Subatomic Brainfreeze

Dave's HELPFUL MAHJONG LINKS

So, you want to play? That's good!

I will quickly list some learning resources: I'm not going to bullshit you here, this game is tough to learn. There are a lot of rules and English-language material is scarce. This Flash game is a nice, light introduction to the basics in English with the absolute essentials listed on the page. Note that you should do yourself a favor and memorize the Japanese numbers on the character tiles while you play with this: whether you're playing a videogame or on a real set, you will usually not have the luxury of having Arabic numbers on them.

Play around with that for a minute, then read this friendly tutorial to get all the basics down. Then come back to the Flash game. There will be a world of difference between playing against these AIs and playing against real people, but just concentrate on learning how the game works. A truly exhaustive set of rules is available here: I keep a printout of the site around for reference.

Reachmahjong.com is the biggest English-language community: there's a lot of good material on the site but the design's kind of a mess so you've really got to dig for it. Also, their basic tutorials confused the hell out of me when I was first learning. Read their advanced stuff once you already know the game.

Here's some more really good material for the intermediate player.

Oh right, they're talking about Tenhou. When you have a handle on how the game works, consider diving into Tenhou, the best, simplest online mahjong client. Yes, the client is in Japanese, but it is easily navigable with the help of this thorough English documentation. Read all of that. Tenhou is free to play for as long as you want, but at a certain rank you're limited to the "economy" version, which is charmingly and intentionally bare-bones, going so far as to replace voices with blips and bloops. However, there is a premium subscription ($5/month: not a recurring subscription, can be bought by the month when you want it) that gives you access to a pretty Windows client where every piece of the interface can be customized or changed outright. I have a Psyduck setup going.

One last thing: I'm always digging through mahjong videos on Nicovideo to watch pro matches. The language barrier means I can't get much out of the commentary, but it's still very valuable to look at how pros handle situations.

Dance in the Vampire Bund edited for release: Anime fandom, get ready for the PEDOPOCALYPSE

Of course Pedogeddon is a cooler-sounding name, but funnier dudes than I used it a long, long time ago.

Here then, friends, is today's anime scene drama. If you pre-emptively asked "Are there pedophiles?"-- before even reading the title of this post, in fact, the moment you heard someone say "anime" let's say you correctly assumed that pedophiles would just kind of be hanging around, doing their thing-- then yes, yes there are.

This is what's up: Funimation just announced that their US release of the recent Dance in the Vampire Bund anime will be edited for content. This is not a case where some content is cut for a general-audience release and an uncut release is made available later. There will not be an uncut release. The anime contains scenes which the company has deemed "inappropriate for U.S. viewing".

Nobody is saying what the scene is. I had described it, but then I decided "well, do I want this description on my site?" and you know what, I'm not too crazy about ending up on an FBI watchlist. It's around the middle of the second episode. If you don't notice the overt sexuality in the scene you probably can't see your own two hands in front of your face either. Real talk.

That scene, by itself, completely breaches what's typically allowed in American entertainment. You definitely wouldn't be able to get away with it in film. It's not just dipping into taboo, it's wading waist-deep. It's not a huge surprise that Funi doesn't want to be associated with a scene like that, especially given what's been going on.

I'm talking, of course, about Christopher Handley, who was recently sentenced for possessing lolicon (TL note: "lolicon" is Japanese for "pedo") manga that he imported from Japan. I disapprove of the idea of legislating the contents of somebody's imagination-- there are real children in the world facing real abuse who are really ignored in favor of silly, easy shit like this, and I believe it's better for pedophiles to have a fictional outlet than for their desires to boil over and explode into the real world-- but the ruling sets a precedent.

It is worth noting that before the Handley ruling (and since), Funi has been running a big campaign for the pedoriffic Strike Witches, one based largely on the fact that the characters do not wear pants, skirts, or anything that might obscure their underwear from our view. Now, after the ruling, Vampire Bund is being edited. Will this become the marker standing between the pre- and post-Handley eras of American anime fandom? What will we do when two devastating sales forces-- an anime with the word "baka" in the title and an anime with the word "vampire" in the title-- are sold side by side? I don't know, I don't know! Anime is so confusing, you guys!

