Trying to get my sleep schedule back on track, I'm once again writing this the day after. I hope to get today's things done was well. If I do fall behind during the week however, I'll call the winner baced on which ones I did get to by that time. I'm on spring break right now so I can spend most of my time playing games at the moment, but once school starts up again shorter weeks may happen more often.
Neither of these went quite the way I thought they would, so they're both the first real surprises for me in the rankings for different reasons.
Ugly Ducking Love Revolution (DS)
I'm using the title the manga adopted when being translated into english, since that is where I recognized the game from and why I picked it up. I only read the first volume of the manga, and it was just a cute collection of day-to-day mini stories. The Japanese title is "Otometeki Koi Kakumei Raburebo" or roughly, "A Maidan-Like Love Revolution Love Revolution". Love Revolution is written both in traditional Japanese Kanji and in it's borrowed english Katakana incarnation, so yes, it really is "Love Revolution Love Revolution".
What made it stick out in my mind was it was a rare Otome story where they establish the heroine to not be pretty at all. She's fat, and her clothes don't play to that at all so this isn't some kind of fetish thing. She's got beady eyes. She's constantly thinking about either eating or dieting. That kind of feeling. And yet, it's very clear these five gorgeous guys (plus apparently a not gorgeous guy) all have crushes on her. I was curious about the "Why?" to try and find somemore backstory, since it's apparently assumed the reader has played the game. I was even curious enough to consider buying it off of play-asia, but I couldn't find it... Largely because the title is completly different. So when I saw the game this winter break(dirt cheap, even for Book Off) I picked it up without a second thought. I didn't expect all that much, but it had been a lingering question in my mind for, what, two, maybe three years? Never really sat down to play it until now.
Since this heroine is abnormally well developed (for this type of game at least), I'm reluctant to use the "You" I've been using when describing games like this so far, so I'll instead talk about what "the heroine" is doing.
I'm feeling some need to explain this.
Normally the number of traits are low so the player can relate to the character, and when they are given they're good traits that it's assumed the player would like to have. In Digimon Story (the DS one) you are some kind of quite leader type, so the people around you do all the talking and as the player you see the other characters respect your character's decisions. You get to figure out what they see in you by yourself. In Starry Sky you are gentle and a good listener and your hobby is looking at the stars. Two good traits and a common hobby with the prospective dudes. Even though the guys are really interested in you from the get go, when you all talk about your memories they are more about what the guys did or what the guys felt. You where there for them, but once again it's really left up to the player to imagine what it was you actually did. All you really know is that they appriceated it. Saying "you" in those cases makes sense to me, but in Ugly Ducking it's just... too explained. Like or dislike the her, she's a definite character, not a blank canvas of "you"ness.
Putting my ramblings aside. In the beginning...
We start off with the heroine's backstory and It's not one of tragedy and woe... exaclty...
When she was very young she was undisputedly cute. She apparently won some kind of Mrs. Japan cutest child ever contest. Everyday she would always hear how cute she was and she would get at least a car-load of presents from her admires. Her future seemed bright... except that she really let herself go. Apparently the issue was the presents were more often then not candy. To top it off her mother made candy for a living, and her dad would make some occasionally too. So she was a little girl who was given a mountain of candy everyday, and everybody always said how cute she looked eating it. One thing lead to another....
Flashforward to today, and our Heroine is about to start her second year of High Shool. What we see is her eating the biggest box of peeps I've ever seen. Look, she's impressed me for that. Have you ever tried to eat a large number of peeps? You can't eat more then 9 in one sitting. Normal people can't even eat nine. She's large now and reflecting on her past. It's unclear to me from the way she says it whether she blames herself or others for it, but it's clear she knows she isn't cute anymore. She actully seems to have a bit of a realistic streak to her. "People often say to me 'You've still got a good figure', but no matter how you look at it, that's a lie" She dosn't say this in a self-pity sort of way, but more in a "well, so it goes" sort of way.
We also get some more information about her circumstances now. She's living in an appartment owned by her dad an run by her older brother. It's only mildly hinted at now, but I know from the manga that said brother has a sister-complex and still thinks she's the cutest girl in the world. Aside from those two there have so far been only 2 other tenets in the building. This is apparently a more upscale set of appartments so the rent is a bit high. Today however they are getting 5 more, much to the relief and happiness of her dad. Her bother already greeted them and tells our heroine that she ought to go do the same.
Our Heroine sees them and starts to greet them by suddenly is stopped the unexpected feeling of an oncoming nose bleed. It turns out the five tenets are the most popular gorgeous guys at her school.
