a very entertaining dungeon crawl experience.

To add to the experience you have the plot itself that helps to give you a sense of progress. As you build this castle, you get to know more about this village, your companions and the demons themselves. It’s nothing extraordinary but the little stories that play out as you interact with the villagers are really nice and dare I say, quite endearing sometimes. It’s all done in this optimistic, lighthearted, whimsical manner that makes for a very soothing game. Speaking of soothing, the graphics are charming and add to the atmosphere perfectly. The characters have this blend of 2D and 3D aspects to them. It works. The music is truly excellent and it shows the producers knew the grinding of going up and down the dungeons works best with relaxing tunes.

Each individual aspect of Shiren 2 is nothing really new and maybe not done inventively or extremely well but when you put everything together it makes for a very excellent game. It took me about 17 hours to complete and I very much enjoyed all of it. It just felt very nice to traverse the dungeons with your friends, specially the walking drawing Mamo, while you gather some building materials, deal with colorful and varied monsters, step right into clearly there traps and at the end of the day, build decorous fortifications against not-really-evil-but-clearly-misguided demons. It’s optimistic, lighthearted and a perfect game to spend the afternoons with.

As it turns out, once you complete the game, a whole new gameplay becomes available. One of the villagers wants to create a monster zoo, so a new dungeon opens up where you can find a special item known as monster pots. Basically they are pokeballs and now you can go on in these monster capture runs and use your captured monsters to fight for you. They gain levels and everything and it plays very differently from the main game, since inside this dungeon you can’t use any weapons. That was a very nice surprise and it gives a lot of replayability. This is a game I would play once a year even without that part.

 

 

 

On a personal note, it took me a long time to play this one. I knew of its existence for years and the visuals always attracted me but forgot all about it for years at a time, for some reason or another never getting in the right mood to play it. Now that I have it’s one of my favorite Nintendo 64 titles. I quite enjoy games with this mood and atmosphere and a dungeon crawl game where you can grind on in a relaxed and lighthearted environment is right up my alley, though it gives me an intense sense of waste and depression when I step out of the game and realize sooner or later, you have to come back to reality, and reality looks particularly uglier and cruel when you step out of the world of Shiren the Wanderer 2: Oni Invasion! Shiren Castle! I even had nightmares the night after I finished the game, which was odd. I can’t remember what they were about other than they were nightmares. This is all particular to my own psyche of course and I very much recommend this game.

Now, on the technical side of things, make sure your video drive is vulkan if you’re using retroarch. I have the original hardware and can compare it side by side when it comes to n64 games. The other drivers give you a very crisp image and for n64 in particular that’s not how you want, since you’ll be looking at the “seams” of the graphics in many parts of the game. The way it looks on CRT with the original console is better since it makes the perfect amount of blending, giving a more uniform look. Maybe if you never played the original stuff you’ll be fine with that very sharp look but since I got so used to how they look in old TVs that it really bothers me when it’s sharp and crisp.

All that said, I still don’t feel I was able to capture how nice of an experience it was for me to play this game. Shiren 2 is filled with quiet moments where you just stop there for a moment and enjoy the fact you're in a quiet place and that is all there is to it. It's a colorful, immersive little world and I've grown very fond of it. I guess the only way to find out if you'll like this is to try it out for yourself.
 

 

Maptroid Worlds

 

 

Just finished Maptroid Worlds. It's one of those games that makes me feel in control, and I mean that in the most fundamental sense. Maptroid feels very compact and clean, its gaming concepts and visuals are stripped down to very fundamental levels. So here you are exploring this tiny "golf course galaxy", it's devoid of life and you're the only one there, exploring these little planets, collecting equipment and keycards so you can explore some more. You pick up disks along the way to read some very basic lore about the place. Music is really, really good. And then, about an hour later you explored everything. 100% done, little credits role, you're back to the title screen.

And that's it, really, a bite-size experience. It's very relieving in a way to experience Maptroid. Just you, a nice tune on the background and running around for ruined disks in thick forests, underwater and rocky deserts. It's not a nostalgic feeling exactly, but if you're kinda old by now and your infancy games were all 2D and much simpler than they're today, this might hit just right for you. I thinking about people that grew up with GB, GBC and Nes in particular.

のんのびより (Non Non Biyori)

 

 

Non Non Biyori follow the idyllic lives of Hotaru, Komari, Natsumi, and Renge, a group of friends aged 7 to 14 and their little adventures in the rural paradise of Asahigaoka. The show is very episodic in nature and you can pretty much watch in any order you like. I think it’s very hard to add anything new when talking about this, for two reasons. First, everybody already watched this. Second, there’s not that much to talk about. It’s a very well established formula at this point. A group of sweet, endearing characters living the best time of their lives in the Japanese countryside. Non Non is just better than most at it. The plots are not what makes this special though. You’ll go through all the same stuff; fireworks, melon and a hot summer, a beach episode, a school festival episode and so forth. What makes it better than most are the characters, they felt more unique and realized than most entities populating Iyashikeis and CGDCT I’ve seen.

I particularly liked two characters. First would be Komari, one of the Koshigaya sisters. I enjoyed how she encapsulated the ideas children have about being a grown up. Liking bitter foods, reading fashion magazines, liking certain types of music and dressing up. The funny part is she’s actually going through the process of becoming an actual adult through the conflicts with her slacker sister. She finds herself in a position of responsibility at her home, having to perform domestic tasks and helping her sister to not get too unhinged and mediating between her and their mother. It’s interesting how she never realizes those things are what is turning her into an adult, perhaps the most adult, responsible person in her group but since she has an idealized idea of what’s about she gets lost in things like having a phone or using a certain type of clothing. The way the internal conflict of this character is handled is one of the best parts of this show in my opinion and what I enjoyed the most in it.

