Digital: A Love Story, henceforth to be referred to as simply Digital, is a Visual Novel type game, but with many rather unique differences. To start, there is only one path for the game. No good or bad ending, just an ending. Secondly, the game takes about one hour to complete. Just a single hour of your time. There are no character drawings or animations that appear, it is all just text. And yet, it provides some very interesting characters that you genuinely begin to care about.

The game basically takes place back when the internet was new, and you are using an interface designed to be like the old Amiga computers. In the process of the story, you connect to Bulletin Board Systems, read messages, dial into other ones with your virtual modem, and begin to piece together the plot, story, and characters.

The game in short and in spoiler form is about an AI you meet online without knowing she is an AI, she seems to be showing some major interest in you, then the BBS you were using goes down, along with a list of dead AIs appearing on another BBS that contains her name, which also is your clue that she is an AI. It turns out there is a virus attacking AIs. You manage to save her, and she then goes and sacrifices herself to destroy the virus so it won’t destroy any other AIs.

You are the typical silent protagonist, but it is taken to the extreme. You can reply to messages, but you never see your reply, nor do you ever encounter the choose an option. You simply choose to reply, and by replying to the right messages, you learn more about the setting, plot, or characters. Funny enough, while it sounds uninteresting, as you cannot see or interact with the other characters in the ways other visual novels allow, it actually adds a layer of mystery as to who these people really are. You receive responses from someone, who beyond a username is a total mystery.

Even plot elements have a feel of actually having achieved something. While another game may have you hack a computer by choosing the choice, Digital has you hack a computer by getting the hacking program, getting long distance codes, getting the address of the place, and actually preforming the hack. You need to reply to most every message to get all the details needed to advance the plot, such as the programs that allow you to hack into another BBS or to recover Emilia.

Instead of just choosing an option, you actually have to remember what other people said, put two and two together and then deduce from there how to proceed. As there is no ‘wrong’ answer that can really be given, you will always have the information required to proceed, it just takes a little bit of reasoning to get it all to work.

To summarize, it is an hour long game that does somehting unique and different, is absolutely free, made by one person, and is actually pretty compelling.

Score: 5/5

Pros: everything about it just works. Every element of the game helps to reinforce the story and characters, while nothing is really allowed to break the immersion. Characters are compelling, and the plot is interesting.

Cons: The only con is that I can’t really find anything to complain about. Even the single ending doesn’t discourage replay value.

You can get Digital from here: http://scoutshonour.com/digital/

Final suggestion: Get the game. It is honestly worth it.

Without further ado:

Press Release: JAST USA Announces School Days HQ Collector’s Edition

JAST USA, the top publisher of Japanese PC games in English, today unveiled the collector’s edition of School Days HQ, a fully-animated bishoujo game (also known as a dating sim or eroge) that is famous for its violent bad ends. School Days has attracted mainstream attention since the anime adaptation shocked audiences with its unexpected and gory conclusion.

This collector’s edition is the first such release in JAST USA’s history, and includes two items that are not available from any other source.

The first item is an “oppai” mousepad, which is an illustrated mousepad with a breast-shaped wrist rest. The mousepad included with the School Days HQ collector’s edition features original artwork of heroine Katsura Kotonoha in a wedding dress. This illustration was drawn for the mousepad by School Days character designer Goto Junji.

The second item is an illustrated rubber keychain. The illustration, designed with fans of the School Days anime in mind, is super-deformed art of protagonist Itou Makoto’s head.

JAST USA president Peter Payne said, “Without a doubt, School Days is a very important game for the English eroge industry. We really wanted to make it special, so we worked with Goto Junji and School Days developer 0verflow to create an amazing collector’s edition that fans are going to drool over.”

These two items will be packaged together with the game in a distinct collector’s box. The full set can be viewed and ordered on its product page athttp://www.jastusa.com/schooldays.html.

School Days HQ is currently in the final stages of testing, and is expected to go Golden Master in May, with release following shortly thereafter.

