This is MY kingdom, my power, my glory!

Just a sketch and musings post today. This time, I’ve drawn Elizasleyn, the Throne (angel) from Kamidori Alchemy Meister, which was recently fan translated by Aroduc. It’s a darn good tactical strategy/visual novel game; kind of like what would happen if Fire Emblem, Atelier Rorona, and a Visual Novel of your choice were spliced together.

Check it out:
As always, click her to see full sized.

I gave her an bit of an outfit change; since I figured, well hey, all the main heroines in the game get some new outfits, so why not the sub-heroines like Eliza? This one mostly keeps her bronze pauldrons and collar, but replaces the bracers for furry/silk armlets and goes armless.

Moreover, I’ve created her in Aniventure to play as in a game my friend is running soon, partly as a beta-test of the new Saint class that will showing up in the supplement booklet, Shimaihen, but mostly just because she’s awesome. With ‘Born Conquerer’ as her personality, angelic songs, divine lightning and a winged warhammer, she should at least be amusing to play.

This sketch is of that version; perhaps some time before she became a Throne (she’s what… a Power or a Principality at this point?) and Lord of Misanshel. But she’s still as powerful (and scary) as ever. I like to split her name to Eliza of the Slain for my version (and Elizasleyn is just a shortened version of that). Whether or not she’ll ever say the title of this post? Who knows? But it feels in character! 😀

Here’s the cropped down 1440×900 Wallpaper version:
For your angelic desktop needs. Of course, this version loses much of her left arm, but not much can be done about that.

Shimaihen is still going well, by the way. I’m not going to set a final date since there’s still a fair bit to be completed, but I’m rather happy with the newly revised Suffragium and Malificarum (Holy and Profane Magic Schools) and power-sets. Summoning still needs a fair bit of work, but its on its way to completion. At the very least, I feel I should be able to get it done this year, barring any significant delays.

Personally, I’ve had a couple of fanboy-gasms over the last couple of weeks when I discovered UFO: Enemy Unknown was being remade by Firaxis (as X-COM Enemy Unknown). UFO is of course the greatest PC game of all time; and from what I’ve checked out about the remake, I’m very excited about it.

Obviously, the oldschool part of me is wary about them dumping Time Units and reducing the squad size. But replacing TU’s with a D&D style Move and Attack action for troops (and 4 distinct classes and RPG like bits) may well work like a charm:
Reducing squad size is a little more concerning; but in retrospect, the main reason for huge squads in the original was that all your initial guys were idiots X-COM had hired off the street and put in jumpsuits to fight the aliens rather than professional marines. If the new soldiers are actually semi-competent right off the bat, there won’t be need for the n00bs you throw off the Skyranger first as body shields (!).

Fully alive and ever changing bases like the ones in Evil Genius are a great touch too:
Hopefully they’ll add to the interception sequences too (look at UFO: Aftermath, guys, that was one part they did right in that- those ever changing video clips were actually really nice). I laughed at them joking it was now an Angry Birds minigame in the podcast.

Oh, although the random names of the marines you had in the original were funny, that they have fully customisable squad members now will be a nice treat (and more incentive to keep that small squad alive!):
Just so long as they remix the interceptor music and keep the Guile haircut, all’s right with the world. Haha.

Well, I believe that’s all for today. Stay tuned.

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2011 Anime Season (April – June) First Impressions

Apologies for the delay, but, well, this is a mightily huge selection to trawl through this time. Even with some judicious cherry picking and a marginal focusing of the usual criteria, I’ve only managed to narrow things down to 20 shows this season, which is of course lunacy. Additionally, it seems likely that this season will automatically run over in July and may not even start in April, depending on how much delay the recent horrific 9.0 earthquake imposes on television scheduling. As a result, I’m organising this season’s anime’s alphabetically (Normally I go by expected first airing date!).

Anyway, without further ado:

A-Channel

Well, lets start with this little 4-koma. A-Channel looks to be the usual comedy slice of life sketch type for this season; possessing a familiar vibe of Azumanga Daioh or Lucky Star. It revolves around 4 girls (as ever!); a Dejikko airhead called Run, the vicious chibi thing Tooru, timid yet glamourous Yuuko, and the semi-sensible meganekko Nagi. Its got the usual ingredients for Manzai comedy I guess.

These things always live or die based on the punchlines they can pull off; but ironically I wouldn’t consider it a failure if it just makes you groan (because at least that means you get it). No, indeed, they lose out when they make you ‘derp?’ instead, which can happen more often than you might think… especially if you’re not up to date with your Japanese puns. Since we know little else at this stage, this’ll be one of those wait and see types for me.

Anticipation Rating: 65% A-class LOL ROFL.

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Ao No Exorcist

Ao no Exorcist is the first of three new Shounen anime’s this season. The world is made up of Assiah, which is the human’s reality, and its mirror image, Gehanna, which is full of demons. Demons can pass the otherwise impenetrable barrier between the two by possessing something on the other side, assuming the shell is strong enough to inhabit them. Satan himself has the problem that nothing is strong enough to contain him, seeing as how he’s the god of demons; and so for this purpose he creates a son from a human woman. But in a question of nature vs. nurture, will the boy, Rin, truly become the anti-christ, or will he rebel against his roots to the last and become the embodiment of resistance, the exorcist?

