100 Turn Hero Mini Guide

100 Turn Hero is the latest game by Kotaro Yoshida and a spiritual sister to Half Minute Hero.  

US iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/100turn-yong-zhe/id722163359?mt=8

This one is Japanese language only.  Although it's playable without knowing Japanese, it requires a lot more patience than his other games, plus there's a fair amount of dialogue you'll be missing out on.  But even without knowing Japanese, it's pretty fun.  It's not free (about a dollar) and it also features in-app purchases (although they're totally not necessary.)  The in-app purchase are for jewels to level up your weapons, but you can quickly get the same amount of jewels through playing stages.

You play as Hero Fundel, who is on a quest to save the world with the ninja Shadow Maru.  You're on a different island full of visible monsters each stage and need to kill the highlighted boss to win.  You have free movement, you level up by killing monsters, and the monsters don't move or attack... but you can only attack a maximum of 100 times before the stage ends.  You bring three weapons with you and switch between them at will.  You'll want to use multiple weapons not only because of their different skills (ex. strong against water monsters or strong against land monsters), but because the weapons hit a different pattern around you.  When you beat a stage, you get jewels and, depending on the number of turns it took you to beat the stage, another weapon.  You can use jewels to upgrade your weapon.  Choosing an efficient path through the stage is important, this game gives you plenty of aha moments that let you shave a lot of turns.

Honestly, I was hoping for more out of this game.  The concept is interesting, but the game doesn't really do as much with it as I had hoped.  The strategy of the game is 10% figuring the right order to kill monsters in and 90% about bringing the right weapons.  Bringing the right weapons requires a fair amount of grinding, which I dislike.  I think the main reason for my disappointment was that I was hoping the game would be more like Half Minute Hero, which attempted to be a JRPG.  I had hoped there'd be more to a stage than just killing monsters.  The stages in 100 Turn Hero could have had multiple paths through it... quests to complete that give you shortcuts to the boss, searching for secrets in a stage, or party members to recruit.  I think it would have be a perfect touch screen based Half Minute Hero, but instead it's much smaller in ambition.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game and it's definitely worth a dollar.  I hope ritterz decides to localize this game.  But I would have rather paid for a five dollar game with more charm and surprises.

To play without knowing Japanese isn't impossible, you'll just need to rely on trial and error.  I've added descriptions of some of the various menus.  These descriptions will help keep you from wasting your jewels.  Hopefully this helps with the less obvious parts of navigating the game.

Lastly, I thought I'd go over some tips.

Always visit all the buildings in a stage.  You'll often get gold you can spend at the shops.  You buy food at the shops in exchange for stat increases that will last for the remainder of the stage.  You can increase Attack, Charge, Guard Shave, Range, or Everything.  Each type of food corresponds to one of those increases.

At the end of each stage, your remaining Gold is converted into Jewels you keep.  Quest 14 is really nice for grinding money, you just need a weapon that hits the boss over the water.  That way, you bypass needing to kill the strong guys.  You can easily end the stage with 300 Gold, giving you 100 Jewels.

When fighting a Boss, the critical and guard shave stats are much more important than your attack or level.  It's common to do 1 damage normally against the boss, then have a 20 or 40 damage critical hit.

Most of the "strategy" of this game is bringing the right weapons into battle.  Like in Gun Spirits, weapons can have skills.  They're the orange text on the upgrade screen.  Most are obvious (EXP/Attack/Guard/Charge/Gold increase), but the following require a little special mention:

These stats significantly increase your damage against that type of monster and are the key to progressing through the game without spending money.

Hopefully these tips help you enjoy the game.  So, have fun~  And here's hoping to more Kotaro Yoshida localizations!

Kotaro Yoshida Games

Kotaro Yoshida, best known for his work on Half Minute Hero, is one of my favorite game designers.  His games are japanese-quirky, easy to pick up and play, encourage exploration and experimentation, and have JRPG elements (leveling up, equipment, party members, and killing monsters for gold).  I also like the faux-retro sprite style his games use and although his characters are pretty one dimensional, I think they're fun and I enjoy their banter.  But best of all, every game focuses on a new gameplay mechanic.  He doesn't refine existing ideas, he tries new mechanics (albeit to varying degrees of success.)  The games are simple, but still require some thought; they almost always have a sense of "puzzle" to them.

Anyway, for fans of his, I decided to list out the games he's been heavily involved with.  Since each game is pretty fresh, they're all worth trying for a bit.  He's been doing a lot of mobile games recently that really fit his style, but have no kind of media attention.  They're all really easy to play, even with the occasional language barrier, but maybe I'll do 'Let's Plays' on some of them someday. If I make any links to Japanese pages and you don't understand Japanese, Google Translate is your friend.

Half Minute Hero [Marvelous] - PSP / XBOX Live / PC

 

This one is in English (among others) and available on many different platforms.

Likely his most well-known game, it's usually described as a JRPG parody.  I'd say its genre was RPG-Puzzle.  You have "30 seconds" (although you can reset the timer) to defeat an Evil Lord in a minuature JRPG.  Each stage features towns, monsters, leveling up, equipment, sidequests, and a boss to defeat.  The story is fun and touches lots of JRPG cliches.  In addition to the RPG mode, there's 30 second shooter, RTS, and action modes.

There are a lot of reviews of this game out there for you (including my own...), so I won't go into anymore depth.  It's unlikely you've found your way to this page without knowing what Half Minute Hero is.  The definitive version of the game is the recent PC Steam release.  You can often get it on sale for 75% off.

Steam Link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/214830/

Half Minute Hero 2 [Marvelous] - PSP / PC

This one is Japanese only on PSP, but in English and Japanese on PC via Steam.

It's the sequel to Half Minute Hero and features only the Hero 30 (JRPG) gameplay, although the mode has much more depth this time around.  Where the first felt like a take on 8 Bit Era RPGs, the second feels like a take on 16 Bit Era RPGs.  There's an overworld, global leveling, and a much more involved story.  I did a detailed review of it here.

Steam Link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/240970/?snr=1_200_200_253_105

Battrix [Opus Studios] - iOS

 

This one is in English and is free to play, but you almost have to spend $1.99 on it if you want to get to the end.

Based off of one of his PC Game experiments, Battrix is a pure RPG-Puzzle game.  Each tile in the world has either a battle or a town on it.  By winning a battle, in addition to standard JRPG rewards, the adjacent world tiles appear.  So instead of wandering the world, you liberate it into existence.

The battles play on a grid with a particular enemy distribution.  Each enemy attacks after a certain number of turns.  Your weapons can only hit a certain pattern of tiles and use up a certain number of turns per attack.  The goal is to kill all the enemies before you are killed.  You bring 3 weapons into each battle, which you can level up and synthesize into better weapons.

