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In memoriam: Manga Week, Pt. 1
28 February 07 | 13:32
Last week was Manga Week, and I feel it is my duty to eulogize it.
By "manga week," I mean that new volumes were published for an unusually large number of the few manga series I actually bother to keep up with. I really don't read much manga, because I'm picky about how I spend my precious spare time, I detest anime, and it's pretty tough to find manga that doesn't just feel like anime in print. So when four volumes of my different series come out at once, it deserves memorialization. At least in a cursory sense.
The Drifting Classroom Vol. 4
Viz | Kazuo Umezu | ten bucks
I first became acquainted with The Drifting Classroom several years ago when someone, I forget who, posted a link to scans of a doujin called Azumanga Daoih Drifting Classroom, which inexplicably placed the heartwarming cast of Kiyohiko Azuma's four-panel comic in a dark post-apocalyptic scenario which involved a great deal of death and dismemberment. Bewildered, I poked around the Internet (back in the golden age before people thought it was the height of cleverness to call it the "Intertubes") until I determined that the comic in question was a mashup of Azumanga with a classic horror manga whose name it had co-opted. So while this discovery didn't make the doujin seem like a better idea, it did at least provide some handy context.
Obviously, when Viz decided to translate the original series, I jumped at it -- partly to satisfy my curiosity, but also because I'm a closed-minded old fart who hates most manga and clings to the belief that the best work mostly lays in the past. By that logic, the older the manga, the better. When someone finally brings over a Genji Scrolls collection, I'm gonna be so all over that. I'm not sure I can actually describe The Drifting Classroom as "good," though -- it's much too harrowing for that. It gets an explicit content warning not for sex or language but because it places an elementary school building full of children into a desolate wasteland where quite a lot of the cast freaks out and starts with the killin'. Little kids being hacked into chunks isn't really all-ages type material, even if it is in black-and-white and they're probably just using chocolate syrup instead of blood.
Volume 4 is actually the least-harrowing chapter to date, but that's like saying a mild heart attack is only sort of cause for concern. By this point in the series, all the adults (read: teachers) have managed to die horribly except the psychotic janitor dude, who's merely gone mad. So it's up to the kids to take the reins and prevent the school from transforming into a large scale Lord of the Flies, minus the skewered pig heads of course. Not many pigs to be found in a bleak wasteland of sand. The creation of a de facto government provides the first respite the series has seen -- several pages in which no one runs, shouts or dies! Quite a breakthrough.
Granted, the idyll is quickly shattered when the school is attacked by a giant invincible lobster-beast, and even once the kids figure out how to overcome it an even more horrifying threat rears its tiny, tiny head. So basically it's like a sitcom where the status quo is restored at the end of every episode. Just keep in mind that the difference between Drifting Classroom and Full House, besides a merciful lack of Bob Saget or the Olsen creatures, is that the status quo is heartpounding terror and limbless first graders bleeding out on the floor rather than warm family togetherness. Too bad, really. Full House could have been so much more interesting.
Drifting Classroom is really a strange beast to be sitting alongside store shelves full of Naruto and Strawberry Milk Tea and whatever else kids are buying these days (or at least reading for free while sitting obnoxiously on the floor of Borders' manga aisle). It's awkwardly-drawn -- Umezu is hardly the most fluid illustrator, and his work looks incredibly dated and stiff -- and it's unrelentingly grim, full of unspeakable horrors visited upon a few hundred children and their ill-fated guardians. Unlike most manga, though, it doesn't glamorize the violence, and while it may give the youthful cast a little too much credit for scholarliness (the makeshift student government is patterned after what the sixth graders learned in Social Studies -- whatever. I refuse to believe even Japanese kids are that dedicated to their stidies) it's still a compelling read. For one thing, we're about 700 pages into the story and it's all happened in the space of a day or two, yet the pacing is breakneck and there's a real question of how things are going to turn out. A school packed with hungry children is stranded in an endless, dead world, and there's only so much food and water to go around. It's difficult to imagine the story ending with everyone slowly starving to death, though, given its breathless rush of events. So I'll stick around if only to see what fate does befall the drifting classroom. And whether or not Chiyo-chan puts in an apperance. Maybe she'll airlift everyone out via pigtail express.