August 7th

Parasite Dolls Complete Collection DVD
The World God Only Knows II Complete Collection DVD
The World God Only Knows II Complete Collection Blu-ray

August 14th

This Boy Can Fight Aliens! DVD
This Boy Can Fight Aliens! Blu-ray

August 21st

No.6 Complete Collection DVD
No.6 Complete Collection Blu-ray

August 28th

K-ON! Season 2 Collection 2 DVD
K-ON! Season 2 Collection 2 Blu-ray
Koihime Muso Ultimate Collection (Season 1-3) DVD (Sub-only)

August 7th

Disgaea Complete Series DVD (S.A.V.E.)
Is This A Zombie? Complete Series DVD Limited Edition
One Piece Season 4 Part 1 DVD

August 14th

Oblivion Island: Haruka & the Magic Mirror DVD
Oblivion Island: Haruka & the Magic Mirror DVD/Blu-ray Combo
One Piece Collection 7 DVD
Trinity Blood Complete Series DVD (Anime Classics)

August 21st

Shakugan no Shana Season 1 DVD/Blu-ray Combo
Shangri-La Part 1 DVD Limited Edition
Shangri-La Part 2 DVD

August 28th

Freezing Complete Series DVD/Blu-ray Combo Limited Edition
Kaleido Star Season 1 Complete Collection DVD (S.A.V.E.)
Texhnolyze Complete Series DVD (Anime Classics)

Show: XYZ, it is currently streaming on DEF.

*Disclaimer: I do have the right to reject the majority vote if there is no realistic way for me to review the title in question (for example the sequel to a show that I have no watched, or something that would take too long for me to review like One Piece or Naruto)

The poll will run for one week starting tonight and will end May 19^th at 6:00 PM EST.

Update: So it is a little late for the update but the polls are closed.  Since it was a tie between Blue Drop and Escaflowne I will review both titles.

Today I intend to cop out on reviews so I have time to finish up Deus Machina Demonbane; Digital: A Love Story; don’t take it personally babe, it just ain’t your story; Analogue: A Hate Story; narcissu 2; Aselia The Eternal; and Aion.

So instead today I will talk about some adult games from Japan that introduce new ideas that are actually quite innovative, due to the fact that I like to see innovation, as it moves the industry forward as a whole.

First is a game called Artificial Academy, or Jinkou Gakuen. To make a long story short, you play as a class president, and you can create the class. To be more specific, you can fiill the classroom full of characters of your own creation. Want the entire class to be clones of the same girl? Go ahead. Want a diverse population of characters to interact with? You can do that as well. Want to create a harem of all the classmates? Feel free. Want to romantically pursue just one? You can do that too.

So, why is this making the list of revolutionary games? Well, it is a game that allows you to create your own story. Every other Visual Novel has you play through their story, and some are more advanced and have branching storylines. Digital: A Love Story has one single story path with only one ending (but only takes about an hour to complete) while most other games have good and bad endings and several characters you can end or fail to end with. In comparison, Artificial Academy has near-infinite possible paths. The only limit is 25 classmates and your imagination. 25 classmates, and you can customize them and yourself. Almost every fantasy can be played out with this game, and it allows you to create your own story instead of following the story of someone else.

Honestly, I considered not linking to these games, but they are so easily googled that I may as well just give the link. After all, while you need to be 18 to order adult games, everywhere just relies on the honor system to view and buy stuff. So I may as well hope you are honest and won’t click the link if you are under 18.

Artificial Academy

The second game is Delusion Virtual Character Trouble with T-CAM. Remember when I said Sonicomi was a great advance for Visual Novels due to the fact that actions required you to perform said action instead of a cutscene or just clicking in a box? Well, DVCT takes it to a whole new level by using a (sadly proprietary) camera with the game for the actions. While Sonicomi had you play minigames to take photos, and the minigame perfomed somewhat like taking photos, DVCT goes one step further by using the camera to read your body movements. I do not know if that works in a perverted way, or if the game includes adult content. Back on topic, if you want to give an item to someone, you actually do the motions of handing somehting, the camera sees it, and the character receives the item.

To quote form the website: “…the player is able for the first time to “reach out and touch” the 3D heroines on the screen, through the innovative use of camera sensor technology. Interact with your favorite girl through movements of your hand, and make ‘eye contact’ through face recognition technology, in addition to a suite of other controls that let you interact with characters in the virtual world like never before! Examine a girl by looking at her from various angles and the camera position changes to suit, or give her a virtual present through the screen – the possibilities are virtually limitless. With the far future ‘Adam and Eve aboard an artificial satellite’ setting as a landscape, you’ll be able to meet and interact with the girl of your dreams in this next generation love sim game.”

Talk about innovation: you now must do the actions in person instead of clicking boxes or watching a cutscene of an event and thinking it would be nice if you could actually Do some of that stuff. Well, thanks to DVCT you actually can.

Plus, the setting sounds pretty interesting as well, but that is for a review, if one ever happens.

Delusion Virtual Character Trouble with T-CAM

Finally, and I really debated about this, but 3D Virtual Girl. While the other games include ideas such as a fully open story or camera based interaction that will hopefully see release for non-adult games, 3D Virtual Girl is solely for adults with its adult accessory.

