Subatomic Brainfreeze

Tsukihime - Arcueid Route - Day 2 - Good Thing It Was All Just A Dream!

Whoo! Remember this game? Last we played Tsukihime we killed someone pretty bad. It was ugly, it was nasty, it was pukey. Not a high point for us, yes? But then, all of a sudden, we were home and everything was alright.

It's good to see that our narrator thinks this is as bullshit as I do, but Hisui holds to her story: Kohaku went and found Shiki passed out in the park after he got out of school. Shiki asks about blood; Hisui says there was mud, yeah, but nothing like that. She suggests that we just had a really bad dream. A maid's job is to serve, and I guess that extends to self-delusion. Ah, what a girl. Shiki denies himself to sleep.

Oh shit! This is actually the end of Day 2! I've been winging this so I had no idea; I hadn't even thought about the whole issue where when people go to sleep time passes. I'm going to end the post here, but expect another in a little.

Tsukihime - Arcueid Route - Day 2 - I Cut Because It Makes Me Feel Alive

So last time we found out we had anemia, and we nearly passed out in class. We got out of class, and we started walking home. Shiki's still not feeling so hot; so not-hot is he that he has to stop walking, lean on a guard rail, and contemplate the plight of humanity by observing passers-by. In summary: they are nameless, they are boring, and they are lonely. I think Shiki's glasses are gonna need some thicker rims if this shit keeps up. But wait it's a chick--

Shiki can, as we've seen, spot potential h-game heroines with his spider-sense, and even now, as he hobbles sickly along, the soul still burns. Today Shiki's soul is, perhaps, burning too much, because as soon as he sees this girl, he goes pretty crazy. He starts hearing voices, he's short of breath. He's curled up in a ball, babbling unintelligibly, on the ground, and his spine is twitching. Whatever compulsion is whispering in Shiki's ear takes over, and he goes running after the girl.

Oh come on, man. Ask her her name, tell her everything is alright. Not to worry. Tell her that maybe we can get to know each other better at someplace special. Someplace romantic, you know? Tell her to put on this blindfold and get in the van, right? Why don't they ever go along with it? This is how a nice guy operates! You're not that creepy! Maybe the Ladder Theory was right after all!

But this guy is way ahead of us. He's very much in stalker mode now. I guess lead characters in h-games (or their writers, or their target audience) are just born knowing how to stalk a chick. Shiki's even feeling around in his pocket for his knife. He is serious. Shit, man. I was just joking around. Nobody needs to get hurt here, dude! We can stop. We can chill. I promise this time we'll go watch TV with Kohaku. Swear to god. Shiki gets as far as the apartment building the girl is staying at, and get this, he figures out what apartment she's saying at by sniffing her mailbox. That's a Crying Freeman move, right there.

That isn't all Shiki has in common with a Kazuo Koike character. This is running pretty fast from creepy to scary and it will, momentarily, break that red tape and go screaming into ugly. Shiki takes off his glasses at the door.

Turns out it was his superpowers acting up all along. Shiki walks into the apartment of the girl he stalked and cuts her, in a second, into seventeen surgically precise bits of flesh. So, we've killed a random stranger and apparently it totally turned us on. Choice! We have to decide whether or not to go into denial. Hey, why not? "This is all just a bad dream". They do this shit on TV all the time. Everything is gonna be a-okay.

Denial proves not to be so easy! Shiki pukes and he cries and he pukes and he cries, and all the while he's trying to figure out a way that what just happened could in fact not have just happened. He doesn't come up with anything good.

So Shiki gives up on lying about the dead chick in front of him (and the blood all over him and the knife in his hand), and he gives us some information we probably could have figured out, but didn't really want to think about. We've killed a random stranger, and it totally got us off. What a predicament, and what to do about it?

The game answers that question for us by inexplicably warping us home. Let's just, uh. Let's just not think about that whole thing for a little while. I guess here is a fine place to cut off. Stay tuned, kids!

Tsukihime - Arcueid Route - Day 2 - OH BY THE WAY I HAVE ANEMIA

fucking firefox crashed and I lost what I wrote

Oh look, it's our friends. Everybody makes a note of how out of her way Ciel is going to be here and how she really shouldn't and she's gonna be totally late. She's a fast runner, she says. Shiki pretends to object to this whole business because he's contractually obligated to. I'm going to explain an important rule to you: the harem lead has to act like he totally doesn't enjoy any of this, despite the fact that the universe around him has been built to the exact specifications of his fantasies. When one of the girls lavishes attention upon him he has to stop and say "whoa there how very unusual, and dare I say I'm a little uncomfortable oh ho ho" but really everything is totally chill. It's a personality type!

So Ciel and Arihiko gossip about how moving must really have Shiki down and how, you know, dude flips out when he doesn't understand things. We squabble with Arihiko while Ciel watches maybe too intently? Weirdo. Then she says hey, that was your house on the news, right? We tell her yeah, the police came by. Hmm. Chick is nosy. When she leaves, Shiki and Arihiko ponder how nosy chick is, and how totally hot girls in glasses are (a sentiment shared by myself). "It was a short friendship," he tells us.

Choice! As interesting as this whole girl in glasses business is, we really need to get to the point already. Getting to the point means purposely ignoring Ciel! Isn't it sad? I stick around in the classroom while I bet Arihiko and Ciel are getting some quality time. Good on them. Nothing at all happens because Shiki doesn't even have anything to stare at. As though dude didn't have enough. Harem leads, like the player, also have a denied and barely suppressed thirst for more. Just sayin'.