The other character I enjoyed following around is Kaede, the candy shop owner. Now, this is a character more or less on the fringe of this whole thing. First, she’s the only one who has financial problems, not exactly an iyashikei thing to have in there. It’s a bit of a mystery how she manages to have any money at all. The town is obviously dying, there’s simply not enough kids in there to sustain her business. At one point she agrees to close shop for an entire day for 30 bucks, so times are certainly dire. She also has very little business sense since we can safely infer the families living there need to go to the next town to get basic supplies. She could definitely make more things available at her shop so townsfolk would stop having to do groceries in another town. It seems this candy shop is a very well established business and it’s been there since forever. I think she’s living on some inheritance or something, and is keeping this shop out of some nostalgia or filial piety, that’s the conclusion I got after watching two seasons of this show. The other thing I like about her is her position as observer, this is basically a trope you usually have when the show is centered around children growing up. You’ll have adults around whose life gets a little bit sweeter by watching the whole process and Kaede is pretty much one of those. It helps to see the impact the main characters have on the people around them, which in turn makes them more interesting to watch.

Worth a watch if you like the genre. Art and music are of high quality and add a lot to the show.

ハッピードリームシンドローム

 

It's that time again I come here and tell you this is a beautiful game. You might start to assume I will praise any game I play but that's not true. What happens is I play through several VNs before committing to one. I would have played maybe 10 to 20 min of 4 or 5 titles before finding one I feel like reading all the way to the end and of course I'll review only those that I actually read all the way through. This is the latest one, Happy Dream Syndrome. This is the type of game that makes me wonder why nobody played it and most importantly, why there are so many boring plots for anime each season when they have stories like this lying around the internet. I don't get it. The other 4 guys who played this on yt all loved it and it's 5 stars on novelgame.

The art for this is pretty good. It has its own style going for it and it makes the characters very memorable. It doesn't look like a VN backed by a professional studio of course, but it is still pretty good and it has more charm and strength than a lot of generic 'highly professional' illustrations I see out there on VNs. The music is composed of 3 piano medleys. Not the best but they really work for this game. I had some problems with the gameplay though. Game has a couple of bugs and at least for me it's broken on Firefox. About 2 hours in there's a small animation scene and it doesn't matter what I try, I can't make the clip to load and run on firefox. Had to switch to Chrome and redo a huge portion of the game to get where I was. About 15 minutes of skipping. Free games though, you can't really complain. Lots of routes to take here. In fact I ended up cheating and looking up how to get one of the endings, then I regretted doing it because it was really obvious and the only thing I hadn't tried, despite being obvious.

The story begins with a trope I really like and I think everyone who played a lot of rpgmaker games back in its heyday have a soft spot for it as well. The protagonist wakes up with no idea who he is or where he's at. He lost all memory of his past and it's on the same level of wisdom about the world he's in as we the players starting this game for the first time. Protagonist memory loss must be the single most popular trope for RPG Maker games for the first decade of the 2000s for sure and here we have it, too.

This guy wakes up in a hospital bed full of bruises everywhere. He has no idea what happened. Hospital seems empty so he decides to wander around until finding a nurse sleeping in another room. She explains he was found in the woods nearby and this is a psychiatric sort of hospital. Sort of, because this takes a lot of turns. As you interact with the other patients, things begin to make less sense until it begins to make more sense and then it becomes a matter of who to trust and the it goes all over the place. It's really good. This game also introduced me to something I really like but didn't know until now and that is female characters too old to care for stuffed animals but still have a strong attachment to them for some tragic reason. It hits some really specific commiseration trigger in my brain, hard to explain.

I guess I'll try to give you a not nearly complete run of the whole mystery, in a single paragraph. Spoilers, don't read this if you plan to play this game for yourself.

Toi-kun wakes up in a hospital with memory loss. He wanders around, and finds the hospital only has 3 patients. Asahi, Aki and Leo, a nurse named Meru and a doctor named... Doctor. They're all really, REALLY damaged people mentally though of course you don't know this from the start. Asahi is the first patient you meet and 'solve'. She lost her one and only friend, a stuffed animal toy shark named Garo. I won't go through all her story but basically her problem is she's a complete anti-social individual incapable of being close to anyone but her toy Garo. You find the toy on the same day she's leaving the hospital. You part ways promising to be friends. She lets go of Garo before leaving, which is very weird, it's almost like she is brainwashed. Then you meet another damaged patient, Aki. Aki is only there for the money as he's taking part in the happy pill experiment... but not really, he's just a 'regularly' super damaged person and is coping by pretending he's there by his own volition. I won't go through his story but it involves being poor and having to work from a very young age to support his siblings, tragic stuff. He also ends up being released. Lastly you have Leo, a really nice guy you find in the library. He seems very smart and calm but in reality he has bouts of violent behavior and ends up killing a cat close to the mid-end of the game to great dramatic effect. All these people suspect each other and the actual goals of the treatment they're receiving, and they also suspect the medical staff, and are investigating the hospital by snooping around, so you get caught up not knowing who to trust or not to trust. On top of all this, you're trying to figure it out what is going on with your memory and trying to make sense of what happened and who you're and the staff doesn't seem to care or be able to help. The choices available to you reflect this and it makes for very interesting unraveling. I'm skipping hours of dialogue, but the whole thing makes for a great mystery. Leo's story is one of domestic violence. He and his sister ran away from home but he soon realizes he's just as violent and dangerous as his dad and several things leads him to end up in this hospital. So when you go through all these stories and several flashbacks that you end up connecting by the end, you get to go outside (you were forbidden to do so) and the truth is revealed. As far as your memory wipe, the fact is you killed your mother during one of her psychotic episodes. She is obsessed with her son and won't allow him to do anything because she's afraid he'll leave her too, just like dad did. It's a really sick relationship that ends up with Toi stabbing her in the stomach. Then through some more shenanigans you end up in the hospital that turns out it's not a hospital at all. This is actually a religious cult funded on some weird idea about a God that grants hypnotic powers to a chosen few. These powers are real but it's really hard to find the right people that can open the third eye, so they're basically kidnapping youngsters to test their potential. This is all a secret of course, so they basically have to dispose of everyone who doesn't make it, which means all the other patients you met are probably dead. If you make all the right choices and manage to survive all this crazy rodeo, you find out Meru is conducting all these under orders and she has those hypnotic power herself. You convince her she can leave all this behind and come with you. The end. Also Doctor gets hit at the back of the head and is probably left to bleed to death in the woods. There are really no happy endings here, this is all really tragic but it's also really good and you should play it if you can.

https://novelgame.jp/games/show/4922?fes=1

You can watch someone else playing it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvPXLuwG5UM&list=PL0DEAPIYMmKG1396U8wJU4C06Dnby0yFo

約束の赤い折り紙を

 

As far as I'm aware Yakusoku no Akai Origami is the very first game by Hitotokinoyume, a team of 3 guys. They also released this mostly same game for mobile with room escape elements. I played the PC, VN version. I'm very impressed with their first attempt. Everything is solid and the story is pretty good. There are also some player friendly choices with the design I would love to see in all VNs, like highlighting the routes I already took so I don't have to reload when making a mistake, and showing me the paths I didn't take to reach a particular ending. Not many free stuff out there that will take the trouble to implement those things, it helps a lot. Everything else other than the plot is average though. Average art, average music. The characters do look a little bit uninspired but the backgrounds held my interest as they look like from an old point and click game but in a Japanese setting, it was interesting.