The game is solely sex with no story or plot. And to assist with that, they made an extra bit that allows you to actually…yeah…and the character on screen…yeah.

Funny enough though, 3D Custom Girl was outselling Little Busters on amazon.jp, and actually took the #1 spot for PC eroge. This game managed to dethrone the mighty Little Busters, which is a pretty impressive feat for a $200 game. So what else does it do? Well, you can create custom characters in game, so if you ever had fantasies about Hatsune Miku, you can act those out. If that isn’t quite your taste, snag one of the game modifications and go to town on a giant gundam. Literally anything or any character you can think of has been created. While that is a bit messed up if you think about it (so don’t) the game license allows for you to create a custom character model and sell it to other people. Commercially. Without having to give them a cut of the money.

A bit perverted use, but it has extras that would allow you to interact with eroge by actually…*ahem*…

Plus, it allows you to make some extra money if you can find someone who wants to download and pay for the files of a character you made, it has lots of third party mods, and actually manages to bring new ideas to the eroge genre. Specifically, it is a game that knows exactly what people want from eroge and gives them just that. Oh, and did I mention it used those 3D-esque characters? Yeah, it is like an animation drawing  came to life. While to other two games head towards the more photo-realistic character designs, 3d Virtual Girl takes typical anime and manga appearances and makes those into its 3D characters.

So, a whole new visual appearance and a game that provides new interaction ideas? Not the most innovative, but it puts forward ideas they will again hopefully be in future games. Well, future adult games here. There is no way the accessory here can work for anything but adult games.

And it just so happens  they are out of stock and may or may not get it back, but jlist previously had it here:

3D Custom Girl

My personal thoughts: 3D cake simulator (as I call it) is interesting, and probably one of the better H games. Artificial academy is interesting, but not likely to get a follow up game. After all, when you can be the god/main character of your realm, it is pretty hard to follow up to that,  except by changing the setting and some other changes. Maybe the sequel will be in an office or a  university or somehting instead of a high school. DVCT has  to be one of the most interesting game I have seen, primarily due to that use of the camera to allow you to interact with the characters by mimicking the actions.

I also think that if I had the money I’d review…perhaps them all, actually. I am not too hip on the 3D cake idea, but I am more willing to put my money where my mouth is. Artificial Academy has me interested, but might not be a good idea, given my history with the last game that gave me the powers of a god (sims.) Overall, of those three, I would want to check out DVCT the most. I would also like  to check out a new mouse and keyboard too, as both only work about 50% of the time.

Right, well, that is the end of this article.  Buy any of those games if that is your thing is my useful advice for the ending here. The links go right to the products because I am nice like that.

But the series has a small problem. Or at least the beginning does. The first story arc is incredibly repetitive. It’s episode after episode of Kenshiro stumbling upon a village being victimized by bandits. Kenshiro then goes to confront the bandits, they all try to take him down, he goes “wah-tah!” and they all explode. This goes on for a while, but eventually the people Kenshiro has to fight start to get a little… weird.

Unlike Hokuto Shinken, which is traditionally used by a single person who then passes it on to a succesor, Nanto Seiken has 108 different schools who use variations of the martial art. The people Kenshiro fights in the lead up to his battle with Shin, a man who used to be Kenshiro’s friend but later betrayed him and kidnapped his fiance, are mostly users of different kinds of Nanto Seiken. One of these people is the Colonel who leads God’s Army. God’s Army was in control of a village, and when Kenshiro arrives there he gets on the army’s bad side by killing a few of them. After letting himself get captured and brought to their base, he eventually confronts the Colonel…

… who tries to kill him with boomerangs. The boomerangs are metal and sharp, sure, but they’re still boomerangs. This guy is a practitioner of an ancient martial art and the first thing he does in a fight is whip out a couple boomerangs. But I’ll cut this one some slack. Outside of the boomerangs he’s a fairly normal guy, he even throws a couple spears too. And in the next story arc we meet Mamiya, who fights with yo-yos, so boomerangs aren’t that weird in retrospect.

Later on, Kenshiro arrives at a village whose water supply is controlled by a sorceress named Patra, who demands that young men and women in the village be offered as slaves to her. Kenshiro does his whole saving the village thing, and eventually faces these two dudes.

Yes, they are also practitioners of a type of Nanto Seiken. One that requires them to dress up as bats and fly around screeching and attacking people with claws. That is a school of an ancient martial art.

Later on, Kenshiro arrives at a village that is being controlled by a witchdoctor named Zaria. He uses a form of hypnosis to turn the population of the village into mindless slaves, and can also use this hypnosis to slice up their bodies. That’s also a form on Nanto Seiken! And the guy looks like this!

