You Don’t See This Every Day

Actually, this is a crossover with Nobunaga’s Ambition, a venerable wargame series out of Japan, but that’s niche stuff. The kind of niche I’m into, mind you. The people are similar, though: it’ll be Oda Nobunaga, Akechi Mitsuhide, Oichi, Takeda Shingen… with pokemon. Holy cow. 

Anyway, it’s a crossover I never expected to see. The famous generals, along with Oichi who never took a battlefield in her not-so-charmed life in real life (I think), will be shown in a more anime-like vibe as shown in the picture above. For a much larger one, you’ll need to go to the Japanese website. Apparently Oichi will be the first personage figured in a series of short manga stories that will run six volumes long. That’ll be a webcomic starting on the 16th of this month (March) according to what I read on that site.

I’ve played Pokemon games in the ancient past, but I’d long lost track of the franchise. (I also never came close to finishing the first.) Tossing in famous warlords is a new spin on this and might make it very amusing indeed. I might even want to play such a thing. Time will tell, but this is one of those crazy things you don’t see every day. – J

Hilda, Tales of Rebirth

The Situations

This is an exchange between different characters of the Japan-produced video game, Tales of Rebirth, which sadly never made it to America. These are loose translations I am providing to illustrate the situations, both involving a newly joined party member, Hilda.

First, she is approached by Annie, a teenage healer whose father was a nationally famous doctor.

Annie, Tales of Rebirth, wielding staff

Annie, conversation

Annie: Pardon me, Hilda… how old are you?

Hilda: …Why do you ask?

Annie: I’m sorry if I was impolite…! I was just… curious.

Hilda: I’m 21.

Annie: My, such an adult…

Hilda: And how old are you?

Annie: I am 15.

Hilda: My, still a child.

[Annie makes understated, disagreeable expression]

–

Next, she is approached by Mao (which is, I am told, Chinese for ‘cat’, but Japanese is my third language, not Chinese!). Mao looks and sounds quite a bit younger and is what you might call an androgynous boy full of life.

Mao, Tales of Rebirth

Mao: Um… Hilda, how old are you?

[Hilda makes an unpleasant expression and sound.]

Mao: Did I… say something bad?

Hilda: It is thoroughly bad manners to ask a woman’s age, boy.

Mao: H… hey! Don’t talk to me like I’m a child!

Hilda: That you’re upset only proves that you are one.

–

What Just Happened

We have just seen a variety of Japanese (and non-Japanese) social values in action.

• An assumed respect for elders
• An assumed need to preserve politeness
• Girls/women can discuss age with other girls/women
• Boys cannot discuss age with girls/women without being rude
• A child always betrays himself by behaving as one
• A mature teenager resents being seen as a mere child
• An immature teenager resents it too, but with less just cause

Of course,  we should not simply ignore the fact Hilda is being mean to both teenagers. She joined the party with no intention of getting touchy-feely with anyone and made no secret of the fact. She has a very troubled background, which I won’t go into great depth here except to say that she is mixed-race in a world with two main races, humans being one. This is an unusual, mature, and deep subject for an RPG to address, and Tales of Rebirth does a marvelous job of it.

So, in spite of these circumstances, Annie’s instinct is to look up to Hilde as a more mature female and someone poised and confident. It is expected that children want to grow up, and that is why they look up to elders.

Mao, on the other hand, hasn’t given two thoughts about “growing up” and is asking what he thinks is an innocent question, but which is contrary to gentlemanly manners – at minimum, in both Japan and in countries of European culture.

Conclusion

We have just seen two examples of how Japanese social interactions happen, both in the setting of social expectations and measuring actual interactions by how they depart from expectations.

In other words, since Annie behaved in line with social expectations for someone of her type, Hilda was being gratuitously mean to her.  On the other hand, Mao was engaging in what society regards as bad manners, so Hilda had every social right to give him the verbal smackdown she did; he was in the wrong.

In two short skits, we have learned a great deal about all three characters and where their relationships, such as they are, begin from. – J

The Virgola is a fictional machine designed as a video game original for the crossover mecha game Super Robot Taisen Z (Super Robot Wars Z). By “original,” we mean that it does not appear in any anime. So far, this includes Original Generations anime seasons 1 and 2.

The Setting

The Virgola is first presented as a series of three prototypes being flight tested to gather data for eventual adoption as the Earth Federation’s next generation mass-produced humanoid weapons system.