The plot is the main reason why you would play this. Religion plays a major part in the story. It's interesting to see a more 'religious-centric' view on Japanese spirituality. Usually in games and anime you have a very fantastic, mythological approach where you actually see the Gods and all the mythological creatures roaming around and interacting with humans. In such cases, there's no room for an exploration of religious behavior or religious belief, because there's no room for skepticism or thinking critically about religion. The Gods are right there! The Kappas roam the mountains. If a miku is doing something wrong, she just needs to ask the God she's serving and he or she is right there to respond, problem solved. When Mythology is a given like this, it's almost not a religion as a belief system, it's right in front of you. There are no doubts about it. Here though we have a more realistic view. Lots of conflict about belief and rituals and whatnot. It would be interesting to see more games taking this approach, I think it's a fairly unexplored territory, especially if you compare it with the more fantasy-based approach to Shinto and Japanese mythology that is absolutely everywhere in JP media.

I want to say this takes place at the beginning of the Meiji era based on some objects you can see around, but it might be a little later than that since the entire thing happens in a very tiny, isolated village. You have a very influential family, the Utsumi, having to deal with the task of giving thanks to the God protector of the place. Right away there's all sorts of weird things happening. You follow a girl called Tada, as she's trying to figure out all the weird things that start to happen to her on her 16th birthday. Voices whispering in the night, visions of a little girl inside the temple strangling an old man and little pieces of origami paper she keeps finding in the oddest places. As she goes back and forth asking people around about the past of the village and the upcoming festival, the plot unravels.

There's also point and click elements to find clues and objects that unlock more of the story. I'm not fond of that type of stuff in the middle of a VN but all those sections are simple enough and nicely spaced so it never gets annoying. It's a rather long one for a free title but it's worth a read.

https://novelgame.jp/games/show/6509
You can also watch it, some fairly talkative guy played it in 4 parts. Fair warning though, he's very enthusiastic about his own voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7mk813n2hg

Konohana Kitan (このはな綺譚)

It's been a while since I saw an anime that hides its gold so deep. First 3 episodes of Konohana Kitan feel like a patience challenge. Reminds me of some Buddhist stories where a monk would let the aspiring student stand outside the temple for a couple weeks in the cold and heavy rain in order to test his resolve. Except here you have to endure the first 3 episodes that are guaranteed to push a lot of people away. Especially if you have something else to do. Characters just kinda fuss about with no plot and acting terribly generic. It gives every possible sign this is going to be completely forgetable. The first 3 episodes are trying to tell you it's a group of cute fox girls working at an inn for the gods. Just one more excuse to look at cute characters, please move on. Well, too bad, Ms. Tsubaki, I stood there and you had to let me in.

Then it gets good. The fourth episode really gives you the opportunity to look under the sweetness of these charming foxes. And if you sit there and connect some dots at leisure, it gets really interesting. So, these fantastic creatures are pretty much playing around with human emotions. They live so long that to them, human lives feel like a short dream, and they see no problem deluding humans because they have a hard time even seeing the difference. It makes sense. They must feel like it's OK to give people a nice dream instead of reality, after all, a human lasts as long as a soap bubble to them. Of course this idea of fantasy as a tool is what iyashikei itself is about in many ways.

Each episode we get a person in need to escape reality. An abandoned child, an workaholic, a suicidal. All darkness of reality must be destroyed. There's a very funny and profoundly revealing moment in the 8th episode where Yuzu meets a compulsive liar who ends up isolated from people. She lies because she finds life crushingly insipid. Yuzu, being a fox, can't understand what she's talking about, so to cheer the liar up she responds that her fox life is actually great! I had to pause right there and give a hollow laugh. There's such a gap between these creatures and humans it's almost a cruelty to be able to converse with them. It's like talking to a demi-god able to do all these amazing things and being close to one makes you more aware of your shortcomings. The story ends with the girl disappearing and going back to her own world. Her problems, to Yuzu, was nothing but a short walk on the beach. The second part of the episode deals with people who don't want to go back to reality. Again, hard not to make a connection of yourself watching Konohana.

Like I said, all darkness must be destroyed and this includes the complete destruction of my second favorite character (first being Sakura of course), Okiku. See, Okiku is a curse doll but she doesn't look like one. She looks pretty much like an Ichimatsu doll with the beautiful red kimono and the long black hair. I really like those dolls and here there is one, but not for long. They find her look too bleak and decide to mutilate her into a maid with silly purple hair. I suppose it could be worse. Then Sakura spent a good chunk of her time making Okiku fear for her life. Why is it that Yuzu doesn't pay more attention to this particular situation? That wasn't fair.

Everything I said is not really on the surface of the show but if you think too much about these I think you'll end up seeing it, too. Still, very emotional, cute stories all around with kindhearted characters and bittersweet endings. I feel like the manga must be a lot more interesting because it can deal with creepy cute effects of a gods' inn. It did show up here and there in the anime and it's probably coming from the manga. Also the author herself escapes to her own fantasy all the time. She's everywhere, wearing a fox mask. She knows what's up. She really does.

Hoozuki no Reitetsu (鬼灯の冷徹)

 

It's possible you might have talked to someone like Ms. Eguchi before. A person who has two or three very specific interests and is very knowledgeable about them. You might know a thing or two about those things as well, but not at all like that person. You end up doing all the listening. She goes on talking about the things she likes and it might be a little hermetic at first, you might even consider coming up with an excuse to leave, but soon you get caught up in her web and things get so interesting you end up completely immersed in it. Then, when you realize it, hours have passed and you were having a great time listening to that person, even though you didn't think much of it at first.

