Nestor's Cola

Our racist buddies over at minori has fired another shot, this time at No Name Losers, a fan translation group of dubious ethical quality. The bullet? Well, their site has an open email they sent to NNL last week. Asking them to to stop you know, translating their games. You read through a good portion of what they have to say, and you know what? they’re absolutely in the right. You know what? I’ll say that straight up: They might be racist fucks, but they’ve got a (legal) leg to stand on. Have a look:

You have translated into English without our permission and offered to the public our works [...] which is illegal with respect to both our Copyright act that was collectively ratified by other nations as well as our distribution rights. [...] The act of offering an independent functioning version of the software to countless people is a violation of the rights we have as producers, isn’t it?

In this, they’re absolutely 100% correct as far as legally and morally binding obligations. On the one hand it wouldn’t surprise me to see NNL stop production on their minori games, but at the same time, on the other side of the coin, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if NNL simply thumbed their nose at minori, called them a bunch of racist cunts, and kept going with what they were doing. I could care either way- I’m not losing anything.

A point I’d like to make is this line, which strikes me as hilarious:

???????????????

I read that as, “(we) risk our own lives to do so”, (the entirety of the statement being “We use enormous amounts of money and spend a long time to produce our games, and furthermore risk our own lives to do so.”) Isn’t that just the pinnacle of overdramatic posturing? Could they grandstand just a little more? Making a game is not a harrowing, life-threatening experience. You do not gush blood, internal organs do not rupture, your head will not explode. Well, I’m not sure of that, but I’ve done a little programming, a little scenario writing, etc and you know, I’m DOING JUST FINE. Maybe it’s with prolonged exposure?

This final bit is something that makes me a little upset.

If there are any amongst you who are truly fans of “minori”, and hope for us to carry on producing works in the future, please please stop illegal acts which our destroying our future.

Now they acknowledge foreign fans? Isn’t that a little backhanded? Well, wait. They don’t. You see, they still don’t sell to anyone overseas. Filthy gaijin dollars are filthy after all. You have to be Japanese and live in GRORIOUS NIPPON to buy and play their games. They’re not really losing money or livelihood because this (blatantly illegal) piracy is happening in a market they refuse to acknowledge. You can’t deny a market, and then complain you’re not making money off that market when you discover they’re using your product. I’m sorry, but that’s like refusing to believe that your car runs on gasoline and then bitching when the car no longer runs. Actually, a better analogy would be, “don’t lock the barn door after the horse has been stolen” You brought it on yourself. You had a damn good opportunity to expand into a decent market and you walled yourself up. You don’t have the right to complain that the world has passed you by.

If I were asked, “Nestor, What’s your official stance?” I’d say NNL is functionally in the wrong, but minori brought it on themselves, so they should acknowledge some responsibility too.

It’s been a while since I played (and reviewed) a japanese game. There are several reasons for this hiatus. The one that sticks out most visibly is minori, a notably racist, isolationist, and terminally xenophobic game maker from Jolly ‘ole Japan. See, refer back to my posts on Equality Now. It can be easily concluded that minori are chafing under the yoke that their own government placed on them by blaming foreigners. Their response at first was to block foreign IP from their site. Another response was to post a thinly veiled message on their redirect page, essentially boiling down to “unless you are japanese living in japan, we don’t want you buying our games, participating in our activities, or even visiting our website.” Their solution? MOVE TO JAPAN. Literally, it says that right there on their website. “You want to play our games? Move to japan. We won’t have a problem with that.” Riiiight. I’m going to move overseas to play a game. I’ll get right on that.

I’ve heard some interesting defense in favor of minori. That they’re in the right to block foreign business. In this context, they are. Here in the US, you’ll frequently see the signs “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” and generally speaking that’s perfectly okay to do. But this blocking of foreign business only started after Equality Now started their shit. This sophomoric reactionary stance is pretty fucking childish. Hello, it was your own fucking government that passed the goddamn regulations. The US didn’t do it. England didn’t do it. Zimbabwe didn’t fucking do it; It was your own goddamn politicians that couldn’t stand up for themselves, for the nation of Japan, for their rights, for anything. They’re the ones that said “You can’t do this.” End of line. Accept some goddamn personal fucking responsibility.

A second defense I’ve heard is that by blocking foreign IPs from visiting their site and purchasing/ using their games, they are defending their games against piracy. This is ALSO a crock of shit. It’s the Japanese that buy the games (IN JAPAN, LOLOLOL), it’s the Japanese that make digital copies, and upload them to P2P sites. Blocking foreign visitors from their website does nothing to “stem the tide against piracy” at all. Straw man defense: defeated.

