Zero Frights: Devilman (1972 - anime)

As discussed earlier in my Zero Frights Introduction and my Mao Dante Review the original 1972 Devilman anime played a key role in the creation of the franchise as a whole. The short version for the uninitiated is that executives over at Toei animation wanted to create a series based around Nagai’s earlier Mao Dante (aka Demon Lord Dante) manga but with changes to make it more appropriate for television and a hero with a more humanoid appearance. Nagai felt that instead of just tweaking the earlier Mao Dante into something else he should start fresh and this is how he took similar elements from Mao Dante reworked them and created the new series Devilman.

Nagai oversaw the production of the TV series and was invested in it greatly but would later put most of his attention into his own manga version that he controlled himself. Eventually the two projects diverged and became wildly different. This was due in part to Nagai’s freestyle writing without any planning ahead as well as how he felt the audience for the magazine in which his manga was serialized under was much older than an audience that would watch television anime making him feel a need to up the maturity level of his work.

Some of the major characters from the manga not present in the anime came about because of these reasons, with the biggest example being the character Ryo Asuka whom was a key component to the manga but noticeably absent in the anime. Go Nagai conceived of Ryo much too late in the production cycle for the anime to incorporate him into their version, much to the dismay of some of the staff whom loved the character and felt he would have been a fantastic addition to the anime version. The anime seemed to try its hand rather hard from that point to create its own hand similar character, first with the rival character Iwao Himura and later with the demon Dorango, former friend turned foe.

It’s the intended audience that is the biggest difference between the two works, however, and goes much deeper than just missing characters. The television anime was conceived to thematically be about evil vs evil, with the villainous demon Devilman assuming the role of the now deceased Akira Fudo and falling in love with the “goddess” Miki Makimura. Instead of spreading death and destruction like originally intended Devilman fights to protect Miki and her family because of this love he now harbors even though it meant fighting the very evil forces he was once part of. Eventually we watch Devilman grow as a better person--he mellows out and loses some of that sharp edge he used to have, and noticeably carries a deeper respect for ideals like love and friendship. This is very much at odds with the strong anti-war message of the manga where humans assume demonic forms and power being a message for war drafting and arming young people with weapons. The second the protagonist Akira Fudo lets the demon Amon possess him he is throwing away his innocence and arming himself with a weapon. Hate begets more hate and the cycle becomes increasingly violent until eventually things go too far. Devilman the anime sees concepts like justice and love winning out in the end where as Devilman the manga sees a world where violence carries heavy consequences.

The Devilman manga is a story with a deeper meaning meant to be interpreted through its pages and it’s easy to look at that and feel the original 1972 anime just doesn't belong with its typical tokusatsu superhero monster-of-the-week formula, which is why it has a bad rap amongst some fans. This however is pretty unfair as the 1972 anime series is thoroughly well crafted and written. Scenario writer and novelist Masaki Tsuji oversaw much of the writing for the anime and produced incredibly solid scripts for the series. Tsuji was a huge writer at the time and wrote a large amount of episodes for an extensive amount of now legendary TV series such as Astro Boy, GeGeGe no Kitaro, Cyborg 009, Tiger Mask, Dokonjo Gaeru, Babel II, Dr Slump, and Giant Gorg--just to name a few.

Putting aside the manga, and what the franchise later evolved into--after all there was no franchise at this point--the original 1972 Devilman is a great 70’s superhero series that really deserves more love from the fans. Devilman’s multiple powers are all fun with cheesy names like Devil Cutter, Devil Eye, and Devil Beam (that the catchy opening song of course explains), and he posses the ability to grow into a giant much like Ultraman. Fights are dynamic and even a bit bloody at times, but the best aspect by far, however, is the fun monsters-of-the-week themselves. These demons typically looked grotesque and often used underhanded and sometimes actually scary methods to fight Devilman. A lot of the demons in the original manga made an appearance here and they are all great enemies for Devilman to fight. The general horror themed based animation really just started by this point on Japanese television as GeGeGe no Kitaro only just aired 4 years prior, so you can see the yokai boom in full effect.

The 1972 Devilman anime is one of my personal favorites from this era and anyone that enjoys older tokusatsu shows or are looking for some horror in their cheesy monster-of-the-week romps can easily fall in love with this series. I always was really fascinated with the series just for the fact that it stars the demon (not yet named Amon) instead of Akira Fudo as well. That difference is just so interesting in retrospect for the franchise and puts a whole other spin on much of the later created content. There’s also obvious Mao Dante trappings left behind that are a lot of fun to notice for long time fans as well; such as the demons all living in a frozen wasteland and being sealed in ice for thousands of years, the character Zannin who is blatantly just a reused Zennon from Mao Dante, and the ruler of the villainous Demon Tribe looking very much like a silhouette of Mao Dante himself as well as (kind of confusingly) being named Zennon.