You can tell just by looking at his hair that he’s trained in an ancient deadly martial art. It’s been a bit since I’ve actually seen the episode so I honestly can’t remember if the dude ever even throws a punch or if he just does his dumb hypnosis the whole time and gets killed.

Kenshiro faces a few other Nanto Seiken users before finally facing off against Shin, but you get the point by now. The weird enemies at least make things a little more entertaining than if Kenshiro was just constantly punching generic bandits in the face. I really do like the series, but this first bit of it doesn’t make it very easy to get into.

• Purchase Fist of the North Star at RightStuf

But yeah, I’d been buying the Blu-rays once they started coming out, ’cause even as much as I hated this series I still like Fullmetal Alchemist so I bought it anyway. I never actually bothered to make a serious effort to watch them until recently, because I was bored and they were there. I still struggled to get through the early bits, both because of the terrible comedy and the fact that, through various media, I’d seen all the early stuff at least a dozen fucking times and I never want to see it ever again if at all possible.

Around ~20 episodes into the series the amount of comedy starts to drop off a bit, as the story starts to get more serious. The comedy still persists throughout the entire thing, but the sheer amount of it decreases dramatically. Characters are able to seriously discuss all the genocide and military corruption that the series revolves around without getting super-deformed, making dumb faces, or plastering Japanese text all over the screen. It’s a welcome change that makes the series much easier to sit through.

Of course, this all stems from the original manga. Obviously it had the same kind of comedy and to same extent as Brotherhood, but it never seemed as distracting there as it is here. In the manga the gags can be confined to a single panel and are essentially throw-away gags. The series takes those throwaway gags and elevates them, putting too much focus on them. It also probably doesn’t help that I was sick of Fullmetal Alchemist‘s repertoire of jokes in 2006, so an entire new series filled with them didn’t really have a fair chance.

Obviously it’d work better if you could see it moving, but how they chose to create the effect was simply by flapping the cel with Kenshiro on it up and down while capturing the image.  It’s an interesting way to create the effect, likely done to save money by not actually having to animate it. Of course, there are some problems with it, namely the light reflecting on the cel, the background remaining completely static, and the cel being lifted off the background causes Kenshiro to cast a shadow on it, but it still struck me as interesting.

Filed under: Anime Tagged: fist of the north star ]]> http://blogofthehawk.com/2012/04/27/creative-use-of-cels-in-fist-of-the-north-star-episode-23/feed/ 0 anthonymoores FotNS 23-1 http://blogofthehawk.com/2012/04/26/review-eve-no-jikan/ http://blogofthehawk.com/2012/04/26/review-eve-no-jikan/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:36:08 +0000 Nyanman http://janaiblog.com/?p=8495 Continue reading →]]> Time of Eve, aka Eve no Jikan. Honestly, this review this week was almost the newest Final Fantasy game, but with all the time spent on the demo and still not managing to achieve everything, as well as some other events that ended up with me reading through the archives of another blog and stunbmling across a mention of Eve no Jikan, this reiew ended up being Eve no Jikan. If that confused you, you understand how my entire week has been. Consider yourself welcome.

Eve no Jikan is a show released by a rather small animation studio, hence the two month and above release times between episodes. If yu don’t recall having seen the show on tv, that would be because it was apparently netcast. I can better explain that by saying it was shown for free online instead of broadcast, which gives you an idea how big the budget of the show was.

The main story revolves at first around a boy and what seems to be his robot. To be more accurate, as it has a human form it would be an android. To be pedantic, as it has a female form, it would by a gynoid. It is never really clear if the robot is his directly, or a possession of his family.

Either way, she has been going to an area she was never ordered to go to, so he and his friend go there to find a cafe, where the one rule is there will be no discrimination between humans and androids. To that effect, all androids there shut off their glowing halo rings that advertise that they are not, in fact, human. The name of the cafe? No other than Eve no Jikan (Time of Eve.) Even the items in the cafe, as well as when it shows up in a movement log on a robot all say ‘Are you enjoying the time of eve?’

Each episode from then on concentrates on the main characters and each of the other people who frequent the cafe. Each episode then ends up fleshing out some specific characters, and the overall effect ends up being a greater understanding of the main characters, as well as evolution of the main characters. The one boy who owns Sammy (the robot initially mentioned) opens up a bit more, and starts to emerge a bit. To betetr explain it, we find out from Sammy that he had quit a bunch of the things he loved, but as the episodes progress, he starts to go back to the things he enjoys, as well as make more friends at the cafe.