Well, this is truly biblical sounding, isn’t it? Since I’ve now dropped Fairy Tail; I guess I do have an opening for a ridiculously long running series, but this will have to impress me alot to secure a slot that could be used for something else. My general thought is that if an individual series runs beyond 52 episodes, its taking too long to tell its story. But, I have to say, I probably fancy this over Toriko.

Anticipation Rating: 55% of possessions are just people pulling an act with Alka-Seltza’s

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Astarotte’s Plaything (aka. Astarotte no omacha)

Possibly the most amusing dubious humour anime forthcoming. It follows the succubus crown-princess of the kingdom of Alfheimr, Astarotte. She has just hit her tenth birthday; and it is now her duty to construct a personal harem. Apparently, succubi need to collect male fluids (!) in order to live and maintain their youthful appearance. Unfortunately, Astarotte despises men, and tries a catch 22; that her first member has to be a human, which she thinks is impossible since the link between Alfheimr and Midguard, via the Yggdrasil, has been broken for over a century. But then, to her shock, her supervisor immediately brings her 23-year-old Naoya, who has a 10 year old daughter, Asuha, all his own with him.

Vulgar? Yes. Disturbing? Perhaps. Takes the piss out of jailbait? Definately.

I sense another eyebrow raiser on par with ‘B Gata H Kei’ here. But then again, B Gata was truly excellent; proving that absurd sexual premises sometimes make for good shows.  No doubt this is not for the prudish, but I’m pleasantly anticipating that this could manage the same level of excellence, especially since the studio that made Ika Musume are involved.

Anticipation Rating: 90% of people agree that succubi are responsible for the issues of teenage pregnancy.

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Yondemasu yo! Azazel-san! (aka. He’s calling for you, Azazel!)

Supernatural deadpan comedy? Apparently so. This focuses on a detective-cum-diabolist, Akutabe, who uses summoned demons to help him solve his cases. Of course, Azazel and the others come to the world begrudingly for sacrifices only to be sealed up in ridiculous looking chibi forms; and as Akutabe and his student Rinko order the demons around, the question really to be asked is; who is the real demon here?

Not entirely sure how to react to this one, to be honest. The premise rather amuses me as being some kind of pisstake of the Roger Zelazny novel ‘A night in Lonesome October’; but it kind of depends on how they play it. I’m assuming they’re going to try for deadpan; and I guess that could work, especially if the demons are endearing and Akatube manages to pull off a good magnificent bastard.

Anticipation Rating: 7 out of 10 people were confused about the difference between pentagrams and stars of david.

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Control (aka. C- The Money of Soul & Chance Control)

A near-future sci-fi economics anime? Huh? Well, this is a what if premise. As in, what would you do if offered a limitless source of funds? Yogi Kimimaru gets that exact what if, as one day he is approached by a mystery man called Masakaki. As a poor student in a Japan that is increasingly despairing over its social and economic downturn, it seems a miracle. But when he moves into the cyberspace world of the financial district and interacts with the big guns of industry like Mikuni Souichirou and Q, what will happen?

I guess this is an interesting idea; that as our economy becomes more and more virtual and credit-based; it begins to form its own kind of virtual world. How they’re going to take this concept is anyone’s guess, but the ‘what if’ premise reminds me of ‘Eden of the East’ and its phone of unlimited wishes. Can’t say I’m holding my breath, but I’ll keep an eye open for this.

Anticipation Rating: In breaking news: Ridiculous 67% tax rate causes outrage.

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Deadman Wonderland

Gory contemporary fantasy action show? Ganta Igarashi gets framed for a mass murder of his classmates; as during the incident he gets a crimson shard shot into him that gives him the power to manipulate blood. He is sentenced to death in what amounts to an island based ‘amusement park’ for criminals, fitted with an irremovable poison injecting collar that slowly kills him. The death prison is used a lucrative form of gladiatorial entertainment, and to survive, Ganta is forced to kill others with his newfound ability from the crimson shard, which gives him the currency he needs to buy antidotes in this sick game and survive. His only ray of sunshine (ironically) is a spirited albino girl called Shiro, as he quests to find the ‘Red Man’ who really killed his classmates.

Whew, people fighting with Sanguine Thaumaturgy? Yes, this is probably the show I’m most anticipating out of the lineup this season; not because it promises ultra-violence (though thats certainly a plus sometimes), but because it has a clear narrative setup with alot of promise; something that not alot of shows manage with their meandering and lethargic coughs that pretend to be plot. Assuming it remains well animated, I can only see good coming from this.

Anticipation Rating: Is blood really meant to gush out at 100 mph? Thats surely breaking the speed limit!

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Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko (aka. Electromagnetic girl & Adolescent Boy)

Ah, this is new SHAFT show this season; and Shinbou’s at the helm again with his own brand of lunacy. This focuses on Makoto Niwa, who moves in with his aunt, and meets his cuckoo-head cousin Erio Touwa; who believes she was abducted by aliens after she dissapears for six months and has no memory of the events that occured at that time; as she is merely found floating face-down in the sea. Since then, she had to re-learn how to walk and now goes everywhere with a futon tied around her body. Hilarity ensues as Makoto gets caught up in her lunacy. Is she just a nutter, or are her claims of alien invasion true?

Considering how on form Shinbou has been recently with Madoka, I’m, as always, highly anticipating what he can do here. This has a flavour more resembling his earlier works like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and maybe Tsukoyomi Moon Phase. He’s busy this season, though, since theres also the second season of Maria+Holic going on.