I'm calling them the "Fabulous Five" from now on.
The Fabulous Five all seem surprised to see her as well. She regains her composure and greets #1 (I'll learn his name later). He's the most popular boy at school. He's smart and cool, but with a mysterious aura that draws people to him. He also turns out to be a prick. Our Heroine stands there awkwardly with her hand outstretched, wondering why he's not making any move to shake it, when he tells her she's an eyesore, and she should remove her fat self from his presence and stop bothering him. Her reaction is a stunned muteness, but also she's clearly ticked off at him as well. She desides there that it dosen't matter how popular he is, he's a jerk and she takes a disliking to him. He never smiles
#2 Starts laughing and the heroine's irritation is changed to him. He apologizes but keeps a big grin on his face. He's also a second year but in a different class so our Heroine doesn't know much about him. He however says he's heard of her because she's famous.
Famous for what? I don't know, I was falling asleep at my desk so I called it a night there.
Personal game rating?
The grammar is fine but the sticking point here is the tiney, unfamilier Kanji. My vocabulary has expanded enough at this point it dosen't pose a problem most of the time, but it's still like driving along and getting a flat tire every ten miles or so and having to get out and change it. The story has enough twists I'm having trouble guessing the meaning form context, and the strokes are unclear enough that on one sentence I even just had to say, "I've spent 40 minutes trying to figure this Kanji out. It's time to move on". Really annoying when it happens, but not so bad it ruins the experince.
To my surprise I really am liking this story. Judging from the price of the game and, well, how bored I've gotten with some of the intros I've been going though ealier this week, I wasn't expecting much. This is the first game so far where I really want to know what's going to happen to the main character's development. That's a nice change of pace. Ugly Duckling Love Revolution gets a green flag from me. Time will tell if it can keep it once we get into the gameplay. It is an Otome game so when push comes to shove it's going to be her interaction with the guys that will make or break the game.
Shin Tenchi Muyo (Book)
These are three books giving backstory some backstory to the anime Tenchi Muyo and parts of its universe that were never explained in the anime itself. This was one of my first anime, and I kinda wanted to know more about it. The books came out in 1997 so I ordered them second hand off of Japan Amazon and got the three for 1 yen a pop. Plus shipping per item. I guess that's how that seller makes money. Anyway, a good deal for me.
As far as spoilers go... it's hard for me to say whether explaning what happens before the series starts counts as a spoiler. We don't get the same introduction to them as the character's in the show so it makes for a different experience but... well use your own judgement for this one. Continue at your own discretion.
Tenchi Muyo is what's refered to in the states Harem anime, a romantic comedy one male protagansist and multiple female suitors. Most of it's action takes place on or very close to earth, but all the women are aliens and they do go into space decently often. Though most of the show is about the romantic comedy part, there is an overall plot involving Tenchi, nice guy who's a bit unsure of how to act around girls, finding out he's 1/8 royal alien and that he's got a magical light saber and special abilities that could change the balance of power in the universe. Literally and politically. On word of the author, the original concept actually involved Tenchi getting a literal harem and marrying all of the women, each of whom are very powerful either physically or politically in one way or another in their own right. Didn't happen in the anime, but neither did he ever pick just one, although there where two main contenders. The anime came out in OVA format with massive breaks between the three sets. The first two where shown on Toonami as "Tenchi Muyo" while the third came out well after toonami ended. I haven't seen all of the third, but I know they added another woman in that one. Tenchi Muyo also had several spin offs including "Tenchi Universe" which restarts the story and puts more emphasis on outerspace and plot then the more romance oriented "Tenchi Muyo".
As a final note: while well known among American anime fans, it isn't well known in Japan. I have a few friends and aquantinces here who are rather into anime themselves, but so far not a single one has heard of Tenchi. Perhaps is is because this is just because I'm attending an all girls school and this anime is more aimed at guys, but I think it's name recognision in the USA is abnormally high do to it's apperance on Toonami. For most people my age that's where we first were introduced to anime.
Into the up-to-date book summary we go!
It's clear that this book is going to explain Azusa's back story. He's the father of two of the girls, and the king of Jurai, the most powerful planet in the universe. We start off with a more or less a retell of the final episode of the anime, where the suiter Azasa selected for his daughter Ayeka has a dual with Tenchi.
I'm really not very far in this so it'll actully be eaiser to a direct translation here. Please forgive my somewhat loose interpretation in some parts. This gets a bit difficult for me.