In the last episode, we find out the relationship between the second main character and his father, as well as with his robot. We also find out a bunch of details about his past that he had buried due to the emotional trauma it had caused him at the time.

I honestly do not want to give out spoilers, but I will say that each episode is genuinely interesting, and really served to further the story and develop the characters.

Even more impressive is that Eve no Jikan tells an interesting and compelling story almost solely through the characters discussions at the cafe. Other locations that appear include the home (main room only) of the main character, the bedroom of his friend, their room at the school they attend, the city and outside of Eve no Jikan cafe (no more than twice, I believe) and the cafe itself. Almost all of the time is spent at the cafe and is spent talking with other patrons, visitors, or the owner.

The one theme that is repeated is that machines are not anywhere near human, and that is shown by their stiff and steryotypical manner when interacted with outside of Eve no Jikan. If you want to ask a question, you state ‘Question’ at which point the robot will acknowledge you, then you may ask a question. This reeks of the old-fashioned idea of what communication with machines would be like, as in the old ‘Computer, beam us down’ commands. If they wanted machines to be like interacting with a computer, asking a question would be a command more like:

10 start program

or perhaps

System; 0==0,{Question$}

The use of the specific method of communication seems only to be a throwback to how older science fiction thought computers would be, and seems like an unnecessary addition to the not human aspect, seeing as the robots have glowing halos. Not only that, but when they appear at the cafe, each is capable of full annunciation, comprehension, and human speech. All of the commands and short sentences of the public interactons just vanish, which means the robots can communicate in a way that is easy for the people using them, which would be ideal in a product that is voice controlled, which is why it makes no sense that they respond to such archaic-sounding commands.

To spoil a bit of the end, what happens is the main antagonist (I don’t want to spoil it all) sends an adroid to investigate Eve no Jikan, but they find out it is an android and send it away (not too many spoilers) and the main antagonist lists Eve no Jikan as a place that is pending further investigation before being closed or allowed to continue business.

And that is all. The story ends there. The Eve no Jikan website apparently hinted at a second season, which would be nice. As it stands, Eve no Jikan introduces the characters, fleshes them out, and introduces a central conflict. The central conflict here can serve to band together the people and robots in the cafe to fight for the cafe against the antagonists. In short, Eve no Jikan is currently only the introduction and rising action of a story.

While it is very good, and very interesting, it still is not a complete story. Just saying ‘The End’ does not end your story, a conclusion ends your story.

Depending on who you ask, introducing the central conflict is either part of the rising action or part of the exposition. Notice where they land on the chart. For those who don’t ant to look, they fall at the part OPPOSITE OF THE ENDING.

Eve no Jikan is amazing. The characters are amazingly well done. The central conflict adds interest. The whole interactions that show the robots as to be similar to humans with similar thoughts and desires is interesting. The whole message of maybe they aren’t so different is compelling.

And as good as I think Eve no Jikan is, it still is only half or less than half of a complete story. Sadly, that is why I will reserve a reccommendation.

Just for the fun of it, while people use creativity to separate people from robots, robots have already started being creative. For instance, one classical composer is a computer. Eve no Jikan must have heard of this, as they show robots to be essentially people (as they could very well be in personality) with the only difference being that we are biological and think with a lump of flesh, while they are metal, and think with silicon and other exotic materials.

The reason I am being hard about the story is that Eve no Jikan comes across as being more about the story than about the show. It forgoes things like opening songs and flashy opening animations in favor of a few lines of text that introduce the background, then the episode starts up right after that. The only real songs are over the end credits, and a short soundtrack that plays almost every time the Even no Jikan cafe sign appears on camera. As the elements in the show push it more heavily towards the story side of story vs entertainment, it should have a full story that matches what it wants us to take away.

anyways, final score: 4/5 good. A great story set off by not being a complete story

Pros: utterly amazing. I wish I had words to describe how good it is.

Cons: It is yet to be a complete story. In fact, just when we begin to have total interest in the conflict is when they choose to say ‘we have done enough for now. Maybe we will make more episodes some other time.’

Eve no Jikan still is making it on my list of favorite series (in fact, it is likely making it on as my second favorite series of all time), but that lack of a real ending and climax and most of the rising action really puts a horsefly in that ointment. Not just a housefly or gnat, but a full-on horsefly.

Sites of information and links:

I found out about the series from this website: http://www.kuroneko-chan.com/echoes/?p=643

The website for Eve no Jikan can be found here: http://timeofeve.com/e/

And that’s almost all for today, except that I do suggest watching it. I can’t yet fully recommend it, as it feels incomplete, but I do suggest watching it. It is available on crunchyroll but requires the free trial or premium to watch, sadly.