Supporting the Industry - What I Did in April 2015

I bought something a few months ago that was pretty atypical for me.

I should explain first that I’m not a gamer – truly. The only games I was ever decent at were Galaga and Tetris. If my character has a machine gun and has to kill zombies, the zombies will eat her first. I’m not adept at action games where you have to move a character around and make her/him do things.

But I have two young friends who are gamers. One works in the game industry. We’ll call him Ryan, because that’s his name. ;-) The other is Yumeka, who writes a popular anime blog you've probably read. =D

Both Ryan and Yumeka own Nintendo 3DS XL portable game consoles. After watching them play, I decided to buy one of my own.

And here it is.

The machine is plain black, but I bought this nice golden Asian-themed metal case for it.

Even though I’d watched Yumeka and Ryan play on their 3DS XLs, I was clueless when I bought mine. Still am in many ways. More on that below. =D

So, here is the home screen:

How did I support the anime industry with this purchase? Because there are anime-themed video games available for the 3DS (actually, there are more available for the Sony Vita, but I digress). And in April, I bought one – the Hakuouki - Memories of the Shinsengumi game.

I saved money by buying the download of the game instead of the cartridge, which I found out I could do while browsing the Nintendo eShop. ;-)

Hakuouki – Memories of the Shinsengumi is a visual novel game. The game opens with a very nice song and a montage of the various characters. Here’s Saito:

Previously, my only familiarity with visual novels were the clips I’d seen on You Tube. Here’s one for the Hakuouki - Demon of the Fleeting Blossom game. It’s not too clear, but I just wanted a short clip to show the general idea of visual novels:



Basically, a visual novel is a kind of walk-through of a story utilizing pictures and captions. Visual novels are very popular in Japan, but I don’t think games like this are produced in the U.S. I could be wrong about that, though.

I’m a huge fan of Hakuouki the anime. But I need to say something about this game.

So far, I’ve only played through part of the prologue. If you’ve seen the anime, this is the first episode where Chizuru arrives in Kyoto and gets chased by vampire samurai.

She arrives, it’s nighttime, she thinks about her missing father who she came to Kyoto to find… she thinks some more about her father… why she hasn’t heard from him for a month, how worried she is about him… and then…

… A vampire samurai appears! Chizuru hides and watches while other samurai kill him!

And then she thinks about how frightening this is… and how scared she is… and how she doesn’t know what she’ll do next… and… and…

Are you getting the sense of what my experience has been so far? I honestly was excited to get this game and start playing it. I’ve played it for about 40 minutes now, and those 40 minutes turned out to cover – wait for it – the first seven minutes of episode 1 of the anime.

I'm not going to judge based on this first experience with it. I haven’t gotten to any of the “paths” yet, each path being Chizuru choosing a different Shinsengumi love interest, that is the heart of the game. Plus, the game offers other things like Media, Encyclopedia and Extras that I haven’t even looked at yet.

I had heard that each path of a visual novel takes hours, but I didn’t believe it. I believe it now - trust me. The question is: does a visual novel do what it’s supposed to do? Is it, in fact, entertaining?

Again, I’m still at the beginning of this game, so I can’t answer that yet. I can say that the story captions, while written in (thankfully) good English and easy to follow, became tedious to read after a while. The illustrations were lovely, the sound effects added realism to the story, all was as it was supposed to be. The only confused element was the player, me. Was clicking through the narrative “playing” this game? Or was I meant to do something more?

The beautiful elegiac Hakuouki anime series I love so much was based on this game. The game came first. Which is food for thought, especially since I’m a writer. It piques my curiosity. What is the appeal of this form of storytelling?

When I’ve been through all the paths in the game, I’ll write a review. It might be a few years from now though, at this rate. ;-)

I guess I’ve been on a gaming roll, because I then downloaded two games for my Amazon Fire.

Sonic Dash is my first experience with Sonic the Hedgehog. I’ve heard of Sonic for years, but never watched the anime or played the games.