Anticipation Rating: 9/10 out self proclaimed alien abductee’s approve

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Dororon Enma-kun

A remake of a comedy horror anime from the early 70’s; though the author is more famous for his super robot shows like Mazinger Z and Getter Robo. It follows a trio of spirit hunters that do the now usual duty of putting escaped spirits back into hell. The main character is the fiery, perverse Enma-kun, and Enma is joined by the tsuntsun Yuki-Onna, Yukikohime, and a Kappa called Kapael.

The whole spirit collection story is fairly run of the mill these days (like the modern retelling in ‘The World God Only Knows’, which is also on its second season this spring), and I can’t say I’ve seen the original, as it was from nearly a decade before my conception, LOL, but even so, it’ll be interesting to see an old classic being resusitated and pitched against the new. They’re going with an interesting modern yet somehow retro look with the animation which looks quite promising.

Anticipation Rating: Back when I was a boy, 80% meant 80%, lad!

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Hanasaku Iroha

A hotspring slice of life show, apparently. A girl called Ohana Matsumae is the protagonist. She’s tired of city life, and moves to the country to live at her gran’s hotspring resort. She becomes a waitress there and makes friends with four other girls, Yuina, Minko, Tomoe and Nako; and embarks on journey of self discovery.

Considering its PA Works coming back from hiatus after Angel Beats, I’m already interested, although for me I much preferred their earlier works, like ‘True Tears’, which has rarely been matched in romance anime since; and of course, Canaan. Though there’s little material to go on, there is promise at least. And hey, if nothing else, having a hot spring as the setting means there is never need to find an excuse for fanservice, eh?

Anticipation Rating: 8 parts boiling water, 2 parts herbal infusion.

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Hen Zemi (aka. Abnormal Physiology Lecture)

Stick a bunch of people with unique and disturbing fetishes in the same room as a ‘normal’ girl called Nanako Matsutaka, who is only there due to being interested in a guy who also enrolled for the course. Add a sensei who doesn’t hesitate making her write reports about crazy s**t, pretend the whole thing occurs at a semi-respectable university, top with a out of place cutsey character design, and you have the mixture that is Hen Zemi.

Comedy for those with iron stomachs and adamantine sensiblities. Actually involves discussion of: masochism, underwear theft, consumption of urine, rape fantasies, streaking, and of course, 2D preferences. I guess this is the hardcore version of Genshiken. So yeah. I may peek over the back of my chair and try to watch it. Who knows?

Anticipation Rating: 62% chance of cognitive dissonance

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Hidan No Aria (aka. Crimson Bullet Aria)

Aka. Duel Wielding Pistol-Jutsu Loli’s. A Romantic Action-Comedy. The focus is a school for training combat-detectives in a Tokyo that faces an increasing number of heinious crimes. Kinji Tooyama is a newbie cop enrolled in the investigation department, when he gets targeted by a terrorist bombing. He is narrowly saved by the glamourous twintailed Aria H. Kanzaki; the top “butei” in the assault division who dual wields Colt 9mm handguns; and the anime follows his subsequent assignments and the minefield of associates he has to deal with in the forces themselves.

Lighthearted action comedy is always good to wind down to after a long day at work, and this is based on a popular light novel, which is always a good start. What’s most interesting is that the male lead is genre savvy; and apparently goes out of his way to avoid associating with dangerous loli’s. Good man! Of course, genre savvy doesn’t save you from inevitable plot, but at least its a promising start. Could devolve into a harem comedy though… nevertheless, I’m quite interested.

Anticipation Rating: (gun to head) Didn’t you know, it’s just Nine Millimetres to heaven, bitch!? <BANG!>

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Hoshizora e Kakeru Hashi (aka. A bridge to the starry skies)

A harem comedy. Kazuma moves away from the city with his weak-constitution brother Ayumu, in hopes this will improve young Ayumu’s health. Of course, Kazuma gets lost on the way and stumbles across a beautiful girl called Ui, whom is handily attending the same school he plans to and he pushes her over in a misunderstanding and… (le sigh)

Well, I don’t need to spell out anything else with this kind of anime; where its usually fanservice over plot. Of course, the original game was by the same company that made Akane-iro Somaru Saka. Although the series of that was a trainwreck, it was at least a well orchestrated trainwreck and one of those brainless anime’s thats occassionally worth it for a giggle. Because of these roots, I’m not dismissing it out of hand, but don’t hold any high hopes for it either.

Anticipation Rating: Why cop a feel twice when you can get away with it ten times?!

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Momo-Iro Paradox

Perversion of History anime. Yoshino Hide is a middle school girl who gets pulled into an alternate dimension’s sengoku period japan; which is full of people bizarrely lacking in Y chromsomes (how do they breed? Touhou-class mitosis?) and she gets embroiled in Oda Nobunaga’s quest to grab some awesome armour and unify japan. Okay.

Lets make famous historical figures into voluptous girls because that hasn’t been done before! Tono to Isshou, Samurai Girls and Sengoku Basara really already have the perversion of history covered, so one must wonder what this can bring to the table besides more fanservice. And a voluptous redhead Oda Nobunaga (wut?). At least Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Date Masamune are loli’s. But the fact that makes me happy is perhaps the most disturbing thing of all. Somebody shoot me now.

Anticipation Rating: Three out of ten sengoku period warlords are rolling in their graves right now.

