blog好き

Mar 13 2010

Categories: l33t, off-topic
Tagged: blazblue:noel

19 Comments »

A thorough discussion of a completely inane topic.

(I needed a filler post.)

For me, fighting games are like Chinese restaurants. They all have more or less a tremendous menu of either pork, chicken, and seafood or fighters. They all have the same moves– oh look, fried rice! Oh look, a special move activated with a 623! And both give you an obligatory terrible dessert at the end: the fortune cookie and the storyline. And we’re perfectly fine with this. I play Street Fighter and Tekken not for the plot but for the meaty fighting and the rage of losing and the thrill of victory.

But… once in a while, you’ll stumble across a Chinese restaurant that doesn’t give you a fortune cookie at the end. Instead, you get a warm bowl of sweet red bean soup. Ah, that’s just an extra tasty bonus. And that’s exactly what a good, interesting story is to fighting games– a tasty bonus.

And that brings us to BlazBlue.

A couple things to note before I begin… one, this post is really intended for the smallest of audiences: people who are familiar with BlazBlue and read a blog where bikinis with thighhighs, Luluko, and meido are celebrated. That’s not exactly a great proportion of the world, but it’s an important one. Two, I enjoyed writing about Guilty Gear. Come on. It had Bridget. How could I not enjoy writing about it? Three, this isn’t a gameplay review. Fighters are like vacation spots: some people like Cancun, Europe, Tahiti, Tokyo, Aincrad, Disney World, Yosemite, and Graceland. Everyone has their own preference. Just BlazBlue happens to be Vegas of fighting mechanics. Lastly, this season is so crappy, I am really stretching for things to write about.

My first exposure to BlazBlue was in an Toronto arcade a while back. I was looking for an Accent Core machine when I spotted it… Arc Sys made another 2D fighter? Wha? I mean, I had to try. You couldn’t keep me from trying. It was like keeping Shana from a mound of freshly baked melon-shaped bread or keeping Sasha from plump, juicy soma. Just unpossible. And as soon as I noticed that Ragna and Jin suspiciously resemble Sol and Ky, wild horses couldn’t tear me away. Honestly, then, I didn’t have time to reflect on who these characters were.

Fast forward a few months, and I got the 360 version. I ripped into it. I didn’t bother with story mode, and I thought that the arcade mode “story” made Code Geass seem like To Kill A Mockingbird. I talked in terms of 236236D and wasted way too much time on dustloop. I wasn’t getting enough sunshine. My anime blogging suffered. And my Ragna still sucks. (I think in terms of peak ability, it’s about 28-30 for the NBA. You’re just a tad beyond your physical peak, but you have that right window where there’s enough physical ability left but with a good amount of experience. In terms of fighting games, I’m convinced it’s 22-24. I think your physical ability peaks much earlier, and experience doesn’t count for as much. Plus, it’s a good age for having free time.)

You know what? That was a mistake. The story’s as entertaining as the fighting mechanics. Only now do I really appreciate the story. How?

1. 15,532. You know exactly where I’m coming with this one. Imagine Endless Eight, except replace Kyon with a Kyonko loli vampire. And that’ll be wrong. (Wrong figuratively and metaphorically.) The basic plot has all the tragedies of 100 years constantly repeating, only you don’t know which reboot you’re in. And each repeat can subtlety effect the next one. In that sense, it’s more like Higarashi. The same tragic scenario repeats, with Nii-pah desperately trying to fight against fate over and over again. However, she is able to at least subtlety influence the next reboot. And, really, only anime and videogames from Japan can milk the “Hey, let’s repeat the plot” mechanic this badly.

(Plus, loli who drinks wine smacking around a weak loli ghost… versus a loli vampire who drinks Darjeeling tea and smacks around a bat and that cat thing.)

2. Ragna and Jin. Greatest boy-boy couple since Lulu and Suzaku, surpassing Setsuna and Lockon. Arc Sys took the homoerotic overtones between Sol and Ky and multiplied it by ten. I’m convinced that during Jin’s story mode, after he beats up Ragna, he had his way with him, much like Chizuru and Aka-chan. I can’t understate Jin’s obsession with Ragna… you know how obsessive some otaku fanboys can be? As in wallpapering their room with Megami magazine foldouts, purchasing K-On! leg pillows, and have an endless array of plastic models? (If you’re reading this, and you can’t think of someone with a room like that… it means that you’re the one with the room like that. For Pete’s sake, you’re reading a blog that specializes in 2,000 word posts about K-On!.) I can imagine that Jin’s room is nothing but Ragna wallpaper, Ragna leg pillows, and Ragna plastic models.

