Japan Feb 2012 Part 1

This trip was a last chance to see Tokyo for the visible future.  I'll eventually be back in the country, but really I have absolutely no clue when that day will be.  24 hours from being back I'll try and catalog and talk about anything interesting that happened.  First order of business is the classic stand up topic of airlines.

AKB48 - Give Me Five

It's like Japan actually knew I was coming and AKB48 made a ska song just to annoy me specifically.  Full Japan Japan Japan trip posts coming soon!

In the meantime look at all these dumb video games I bought

Corpse Party (PSP)

me:  my little sister can't possibly need to pee this badly!

Friend:  what?

 me:  Corpse Party has a large part of the plot be about a 14 year old that needs to use a bathroom and no she just won't go anywhere in this other dimension haunted school.  She's Moe with a capital M.

 Friend:  ugh

Moe is what happens when anime fans stare at their own navels so much that it comes out the other side or something.

 me:  it gets kind of boring with how absolutely freaked out the female cast gets at everything.  Also that they sound ~moe~ and not like actual high school girls

that's a good description of moe

Friend:  yeah, so what you are saying is Corpse Party is probably skippable.

 me:  yeah I suppose.

it's interesting in how effective it is at being a horror game with 16 bit graphics

on the other hand what I just describe above gets in the way of that

 Friend:  i would love to see more exploration of using lower end graphics for horror.  I think something that makes LSD such an effective little game is that weird uncanniness of 32 bit graphics.

and 16 bit could definitely be used similarly, yeah

 me:  nodding my head

 Friend:  if only japan didn't have its whole moe thing

 me:  it also makes me curious if there are any other really good RPG maker games out there (probably, I'm not going to look for them though)

Friend:  yeah, i imagine there are.  i always kinda meant to investigate RPG maker, as I think it could be used as a very strange and effective tool for telling stories, if people could get past RPG tropes and such.

 me:  oh okay here's a reason to skip CP (honk honk honk).  There's a somewhat pivotal scene of a girl being strangled.  Our still of course has a panty shot.

 Friend:  goddammit japan

why do you have such a gift for taking things that could be interestingly traumatic, and then always adding such a creepy perversion to them?

it really is some kind of cultural gift they have

 me: :|

really Japan.

REALLY JAPAN?

Guess ~my little sister~ just had her first cycle.

 Friend: oh jesus

seriously? they found a way to go super seiyan moe

i picture a fat otaku kid just spontaneously getting blonde hair sticking straight up at that exact moment

 me:  I wonder if the xseed translator banged his head at this part

I would hope

Friend:  i would definitely hope so

just smashed his head into his desk and sat there and thought "really? is this what I have worked towards for however many years now?"

 me:  oh okay yep netherworld hell hole.  Time to talk about his problems with asking girls out to his super saiyan moe sister that just arrggggggg

Friend:  wow, this sounds like an anime/moe trainwreck

 me:  I've done my best to avoid it but yeah we are in moe hell.  All the Hell, All the Moe.

 me:  this game made me realize I'll never hear the equivalent in japanese of, "I love you, but seriously SHUT UP."

 Friend:  welcome to the abyss, rudie.

haha, just not a thing that happens in japan?

 me:  in the language yeah.  It's a pretty good phrase.

there's no "shut up" in japanese the closest is "you are loud."

Friend:  haha, that is kind of amazing to think about

intsead of a command to another person (shut up), you have a suggestion that the person is bothering you.

that says way too much about how the world is viewed in japanese linguistics

 me:  it does.

Friend:  so basically Corpse Party sounds like it might be a "State of the Moe" address on your PSP.

 me:  more like a dictionary definition

modern moe is more than this.  I'm curious how much of this game has been changed since 1996

Friend:  ah, fair enough.

still, potentially useful for someone, as moe as proven a hard term to define

 me:  it's your 14 year old younger sister that has all the life skills of a 3 year old.

Friend:  haha

and somehow you are supposed to feel some degree of affection and possibly sexual desire for her.

 me:  pretty amazing that not just one person's standards get fucked that badly but enough for a (sub)culture.

Friend:  yeah, that is the spectacular thing about "moe"

like if it was just one dude somewhere making silly games/comics about his little issues with young girls, that would be one thing

you could say "well, at least it's only that weirdo" but no

we have like an industry built on it

anime/manga/fighting games/shmups/so much stuffff

 me:  I wonder if a lot of these problems aren't based around Japan thinking High School was the best years of their lives (versus College)

Friend:  eh, but in small town america, that kind of thinking is stilla ctive as well

though it takes on slightly different tones in the US

Friend:  but i think part of it probably has to do with some sort of innocence longing tied into the love of nostalgia

Solatorobo (DS) Otomedius Excellent (360)

Man Solatorobo.  It has to win for best DS graphics.  It's just absolutely stunning at times.  The plot is lighthearted until it gets 26 episode anime like a 26 episode anime would.  It has a battle system based around throwing things.  You "fish" by shooting harpoons at hermit crabs with battleships on its back. 

It's just too easy too breezy.  You do things and then you did them.  There's no challenge and so no sense of accomplishment.  The battles become more about how to do that as absolutely fast as possible so you can advance the plot.  Wait you can't advance the plot until you raise your HUNTER LEVEL.  That means you have to do sidequests with the end of the world looming.  It's the largest momentum killer in a game with a severe lack of momentum.  I wish I could like it more.  It has so much detail to the world and the cutscenes and the controls are pretty good.  It's just there isn't the spark that is "entertaining to play."  It might have been surgically removed so you feel this emptiness where joy at playing it should be. 

I'm not entirely convinced making it harder would have helped.  It took 10 years to make supposedly and it almost feels like the opposite of games that take a long time to make.  Instead of becoming harder and harder and harder and more precise (Super Meat Boy yo!) you have it being challenging to no one.

Otomedius Excellent is uninspired. I mean yeah we got anime girls as spaceships and that's pretty creepy but that's also it. The first and second stages are alright I guess? then it's just a parade of boring bland space areas and pretty much the same boss all the way through. You have that speeding part that is kind of neat but then it's over and you have a boss rush of what might be the same bosses you fought in the previous stages or new bosses I COULDN'T TELL.