That's how I feel about Ms. Eguchi's title, Hoozuki no Reitetsu. She has a fascination for ink wash and traditional Chinese and Japanese painting, especially landscapes. But that's just the beginning, because she also knows a lot about Chinese and Japanese mythology and folklore, particularly things related to the other worlds. Hells and Heavens. Naturally she knows her Buddhism as well. When talking about these fantastic matters, she organizes everything around the type of men she likes. You can see this is going to get very interesting. Ms. Eguchi is a fascinating person, but you have to give her time to really enjoy where she's going.

Enter her main character, Hoozuki. He's a demon working in Hell for none other than Great King Enma, the ruler and supreme judge of the underworld. Hoozuki is handsome, quiet, self-contained, strong, level-headed, master of several arts, from gardening to cooking and medicine. He's reliant, chaste, organized, focused and can hold his liquor. Ms. Eguchi loves to talk about how cool he is and of course we agree, Hoozuki is a pretty amazing demon, he's awesome.

Ms. Eguchi is also very interested in language and her characters talk in a very literary manner. They don't talk in an old style, in fact their dialogues are very modern, contemporary business-like style, but they tend to use literary words, usually with very clear Chinese roots that nobody else uses. She'll make lots of jokes about it, too, so you'll have to watch it more than once… maybe thrice to really get them all.

She loves to think about folklore heroes and mythological creatures as entities who screwed up at some point and she loves to see their ugly side. It's hard to tell if she likes to drag those characters through the mud for its own sake, or if she does it so Hoozuki can fix them up, making him ever cooler and more attractive in the process. Probably a little bit of both. I'm not complaining, it's actually quite entertaining.

As you can imagine by what I've said so far, Ms. Eguchi's humor is rather peculiar and it doesn't always work outside her own head, but the atmosphere and the world where the jokes happen are so interesting you don't even mind. Also, her characters' designs are adorable when it needs to be and grotesque when it needs to be, everything works very well. They look good, endearing and cute. Not many people can draw traditional clothing like she does. Quick but elegant. Her art really stands out, though the anime may not convey it at all times.

Hoozuki no Reitetsu is a fascinating work and I'm really happy to find out she still has lots of ideas she wants to express. Soon after finishing Hoozuki, she began another title, Dekin no Mogura. Let's hope it's as good as this one.

Kaidan Restaurant (怪談レストラン)

 

Kaidan Restaurant is based on a series of horror short story books collection for children that ran from the mid 90s to 2010, when the last book got released, reaching 50 volumes. MAL says it's picture books but it's actually short story collections, each story goes for about 10 to 12 pages and every other story has an illustration to go along with it. I've personally read about 10 or so of these books and I feel like the anime does a very good job translating the material to animation.

The books and the anime are actually a sort of modern take on several classic horror, folktale stories and more modern urban legends. Most have Japanese sources but there are a good number of European stories as well. If you have any interest in Japanese literature, especially related to the weird, folk tales and horror, then you'll recognize a lot of these. Some of the stories are based on sources as old as the Konjaku Monogatarishu and Ugetsu Monogatari compilations. Some are based on very modern urban legends related to technology, like being able to talk to the dead through a cell phone, creatures from the Beyond being able to use TV signals to cross dimensions, etc.

Although it's a show written for children, you would be surprised how it doesn't shun away from a lot of things a show like this in the West would do. Children actually die in tragic ways here. This is not a spoiler, just a warning. It's also very well written, setting a good precedent; it's not because it's for children that it needs to be lazy, uninteresting and avoid exploring themes like death, loss, pain, tragedy and the like. Just remember, it is a show for kids first, so it won't wallow in depressing themes, but it uses well to tell the stories it wants to tell. It explores all these things very well and in a very Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai-ish way. That's how it usually starts; the 3 main characters, Shou, Ako and Reiko get together, usually after seeing something weird. Shou remembers a story relating to that event and tells it to the other characters. Sometimes the characters themselves go investigate whatever weird thing that happened in their town or in their school. Most episodes are divided into 3 stories, sometimes 2 and a couple of episodes have a single story.

This show was extremely popular in Japan in its demographic and it's easy to see why. For adults however, it might require a little bit of persistence. Some stories are rather mild and an episode here and there can be a little dull, but if you keep going, there are very good tales to go through, some quite tragic and emotionally charged. Each story is self contained so you can skip the ones you don't like, just make sure to watch the last episode. It's a very nice one and it gives some development to one of the main characters.

Each episode gets a little intro by Garcon, the ghost who runs the Kaidan Restaurant. In the books he serves the same purpose, welcoming  the main character of each story as he or she enters the restaurant to tell or be told a horror story. Here however, he just introduces the stories with the help of other supernatural creatures, but they happen in other places. He's also played by Mr. Hirata Hiroaki, one of the most charming male voices in the industry today.

Going with this show's premise of introducing each story as dishes, I think this anime is a good palate cleanser. If you watched something very somber or depressing, or if you just watched something too cute and excessively sweet or silly, then I think you'll enjoy going through this, especially if you're into horror. There's also a movie out there but what this really deserves is a second season. All in all, it's a very satisfying show to go through.

Lovely★Complex (ラブ★コン )

If you have been watching anime for a long time and are willing to explore several genres, Lovely Complex will end up crossing your path sooner or later. It's one of the big shoujo romantic comedies out there and a staple of its kind. It doesn't try to do anything new, instead it focuses on being a safe show that manages to pull all the regular tropes in a very entertaining manner. The story follows the highschool years of Risa and Ootani as their relationship evolves from friendship to romance.

Risa is the main character and it's mainly through her eyes we'll be following the story. She's way taller than her love interest Ootani and that's one of the main elements for the comedy part to happen, usually slapstick and hilarious facial expressions. Their height difference is a source of insecurity from both parties and a hindrance they have to overcome to be together. It also makes them a very memorable couple and part why people still remember this show fondly after all these years.

Their road to romance is what you would expect of a shoujo romantic comedy. Filled with misunderstandings, melodramatic moments and all sorts of badly handled emotions by Ootani and Risa that makes them getting together a lot more tempestuous and difficult than it should be, but that's a romcom anime for you. I feel like this is a very good show for people interested in having a clear picture of how a romantic comedy is put together. Being upfront about the tropes really works in this show's favor.