So in any case, they’re taking out their impotent frustrations on the only people that can’t fight back: foreign fans. When you think about things like that, it’s not just insulting, it’s a brutal assault on your own humanity. You’re not worthy of playing their games by virtue of your birth- something you can no more control than the weather. Ultimately foreign fans have two (realistic) choices (I’m not even going to factor in minori’s outrageous idea of moving to another country just to play their games- let’s not be completely fucking stupid) when it comes to playing their games:

1. Give up on playing their games altogether. (no way!)
2. Get their games from another source, bypassing minori altogether. (Can do.)

In addition to that, my desire to play these games comes and goes in waves, and this was essentially ebb tide. Part of that is my completionist nature: I have to complete every game I play. I tried my hand at Clannad, and I ended up stopping after playing through the best route, simply because I have absolutely no desire for any of the other girls. Since I can’t start a new game because I haven’t finished Clannad (and won’t ever) I simply stopped playing altogether. Well, I got over that and soon I’ll have a good review of SWAN SONG up on the site. Maybe within the next couple of days. Look forward to it!

I’ve been watching anime for almost twenty years. For a lot of people that are watching anime today, that’s more years than they’ve actually been alive. I can remember the first thing I saw that was anime: I was around twelve-thirteen years old and I went over to a friends’ house to join him in a night of video games and whatnot. When I got there, he and his older brother were watching Vampire Hunter D, and they’d just reached the point where this mutant (who thinks he’s got an edge against Count Lee) suddenly gets the tables turned; he gets picked up and smacked against various pillars and objects, and then boom! Head explody. Holy fucking shit, Stop the motherfucking presses, right? Well, for someone who was largely raised on WB and Disney and Hanna Barbara, it was a revelation: there was a whole new world of animation out there, just waiting for me to find it.

It’s been a long time since then. The world has moved on. My tastes in anime are bizarre and eclectic. A few years ago, I saw an advert for K-on. Because I don’t keep my thumb on the pulse of the anime community, because I don’t follow directors, studios, staff, seiyuus, I initially thought it was going to be a show about ENOZ from Haruhi. (In retrospect, i think it’d've been significantly better if it had.) The first season is arguably decent, if weak-watered. It’s a typical SoL that revolves around a “light music club”, sort of a school-sponsored garage band. I thought to myself, this is something I can relate to. Fourteen years ago I was teenager, all glazed eyes and gleaming reproductive organs, and I wanted to learn bass guitar. And I did. Our band lasted six months, we played a whopping three shows (only one of which we actually got paid for) and we wrote three songs and had parts and pieces of lyrics and riffs for another twelve. Although I only played bass for a school year and never looked back, being in a band leaves a mark on you. So forgive me if I wax a bit nostalgic while reviewing K-on.

Some of the trials and tribulations they went through I can relate to. Getting your band together, getting their equipment squared away, learning chords and riffs and trying to make money to pay for the gear, (which is terribly expensive) unplugging the amp while it’s still on, learning about your bandmates’ quirks and musical tastes, mysterious calls at 2am, lunatic drives all over the place to go to concerts, endless drinking and drugs and women of questionable moral value, and somewhere along the line you stop fucking off and music happens. When your fingers his the chords just right and you feel it all come together in a righteous glorious moment. You feel galvanized and you know that this is it. this is what it’s all about.

In a show like K-on there’s a certain leeway permitted; you can’t really have the expectation that a bunch of girls in japan are going to drive around at 2am looking for a party or discuss the merits of one guitarist over another while passing a j back and forth. Or all at the same time. No. Instead it’s a SoL moe-blob show about a bunch of cutesy girls in school (By the way, what the fuck man, This school can afford some high-tension gear. I about shit down both legs when I saw that set of zildjian drums.) who decide to set up a band. The animation goes from mediocre to terrible and back again, the plot is inconsistent but it tries to stay on track, and over the course of one school year they produce a whopping two(?) songs and the first season ends. While overall the entire first season was a piece of shit in terms of animation, direction, consistency and effort, there is an underlying thread that I could connect to, which was me in the garage band, relating to the girls in the club.

The second season is an utter failure in this regard. There’s nothing to relate to. Well, there was one episode where they hocked a guitar, which is something I remember our lead guitarist doing, but the rest of it is dumbfuck shit that no one gives a shriveled ratdick about. The season is about half over and they haven’t done anything worthwhile at all. When you think about how things fit together, you realize you’re simply marking time until something happens, hoping something happens and instead you get a bunch of bland dumbfuck shit about nothing. So, the second season is largely uninteresting and I suspect that when the season is over I will say to myself, “I can’t believe I watched that shit.”

So I read an interesting article in USA Today the other day. It started out by saying

“A Mississippi county school board announced Wednesday it would cancel its upcoming prom after a gay student petitioned to bring a same-sex date to the event.”

