For the interest of keeping track of this without growing bored of just one game, I've decided to split my games up by days of the week.
- Monday: Monster Games (Ex: Digimon)
- Tuesday: Otome games (Ex: Starry Sky, Ouran DS)
- Wednesday: Anime Games (Ex: Conan)
- Thursday: Shin Tenchi Books
- Friday: Meruru
- Saturday: Whatever I feel like :)
Since Friday is Meruru, and as I've said that one's already out in the USA, I'll use that day to discuss more of the technical side of how I'm studying via games and such.
Now on to the review!
Picking up where I left off in Digimon Adventure. I ran through chapter 4, if we're counting total, or 3, if main: Sora and Biyomon. I've decided against rewatching the anime in favor of reliving it strictly through the game, so this review will probably echo some things watchers probably already know.
Still looking for other people, and with Sora as the main playable character now, our group continues past the lake with the lone rail-car and into the telephone pole desert. They see their first flying black gear and Sora, Tai, and Mat start discussing it. Biyomon, however, has very little interest in the topic and would rather hear Sora talk about herself, since she clearly wants to become Sora's best friend ever! Sora seems to have no idea how to respond to this, and as she did earlier in the game as well, just looks at Biyomon in a somewhat complicated manner as Biyomon, happy as a clam, insists they hold hands as they walk.
I'm guessing Sora isn't used to getting a lot of attention at home, at least not that kind. I feel like somewhere in memory I remember an episode from season 2 where her mother told her to quit soccer because she was getting too old to act like a tomboy anymore. I wounder if that kind of home-life, where she's fighting against her parents telling her she should act like a lady, is part of the reason she's just so weirdly baffled when someone loves and accepts her unconditionally. All Biyomon seems to care about is finding out more about the BEST PERSON EVER, and whatever the answer is, she's thrilled to find it out and wants to snuggle.
After wandering around the desert a bit more (and when we fight bigger digimon, with Aguman randomly digivolving now. It looks like I've got no control over when it happens), we eventually make it to a village where our heroes are certain there must be people! But there aren't. They're in a Pyomon village, filled with pink pre-Biyomon flower smiles. The Pyomon a friendly enough, but the kids can't exactly stay with them since the houses are too small. Biyomon is an instant celebrity and when the Pyomon ask her how she got big she doesn't hesitate at all to say it's because of Sora, and how she's got to protect Sora. Well, before they left they had hoped to get water at the well. But how strange, the water was gone! Tai pulls out his mini-telescope, looks at the montian the water should be coming from (don't ask me what he was expecting to see) and see's Meramon (Fire Dude) running and screaming down the mountain to the village. Biyomon insists on evacuating the Pyomon; TK wants to help and Sora tells him to look after the ones outside the village, and I don't know what Mimi was doing there, but Sora had to calm her down and then she left too. The whole evacuation takes too long and Fire Dude appears as Biyomon is talking to the last Pyomon. Sora jumps in to save her, Biyomon and Co in turn try to fight Firedude, Biyomon wishes really hard to protect Sora and digivolves into Giant Fire Bird. VICTORY IS MINE! After the battle it turns out the black gear from earlier got inside Firedude, and he didn't remember a thing afterwards. Sora now, however, seems to be feeling a little less weirded out by Biyomon's overly loving attitude, and is feeling happy and grateful to have been saved.
Right now I'm wondering a bit about the symbolism in Sora's name. It means Sky, it's written with the Kanji for Sky, and her digimon is a bird. Actully, maybe what I should say is I'm wondering about the symbolism in the other kid's names. Hmmm... next time I play I think I'll spend some time parsing out everybody's names...
The next main chapter coming is Izzy's, but before that a mini-Sora chapter popped up as well, and I plan to do that one first: next Monday.
Digimon Story: Lost Evolution
This one's a DS game. There have been quite a few to come out, but Lost Evolution is the next one after Dawn and Dusk, the last set to be translated into English. I suppose this is a good a place as any to point out, in Japanese they don't actually digivolve, they just... "change". The title of the game is in katakana and is literally pronounced as "Rosuto Eboryuushon" (ロストエボリューション）, so I'm sticking with that. As I did with Adventure in the last post, I'll be using the intro day as a way to bring up to speed on where I'm already at in the game.