Expect them all: a dense character that can't take a hint. Characters witnessing an innocent scene and assuming it's something else, characters being dropped in the plot only as a hindrance for the pairing of the main couple to happen, characters not expressing their feelings or expressing them in confusing ways, etc.

Now, Lovely Complex does get repetitive here and there and if you're just watching to see the couple getting together in the end it might bother you it's taking so long, but if you're interested in how the author reworks the same tropes in different flavors and how the story progresses using the same basic conflict, then you'll have a lot of fun. It's a one-on-one romcom after all. I feel like Lovely Complex is a very good standart to the genre and after you watch it you'll have a good idea of the elements you don't like and the stuff you do want to see more of it.

夜は猫といっしょ (Yoru wa Neko to Issho)

There's a fair amount of manga about cats out there and in 2020 an artist going by the handle Kyuryu Z on Twitter began publishing his own observations and interactions with his pet cat named Kyuruga (a pun on the fact his sister's mobile phone tried to read the cat like a QR Code). Yoru wa Neko to Issho have since amassed over 700k followers on Twitter. Kadokawa picked it up for publication (the third volume came out in April 2022) and an anime adaptation was announced as well for the season of Summer 2022.

Unlike something like Ojisama to Neko that focus on the emotional attachment between pet and owner or Chi's Sweet Home that uses anthropomorphic cats for comedy, this title is centered around careful observation of cat behavior. If you ever owned a cat, most pages here will depict things very familiar to you. The fascination cats have for boxes, how they love to get in the way when you're staring at your screen monitor, pushing things off tables and so on. The author is very careful in his observations and the interest and comedy contained here flow in a very natural, peaceful, non-scripted manner. The author is obviously not forcing the jokes to happen and any funny moment comes from pure cat observation. It's pretty much a diary relating funny and amusing things cats do and how it can brighten someone's day. Kyuruga the cat is the main and only star here, at least for now. The other two characters, Fuuta and his sister are just there to observe and play with the pet and the rest of their lives are not explored in any capacity. It's all about the pet cat.

It's a SOL for sure and the art is rather unique. Doesn't seem like Kyuryu Z had any pretentions with his manga, it just grew organically and the art shows his concern to depict cat behavior and movement in an accurate manner but also as fast as possible. I'm really curious how the anime adaptation is going to look like.

I highly recommend you check it out if you enjoy cats (it will be an endless source of 'my cat does that too!' moments) and also because you can actually read all this interesting stuff for free! The author keeps a blog with all the stories archived. I spent a lazy afternoon going through every story and it was an afternoon decently spent. Head to his Twitter, you can find all the links from there.

Himouto! Umaru-chan R (干物妹！うまるちゃんR )

 The second season is a lot better than the first. We're finally past the focus on the paradisiacal and gimmicky otaku life of Umaru and her dual personality. The focus now is the development of the characters' friendship and their daily life together. A lot more time is dedicated to the other girls and their problems and concerns, which actually makes Umaru more relevant and interesting as a character since this time around she can be more than something for her older brother to bare and clean up after it. We get a chance to see her more of her behavior as a friend and how she tries to improve the lives of the people around her… except her brother's life that is, she is still a toy hoarder and can't clean up after herself.

Now that Umaru, Kirie, Tachibana and Ebina is officially a group of friends, that's where the series goes; There's a getting together for christmas episode, getting together to go to the poll episode, going to the amusement park together, getting together to see some fireworks, going to the beach together, the works. The interactions are more varied and have a better pace, but don't expect too much. It's a very episodic anime. Like before, all problems the characters have are superficial, it’s either there for a joke or to be easily overcome. Everyone has a kind heart and everything works out in the end. It's good escapism and it doesn't want to be anything else.

三ツ星カラーズ (Mitsuboshi Colors)

Mitsuboshi Colors is about a group of three elementary school girls; Yui, Sacchan and Kotoha. They made a pact to protect and keep the peace of their town, more specifically Ueno park and its surroundings. And so they run amok causing all sorts of adventures upon themselves; from fighting trees and flowers so they stop causing people to sneeze to handing tissues near the subway entrance and selling strawberries to strangers in the park. To them, everything can become a call to adventure and a chance to explore their environment.

One of the people particularly interested in making their day interesting is Daigorou. He owns some sort of second-hand goods store and loves to come up with all sorts of mysteries to keep the trio occupied. One much less enthusiastic about the girls is the police officer Satou, who has to put up with their antics pretty much on a daily basis. He seems to be the most antagonistic character here, but this is an Iyashikei show, so that means he just tries to shoo away the kids from time to time. Another "quest giver" here is Sacchan's mother, Kise, who sometimes will ask the girls to run some errands for her.

Other people they deal with on a daily basis are the sisters Nonoka and Momoka; they own a bakery soon to be turned into an onigiri store and that's pretty much the cast. Yui is the leader, being probably the most serious and alert of the group. Sacchan is a ball of energy. Charismatic and always looking for something to do. Kotoha is a gamer with a lot of odd and funny theories about the world.

Watching this show was an interesting experience. It felt like it took me every minute out all of the 12 episodes for me to start to care about the characters. When I finally reached the point I felt like I could enjoy the show, it was over. I think there are two main reasons for this. First, the stories feel too scattered and catch-as-catch-can. I'm not talking about an overall sense of progress, this is not what this show is about, but how thin some of those episodes felt. It wasn't soothing, it wasn't funny, it wasn't endearing… it was just there. Felt like the whole script was written as a last minute thing. Some are interesting, for example when they follow their pet cat to figure out what it is doing during the day, or when Yui has to take part in a parade. Others feel like busy work, really, like sending the girls to hand some tissues to get some tickets for a lottery, just so they get more tissues as prizes.

The other issue for me was the lack of interesting supporting characters and a lack of a contrast between the main characters. Yui, Sacchan and Kotoha are just too similar to each other. Their friendship feels consumed by uniformity, there's very little for the viewer to follow in the characters themselves. Supporting characters could be interesting but ultimately they suffer from lack of screen time. I think Nono and Momoka would be great, if they had more development. In fact their relationship as sisters seemed a lot more interesting than the characters the show follows.