Yeah, you know the routine. It's Monday, I did a video thing. No need to gripe about the lack of in-depth game footage, I freaking know already. It was a rough weekend for me. I need a video slave to record this stuff for me, and no foolin' about that.
I've also bumped the weekly Retro Roundup to Mondays. Obscure games are praised! The Big Lebowski is referenced! 75% thumbs-up provided! Have a cookie.
Also, Sharkey resurrected some of my old artwork for a completely boss new feature by Nadia. You should read it. Go on, it's free.
This week: I'm actually going to blog about stuff. Really.
There is a certain delicious irony in the fact that the first game that has made me happy to own the tragically expensive PlayStation 3 is an $8 download. Based on a free Flash game. (I'm pretty sure that's irony in the dictionary sense, too, not the fake Alanis Morisette definition.)
And really, flOw isn't much of a game -- more like a very pretty, very relaxing toy. My girlfriend pegged it: "This is such a game for stoners." Sharkey calls it training wheels for Spore. I'm sure someone out there was like LOL ELECTROPLANKTON at some point. And all of these disparagements are probably correct! But it's so lovely and mellow; I approve. And I'm not even a stoner.
But that doesn't make the curiously sparse and uninviting PS3 library any less of a bitter pill to be swallowed. Sony's apparent apathy to its new console has been baffling, at least until this morning when I had an epiphany in the shower (no, that's not as dirty as it sounds) and realized that the PS3 represents the diametric opposite of the PlayStation 2. The PS2 famously used its inexpensive DVD playback capablities as a trojan horse to sneak into many gamers' home and crush the Dreamcast, and there was suspicion that Sony intended to do precisely the same with Blu-ray. This was widely regarded as a boneheaded idea, since the demand for Blu-ray is substantially lower than interest in DVD had been, and the Blu-ray drive makes the system insanely pricey.
But that's the difference between the two; Sony doesn't want to use Blu-ray to leverage sales of PS3, it wants to use the PS3 as a way to inflate the Blu-ray installed base. Which also seems fairly boneheaded, but in a completely different way. This is probably not a major revelation to anyone else, but it's news to me. Shut up. I've been too busy to pay attention lately, alright?
I threw our friendly neighborhood news editor for a loop today when I told him that I'm completely insane for Crackdown -- in fact, I spent pretty much the entirety of Saturday and Sunday playing. I'm down to just a few more missions before I've finished the game, but I need to start over. I've been playing a pre-release review copy and keep unlocking all these achievements that won't transfer to my real account, and that's annoying. Luckily, I don't have the slightest reservation about starting a new game from scratch, because it will be a completely different experience from what I've already played. Such is the power of an insanely open-ended game.
Luke, I suspect, was surprised because I'm the classics-and-portables guy at 1UP. We all tend to get pigeonholed, I guess, and I've been my own agent in locking myself into my speciality niche because at the time they weren't really getting their due. That's not so much the case now, but I'm happy to keep working with handheld games and lauding the old stuff. Because, really, modern console games do get bogged down with an awful lot of BS, and I'm a man with far too little leisure time to deal with that kind of nonsense.
But Crackdown -- there's a game that cuts through the crap with a fiery knife. If you've played the demo, you have a pretty good idea of what the full game is like. Which should be enough to make you realize that it's pretty freaking awesome. I even took time out of my holiday to write something about it. (The thing I alluded to earlier. I actually did finish it, shockingly.)
The thing that struck me most about Crackdown is that it gives me the same sense of exhilaration and vertigo that Jumping Flash! had -- you fly high, high into the air, recklessly high, but it's a rush and you never feel out of control. Why has it taken 12 years for someone to capture the essence that made a first-generation PlayStation game good? I don't know, but Crackdown has it.
The second thing that struck me was that it reminds me why I liked Grand Theft Auto III so much -- it offers an unbelievable sense of freedom and versatility lacking in the series' most recent entries. No one can deny that San Andreas was a colossal achievement, but the fun was diluted by Issues more often than not. And while GTAIII had its share of problems, there was enough newness about it that you didn't mind.