Mahjong anime and manga THAT YOU CAN GET IN ENGLISH

Want manga/anime about mahjong? What the hell, I can do that. Here's a list post. I just posted about Mudazumo: mahjong isn't really the point here, this is just hilarious. There's the Akagi anime, obviously, which all people should watch. The manga is being scanned, but be warned that Akagi has been stuck on the mahjong equivalent of Planet Namek for years, and because the comic keeps Kindai Mahjong magazine alive, it literally cannot end.

The title that introduced and popularized the character of Akagi, Fukumoto's Ten, has been scanslated in its entirety. This should keep you busy for a long time. I would not recommend reading this unless you know mahjong: it's very much the same situation as the shonen fight manga tournament arc. After the first few books, these characters simply sit down and play mahjong against each other until the comic becomes The Akagi Show for a fantastic final arc and then just ends flat. It's very dry, lacks much of Akagi's atmosphere and tension, and is only really interesting if you already care about the game. People who want to see Ten animated probably just mean "the end of Ten," which starts around chapter 137.

I have watched all of Legendary Gambler Tetsuya and I really didn't like it much. You know that shonen manga trope where they cut away to a spectator talking about how the hero is the most amazing person ever to live? They're constantly doing this with Tetsuya, but he never really impresses. He's got no character whatsoever: Tetsuya just wins as blandly as possible. This show is about cheating at mahjong, and he's still somehow boring. There's an episode where he waits for a single tile, draws the tile on the very last draw, and then is hailed as the greatest gambler of all time. It's not that uncommon, guys!

There's also Saki, which I ran through pretty fast recently, skipping the filler, the first five episodes, and other bullshit. Saki's about 80 percent moe/fanservice, 15 percent mahjong, and 5 percent Yu-Gi-Oh, so keep that in mind coming in. It's not incredibly sleazy, but "not incredibly sleazy" on the moe scale still means a bunch of closeups on a blushing girl's quivering thighs as she appears visibly aroused by another girl's mahjong power level.

This is a tiny enough niche in manga to begin with and even more so in anime. There's obviously still less material available in English. I'm pretty sure that I've actually listed everything here. You are now equipped to complete a genre. Kind of.

I have also EATEN PRINGLES AND PLAYED MAHJONG

It doesn't feel right to leave Carl alone to post about this subject, as I too have been hitting the mahjong hard as of late. The game has fascinated me since I saw Akagi-- this is a common symptom of American players of Japanese mahjong-- and I've made attempts to learn to play in the past, but only in the past few months can I say I know what the hell I'm doing.

I was grinding away by myself online, but in a very unlikely and convenient situation, a local group (the USPML) formed here in NYC. If you know how to play and you're local-- this is itself exceedingly unlikely-- you should be coming to these meets. It's a very friendly environment, and as Carl and I have both mentioned, Pringles, Kindai Mahjong magazine and Dr. Pepper are on hand. If you don't, and you're local, they are going to start doing teaching events. I recommend giving the game a shot: you may find yourself having as much fun as we are. But why are we having so much fun with this game?

From one moment to the next, reach mahjong is a game of chance, a game of skill, and a game of balls. I won't bore you with too many of the details, but the closest thing you've likely heard of is rummy. Four players take turns drawing and discarding tiles to make a 14-tile hand. Certain hands are more valuable than others and a match usually takes place over eight or so hands, so the goal of the game isn't necessarily to race to finish one hand. It's to finish having taken the most points from everybody else. You have to think of the war and not so much the battle. People say it's not so much a game of winning as it is a game of not losing.

While Japanese-style mahjong heavily rewards a player for putting together their hand by themselves, it's also possible to steal tiles: particularly in the endgame, the need to finish your own hand presses against the potentially disastrous possibility of dealing into somebody else's. When a player's hand is one tile away from winning, they can declare "reach" or "riichi" (take your pick), formally declaring their status to the table. From a practical point of view, you wouldn't want to let people know you could win at any moment. However, winning on a reach gives you a number of point bonuses, so it's a very common move. Reach is at the heart of the game: you can prop up a low-scoring hand with it, you can use it as a semi-bluff, you can turn a strong hand into a monster.