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Moshidora

A sports drama business anime? Minami Kawashima’s best friend Yuuki Miyata is suddenly hospitalised and so Minami promises Yuuki that she’ll take over the position of manager of the boy’s baseball team. Only, see she’s a bit dense, and unaware of what a manager of a baseball team actually does; and goes to research what managers do, only to find a copy of famous economist Peter Drucker’s ‘Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices’. And she takes it as her gospel; when of course its about big business CEO’s practices, and nothing to do with the clothes washing and maintainence a baseball manager should be doing!

Based on the bestselling novel in all of Japan last year (2010); its a heartwarming tale of how unorthodox applied in the right measure is just the shakeup a failing team needs to smash them into Koshien. It must be decent if that many people approve, I guess, and it sounds like goofy fun: as hey, all the best comedies and dramas come from misinterpretations. Considering I also really liked Princess Nine and am occassionally partial to some sports anime, I’m certainly very curious about this one.

Anticipation Rating: 90% track record of home runs on the final stretch

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Nichijou

The second 4-koma this season (the other being A-Channel). This is one thats a less degree of slice of life and a higher percentage of crack, as it involves a robot high school girl and her nametag-less inventor, a talking cat, and a trio of highschool girls with eccentric personalities. I suppose we wouldn’t want it any other way, right?

Generally, higher crack content in the authors diet leads to a more amusing show, assuming you can deal with the derp fallout; but I don’t know. In all likelihood, I won’t pick up more than one 4-koma show out of the two; so I guess these are relying on the quality of gags they can throw at me in the first couple of episodes.

Anticipation Rating: 6.5 cases of hallucinogenic chiyodad rockets in raspberry heaven.

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Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa nai

Takashi has a unspeakable secret. To leave his dull school-life, he plays MMO’s. However, he is saved from mediocrity by his awkward younger sister Kobato and negligent girlfriend Asuka. Meanwhile, Syusuke is a poor freeloader that passes his days working part-time until one day, he has a disastrous first encounter with a girl called Hiyoko, and the next time they meet, Syusuke leans she is a fellow employee at his part-time job. Hayato sees himself as “hard-boiled”. Back-breaking jobs shunned by others are nothing to him. He avoids normal human contact but, during the nights, gets together with delinquents and denizens of the night. One such night, he meets the cheerful and oblivious Naru.

Multiple protagonist romance? Apparently with 3 seperate guys chasing 4 seperate love interests; this might well put it above and beyond the usual fare that is based on dating games and may even let it compete with True Tears. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out that they’re all the same guy with a multiple personality disorder or something. I’m a little cynical though, since anime’s based on navel’s dating games don’t exactly have great heritage, though they occassionally break from their roots, like Shuffle did; and if the perspective actually escapes the possibility for harem, its certainly worthy of some time. Being a sap for romance, I’ll possibly watch it regardless.

Anticipation Rating: “How to be a player with four girls in ten easy steps!”

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Sket Dance

The second shounen anime of the season. It covers a school club, the Suketto-dan, who help people with their day to day problems. Led by a guy who likes goggles that do nothing, Yuusuke Fujisaki and also consisting of an intellectual guy called Kazuyoshi Usui and a pampered girl called Hime Onizuka; they’re none the less looked down on by others for their obsession with doing pointless little jobs.

This sounds remarkably episodic, which is main thing that marks it as shounen, as its very likely to able to continue for a long, long time; with fillers and all. Though the potential allusion to the SOS-Dan is there in the club name, I very much doubt it has any true Haruhi links either. So, as a result, I think its the least likely of the three shounen offerings that I’m likely to choose.

Anticipation Rating: Three for all and all for three?

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Sofuteni

Sports anime, but not as we know it. Five girls are trained by tennis champion You Mishimagi with hopes of reaching the nationals. They consist of ecchi Asuka, fiery Kotone, bottomless stomach Chitose, mysterious Kurusu, and English exchange student Elizabeth.

Short description indeed. I’d like to think this could be another Bamboo Blade; but Soft Tennis is not really as excting as Kendo, the characters are very cookie cutter, and the previews worryingly seem to focus on the fanservice, making me think this is actually an ecchi harem comedy disguising itself as a sports anime (like, uh, Infinite Stratos does with a mecha anime). Can’t say I’m paticularly excited about it.

Anticipation Rating: Faults are 20% more exciting to watch than regular tennis play (snicker…)

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Steins;Gate

Steins;Gate is your crack-tastic contemporary sci-fi for the season. Self-Proclaimed mad scientist Rintarou and his hacker friend Hashida collaborate to create a microwave oven that can send SMS text messages into the past (WHAT?) and starts to use this appliance to prevent things like murders from ever occuring by causing dramatic shifts in the timeline due to his meddling micro. As he is able to observe shifts in the timeline and retain memories of before and after, this gets him the attention of time traveller called John Titor, and a nuclear research organisation called SERN. Plot ensues.

Complete with un-necessary semi-colons, a butchery of the laws of physics (oh god the poor catgirls!), and a high likelihood of mindfuck, the makers of Chaos;Head (who else!) want to take you along for their unique brand of weirdness. I never actually got into the Chaos;Head anime, and instead played the game much later upon finding the fan translation. It was certainly… unique, and the concept for this is no different. I guess arguments can be made that the microwave text messages are just a different part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but to the past? Well… anyway; I’m reasonably interested in what this has to offer.