Also, watching this after watching Ichigo Mashimaro makes it very difficult not to draw comparisons. The characters here are way less interesting visually and feel superficial when you compare them with the girls in Ichigo. I'm still interested enough that I'll read the manga. We'll see how it goes.

苺ましまろ (Ichigo Mashiro)

Ichigo Mashimaro follows the daily lives of Itou sisters Nobue and Chika and their friends, Miu, Matsuri and Ana. The stories are mostly self-contained and have a SOL bent to them, but with a rather chaotic twist in the shape of 12 years old Miu. She must be the most explosive comedy release character I've ever seen in a Slice of Life, feel good manga like this. You know the type from many other titles, the very active child that pushes the other characters to do things or force them into situations they would never get by themselves. Well, Miu is that element but she is… special. Judging by the things I've read about this work, she's a polarizing character, too. Half the readers seem to love her, the other half hates her. The reason for this, I'm assuming, is because she doesn't allow Ichigo Mashimaro to be a cozy, feel good manga all the way through. She's always scheming something and even when it's a small thing, it turns out to be bigger than expected.

But why would so many people like this to be a pure feel good SOL manga? To get why, you have to look at the art. Ichigo is just gorgeous to look at. Barasui has a very soothing, "round and cute" style. He's able to draw very delicate lines that capture a lot with very little. His sense of fashion is varied and fun to look out for and he is pretty much one of the best artists I've seen when it comes to capturing character's facial expressions and body language, especially from children. He's able to add a lot of subtlety to the way his characters exist, particularly with the way he draws hands and feet, and I have to mention again, he loves to draw clothing and that adds a lot to his panels. So when you have a very strong and chaotic comedic element that disrupts things, yeah, some people might have a problem with that.

It seems even Barasui himself sees the work as an odd mix of over the top comedy and Slice of Life. There are many stories where he compares the friendship between Miu and Chika (chaotic, comedic) and Matsuri and Ana (endearing, soothing). In fact he seems to love that sort of contrast and applies them a lot in several ways during all sorts of situations. Before we go into those however, it's better if I introduce all the characters first.

Miu is 12 and I'm not sure if she's crazy or a comedy genius. She's very energetic and seems to be constantly dying for attention. She's also incredibly flexible, athletic and cute. Basically she's born to become a movie star, there's no other place in this world for her other than the stage and I think she knows it. In one story she mentions she wants to be an idol but no, she's wrong, she wants to be a movie star. She'll figure it out, eventually.

Then you have Chika. She's in the same class as Miu and not nearly as crazy. In fact, she's a very responsible and sweet kid, unfortunately caught between a slacker sister and oddball Miu. She loves to cook and is always reading about new types of sweets she can prepare at home. Her pacifying and calm nature is essential for the wellbeing of the people around her and she's an all-round restorative force to her friends and family. Chi-chan and Miu form a sort of unity within this group of characters.

The other one is composed by Ana and Matsuri. They're a year younger than Miu and Chi and have a very different relationship. They're also friends of course, but Matsuri is a very shy, fragile, introspective girl and so Ana ends up acting as a sort of guardian and protector. Matsuri is one of those types of people that look very precious and possess the gentlest of souls, so everybody around her tries their best to make sure Matsuri is happy and safe. Ana is also a very interesting character in her own right. She's a foreigner, an English girl, and moved to Japan with her family when she was four or so. She would love to be more of a foreigner, actually, but she doesn't know any English, which is a source of never ending frustration to her. In fact, Matsuri is very focused on helping her learn English and takes it so seriously that she actually knows way more English than Ana, which is a source of funny moments in itself. Ana is very mature, beautiful, extremely polite, refined and trustworthy. Basically it's impossible not to love her, as Matsuri and Nobue know very well. She's adored by Nobue, which makes Miu extremely jealous from time to time.

Transiting around those kids is Nobue, Chi's older sister. She's 16 and kinda what binds everything together. She's also the character the reader will sort of stand side by side the most. Like her, we're also watching as these kids interact and grow together so it feels like she's the closest character to the reader, or at least that's how I felt. It's hard to say much about her because hanging around with her younger sister and the other girls is pretty much all she does and apparently cares about. She doesn't seem to want or have a life beyond that. She dislikes school, doesn't have any friends her age and she must be at least a little socially inept because even though she's very cute, all the boys are afraid of her (according to her sister). She also kicked a stranger in the stomach once because he made a comment about her being single, not exactly a healthy reaction, but there you go, Nobue justice was served that day.

And with these five characters we mostly will be hanging around Chi's bedroom as they play with dolls, talk about their dreams, eat candy, play games and generally have a very nice day. Sometimes they go out to try a restaurant or to the park, but that's not as common. Lots of antics, lots of funny moments, lots of heartwarming moments. This is probably on my top10 favorite list. The art and the characters did it, more than the comedy and plot.

To conclude this I would like to talk a little bit about the situation with releases and what to expect of it. The first and second volume came out in 2003, about six months apart. Then volume 3 came out 2004, a year later. In 2005, again a year later, volume 4 came out and from there the release began to take longer and longer. Volume 5 came out 2 years later, in 2007. Volume 6 came out in 2009. Volume 7 came out 4 years later, in 2013 and again 4 years later, 2017, volume 8 came out. As I'm writing this, it's april 2022, so 5 years after volume 8 and there's no volume 9 yet.

I don't know if there are any chapters released after the stories contained in volume 8 because I could not track any Dengenki Daioh magazines prior to 2020 but the last chapter available on their website is from 2015. I didn't see anything about Barasui giving up on publication, so it's probably an active project, albeit a very slow pace one. Now, I've been following Barasui on Twitter and all he talks about is his 5 yo son. He's having a blast by being a dad and apparently it's his full time job for the past few years. I would not be surprised if Ichigo is the last thing on his mind right now. I guess we'll see.

As a last note to this, if you happen to be learning Japanese and are intermediate or around that, this work is very easy to read. Dialogue is short and the words used are very basic indeed. I mean, the main characters are children, so that's to be expected. I checked the fan translation is actually mostly decent, probably because the dialogue is so straightforward and simple.