You're guided by a fairy and fighting against an Evil Lord who has stolen all the land in the world. There are towns to discover and tons of secret areas, plus a competetive arena.  You can bring your friends into battle to help you.  It's a fun, unique iOS game, although it can get grindy.  I really recommend this game.

US iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battrix-floating-continent/id521959688
There's a good wiki for this game here: http://battrix.wikia.com

Run Run Hero [Line/MAQL/Opus] - iOS / Android

 

This one is in English (among others) and uses a free to play model.

It's an endless runner: You automatically run (left to right), swiping to avoid obstacles, fight monsters, or collect money, until you run out of life.  It's flavored to evoke Half Minute Hero, but it has none of the story elements.  The story is simply that an Evil Lord captured a princess and you have to run through various stages to rescue her. I don't think Yoshida had that much to do with this game (he's listed far down on the credits), but it uses a lot of his concepts.

The features of this game are the Kotaro Yoshida sprites, 5 lanes, fever mode (kill enough enemies and you're invincible for a few seconds), the RPG elements (equipment, leveling, and party members), and the bosses.  The bosses are fun, you need to avoid their attacks and they can only be damaged in a certain lane.

As far as social aspects go, you can compete against your friends and use their avatars in your own runs.  You can also send each other items.

As I write this, the game is six months old.  There has already been one huge update that broke the one endless running stage into several stages.  This helped the game a lot, but the stages still aren't very exciting.  Hopefully we'll see more updates.

But for now, there are issues with the game. The first impression is bad, I didn't start enjoying the game until I got used to playing it with my left hand as playing with the right hand blocks upcoming obstacles. The controls are not nearly as friendly as something like Jetpack Joyride. Also, the game starts to get grindy fast. Once your in-game stamina is high enough, the game does a good job of feeling skill based... it's kind of like playing an old NES game.

My main complaint about the game is that the charm and soul aren't there. There aren't any events, characters, or dialogue... which greatly lower my desire to make it to the end. Maybe it won't bother you, but I would have liked the game a lot more with little story segments the first time you make it to a new stage. On a similar note, unlike most of the other Yoshida involved games, this doesn't feel very unique compared to other games in the same genre. Endless Runner with RPG Elements is a very accurate description of the game.  Maybe I'm just not a big enough Endless Runner fan.

Anyway, please post your LINE ids in the comments so we can help each other out!

Strategy: Sending invites to Line friends gets you useful items, mates, and a ton of money. So add a bunch of "friends" to Line (this is a good list of accounts made just for game invites) to bypass a lot of grinding. Also, don't use gems for money, as this trick makes money pretty easy to get.  Add jediscar on LINE for a strong partner.

US iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/EN/app/id670849460
US Android Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.naver.SJLGRANRAN

100 Man Hero (Hyaku Nin Hero) - iOS / PC

 

This one is Japanese language only.  The PC version is free, but the iOS version costs money.

In this game, you play a king trying to defend his castle against an Evil Lord and his cronies.  Instead of running out and fighting, you hire soldiers to do the dirty work for you.  You send them out, they fight monsters, they collect money for the kingdom, they level up, and then they eventually get defeated and return to the castle to be dispatched again.  You can buy items and reequip your heroes before sending them out again.

This app is not free on iOS. IMHO, you're better off just playing the PC version. The iOS version has different difficulties and an infinite mode, but it's not really all that different than the PC version. There is an extra surprise if you beat all the difficulties on iOS, but it's still not worth the effort.  Also, the iOS version has no music at all, which is weird and disappointing.

Strategy: The trick to the later difficulties is that you usually want most of your soldiers the same level. That means frequently shuffling equipment around.

US iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bai-ren-yong-zhe/id463172823
PC Link: http://uue.holy.jp/game/hero100_touch.zip

Gun Spirits (GUN SPIRITS) - iOS

  

This one is Japanese language only and probably the least experimental of all his games so far.  It's not free and it also features in-app purchases (although they're totally not necessary.)

It's a bullet hell shooter consisting of 73+ stages.  You only have 60 seconds to beat each stage.  Every time you beat a stage, you either collect a new weapon, new wings (for defense and movement), or gold.  The gold is used to level up your equipment.  There's a large variety of weapons and some weapons are much better suited to certain levels than others.  Weapons have very different shot patterns.

The levels get a lot harder as you progress.  After about level 65 you'll likely need to grind (or partake in microtransactions) to continue.

In addition to the story mode, there's a Challenge mode where you play through all the stages as one huge stage: No continues, no chances to re-equip, and no health ups.

This game isn't free, but it's quite fun. As a bullet hell game, the CAVE offerings are probably better. But you'll get very good value for your dollar here and it's much better than CAVE games for short bursts of play.

There's a pretty good wiki page for this game here: http://www54.atwiki.jp/gun_spirits/pages/41.html

US iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gun-spirits/id673975114

Piyo Piyo Quest [ritterz] - iOS

 

This one is Japanese language only and is an RPG-puzzle game.

The puzzle portion is like collapse, where there is a grid of blocks and touching a block removes it and all neighboring identical blocks.  In this game, destroying blocks causes the hero to do a particular action (attack, use magic, heal, get money, strengthen monsters, or collect a chick).  The monsters attack the hero after a set number of your actions.  Your goal is to collect chicks, which you can then take out on your quests for stat bonuses.

It's a pretty fun game and really easy to play.  It could have benefited with a bit more depth and content.  As it is, there's a fair amount of luck involved.  The game is free, but it has microtransactions that don't actually provide you with much benefit.

There's an interview with Kotaro Yoshida that lists out all the chicks: Page 1, Page 2

Strategy: Take the opportunity to clear out your useless blocks if you know you can survive the next turn.

US iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/piyopiyokuesuto/id689177545

100 Turn Hero [ritterz] - iOS

This one is Japanese language only.  Although it's playable without knowing Japanese, it requires a lot more patience than his other games, plus there's a fair amount of dialogue you'll be missing out on.  But even without knowing Japanese, it's pretty fun.  It's not free (about a dollar) and it also features in-app purchases (although they're totally not necessary.)  The in-app purchase are for jewels to level up your weapons, but you can quickly get the same amount of jewels through playing stages.

You play as Hero Fundel, who is on a quest to save the world with the ninja Shadow Maru.  You're on a different island full of visible monsters each stage and need to kill the highlighted boss to win.  You have free movement, you level up by killing monsters, and the monsters don't move or attack... but you can only attack a maximum of 100 times before the stage ends.  You bring three weapons with you and switch between them at will.  You'll want to use multiple weapons not only because of their different skills (ex. strong against water monsters or strong against land monsters), but because the weapons hit a different pattern around you.  When you beat a stage, you get jewels and, depending on the number of turns it took you to beat the stage, another weapon.  You can use jewels to upgrade your weapon.  Choosing an efficient path through the stage is important, this game gives you plenty of aha moments that let you shave a lot of turns.