SRW Z is not only a cross-over of mecha, but of dimensions. Consequently, this Earth Federation is merely the one in which Mobile Suit Gundam Z: A New Translation (i.e. the three-part movie version) takes place. During an AEUG attack on a lunar base, the only force deploying fast enough to respond is Glory Star, the test pilot group responsible for testing the Virgola units. However, time and space bend and warp, and the members of Glory Star are warped into another world… where finally, a “Dimension Bomb” (from the sci fi series Orguss) leads to a strange new world mixing many worlds at once…

The Virgola

Full Height: 19.8m

Full Weight: (Reference) 51.4 metric tons for Unit 1

Power Supply: Minovsky Reactor + “Sphere”

Armor Composition: Unknown

Mechanical Designer: Mika Akitaka

Mysteriously, the Virgola itself was as astonishingly general purpose machine. Amuro Ray calls it a “Shoe-Fitter” in that it will suit the style of any pilot at any skill level, while providing a high level of offensive power through the use of its primary weapon, the Gunnery Carver (above, right side).

In the original test machines, the three Gunnery Carvers were used for firing high velocity slugs (“Straight Turret”), blunt physical attacks, and three entirely distinct modes of special attack unique to each unit: a “Jack Carver” (a giant jackknife), a “Barley Scythe” functioning as a beam weapon that reaps the harvest, and a “Ray Straight Turret” beam attack capable of straight line mass destruction. In addition, each unit carried a “Ray Pistol,” a hand-held beam weapon used only for rapid fire assault purposes or as an emergency weapon.

This reinforced the Virgola offensively, but was of no assistance defensively. While enjoying broadly high specifications, the Virgola was not equipped with either a shield or a sword for use in close combat, and its armor was not especially resistant to enemy attack. As such, the Virgola units could be one-shotted by a powerful enough attack…

Glory Star

Stepping back from the setting, Glory Star’s concept was mixing military trappings with a college sports team. As such, the uniforms look like dress uniforms (we never see any representations of spacesuits for any member, though we should not take this as meaning they don’t exist but rather as a style decision by the developers). Numerous battle phrases are like cheer phrases motivating the team on to victory. Pride, in particular, is a theme. For that matter, the name just begs these comparisons.

Go, Glory Star! Go! – Denzel Hammer

The members are Denzel Hammer, a veteran squad leader and instructor with a gift for gunnery, originally piloting Unit 1; Toby Watson, a usually happy-go-lucky pilot whose attitude screams “jock” but with a hard, serious edge in the midst of battle, specializing in melee with Unit 2’s Barley Scythe; and Setsuko Ohara, a relative greenhorn whose lunar base sortie was her first actual combat. While having an extra affinity for gunnery, her future is wide open, and she is one of the most player-customizable pilots in Super Robot Wars gaming history.

Left to Right: Toby, Setsuko, Denzel

Tragedy and Awakening

Just before the Dimension Bomb sends a number of worlds smashing together and fusing into one strange Earth, the mysterious Asakim Dowen appears and murders Denzel, who had swapped machines with Setsuko due to damage to her Unit 3 (which the veteran could handle better than she could).

Following a time when she was blown into Paradigm City (of “The Big O“), Setsuko recovers her own (quite bitter) memories and travels across the world, searching for Toby. At the end of her journey, she finds Toby – in pursuit of Asakim. Joining together, they fail to deal a decisive blow – apparently something Toby has failed at a number of times while on Asakim’s tail. Together, the two pledge to continue Glory Star, no longer as paid members of a formal military, but helping those who strive to put the world right (which by now has long included the AEUG people, since the Titans are, well, jerks!).

Of course, they also pledge to avenge Denzel (a.k.a. “Chief”).

Instead, Asakim lures the two away from the main force (which by default becomes named “Zeuth”) and even though reinforcements appear on both sides, Asakim fakes his own defeat only to turn around and wreck both remaining Virgolas, slaying Toby and instilling fear and terror into Setsuko with a physical beating in the flesh, until a “savior” named Raven arrives to save Setsuko… for now.

And so, Setsuko is alone.

Setsuko Ohara

Setsuko is young, well-meaning, very earnest and sincere… and is left with deep emotional scars after Toby’s death, which came a short while after Setsuko had finally shared her budding romantic feelings for him. He was fond of Setsuko as well, in a way that wasn’t quite as, well, teacher-student as with Denzel before his own death.

Virgola Unit 1, having already incorporated the remnants of Unit 3’s Gunnery Carver, was now infused with Toby’s Barley Scythe and his combat data. This Virgola Kai (Improved Virogla) could accommodate a 20% increase in pilot skill from Setsuko before maxing out. Thus, the onus was on her to break through the “wall” as she followed the half of Zeuth that allied itself with PLANT (in the Seed Destiny plot), which was then allied with the Diana Counter (from Turn A Gundam), which proved to be only one Moonrace (lunar dwellers) faction, and the Super Robot forces with less of a problem with military methods of operation and devoted to fighting alien threats.