苺ましまろ (Ichigo Mashimaro)

Ichigo Mashimaro follows the daily lives of Itou sisters Nobue and Chika and their friends, Miu, Matsuri and Ana. It's  SOL and CGDCT with a rather unique timing to it, but more of that later. Nobue is 20, Chika and Miu 12, Matsuri and Ana 11, making the show mostly about childhood and how those kids' personalities clash for humorous effect. As one might expect for a show of this genre, the atmosphere and mood are quite soothing and the plots are all trying to be lighthearted and endearing and it hits the mark most days.

The timing for this particular SOL is rather unique. The pacing is slower than most I think, not the plot itself but how the dialogue works and the way the comedy is delivered. This is not a bad thing and it works particularly well if you want something to shut your brain off for 20 minutes which is what I was looking for. This is also hinted at in the color palette for the show. A small range of mostly meek and calming colors. Right away you know what you're getting yourself to.

As far as the characters go, they're all quite nice and it's comforting to watch them playing around and being mostly silly. Miu is the chaotic element of this crew and as a result most of the comedy revolves around the rest of the girls having to deal with the crazy stuff she pulls off all the time. Ana is English but has lived in Japan for most of her life. She's very keen about Japanese culture and is very eager to make friends. Matsuri is a very shy, meek and introverted girl whose only weapon is her natural ability to inspire her friends to immediately stand up for her whenever needed. You'll understand why when you watch it. Chika is described by her older sister as "a girl whose main trait is not having any particular traits" but that's not true. She's the mature one of the group, many times acting more like an adult than Nobue herself.

Then you have Nobue. Being almost a decade older than the other characters and with no parents in sight, she ends up being a parental sort of figure, but without the pressure of being a real parent. All the other kids think she's super cool, except her sister who knows her a little better than that. She's a real mystery. Sometimes it felt like she had her own life going and having to take care of her sister and her friends is a nuisance to her. Other times it feels like all she has going on in her life is her sister and her friends and outside of that she's a recluse. It's obvious she dislikes school and doesn't care about it. Her room is pretty bare and the only passion she seems to have is smoking.

Sometimes she does a very excellent job at being an adult and treating those kids well and fairly, sometimes she fails miserably. Her relationship with Miu is particularly interesting because Miu obviously admires Nobue a lot and wants to be the girl Nobue likes the most. This is where Nobue is pretty hit-or-miss on her behavior. She seems to forget sometimes that she's dealing with kids, other times she goes out of her way for them. I suppose that makes her a rather realistic character in this. She was the most interesting character in the show for sure and watching her dealing with the children is very entertaining.

To finish this little rumbling here I would like to talk about the differences between the anime and the manga. It's been a while since I watched an adaptation so well put together. They read the original material and managed to change a thing here and there to great effect. First, changing Nobue's age from 16 to 20. Obviously this makes things easier with her smoking and drinking. Also, putting more age between her and the other girls reinforces her role as an adult watching children growing up, something she does a lot. A teenager would probably be too involved in their own crap to be around as much as she is in those kids' lives, so it makes her a little more grounded and interesting I think. Another change is having Ana there right from the start. In the manga she's only introduced on the second volume. Also making her enjoy Japanese things from the start instead of finding things weird really made her a lot more sweet. It also changed the way her elegance is presented, going for something less related to pride to something more agreeable. Lots of situations from the manga show up in the anime but the order, motivation and interaction between the characters are a little different. Ironically, I think the way the anime presented those characters actually revealed their personalities better than the first few volumes of the manga. Of course, they had the chance to read all the original material first and then decide how to proceed, while the manga was an original work in progress and that entails mistakes.

All in all, I really enjoyed this series. I wish the author would publish more volumes, as it stands, the story doesn't seem to be over yet, but it's on an indefinite hiatus for now. Let's hope we'll be seeing more of Ichigo Mashimaro soon.

奇々怪界 黒マントの謎 ( Pocky & Rocky Reshrined)

 

 I just finished going through Pocky & Rocky Reshrined or the much more appealing title 奇々怪界 黒マントの謎. I’m very fond of the Pocky & Rocky games for the Super Nintendo so this is a game I’ve been waiting for a very long time. Let’s just say it right away: If you liked the original Snes titles you’ll enjoy this as well. The music has pretty much the same tunes but got an update in quality and a couple new ones were added that are on par with the original BGM. Graphics are very good and has that fourth generation pixel art going for it that goes really well with this type of cute and endearing direction this game has. While the sprites are very, very good, I found the characters’ pictures during cutscenes, especially for Sayo, to be a little bit off. She doesn’t quite look right, at least for me. I would like her to look like the concept art as you can see on the box and elsewhere (https://www.natsumeatari.co.jp/kuromanto/character.html). The others are alright.

Now, one VERY IMPORTANT thing if you actually want to purchase a physical copy of this. The release under the publisher ININ is censored. One of the new characters, Ameno, had her character design mutilated in order to cover her cleavage. Getting ININ’s version of the game is of absolutely no gain whatsoever because the Japanese version actually has a language option and English is included, along with a bunch of other languages. So really there’s no reason whatsoever to get the mutilated version. How do you know which version is which? Simple, The box for the ININ release has their logo on the box, right in front. The Japanese release doesn’t. Easy to avoid. Anyway, moving on.

Like the previous games in the series, this game is very colorful, has an optimistic and cheering atmosphere and all in all is quite a joy to go through. The story got a little bit convoluted here but I can’t talk about it without giving spoilers, so you know, I won’t. What I can say is that it’s about Black Mantle again, but there’s more to it. This is not spoilers by the way, it’s right there on the title. There’s a lot of story here for a Pocky & Rocky game. You can skip it if you like but I appreciated that they decided to include a plot for this. I just wish Sayo would look more like her concept art. Oh well, still very good indeed.

The most interesting thing to me about this game is the fine line it walks between being a remake and an update on the graphics. There are a lot of parts of this game that are pretty much the same as the original, Snes game. If you played that one, get ready to revisit a lot of places. Sometimes all they do is rearrange the stage or add a couple of new obstacles. I would say half of the game is very close to the original and the other half is mostly new. There are a lot of new monsters here and all of them look adorable. There are also three new characters you can play as. Ameno, a Goddess who can fly, Ikazuchi, an anthropomorphized marten able to release thunderbolts and Hotaru, a samurai. You have to beat the game on normal and hard in order to unlock all the characters.