The series as of late as found a renewed interest thanks largely in part to the many lovingly placed references to it in the brand new Devilman Crybaby. Thankfully it is incredibly easy to get a hold of nowadays as well because of Discotek releasing it on DVD (you know I was there on Day-1). The Discotek release contains a great translation that is easy to understand which is a huge improvement over the old days where I watched the series with bootleg English subtitles that were pretty questionable and always refereed to Devilman as Debiman (I like to think this was his nickname because he ate one too many Little Debbie snacks). With such a huge milestone as Go Nagai’s 50^th anniversary this year and all the recent releases for Devilman in North America from Netflix to the many newly released manga, maybe now the original anime can finally get some more love too.

Zero Frights: Mao Dante (2002 - anime)

So I am going to kick off Zero Frights by looking at Devilman titles released in North America. We’ll be starting this process by taking a closer look at the three Devilman anime released on home video by Discotek. All of these releases are currently in print. Tonight’s blog entry will be on the first of the three, Mao Dante.

Mao Dante (or Demon Lord Dante as it’s often translated) was Go Nagai’s orignal attempt at making a horror based manga where the forces of good and evil are not clearly discernible at the beginning. Although popular the original 1971 manga was canceled because of the magazine it was published in going under. Despite this it caught the eyes of some executives at Toei animation who wished to create an anime based around Mao Dante but with slight alterations to make it fit better for TV. So Nagai reworked elements from Mao Dante and Devilman was created. It took almost 30 years of living in Devilman’s shadow ever since but Mao Dante finally got its due in the year 2002 with a brand new manga Shin Mao Dante (sometimes referred to as New or Neo Mao Dante) that remakes the entire series as well as adding new content--the most prominent of which being an actual ending, and an anime adaptation of the original 1971 manga which will be our main focus tonight.

The Mao Dante anime comes from that magical era in the early 2000’s where animie studios wanted to remake classics but they were all especially terrible at it. You know right from the start if you’re picking up a show from 2001 - 2005 that adapts a classic manga you’re in for an awful time. I’m not saying every attempt at it back then was bad, after all we got the much beloved Captain Herlock: Endless Odyssey (2002) out of that era, but well, I am saying Mao Dante was in good company, with the majority of its contemporaries being more akin to Babel II Beyond Infinity (2001), and the mega hit show that everyone loves: Genma Wars (2002). Who could forget Genma Wars?!!! I know I can’t; I tried. The less-than-stellar track record of this early 2000’s fad of trying to cash in on classics combined with the fact that most of these animes were created very cheaply when the use of digital paint was just in its infancy and they all look especially terrible really is a gut punch whenever you scroll through titles of this era. We live in a much better time where the majority of anime based on classic manga get the treatment they deserve.

So you may be asking yourself, besides some poor presentation what’s so wrong with the Mao Dante anime? Well ignoring the bad animation and funky Adam West Batman - esque soundtrack (yes, the background music is bonkers, and never fitting for any scene) the worst culprit is the medium itself. The Mao Dante television anime should have never existed. I’m not saying that in a bitter, sarcastic way either, but as an actual critique from someone who read the manga. You see, Mao Dante is incredibly short, it was published in just 2 manga volumes. It’s a brisk read, you can honestly finish the entire thing in about 90 minutes, probably even less. There is just barley any content to work with here. The studio behind this adaptation should have instead just focused on creating a feature film based on Mao Dante or at least only made Mao Dante a 2-3 episode OVA series. Instead we have 13 entire episodes, over 300 minutes of content, telling something you can read the entirety of while cooking dinner. Basically, I hope you like filler content and a story that is paced as fast as snails, because that’s what you’re getting.

This is the most detrimental aspect of the Mao Dante anime, it’s filled to the brim with so much poorly written content not in the original source material, that does not jive well at all with Nagai’s story. For example, the first 3 episodes, none of that was in the manga, just throw it away. You lose nothing! These early episodes try their best to build a slow and suspenseful atmosphere, almost like a mystery themed series, but as soon as the original source material comes back into the story, they just feel off. The conspiracy about Satanist trying to summon their lord Dante back to this world just isn’t that creepy when you later learn these Satanist are lovable outcast, and that Demon Lord Dante is the result of a pissed off dude flying a space ship that is being eaten by a dinosaur while another dinosaur is eating that dinosaur, and all of them got blasted by fire from God who just turns out to be an alien causing them to mutate into one powerful being. So basically Demon Lord = pissed off dude + space ship + dinosaur + dinosaur + alien flamethrower. Got it.

And don’t get me wrong, I love this! I unironically eat this up, this is the campy apeshit kind of science-fiction story I can’t get enough of from the 1970’s. But that’s just it, at its core, Mao Dante is more of a sci-fi series with Christian imagery than an actual story about the struggle of Heaven and Hell. It’s a battle of disgusting looking espers fighting angelic looking aliens. All of this occult mystery stuff really is just basic window dressing in the manga and does not need to take up one quarter of the anime. And this has nothing on the awful Four Demon Kings story arc that literally made no sense and takes up another quarter of the anime. I know Nagai was fast and loose with mythology but at least Medusa feels somewhat at home mixed in with the Christian demons, unlike Buddhist Gods; like what the hell--they aren’t even European.