Honestly, I was hoping for more out of this game.  The concept is interesting, but the game doesn't really do as much with it as I had hoped.  The strategy of the game is 10% figuring the right order to kill monsters in and 90% about bringing the right weapons.  Bringing the right weapons requires a fair amount of grinding, which I dislike.  I think the main reason for my disappointment was that I was hoping the game would be more like Half Minute Hero, which attempted to be a JRPG.  I had hoped there'd be more to a stage than just killing monsters.  The stages in 100 Turn Hero could have had multiple paths through it... quests to complete that give you shortcuts to the boss, searching for secrets in a stage, or party members to recruit.  I think it would have be a perfect touch screen based Half Minute Hero, but instead it's much smaller in ambition.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game and it's definitely worth a dollar.  I hope ritterz decides to localize this game.  But I would have rather paid for a five dollar game with more charm and surprises.

I wrote a mini guide for this game: http://errantcluster.blogspot.com/2014/01/100-turn-hero-mini-guide.html

US iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/100turn-yong-zhe/id722163359?mt=8

Game Experiments

All of these are found on: http://uue.holy.jp/

    100 Nin Yuusha Touch - PC
    Battrix Touch - PC
    Battrix - PC
    100 Nin Yuusha - PC
    30 Nin Yuusha - PC
    Lionyx (side scroller) - PC

Other

Kotaro Yoshida's Twitter: https://twitter.com/uue_yoshida

His current studio is ritterz: http://ritterz.com/

Lastly, the artist Ayako Suda often collaborates with Yoshida on his games.  Ayako's homepage, with a bunch of art, is here: http://as-em.serio.jp/

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy and that I didn't write this long article for nothing.

Perfect Blue Review

This weekend I rewatched Perfect Blue and decided to write up a review.  Perfect Blue is a well done psychological thriller.  A common sentiment when it came out was that this was the cartoon that Alfred Hitchcock would have made.  Perfect Blue was originally a novel by Yoshikazu Takeuchi, but it's Japanese only so everything I bring up is only based on the film.

I have pretty nostalgic memories of watching it 13 years ago and I'm glad to have been able to enjoy it again today.  It still looks like it was made in 1997 (although the animation itself is done well, 90s anime doesn't display so well in high definition) and the English dub is definitely 90s era too, but the movie itself is done very well.



Perfect Blue was directed Satoshi Kon, which in my opinion already makes the film a must watch.  Satoshi Kon, sadly now deceased, was known for manga, anime, and film work.  His character art was iconic and very detailed.  Most of his films are Philip K. Dick-ish, in which there's a strong theme of a blurred line between reality and fiction.  Satoshi Kon always does a very good job of showing this confusion visually.  His movies tend to be slower pace than American thrillers, but they're just as exciting.  Except for maybe Tokyo Godfathers, which is a very different genre than his other works, I liked Perfect Blue the most out of his works as I felt it had the most well executed storyline.  His much more popular Paprika is a similar movie and is much prettier (thanks to its later release date and much higher budget), but in my opinion its story was not told nearly as well.

Perfect Blue is a really fun and exciting watch, although it is definitely not for children.  When I first watched it during High School, I had recommended it to a friend of mine.  I wanted the movie's contents to surprise him, so I just told him it was a action movie with pop idols.  He proceeded to watch it with his girlfriend and, more significantly, her father.  Well, the movie contains nudity and a very powerful scene where the heroine is struggling with performing a rape scene for a movie she's in.  It was uncomfortable for him to watch it with his girlfriend's father, who wasn't an anime fan and was pretty silent through the whole thing, sitting next to him.  Although the father said it was a good movie afterwards, you should make sure not to put yourself in any awkward circumstances.  You've been warned, for mature audiences only.



As I mentioned, Perfect Blue is about the dark side of being a Japanese idol.  Idols are young female celebrities, usually pop singers or photobook gravure models.  There is a very distinct culture around them that has not changed much over the years.  A good idol, then and now, is judged largely on their "purity."  Idols put on a (almost definitely) false persona of being very young and naive.  Idols end up being obsessed over and harshly judged by a certain subset of fans.  Those familiar with Japanese culture are usually also familiar with the idol horror stories.  Stalkings are fairly common news articles.  Attending hand shaking events with semen soaked hands has been coming up recently as well.  Death threats and unforgivable comments are showered upon any idol who tries to act like she's older than 15.

Although the idol concept is fairly Japanese, the movie is more relatable in the West today more than ever before due to the rise of teen actresses, such as all the recent teen starts who started on the Disney channel.  Of course, everywhere you have celebrities, you'll also have stories of a stalker going after celebrity.  That part is instantly understood.  But I feel the teen idol case is not quite the same as the child star case.  If you try to imagine the struggles teen stars might have growing up and the worst case scenarios they'd face, you'll be able to understand this movie.

I admit that this review has gone slightly off topic for several paragraphs, but that really shows the strength of this film.  It goes in depth into an area that's often not deeply explored.  Or if it is explored, the movie usually ends up being an exploitation film instead of a high quality film.  But moving on to a summary...

The heroine of Perfect Blue is Mima Kirigoe, the lead singer of a pop group called "CHAM!"  The movie begins with her deciding to leave the group to become an actress.  Not only is she nervous and unconfident of the choice to begin with, she's immediately heavily criticized and despised by a vocal group of her former fans.  Leaving her persona behind, she takes on much more mature projects in order to shed her previous image and become a respected actress.  In the midst of her working stress, relationship stress, hatemail, and death threats, she finds a website called "Mima's Room" which features very private diary entries Mima does not recall writing.  And finally, like in any good thriller, the murders begin.  By that point, Mima is unable to clearly distinguish reality and nightmare.



Unlike with my other reviews, I don't want to give anything else away besides to say it's done well.  If you really must know, this movie is old enough where you can just wiki the whole plotline.  But you'd be doing yourself a disservice, especially since the movie is only an hour and a half long.

In the end, my strongest recommendations for this movie are:

1. The character development is done very well
2. It's an exciting thriller
3. It's a good study on a briefly touched subject
4. Ending Spoiler: It doesn't have a pointless "BAD END" for the main character that horror films tend to love

The movie was released on on DVD and Blu Ray, although supply is low nowadays.  You can easily use a service like Netflix to watch it though .

So go and watch it!

Rurouni Kenshin - The Live Action Movie

I was lucky enough to be in Japan during the week the live action Rurouni Kenshin movie was released. Very lucky.  I've decided to write a brief description of my theater-going experience, some thoughts on the movie, and then an in-depth summary.