And at first I thought, “Well, that’s shitty.” But after i thought about it more and more, I realized there’s probably an element I neglected in the equation: She petitioned. See, there’s one thing I’ve always disliked and I’d like to take this opportunity to expound upon a certain aspect of my beliefs that is relevant to this situation.

I believe in a certain amount of what I would consider ‘universal rights’. (Setting aside the valid statement that it is governments, powers, and principalities that establish rights in the first place, I think it’s our obligation to establish a codified set of rights that every human has on the planet. It’s not surprising that there is a globally recognized system of rights that does exactly that, but this is outside the scope of my discussion.) I believe that everyone has the right to be treated equally. What this means is equal dispensation.For the most part this is something that is universally recognized and accepted. I don’t care if you’re black, brown, yellow, white or blue. You’re a human being and I’ll treat you exactly the same as any other human being. That’s it, that’s all there is to it.

What I hate though is that people capitalize on this sort of liberty that is handed to everyone. People that seek out special dispensation for the sake of attention. Not because they are being unfairly treated or mishandled or threatened, but because they have a false sense of entitlement- that is to say that they believe they are unique and precious and because they are unique and precious they deserve additional attention, dispensation, and consideration. This is a fundamental abuse of a system that we have struggled to maintain.

You watch the video and it’s all “me me me, I I I” it has absolutely nothing to do with rights being violated. The school district said that there was a distraction in the learning environment. Of course there would be a distraction if you’ve got a histrionic dyke that’s full of herself that has decided that she needs to take a stand in as public a way as possible. She started a petition, they made some changes in the hopes that she’d shut up and go away, and she decided to involve the press because that’s what needy attention-deprived people with self-esteem issues do when they don’t get their own way: they throw a public fit in the hopes that sooner or later someone will give them what they want.The result: The school canceled the prom. While I believe it was a bit heavy-handed, it’s also a fundamentally brilliant political maneuver. They are being quite fair to everyone.

In terms of personal experience, and keeping in mind that I haven’t been to a school dance in nearly two decades, I’m fairly certain that there actually were rules against same-sex couples going to prom. There were groups of girls and guys (both gay/ lesbian and straight) that went in couples and groups to the prom anyway, and while the rules forbade it, it happened, and I’m fairly certain that a blind eye was turned. The reason? Nobody made a big deal about it. There was no ‘petition’, there was no outcry, there was no big deal made. They simply went anyway. No great revolution, no media leakage, no reactionary fat girl sobbing hysterically on the evening news that she wasn’t getting her own way and it wasn’t fair.

Don’t get me wrong. There are legitimate violations of agreed-upon human rights all the time happening all over the world, every single day. Going to prom (or not going to prom) isn’t one of them.

Ever since “Equality Now” pulled their little stunt with Japan and sparked an international debate, I’ve been reading more and more about Japan’s histrionically paranoid, xenophobic and isolationist attitude towards the rest of the world. If something happens on an international level, Japan withdraws from the international scene that much more. A great case in point is the Equality Now issue: Someone from England bitched, and suddenly Japanese websites stopped allowing foreign traffic. Many businesses in Japan refuse to do overseas business. A little-reported but mentionable case is when the H1N1 flu started entering the public scene- Japanese people that were out in other countries were encouraged to return to Japan.

Ultimately it’s this attitude that has discouraged me from buying any more games or merchandise from Japan. If I’m not “good enough” because I’m not native, then I’ll spend my hard-earned and hard-saved money elsewhere. Though that won’t stop me from playing.

Being exposed to this attitude has in turn made me aware of it on a larger scale- it’s not exclusively Japanese, and this in turn has made me far more aware of what happens on the international scene. I was recently reading an article about a particular event in France where French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke up against Islamic isolationism in France.

See, here’s how it goes down: Paranoid hate-mongering Islamics immigrate to France. Rather than integrate into the society that has welcomed them in, they instead form isolated ghetto communities that stagnate and putrify. They don’t want help.
From an article I read: “At the heart of the identity crisis plaguing today’s France is a significant immigrant population that refuses to become French, and a multicultural left that has allowed them to live isolated in ghettoes for decades, where many have fallen prey to Muslim preachers of hate.”

This leads to poor, marginalized minorities constantly thinking that “hurr durr the white man is keeping us down” no matter what is done- constantly discouraging themselves to do anything constructive, praying Allah because their parents do, and getting turned into fanatics easily, and indulging themselves into all sorts of criminal activities, all based on “BAAAAW we’re so unhappy, if you don’t let us do whatever we want, you’re a fascist”.

All of this, of course, could be averted if they simply dropped their isolationist attitude and worked towards the idea of one world community.