So we got a sci-fi series at its core with cool Christian imagery now turned into this mess of an occult mystery-conspiracy, meets Buddhist Gods rampaging through Asia, meets an evil corporation that is mass producing fake demons to trick people into hating the real demons, meets I dunno, office hijinx? Add filler characters that are dull, and that minor characters from the manga are given new story arcs they didn’t need nor should have gotten. Why did minor villain Souske need to become a good person? He was a rotten dude in the manga that got off from murdering and torturing innocent demons too weak to fight back. Did I really need to delve into his internal struggles? By making the villains more symptomatic it honestly does a disservice to the manga. It can be kind of hard to decide who to root for sometime while watching this anime version because everyone is just some kind of muddled where the manga is very straightforward on the characters and that when you get beyond how hideous and grotesque the demons are, they are really the true victims and the good guys.

Mao Dante is a horror anime where everything that shouldn't be ugly is ugly: cheap animation abound, lazy character designs, backgrounds constantly warp and change in size, the story is bastardized: riddled with filler, terrible pacing, inappropriate thematic elements, and nothing is scary at all. Honestly Mao Dante is unintentionally hilarious most of the time, with the majority of its attempts at frights creating laughs instead. There’s none of the hyper violence Go Nagai is known for nor any of the sexual content either. It’s an incredibly sterile anime given its material. Stay far away from the Mao Dante anime, no matter how curious you may be about the origins of Devilman. My suggestion is to just read the manga. It’s a light and easy read that is pretty fun. Any fan of classic manga owes it to themselves. Likewise the 2002 Shin Mao Dante remake is an incredibly good read that improves greatly on the original material, has a nice ending, and is all around fun too.

Zero Frights: An Introduction to Devilman & GeGeGe no Kitaro

It’s October 1 today and Halloween already feels like it’s around the corner. For me October marks the start of one of my favorite times of the year--fall weather is a welcome relief from the summer heat, the seasonal food is fantastic, and everybody is a little spookier than normal. It’s just the right time of year to get cozy and enjoy something creepy. That’s why for the past couple years I've desperately wanted to do something horror themed for my blog and sadly I have always fallen short. Last year we got to look at the creepy Kamaitachi no Yoru, but that was just one review and not the celebration of the spooky scaries that I've always wanted.

That’s why I doubled down this year and decided to go all in on a new series of reviews. This is a bit of an experiment to say the least, and I’m not sure if any of this will make it to next year, but I want to try to keep throwing out spooky content until something sticks--thus Zero Frights is now born. Zero Frights will be a series of shorter reviews on horror themed anime and video games that I cover all through the month of October. This means that instead of my usual one or two large reviews a month I am going to be releasing a bunch of smaller ones. How many? Well it’s actually kind of hard to say at this point, I’m just making it all up as I go along.

This is the basic concept I decided to go with, however for this year I am already going to make an exception. Yeah, I know, I just started and I got excuses! It’s just that this year is a bit different from most as 2018 marks two hugely important 50^th anniversaries: the anniversary of Go Nagai starting his manga career, and the anniversary of the first GeGeGe no Kitaro TV anime from 1968. It was because of this that both Nagai and Mizuki got the red carpet treatment in 2018 with both creators getting brand new animes: the Mazinger Z Infinity film, Cutey Honey Universe, & Devilman Crybaby for Nagai’s 50th, and the brand new ongoing GeGeGe no Kitaro for its anniversary.

Devilman and Kitaro are two huge franchises that I love and have always wanted to do something with for Halloween so I am instead going to put all my focus into just these two this year because of these anniversaries. That unfortunately means the very first (and maybe only) Zero Frights is going to lack any video game content. If this ever goes beyond just this year I will try to make up for that in the future.

So to get everyone up to pace I will just give a quick rundown of both Devilman and GeGeGe no Kitaro’s histories. Let’s start with Devilman because why not.

Devilman is a series from famous manga creator Go Nagai, best known for his big 3 franchises: Mazinger, Cutey Honey, and you guessed it: Devilman (no coincidence all 3 got new anime to celebrate his career milestone this year). But Nagai is perhaps even more well known for his love of pushing the envelope and creating new controversies to enrage parents across Japan. Sometimes Nagai was shock value for shock value’s sake but other times he could be deeply moving and really beautiful. Whatever the case though, if you picked up a manga from Nagai it was gonna be absolutely grotesque, hyper violent, and full of tits. That’s Uncle Go for you.

Devilman started as an anime and manga series simultaneously in 1972, and was more or less Nagai remaking an earlier canceled manga Mao Dante (otherwise known as Demon Lord Dante). In both Mao Dante and Devilman Nagai wanted to show how good and evil aren't always clear, and while nowadays we have a multitude of angels are the bad guys stories (SMT loves that especially) for 1972 in a children’s manga magazine this was pretty groundbreaking stuff. Most classic anime fans agree that Devilman and the earlier Mao Dante are some of the most influential groundworks for apocalyptic narratives in anime today.