As far as the difficulty goes, it went way down compared to Snes title. The actual gameplay is mostly the same difficulty but the game now gives you a lot of extra lives and there’s an autosave system in place. That means you won’t be redoing the stages over and over again in order to make progress in the game. Progress is pretty much a given now and even if you absolutely suck at scrolling shooters you won’t have a problem finishing this one at all. But then again, I really doubt anyone getting this is going after a super hard game, if you wanted that you would be playing an actual bullet hell or some Touhou derivative. You would get this one for the colorful world, the lighthearted atmosphere and because you’re a fan of the original.

All in all I really enjoyed playing this and I’ll definitely play it enough to get actually good at it. If you liked the original or if you enjoy stuff like Goemon, retro games and/or cute shooters, then I definitely think you’ll enjoy this one as well.

いたいお姉さんは好きですか？(Itai Oneesan ha sukidesuka?)

 

To follow the life of Itai Shiori is like watching a tiny and precious trainwreck. It gets personal very quickly, too, because you’ll care about her from page one. Itai wants a boyfriend but she doesn’t quite know how to go about it and is not the best at reading social situations. And so comedic yet painful events follow.

The way the story unfolds is really clever in this one. Most of the text is not dialogue, but narration, like we’re watching Itai’s with the narrator and she too often will get flabbergasted about her actions. This really puts you in a position of wanting to help Itai. A lot. But you can’t. You’re forced to watch as she moves along being silly and living her painful comedy day by day.

A very engaging narrative and a very interesting read. If you enjoy awkward female protagonists and painful laughter, this title has you covered. The art is simple but it has a very unique charm I don’t quite remember seeing anywhere else. The author has a way of coming up with excellent facial expressions for the characters and even though it’s a simple, straightforward way of drawing the characters, there’s an attention to detail to the expressions that really adds a very special quality to them, it’s hard to put my finger on it. I guess you’ll have to read it to find out by yourself.

The Citadel

 

I don’t usually care for FPS games at all but after seeing a few pictures of The Citadel I was very captivated by it. It’s made by a single developer and he’s also a fan of Blame! so I pretty much had to play it. There’s a very unusual charm about this title, I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s a super violent shooter, all the enemies are either weird biotech creatures or female soldiers, you seem to be walking around this futuristic endless city and you’re there to kill angels, destroy the false god and set people free… by spilling their guts all over the floor. Like I said, I don’t usually care for FPS games but as you can see by my quick description it’s a rather unique game and it loosely reminds me of Baroque, that old title for the Sega Saturn. In there you also have all these odd elements and you pretty much don’t quite know what the hell is going on.

I finished the first 3 acts on my own but when I realized it was going to be a fairly repetitive thing, I just used a cheat and finished the rest with the best weapon in the game. Maybe I don’t really appreciate FPS gameplay but the first 3 acts were quite enough for me. I was still interested in the story so I wanted to continue but couldn’t stomach to slowly crawl my way through hordes of deadly enemies to see it. This game is not hard by the way, but you need to take it slowly. The enemies are not particularly intelligent but that could easily be explained by the brainwashing done to them by the false god. All they do is walk forward and shoot. The way it works with this game is you have to take the enemies one by one pretty much. If you just run in there without any caution you’ll get shot to smithereens, so it can be a slog sometimes. Then again, maybe it’s me and people who do like FPS games will like this one a lot.

It’s a pity that there isn’t much dialogue or any plot exposition. You’ll have to assume most of the story since there’s only a couple of people you can talk to and the dialogue is very limited, maybe 20 or 30 sentences total. To me the world was the most intriguing part of this game and I would have enjoyed a little more plot exposition here and there. Gameplay is very similar to the original Doom but a little bit more smooth I think.

Along with the weird world and the interesting graphics, the music is really, really good. I can’t remember a single bad bgm for this, every single one is really fun and enhances the whole experience of going through this super violent, super depressing neon future. I think people who actually enjoy this genre would really be able to appreciate this. I had a lot of fun with it myself. It’s one of those games that don’t particularly excel in any aspect but just the combination of its parts create this charming, rather odd experience.

メイドさんを右にミ☆ (Super Zangyura)

 

 

I just finished playing メイドさんを右にミ☆ or Super Zangyura as I just found out there’s an English release for this. Not sure what the English title means but it’s not a translation of the original one. Anyway, this is an almost 20 yo doujin game remade for the consoles. It’s a rather interesting game that plays like Castlevania but I feel like deep down, at least visually, it kinda wanted to be more like a gothic Megaman. In general the game looks more colorful and optimistic than any Castlevania title and the characters tend to be cute instead of monstrous.
 
The story here is that every century Dracula wakes up and the land gets filled with monsters, so the people call for a vampire hunter and instead of Van Helsing they get a young lady dressed as a maid and capable of handling a gigantic ball and chain flail about her size, so you know she must be right for the job. There are 5 main areas divided in several rooms filled with spikes, falling platforms that will crush you, and huge chess pieces wandering around eager to hurt you. Also flying jack-o'-lanterns, lots of them.

This game is not exactly hard, as far as doujin games go but it can be if you play it without patience. The way some things work in this game can really destroy your run if you’re not careful. First, meido-san (I called her Mei on my save file, it’s fitting) doesn’t have an invulnerability period when she gets hit, meaning she can get stuck and continue to get hit until dying. This happens often if you’re not careful and there are several spots during the game that it can happen. Best policy is not to get hit at all, just to be safe.

Then, your common attacks with the flail don't go across walls and doors (unless you swing it overhead but that takes a few seconds so you can’t always use it) but the jacks can go across any part of the stage, this causes the problem where you’ll attack them but the flail will hit a wall, giving ample time for the jack to do some damage. This would not be a problem but since many stages have a very limited space, very often you’ll find yourself in very close range of several enemies at once. This is not exactly an issue, just something you need to get used to.

The music is nice but it’s too fast paced for me and for the game, too, sometimes. It gives me a little bit of anxiety to be honest. The graphics are quite nice, I really like the animation for the main character. The designs are a little bit like 90s anime of sorts and that’s my thing too, so I enjoyed it. All in all I’m definitely happy I found out about this game, I enjoyed it enough that I’m currently trying to finish it on hard mode now. They mean it, it is hard. My only complaint is how short it is, soo all it's left up to do is to get better at the few stages available. You can probably finish this in about an hour or so.