Full disclosure: Rurouni Kenshin was one of my first Japanese series and it is by far my favorite. I started reading it right after the Kyoto arc ended. Not only did I buy a ton of merchandise, but I joined Kenshin mailing lists and chat rooms. I own multiple versions of the same material (Japanese tankouban, English versions, and Taiwanese Kanzenban)! I still enjoy the series a lot, even after re-reading 10 years later.

The whole hype around the movie has been so exciting, barring the horrible OVAs and the mediocre PSP game. For the first time in years, there's fresh Kenshin merchandise and nowadays I actually have money to afford things. There are new figures out, very cute cellphone charms, puffy character keychains, and more. The Kinema-ban chapters have been fun and I really enjoyed Chapter 0 (that I got to pick up in Japan ^^.) It was fun walking around Tokyo seeing and hearing ads for the movie. It was great flipping on the TV and seeing all the promotions. 7-11 did a thing where if you bought two of a certain line of products, you got a clearfile folder for free.

I was really excited to find out that Rurouni Kenshin was being shown with English subtitles at the Toho Cinemas in Roppongi Hills. The theater was very easy to find (right outside the Roppongi stop on the Hibiya subway line) and the tickets were easy to order on the kiosk machines. Most of the instructions were in English... even choosing seats was straightforward. I went early because I was competing for seat reservations against people who could pay online.

The theater was cooler than outside, but the AC wasn't very strong. I was initially disappointed with the screen size, but then the movie started and the curtains pulled out making it a proper widescreen. I saw trailers for both One Piece Z and Evangelion 3.0, which was awesome.

The movie itself was great. I agree with most of the reviews I've read. There were pacing issues, but nothing unexpected of a Japanese movies. Some parts were just slow and dragged on. But the good parts were very exciting and there was a lot more humor than I was expecting. I definitely enjoyed the movie more than any of the OVAs that were released for Kenshin.

I think all the actors did a great job, especially Aoki Munetaka's Sano, Sato Takeru’s Kenshin, and Eguchi Yosuke's Saito. I was especially surprised by Sano and Saito, as I didn't think they looked right from the stills. But I think in action, they captured the character's spirits well. I don't really know Japanese so I can't comment on their delivery, but everyone's actions looked great. I really enjoyed Kagawa Teruyuki's perfomance as Kanryu. Sure, it's over-the-top cheesy... but that was the character in the manga too. I think all the portrayals were done especially well.

I thought the movie's story was laid out well (the plot was good and everything happened in a good order despite the amount of material being covered), but I think the script itself could have used some work. I especially had problems with Kaoru's portrayal (she seemed really helpless) and the amount of time Kenshin spent being melancholy. I don't think the dialogue they did really explained Kenshin's internal conflicts very well. Without knowing the comic, I would have still enjoyed the movie, but felt much more negative towards the slow scenes. The most frustrating part was how close the movie felt to getting it perfect.

The fights were done very well, but they were very fast. Blink and you'd miss a lot. There's no screaming out technique names... the fight scenes were done much closer to a normal sword based action movie, which I think was a really good decision. None of the fighting looked too goofy, which often happens in these kinds of adaptations. I enjoyed the soundtrack to the film as well.

I was very happy with the subtitles. No Japanese words are used (Rurouni is wanderer and so on...), but I've never really been picky about that. There wasn't much in the translation I disagreed with. Thanks Ian McDougall (I think that was the translator's name...) , great job!

After watching the movie, I headed to the theater lobby. I guess movies all come with merchandise in Japan. I picked up the Kenshin movie booklet (with interviews and lots of pictures) as well as a sakabatou keychain. It was a great film and a very fun experience to watch a movie in Japan!

Here is a very complete summary of the Kenshin movie. I've written down everything I remember. Some things may be in the wrong order, but everything should be there. It's as detailed as I could make it so it's VERY, VERY, VERY spoiler heavy. I give away all of my favorite scenes... so highlight and read on only if you dare...

The movie begins with the end of the battle of Toba-Fushimi. Saito (in Shinsengumi gear) is wandering the battlefield searching for Battousai. Battousai cuts down several men moments before shouts of victory are heard. Battousai, looking more exhausted than relieved, wanders off on his own. He comes across Saito, who demands a duel. Battousai responds to Saito's request by driving his own sword into the ground and wandering off.

The scene cuts to the night where Jine rises from a pile of corpses, amazed to be alive. He wanders around in a daze and stumbles onto Battousai's sword, taking it for his own... 

In the 11th Year of Meiji...

The scene settles inside wealthy business man Kanryu's mansion. Kanryu calls in Takani Megumi and a group of men. He praises them for the new addictive spiderweb opium they developed and dreams of the money he'll make. He sends them out, but shuts the door before Megumi and one other man can leave. Everyone outside is slaughtered by Kanryu's bodyguards: Inui Banjin and the masked Gein. Kanryu tells Megumi and the other man that he only needs one person who knows the formula. He does an "eeny-meeny-miny-moe" to choose the survivor, landing on the man. Megumi walks forward and Kanryu hugs her, saying of course he wouldn't hurt her. The other man makes a run for it, jumping out through the window. Kanryu says it doesn't matter and Battousai will take care of it.

The next day, Saito, now a policeman under the name Fujita Goro, finds the corpse of the man from Kanryu's mansion. The man happened to be an undercover agent. Saito's men are freaked out that Battousai killed another officer. Saito tells them this isn't Battousai's work.

Kenshin, wearing a blue and grey hakama, is happily wandering through Tokyo eating a dango when he notices a wanted poster for Battousai, who has been wandering Tokyo at night murdering men under than name of the Kamiya Kasshin school. He's suddenly attacked by a girl with a wooden sword. He dodges her strikes, but eventually falls to the ground. She accuses him of being Battousai, but he says he's not. He's a Rurouni - Wanderer. He shows her that the sword he carries has the dull and sharp sides swapped. She apologizes for her mistake. It's not clear what happens to Kenshin's dango and it never appears again.

Saito goes to Kanryu's mansion and asks him if he knows anything about the recent murders. Kanryu says no and just talks about how great money is. He summons his army of ronin... previously proud samurai who now slave themselves to Kanryu just for rice to eat everyday. Saito warns Kanryu that he's not like other cops and that he doesn't always wait for hard evidence. When Saito leaves, Kanryu is alerted that Megumi escaped with a policeman. Kanryu isn't worried. If Megumi said anything, she would be taken in as an accomplice. He sends Battousai, who is actually Jine, to fetch her.

Megumi waits in the police station when screams are suddenly heard. She escapes while Jine slaughters his way through all police officers. It's a pretty cool fight scene. Jine takes great pleasure in killing.