I covered a lot of information about the late Shigeru Mizuki and Kitaro earlier in a blog post I wrote dedicated to Mizuki after his passing in 2015, but since then I have learned a lot more about about both and I don't particularly like that post much now. If you don’t want to skim it I think the best way to sum up Mizuki is the father of modern yokai stories. Mizuki helped to popularize yokai in a post-WWII Japan where silly old folk stories and superstitions were deemed too old hat for the (then) modern era. Mizuki was able to make yokai popular again and because of that it started the yokai boom in the 70’s where it seemed everyone wanted to have a yokai anime or manga: with imitators like Yokai Ningen Bem, Dororo, and Dororon Enma-kun (from none other than Go Nagai himself).

What separates Mizuki from all his imitators though is that the man was a living, breathing yokai encyclopedia. Literally! He wrote multiple encyclopedias about yokai, and these are not just fun little anime merch, but real, actual academic encyclopedias. He was considered to be an expert on the subject and his depictions of yokai have ended up becoming some of the default art work for them in modern times. Mizuki’s work at depicting yokai in of itself has had huge affects on lots of creators. Kazuma Kaneko the main artist for much of the Shin Megami Tensei series found a lot of his inspiration for demon designs from Mizuki’s encyclopedias for example.

GeGeGe no Kitaro itself is perhaps one of the earliest horror themed animated series to air in Japan but the road to getting there was actually rough. Kitaro went through a lot of transformations or earlier prototypes, if you will, over the years to reach that point. Before GeGeGe no Kitaro there was the more morbid Hakaba Kitaro (or Kitaro of the Graveyard). This was considered too scary for children though, and Mizuki was able to tone down some aspects of this manga and find the just right mix of horror and action to make his yokai knowhow into the money maker we know today. Kids ate it up and ever since then Kitaro has enjoyed success on TV for over 50 years. Every decade sees a new series, a new generation to grow up with these characters, and we are now in the middle of the most current Kitaro anime on TV. Kitaro isn’t stopping any time soon even after Mizuki’s passing.

Legend of the Galactic Price-tag

Legend of the Galactic Heroes (aka Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu) is one of “THOSE” animes. You know the type--those super famous, super long, classics that can never catch a break in English speaking territories. The kind of content that only dedicated fans can bring out illicitly because no company can afford the license thanks to its pedigree, nor would any company be willing to try because none have the cojones to touch a 150+ episode series that’s 30+ years old. So Sentai Filmworks’ acquisition of LotGH in 2015 was a pretty big surprise. Sentai releasing older series isn’t really too out of character for them--I mean they’re no discotek, but their Casshan release was great, and back-in-the-day as ADV Films they regularly did classics such as Gatchaman and Aura Battler Dunbine. But even knowing that this was still unbelievable, a legendarily unobtainable series can soon be obtained--but at a price the Monkey Paw demanded.

The 3 long years of radio silence was bad enough, but when news finally came in 2018 that’s when it really hit the fan. Legend of the Galactic Heroes would only be getting the royal treatment; a luxurious limited edition set that would cost $800 (plus shipping and handling). There will be no standard edition, there will be no cheaper DVD versions coming later, and there will be no other prints made. Only 1000 sets are being sold, so only 1000 people will be able to obtain the legendarily unobtainable. Those are some tough breaks. No real sane person would honestly buy this, only the most desperate super fan would sink so low--so naturally I bought one. ba-dum-tss

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask. Well, part of the reason is I’m one of “THOSE” people. You know the ones--the dastardly type that has bought some Aniplex of America releases (not a lot of them though!) and *gasp* may even import the occasional blu-ray from Japan. Jokes aside though, I quite enjoy my hobbies, so I don’t mind spending on them. A lot of my Gundam collection is in fact overpriced Japanese BDs that I really cherish for the gorgeous cover artwork that the US releases never get. I always felt like I’m willing to pay a premium price if the product I am paying for is premium--but to be fair, that’s just me, other people may call the whole thing a scam. I know a lot of people hate limited high price releases, and honestly, I can’t stand that only a chosen few can ever own LotGH now. If not for the fact that I had recently obtained my tax rebate before this pre-order window I would have easily missed the chance to become one of those chosen (this is the other reason why I ended up buying it).

Honestly while this set should be a major showpiece of my collection I felt a lot of remorse over it in the coming months; as this was easily one of my most conflicted purchases I have ever made in my life. This blu-ray box set has haunted me. After all, this is probably the most money I spent on something that wasn’t a car or an electronic like a new television. $800 is a lot; depending on where you live, you could probably pay a month’s worth of rent with this kind of dough. Even someone like me felt pretty pressured over paying this much for a hobby. Then there’s Sentai botching the first shipments royally. The set I’m showing here is actually my second one--the original set arrived damaged and I had to send it back. Regularly I’m not too picky about these things but goddamn for the price I paid it needs to be as close to perfect as possible.

From what I could tell, the number plate in my original set came loose during the shipping process and scratched the crap out of everything inside. I saw quite a few others with similar issues on forums over the following days. What I find hilarious is that when I got my replacement set they GLUED the new number plate in place and no matter how hard you tug it’s not coming out. Looks like they learned that one the hard way! Sadly I lost my original number thanks to this. I luckily did have the foresight to at least take a photo of it in case something like that happened though; number 131 out of 1000. Now I’m number 626 out of 1000 (gah). C’est la vie, at least my set isn’t broken anymore. If there's anyone out there that returned their set and suddenly became 131: you’re welcome.

