Visual Novels That Are Made in Canada, an East meets West Ideal

Game designer Alfe Clemencio sits behind a small brown desk and calls to potential customers. He has two independent games to sell, and one for which he really wants to get some attention.  Yet, how he’s attracting that attention would be considered deviant, perhaps even backwards, by North American standards. He’s trying to sell them as a disk in a box.

Clemencio feels that having a physical copy of a game, especially an indie game, immediately increases its value and uniqueness to the player. While many developers find producing physical copies to be an actual barrier to publication, Clemencio believes that this is a phenomenon unique to North America.

“Back when I took my internship in Japan, I went to Akihabara. Right when I got there, I saw a store selling independent games from local developers,” said Clemencio. Akihabara is a region of Tokyo famous for its shops that sell “niche market” or “geek” merchandise. It is no exaggeration that within this region, you can find almost every video game released in Japan.

“[In North America], you hear people yelling ‘Digital download! Digital download!’ but you almost never hear about physical copies of [indie] games,” says Clemencio.

Serious Analysis: Ano Hana

AnoHana, short for Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai (We Still Don’t Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day) is probably the best anime to come out this season. Even then, I wouldn’t just preclude it to being great within its medium. Ano Hana is an enjoyable series that stands at about the same level as other great works of television, like Mad Men or Life on Mars.

For those who haven’t seen it, AnoHana is about the death of a very young girl, Menma, whose death causes her friends to separate. When she comes back as a spirit ten years later, they’re forced to come together again for her sake and to retrieve their own self-worth. AnoHana is a slice-of-life story about recovering confidence and faith in one’s self, while exploring the impact of trauma on children.

Fan Expo 2009 – Saturday AKA Marvel Day

Ever heard of Comic Con? If you’re reading this you should have, and these days everyone’s trying to get a little bit of the comic convention pie, meaning that as being one of the cultural centres of Canada, Toronto played host to one of the biggest conventions of its kind – in Canada. Which means that this weekend, the dreary painful weekend that occurs soon before school starts, is(was) Fan Expo. Now, as a little warning or point of reference, I attended for an hour or so on the Friday and for most of the Saturday, and to be honest that was all I needed. Also, I punched Joe Quesada. Mentally.

FANFIC TIME: Anything More – Part 4

I write Fanfic. Who knew right? Here’s chapter 4 of a BLEACH story I like to call Anything More. For Coherance sake, I’ll post the rest later.

Chapter 4: Midnight Waltz

“Miss Inoue,” Aizen said, pouring a liquid reminiscent of Earl Grey into a china cup. “Have some tea.” Orihime kept her eyes fixed on the drink as it travelled from the teapot to the cup. She didn’t want to see whatever expression lay on his face.

When the tea hit the rim, he immediately stopped, wiping his hands together before moving to the other end of the table. Orihime heard the chair move out and in, allowing Aizen to sit down. When he settled down, he made a small coughing noise to signal her attention. She didn’t look up, instead choosing to watch her swirling drink.

Aizen made another cough, louder this time. Orihime gave him a quick glance, hoping that would be enough to satisfy. She instantly felt that she had made a mistake. Aizen had that look, the one where no matter what you did or how you did it, it was wrong. And he could do it better than you. The man looked at her expectantly, leaning his head onto the back of his hands. Orihime’s fingers started to tremble. It isn’t supposed to happen this way.

Eureka Seven Madness – It’s almost a Review. I think.

Legend: normal text – On topic |  [normal text] – Not on topic

[You know what I love? 3 am. Three AM is this magical time of the day that you can do anything and talk to anyone without fear of being reproached and told that your writing is messy, confusing or written in the wrong language, because if they do you can always respond I did it at 3am, jerk-wad and suddenly it all makes sense. They will be keen to admit that this is not your best work or the reason that you beat little Jimmy with a hammer was not because you're a psychopath. It's because you're a psychopath who works at 3am. And really if you're not going to go on a murderous rampage afterwards, why bother starting anything past 1am. It's just too much effort without the insanity.]

Wait. This was supposed to be about Eureka Seven wasn’t it?

G.A.M uPDATE 5

Okay, so here’s another one of these nightmares. I’ve been screamed at for a month to put this up to the point where I no longer even remember what it is about. So based solely on memory here’s what it is apparently about:

• Bleach movie in Canada October 20
• Appleseed Anime series on permanent hold
• Production IG to make computer animated film with Fuji TV
• Hellsing ends, Hirano is coming up with something new for next year
• Something about Evangellion
• Manga/Anime Releases for the month
• Funimation Juice?

Reviews: There will be more later in the week. This one was already getting too long.

So for the approximately four people who listen to these podcasts, I apologize for the extreme delay, but I have school and I don’t want to spend valuable sleeping time on the INTER-WEBZ. Also it will probably get down to twice a month at most.