“Although many have assimilated into French secular society, which Sarkozy applauded, others openly seek to transform France into a Muslim nation and have won allies in the multicultural left.
“France does not demand that you give up your history or your culture,” Sarkozy said. “But France demands of those who would link their fates to hers to also share her history and her culture. France is not hodgepodge of communities or individuals. . . Becoming French means accepting a form of civilization, values, and customs.”
Sarkozy’s definition of those values left no ambiguity from which direction he felt the danger was coming: “France is a country where women are free. France is a country where church is separate from state, and where the beliefs of each person are respected.
“But France is also a country where there is no room for the burka, and where there is no room for the subjugation of women under any circumstance or pretext.”
The French have debated for 25 years whether Muslim women should be allowed to veil themselves in public schools or in public workplaces, as radical Muslim preachers and their supporters on the left have demanded.
Sarkozy ended that debate scarcely one year after becoming president by outlawing the veil in public last year.
In announcing the reform at the time, Sarkozy said he was troubled by the “discriminatory and degrading” Islamist practice of veiling women.
“I don’t want certain neighborhoods to feel more like Kabul or Tehran than France,” he said.
The same day Sarkozy gave his speech on national identity, police turned away a group of women wearing Islamist veils as they attempted to enter the French National Assembly.
Sarkozy took direct aim at radical secularists as well. While calling on immigrants to share French values, he said French men and women have to believe in those values themselves.
“To open our doors to others, we have to have enough confidence in ourselves. We must be sure of our values and of our model,” he said.
“By giving in to moral equivalence that proclaims all values, behaviors and accomplishments to be the same, we strike a blow against the idea of civilization and against society itself,” he said.
And then he warned: “And it is for this reason, my fellow citizens, that anyone who comes to France to call for violence and hatred of the other will be deported.”
If France is having problems with integrating Muslims, “it is not our values that are at fault but our departure from them, at times even our denial of them,” Sarkozy said.”

I believe in this. I believe that there should not be any isolationism. I believe in a free and equitable exchange of ideas, beliefs, and information. I believe in liberation from outmoded and fear- and hate-driven ideologies. In this I express belief that it is not only our individuality, uniqueness and self-identity, but also our willingness to work together across cultural and social boundaries and barriers that gives us our true strength.”

These are the things in this world today. Where everyone tries to live. And here in this world are the things we want: sex and birth, votes and traits. money and guilt, television and teddy bears. But all we’ve actually got is each other.

I was first introduced to Cross†Channel when I started hanging out in one of TLWiki’s irc channels, and the introduction was less than descriptive. I was simply told that it was good and I should play it on that merit alone. What the hell, I’ve got nothing but time. I don’t know what sort of expectations I had when I started Cross†Channel. Well, it’d be safe to say I didn’t actually have any to begin with. I didn’t really know what I was getting into. In fact, it was only when I started the install process (what fun! haha!) that I realized it was the inspiration for that ridiculously insipid-yet-addicting flash game, Nanaca Crash.

Installation/ Patching:

Installation is a breeze, patching is easy, simply run the *.exe.

Menus/ interaction:

I found the hover bar at the top of the page to be a kiss-curse in a way: damned useful but fucking annoying. I feel that they handled the repetitive text the best they could.

My first impression was that the protagonist Taichi was a loon. Irrational, nonsensical, and ridiculously energetic. This is a huge step away from other protagonists I’ve played. The Junker was bluff and no nonsense, Fuminori was cold and calculating, Takumi was cowardly and introspective, Shirou was idealistic, etc. From the very start though, Taichi pointed out (and kept pointing out) that the Gunjou Institute was not a normal school and this was not a normal world.

I initially thought that this was going to be a simple progression of events with a bizarre protagonist, so after a brief assessment of the superficial facts, I chose a girl and moved forward with the expectation that I’d get her in the end. Well, that’s inaccurate. Each week I gain the option to pursue an additional girl, and the story is not linear.

The Girls:

I was presented with the option of pursuing a girl and when presented with that choice, I rejected her. Rejecting her introduced me to Misato, the beautiful sempai. Learning about Misato was like watching a rose bloom. Every layer of gorgeous petals simply opened the way to reveal yet more beautiful petals. I fell for her instantly, and I fell hard. She’s so wonderful, so cute, so amazing. Everything she did was amazing.

On the second iteration, I was once again presented with a choice, and this time I chose Touko. I was hesitant to pursue her in the beginning because she gave off a very strong Tsundere vibe. I’ve never been a fan of the tsundere archetype and was resistant. However, I was impressed. I was impressed and touched. Touko was amazing, regardless of whether it was her bizarre oral fixation or her naïveté, Touko touched me. She touched me in a way beyond what I thought possible; when her week ended I went back not once but several times in an effort to change certain things.