So only now am I starting to really feel comfortable with this set and I just recently added it to my collection display. It sat in its shipping box on my desk for weeks as I felt uneasy about it. I’m starting to finally come to terms with this huge, expensive thing I now own--and let me tell you, if I ever move this is getting a crap load of bubble wrap considering the shipping woes Sentai gave me with the first set. Over all, this has been one stranger chapters of my collection though.

Please enjoy the following photos I took of this legendarily rare box set.

Complete set with one of the 4 blu-ray cases laid open.

Inside fold-out art for the blu-ray case.

Included book.

Most of the book is filled up with basic episode recaps. Somewhat disappointing,
there's tiny screenshots and almost no art whatsoever in it.
Listing all the classic music pieces used in each episode is a very nice touch, however. 

Commemorative coins of best boys Yang Wen-li and Reinhard von Lohengramm.

One of the two 3D lithographs included. Said 3D effect is actually pretty nice under
the right kind of lighting. 

Happy Dragon Quest XI Day!!!

I'm actually really impressed with the Gamestop pre-order pins. Usually the bonuses Gamestop gives are pretty crummy. lol

Happy Dragon Quest XI Eve

Tomorrow marks the release of Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age for the North American and European markets. To help celebrate this launch I decided I should write a little something Dragon Quest related on my blog. It’s no secret to those that know me that I am a huge fan of the franchise, and that Dragon Quest XI is easily one of my most anticipated game releases in years—after all we have not had a chance to sit down with a new entry in this franchise since Dragon Quest IX back in 2010. That eight year wait was thoroughly killing me inside but I persevered and made it this far! So let’s talk some Dragon Quest.

Now Dragon Quest is an monumental franchise that helped to establish not just role-playing games in Japan but around the whole world. The original release was a game that many thought simply could not be done, as at the time role-playing games were only ever released for a very dedicated niche PC market. Taking an RPG from a computer with complex command prompts and a full keyboard and mouse interface and converting it for a video game console with a controller that just had an A and B button, start and select, and a directional-pad was thought to be ludicrous, but then came Dragon Quest.

The early NES (or Famicom if that’s more your style) Dragon Quest games are far from perfect in their game design, but they mark the first real RPG video game experience a casual audience could enjoy, and soon other RPGs would follow in their footsteps and the genre became a mainstay for gaming everywhere and not just stuck on the PC. A large part of this had to do with a strong marketing push, using popular magazine publications to essentially hold the hands of the newly introduced whom had no idea how to navigate an RPG; very much akin to the role Nintendo Power would play for us in America during the late-80's and early 90's. It’s because of this (among other reasons) that the series has always had a very strong media presence in its home country and Dragon Quest enjoys dipping its fingers into everything from comics, to toys, to cartoons. Which leads us to what I really wanted to talk about today, the 1996 animated film: Dragon Quest Saga: The Emblem of Roto.

Emblem of Roto started life as a manga created by Chiaki Kawamata, Junji Koyanagi, and Kamui Fujiwara in 1991 running for 21 volumes until its completion in 1997. It is among the many, many, many other Dragon Quest manga out there. It’s not a very well known manga series in English speaking circles and unlike Dai no Daibouken it isn’t fully translated into English either. I first encountered Emblem of Roto a little over a decade ago when I was in my Dragon Quest frenzy stage and could not get enough of the series (I still can’t, really!). Back then I would buy up anything on eBay even remotely close to Dragon Quest and ended up owning a lot of Dragon Quest related crap. In my huge pile of Dragon Quest books in Japanese that I can’t even read laid a couple manga volumes and even an art book for this series. I remember flipping through these pages and being fascinated by it, hoping to one day find some stuff for Emblem of Roto in English. That turned out to be very hard to do.

I really love the art work for Emblem of Roto too, if I can just talk about that for a minute. It has a very 90’s-esque anime style to it that I am quite fond of, but also has a hint of Akira Toriyama’s unique style mixed in too. Series that have had Toriyama as lead artist always have a very fascinating art evolution to me as he developed a super distinct and identifiable style of his own over his 15 years as a manga artist in Shonen Jump writing Dr Slump and Dragon Ball. So when I see how anime studios and other artists have to take that style of his and adapt as well as change it for works like Beet the Vandel Buster, Blue Dragon, and Emblem of Roto, it’s always fun. Where does Toriyama begin and these many other artists end, so to say.

Getting back on track, however, it wasn't until recently I learned of this Emblem of Roto movie, and it wasn't until a few days ago that I actually got around to watching it! Imagine my surprise that there was a movie adaptation all this time and that somebody actually went and fansubbed it to boot! However, adaptation may be a pretty forgiving word, as far as I can tell skimming the few scans that exist online, and flipping through the volumes I have, this film more or less does its own thing and only takes the characters very loosely from the manga. So then just what is this movie even about? We should probably be getting to the meat and potatoes by this point now after all.

