Type-Moon Special

Yikes, I’ve been gone again for a little while, eh? I’ve been meaning to crank out a post for nearly a week, but well, it has been busy in real-life due to me starting a new job and having to get used to that.

Anyway, the big news for me recently (though I’m late on the bandwagon) is that there will shortly be a brand new TYPE MOON game being released, Mahou Tsukai no Yoru (Witch on the Holy Night):

It may not be immediately obvious, but the above is everyone’s favourite Beam Spamming, Suitcase wielding, ‘Sugoi’ Sensei, Aoko.

The game is actually therefore covering a pseudo backstory effort for Tsukihime, showing her in her magic academy (aka. Teenager) days, and specifically, it seems, showing her interactions with another pair of characters, Soichiro and Alice.

Apparently, its also before she got the blazing red hair, but given what else happens in the Nasuverse, hair colour changes due to magic seem to be fairly reasonable (see Sakura from FSN, and Akiha from Tsukihime).

Our male protagonist, Soichiro.

Though part of me, upon first hearing about an Aoko based game, wondered whether or not they would have her as a protagonist (like Rin was in the prologue of Fate), another part laughs at the silliness of such an idea since it would likely give little variety for choice in a good visual novel, eh? (If you don’t get it, this would be due the fact that a sample choice for Aoko would be: You see a door, what do you do? A) Beam Spam B) Kick the door down and Beam Spam C) Beam Spam the wall and step through the hole.)

Our other Heroine, Alice

It interests me that she appears to wearing a Burial Agency dress similar to Ciel’s in this image. Though I could be over-analysing that. All that we do know about this Alice is that she is from a long magical line, and will obviously play a big part in the story. There are some thoughts floating around that Soichiro and Alice is already a canon coupling, but since this is a game about an Aoko primarily, I doubt its quite as straight and easy as that.

And a uniformed Aoko

Though I could be wrong, Aoko’s uniform also kind of resembles Rin’s, though with sleeves rather than a waistcoat affair, and the skirt seems to be more beige than black, though this could be the lighting?

What will be most interesting, in my opinion, is that we should perhaps get to see some of the reasons for the enmity between the Aozaki sisters. Given that the Kara No Kyokai movies have now completed and we’ve seen alot of Touko’s modern day appearance, it’ll be nice to see what the background there is and what caused Aoko and Touko to come to literal blows, and also perhaps how Aoko gained the name of ‘Blue’, besides the easy colour of eyes (and lasers?) theory.

And there are of course plenty of oppertunities for Aoko to be cute, I suppose, as above.

Though we have been informed as a certainty that this game is finally non-H. Given Nasu’s hilarious writing in the porno scenes, this is probably a great choice on TYPE-MOON’s part (no really, if you’ve read the translations, you’ll never be able to view meat and mollusks in the same way again… the man seriously cannot write an erotic sentence. So much so that you end up with visual dissonance given how amazingly awesome and hot the CG by Takeuchi’s team is…)

We also know for sure that this one is a bit shorter than the epic-hueg Tsukihime and rather-huge FSN, as there are no multiple routes to speak of, just the one. But then, I guess this is to be expected, since we’re talking mainly a backstory effort that can’t really conflict with the various facts already established in Kara no Kyoukai and Tsukihime.

Anyway, for many true TYPE MOON fanatics, I suppose I’m merely regurgitating information, but oh well, its still an interesting time as we’ve not seen an actual VN from them since Fate/Hollow Ataraxia.

I mean, we’ve seen a few games in general (including many FSN spinoffs of various degrees like Fate/Extra, Fate/Unlimited Codes etc), the Fate/Zero prequel novels, and of course the fairly recent Kara no Kyoukai movies (I never got around to posting about Movies 1-3, 5 and 7, but I did definately watch them), but not actually a Visual Novel. So yeah.

Onto other matters, Comiket 78 is coming to a close, so I guess we can also expect a huge upsurge in new doujin and other stuff.