As the new kid in town, you're at a festival watching fireworks when something not quite right happens. It looks like a star was hit by one of the fireworks and landed over in the forest. You've already made a bunch of friends who you run into along the way to investigate, and one of it's members is named Hiroyuki. Hiroyuki is a pain. In game terms, he's impulsive and that propels the story along. In translation terms, he likes to use very masculine Japanese, which I'm not overly familiar with, and that means sometimes I'm just guessing from context what he's saying. Hiroyuki is convinced that something big is going on and runs off to the forest ahead of you when another of your mutual friends calls him a childish moron. Meeting up with the rest of your group on the way your team includes: You, Hiroyuki, Mutual-Acts-Grown-Up-Guy-Friend(Blue Hair), Hiroyuki's Cute Little Sister(Pink Hair), and Hiroyuki's Cute Little Sister's Stern Friend(Blond Hair). Your team finds Hiroyuki further into the forest in front of a spaceship. A dinosaur (Augumon) crawls out of the bushes and we're expositioned SO MUCH PLOT. >_<
In a nut shell, the tamers in the Digi-world have disappeared, and Augumon came to your world to find them. He did so by stowing away on the ship of the bad guys who JUST FOUND YOU. Well, sort of. They come out of the space ship and somehow don't see you as they talk more exposition among themselves. Not expecting to get hit by a firework they're changing their plans and are going to dump the Numamon* (green slimes with crab eyes that always show their teeth) on board their ship here. They see you, your party flees save you and Agumon, you two fight the bandits (That's what they're called). You win, they go back in their ship to trigger the escape pod and return with the Numamon to the digiworld. Your party returns and Hiroyuki is especially fascinated by the space alien (Numamon) on the ground. Everybody gets sucked up by the beam meant for the Numamon and presto! You're in the Digi-world! You're in a dark slimy cabin used to hold Numamon, so you don't know that at first, but after Hiroyuki presses the emergency eject button on a "good hunch" you, Agumon, Hiroyuki, and Blond Hair wake up on the ground of said Digital world.
With two of your party now missing Agumon proposes you all head to the Digibase, and maybe his friends could help you. Along the way you meet Gabumon who's Digi-plate was stolen. Digiplates are what let digimon digivolve in this game, so without it he's freaking out. Gabumon is convinced the bandits stole it but didn't see them do it.
With years of gaming experince under my belt, my detective instincts tell me: In a game aimed at this age group, someone else stole it.
Gabumon joins your group after Agumon brags on your behaf and your group makes it to the digi-base. They are disappointed to see Agumon couldn't find the others but thrilled to see he brought back a human. Why does no one consider enlisting the other two humans with me as tamers as well...? You spend the night, are given a digi-farm, it trains digimon who arn't in your party when you put them in it, and three new digimon. I got a purple dragon with bat wings, an Owl, and the snake version of Gatomon. You are then sent to go find a Digi-ship. Yes, Digivolve is just change in Japanese, but they really do add "digi" in front of everything else. You run into the bandits, agian, and they exposition, again, and you defeat them, again. (My power died so I had to do this part twice) What you get out of them is they don't know where your friends are, but you might get a better lead from investigaing the group "Select", who are on another island and you need a digiship to get to them. They leave and somehow or another the digiship you found being registered on your digivice means you can use it later (I think).
Meanwhile, the group Select shows up at the digibase and things get dark fast. They are wearing what look like blue-combat-spacesuits and jump out of a giant spaceship right in front of the digi-base. They reapeat everything they say twice and tend to use katakana-english-computer terms to describe everything they do. What they are here to do, is erase and select. They local thug-esk digimon come over and threaten them, Select stops to check it's list, and identifies the three as erase targets. They hit them with the erase beam and the thug digimon disintegrate. Select then proceeds inside the digibase and finds the digimon who helped you. They are on the list as preserve and Select hits them with a dizzy beam. Cut over to your party and you guys are talking about how it's weird, and foreboding, how your signal suddenly went out. Walk back to the digibase and blond hair is struck by how all the digimon are missing and a few things are broken. Select comes out and sees you. Since you're not on their list they have a digimon battle with you (well, why question it?) and you win. So they transform into blue-spacesuit-combat-spiders and you fight them. When they loose Hiroyuki smack talks them for a while and then they disintegrate themselves. Now you can enter the digibase and see what happened....
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