(I have read a fan essay that slashed Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog together. I’m saying this just so I can mark “yaoi” as a label for this post. LOL)

As I said, I’m not good at action games. All Sonic does in this game is run madly along a road where he has to jump over obstacles. I keep sending Sonic headlong into brick walls and into bodies of water where he drowns. I’m slowly getting better, but I’m guessing that games like this were not destined to be my forte.

The second game I downloaded is the exceedingly sparkly and pretty…

Yumeka showed me Frozen Free Fall on her phone. I saw it while browsing Amazon’s app store and downloaded it. Amazingly, both it and Sonic Dash were free. I guess these free games exist to advertise the companies’ paid games.

I do okay at puzzle games, though I won’t win any competitions. And Frozen Free Fall is really beautiful to look at, which adds to the enjoyment of playing it.

I also received two free games for my 3DS, both Pokemon games - Pokemon Shuffle and Pokemon Rumble World.

Pokemon Shuffle is a simple puzzle/aim-and-capture-the-Pokemon game, but Pokemon Rumble World sends Pikachu and other Pokemon characters out to fight enemies.

I had difficulty maneuvering Pikachu in Rumble World until Ryan showed me that the round rubber button on the console’s upper left slides. I had been pressing down on it, really hard, expecting this to move Pikachu around.

Yeah. Real gamers have no reason to fear me anytime soon. =D

Supporting the Industry - What I Did in April 2013

It's time for my monthly post on what I did to try and support the anime and manga industries in the U.S. the previous month, complete with my trademark blurry photographs of what I bought. There's only one bad photo to put up with this time, of the Hakuouki OVA DVDs, A Memory of Snow Flowers.

There are six episodes in this OVA, each one focusing on a single member of the Shinsengumi: Souji Okita, Sanosuke Harada, Hajime Saito and Heisuke Todo, with the final episodes on Toshizo Hijikata and Chikage Kazama the demon prince.

All the episodes revolve around the events of one night. Chizuru Yukimura is sent to Shimabara disguised as a geisha in order to spy on Choshu rebels. Naturally she gets in over her head and has to be rescued (this happens in nearly every episode of both seasons of Hakuouki so why should the OVA be any different). Each episode features that night from the perspective of a different Shinsengumi member, as well as presenting other scenes that show another side of the character.

The best episodes as you might expect are the final two with Kazama and Hijikata.

Kazama runs into geisha Chizuru and recognizes her immediately, but strings her along at first.

Eventually he makes his move:

Chizuru is saved by Sen, who enters and reads Kazama the riot act. Later, Sen tells Kazama that he treats women all wrong which leads to some humorous scenes with Kazama saving Chizuru from a drunken samurai and acting chivalrous by walking her back to Shinsengumi headquarters.

In Kazama's episode, we see Kaoru again.

Kaoru, Chizuru's cross-dressing demon brother so beautifully played by seiyuu Hasumi Ito. Ito's voice is haunting once again, sliding from female to male and in general just creeping the viewer out.

Finally, Hijikata's episode shows Hijikata rescuing Chizuru from the brothel but being stopped by a guard who thinks he's trying to leave Shimabara with a geisha without paying for her. This leads to Hijikata having to think quick:

The episode also brings up one of the lighter historical facts about Hijikata. Toshizo Hijikata, the handsome and accomplished Vice-Captain of the Shinsengumi, was known for writing not very good poetry. At the end of the episode Okita steals Hijikata's haiku book, with predictable amusing consequences.

If you're already a Hakuouki fan you'll enjoy Hakuouki: A Memory of Snow Flowers; and if you're not a fan, none of the above will have made any sense to you ;-) - so your best course of action is to watch both seasons of Hakuouki as well as the prequel series and become a fan. It's got samurai, Japanese history, the Shinsengumi, vampires and some of the most gorgeous bishonen character designs ever seen in anime, so you'll find plenty to like.