G.A.M. uPDATE 3

Alright, I give up. These are coming out on Monday, no matter how much Arman wants me to have it out Sunday. Besides, who likes Sundays…Well it’s not like Monday’s any better. Regardless here’s numero 3.

G.A.M. uPDATE 3

Topic Include:

• Domo-kun in Target stores
• Beck – “The Last Day of Eddie Lee”
• August’s top Graphic Novels
• Ponyo Comes to North America in 09
• Funimation garners 1/3 of Anime market
• Dinner and Timeskips

Reviews:

• None this week

Also: COMMENT

G.A.M Netcast 1

Uhh, I was too busy to make my own post this week. Anyways it’s late but it’s not like anyone listens to it. Here’s the first proper G.A.M. uPDATE for this week.

He got his mic so it should sound better than last week’s frightening  turn out.

Topics Include:

• Morbito on Adult Swim
• Fansubs vs Industry Panel
• Tomari no 801-chan
• Kevin being a Death Note
• Live action Death Note movie comes to Canada
• Compatible Rock Band and Guitar Hero Controllers

Reviewed

• Gurren Lagenn Vol. 1
• Naruto Shippuden: Narutimate Hero Accel 2
• Shakugan no Shana Vol. 3

They seem to be better considering that last week was 30 minutes long and sucked. Regardless, Have fun.

G.A.M. Netcast 00

G.A.M.cast  – Gaming, Anime, Manga Cast/ Netcast/ Podcast/ Town Diner

A close friend of mine who lives in his basement, and rents movie every week because he is too poor to buy them, has decided to start his own Japanese Otaku podcast.In my divine wisdom I told him to paste it on my blog since too many people seem to be reading this and I need a way to get rid of them.

It’s not all that great considering his condenser mic isn’t arriving for another week, but it’d be nice to give this guy a chance. He’s at least trying, unlike you. Along side him are his two other chums who are too insignificant to mention further.

A Healthy Third of D’Eon

Today I went to my local DVD store/anime retailer/Pizza Place/Heaven and bought Le Chevalier D’Eon, Livre 1 and 2. A friend of mine reccomended it to me a while back, and seeing that I wasn’t broke at the time I bought it. I was apprehensive at first to even look at the title considering it was in French, which I hate. After watching it now I discovered that I really like the anime, and that I’m now broke.  I only watched the first eight episodes but they left me with quite an impression.

The general story is that in 1742 D’Eon, a member of the French secret police under King Louis XV, finds that his sister had been mercilessly killed and her body had been placed in a coffin in the Seine River. He soon discovers that for some reason her body has been filled with mercury, stopping it from rotting. He then takes it upon himself to find the people responsible and kill them. Of course the plot runs a lot deeper than that. The story does delve into far-fetched as it deals with using the bible Psalms to cast magic, but at no point does it seem too unrealistic. It’s just subtle enough that it’s almost immediately acceptable (unlike some other fiction where the magic feels like a game of Civilization played on God Mode).

As it is still beginning there has been nothing in terms of insane plot twists, only constant tension and intrigue. Every episode I watched was interesting in its own merit, and certainly kept me wondering what comes next. Livre 2 also ends on a good note, leaving you with enough suspense to want more but content enough to pause until you get your hands on the next one.

Even the Ceiling is accurate!

While the plot is definitely a highlight of the story, the thing that I enjoyed the most was the level of detail put into its production. Historically the setting is entirely correct. I did some research myself thinking that they probably made something up put it together added some European flair and called it France and I was shocked to find that this was not the case. The buildings, names, phrases, cities etc. are all decidedly French. The characters are not entirely accurate, but this is to be expected considering it is historical fiction. For example King Louis and his wife are relatively accurate in terms of characterization and appearance; on the other hand D’Eon is not even close to his historical counterpart bearing in mind that historically D’Eon was a cross-dressing spy.

Often in the show they quote the bible, seeing as it is 18th century France, where the King only lived because God said so. I even took out my dust covered bible to see if the lines they quote are actually in the bible. Amazingly enough, I actually found them in the Psalms.

In terms of the dub quality, I liked it much more than the Japanese Version. It’s not an all-star cast but it gets the job done in a way that couldn’t be achieved in Japanese. Really, I think that it has more to do that when they do slip in French words and phrases it sounds a lot smoother (and more understandable) in English. The similarities between English and French lend a hand in creating much more fluid dialogue, though I am pretty proud of how well the Japanese managed.

One last thing that caught my eye was the DVDs themselves. There are brief historical notes for those of you who don’t know what Wikipedia is (of course I didn’t find the Historical Notes until after several hours on Wikipedia). On top of that there are commentaries from the translators, the male voice actors, and the female voice actors.

Taken with a grain of salt, this is only the first few episodes. There are still sixteen more that I haven’t seen. For all I know there could be a horrible fatal flaw that comes along in the next episode. However from what I’ve seen I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Look at its almighty glow