Thus, there would be no lack of hard, bitter fighting for Setsuko. Slowly, she improved, but when it was time to test her spirit against Asakim and his succubus-like minion Xine, Setsuko broke down, her spirit still filled with fear. Yet mysteriously, Toby Watson – not dead?… – appeared to save her from being finished off by Xine, before disappearing again to pursue the enemy.

Finally, she answered the call to face her personal demons alone, and while Raven returned to support her against an assault in force by Xine (using AI-controlled machines to back her up), the entire Zeuth detachment showed up to provide support. Knowing she was not alone, Setsuko found new reserves of strength and Xine was once again driven off.

While stopped at a base belonging to Chimera, Raven’s force (part of their “enemy” the Earth Federation, but secretly aiding Zeuth and claiming to be dedicated to improving the world), a truly mad (as well as ugly) scientist belonging to Chimera offers to overhaul the Virgola. Setsuko ignores entreaties to turn the skirt-chasing geezer’s offer down and wants to become stronger however she can.

The resulting Virgola Glory was, externally, simply fitted with a wing system that allowed non-transforming flight in an atmosphere and overall improved agility. Armed with this unit, Setsuko once again answered a call to do battle with her personal demons, this time from “Toby.” But mysteries remained.

As the scientist explained to Zeuth’s members, such as Amuro and other interested pilots with high technical aptitudes, the Virgola in and of itself was nothing special… but the Gunnery Carver was, with parts that were “black boxed” and could not be externally analyzed. Furthermore, and this was the big mystery, the Virgola was over-specced to the point of being able to handle 200% of its own internal reactor’s power output.

What was the mystery of the Gunnery Carver? How could its secrets be accessed? Perhaps by something that could not be compelled by science, such as reacting to a human emotion? Love, perhaps? This was dismissed at the time, but in short order, these questions would be partially answered… in the worst possible way.

The Valkyrie of Sadness

Setsuko after Toby’s death. “For today only… let me cry…”

While the Virgola’s maneuverability had been greatly improved, the heartened Setsuko underwent a breakdown in the Gunnery Carver, rendering it inoperable. Forced to rely on the Ray Pistol, Setsuko engaged the mysterious black crow machines that seemed to work with Asakim everywhere, along with a mysterious ally of Asakim, Rand the Wandering Mechanic, and his construction machine colored, giant wrench using, super robot style Gunleon.

Even though the Virgola dealt with the crows entirely adequately with only the Ray Pistol, the Gunleon and its pilot, Rand, had great reserves of strength, and enormous power. The Virgola was nearly destroyed in a single blow. On the verge of death, Toby once again emerged to knock back the Gunleon. Finally, both turned to face the Gunleon together…

…and “Toby” shot Setsuko’s machine in the back.

The mysterious powers at Asakim’s command allowed him to temporarily borrow the illusion of Toby, down to his voice and tiny mannerisms, to fool Setsuko… and to truly crush her spirit once and for all, for that was the path that rested between him and his objective.

And so, “it” happened.

The Sphere

The central part of the Gunnery Carver was a second power source, but what called to it was not love, but sadness – true, soul-crushing sadness. Setsuko had found the depth of despair, and now, the Sphere awoke.

The Gunnery Carver lost its false shell and took on its true form, the Nautilus Carver, a weapon that seemed to pulse with its own life force, with a “barrel” that resembled a nautical creature.

Doing great damage to Asakim’s machine with her new power, the emotionally shattered Setsuko learned to turn her despair against her enemy, and strike hard.

Forgive the horrid resolution; it was hard to find a pic. – J

Setsuko would continue to pilot what would now be known as the Virgola Glory until the end of the game, though it later underwent a later evolution as the further betrayal of Raven – secretly one of Asakim’s comrades – further sent Setsuko into the depths of despair, beginning a process of transformation of her body. First, loss of taste; then, temporary blindness… but her sight returned, and she was able to continue fighting until the conclusion.

The Virgola Glory

Aside from the wings, the Virgola Glory gains special weapons from the Nautilus Carver:

– A straight line MAP weapon (that is, affecting a bunch of squares in a row) with two “ammunition” shots. That is, once clearing the relatively low morale requirements, she can fire the MAP weapon twice and not suffer any depletion of her machine’s “Energy” reserves, but will then be unable to fire the weapon until resupply or, more likely, until the stage ends, you go through intermission, and sortie for the next battle.

– A “Nautilus Carver” Attack that combines the blunt strike, Barley Scythe, and Jack Carver style attacks into a single high powered attack that will penetrate any “barrier”.

– An improved Ray Straight Turret style attack that has the best and most satisfying attack animations on Setsuko’s side. It’s long ranged, it hits hard, and it leaves stardust behind. It is called, “The Glory Star“! I consider it completely worthy of the name.