When the reach stick goes on the table, the mood gets really tense: I was in a hand at the last meet where one player after another reached, and I was faced with the terrifying possibility of dealing into any one of their hands at any moment. I survived by simply folding: taking my hand apart and discarding only tiles I knew all three players didn't need. The danger of trying to win here greatly outweighs the loss of a small hand. When we finished in a draw, it turned out that I was in fact holding every single tile the other players needed, including one tile that two players needed. Had I dealt into this, I would be paying for both players' hands, which could have well knocked me out in one shot and ended the game with me in last place. This is the shortest match I have ever played: I won on the second hand. This game is a very tense, very dangerous, and mostly blind negotiation.

That's what I like about the game, anyway. When I was writing this post it got really huge and out of hand, so I'll be posting one of these a day.

Anime about games, game logic, and how SUMMER WARS IS KIND OF LIKE YU-GI-OH

Last week I went and saw Mamoru Hosoda's Summer Wars with friends, including Carl and the Reverse Thieves. After we had gotten through all of the other cool stuff that had happened in the movie, somebody had to get to the heart of the matter:

"Wasn't that Yu-Gi-Oh scene great?"

Yes, there was a Yu-Gi-Oh scene in this movie. It's not coincidental: the scene is deliberately staged and directed like one of Yugi's card battles, down to the rapidly fluctuating life point counters displayed on the screen. The climax of the film is the same hand-to-the-sky card-playing sequence that so often ends a Yu-Gi-Oh episode, except it's about ten times as majestic. If you've ever watched that show, it is impossible not to notice this direct resemblance.

In Summer Wars, the characters are playing the Japanese hanafuda card game. I don't understand it at all, the viewer isn't expected to, but the scene is made to be exciting despite that. We see cards being played rapidly, the characters making aggressive, resolute calls at every play, and those life points plunging and swelling as a direct result of the action. We understand that this is a hard-fought struggle, and it's compelling on those grounds, but we don't understand exactly what is going on.

It's all about presentation: this is why Nobuyuki Fukumoto's mahjong series Akagi is a cult classic in Western anime/manga fandom despite the fact that the vast majority of us viewers have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on. It is always clear that Akagi is toying with and crushing his enemies: if not via the game, then through the tension in the air and the looks on people's faces.

Technically speaking, Yu-Gi-Oh spawned a real-world card game with real-world rules, but the characters in the series are not bound by said rules. They do whatever the writers decide they can do at any given moment in the name of entertainment. Actually knowing how the card game is played detracts somewhat from the cartoon, because you know everything they're doing is total cheating nonsense.

The nail in the coffin for viewer interest is hero Yugi's writer-granted power: this guy believes in the "heart of the cards". What this means is that when the chips are down, Yugi just believes, and in so doing wills the single card he needs for a complete turnaround victory into his hand. This deflates any possible tension, of course: not only do we know that our young hero will always win, it takes that extra step into predictability by letting us know exactly how. It's a kids' show, of course, but even kids get bored of this stuff.

And so, when in my recent Japanese mahjong research I watched Saki, I immediately said to Carl "what is this Yu-Gi-Oh bullshit and when do they start playing mahjong?" He had me skip the first arc. The mahjong in Saki is an actual game when the small fries are playing and Yu-Gi-Oh when a major character gets involved. Saki doesn't need the viewer to understand the game either: if you're watching this it's a lot more likely you're in it for the blatantly suggestive camera angles and the longing gazes between girls that form the majority of the show.

By the final table, we've got two characters with entirely ridiculous mahjong powers that all four players understand to be absolute fact: when heroine Saki calls a kan (a set of four of the same tiles) and draws a tile, she will win. When reigning champion Koromo draws the last tile, she will win. This will happen 100% of the time, no matter what. What's funny is that we start to see the characters take this into the logic of the game and attempt to maneuver around the craziness: for example, calling to shift the turn order so that Koromo doesn't draw last (Koromo just calls again and resets the situation). In the end Saki calls a lot of kans, wins with the heart of the tiles, and nobody is terribly surprised.

