My Rurouni Kenshin Collection

So... 2011 is the 15th Anniversary of Rurouni Kenshin. Kenshin is, without doubt, my absolute favorite manga. In celebration of the 15 years, there's been a bunch of stuff announced and released (BTW, the PSP game was pretty bad, I would not suggest picking it up if you want a good Kenshin game. Go for the PS2 game or the awesome PSX rpg.) On top of all the releases and games, a new anime project has been greenlit. It still remains to be seen what the project is, but I'm crossing my fingers that the Jinchuu arc will finally be animated.

Anyway, all the Kenshin stuff this year made me want to do a post about it... so I decided to post pictures of most of my Kenshin stuff. I'm pretty proud (and simultaneously embarrassed) of the stuff I've collected, so here goes.


I picked up a set of the original Japanese tankouban as they were released, oh so many years ago. I also picked up the info books, Kenshin Hiden and Kenshin Kaden. The thin book is a guidebook to the PSX Kenshin RPG game (again, really fun game with an interesting battle system.) The Shonen Jumps on the left contain (29) the last color chapter, (43) the last chapter, and (3-4) Yahiko's Sakabatou.


I also picked up the original Viz translations as they came out. I wish they tried to match the Japanese spines... and I REALLY wish they didn't change that bottom Viz logo after book 17. I also have the VizBig version Volume 9 because it has the Yahiko's Sakabatou and Haru Ni Sakura chapters not available elsewhere. Kenshin Profiles and Kenshin Novel are in the shot... but those were both pretty disappointing purchases. You can see Busou Renkin to the right there... it was another good Watsuki series. I used to have Gun Blaze West, but I got rid of it because it was really, really bad.




It seems somewhat ridiculous to have three sets of the same manga... but I do and I don't regret it. My last set of the Kenshin Manga is the Taiwanese edition of the Kenshin Complete (Kanzenban) books. This is an awesome set and was much cheaper than the identical Japanese prints. The books themselves are larger than the original edition and use higher quality paper. On top of that, the color pages are kept intact. Watsuki created new covers for all the books and did fun reimaginings of all the characters under the dust jackets. You can find high quality scans of the covers, color pages, and reimaginined characters at this site. I collected the scans and resized them at a lower resolution. You can download the entire batch zipped up over here, if the low resolution doesn't bother you.




I've got some other stuff too. An old gashapon set, the VHS Memorial Box for a special final recap episode of the anime, the PSX RPG, and a bunch of postcards and other images (not all pictured.)

And, that's all I've got. If you're interested in finding other Kenshin stuff, head over to http://the-oro.com. They've got all the info you'd wish for as well as an awesome collection of images.

3D Dot Game Heroes

So... 3D Dot Game Heroes was an okay game. You can get it for pretty cheap now. I played it last year and finished the main quest. I'm a huge fan of the 2D Zelda Games, so I thought I would love 3D Dot Game Heroes. In the end... I was actually kind of disappointed. It feels to me like 3D Dot Game Heroes is an homage to the first Zelda on the NES, whereas I liked the worlds and feelings of the SNES Link to the Past and Gameboy Link's Awakening. I also felt the game design was a lot less tight than a Nintendo title. And although I loved the idea of a "3D Pixel" game, it turned out I wasn't a fan of the art direction and really would have preferred a sprite game. Still, I enjoyed my play through it, I just had no desire to do anything past simply completing the game with the bare minimum of collectables.

The one thing that I thought was really great in this game was the block editor. You can design the hero character avatar you use in the block editor. You can also download and use other people's creation, although it's been so long that live links are harder to find.

Here's a link to some popular characters from other franchises that I thought were done well. I didn't make any of these, I just found them on the net. There are Link avatars made by Gamespy, an avatar of Cave Story's Quote by DesTwo from gamefaqs, and an avatar of Tina/Terra from Final Fantasy 6 (which was Final Fantasy 3 on the SNES.) Terra was pretty tough to find, I finally got her off some Japanese web site. I wasn't able to find links to other Final Fantasy VI/III characters though. Oh well.

Download Character Models

Enjoy!

Fate/Zero Translation Complete

The Fate/Zero translation is complete! You can read the whole thing over at baka-tsuki. If you like Japanese fantasy, it's well worth reading. Make sure to thank the team over at Beast's Lair for their work!

If you'd like, here's a Fate/Zero pack I put together. It includes all 4 novels in PDF form (I got the files from bakabt) and the Fate/Zero artbooks at a decent resolution (which I resized from this pack of Fate Night artbooks). It does not include the translation of "Heart of Freaks", which was a side story about Kiritsugi's past and was not written by Urobochi Gen. The files I collected are zipped up and uploaded to mediafire.

Download the Fate/Zero Pack

Fate/Zero is a prequel story to the visual novel game Fate/Stay Night. Fate/Zero can be read without playing the game first. The novels cover the disastrous fourth Mage War only alluded to by Fate/Stay Night. As such, it's a tragedy. The novels are written by Urobuchi Gen, who collaborated with Kinoko Nasu, the creator of Fate Night. It's a gritty magic tournament story with great battle scenes, but the real magic of the story to me is the characterization. Urobuchi Gen does a good job of portraying the characters and showing why they make the decisions they make. I'm horrible at reviews, so I'll leave it at that.


And if you didn't know, Fate/Zero was adapted into a 26 episode anime by the awesome ufotable.  It's been fan translated by the folks at Unlimited Translation Works.  The anime is definitely worth the watch and there's fun bonus content in the blu-ray releases.

As for Fate/Stay Night... it's the only Visual Novel I've ever made it all the way through and I highly recommend it. A Visual Novel is kind of like a choose your own adventure story with lots of images and sound (music and character dialog), except there aren't that many choices to make. It is very lengthy and probably comparable to a full length novel if you do all the paths. There's also an anime (which I don't recommend), a movie (which I don't recommend), a Visual Novel sequel (which I never played, but doesn't sound interesting), and some PSP games.

Streets of Rage Fan Remake

(Here's the link to the project's homepage.)

Ah, this is pretty cool.

Streets of Rage is an old Sega series. It's an arcade brawler... you wander down linear levels beating up sprites until you fight the stage boss, ideally with two players. This genre probably mostly appeals to those who grew up on this game, but this game in particular is pretty accessible to anyone. Anyway, this group has been working on a remake for eight years and finally finished. It's a remake, not a port or an emulation.

They combined the best things about all the Streets of Rage games, then added a ton of customization and special unlockables. Boasting tons of stages, characters, enemies, and music as well as cheat options and a stage maker... they've poured lots and lots of love into this project.

There's so much I can say about this project.. but this review does a much better job than I would. All I have left to say is that the team made a great homage... it's really fun and nostalgic. Download a copy while you can!

Relic NT

Hi, I'm Relic.NT (you can pronounce it Relic Enne Tee) and I'll be taking over this blog from my friend. He wasn't using it anyway and I like the name. Errant Cluster... just sounds cool. Anyway, the content will be the same... random links and posts about my geeky interests. But I'll probably be posting pretty frequently. So look forward to it~

Samurai Shadow Dance

A really cool stylized samurai performance. The project a shadow thing that the swordsman fights. It ends up like an anime fight, except with one live actor.

Evangelion