3. The Japanese voice acting is superb, and the English localization is train wreck superb. My favorite has to be Ragna, whose English voice sounds like a 19 year old frat boy than a bad ass Heath Ledger type. (As in Brokeback, not as in Dark Knight.) I keep expecting Ragna to go, “Hey guys, anyone else want to go grab some brewskis?” My second favorite has to be Taokaka, whose Japanese seiyuu, I’ve heard, is excellent.

(And Taokaka’s lines… well… they’re awesome. Boobie Lady, “I’m going to rape you!”… come on. She’s on the short list of greatest and stupidest fighting game characters.)

(I thought Taokaka’s excellent seiyuu should have voiced every female character in Ghostory. She could definitely do Mayoi at the very least. She has the range, unlike, oh, Horie Yui… who has one A voice, but it’s still just one voice.)

4. I enjoyed all the quirky kinks of the Guilty Gear cast, and I’m glad Arc Sys brought the same personality highlights to BlazBlue. Everyone on Guilty Gear was weird to the point that Faust– FAUST!– seemed boring by comparison. Let’s see… a girl who talks to her hair, a girl who talks with dolphins, the Sol and Ky bromance, the one-armed yet double-boobed samurai, and Bridget. Even a seemingly normal character is broken. Let me put it this way… Johnny leads a pirate gang of underaged girls. You know what? It’s one thing to be a pirate… it’s another when you only accept underaged girls as your shipmates. Just a plethora of characters. The Guilty Gear freakshow is kinda like the pig blood soup you might find in Hong Kong dim sum. Street Fighter would be more like beef with broccoli.

Honestly, nothing tops Guilty Gear, but BlazBlue brings some strong arguments. Taokaka, Ragna, Jin, Rachel… they all could have been in Guilty Gear’s cast. Everyone’s broken. I enjoy Carl’s beyond freaky siscon, I enjoy Litchi’s irrational love for Arakune, I enjoy Bang’s FRKZ, I enjoy Nu’s attempts to “combine” with Ragna, and I enjoy how Noel is so timid and useless unless she’s defending the honor of her bosom. Then she becomes Jin Kazuma after he discovers that Heihachi double crossed him. (Ha! Make that people who play BlazBlue, watch Seitokai no Ichizon, understand the lack of different Horie Yui voices, and suffered through Tekken’s fortune cookie-class plot.) I definitely enjoy how Noel’s alternate story is her trying to avoid getting costume raped by Litchi. Yes, if you’re keeping score, so far we have an uncomfortable bromance, a Higurashi rip-off plot, a Kanbaru prototype, an abusive loli vampire with Belldandy’s tastes for refreshments, a siscon, a SaiKano rip-off who wants to mate with a 19 year old frat boy, and a costume rape side story. How many tropes is that?

5. Teach Me Ms. Litchi gives me a great idea for an anime series. You have a seemingly normal doctor (with a hawt body, of course) getting visited by various freaks. Every episode, it would be a different freak with a different problem. It would be Teach Me Ms. Litchi crossed with House. Like this wouldn’t be an improvement over B Gata H Kei, Ladies vs. Butlers, and Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou.

(Of course, you could say that this concept of a well-meaning but never turns out that way doctor exists already: Frankenfran. Honestly, as much as I appreciate Fran, I think I rather go for the comedic fanservice angle of Teach Me Ms. Litchi. I can only handle so much traumatic, moralistic gore.)

6. My biggest complaint about the story has to be Gonzo handling the 2D animation scenes. Why? Why?! WHY!!! Yes, there’s not a lot of 2D animation, but, really, let’s not sully ourselves with Gonzo. As Rachel said to her bat after Arakune vomited the bat up, let’s not stand within five yards downwind of said bat.

(Rachel is an awesome immortal loli vampire. So much better than Mina.)

7. I like how the official BlazBlue online store is selling prepaid phone cards… and half of them feature Rachel x Noel scenes. I think this is Arc Sys’s way of trying to balance out all the Ragna x Jin uncomfortableness. Out of curiosity, who uses phone cards these days?

8. It’s a story that seems really trivial at first, but, when digging deep, it’s not bad. It’s an acquired taste, maybe not like a durian, but not that far off either. The initial feel I got from the story really didn’t matter (again, plot for fighting games is like sense and sensibility in anime blogging– totally a dessert). But as I started getting into story mode, it got better. Much better. To the point where I find the story highly underrated, much like Final Fantasy VIII.

So there you have it. Even more reasons to enjoy an already great game and hopefully Arc Sys will bring Continuum Shift stateside. (Really, nothing would make me happier than either a Guilty Gear vs. BlazBlue game… or a Code Geass and Gundam crossover. I might explode from experiencing either.)