Character & Mecha In Game Terms

As mentioned earlier, Setsuko is one of the most customizable characters in SRW history.

In actual gaming terms, she receives all of the “pilot points” (which can be used to purchase skills or raise parameters of pilots) that Denzel and Toby received until the moment of their deaths. Thus, she truly does inherit the spirit of Glory Star. How you use that advantage is up to you.

For fully half the game, Setsuko is, put bluntly, a below average pilot in an above average machine. In particular, her “Skill” rating – which governs critical hits, how easily others critical or use special skills against you, etc. – is low. She is adequate, and handles her weapons well, but she is nothing special.

After her personal awakening, she gains a bonus to all of her parameters across the board. This still doesn’t make her an Amuro Ray, but it’s a start.

Remember, her main characteristic is that she gets a huge load of Pilot Points earlier than other people. She can use whatever high end skills you prefer to purchase with all this at a much earlier stage than others. Later, she just piles on, because, well, the MAP weapon combined with her The Glory Star attack and a high overall attack ability means she’s wiping stuff out left and right, earning more Pilot Points in the process.

Personal Quirks

Setsuko’s default tendencies are as follows:

• Heavy support attacker. Her “native” Support Attack skill rises to level 4, meaning she can follow up one unit’s attack with her own up to four times in a row, provided she is adjacent and not ineligible for some reason (can’t support an air attacker from the ground). This is her only true “starting” skill.
• Unlocked: SP Regen. This means, once she awakens, she is one of the precious few characters in the game to restore ten “Seishin Points” (often called Spirit Points, at any rate, what’s used for in-battle power-ups that are unique to every pilot) at the start of every Player Phase (player turn). This is a huge help over the course of a long battle…
• Platoon Leader Bonus: +10% Damage With All Shooting Attacks. This is just gravy, but still, it comes up. This means The Glory Star, the MAP weapon, and the bread and butter Straight Turret attacks will get a +10% to damage until the end of the game.

Another thing anyone wanting to use her might want to think about is, the Virgola is not inherently high defense, but Setsuko has a higher Defense stat than typical “real robot” pilots (i.e. Gundam series pilots). While any sane player is using special equipment to combat the Virgola’s defensive deficiencies – barriers, armor enhancements, maneuverability enhancements, plus my favorite, throwing money at the problem and upgrading – it’s not a complete package.

While I tend to prioritize skills that help me destroy the enemy faster and easier, at least early to mid game, giving Setsuko the skill that boosts defense, accuracy, and critical hit rates the closer your mecha’s HP get to 0 may not be a waste of time at all. Take the attitude that, in this game, you will get hit; it’s just a matter of time, and how bad the enemy wants it. And barriers aren’t foolproof; Tri attacks (squad team-ups) and weapons like the Nautilus Carver itself (though that’s yours…) will breach a barrier and go straight to HP damage.

But oh well. The bottom line is, early on, the extra pilot points are an offset for Setsuko being raw; later, there are few truly bad choices. You stock her up on whatever skills make sense for you. I’ve tried lots, such as giving her an S rating in Air and giving her a Minovsky Craft to boost the Virgola’s own rating to S, meaning it’s better than C, B, or A. That makes her take less hits too. Combined with the SP Regen and Seishin skills like Concentrate, you won’t be hit much like that, either.

And That’s A Wrap.

Some may wonder why I bothered to do this. Well, basically… I wanted to, and things flow a lot easier when I’m writing about something I personally like. That’s kind of why, even though the blog stats say Gundam 00 still brings people in, it’s hard to write about that because I was never a fanboy, just a viewer. Really loved the visuals, and the machines were pretty good, but I hated the humans ^^ Relatively speaking.

Setsuko, though, I like, on a gut level and many others. I like a lot of main character candidates, but this one is the antithesis of spouting taunts at the enemy and laughing at the opponent’s demise. (You know, like Asakim…) No, she’s doing this because she cares, and because she doesn’t want other people to have to go through the suffering she has.

More importantly, she becomes able to back it up – and in force, becoming a true Valkyrie avenging the souls of the dead, cutting a path through the battlefield, laying waste to those who deeply and richly deserve wasting.

By the way, Setsuko is a nice girl, fundamentally, and that’s not something you can teach. It runs deep. I find myself plenty willing to cheer her on.

By the way, Rand is the other potential main character, and their roles flip somewhat if you play him instead. He’s actually awesome. Rough around the edges to say the least, but even though he goes through his own challenges, he forces a more positive experience… and his machine is just a lot less likely to blow up than the Virgola. So there.