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And finally, also Type Moon related, there’s also a new wallpaper for you all:

As always, click the above to see full size. (Maybe NSFW)

Yep, its everyone’s favourite scandinavian wrestling thaumaturgist, Luviagelita Edelfelt.

It started out as me trying to vector one of my favourite images of her from a calendar (original here, if you want to make comparisons), but then I realised that it wasn’t really possible to do a proper vector of her due to the, ahem, semi-transluscent nature of her nightwear. So yeah, some normal use of the line tool and photoshop layers galore were required and I imagine it isn’t truly upsizable to any resolution. Nevertheless, it looks bloody amazing if I may say so myself.

I took a few liberties in the conversion of the image, but I prefer this expression and suchlike, so yeah, I think it was a good selection.

The actual wall itself isn’t much of a work compared the five hours or so that went into the pseudo-vector, but sometimes a simple run of the fibre filter is effective too.

Anyway, that’s all for today, methinks. I might get around to a midseason anime post shortly. Stay tuned.

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Kara no Kyoukai, Garden of Sinners: Movie 6

Eh, actually, I think I forgot to blog the previous Kara no Kyokai, didn’t I? Yeah…oh well…

This is the sixth one in the chain and is a bit shorter than Paradox Spiral (5), being only an hour long.

As I noted before, they call these episodes, but when each one lasts 50 to 120 minutes, I think they’re more like individual movies (they were shown in Japanese cinemas anyway).

This one includes 100% more Azaka for your enjoyment, as she is paired with Shiki on an assignment in her own magic school to catch a rogue magus who has killed someone with fairies (well, more accurately, made someone to kill themselves). Of course, Shiki is sent here by Touko because apparently her Mystic Eyes of Death Perception allow her to see the fairies they are tracking, which apparently, Azaka cannot. Strangely enough, however, Azaka seems to see the fairies (and block them with her mages fire) several times in the film, so I have to wonder whether this was a serious continuity error Nasu forgot about or whether it was intentional, and Touko actually just used this as an excuse to see what would happen if Shiki and Azaka, eternal rivals for Kokutou, were paired together. This would suit her personality, I guess, but then, Azaka also misses some fairies at times, so whatever…

I’d also say this one is a bit less grusome than the prior couple. Fewer rotting corpses, slightly more lighthearted plot and all that. Though we do get an exposure to all of Azaka’s incestuous feelings toward her brother, so I guess its just a different form of poison.

What did amuse me though is that Azaka’s thought that Shiki is a rival for Kokutou’s love actually seems to be false. Shiki riles her up about it alot, but never actually seems to be bothered about it. I guess that kills all the obvious evidence for Kokutou x Shiki. I can almost hear the shippers screaming. Though the sexual tension of Strawberry Hagen-Daaz incident is still there from the first movie, I suppose.

Azaka gets to play the Kawaii card a hell of a lot here as well. But then, I guess she is the episode focus, so whatever.

I did like the Gods Word guy. That’s a fun magic concept, making anything you say become true. Saying ‘You cannot See Me!’ and suddenly, they can’t. Logromancy, I suppose. It completely foils Shiki’s usually infalliable eyes and makes her rather inneffective this episode, which is quite a rarity.

I also lol’ed that Seo, from Kagetsu Tohya, showed up. Though she may well be in the actual novels and it was actually Kagetsu that stole her from here, I don’t know…

Araya also shows up again to be deliberately creepy, witnessing a cannibalism thing at the end.

Anyway, here’s some shots:

Well, you should be!! Jeez, woman…its like Sister Princess all over again.

Wow, that looks dodgy. Azakas little speech about loving forbidden things is really true! LOL.

Prototype Rin! (in case it isn’t obvious, Azaka was the template for Rin from Fate Stay Night. Especially the delicious Tsundere aspects. She was also probably a bit of an influence on Akiha with the brother love tendancies.)

Nothing. Nothing at all. As a side note, do you prefer ‘Shiki-sama no Miteru’ or ‘Maria-sama no Kyoukai’? This episode certainly seems to steer in that direction from time to time, ROFL.