Well the gist of its short 45 minute run time is that Arus, our protagonist, happens to be the village crybaby. The boy is known for being a coward and doesn't seem to get along with the other kids his age nor able to stand up for himself. The other kids bully him, and he doesn't seem to have friends. Arus is terrible at fighting and can’t keep up with the others training his swordsmanship or his magic. The elders of the village all seem quite worried over how weak and sensitive he is, especially in this uncertain time with monsters roaming everywhere outside the village.

After some mischief with the town bully, Kira, Arus is dared into adventuring into the forest at night to prove his manhood. The two boys, Arus and Kira, stumble their way through the monster populated forest trying to find an old shrine, that the village used to worship at but can no longer go to because of the monsters. The shrine is the only location that the lily of the valley blooms in. First boy to bring back one of these lilies as proof that they entered the shrine is the winner. Arus fumbles around like a klutz and just when he’s about to break down and cry he ends up falling into a den where fairies live. The fairies are initially terrified that a human has invaded their home but soon turn amazed that Arus can actually understand their sacred language and decide to instead ask him for help. Arus agrees to help them kill a monstrous flower that started to bloom near the shrine. The flower gives off deadly poison that is killing all living things plant and animal alike near it. However the flower slumbers at night giving Arus an easy chance to cut it down before the sun rises thus becoming a hero.

After heading back home to procure a sword and chomping the flower down just in time before sunrise Arus explores the shrine only to find that the monster is not dead—in fact its roots have taken over the entire shrine acting as creepy tentacle like tendons that capture everything that moves within. After some temple running (literately) and dodging the deadly roots in a chase scene, it’s round 2 of fighting, and this time Arus is able to muster all his strength and kills the evil plant for good—even saving Kira in the process whom was captured by the tentacle roots earlier in the film. It’s then in the heart of the shrine that Arus learns of his origins as a descendant of the legendary hero Roto (or Erdirk) and the two boys go home as friends as the credits roll.

The movie is a pretty straight forward affair, given its shorter run time that is to be expected—but you’d assume it would move pretty briskly like most 45 minute anime films do, however, it’s actually somewhat slow at the beginning. The movie really takes its time to establish Arus as a weak and bullied kid before finally having the “call to action” occur at about 20 minutes in—almost half way through. Once the movie does start going though it’s quite fun and chock-full of some really impressive animated sequences that I did not expect for such a humble and overlooked kid’s film. This was never brought to blu-ray, hell it was never even brought to DVD. The copy I was watching is an old VHS recording. So it’s somewhat heart breaking in the end seeing how gorgeous this little feature ended up being.

It’s all the little things that make Emblem of Roto a wonderful looking film. I love the gorgeous hand painted backgrounds with birds and other animals always flying around. There’s constant movement in this film actually. The way the wind blows during scenes outside in nature; how clothes move; how there’s always something moving in the background—it’s fantastic. I love that the character designs are super flexible and move smoothly, and that characters have fully developed faces that show lots of emotions. I love that Arus’ sword is almost twice the size of his body. That was something I especially loved actually. Arus is just a kid after all, and the way the animators handled him sheathing and unsheathing this unwieldy adult sized sword just made for some fantastic little animated moments. The whole thing is over in less than an hour, and all these small things really add up to make the short run time go by even faster. Honestly the animation alone can really sell a movie like this.

And just like that Emblem of Roto was over before I know it. It is kind of fitting in a way when I think about it. Emblem of Roto is probably not gonna get any more attention in English speaking circles any time soon. It’s very easy to overlook and though dedicated as the English DQ fan community is, there probably isn’t enough interest in a lot of these multimedia tie-ins to get translated. Hell, thanks to the MMO nature of Dragon Quest X we’re back to not even having every mainline Dragon Quest game released outside of Japan again—so we don’t even have all the games released any more, I'd say the chances that an older manga getting released are even slimmer. But what we do have of Emblem of Roto in English is fun, easy to watch, and great to boot. I really recommend checking it out for yourself if any of my rambling sounded interesting to you. And I hope tomorrow’s release of Dragon Quest XI will be a great day for all of you.

Nintendo’s Virtual Console: The End of an Era

The Nintendo Wii is more than a decade old now; it’s been a long time since 2006, yet it feels like it all has gone by with a blink of an eye. Sometimes I wonder if today’s gamers still remember what the Wii launch meant. It’s easy nowadays in 2018 to look back at the dark days of the console when Nintendo just left it to wither away with their focus elsewhere, fans had to beg for certain games to even be released for it, and the shovelware. Oh the shovelware! If there was ever any cheap-shot to take in gaming, it would be to mention the sheer amount of shovelware that came with the Wii and dismiss the console as nothing but. However when the Wii first came out everything about it seemed to define what Nintendo would be for a time. The Miis, the new game-play mechanics (or gimmicks depending how jaded you are), great background music for apps/online shops (with awesome fan remixes), and the Virtual Console. All of these things were kept at the forefront of Nintendo’s future consoles since then with the Nintendo 3DS and eventually the failed follow-up: the Nintendo Wii U.