I found the bits with the lesser players more interesting because I felt like they earned it. My favorite character in Saki was the one I like to call Bad Odds Girl, because she just bets on lousy odds over and over again. Sure, she wins, but it's thanks to a conscious decision on her part. It's admirable. And of course, Shigeru Akagi doesn't so much play mahjong as he masterminds the interaction between four human beings sitting at a table. He earns it: he's on another level of earning it.

Summer Wars isn't actually about hanafuda, of course. It's about a large, tight-knit family out in the Japanese countryside using Web 3.0 to fight off a rogue AI. (It's also about Terry Bogard.) We feel like the heroine earns the final hanafuda victory because she has grown in so many ways over the course of the film, and she is at the peak of her being when she slams down that card. Without a soul behind it, the whole spectacle-- the light of heaven beaming from under the cards, the observers flipping out in the background-- would be empty. It's just some lucky guy you can't empathize with. Kinda like Legendary Gambler Tetsuya.

Subatomic Brainfreeze sells out to The Man: YOU LIKED IT BETTER WHEN IT WAS STILL UNDERGROUND

If you're reading this, then I'm doing awesome, because my first piece of work for Anime News Network just went up. I'm taking over Astro Toy, the ANN toy review column. I've never really talked about it on the blog, but I used to really be in love with Japanese toys, to the point where I just ran out of room for them. Every few years I buy something nice for myself, but I've mostly been away. When I was approached with the opportunity to re-awaken the terrible, plastic-and-diecast-craving beast inside of me as a part-time job, I really had no choice but to say yes. The first piece is a review of Max Factory's Figma Golgo 13, and I hope you all love it. I'm gunning for other opportunities, so hopefully this won't be the last of me you see around the internet. Tell your friends! Tell your friends who can pay me to write for them! In fact...

HIRE DAVID CABRERA TO WRITE FOR YOU TODAY.

Hey, everybody! If there's one damn thing David Cabrera knows in all the world, it's stupid crap like Japanese videogames and cartoons! I'm proven to have spent way too much time on this stuff. I:

-am Anime News Network's new toy reviewer
-have been writing about videogames and anime on this blog for over three years, and am a founding member of Colony Drop, the angry anime fan's favorite destination.
-have guest written at places like Insert Credit and Action Button
-was famous, filthy-mouthed 4chan gimmick poster Badass Manly Anime Reviewer
-have a functioning work ethic
-am regularly asked things like "How do you even know things like that?" and "You're an Akiba-type, right?"
-love this stuff too, too much.

Potential employers are welcome to contact me at subatomicbrainfreeze at google's email service.

(Don't worry, guys, the blog isn't going anywhere.)

Yakuza 3 loses stuff that's too Japanese for you: IT'S A RETRO HOMAGE TO 1993

Man, I'm a videogame blog instead of an anime blog again. I'm only watching Dullalala and Kimi ni Todoke and LOGH Gaiden, okay? I have zines to write for, here! I'll get back on the horse, I swear!

Anyway, here's what's up: Sega is screwing up a release of a major videogame. Again. It's kind of their thing. Here's the scoop (from IGN, of all places!): according to Sega reps, content that "wouldn't resonate" was removed. "Wouldn't resonate" is code for "is a little too Japanese", as the elements confirmed removed are a Japanese history quiz and hostess clubs. Mahjong and shogi games are also speculated to have been removed, as they are absent from the trophy list that's come out.

Yakuza is a free-roaming action/RPG game with a lot of side dishes: it is by no means required, but you can walk into bars, restaurants, all kinds of establishments, and they will have something for you to do. You can go to the batting range! You can play crane games! You can get drunk and learn something about your booze! It's a fun break from beating up an endless stream of people who have it in for you. While none of this has a direct impact on the main plot, removing some of these side dishes also removes a lot of the game's unique character and much of the reason people enjoy it. The game is not destroyed, but it is hurt. This is a bad thing.

What's the excuse here? Sega's official line is weak, to say the least:

Ultimately, the choice that had to be made was either no Yakuza 3 in the west, or a version of the game that was almost exactly the same, but with a little less trivia.

Not only is this a bald-faced lie and a poor attempt to downplay the loss, it tells us nothing about the reasoning behind the decision. Let's go back to the IGN article.

The content between Yakuza 3 US/UK and Yakuza JP is a little different in that we took out certain bits in order to bring the game to the west in the time alloted for us to do so.