Nonetheless, Setsuko’s devastating in late games, and that’s how I like it. – J

A Recurring Cultural Theme

One issue continually revisited by Japanese video games, and the writing and storytelling culture that infuses it, is the idea that the world is corrupt in many ways, and it must be changed – but breaking it entirely is cruel and indeed, quite genocidal. So we half-break it.

What I mean is, in a game like Tales of Vesperia, the “end villain” isn’t really a villain in the sense of desiring nothing but ill; he’s just an enemy of all humanity because he figures that humanity is the problem. His being born human isn’t at all the point. He just sees humanity as destroying the natural world for its own sake.

In this case, leaving the world as it is leaves it hurtling towards destruction. Breaking the world and cleansing it of all mankind preserves the ancient natural world, at the cost of wiping out all of the infinite possibilities of humankind. The result that the “good guys” aim towards is to change the world, which violates the “protect the old order” stuff (which is why you have to fight that guy, since he intends to veto that plan), but which gives humanity a chance, and gives a new lease on life to a world that wasn’t all it could be by any stretch.

In the Final Fantasy series, generally speaking, any good that comes out of things is a result of overcoming an apocalyptic threat that threatens to destroy the world, space-time as we know it, and so forth. The entire world is rocked and changed and comes to the brink of destruction, but is spared through heroism and sacrifice and great deeds. The future is not dictated by this victory; instead, the possibilities that the future can hold are protected, and the exact form the future will take is left to others.

These kind of themes are simply too widespread in Japanese gaming, particularly in the RPG genre, to ignore. So the question arises, why? Why is this the form it takes?

I mean, totally aside from clearly defining something for the characters to do, which is kind of important for a game, why this form? Why not a good world to be protected nobly, for instance?

Cultural Memory

Let’s look, with as much sensitivity as we can, to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The world that native soil Japanese (“nihonjin”) knew was shattered completely. Now, things had been getting harder and harder, sure. It was war. The unrestricted submarine warfare on an island nation was having effects that it never achieved against the British isles. Nonetheless, the atomic bombings were a cataclysmic end to the world that people had known.

Yet it was not the end of all existence. Though Japan was fully conquered, its laws rewritten and all but the barest fig leaf of imperial rule left standing, this was the gateway to what eventually became a brighter future. In spite of modern economic stagnation, Japan is light years away from the ruin that it faced at the end of WWII.

In other words, the world known to “nihonjin” was half-broken – and things got better.

Now, this is not to say that everyone is happy with every aspect of the outcome. But, we’re talking about fantasy RPG’s here. One fantasy, which is really just a very big fantasy, is changing the world. Yet changing the world, without becoming the villain of your own story and being justly hated by all good peoples, requires a big set-up.

So, it’s entirely understandable that the “good ending” becomes change riding on the back of the villainy that aims to break the world fully rather than half-way. Without this villainy, the world could never have been changed; it would have remained stagnant. Yet the villainy is villainy because it aims to go too far in pursuit of a chimerical absolute, a final solution that is too final to resemble anything good people could want. Some sacrifices are simply too high – and this is coming from a nation that sacrificed plenty in pursuit of imperial war aims.

So every day, game players throughout the world participate in half-breaking the world. Except, in these cases, they are active participants searching for better solutions, not simply following blind ideologies because they offer a perfect path in theory.

To the extent that Shinto respect for nature shines through a lot of games, and movies and books as well, it is not just because nature is thought of as a good in itself. In addition, it is open-ended without the promise of absolute solutions. When a nation has been buffeted by cataclysmic negative change under the rubric of absolute nationalism, yet finds industrialization, corporatism and so forth to be lacking in soul and somehow hollow and incomplete, there is a reflexive cultural reach back in time to roots that feel safe, comforting, and non-threatening.

Most of what we see in video games concerning this isn’t actual Shinto; it’s emanations of the same general idea. Take the Tree of Mana in the Seiken Densetsu series (known in the west as Legend of Mana). This is basically a spin on Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse mythology. This tree also figures very prominently in the original Tales of Phantasia, while a merely giant tree is featured as the more or less guardian angel of an entire town in Tales of Vesperia, which is shown in the above picture (in blooming form).

So why not go all nature? Why not aspire to a world without humans? Well, totally besides the fact that we don’t, broadly speaking, try to commit self-genocide, we’re seeking a middle way that allows cohabitation with nature, and the enjoyment thereof, without strangling it. Also, the simple fact is, advanced technology is cool and entertaining. It draws us to games, comic books, movies, futuristic novels, and so on. These are the worlds of cyberpunk, mobile suits, and space ships.

In other words, an awful lot of this is just very elaborate expressions of our human search for a better way: not completely industrial and urban to the point of abandoning not only nature, but our very own human spirit… yet without abandoning the entire idea of civilization, without which we simply cannot thrive as a species.