This changed though when Nintendo launched their new Switch console on March 3 last year and ever since then all the old Wii era branding has slowly faded away. Sure Miis are still here, and you can even transfer your old Miis over to the Switch (I know I did), but gone is the day where setting up a Mii is one of the first steps you take when turning on your brand new console straight out of the box. Mii Maker? Not here. For a time if you wanted to make yourself a Mii you would need a smart-phone, but even that has gone on to pass since Miitomo is dead now too. At least Nintendo just recently created an online website for Mii creation but the writing is definitely on the wall for these little guys.

That’s not all either, like what about the background music? There’s none. The Nintendo Switch is as silent and cold as library in the middle of a snowstorm. Where is the fun and exciting music? Where are the themes that were introduced with the Nintendo 3DS? Why are the games silent when you click on them? No longer is there an exciting voice yelling out the title of the game, or a nice little 3 second jingle playing when you select something on the OS. No, instead when I turn on the console I’m just left with cold silence, as I stare into the abyss that is the barren Switch OS until a game finally loads.

The eShop isn’t much better. The Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DSi, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Wii U all had fantastic music playing while accessing their digital shops. It felt like an experience—like you just entered a Nintendo super store. Now it’s just another boring app store. Cold, hard to navigate, older stuff easily becomes lost, and so, so, so quiet! Then there is the Virtual Console. Forget not evening getting to swing the bat, the VC never even got a chance to show up to the ballpark. A whole year passed for the Nintendo Switch with nothing and finally as of May 8 we learned why: Nintendo is no longer supporting the Virtual Console. Another old staple of the Wii era dead.

Does it sound like I’m harshing on the Nintendo Switch too much? If so, I really am sorry. I love the Switch, and my excitement for its release was palpable; I even got mine the day it came out at the midnight launch (my first and probably my only considering how awful that experience was but that’s a story for another time). Between the Nintendo Switch and my 3DS I barley played anything else last year. I put nearly 150 hours into XenoBlade Chronicles 2 alone (and I’m scared at how hight the number would be if I added Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild to that too. Needless to say: probably too much). But just because I love it doesn’t mean I can’t start to feel a bit disappointed at some of the console’s shortcomings. And yes, I’m sure there’s better, more reasonable shortcomings to address: like the limited hard-drive space, the short battery life, and game cartridges being so expensive leading to some shady developers only putting half a game on a cartridge and forcing large downloads on their consumers instead of just paying for bigger cartridges, but well, people are talking about that to death already. You know? And maybe it’s just my nostalgia for the simpler and easier time of time of 2006, but seeing all the old Wii stuff finally die has been a real experience for me. I wanted to talk about this.

The death of the Nintendo Wii Shop struck me hard back in March 26 of this year. It’s still around until January 2019, but only as an abandoned ghost-town. You can’t add any more points to buy anything so this is essentially just a grace period for people to redownload old stuff. Before the Wii Shop went the way of K-Marts all across the nation, though, I made sure to buy up all the great Virtual Console games I could as well as a few WiiWare titles to boot. I honestly probably spent an upwards of couple hundred dollars on this like a complete and total idiot. Was it sane to burn away a whole paycheck like that? No, no it was not. But that was just how much nostalgia I had for the console and its digital storefront. I needed the last few VC titles I really wanted and that have yet to resurface on any other digital platform, and all those WiiWare titles that aren’t anywhere but the Wii shop: I had to have them too!

You see, the Wii shop was my first ever experience for digital game purchases, and at the time was mind blowing to me. I couldn’t believe all the great stuff I could get on my Wii through the internet. Back in 2006 the Virtual Console was actually a major selling point of the entire Wii system for me. And the great hits kept coming, and coming, and coming. The support for the Wii’s VC was simply phenomenal, and I experienced some consoles for the first time through it, like the wonderful and often over looked TurboGrafx-16.You see, the Wii shop was my first ever experience for digital game purchases, and at the time was mind blowing to me. I couldn’t believe all the great stuff I could get on my Wii through the internet. Back in 2006 the Virtual Console was actually a major selling point of the entire Wii system for me. And the great hits kept coming, and coming, and coming. The support for the Wii’s VC was simply phenomenal, and I experienced some consoles for the first time through it, like the wonderful and often over looked TurboGrafx-16.

The support sadly is something that got worse and worse through the ages, however. The Nintendo 3DS VC was an exciting prospect for me since I always wanted GB and GBC games to come to the Wii VC (The GCN’s GameBoy Player spoiled me back then), so finally getting Nintendo to dig into their old backlog as well as Sega’s GameGear backlog, not to mention the 3D Classics, had me over the moon. There was a laundry list of classic GB and GBC games I just had to have on my 3DS, and things sounded great near the launch of the console’s eShop. Then sadly it took awhile for the 3DS VC to really get going, and games trickled out a lot slower than back on the Wii. We got some huge games early enough like Link’s Awakening, but some other games that should have been an easy given took years. We had to wait until 2016 to get Pokémon Red, Blue/Green, and Yellow for Arceus’ sake! And Pokémon Crystal (the one retro Pokémon I wanted to revisit the most) didn’t trickle out until 2018! The Nintendo Switch was already a year old by then. If you count all the way back to the Wii when I wanted GB support, I waited 12 years for Crystal, what the heck?!