Kaoru is outside playing with a cat when a dying policeman stumbles towards her. She sees Jine walks by and realizes he's the Battousai sullying the name of her school. She challenges him to a duel. He trivially defeats her, mocking her use of a wooden sword. Right before he kills her, Kenshin jumps in and saves her. Jine recognizes him as the real Battousai, but before they fight, more policemen show up and everyone runs away.

Kaoru thanks Kenshin for her help at her dojo. She explains that her father died in the war and she watches the dojo now, but there are barely any students after the Battousai mess. She explains that her father's style emphasised the "sword that protects life." They chat a bit more. Before Kenshin leaves, she asks for his name. "Himura Kenshin de gozaru."

Kanryu plots with his men about how he'll distribute the opium. He's going to obtain the last few dojos he wasn't able to buy, then tear them all down to create a factory and port for his operation.

Kaoru hears a noise at the door only to find Myojin Yahiko, her sole sometimes-student. She sets him to cleaning the dojo when a group of men show up to buy the dojo from her. She refuses again and they say they'll take it by force. Yahiko jumps in saying he's the defender of the weak, but he's easily pushed aside. The group (led by the Gaara brothers according to the movie book) enter the dojo. Kaoru is furious that they haven't removed their shoes and gets ready to fight. The the group begins mocking the "Sword that protects life" motto. Kenshin appears and says that although the motto is silly, he likes it more than the truth. He proceeds to defeat the entire group by himself in an awesome fight sequence. He only draws his sword to defeat the two brothers. The rest of the town and the police show up because they saw the huge group heading to the dojo. Kenshin says the men were after him and it didn't involve the dojo at all. He and all the men are dragged off to prison.

Kenshin sits in prison as it rains outside. He goofily tries to collect rain in a bowl when Saito fetches him, identifying him as Battousai. (Sanosuke, in an adjacent cell, overhears this.) Saito brings Kenshin to General Yamagata, who is happy to see him again as Battousai disapeared 10 years ago. Yamagata requests that Kenshin help them by killing Kanryu. Kenshin refuses. Yamagata tells him of the rumors he's heard about a wandering samurai helping people without killing. Saito challenges Kenshin to a fight and they take it outside to the courtyard in the pouring rain. Saito tells him that if he uses a blade with the sharp side facing him, the only person he'll hurt is himself. After a short but sweet fight, Saito ends up forcing Kenshin's own sword down on Kenshin's own shoulder. Yamagata orders Saito to stop. He apologizes profusely to Kenshin and lets him leave.

Kaoru is waiting outside for Kenshin. She thanks him for all of his help and offers him an umbrella. She offers him a place to stay at her dojo along with her father's old clothes. Elsewhere, Yahiko finds Megumi stumbling in the streets and brings her into the dojo.

The sky has cleared up and Kenshin has changed clothes. He steps outside his room at the dojo and the camera (slowly) pans to reveal his new pink and white hakama. He meets up with Kaoru. Yahiko appears and introduces them to Megumi, who instantly cozies up to Kenshin. She heard about Kenshin's defense of the dojo from Yahiko.

The group go the Akabeko to have some sukiyaki. As they eat, Kanryu jaunts in. Megumi quickly hides. Kanryu saunters over to Kenshin and tells him he heard about his defense of the dojo. He offers Kenshin a ton of money to be his bodyguard. Kenshin refuses. Kanryu pulls out some more money (I think out of his pants) and adds it to the pile. Kenshin still refuses. Sano bursts in and demands Kanryu hires him instead (as he talks, he lets his zanbatou fall over, which Tae and Sae are barely able to keep up.) He reveals Kenshin's identity as Battousai. He asks Kanryu if he'll hire him if he defeats Kenshin. Kanryu agrees.

Everyone steps outside, where Sano explains that his zanbatou was used to cut down horses during the war. It's dull now, but still deadly. Kenshin dodges all of Sano's swings. Kenshin tells Sano he has no reason to fight him and asks if he'd really work for a guy like Kanryu. Sano admits he wouldn't, then stops fighting, telling the crowd it'd be no good for him to end up in jail again. Kanryu mutters to his aide that he shouldn't get on the Battousai's bad side and leaves. Everyone else goes back inside to eat more beef.

The next day, Jine has struck again. Saito is at the scene and Kenshin happens by. Saito tells Kenshin that this is the result of not helping them kill Kanryu. As a woman cries over a dead policemen's, Kenshin has a flashback. He remembers agreeing to join the war in order to make people's lives better. He remembers a particular assasination. A group of men wander the streets of Tokyo. They congratulate one of the men who is getting married in the morning when Battousai appears. He cuts them all down, but the one to be married keeps rising to fight again, crying out "I can't die yet! I need to live!" Battousai finally cuts him down for good, but gets the first slash of his cross scar. The next day, he watches the corpses being taken away. A woman in white cries (shown only from the back) over the man's corpse while Battousai stares, feeling his scar. The scene cuts back to the present with Kenshin feeling his scar.

Kanryu is close to completing his plan. He gets excited because his gattling gun arrives.

That night, Megumi is outside the dojo when Gein appears. He warns her to be careful and that her actions have consequences.

The next day, a bunch of people all over town are sick. They all end up in the Kamiya dojo. Sano brings in a sick little girl. Megumi rushes outside, tastes the dojo's water, and realizes that Gein put rat poison in the water supply. She gives all the healthy people tasks to do and gets everyone treated. 

Kenshin talks to Megumi alone while they fetch water. He asks about her past. She tells him he shouldn't ask about hers unless he tells her about his. Kenshin tells her that the first slash of his cross scar came from a man he assasinated, the other slash came from the man's wife to be. Kenshin tells her he's killed so many men. She yells back that she hasn't killed anyone. She flashes back to developing the opium while her test subjects beg for more in the prisons. She tells Kenshin her family was killed and Kanryu took her in. He used her to make opium and she used him to live.

A doctor brought from the next town over tells Kaoru they're lucky Megumi was there or else everyone would have died. He tells her about the famous Takani family. They were great doctors, but took the wrong side in the war. None were known to survive. Everyone has recovered by the evening, but Megumi has disappeared. Kenshin decides to stop Kanryu. Sano announces he'll join in after everything Kanryu has done. Yahiko wants to go to, but Kenshin tells him to stay behind and watch over Kaoru.

Megumi goes back to Kanryu, who welcomes her with open arms. She tells him she didn't return to help him, but to assasinate him then kill herself. She's stopped by a bodyguard. Kanryu is furious at her, but is interupted from beating her to hear Battousai and Sano have broken onto the premises. Kanryu orders Megumi locked up and rushes off. As Megumi is dragged off, Jine stoops down to talk to her.