Anticipation Rating: 81.7 GHz / 4.36 mm

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Toriko

Culinery Shonen anime. (NO, Really…) This follows the titular super-strong gourmet hunter Toriko and his timid chef partner Komatsu. There’s an organisation in this world that ranks wild beasts and basically acts as a mercenary guild for people looking for gourmet food, paying hunters for their catches which get sold in a huge bazaar called the World Kitchen.

I guess the person who wrote this saw the elements of Dragon Ball where Goku hunts mythical beasts for food, played a bit of Monster Hunter, then watched the Iron Chef and thought “Why not merge all that! THIS is a GREAT idea!”.

It is certainly… interesting. Inhospitable wilderness and a stupidly muscular guy beating up dragons with his bare hands? Framed by a narrative to create a perfect menu and prevent an evil organisation from monopolising the food market? Yeah, work that out. Still, it might serve as some amusement, especially if Exorcist fails to deliver the goods (LOL).

Anticipation Rating: 5 star chef beaten up by surprise 10 star chef

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And… thats about it. Jeez. I think I need a cold shower now, since I’ve been typing and researching for 5 hours straight. Nevertheless, I hope this report, as always, is an informative window in your anime selections for the next up and coming season. Stay tuned.

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Visual Novel Diary: Galaxy Angel

Well, its been far too long since I last did a VN diary. To be fair, this is mainly due to having not too many to play, and also due to my work commitments, but even so.

Anyway, Aroduc is responsible for this Galaxy Angel translation; his next translation project after Battle Moon Wars was done and dusted (well, this and Daibanchou), so hats off to him as always. The patch is basically complete at its 0.98 version; which is just missing the fmv subtitles (I think) as far as I can tell.

So, some of you might be familiar with the Galaxy Angel anime and its spinoffs, right? Well, they have absolutely NOTHING to do with the games on which they are based, much to my surprise. Besides the characters and universe setting, that is. The game is an intergalactic war story; with you protecting the last heir of the Transbaal Empire, Prince Shiva, from certain death as you retreat from the villanous usurper of the throne, Eonia and his creepy loli pet Noa.

As a game; its what happens if you take Homeworld, slam it into a squad based strategy RPG, and add a well executed non-H visual novel as topping. It sounds like an eclectic mix, and it is, but its certainly one that works a charm:

You play as Tact Meyers, Colonel of a outlying fleet that is suddenly put in command of the Empire’s top of the range prototypes, the Emblem Frames, born of lost technology and piloted by a bevy of lovely young ladies who form the Angel Wing.

Each chapter has several VN sections that give way to a bunch of space battles. Space battles occur on a full 3d plane; as you might expect:

The Elsior is Tact’s flagship from the second chapter, seen here, unloading its main batteries into a frigate. Despite its looks and apparent status as top of the line battleship though, most missions involve protecting the Elsior, which rarely sees a good fight despite its excellent range, due to its low speed, surprisingly low durability, and the fact that the angels typically outclass the massive warship. (!)

These sections are very reminiscient of playing Homeworld, but there is no resource management. The only focus is on your movement and strategy and keeping the Angels alive long enough for them to whup the enemy into shape. The interface for this is pretty good, all in all, since there’s the ability to pause and give commands with hotkeys, which I liked (and is a lifesaver) at several harsher moments of battle.

Since Emblem Frames apparently grow in power in relation to their pilots mental state, Tact’s duty as the Angel Wing commander is to ensure all of the ladies are as happy as they can be! Talk about a cushy military assignment! As a result, in each of the downtime periods between fights, you get to wander the ship and chat to the ladies:

But of course, you typically only get six picks in each downtime; so theres alot of time management. On top of that, there’s often a multiple choice question in each of the scenes; and choosing the correct response is what causes the ladies to like you more. Naturally, showing courage and tenacity are nearly always positive; but each girl has certain needs you should tune into as well:

Each Angel also pilots a unique emblem frame, and its quite true that making them happy affects the ships. As affection goes up, the Angels start to get pretty serious buffs for combat, and the girl you eventually select as your valentine gets truly obscene bonuses and turns into a death machine.

If you’ve seen the anime, you should be familiar with the girls, but their units are of interest for me to discuss here, so I’ll do a bit of both, going top to bottom, left to right:

Ranpha is the tsundere that loves fitness and fortune telling as well as exuberant girly things (she has a streak of ojou-sama, and pulls out ~the laugh~ every so often to prove it). She doesn’t like to show weakness to others (especially Tact) and initially despises him, though she does a hilariously amusing turnabout if you pick up the right events.
Her Emblem Frame is the Kung-Fu-Fighter, which is intially a Fragile Speedster, but turns into a Glass Cannon if you get up her affection. She gets into trouble easily due to her vastly outstipping the others in speed; but can really clock up kills too. She has dual vulcan cannons and a single launcher, and her ultimate weapons shoots two rending claws; each of which literally destroy 1/2 of the targets max. health; making it a pretty much guaranteed kill, though only single target unlike some of the other specials.

Ranpha on her attack pass; she loves to play chicken with cruisers!

Mint is the telepathic refugee noble girl who joined the military to escape her father and his overbearing mercantile roots. She has a great fondness for tea and sweets; as well as honesty. She has a secret hobby of dressing up in weird cosplay outfits.
Her Emblem Frame is the Trick Master, which is the Carrier type. Its marginally faster than Happy Trigger; but offsets its mediocre speed and average armament of a couple of launchers by having a wing of ion cannon drones that independently attack the target, allowing her omnidirectional coverage and high accuracy. Her special is to launch all her drones at once which spam beams at everything in an area of effect. If you’re lucky, this can be the best offensive special as the enemies often fly in formations.