The Nintendo Wii U’s Virtual Console was another exciting prospect at first that really just fizzled out, probably even worse than the 3DS’. I still have fond memories of coming home from some University summer courses to the Nintendo Direct that revealed Earthbound will finally get a rerelease for the first time in 18 years! Only on the Wii U Virtual Console! “Immediate purchase” I said to myself that day, and sure enough I was there day-1. And a few years later Earthbound Beginnings (aka Mother 1) came out as well for the first time … well ever. What a nice surprise, getting a previously canceled game from 1990 is what stuff like the VC is all about. And then of course Mother 3 finally — ha ha ha … if only. The two Earthbound releases were more the exception and not the norm, sadly, and things soon got pretty stagnant on the Wii U in general, even outside of the eShop and Virtual Console.

Nintendo seemed desperate for a while to give the Wii U something though and the GBA games were a nice surprise even though I have to admit it felt off getting these on a home console instead of the 3DS. Thankfully the wizs at M2 at least had some great emulations for their GBA releases so they didn’t look gross on a modern big screen TVs. Not all of the GBA games would be so lucky on the Wii U VC, though, so it can be kind of awkward every now and again when you stumble on a GBA game that just looks pretty bad on the Wii U. The Nintendo DS came later and was an even weirder add for the Wii U’s VC and honestly I’m not even sure why Nintendo did that. I’m a bit of two minds on it still. On one hand this will probably be the only system to properly emulate these games given the Wii U’s unique two screen set up, but on the other hand, should we really try to stretch out Nintendo DS games on modern big screen TVs? Even GBA games were worrying enough. Sure I wanted the Wii to play GB and GBC games back in the day, but TVs weren’t nearly as big. Nowadays the 25 inch TV I played my Wii on would be considered a child’s play thing. Well, regardless they were here, and Nintedno did manage to release quite a few DS games on the Wii U, even getting both Zelda Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks out there.

But besides some weird portable console pick-ups the Wii U’s VC was super slow and barley had much of anything release for it. Third party support wasn’t absent and there were companies like Natsume who really kept at it for a while but it was once again no where near the level of support the Wii had. I still manged to make the most of it and I’m glad rarer N64 games finally got a rerelease like Harvest Moon 64 and Ogre Battle 64 (Swearing Simulator 64), but overall, I felt I barley got a chance to use the poor thing. What better way to sum up the Wii U though? I barley got a chance to do anything on it.

When it comes to both the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Wii U, they were such a far cry from the Wii’s glory days when you could just cycle through the plethora of retro games for hours trying to decide what to play next. Seeing how much the Virtual Console degraded over the past 12 years is honestly kind of heart breaking, I had so much admiration and really bought into the hype when it was first launched only for it to end up like this more than a decade later. It makes sense why Nintendo decided to finally move on. It’s always sad to lose some sort of branding you really enjoyed, after all you made it a part of your life and have such found memories of it. I would surf the Wii Shop on Friday nights for hours as a teen trying to find what cool looking retro game to try out next. Between that, and Twilight Princess, my high school weekends were all set. So seeing how the VC died with such a quiet and weak whimper instead of a bang, really hits me right in my nostalgia. A part of my youth felt like it would be gone forever when the Wii Shop closure was announced. I knew it wouldn’t last forever but all the same, it was hard to finally admit it will be gone.

But then something really special happened. When it came closer and closer to Nintendo shutting down the Wii Shop I saw so many people share their memories about it. I wasn’t alone in my love! Lots of great stories from Nintendo fans got passed around and of course recommendations on what to get before it was all gone. This really put a smile on my face, 12 years later and we were all talking about the old Wii Shop just like I was a teenager again. So many passionate videos and articles resurfaced with people reminiscing about the glory days of the VC and all the fun and interesting experimental titles that used to be part of digital game stores. If Nintendo themselves would stay silent then it was up to us to be the ones to raise our voices and say the final eulogy. So yeah, maybe Nintendo will never say anything about this 12 year old branding or a digital storefront on a dead system that is two game generations old now, but us fans will keep talking about it, because whether or not anyone realized it at the time, Nintendo created an unique shopping experience we’ll never forget.

While the Wii and many of its fun branding and concepts are gone now, they will never truly be forgotten and live on in a generation of Nintendo fans. Nintendo won’t ever truly ax off the Virtual Console either. The branding is dead now, but rereleasing older game ROMs is too lucrative a business to ignore. Someday soon I’m sure we’ll see Nintendo take another swing at giving us these older games. The Switch’s eShop is already full of classic games from SNK who took it upon themselves to release their backlog, VC or not. Then we have the NES and SNES Classics, which are just such fun little toys that I really can’t get enough of. Even when I’m not playing them I just like looking at these adorable reproductions of childhood consoles. So I guess all that’s left now is to ask what are some of your favorite WiiWare and Wii Virtual Consoles releases? Are you excited for an N64 Classic? I know I am. Even though I’ll never forget the fun times I had with the Virtual Console, I think we should all just keep enjoying the classic games we love, no matter what they are called.