The third week I was given the chance to chase after Kiri Sakura, and so I did. She’s always been cool and displayed a certain animosity towards me, and with Touko’s end still ringing in my ears I could only jump at the chance. To be honest, I’m glad I did. She’s ridiculously fragile and complex, like a puzzle made out of spun glass. Playing through Sakura’s route was a little rough, but it was amazing. I fell so hard for her.

As each route progressed, I was eagerly looking forward to Miki. Miki was this little bundle of flat-chested cheerfulness in every other route. I expected something delightful, and I wasn’t in the least bit disappointed. Miki is indeed a flower, as much a flower as Kiri, and most definitely is Taichi’s pupil in every aspect. She’s also a delight. Her ending was more of a shock than Touko’s or Kiri’s, but so much more rewarding than either. Not only because it revealed so much more than any other route, but because from the beginning to the end everything was simply done in a way that was amazing.

After so much about Youko had been revealed in each route, I was finally given the option of pursuing her. Her route was short and brutal in its simplicity. There was no one else that understood her the same as me. There was no one that understood me the same as her. Everything else was irrelevant.

After each main route, everyone gets a mini-route that answers a lot of questions and concludes a lot of open-ended and ambiguous ends from the previous weeks. They must be completed in order. We get a proper ending and Taichi’s inevitable conclusions and resolution.  Afterwords, we get a credit roll and we finally understand what Cross†Channel is all about, what it really and truly means to cross paths with someone else.

The game touched me in a really amazing way. I haven’t felt this way in a very long time. I was initially going to give it a low score because I didn’t believe it was up to par with other games I’ve played, but ultimately that was wrong. The game is immediately elevated to the top ten. If I could give it a higher score I would. I leave you with several things. Taichi’s recipe for cooking rice, and Miki-Miki with Taichi.

The best way to cook delicious meals:
1. Believe in yourself.
2. Weigh the rice.
3. Each and every grain of rice contains a precious life.
4. With those innumerable lives, people can keep living.
5. But every life will eventually return to the earth.
6. The Earth is Life, just as Life is the Earth.
7. In order to someday bring about new life
8. Long Sci-fi novel “Gaia’s Journey” – Fin
9. Polish the rice and wash it for twenty minutes.
10. The summertime makes me want to eat some incredibly spicy curry.
11. Cook.
12. Stare long and hard at the fire, letting dangerous thoughts soak into your body OR remembering comrades-in-arms who gave their lives to protect you (Two choices)
13. Once cooked, steam upside down for ten minutes.
14. Super delicious rice is born.

Off and on I hear about our favorite anti-free speech, pro-censorship feminist group Equality Now attempting to do away with all sorts of things they arbitrarily deem offensive, all around the world. I don’t claim to have my thumb on the pulse of events, and most certainly I don’t have any sort of reputable information to present, but this is what I’ve heard:

First, we know that they forced japan to essentially fuck themselves in the ass. Well, the Japanese fucked themselves in the ass, because they bent over for the giant gaijin penis. err, vagina. Whatever. The Japanese should have told the histrionic feminist group to get fucked, get back to the kitchen, and then slapped them in the face with their constitutional rights. To climb on a moral LAWFUL GOOD soapbox here, it doesn’t matter if I find rape games to be disgusting or reprehensible, the constitutional law says they can be made and sold to the adults that want them and that right cannot be infringed upon. Period. Equality Now should have been told to fuck off.

Secondly, and apparently most recently, (no verifiable sources on this one, sorry) Equality Now has decided that what they’ve done simply is not enough. “Japan is a nation which accepts hentai. This encourages rape so hentai must be banned. Rapelay was withdrawn from sale, the EOCS banned all fetishes, and some companies have banned foreigners from their websites. This is not enough. The Japanese government must ban everything we object to and make it all illegal. The UN must tell the Japanese to do as we direct.” Of course, they also say, “Women should not have to resist sex to be able to call it rape.” which opens up a whole different direction of irrationality and misandric terrorism. I can see it now: “he raped me.” “no, it was consensual.” “I don’t have to say no, fight back, disagree, or otherwise express an unwillingness to have sex, I can simply decide that it was rape and it is so.”

Let’s sort of set that to the side here for a brief bit. One thing I can’t help but do is draw a parallel between this… ridiculous campaign and jack Thompson’s equally ridiculous campaign against violence in video games. Same medium of entertainment, same question of artistic expression, etc. But I will show you a couple of things I’ve picked up in my travels through the internet and I’d like to ask you to consider a few things.
First, rape has gone down since the early nineties.(Source) This roughly coincides with the increase of VCRs and VHS distribution of porn. There’s no direct correlation that says that as sales of porn videos have gone up, rape has gone down, but it’s damn suggestive.