And even though it was a smaller game, it was a lot less limiting -- the world didn't automatically reset when you initated a mission the way GTA games do now, so you could stack the odds in your favor. One of my favorite GTAIII moments was an early mission in Chinatown where you have to take down a street vendor who makes a break for it as soon as you come after him. After failing my first few attempts, I decided to cheat and leave a damaged car in his path. Then, when he cheesed it, I'm pumped lead into the car so that it exploded as he ran past. Instant win. Try to do that in a newer GTA, though, and you can't. Rather than rewarding players for coming up with clever ways to achieve their goals, Vice City and San Andreas expect you to work within the limits Rockstar sets as mission parameters -- which is silly, since it flies in the face of the game's open-endedness.
Not Crackdown, though. It pretty much lets you go to town on the bad guys however you want. And I appreciate that fact, and hope Real-Time Worlds builds on it in sequels rather than stripping it away.
So yeah, I hope you will join me soon on XBLA as I blow the almighty crap out of things. And as for the Halo beta: pfft.
Seeing as it's Presidents' Day and all, I thought to myself, why not do something patriotic? Then I decided that would be too much trouble and did a Bonus Stage about G.I. Joe instead. Apparently this one is only for people 18 or older? I guess Sharkey said too many cusses or something. Cobra Commander would not approve.
This episode feels a little lackluster after last week's, unfortunately. I guess there actually is something to be said for having faces to link to the voices after all. Now I need to rethink this whole stupid thing.
I also think I'll be posting something akin to an actual article later. But probably not, now that I've announced my intentions. I've jinxed it, just you watch.
(Please imagine this post is being read aloud by Patrick Stewart with a Jerry Goldsmith composition playing in the background to unleash its terrifying true potential.)
For about five minutes yesterday, I was pretty happy to hear that Konami has a new arcade shooter in the works -- it's nice to know the company can do something that isn't DDR, and Konami shooters tend to be a lot more enjoyable than the identical bullet hell clones that most publishers are content to spew these days. (Spew like hellish bullets, even.) But then I learned that the shooter's name would be Otomedius, a portmanteau of "otome" (or "maiden" in Japanese) and Gradius.
"So it's either going to be sleazy and pandering, or else it's going to be goofy and ridiculous," I opined to cubicle pal Matt Leone.
"I don't see why it can't be both," he said with a shrug. And then we found the first official artwork.
Good thing I am not a gambling man or I would totally owe him a Coke right now.
On a completely unrelated (I hope) note, Talking Time now has a new public challenge forum: Hardcore Awesome Wednesdays, which is home to a loose coalition of people who would rather gather online and blow each other up than watch American Idol. And who can blame them? I'll probably join in on those rare and precious occasions in which I have free time, so stop in for code-swapping and check back each Wednesday night. Assuming everyone stays interested for more than a week or two.
Another week, another Retro Roundup, and all the baggage that represents. I don't mean "baggage" in the sense of "odious personal issues" or whatever, though, I just mean it carries around the Retronauts podcast in a quaint little carpet bag for a dose of Reconstruction Era nostalgia. It's tough to get more old-school than that.
And I never bothered to link to this week's Bonus Stage, because I'm painfully self-conscious about it. I hate seeing myself on camera looking all pale and fat and uncomfortable, and that's basically the entirety of the new episode. But life hates me, so naturally my quiet effort to passively sweep it under the carpet has been utterly thwarted; this is far and away the most popular episode to date. So with 100,000 views already inflicted upon it, I guess I might as well give in to the inevitable and join the linkfest.
Sorry. Next week is 100% real-person free, I promise.
Please train your writers to recognize the difference between "desperately trying to explain" and "flamebaiting with tongue in cheek." Honestly. And maybe you could do something about your print-publication fetishization. The neat thing about the Internet is that layouts don't have to be constrained by the limitations of physical media!
Anyway. I've much more recently written a thing, and it's making people far less angry than I had feared -- although unlike the FFVII piece it wasn't actually intended to annoy but rather to redeem. Apparently the bulk of gamers are on board with this perception of Sonic the Hedgehog as gaming's Marlon Brando (a one-time bad boy turned into a sad-sack self-caricature) so that's good. Now if only people would follow their hearts with their wallets and stop buying crappy Sonic games, maybe Sega would actually pay attention.