In the course of this search, many more fictional worlds will be half-broken along the way. But if it’s not a cause worth fighting over, you can’t have the man vs. man and man vs. entity conflicts that make a story compelling. – J

Old Times, Good Times

Super Turrican is one of the games for the Super Nintendo that, owing to the system, had “Super” tacked onto the front. Featuring a man in an armored suit, with some similarities to Metroid, this action platformer featured some incredible synthesized music. I have included a sample of this music below from Stage 1-3.

My only personal connection with this game is through game rentals in my early teens, but I remember the music of this stage well, even now. Amusingly, in spite of the action nature of the game, this music instilled a Zen-like state of peace in my mind. Perhaps the better to go out shooting things with. Perhaps.

Listen for yourself and enjoy the experience. – J

The above is a gameplay video on YouTube showing the first stage of one of the potential main characters in Super Robot Taisen (“Super Robot Wars”) Z the 2nd, on PSP, sequel to SRW Z, on PS2. As usual, new “original” mecha and pilots are used with a wide mix of mecha anime crossover plots, machines, and characters for a lively mix.

The rough version of the above: the main character, whose name reads like “crow” or “claw” in katakana but is probably representing the name Crowe (while giving the aforementioned impressions), is a man with a million G in debt.

(Eat your heart out, Bernacke; Super Robot Wars apparently functions just fine on a gold standard. Ahem. Anyway…)

So, a desperate man down on his luck due to debts left by his father (and the collapse of his father’s company) makes him receptive to an offer that he really can’t refuse: test pilot an experimental combat machine and earn the money to pay off his debts and be a free man. Since Japanese like to express certain figures in units of “man” (万, or 10,000), the “100 man man” means, in our terms, the million dollar man (or at least, the man in debt for that much!).

As one might cynically expect for the first stage of a video game, it’s not quite some little milk run; a bunch of terrorists are attacking the world’s foremost financial group, but Crowe makes it inside and a deal is struck. I don’t want to vouch for what the name of the machine should be yet, but it reads almost like “Blastia” (like in Tales of Vesperia or something).

Anyway, the terrorists go down fast but, in this completely time-space messed up Earth, there’s such a thing as “Dimension Beasts” that show up to cause more death and destruction, but a mysterious “ally” (?) shows up in the form of Wufei from Gundam Wing, complete with the Shenlong Gundam. The rest of what you see in the video is simply the action.

While the tactical map is all traditional portable SRW type 2D, the battle animations are pretty good, and I found the original music to be not bad at all. Gundam Wing’s music has never been hard to listen to for me.

Now, stage 2, below, introduces another element of this strange new world, the Gundam 00 universe’s content. There’s going to be quite a lot of it in this game.

Prior to the stage, you see some “intermission” (in-between “episodes” i.e. game stages) bookkeeping type work to manage the as yet one-bot army at the player’s disposal. This army will greatly expand in the course of the winding plot. However, this next stage isn’t truly about Crowe; it’s mainly a kick-off of the Gundam 00 plot, with Setsuna starring.

The rest doesn’t require any explanation to fans of Gundam 00, so watch and enjoy. I’m finding the music to be represented pretty well here. – J

This Blog Is About Art.

When you really get down to it, art is what this blog is about. Art is an expression of culture. Culture is my broader subject, but art is how I can best focus attention on that subject. For its part, art takes many forms, including anime and video games. These, too, express culture.

Recently, Gamespot had a “Why It Matters” feature on storytelling. Gamespot was eager to point out that this is not the same thing as “the plot.” Rather, a story in a video game is told through how the player experiences the game. This is a good observation, and one I wish to build on here.

In anime, the plot is not the entirety of the story. Nor is the script the story itself. Anime, built upon manga roots, is partly a visual medium; it is also heavily reinforced by sound, not only from the veteran-packed domestic voice acting (声優、seiyuu) industry, but by the wide varety of sound effects and music used to dramatize the experience. While sound effects and music are crisper, the experience has changed due to changes in visual technology.

Gundam 00 (double-o) is an excellent example of this. This was the first mecha show to really show us what could be done in full HD, though a great deal of praise must be given to Macross Frontier. While HD is something accomplished with extremely detailed, computer assisted backgrounds, older examples of inserting computer graphics into anime had spotty success, and felt jarring and unnatural much of the time. Comparing Gundam 00 to, let’s say, the original season of Aquarion, would result in amazement at the difference.

Put another way, Gundam 00 seems at home with an extremely high degree of technical wizardry. This is part of the story of the show, and a great deal of the artistic value of the show can be measured by how the story is told visually.