Milfie is the genki air-head girl with ‘ideal wife’ characteristics (loves to cook and clean). She also has extreme luck; which swings from obscenely good to terrifyingly bad (she wins the lottery 1st prize five times in a row and then nearly causes a forest fire the same day!).
Her Emblem Frame is the Lucky Star (LOL) which has high speed and is above average in most other things, sporting a good selection of mass drivers and missiles; and she has a giant pink laser as her ultimate weapon that literally destroys anything in a line in front of it, across the ENTIRE map. Sadly, only a few enemy fleets dutifully line up for her to take advantage of this.

Milfie’s Pink Laser of Death. What you don’t see is that health bar suddenly reduce to zero and the mobile battle platform exploding about 1.2 seconds after this screencap.

Forte is the ‘big sister’ character, stern and wise yet flirtateous and stunning at the same time. She’s the nominal squad leader of the angels, as the oldest and only one who’s a 1st Lieutenant. She also loves gunpowder guns in an age that has embraced energy weapons; and has a huge selection. She is perhaps the most grounded one of the Wing.
Her Emblem Frame is the Happy Trigger, which is the Tank. Its the slowest by far, but its a gunship that’s bristling with about eight launchers and at least 5 mass drivers, allowing her to seriously lay smackdown onto whatever wanders into her sights. She has no unique weapon; her special is to simply boost and discharge her entire arsenal in a single huge barrage. Since each weapon gets a big accuracy boost as part of this attack, its usually pretty decent damage.

Vanilla is a hardworking silent girl that is uncomfortable in social situations, but she becomes vastly more vocal as the game progresses, especially with the right events. She controls nano-machines and loves animals; and devotes most of her time to earnestly helping others in need to her own detriment.
Her Emblem Frame is the Harvester, which has the highest defence and is the only one with the ability to repair the others (but she can’t repair Tact’s Elsior). She also has a decent rack of swarmer missles and a cannon or two, and is average elsewhere. Her special is a total lifesaver, sending a huge wave of repairing nanomachines that give a full-heal to all of angel-wing, no matter where they are on the map.

Vanilla goes in to support Milfie’s dogfight. The missile barrage is about to begin.

Of course, as already noted, your favourite girl becomes a death machine regardless of her usual battle role, however:

This was shortly after I started heading up the Vanilla Route; and as you can see, she went on a bit of rampage. To give perspective; in Vanillas case here, with the love buff all her swarmers suddenly guarantee a hit and each does a bucket of damage, and she charges up her map-wide full heal continually, which makes everything a bit hilariously easy if you do the same as me. I’ve heard the others get similar huge leaps in power, like Ranpha dodges everything and decimates battleships in a single pass; Mint’s drones go mental and so on.

Well, I think that just about covers it all. Hope you enjoyed this little soujorn and tune in again soon!

EDIT: And just a quick edit; to showcase the Vanilla End:

Dawww! Vanilla melts me with her cuteness. An amusing reversal, ne?

I guess I’ll head back and do the Ranpha route next since I like my Tsundere’s almost as much as my hard-shelled girls.

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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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Visual Novel Diary: Da Capo

Guh, its been a little while, huh?

I’ve been pretty shockingly busy as of late, working on menageries of projects. And, uh, most of my spare time of late has been consumed, one way or another, leaving this blog a bit in the lurch, I guess. For this I apologise.

On the other hand, I’m back with another Visual Novel Diary. This time, I finally got around to playing Da Capo, which is translated by Mangagamer (professionally this time, rather than a fan translation…though I have to wonder, since both Da Capo and Shuffle were getting Fan Translations that suddenly dissappeared and then re-appeared in the catalogue of these people. Methinks the translators were bought out, in these cases. Not that I can especially blame them, since fansubbing is a thankless job most of the time.)

Anyway, Da Capo is franchise than shot Circus into the limelight as creator of visual novels. Since its rather popular release, its had a huge host of cash-in’s, sequels, extra chapters, and gaidens; not to mention having anime’s made of its various parts.

Unfortunately, the anime was a bit of bust. Merely because Nemu was picked as the girl of choice, when basically EVERY other choice is superior, at least in the eyes of most people I’ve spoken with. They then performed extra travesties by literally torturing Kotori fans in Da Capo Second Season (this made me stop following any subsequent series of the anime).

That said, apparently the Japanese fans love Nemu. They’re all sis-cons, perhaps? I really don’t usually see the appeal of the subservient sister like character, but nearly all visual novels have one lurking around somewhere.

As you may have possibly guessed, I immediately went straight for Kotori.

Wah, she’s surprisingly forward, eh?

Cuteness. It is only cuteness.

The game itself is actually pretty good in terms of originality for dating sims. Rather than presenting the usual obligatory two choice box, Da Capo offers its branches in a different way. For starters, every evening, you have to set your Alarm Clock to one of three times (6:30, 7:00 or 7:50) which gives you different things on your way to school. After that, during lunchtime, you select where you want to eat from a map (with choices like Roof, Courtyard, Classroom, Cafeteria, etc.). Then, after school (and on sundays), you can use a different map to visit somewhere on the island (with selections like the Cherry Blossom Park, the Town, and the School etc.)