This week's Bonus Stage hasn't gone up yet, but for once I've missed a recurring deadline and it wasn't my fault. I had the episode wrapped up Friday but there's been some manner of complication on GameVideos' part. Sadly, posting videogame boobies really is better for traffic than Bonus Stage, which makes me feel awfully dopey.
Maybe I shouldn't have asked them to blur out the breasts (seen briefly on the back of the box of Hot Slots for Famicom) in this episode.
And speaking of naked girl parts! This week's One Credit Challenge (hosted by djSyndrome) is Kid Icarus. If you think you're completely rad, get a Talking Time account and chime in with the results of your own no-continue, no-save-state playthrough of the game in the appropriate thread. This is hardcore honor system stuff, so don't be a jerk.
It wasn't that strange a query. The restaurant in question serves impressively fresh sashimi, but half the time their cups and bowls have a slightly bleachy odor to them. I sniffed my own bowl hesistantly. And yeah, beneath the sweetly salty tang of miso was a hint of soap.
"I don't understand why their dishes always smell like this," she complained. "It's nice to know they're so clean, but the smell is disgusting."
"Maybe it's a language problem," I offered. "In Japanese, S-O-U-P would be pronounced 'soap,' so I can understand the confusion."
Her silent response suggested she was either amused but pretending not to be or else she simply wasn't amused. I chose to believe the former.
"Or," I added, "it could have been the ambiguity of Ls and Rs in Japanese. Maybe the recipe called for 'rye' but they added 'lye' instead."
She shook her head. "You'll keep this up all night, won't you?"
I held my breath and sipped at my soapy soup. "Probably."
Epilogue: Then we went home and she gave me a copy of Snakes on a Plane as an early Valentine's gift. Best date ever.
Did you know? My secretest shame of all is that my favorite ongoing bit of videogame writing these days isn't on 1UP, or in fact connected to any Ziff Davis property. Nope, it's actually @ Play, GameSetWatch's completely incredible biweekly column dedicated to all things Rogue. I have about zero patience for Rogue and Nethack, but I find them endlessly fascinating in the complexity and nuance that belies their simplistic appearance, so these exhaustive looks into the minutiae of genre are like voyeurism for nerds.
Well, I suppose plain ol' voyeurism is your average nerd's favorite flavor of voyeurism, but you get the point.
As today's Thursday, my own weekly ongoing concern has also been updated, along with our usual podcast. Retro Roundup isn't as interesting to me as @ Play, but mostly because it's more familiar material. Also, I think it's generally harder to find your own work gripping, period. Maybe next week will be more fascinating, though, given that our Retronauts topic for 2/15 is the Commodore 64. And to my recollection I've never actually played a C64 game. Will it be interesting or simply a train wreck? I give it even odds.
Meanwhile, I wish I had been responsible for this.
There's a certain charm in the way that life is determined to slowly dismantle all my fond childhood memories. The latest victim? The ending to Super Mario Bros. 2.
Man, that was such a great ending, you know? A big ol' animated cartoon-like Mario snoozing quietly as he dreamed of his journey through SubCon. The graphics were impressive for the NES, and the adventure-within-a-dream made perfect sense within the context of the plot, so it wasn't one of those insulting Dallas-like "everything was just fake" cop-outs.
But alas, all good things must come to a grimly deconstructed end. In this case, the damage has been done by my upstairs neighbor, a totally nice dude in his fifties by the name of Glen. Having Glen for a neighbor is great, because he's one of those rare souls who rents but is still conscientious and thoughtful about it. The problem is that he looks exactly like Mario, to the point where Ron Jeremy in overalls is just an embarrassingly poor imitation. In fact, Glen wears overalls all the time. White overalls! Sometimes with red shirts! Granted, he curses like a sailor, but otherwise it's totally uncanny.
Unfortunately, he snores. Snores like you wouldn't believe. Every night I sit in my room and can actually hear his snores coming from the apartment upstairs. Hear them over the sound of whatever video I'm watching or game I'm playing. It's pretty intense.