Now this is something, and it leads us to something even dumber. Content is being cut from Yakuza 3 to get the game out on time. Guess what day Yakuza 3 drops? It's March 9th: the same day as Final Fantasy God Damn XIII. They rushed to remove content from a game so that they could deliberately put it in the worst imaginable spot in the schedule short of releasing next to Modern Warfare.

It's not news, but Sega are idiots. When the release date came out we already knew they'd sent their game out to die, but it's even more ridiculous to see that they actually made sacrifices in order to make their deadline for failure. Those of us who follow Sega are used to the company making the worst possible decision in any situation, but this apparent superpower has not lost its ability to shock crowds of onlookers in the least. This is why I don't even bother thinking about whether or not Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is coming out here.

(Poor Patrick Macias is going to have to field a bunch of questions he doesn't know anything about from angry fans at the launch party, huh?)

The Cave region-lock saga ends: ENJOY ESPGALUDA II, IT'S THE LAST ONE

It's been a few days, but I might as well finish following the story. This drama started when arcade shooting game developer Cave made a tentative step into the international market by making Mushihime-sama Futari region-free, effectively opening the floodgates for importers. However, the region status of Cave's next home release, ESPGaluda II, has been in question. Personally, I took it as a given that I wouldn't be able to play the game and scratched it off my to-buy list, bumping Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom and No More Heroes 2 down a spot. Nothing short of an eleventh-hour reversal would fix this, and that stuff doesn't happen.

So, of course, that's how things went down. It was announced that the regular edition of the game would be made region-free, but the decision was so under-the-wire that the process couldn't be repeated for the limited edition, which is technically considered a different disc. Furthermore, this went up on the Cave blog:

Thank you for the warm messages from all over the world.
Espgaluda II Black Label Normal Edition is region free.
But I'm afraid new games after Espgaluda II Black Label won't be region free.
I assure you that Espgaluda II Black Label Normal Edition will be the last region free game for the time being.

Cave

Makoto Asada

Thanks, guys! You might not want to think of it this way, but Asada does us a favor here, putting a thousand tired fanboy discussions to rest by saying straight up that this will be the last region-free release. It makes sense: Deathsmiles is coming out in the US via Aksys soon and Cave probably wants to keep the rest of its games viable for localization. The region-free releases have done their jobs.

On the other hand, I really do need to get Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom and No More Heroes 2. Next month.

Thank you for the warm messages from all over the world.
Espgaluda II Black Label Normal Edition is region free.
But I'm afraid new games after Espgaluda II Black Label won't be region free.
I assure you that Espgaluda II Black Label Normal Edition will be the last region free game for the time being.

Cave

Makoto Asada

Thanks, guys! You might not want to think of it this way, but Asada does us a favor here, putting a thousand tired fanboy discussions to rest by saying straight up that this will be the last region-free release. It makes sense: Deathsmiles is coming out in the US via Aksys soon and Cave probably wants to keep the rest of its games viable for localization. The region-free releases have done their jobs.

On the other hand, I really do need to get Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom and No More Heroes 2. Next month.

Way of the Samurai 3 impressions

I've beaten this game twice and yet I can still use the word "impressions", because I've only barely scratched its surface. Considering it's $20 on Amazon-- I really don't pay retail for anything but the arcade ports I love-- this is an obvious steal.

Way of the Samurai 3 is what people like to call a sandbox game. You're thrown into an environment and told to do what you want. Grand Theft Auto does this, Bethesda's RPGs (like Oblivion, Fallout) do this. The main difference is a matter of scale: Way of the Samurai is a much shorter game that takes place in a much smaller world. Playing at a typical speed, it took me about five hours to finish my first run. As a tradeoff, the world is incredibly dense, and the story is completely yours to influence in any way you want.

Here's the setup: you're a masterless samurai who, after defeat in a major battle, wakes up in a new town. After waking up, you're immediately given free reign: unless you specifically ask a non-player character for it, you won't get a tutorial. There are two factions at war here and a number of major players both within and without them: allying with even one of these people, betraying them, even dialogue choices will lead to a serious change in the way the story unravels. Only one major event, which sets the endgame into motion, is actually inevitable.