Of course, certain girls tend to frequent certain locations more often, so its not a complete bust trying to get their flags (though you might miss an event or two). Kotori, for example, appreciates you being on time and is most often seen in the Courtyard and variably behind the giant Sakura tree and the commercial district. Whereas, grabbing, say, Moe-sempai requires you to continually be late in the mornings and hang around school an awful lot.

Eventually, of course, if all flags are triggered, you stop getting mao choices and actually enter a girls route and the rest of the story follows your romance with the selected lady, where more typical choices tend to happen instead. Anyway, have some more Kotori’s:

Of course, considering a certain plot point, it is important not to lie or think too many ecchi things about Kotori chan. Be a nice guy, yeah?

Also, it seems that yellow pyjamas are popular in this game. Not that I’m complaining.

Yes, the new uniform is fabulous, dear.

Feed me Kotori! Even her pouting is cute.

Anyways, after making Kotori mai waifu, I proceeded to eventually do Moe-sempai’s route as well. Which leads to some amusing lines like this:

Ehahaha! Sure thing!

Yikes, thats…shocking… I mean, I know I saved you and all…but…wowzers…

Anyhow, it was light and enjoyable. Far better than the anime (though for biased reasons). I’ll probably get around to eventually clearing Sakura as well, but for now, thats all I’ve done due to being busy. See ya again soon, eh?

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Visual Novel Diary: Sengoku Rance

Its been awhile since I’ve done one of these, eh? I believe Kanon was the last one.

Anyway, this has been consuming ludicrous amounts of my spare time over the past few days, since a full-english translation was released on the 10th of October for it thanks to the efforts of the hardworking guys of Yandere Translations (and TakaJun, who seems to be everywhere!).

This is actually the SEVENTH game in the long running Rance series by AliceSoft (hence, Sengoku). As far as I’m aware, previous Rance games were dungeon crawlers with Visual Novel Elements. This one, however, is a tactical strategy game with Visual Novel Elements:

(This is showing the Items and Inventory screen, by the way)

Rance himself is…well… I guess, in a way, he’s like the fantasy version of James Bond. ‘Sex Freak’ doesn’t even begin to describe him. He unashamedly asks random women his just met to sleep with him and even seems to draw power from the act. He’s beyond arrogant and isn’t above forceful, dirty tactics to get what he wants. And yet…for all his arrogance and being a total dick, he’s a surprisingly likable character. His ‘Strongest man in the world’ claim isn’t just self appointed either; he really is one of the best warriors in the world, and is the bearer of one of the few legendary sentient demonslaying blades, Chaos. And underneath the lust is actually a strangely decent guy. Although:

Expect to see this alot. Gahahahaha. Rance has the ability to strip out of his Half-Plate in about 7 seconds when he thinks he might be able to get some. Which is impressive, I’ll give him that…

In short, the opening story is: After his adventures in Zeth, Rance decides to come and visit JAPAN (yes, in capitials) with his slave, Sill, in order to visit the hotsprings and of course, have sex with as many girls as possible. Rumours of the beauty of the princess Oda Kou lead him to the territory of Oda, where he meets a seriously chill version of Oda Nobunaga, whom apparently finds running a dango store to be more enjoyable than actually running his country.

Apparently (for no real reason) the two get along, and Nobunaga decides to appoint Rance as the new Shadow Ruler of Oda. Rance accepts, feeling this is a great oppertunity to test his strength (and of course, after conquering countries, its also a good oppertunity to exhert his right as the victor and test his bedroom skills…) Since Nobunaga is a pretty dozy guy, theres about to be a rebellion, and your first battle of the game is leading the remaining loyalists against the rebels (whom are actually an atrocious force, but I suppose this could come down to it being the first battle and hence, meant to be easy).

After surpressing the rebellion, Rance is told to basically do what he wants with the country. Leading you to this:

You’ll spend some time here, of course. Clicking on a country gives you many options for actions in the top left box.

This ranges from preparing for battle and searching for dungeons to advancing the plot and talking to your various commanders (Purple ???’s show something brand new).

Speaking with commanders raises their affection towards you, and once you accumilate a certain amount, they’ll usually have a special ??? event which raises their trust level (Its Hate > Normal > Trust > Love on a sliding scale). Each time the trust level goes up, the commanders unit levels up, allowing you to give them a new ability or upgrade their stats. Of course, only female units can reach Love and as you might imagine, raising female commanders to Trust and Love also usually results in H (and more Satisfaction for Rance).

Each time you do an event or battle of any kind, you’ll use an action fan. You normally start with two (I have 3 here, since this is from a new game+).

There’s also resource management involved, with items, gold, national power, and Rance’s Satisfaction (Sat.) to keep track of. As you might imagine, you get gold from taxes, items from winning battles or clearing dungeons, power from developing or conquering countries and satisfaction from doing Hentai type things with girls. The latter is surprisingly important, as every 10 satisfaction gives you a great bonus, from upgrading Rance’s Unit and getting more action fans, to calling for reinforcements and getting really rare items.

Rance’s objective (at least initially) is to simply conquer all of JAPAN. This can and will change as the game progresses, as you can go onto different story routes. Usually, you’ll end up having to deal with the demon lord Xavier and his demon army in some form or another.