Now, I am well known among my friends for not being a great fan of the writing of Gundam 00, which I found to be far too mechanical for my tastes. Meant to be two seasons from the start, numerous events had to happen as scripted without any meaningful variation or the whole project would have been thrown off. Many characterizations were meant to be pretentious in one way or another. Overall, the whole show suffered from issues with creative genius… at the episode and show scripting levels.

Unlike some of my friends, I did watch the entire show and suffered through its difficult parts to see all the spectacular mecha in action. The mecha were absolutely not lacking in creativity; the designers did a lot of serious thinking, much of which is appreciated by serious fans who do a lot of chatter about the pretend physics details that interest them and draw them in. There’s a large “wouldn’t this be cool?” factor to it.

So, my personal feeling is that what success Gundam 00 has had – and certainly, it is considerable success – is thanks more to the creativity put into the machines portrayed in the show than the sense of grim inevitability of mankind’s sucking dragging down the present and the future which completely pervaded the script.

Put more bluntly, the experience that a great deal of people felt from Gundam 00 was better than the plot that they had to deal with. Therefore, they found Gundam 00 to tell a very compelling story as a whole. Certainly it is an epic story, but ultimately it’s all about touching upon possibilities and the what-ifs of the future, and if humanity can truly become ready for greater things (or will strangle itself to death first).

Well, the result is nine-tenths pessimism and one-tenths hope, which is not the ratio I go for when I watch a show, but that’s how it is.

In video games, many designers work hard to see that the story is told by the experience of the game much more than the plot. Now, let’s be honest here: sometimes designers go overboard and the plot feels thin as a result, too thin. However, let’s also not fault the reason for attempting such lofty goals; the sense of discovery of an unknown world, a world which we do not yet know, is a powerful motivation for playing any immersive game.

Properly accomplished, a video game draws a player into its world and uses interactivity and proactive player behavior to provide an experience that is more compelling, and more treasured, than passive artistic mediums where we are recipients of some kind of broadcast.

In this sense, we don’t play the game; the game plays us.

What I mean by this is, a video game is a structure and a system, but it is only the human element – the player – that makes it into entertainment. The game uses us to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, and far greater than a passive experience using the same components could provide. The game provides the player with input, but the player’s reactions, thoughts, and plans are the output that is required for the creation of a real experience.

Of course, we’re the ones who enjoy the result. That is good.

The Persona 4 Case

Now, this is more of an afterthought for me rather than the thrust of my point (the point being that anime and video games are art mediums for providing a vivid experience in their own ways), but the announcement of an anime directly based on the video game Persona 4 resulted in a very ambivalent reaction among Japanese people.

Apparently, it’s not really the issue of “the game has been done already” and the story has already been told; rather, it is that the story was designed to be told at the pace of a video game, with the intensive involvement of the player, creating an experience that cannot be simply replicated by an animated show.

This has little bearing on whether or not the anime will be good on its own. It is simply a natural concern that the comparisons can only be harsh because, as vivid and entertaining as anime can be, there are things that video games are likely to do better.

This simply reflects how powerful video games can be as a medium. This isn’t your old radio -> television -> broadcast style internet. This is true interactivity. It’s a different animal. It is not just art – it is direct transmission of culture.

In the case of Japanese video games, there’s a lot of Japanese culture – or at least cultural ideas and biases – that are overtly and covertly transmitted.

But, enough general talk. Sometime in the future I’ll do posts on far more specific things. I just thought I’d cover the big picture while I had some time. – J

Oh and, definitely count me among the mecha crowd. I’ve played the predecessor of this PSP game exhaustively. Rather than babble about my experiences, those inclined to see a sampling of the various series and mecha should just watch the video above. Have fun! – J

Just follow the link and look over all the details. Screenshots detailed here. This sort of thing just tends to defy any sort of intelligent commentary. Just go look, read, and gape in awe and wonder. Seriously, what do you think? Totally awesome? Run-in-terror strange? Combination of the two? It’s hard to know how to react to something like this. – J

The Japanese yari (槍、やり), or spear, was not originally a dominant weapon of war. My own research into this issue should not be thought of as authoritative, but this post contains my impressions on this fundamental weapon that became an essential component of the battles of the Sengoku Jidai (戦国時代), or Warring States Period.

So, no, the yari was not originally thought of as a weapon of choice by the samurai. Now, warfare became a nearly exclusive samurai affair for centuries, with exceptions such as the Sohei being mostly a sideshow. Samurai did use spears, but that was because swords were the easiest weapon to carry and an ideal last resort, with bows coming first. Spears were also used by non-samurai retainers of the elite and gave them a practical way to defend a man on a horse. Samurai would later come to favor the yari as highly suitable for mass combat.