I got right to testing the system by actually playing out roles: seeing if I could, for example, turn the people who saved me over to their enemies, then have a change of heart and come to their defense. There's an ending for that. There's an ending for living and dying without ambition as a simple bandit, and I'm sure there's an ending for taking over Japan. The possibilities are rich indeed. The genre you'd list this game under in a store is "action", but it is a role-playing game in the truest sense.

On top of all the intrigue, there's a lot you can do in town: take odd jobs, get in fights, pick up a love interest. Combat is as comprehensive as you would expect in a game like this-- about a hundred weapons, with the ability to forge your own-- but it's hardly the only thing you can do. While I'm not sure you can finish the game without getting into a fight (probably?), finishing without killing anybody is entirely possible. Beat this game once, and you'll think about all the other things you could have done, and then you'll want to play again.

The game encourages this a couple of different ways: first, you get to carry over all your equipment-- like that sword you upgraded-- and money from one playthrough to the next. Second, there's a point system by which successive playthroughs lead to new items and accessories being unlocked. Lastly, the game keeps a running tally of everything you've been doing, awarding titles like "Workaholic" for the guy who does too many jobs, for example. Maybe you want to collect all the wives in the game, I dunno! It's up to you, just like everything else.

There is also a bit of DLC content. Totaling a whopping two dollars, the item and accessory packs include Manji's outfit from Blade of the Immortal, the coveted "white guy face", and various other jokey outfits. I am a big fan of the samurai suit made of cardboard boxes myself.

Is Max Factory THE MOST BRILLIANT INDIE VIDEOGAME DEVELOPER OF ALL TIME?

I'm going to say "yes". There's a lot of competition in the videogame market these days, as I'm sure you're aware, and owing to the sheer amount of stuff out there, people have had to try all kinds of revenue models to catch players' eyes: the "first month's free!" subscription model, the "free unless you want all this basic functionality!" free-to-play model, and the paid, extra content which is springing up in every mainstream console game to fleece a couple bucks off the more enthusiastic fans out there. Well, I've got a model here you sure as hell haven't seen before: the "paid for entirely by toy sales" model.

Prominent figure company Max Factory, who produce such popular toys as the Figma series (I want the Marisa one), has hit upon this ingenious plan. We know that a big chunk of the market for PVC figures comes from porn games (and I'm not gonna lie, that statue looks baller). Let's look at the situation from Max Factory's point of view. Max Factory spends money to license the rights to other people's games (or comics, or anime), and then makes figures out of them. You have to have played the game to care about these releases, and the game typically costs a hundred dollars.

Why not cut out the middleman here? Max Factory has decided to make their own damn porn game, called se.kirara, and give it out for free. It's the drug dealer model we're familiar with from MMORPGs, except in this case the whole game-- a full-featured piece of work, with lots of heroines and branching routes and all this stuff-- is free. The "second step" is when the player finds himself paying for se.kirara by buying a hundred-dollar hugpillow or PVC figure instead of a hundred-dollar porn game. If the intent of this game was not already clear, a limited edition of the game will ship with a Figma of one of the characters. The cost is... that of a Figma. It's like the game is a bonus with the figure!

(One time my buddy bought the LE of Fate/Unlimited Codes solely because he wanted the exclusive Figma that came with it. I bought the game off him and we were both happy.)

Of course I'm kind of joking when I use "indie" here: Max Factory is a huge figure-making monster with cash to burn. Nobody working out of their basement could get away with producing toys on top of producing a game.

Carl and I were talking about how maybe robot anime could benefit from this sort of treatment. The facts are clear: the only people left buying toy robots are otaku,robots-- especially the kind of ornate designs otaku like-- are notoriously difficult to animate in 2D, and the anime industry is broke. Now why make an expensive robot anime when you're not sure it'll sell anything anyway? Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to skip to the toy. Imagine, if you will, a series of robot toys sold effectively as pitches. Each robot could have a drama CD, a little comic, a bunch of cheaply made material that lays down a mythology. Geeks love promotional material for things that never came to pass! Then you take the one that sells best and make it into whatever is most convenient. I expect a sizable check for this one, Japanese toy industry. Don't say I never did nothin' for you.