For some reason, I noticed that Azaka crashing onto her bed was really well animated. There was bounceback and flailing of limbs and all that, as there should be. Most animated sequences of this regard seem to percieve beds as being made of concrete.

Gwaaaahhhhh! Definately an Akiha vibe going on there, with the vermillion hair as she pours mage fire everywhere.

And suddenly, Kawaii!

This guy just ate somebody (no really!).

Hmm, well that was a fun episode. I look forward to more Kara no Kyokai, as always.

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Back to Battle Moon Wars

Well, the title is fairly self-explainitory, but I figured I didn’t actually ever do a post for Battle Moon Wars, and I should.

In case you’re wondering, Battle Moon Wars is a fabulous parody of Super Robot Wars games and also a fanservice game for TYPE MOON nutcases (like myself) at the same time. Since, hey, we get to see all of our favourite TYPE MOON characters fighting together on the same team with all their awesome unique abilities versus all of the villians. It is also translated most excellently by Aroduc of Tenka Seiha.

Previously, before my hard drive death, I had completed all of Act 3 on both the REAL and SUPER routes, and had started Act 4 on the REAL route, so, as you might imagine, I was initially a bit lethargic about starting from scratch once more. However, fate conspired to re-kindle my interest since Werk (the makers) chose just now, recently, to release a so-called “Perfect Edition” with alot of the older graphics replaced with newer versions, a couple of bonus things, making sure the old plotholes were fixed and suchlike. Actually, despite the title, this is more like the actual proper release version, since originally the game started as Act I, and extra acts were pretty much just bolted onto it as Werk created them. So, really, they just normalised the quality so its better throughout rather than showing an obvious increase over time.

Anyway, I just cleared Act 1 again with the Takumi (SUPER) route. The most obvious changes so far are Takumi and Haruna (the main characters) having a total face-lift. Takumi’s prototype Futsuno no longer looks like a metal boat oar, but shows much better similarity to the Mk II version he gets later in the plot during his Power-Up. His portrait also looks better, as you can see below:

Rupture Strike is now actually a pretty damn cool attack!

Yup, his enormous sword, Futsuno, actually looks vaguely like a sword now.

But, as well as that, all of the characters have had a general graphical clean-up done….

Baseball Rin is no longer strangely pixellated when throwing her gemstones.

I’m also pretty sure Saber using Excalibur got a massive clean-up as well.

Yup, pretty sure.

I also never remember seeing School Seifuku or Lingerie Ren/Len when she uses her Sweet Dreams Attack. Although I’ve heard those have been there before, but its just that they hardly ever showed up. So evidently, they at least fixed the random number generator that picks which Sweet Dream you get in this version. I always got the pyjama & meganekko one or the swimsuity one in the older versions.

Not sure if the maps got a face-lift, though I don’t actually remember this one from before (then again, the first time I played the Takumi route was a heck of a while ago…I may have just forgotten it…)

Anyway, if you’ve been hesistating getting this before, now’s the time to get into it, since this version is out. It IS obviously meant for the TYPE-MOON nutter, and assumes you’ve played Tsukihime, Kagetsu Tohya, Melty Blood, Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Hollow Ataraxia, as well as seen some Kara no Kyoukai. Although you don’t in any way need to have played all of that (I haven’t played F/HA, actually) or even any of them, it does offer some pretty immense spoilers!

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VOTE! International Saimoe 2009

Ah, its that time again.

That is, its time for otaku and anime nutcases like me to select the cutest things on the planet in an arbitrary voting process and promote them to kawaii-kami’s for no paticular reason at all.

So, yeah, if you actually care, get on over to http://www.internationalsaimoe.com/ before the first round of voting closes at midnight tonight (GMT), and get your say on what you think is the prettiest, smartest, most awesome bishoujo that anime has produced.

If you miss that bracket, there are still others, mind you. Keep tuned!