This naturally leads to battles, which look a little like this:

You pit up to six of your units against up to six foes. Initiative order is shown on the top hand tabs. As you get to one of your turns, you select an action and a target. Troops have a number of action banners, and time counts down on the middle column. To win, you have to either annihilate all the enemy units or have the battle rating (the topmost bar) in your favour when time runs out. The number of troops left in a unit acts as its HP (a little like Advance Wars). The above shot shows the Ninja unit of Gekkou (and his Loli sidekick). Of course, winning a battle is rather strategic, and it helps to use a nice variety of units, which come in lots of types:

This is the Unit Roster, currently focused on Kanami the Ninja girl.
I’ll list the types in the order shown in the list above:

• Rance himself leads a Warrior unit. These naturally excel at doing lots of damage really quickly, especially once they learn Guard Break. Once you recruit Kenshin, she is arguably the strongest Warrior unit in the game.
• Footsoldiers are defensive. They halve damage against them when they have their guard up, and can leap in the way of attacks targeting other units. They deal pretty mediocre damage though.
• Knights are a special unit (you only get one, led by Leila, through a Satisfaction bonus). They combine the offense of Warriors and Defence of Footsoldier, but are very expensive to recruit.
• Archers are naturally backrow units and are useful mainly for versatility, since can target either row, though not for huge amounts of damage. Yamamoto Isokoru is best since she can learn penetrating fire that hits an entire column and can’t be guarded against.
• Musketeers (not actually shown in this shot) are front row units with atrocious defence but high offence. They can be a bit dubious though since they also have a low action count and they’ll be slaughtered by Warriors.
• Cannoneers are special (again, you get Maria through a Satisfaction Bonus) and are upgraded Musketeers (they’re actually a huge unit of girls with rocket launchers!). They can shoot from the back row and deal high damage, making them generally pretty good.
• Miko’s are your healing and utility unit, able to replenish dead troops. They can also provide archery support  (though not as strong as actual archer units), and with a certain ability, also grant buffs to male units at the start of a battle (apparently, in this version of Japan, Miko’s are also ‘working girls’, if you catch my drift, hence the buffs to male units).
• Mages are special units again (you can get three, two from satisfaction bonus, one from a New Game + bonus). They are ‘western’ mages in the traditional sense, in that they typically throw fireballs (though Rizna learns a hit-all, Angel Cutter, whilst Magic and Shizuka learn a Penetration laser Beam).
• Diviners are the ‘eastern’ mages, who use spellpaper and shikigami. They are the best artillery units with their charge up hit all attack, and can also throw up damage prevention shields that completely negate a single attack against a unit.
• Ninjas are fast, dealing about as much damage as archers with Shuriken. However, Ninja Shuriken also cancels spell charging, which is very useful against enemy Diviners. They can also assassinate enemy commanders, which if it succeeds, OHKO’s an enemy unit (however, it succeeds only if the number of ninjas exceeds the foes unit and then not all the time, and regardless of outcome, always uses all of the Ninja units actions).
• Tacticians add buffs to your units at the start of battle and as a command. They can also de-buff enemy units (making them important to bring along if the enemy also has a Tactician), and finally, provide archery support (at a lower level than normal archers though, like Miko’s can).
• Cavalry is only recruitable by capturing enemy units from Takeda (horses don’t exist in this world, and these cavalry ride large ostritches which can only be bred in Takeda). It basically acts as a more mobile Warrior unit, able to attack from the back row and against the enemies back row, making it pretty deadly. They are hence both rare and expensive.
• Finally, Monks are a utility unit. They have decent attack (higher than footsoldiers, less than warriors) but awful defence. However, they can give other units actions, heal themselves, remove enemy buffs, stop enemy footsoldiers from guarding, and various other weird things.

Thats all that I’m going to explain about the game. The AliceSoft Wikia goes into a ludicrous amount of extra details if you’re interested. I’ll just finish with some more screencaps:

Yep, Kenshin (right) is a girl in this game. She is known as the goddess of war and is the best swordswoman in JAPAN. She also likes fighting for underdog, randomly defending nations that are under attack (including you, or nations you attack), until you engage Uesugi. Of course, when you do, the poor girl gets more than she bargained for with Rance:

Maybe its because he actually duals her and blocks her blows? Or perhaps its just the whole him saying ‘you look beautiful even up close’ scism? In any case, its love at first sight for her. Poor girl.

Nevertheless, once recruited, she becomes a ludicrously strong unit for you. With her Commander Charge, she often personally kills about 300 troops before her own troop then attacks immediately afterward. Brutal. (Rance has a similar move with RANCE ATTACK!)

Yuzumi the Musketeer girl adores cute things, apparently.

Souun is the head diviner of what I call the ‘Triforce nation’ (LOL). He is, naturally, the most powerful diviner unit, as this might suggest!

After taking over the Blacksmith nation, Rance’s sentient Sword, Chaos, gets some very special treatment from the female blacksmiths! I LOL’ed at this scene.

And to finish, Rance at the cherry blossom festival with (left to right) Suzume, Sill, Nobunaga and Kouhime. 3G, their Youkai minister, is in the far right background. Sill is very pink, isn’t she? (and yes, Suzume is indeed a catgirl ninja, sigh…though her ability to use Naruto like clones in her scenes is quite…disturbing…)

Anyway, that was a long post, ne? If you like your tactical strategy, this game will keep you going for at least 120 hours if you follow all of the routes, and its pretty darn addictive, so I’d recommend it solely on that. Of course, theres also the VN side attached with an above average story and lots of fun easter eggs (and of course, H-scenes, if you’re entirely here for that…) so its a very substantial, slickly presented package.

Thats all for now. I’ll probably do the last couple of reviews for the new anime season soon, so see you then.

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