Second, Violent crime has also gone down since the early nineties (Source) which again also roughly coincides with a larger market penetration of ‘violent’ console and PC games. Again, no direct correlation between violent crimes and violent games here, but as I said before, it’s suggestive.

So, putting two and two together, we can see the direction Equality Now is taking is a bad one. However, the Japanese have a bit of a passive-aggressive inferiority complex, which means that if a vocal histrionic and irrational minority like EN says something should be banned, they will willingly and happily legislate it out of existence without so much as a whimper of resistance- and then they’ll angrily mutter under their breaths about how it’s EN’s THE FILTHY GAIJIN’S fault. Simply put: Equality Now is a bunch of fucked-up and histrionic cunts, and the Japanese are servile spineless fags. What a great combination.

If there’s one particular franchise I’ve never quite had an interest in, it’s the Shuffle! Franchise. I watched the anime back in 2005 and up until the tail end when Kaede goes yandere. Suddenly it got a whole lot more interesting! Ahahaha~! Though if you were willing to sit through twenty-two episodes of doormat, tool, and generic, utilitarian plot with the consistency of runny eggs, then I suppose you deserve what you get. The anime ended as badly as you can imagine with a trite, cliché, and thoroughly un-enjoyable conclusion. This soured me on the series, on the game, and the franchise in general. That and it’s most vocal proponents are perhaps the most histrionic retards.

Mercifully, I forgot all about Shuffle. I picked up the translated game… I’m not sure why. I went on sabbatical from playing ren’ai and visual novels for a few months because I could no longer feel the magic. Anyway, I picked up the translated game the other day. I struggled with myself and decided to play it. No guts no glory, and sometimes you have to suffer so that you can ultimately appreciate something else even more.

Menus/ interface: First off, I don’t particularly like the default settings. The music was too loud, the text didn’t appear quick enough, and the menus were a bizarre and motley collection of nigh-incomprehensible sliding bars. The font was faint and barely visible. There was no cute game cursor. After spending more time than necessary configuring and customizing things to my liking, I started playing. (4/10)

Story: I want to say that the story is as bland as it was in the anime, but that would be wrong. Ultimately it’s worse. You find yourself going back over the same territory over and over again, rehashing the same plot details over and over and over, ad nauseum. Skipping text you’ve already read is a given, but I spent more time skimming through text I’d already read than actually getting to individual story. Ultimately a very bland and unrewarding experience, especially as the already-read text seems to multiply with each route completed. Whomever decided to “decensor” the game really, truly, and strongly needs to take a class on human anatomy. Barring that, they need to watch a porno. Things don’t work that way (or look that way). Story-wise, the world is flat and two-dimensional. I’ve played a variety of other games and if you took the characters away, you can see the world behind them. A strongly shining example of this is Planetarian. If you took the Junker and Hoshino Yumemi out of Planetarian, you could still see beyond them, see the city, and see the world as it was, but the world of Shuffle is simply a contrivance. Tripping flags is ridiculously easy and the choices available have no effect on the inevitable conclusion except that it locks you into a specific route. Once you’re locked in, you can skim the text, collect the ending, and move on to the next girl. Speaking of girls… (2/10)

Sia: I went through her route somewhat baffled that I was interacting more with Primula and Nerine and Kaede more than with her… up until the point that I bagged her. Her … plot twist was lackadaisical and didn’t seem to have any real tangibility. Ultimately, I didn’t like her. The only benefit to playing her route was that her voice was different than the anime and it didn’t grate as badly. I apparently didn’t have a lot to say about Sia during my playthrough; my notes seem to only mention her a few times. “Oh God Sia is stupid. She’s about as dumb as a sack of hammers. Hahaha, logic 1, girl 0.” Her ending is as baffling as it is insipid and destroyed any hope of redemption for her. (3/10)

Kaede: I played Kaede with some trepidation; To give fair credit where credit was due, I tried my best to like her, but I dislike her very strongly. My notes reflect this, at length. “She’s such a fucking tool. “I’m a gaping vagina that exists solely for the purpose of Rin-kun”  Oh fuck, there she goes again. “I have no self identity, I simply exist to be useful to you.” What the fuck girl. Oh for fucks sake girl, you’re fucking retarded. just kill yourself. God, Kaede’s obsequiesness is disgusting. Fuck, Kaede sounds a lot like Mikuru from Haruhi- Oh god, she is. No wonder I can’t stand her. I think Kaede-chan has sort of a persecution complex: she feels he should reject or punish her or take advantage of her, but he doesn’t. Of course Kaede is also a retard, so there’s that, too. I’m fairly certain that her childhood illness (lol) scrambled her brains and she was never actually able to grow up as a normal child. Maybe I’m a bit jaded and cyhnical, but she gets no sympathy or pity from me. She’s just a retard, herp derp. Oh, finally got some Kaede time. Wait, what the fuck is this shit? “I’ll hate you if you don’t”? She’s a fucking retard. And a slut. a trite, manipulative whore that needs her meatsocket to be filled in order to think she’s a verifiable human being. God, her ingratiating servility is disgusting. I want to puke twenty years of cigarette tar directly into her mouth. She’s the worst kind of woman. She takes away the entire valuation of being a man. How can a man feel like a man if he’s expected to do jack shit? “use my body, take advantage of my kindness, capitalize on my retardation but don’t love me.” God what a fucking piece of work. I was right about the persecution complex. “To serve Rin-kun is my life!” What fucking outrageous stupidity.” (1/10)