In addition, the 14th century saw the rise of a new kind of warrior that made the yari its staple prior to the introduction of firearms, at which point the two would be used in tandem.

Yari in the Sengoku Jidai

I believe that the decisive reason for the shift to the yari is a matter of logistics more than technology. After all, the technology behind the yari cannot possibly have been new. Rather, warlords came to see the yari, used in packed formations, as superior to, and more decisive than, a bunch of samurai using swords (and this would be usually after their archery was no longer viable; think of samurai like multirole combat fighters in their day).

Now, it’s obvious why the forward thrusting spear is useful in tight formations; the Greeks and Romans established that long before the Swiss pikemen were thwarting cavalry across Europe. No, that is not the point. Why were packed formations an issue? As in, weren’t there packed formations before?

I’m thinking, no.

My speculation is that the evolving prosperity of Japan, which was now taking place in a highly distributed manner with the collapse of proper central authority, systematically placed more and more armed men under the banners of various warlords. In other words, warlords were able to feed and retain more samurai than ever before.

In addition, there was also the ashigaru (足軽、あしがる), literally light foot (light footmen). So, I believe that is why the issue came up; the bigger the battle, the more Japan’s constrained topography becomes an issue, and the simpler it is to smash a loose formation of swordsman with a tight formation of packed yari users.

And so a tactic was born.

In other words, it wasn’t an issue of cost… though I’m sure low cost did not escape the minds of yari advocates like Oda Nobunaga. However, it’s not the cost of a sword that’s the barrier here. It’s the cost of the man.

When that became less of an issue, yari use soared.

Now, ashigaru were not actually samurai. They first became established as what Europeans might call freebooters, and while I am no authority on this word, let us break it down for relevance: the “free” part, meaning you did not pay them salary; the “boot” part, meaning you did not assign a horse and they walked with the army; and “booty,” which was the only reward they would have for victory. At any rate, the more serious and less ritualistic the inter-clan rivalries became, the more ashigaru got involved. Yet these were part-timers who would go home to their farms and fields. After all, no salary – nor any retainer fee.

Later – and this is where my speculation about economics and social development comes in – warlords were actually retaining ashigaru like samurai, and in so doing, made them permanent warriors of a new, bottom basement class.

One might ask what then made them any different than samurai. Well, at this point samurai were a deeply entrenched permanent warrior class (but not caste). There was no desire to alienate them by treating ashigaru as their full equals. Thus, these militarized farmers became part of the increasingly heated and bitter wars of the age.

A Two-Handed Spear

Now, yari vary greatly, but the typical model used on the battlefield was absolutely meant to be wielded with two hands.

European spears had heavy shaft tapering so that the tip would not make the weapon very tip-heavy at all. For “spears” rather than pikes, this made one-handed use viable; one could even use spears with shields in Greek or Roman fashion. This , however, made blunt hits with the head of the spear a rather bad idea.

Yari include tapered shafts, but also include round shafts that are considerably beefier for swinging. Of course, this has the result of making the weapon tip-heavy, precisely what the Europeans were trying to avoid. Thus, this flexibility made the weapon harder to wield; not only was using two hands inevitable, but great skill would be required to be really good at it.

A Cavalry Staple As Well

It wasn’t just infantry. Samurai cavalry used yari for a rather simple reason: it had more reach than a sword. Yes, they could use bows too, but yari allowed shock tactics with European-like charges and were excellent first strike weapons against both infantry and cavalry.

Why first strike? Well, take the katana. Thought exercise; which is easier to carry as a secondary, spare weapon: a spear, or a sword?

Thought so.

High ranking nobles had their retainers who would have spare yari to use, but in a forward battle situation, a cavalryman was probably on his own with his spear, sword, and if all else fails, his tanto short sword (which, naming aside, was essentially a dagger).

Now, what happens when a cavalryman with a yari dismounts, either willingly or unwillingly? As professional warriors, samurai felt as if they would be er, forgive the pun, shafted (^^;) by a lack of skill if they did not take using the yari on foot at least as seriously as ashigaru peasants.

There are many reasons why a cavalryman might find himself on foot, just like European knights attempted it; human beings are smaller targets than horses, and horses can become living pincushions against archers in a pitiless age of war. So it wasn’t a theoretical situation.

As a result, schools of soujutsu (倉術、そうじゅつ) arose to take lessons learned from the brutal fields of combat and formalize instruction for future warriors, giving them a fighting chance. In general, the more one-on-one the situation, the more personal skill was a factor in survival rather than the overall battlefield situation.

For More Information

One place you may consider is this school of martial arts. As usual, I’m not linking to people I know and they owe no favors to me.

Some other time I’ll put images of specific kinds of yari up but, when I do, I can refer back to this post so people can have a primer on the basics. – J