Kenshin and Sano easily take out the ronin in the mansion courtyard. At some point, Sano tosses his zanbatou to a group of 4 men, who stuggle to hold it. He kicks them down and doesn't bother retrieving the sword. The ronin start backing off. Kanryu throws money from the roof, telling them whoever defeats Kenshin or Sano will be rich beyond their wildest dreams. They renew their attack. Kenshin and Sano take out everyone. 

They enter the mansion and Banjin appears. He asks who he'll fight. Sano volunteers and they have a good ol' fashion brawl, eventually ending up in a kitchen. Kenshin goes to another room and runs into Gein. Kenshin asks what caused him to stoop so low, Gein removes his mask, revealing a half scarred face. In this rendition, Gein is young, pretty, blond man. He tells Kenshin this new era caused him to starve and he joined Kanryu in order to live. He fires a cord and catches Kenshin. He tries to shoot Kenshin with pistols, but Kenshin dodges everything. Finally, he resorts to a knifre. The fight alternates between the Sano/Banjin brawl and the Kenshin/Gein duel.

During their brawl, Sano eyes a piece of chicken on the floor and calls for a timeout. Banjin obliges, and Sano eats the chicken. He tosses half to Banjin. Banjin sets it down, saying "Poor Bird. I'm a vegetarian." Sano offers him some wine, which Banjin accepts. After they both eat a bunch of random things, they resume their brawl. Sano says Banjin needs to use his head more before headbutting him. He finishes the fight by suplexing Banjin. Kenshin also finishes his fight with Gein.

They rush to the next room, but before they enter, the door explodes open from gattling gunfire. Sano runs in, barely hiding behind a pillar. Kanryu shouts "How dare you guys destroy my mansion!", Sano retorts "You're destroying it yourself!" Kenshin is still outside the room when Saito non-chalantly walks up. He tells them Yahiko contacted the police. He says the gattling gun can only fire in one direction, so if they can distract Kanryu, Saito can take him out. Kenshin and Sano draw Kanryu's fire while Saito does a Gatotsu, defeating the gattling gun. Kenshin and Sano rush forward to Megumi, who tells them Jine went after Kaoru.

Kenshin meets Jine at dawn near a shrine in a forest. Kaoru is tied up on some steps. Jine wants to fight the true Battousai. They fight for a bit. Kenshin is too weak, so Jine uses his powerful will to stop Kaoru from breathing. Unless Kenshin kills Jine within two minutes, Kaoru won't be able to breathe. Kenshin switches back into Battousai mode, saying "I’m angry at you for abducting Kaoru-dono. And I’m angry at myself for letting you do it" with a very rough form of speech. Kenshin sheathes his sword, then attacks with iai-jutsu. Jine dodges the first strike, but then Kenshin smashes Jine's elbow with his sheath. Kenshin states the name of the attack, then raises his sword, intending to kill Jine with the sharp side. Kaoru shouts for Kenshin not to do it. She cries on for a while telling Kenshin he needs to stay the way he is and Kenshin is relieved she's okay. Jine is amazed she broke through his will on her own. He tells Kenshin it's not over yet, picks up a sword, then kills himself. He dies, laughing at Kenshin, telling him a killer will always be a killer.

The police have swarmed Kanryu's mansion and there's enough evidence to legally put him away.

Kaoru awakes the next day to Sano's snores. Sano is still bloody from the night before. She sees Megumi cooking in the kitchen. She runs around the dojo and sadly realizes that Kenshin left. Just then, Kenshin walks in with a bucket of vegetables. Yahiko tells her he just stepped out to grab some supplies for dinner. Kaoru welcomes him back with an "Okaeri." Kenshin replies with "Tadaima" - I'm home.

Flame of Recca Review

This manga takes place in the modern day.  16-year old self-proclaimed ninja Recca, a girl he chose as his master, and a group of friends who become increasingly close fight against an incredibly evil business man trying to find a certain magical artifacts, which are called madougouin this series.  This manga focuses on fights, character back stories, and small bits of comedy.  Each character has their own madougou which they must cleverly use to fight against their opponent.  The characters strength comes from learning new abilities from their madougou and due to their determination to protect each other.  It has a very good, diverse cast of characters who get good development throughout the series and are given good backstories.  This manga does include a lengthy tournament.

I was introduced to this series through fansubs several years ago.  I felt that the series started off very strong, then got linearly less interesting, but then ended strong.  Years later, I found that the anime series (which was 42 episodes) was based off of a manga series (episode 42 was roughly equivalent to volume 16 out of 36.)  I found scanlations for the manga and finished the series.  Later I read the first 16 volumes as well, after the series was released by Viz.

This is a highly recommended series as long as you're not tired of shonen cliches.  In my opinion, it is one of the top shonen fighting manga because of the great detail in defining the character's motivations and the pure awesomeness of the main character's power.

There are three points which I count as weaknesses.  The first is the art quality.  The first 16 volumes are not very fun to look at, in my opinion.  However, if you view this series as I did with the anime transitioning into the manga, this point is negligible.  The second is the fights themselves.  Many of the fights really aren't that interesting, specifically the ones where the victor is determined by "Oh, I suddenly found a new ability of my madougou that I didn't know about before."  This is not so bad though because there are a fair number of fights that are determind by the fighter cleverly using their known abilities.  The final weakness is the tournament in the middle.  While I understand why the author did it, it lasted too long and pales in comparison to the less cliche feeling and more revelation filled story arcs of the beginning and the end.

In any case, this series is in my top ten manga list.  Seeing these characters struggle and achieve their goals have motivated me, somehow.  "I must Protect my Princess" is a great life mantra, in my opinion.  Plus, thinking about summoning flame has done wonders for my imagination.  Definitely take a look at this one.

[warning! ending spoilers follow]







In addition to the three points of weakness I gave before, there is one more.  The ending.  This is probably just my preference, but... when you think about it, the whole series took place in less than a year.  I would have really liked a look into the future to see how the characters turned out in the long run.  Yes, I realized that the story was over and the whole thing isn't real anyway, but I would have enjoyed it more if the author showed the lives of the characters a bit after things got calm.  It's easy to grow, develop, bond, and such during a large crisis... but what happens once life is no longer crazy?  True, I'm asking for to much, probably, and it's probably just because I get too interested and involved with the characters in the story.

As a counterpoint, the ending does completely "end the story" without any lingering mysteries or any chances for continuation.

My Girlfriend is a Geek

My Girlfriend is a Geek... or as a more accurate translation, My Fujoshi Girlfriend. 'Fujoshi' refers to a girl who is not only very interested in Japanese anime/manga, but is also interested in romantically pairing their favorite male characters. (Haha... that's such a formal way of defining a Boy's Love (BL) fan.) 'My Girlfriend is a Geek' is about a pretty normal Japanese college guy who starts dating his boss... and she turns out to be a closet fujoshi. The book is in the form of anecdotal blog posts.