And it means that whenever I see the ending of SMB2, I imagine Mario shaking the walls with adenoidal fury. Somehow, the charm is rather lost.
But enough of me struggling to pad a minor anecdote into a full update! In more exciting news -- no, wait, I mean indescribably unexciting news -- I've reviewed both Lunar Knights and Capcom Puzzle World. I'm sure the disparity in scores will do nothing to dissuade people who are convinced that I have it out for PSP games. Because of course scores are determined entirely by perceived personal biases and have nothing to do with the fact that Puzzle World is probably the lamest classics compilation I've seen in years.
Another Monday, another Bonus Stage. Seriously, I'm absolutely determined to keep to a weekly pace for both this and the Retronauts podcast. Especially since that meticulously-planned ToastyFrog story turned out to be the biggest flop of my existence before even reaching week two.
(The problem is that I'm completely incapable of writing fiction, which is existentially distressing given that I've always kind of hoped to be an author.)
After that realization set in with sickening certainty, it was a matter of either turning to other projects or turning to hard liquor; since I tend to feel a bit nauseous when I drink I figured I'd give the other projects option a shot first. Anyway, yes, I know, we're all sick of Castlevania. I just thought this would be a nice tie-in with certain recent announcements. Don't worry, though -- after this week, Retronauts will let that particular series lay fallow for the rest of the year.
Also, much as I hate to shill for overhyped Web 2.0 ventures, you can help convince the powers-that-be that Bonus Stage is actually a worthwhile investment of my time and energy (rather than an excuse for me to slack of and do something frivolous and fun) if you Digg them. (Retronauts | Bonus Stage) Ugh, now I feel all dirty.
See, I held off on buying a copy of Rondo of Blood for PC Engine Duo for almost a decade, always confident that eventually Konami would do the right thing and port it to a system where it could be acquired for a reasonable price. But as the years went by, the chances of such a thing happening became increasingly slim -- especially after Koji Igarashi all but said, "Yeah, we can't really do it." So last year at PAX I broke down and paid far too much for a copy of the original game as a stunt for a segment of the 1UP Show. (Which segment, tragically, never actually saw the light of day, but never mind that.)
A month later, I learned of Dracula X Chronicles' existence. Coming so soon after a decade's worth of restrained finally broke down? Yeah, there's no question. DXC was summoned into existence by the same ironic force of nature that prevents it from raining until you stop taking your umbrella to work and ensures that the grocery line speeds up only after you hop over to the shorter line. So just think. If I hadn't broken down and spent a few hundred bucks on a game and the system to play it on, we'd never be getting this remake.
You're welcome.
Also, it's a Thursday, which means this week's Retro Roundup is up alongside a new Retronauts. The only thing of note this time around is that the Nintendo hivemind has stirred in anger to rebuke me for giving the thumbs-down to Mario Kart 64. But it's simple common sense, folks. Mario Kart 64 is good, but there's already a better MK sequel playable on Wii (the overly-punctuated Double Dash!!). And sooner or later, the Super NES original will make its way to VC for less dough. Either way, MK64 feels like settling for second-best.
Oh yeah. Also, I apologize for the fact that the Dracula X Chronicles preview is probably to sloppiest, dopiest thing I've ever written. I'm not actually sure what I was thinking when I put it together. Clearly some sort of narcotic was slipped into my beverage. Anyway, all you need to know is that the graphics look great on the PSP screen, and while the animation seems off the play control feels spot-on.
I first became acquainted with The Drifting Classroom several years ago when someone, I forget who, posted a link to scans of a doujin called Azumanga Daoih Drifting Classroom, which inexplicably placed the heartwarming cast of Kiyohiko Azuma's four-panel comic in a dark post-apocalyptic scenario which involved a great deal of death and dismemberment. Bewildered, I poked around the Internet (back in the golden age before people thought it was the height of cleverness to call it the "Intertubes") until I determined that the comic in question was a mashup of Azumanga with a classic horror manga whose name it had co-opted. So while this discovery didn't make the doujin seem like a better idea, it did at least provide some handy context.