Asa: I remember I liked her in the anime, up to the end, when she just became repetitive and stupid. The game is a lot like this, but because of the story bloat and all the “skip previously read portions” I was simply marking time until I could read through her arc. She was awkward in her femininity and responded to certain inquiries like a tsundere. Certain elements of her arc (namely unnecessary bloat) kept me from liking her. When there wasn’t crap in the way of her story, her arc seemed contrived. There’s this block of time between “I’m interested in someone else” and my kiss with Asa that is completely devoid of interaction with her. From zero to hero in a couple weeks? I don’t fucking think so. Then things started balancing out and I was daring to hope, but no. crash and burn. In the final result, I was wanting a Kareha route more because she was far more entertaining. Ama and Kareha made this route shine, but unfortunately the route wasn’t about them. (4.5/10)

Nerine: Surprisingly, all throughout Sia, Kaede, and Asa’s routes, I was always sort of eyeing Nerine. When I played through her, though, my first thought was “Start a new route, skip through blue text.” The blue text being, of course, shit I’ve already read before. The blue text kept going and going and going. The game starts June 13th and her route-specific content doesn’t actually start until July 22nd, and that was a five-minute scene at the pool. Afterword she seems to display the same sniveling, cringing, eager-to-please meatsocket philosophy that Kaede seems to personify. However,  in the tiny amounts of story we get while sifting through the already-read bloat, you catch glimpses of a potentially decent character that doesn’t suffer Kaede’s crippling flaws- there’s a world of difference between sniveling servility and devotion. But because you don’t get anything you haven’t already seen until mid-august, she falls flat. Her ending drama is very much in tune with Sia’s, Kaede’s, and Asa’s- female irrationality heaped atop poor writing and straw logic. (4/10)

Primula: Throughout my playthroughs, I never once considered Primula’s route. I can appreciate judicious use of a token loli, but there was never anything through any other route that said Primula was worth pursuing in the slightest. She’s also the last route in my playthrough, so with that in mind, the deck has already been stacked against her. Primula in a school swimsuit is appropriate in her type of appeal, but it simply seems I’m being pandered to. “Here is a token loli. It’s expected you’d see her in these things and doing these things, so here she is, doing those things.” I feel patronized and insulted. She wants validation and affection, I respond by giving her penis. LOGICAL CHOICE. (2/10)

Twenty-five years ago, if I had been asked about romance, I probably would have replied “That’s icky stuff, girls are gross.” Twenty years ago, I would have said, “cards, candy, flowers” …essentially the staples of any Valentine’s Day.Fifteen years ago, I would have said the previous, but added in secluded dinners for two, fireplaces, getaways, etc.

When you get older you understand it’s not just a matter of giving of material gifts, but it’s also to a certain extent ‘being thoughtful’ and paying attention to the complex, bizarre, mostly contradictory and irrational wants and desires of your partner. And then satisfying those desires with material objects and emotional validation. Women need to be reassured that they’re still attractive. Women need to be reassured that they’re still sexy. Women need to be reassured that they’re still appreciated. Women need to be reassured that they’re still women.

You see it all in contemporary television, and if you look at it with a scrutinizing eye, you see the ever-popular scene: man forgets anniversary or birthday or valentines day or whatever, and becomes a nervous wreck buying a last-minute present that he hopes will appease the woman. Maybe my chauvinism is showing a little, but I can see that scene in dozens of different dramas and sitcoms and errata- women are being programmed to expect unnecessary amounts of gifts. Women are idols that must be sacrificed unto. Men are stupid, bumbling idiots that have to be reminded of their place: which is to say sacrificing hard-earned money and groveling at the feet of the woman in the hopes that she deigns to grant him the use of her vagina.