I thought the books were great. They're very light reading and I found them hilarious. I felt somewhat sad actually getting most of the geeky references without having to resort to the glossary... but the laughs made up for that sad self-introspection. I think the best way of reviewing the book is to give an short excerpt. If you enjoy it, you should rush and buy the two books now.


While I was putting together an extremely taxing and annoying report, I got a phone call from Y-ko, who was supposed to be hanging out with her fujoshi friends.

Me: Yeah? What's u-
Y-ko: Bonjour!! Listen, listen, listen!!

Ringggg.
C-could you turn down the volume?

Me: Sorry, could you tone it down? You're really hurting my ea-
Y-ko: Big news!! Oh, and when I greet you in Italian, I want an Italian response!!
Me: ...I'm sorry. Are you drunk? You're drunk, aren't you?

Plus, bonjour is French, not Italian.

Y-ko: So what? Anyways... I hear they're going to open a butler cafe!!

...What?
Really?

Me: That's incredible!! It's going to be a smash success.
Y-ko: I know, I know, I know!! Yes!! This weekend's plans are set!!

...Now you're getting ahead of yourself.
This place probably isn't even open for business yet.

Y-ko: Oh my goodness, it's going to be a festival! We're going to open that bottle of wine we've been saving, Sebas (ed. She calls him Sebas, short for Sebastian, because he reminds her of the butler from Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler).

...
Um...

Who are you calling Sebas?

Me: Come on! We don't even have a bottle of wine!
Y-ko: Yes we do! I'll go and pick one up!!
Me: That's not the same as "saving" a bottle...
Y-ko: Hey, what was it called? That one bottle that was really good... Oh right! I remember! Moe Moe Chandon?

What kind of name is that?

They might be able to sell a few bottles by riding that fact, but I certainly don't want to drink it.

Me: Nice try, but not quite. You're thinking of Moet & Chandon.
Y-ko: Oh, who cares? It's only one letter. Don't be so fussy, Sebas!!

I think I just got scolded!
And she called me Sebas again!

Me: ...Um, I'm sorry. Would you stop calling me Sebas?
Y-ko: Huh? Why?

Great.
The vaunted "why?" defense.

Me: Well, because my name is -
Y-ko: Oh, sorry. Did you want to be Shota?

I wasn't done with the sentence!
And why are those my only two choices?!
Plus, Shota isn't even a name!!

Y-ko: Yeah, of course... You're more the uke type.

...!!
Um... I'm sorry...

Is that how you've seen me all this time?


You can find some more excerpts here http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=62208. There are two books total to buy (Volume 1 and Volume 2). The books are complete. There is also a shoujo manga series, which I haven't read.

Yakitate!! Japan Review

So, since the final Volume of Yakitate!! Japan has been published in English. I thought I'd give a short review of the series and Viz's localization.

Here's the brief version: Yakitate Japan is great! Buy it and read it! At the very least, read the first volume and if you like it, read to the end of Volume 14.

Now for a slightly more formal review.

Yakitate!! Japan is an award winning manga about... making bread. At times it can be fairly technical, which is nice because you can actually learn something. This series blends a lot of genres, but technically, the series is a very Japanese comedy manga. (That's my way of saying there's a lot of wordplay humor. Still, there are lots of visual, sarcastic, over-the-top, and universal gags as well.) The reason I love this series, though, is because it cares a lot about its story and characters. It uses its theme and humor to flavor the story and characters, not the other way around. And that's something I really didn't expect out of a comedy cooking battle manga. The story is well done, the conflicts are exciting, and there's strong characterization. The subject matter is interesting, the art is good, and the humor is funny.

I originally read Yakitate!! Japan through scanlations from the site SnoopyCool. Scanlations don't tend to care much about localizing to demographics and generally try to keep the translation as close to the Japanese as possible. Also, it's easy to put very lengthy liner notes all over the place. Viz's translations generally try to avoid forcing their readers to have a strong background in the Japanese language or culture. Translation/Localization is very tricky business and I have no problem with Viz's approach to it, although sometimes I feel that approach comes at the cost of charm. I did not feel this way about Viz's Yakitate!! Japan translation. I thought they showed a lot of consideration in their translation and were able to keep the heart of the story and jokes.

For example... in the Viz translation one gag relies on a horse screaming out "Mag-Neigh-Ficent" after eating some bread (seriously, read this manga.) The original gag was the horse shouting "U~mai", which means delicious. However, the "u" sound is written with the character for horse instead of the homonym character that's supposed to be used. I feel this is a good example of keeping the heart of the joke, but making it easier for American culture to understand... which I think fits their goal for localization. Personally, I prefer more direct translations (like Snoopy Cool's), but I still really enjoyed Viz's localization.

(As the series goes on, the wordplay gets increasingly ridiculous to the point I think it barely makes sense in Japanese. For a lot of these jokes at the end, the Viz English Translation seems to give up trying to localize the joke and instead give a direct translation. I don't have any problem with this... as I said, those end jokes are a HUGE stretch even in Japanese.)

As for the cover art... I really hate Viz's cover art department. The spines for this series simply don't match, which really bugs me because it looks messy on a bookshelf (yes, I'm picky like that.) As you can see, after Volume 18 Viz switched from their Ugly "V" emblem to an uglier "S" logo.

Somewhat surprisingly, Viz does a thorough job of keeping the original Japanese book's special right cover insert bonus... the cosplay drawings of the main heroine Tsukino. They place these on the back cover. I guess this is really just an example of "sex sells" and not an example of Viz's cover art team having any attention to detail. (Heh heh... I speak harshly, but it's all in fun!)

vs.

That's all the non-spoiler stuff I want to say. The rest of this "review" contain light spoilers for the second half of the series. I don't give any details, but I discuss my opinion on the direction the story takes.

SPOILER WARNING ALERT: Contains Spoilers for Yakitate!! Japan

I just kind of want to vent a bit. The second half of the series is much, much weaker than the first part. First off, the art is less detailed. Second, most of the jokes stop making sense and the originally creative reactions become ridiculous. The reactions go from skirting the edge of reality to full blown deep end impossible. Third, the story changes from an interesting mashup of genres to a very straightforward battle manga. And finally, the characters end up becoming one-dimensional caricatures of their former selves. I don't think the series becomes bad... it just isn't as good as in the first half. In short, Yakitate!! Japan 1-14 is like Dragonball whereas Yakitate!! Japan 15-26 is like Dragonball Z.

I do have one huge problem with the second half. That's the treatment of Kawachi. He turns into a pure gag character with no redeeming qualities or cool moments. As ridiculous as the final boss turns out to be and as heartless as I feel the author ultimately treats Azuma's opponents, nothing is more disappointing than the character Kawachi became.