---
The king of Jurai had been visiting the Masaki home for one week.
Strictly speaking, the visit had taken one week. The first princess of the planet Jurai's, Ayeka's, potential fiancé had been brought along but due to strange occurances that kept happening the work involving finalizing him had had to be done over 7 times, with a new interuption everyday. At that time Ayeka would say, "Father, about me, the thing is Tenchi..." and be met with the responce, "If this Tenchi-guy can win in a duel against my chosen man I'll give my blessing". These lines were said every time, so for this, Tenchi's 8th duel, it felt like tradition.
The audience always involved the same eight people and one animal, and this 8th time was the same
Jurai's King, Azusa
Jurai's first Queen, Funaho
Jurai's secod Queen, Misaki
Jurai's first prince, Masaki Katsuhito (Youshou)
Jurai's first princess, Ayeka
Jurai's second princess, Sasami
Former space pirate, Ryoko
Genies Scientist, Washu-chan
Living Spaceship, Ryo-ohki
The gorgeous women, who where at this moment gathered in Earth's solar system and who's aura had never been matched before, and who could be called a major pain in the neck, where all attracted to the nice guy and normal high school student (currently on hiatus) Tenchi Masaki and each (beautiful and rich) considered herself his suitor.
Ayeka was worried about Tenchi's well-being, "Tenchi is fighting for my sake", she thought, and the very idea gave her a happiness that bordered on ecstasy. On the other hand there was Ryoko, "Lose! Lose quickly! Lose on purpose! Lose without getting hurt! If you lose we'll send Ayeka back to Jurai. And Sasami will go back at the same time. Washu can just go where-ever. And you can take Mihoshi with you too" is what she wished to say from the bottem of her heart...but, she could feel Misaki's line of sight pointing right at her and she found herself rooting for Tenchi involuntarily. Not only did Ryoko understand that if Misaki got angry she should pull Ryoko's face until she cried while giving her the stink-eye, since this happened to her 8 times, she also understood that she would have the bill from her attack on Jurai 700 years prior thrust before her, since this had also happened 8 times.
---
Ranking
Realistically, this book is doable for me, but the speed is often just one sentence an hour. This is something I've been trying to read for a while and the above translation is the total accumulation of my work so far. All I got done for Yesterday's was the last sentence, which in Japanese it looks like this:
çŸç æščăæăăăăšæłŁăȘăăé ŹăćŒăŁćŒ”ăăæăăăçȘăéŁă°ăăă§、性ć€ăȘçźă«éăăăšăŻć
«ćçźă ăăéćŒă«ăćăăŁăŠăă、äžïŒïŒćčŽćă«æščé·æăè„ČăŁăæăźè«æ±æžăă€ăă€ăăăăăźăć
«ćçźă ăăćăăŁăŠăă。
So far that's the standard length of sentence for this book. For comparison here's a normal one from Ugly Duckling Revolution:
ăȘăăȘăź、ăăźäșșăăĄ。。。ă、ç°æ§ă«ă€ă±ăĄăłă°ăŁăăă ă！ćŸć
ăăŸă¶ăăăŠ、ăăèŠăăȘă。。。！
It looks like once I get past the prolog the Tenchi sentences might shorten down, but I'm only two pages in and I've got quite a bit more to go.
As for as the story goes it definatly has my curiosity, even if it's just a recap. It's going into slightly more detail then they showed in the Anime, so it's not boreing.
So where do I put this?
I want to give the story a green, but the grammar difficultly level a red. So, weirdly, I think I've got to invent a new ranking for this category. This is purple. The meaning is this, I'm removing it from the derby as a normal contestent but I'll still add a few sentences here and there until my level improves significantly enough to look at the story at a decent speed. Perhaps it will come back in the future, so this is different then losing, but for the time being I can't rank it normally. This does not count as the game being removed for the week. The other contestents will be ranked in the derby as is normal and the lowest ranking there will still be the one to be removed.
Running Ranking
- Digimon Adventure
- Ugly Duckling Love Revolution
- Starry Sky Portable -in Spring-
- Hetalia Academy
- Ouran High School Host Club
- Digimon Story: Lost Evolution
- Detective Conan
Shin Tenchi Muyo
My favorite word of the day was:
ćă, ç§èȘă
[ăăăă (sasayaku)]
to whisper, to murmur
From when the sweets were "whispering" to the main character in Ugly Duckling, tempting her.
Friday's set is Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side (1, DS) and Baka to Testo (PSP)
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