There are solutions, though. By not buying into the shallow, materialistic ideas of romance perpetuated by the misandric feminist movement, by not collapsing into complacency and pursuing your girl consistently, by consistently providing attention, affection and appreciation, you can avoid emasculating yourself (and your wallet) for the sake of the almighty vagina. Alternatively, the Japanese have come up with a unique solution: simply abandoning women in totality.

The guru of the 2-D love movement, Toru Honda, a 40-year-old man with a boyishly round face and puppy-dog eyes, has written half a dozen books advocating the 2-D lifestyle. A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls “romantic capitalism.” Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. “Pure love is completely gone in the real world,” Honda wrote. “As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.” Honda insists that he’s advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?

I have to say, since watching the Evangelion series ten or more years ago, I really hated it. Couldn’t stand it.

A random bowl of bullshit and sophistry and pseudo-psychological and pseudo-religious babble revolving around a simple story of people that are ultimately and fundamentally broken? What’s to like, right? I think listening to TEN YEARS of rabid and histrionic prepubescent fanboys (and post-pubescent too!) slavering and masturbating to something that was mediocre at best has got to be the worst part of Eva- the second being the almost auto-cannibalistic release and re-release and re-re-release of “new versions”. Who here remembers the collector’s series white VHS tapes? ($30 each!) The black box DVD set? The metal black box DVD set? The White DVD pack? Gold Edition? Deluxe Edition? Deluxe edition with 30 second more footage? Deluxe Edition with Director’s cut? Platinum? Platinum thinpack? Those two things made me hate Evangelion the most. It’s an average story, overhyped and overmarketed. But in all honestly, I think that the first and second movies have redeemed the show in ways that may not necessarily be readily apparent.

I think there are certain things you can’t look at directly, at least not at first. You must first glance sideways, examine things laterally. Look at the edges. Examine principles of effect and causalities. Find trends and values and from all of the outlying data begin to coalesce the fundamental core of what you are seeking. Look at footprints, fingertips and strands of hair, only then can you dare lift your eyes and truly understand all of it. So it’s with that that I watched Evangelion 01 You are (not) alone and Evangelion 02: You can (not) advance.

There are certain things that one must think of as “necessary” when you think of the series of Rebuild movies; and most specifically, the second one.  The expectations have already been set with previews, promos and hype:

• First, that there’s a new pilot we never saw in the series. Mari. We’ve got that, and it’s fine.
• Second, that Asuka shows up, and accordingly, so does Unit 02. She has, and that’s fine.
• Angels will show up and die. Okay, we’ve got that covered.
• Gendo’s keikaku doori.
• Bizarre insertions of random religious symbology.

The lesser-known but still necessary elements, though, are the things that bring home to us the realization that while it may be done with new technology, better animation, smoother transitions, amazing music, and such and so forth, this is still, irrevocably an evangelion movie. Like Asuka’s ubiquitous ‘Anta, baka?‘. Or, perhaps Misato’s enthusiastic beer-chugging and self-satisfying war-whoop at it’s completion- I believe that details like this flesh out and draw up the phenomenon known as Evangelion.

I’m going to admit it, I’m a slut for the almost…. pornographic level of detail that goes on in the background. Buildings raising and lowering, solar panels turning to catch the rays, cars moving, clouds shifting, escalators churning away. Even in this badly captured cam, you can still see beyond the mundane and appreciate the less obvious. One of the things that’s only hinted at, viscerally, throughout the eva franchise, is just how big the complex that houses NERV and the EVAs really is. If you’re not specifically looking for it, you will miss the important detail- it’s huge. Staggeringly huge. Mind-bogglingly huge. And that’s something you can clearly grasp in the second movie.

Another detail that we’ve got to learn before we can raise our eyes to the sightline, is not something we can see, but instead we have to hear it. The music. A large part of the pacing and overall mood of all iterations of the movies and the series and such has been the music. Prior to watching Evangelion back before I got married, I had never heard so much ‘brass’ in a show. Blaring trumpets and trombones and tubas and such; Rebuild brings in new iterations of these same tracks with different instruments to create a heartfelt similar yet audibly different, experience.  That’s not to disregard the strings. Most certainly not. There are string movements in the movie that awe-inspiringly dramatic and only serve to apply elements to the story we may not immediately see if we were to look at the movie straight on.

If watching the series, simply look straight at it. There is nothing beyond the obvious. There are no magic suppositions or deeper meanings except the ones that you yourself impose. Ray Bradbury once said, “My stories are often open-ended so that the reader can draw his own conclusions.” and while you have the freedom and encouragement to seek a deeper meaning, there really isn’t. If you’re watching the Rebuild movies, don’t look at them straight on. The story hasn’t changed in new or dramatic ways- you’re not missing anything. Instead pay attention to the things you wouldn’t normally think of, and ultimately the true reward will present itself: the redemption of an otherwise shit franchise.