I'd understand stopping after Volume 14 if you're not a huge fan of the series by then. The events ending that volume are as good as the series gets. But even with the decline in quality, I still mostly enjoyed the final arc. Yakitate!! Japan is a great series and is worth attention.

Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes

Crimson Echoes is a Chrono Trigger fan game. Its background is important to understanding what it is. There's a lot of middle-school drama surrounding the game, so I'll try to be unbiased in my explanation. Basically, ZeaLity of the Chrono Compendium organized a project to create a fan based sequel to Chrono Trigger. The goal was to make a fun game that was true to both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. They would also further develop romhacking tools targeting Chrono Trigger.

They worked very hard for years, despite many problems during development. Some alpha copies and demos were released into the wild. Occasionally, groups used those releases to work on their own versions completely independent of the Chrono Compendium, such as the team behind Frozen Echoes. Right before Crimson Echoes was ready to be released (they say at 98% done), Square allegedly served them a Cease and Desist, so the Chrono Compendium removed as much Crimson Echoes related materials as they could from the internet and the game was never released. The only relics of the project were a youtube playthrough of the 98% completed game and some development notes. Until a year later, when a rom that built upon the 98% Crimson Echoes build was released. The 98% build can be played all the way through, my guess is that balancing issues and small touch-ups are the only 2% remaining. This blog entry is a review/discussion of that build.

Crimson Echoes is a very big game that can easily last 20 Hours. Its odd history begs the question... is this leak of Crimson Echoes worth playing? My opinion? Only if you really, really enjoy the Chrono Trigger game style and are willing to put up with a lot of pain for a chance at some new adventures. If you haven't played Chrono Trigger, don't even think about playing this. The rest of this review are my thoughts of the game and should help you decide if you want to try it. This review is story spoiler free.

The gameplay of Crimson Echoes is the same as Chrono Trigger, which is great. The battle engine is the same, feel of exploration is the same, the effects and music are the same. The "new content" it offers are some new enemies (and a new, well-made, big boss), lots of new (generally very well made) maps, some new techs/weapons/armor, and of course a brand new story. Crimson Echoes is best described as high grade fanfiction + good ol' Chrono Trigger engine.

Good ol' Chrono Trigger engine is almost enough to make it unquestionably worth sinking the time into this game. I nostalgia'd all over the place and enjoyed re-finding characters and seeing the updated world the Crimson Echoes team created. But the things Crimson Echoes does wrong made it almost unplayable.

Things that I've generally seen complained about: Crono speaks. Frog doesn't use an accent. The game balancing is horrible and only gets worse as the game goes on.

Character dialogue didn't bother me a bit and the Crimson Echoes teams rational behind their decisions makes a lot of sense. This story is fanfiction, but it's well thought out fanfiction. It does of good job of serving as a heavy handed bridge between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, providing answers for any lingering questions after playing Chrono Cross. You may or may not like the writing (I think people get overly critical over fan works) and story or devices (there are nuclear missiles in the game at some point), but I thought it was fine. From what I could tell, the creators of the game cared very much about and showed a lot of respect towards the Chrono games.

My problem with the story is that I didn't feel it meshed well with the gameplay. In my opinion, Chrono Trigger is a fast paced adventure-y game and Crimson Echoes is generally not that. There are occasionally huge walls of text. There are very analytical sections. The time travel mechanics are more thoroughly dissected / complicated. I feel the wordiness interrupts the "fun" feel of Chrono Trigger. I think that lots of things are best left up to the imagination (especially with "magic"), but the Crimson Echoes team tried to explain everything in pretty great detail. It makes the game seem like less of a Chrono Trigger adventure to me.

While some story arcs were awesome, there were many story arcs that did not work well in a game. There would be chapters that were very short and consisted of very little actual game play. Towards the middle of the game, I often got very bored. I did want to see how the main story resolved and fight the main villains of the game, but I felt I was doing a lot of pointless and boring quests. There are also sections that split up the characters. I hated those sections, especially when they were solo character sections.

Which leads to the huge problem with Crimson Echoes: The difficulty. I'd call this game impossible without the use of emulators (save states) and hacks. The missing 2% probably mostly referred to fixing balancing. Enemies have WAY too much life and your attacks do WAY too little damage. Getting techs requires WAY too much SP. The game starts out pretty bad and gets worse and worse. The only saving grace was that running away from battle is very easy.


I was playing for the gameplay, not the story (otherwise I could just watch the youtube videos or read the plot points at http://crimsonechoes.com). I wanted a small challenge in the game (so no level 99 or invincibility hacks for me), but I did not want to spend hours grinding. Here's what I did:

The Chrono Compendium originally had a large section about how to romhack Chrono Trigger, complete with some very good tools. However, that section was removed after cease and desist letter. But the section is still available via the Internet Wayback Machine. Any links to tools that don't work on that site can easily be google'd.

If you want to know exactly how I modified the game:

1. Gave myself an absurd amount of money and kept myself fully stocked with items. You can see this youtube video for an easy to understand explanation on how to modify memory. Find the value representing your money and max that out~ (Alternatively, you can use Chrono Shop Editor to make all items costs 1G.)

2. Used Chrono Tweaker to modify stats. I basically went through and halved the life of every enemy. I also edited enemies to give at least double the SP.

3. I'd reference the youtube playthrough occasionally to get through puzzles that I don't think were very well designed, such as the drum mini game.

With these changes, the game was pretty fun and, for the most part, I enjoyed playing through the game.

Well, these were my thoughts on this well made fan sequel. I hope I helped you decide how you want to treat the game.

BTW, here's a link to the 98% build ROM: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CR6ZTVXG

Angel Densetsu

Recently I read through the manga Angel Densetsu by Norihiro Yagi, the author of Claymore. Even though the author is the same as Claymore, the story is totally different. It's a basically episodic comic about the misadventures due to misunderstandings about a boy name Yamishi, who has the heart of an Angel, but a face like a Demon. Everyone who sees him think he's evil incarnate, but he really isn't. It's a comedy series that relies heavily on unexpected coincedences. It is surprisingly done well and I found it pretty funny in short doses. So, I definitely recommend it.

Shin Angyo Onishi

This week I read the manga/manhwa Shin Angyo Onishi. It's a manga written by a Korean author, with art by a Korean artist, but it was published in Japan. It wasn't the best manga I've ever read, but it was a pretty good read. If I had to give a one line description, I'd describe it as "Cowboy Bebop in a fantasy feudal Korea." Probably the best part of the manga for me was that the story took many of its elements from Korean history and mythology, which the author explained in detail. Kind of like Nobuhiro Watsuki's commentary during Rurouni Kenshin. If that sounds like your type of thing, you should definitely give this manga a try.