My (biased) selection was:

No chance of me being a Nasuverse nutter or anything, right? Heh…

Go, pointless Democracy!

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Kara no Kyoukai, Garden of Sinners: Movie 4

Well, as I’m sure you’ve all realised by now, I’m quite the TYPE-MOON fan, so I was looking forward to seeing some more Kara no Kyoukai animated.

In case you’re not aware, Kara no Kyokai was a set of novels written by Kinoko Nasu before he went on to co-create TYPE MOON and write Tsukihime, and eventually Fate/Stay Night. Tsukihime is, in fact, a heavily modified version of Kara no Kyokai’s story, and this work forms a prototype for alot of what happens in the Nasu-verse.

It also stars the original female version of Shiki, Ryogi Shiki, upon whom the male Tohno Shiki of Tsukihime is based. She too has the Mystic eyes of Death Perception, and generally shows greater control over them than her male counterpart (though that probably has something to do with the fact that male Shiki gets Mystic Eye Inhibitor glasses from Aoko, where Ryogi Shiki has no such luck).

This episode/movie (they are technically 50 minute episodes, but were originally shown in Cinemas, so I consider them to be short movies) is technically the fourth in the series, but chronologically is actually the second, showing how Shiki obtained her Mystic Eyes after the car accident and coma of two years. My Synopsis of this will be fairly brief, or else I’ll be here all day!

Technically, I believe this follows after episode 2. (That episode is actually the first one in the chronology, and shows Shiki struggling with her dual personality disorder and getting irritated after meeting Kokutou the first time and finding that he is the only one to show interest in her)

Death is bleak in the Nasuverse. No pretty angels for you, no siree…

As she wakes up, she immediately gets her first manifestation of the Mystic Eyes; which is of course a pretty horrifying experience, seeing the lines and points of death everywhere. She touches the lines she can see on the roses Kokutou has left her, and they immediately wilt away. She then passes out.

As a nurse arrives, she is shocked Shiki has awoken. Apparently she’s been out for two years.

Whew, these lines of death are scarier than the Tsukihime ones.

Shiki struggles for a little while, then immediately tries to put out her eyes.

The doctors put it down to confusion. And they call in a speech therapist, since she cannot seem to talk. (though in truth, she’s just too scared to do so.)

Touko happens to blag her way in as the speech therapist, however, probably with some Mystic eyes of her own, if I remember rightly. (hers are just ones of suggestion gained from using magic, though).

Hmm…thats troublesome, huh…

We also learn that Shiki’s mysterious eyes are likely to attract the evil spirits of the hospital; and that whilst in her coma, she has become ‘lonely’ because she has lost her alternate personality.

Kokutou starts doing a rendition of ‘Singing in the Rain’ for some reason. That manniquin of Shiki on the right is pretty creepy. At least I believe its supposed to be her… (but then, its expected to be there, since Touko is considered to be the dollmistress)

Shiki is attacked in the night by the evil spirits possessing a body. She struggles with whether or not to fight back or whether to just die quietly, but eventually decides on the former, leaping out of a 4th floor window, throwing the zombie into the electrical generator, and landing like a cat. Apparently, two years under hasn’t diminished her martial capacity.

Touko is there again, waiting in the rain. She says she didn’t expect this to happen; and uses her cigarette as a wand to cast a gout of green fire at the zombie.

However, being a zombie, (one of the ‘Dead’ to use the Nasuverse term) it doesn’t much care. It can’t be killed, since it is already dead.

Not that this matters to the Shiki. She finally realises some modicum of control for her power. And as we all know, the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception can even kill the dead, for they focus on destroying the very concept and existence of an object/being.

The zombie is annihilated, but the spirit possesses Shiki herself, making her turn the knife against herself.

However, in stabbing herself, she percieves the death of the wicked spirit inhabiting her, and kills it instead.

Kokutou finally visits again to help her leave the hospital. And the episode ends there.

And in the next episode preview, we see Proto-Shirou!!

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