"OH BY THE WAY I HAVE ANEMIA," Shiki tells us during fifth period. Since the stabbed-in-the-chest incident, of course. So he sees a crow again, and everything starts all goin' crazy. Screen starts flashing, and whatnot. Arihiko gets him out of school, and Shiki walks home. And finally, on the way home, something major happens. I'm sort of surprised it took me this long to get to the first major plot point, but hey, the game is wordy.

I guess I'm back at it again! I'll definitely be working faster on these over the break but it's still a pretty huge videogame to be playing for you. Anyway, this is going to start to get fun, so look forward to that.

Tsukihime - Arcueid Route - Day 2 - Leaving For School Takes A Really Long Time

Last time on Tsukihime, we were stabbed through the chest by a car windshield, got superpowers that make us go crazy if we use them too much, got superpower-suppressing glasses from a sorceress, got disowned by our family, grew up a little bit, got taken back in by our family, fixed fences with a hot upperclassman, ate lunch with a free-spirited outlaw, had tea with said upperclassman (and she's falling all over us to the point where we feel bad for her because we're not on her route and as such this love simply cannot be until we start the game over), moved into the family mansion, complimented our sister on her beauty, got called "-sama" by some maids, were roused from our sleep by some animals and one of them walked right into this guy's jacket like liquid metal or something what the hell is that about, got sick, passed out, and saw lines.

We go back to the time when Aoko told Shiki about the lines: they are absolute breaking points for every physical object in existence. Seeing death everywhere all the time is such a bummer that anybody who had to do so would probably have gone insane; this is why Aoko went out of her way to make the glasses. She can't have little children going crazy (due to their newfound superpowers) on her watch. What a lady!

Hisui wakes us. Shiki reflects on it how would be really great for a girl like this to wake you up every morning; if only she had a personality. You might call him unappreciative, but remember; he's the lead character of an h-game. He's spoiled fucking rotten. He's so spoiled fucking rotten that Hisui lets him know that her sister changed his clothes for him after he passed out in his bed, and he acts like he didn't like it. "Usually I would have sensed it," he muses.

We greet Akiha and Kohaku in the sitting room. Nobody heard any dogs or saw any crazy jacket men or anything, and Akiha totally buhurns us for thinking that there were any.

The maids meet Shiki at the door, and Kohaku has something from the Arimas to give us. She says it's old man Tohno's inheritance; a knife. A fruit knife. What a coincidence! Dad must have been a big proponent, in his life, of superpowers that make you go crazy when you use them too much. Shiki decides it's kinda crap, and Hisui (apparently a blade aficionado) decides it's kinda beautiful, so Shiki decides it's beautiful too. Off to school, then... but wait-- blood. I hope this isn't Chris' blood! It looks like the barking and funny-man incidents did in fact happen. But really, sweartogod, off to school this time.

I'm gonna cut it off here because school also takes a really long time. This is a short post as-is but if I tag on school it's starting to stretch into too long. I'm going to split what I have into two posts.

Today, on a very special Unlimited Blog Works

Many videogames thank you for forsaking your life to play them on Christmas Day. Tsukhime is more reasonable. This little bit appears immediately after startup. "Teach me, Ciel-sensei" is a segment we haven't gotten to because I'm lazy and we've gotten nowhere in this game.

When you get Shiki killed, Teacher Ciel (accompanied by the comically mischievous Neko-Arc) will appear before us and tell us how not to fuck up next time. In other words, playing Tsukihime on Christmas is comparable to death.

As we mentioned, it is Arc's birthday. Neko-Arc would actually like very much for the player to play Tsukihime on Christmas. She can think of no better pastime. There is a conflict.

And like on a sitcom Christmas special, Celebrity Guest Nrvnqsr Chaos walks right on into class to wish Arc a happy birthday. He usually runs around killing shit with his animal friends, but you know, it's the season, and on Christmas even a dude like Chaos is totally chill. Aww, lookit him rationalizing! We know why he's here. It's the spirit.

We are missing the "Neko-Arc turns in one direction, and then the other" animation, but I assure you, her rage is palpable. I had to stop for a minute, and take some really deep breaths.

 

Because isn't that one of the terrible things about being a videogame character? They're stuck in this goddamned classroom all day, for you. They can't go to church, man. They can't pray to the computer god. They can't hang with the family. They're fucking stuck with you (I MEAN SHIKI TOHNO SORRY) and really, we need to give it a break, you know? Let 'em sleep.

Our friend the free-spirited outlaw makes the free-spirited, outlawed suggestion of incest. Incest: it's like the wind in your hair! He gets scared off by the totally huge Nrvnqsr, who leaves as charmingly as he came, no doubt to the applause of the crowd.

We are implored, again, to for god's sake spend some time with the family, and sent to the title screen. Yes, yes, you can play your videogame now. God. You degenerate. Now here at the Cabrera household we already did all our Christmas celebratin' (having as we do a need for companionship and shared emotion) but yeah, I'll admit it: I closed the window and hung out with the family for a little while longer. Thanks, Ciel-sensei.

I just wanted to give you a little bit of Nasu-English

From the Act Cadenza Ver. B character select screen:

"Open your magic circuit,
and choose your partner.
Images are magic.
There are eternal images that develop out of thought,
experience and imagination,
and grow into stories of information,
narrative, and fairytale,
touching the mind, the heart, and the soul.
It will be power,
and become glorious."

Nasu's English has gotten a lot better since the original MB, (I remember the demo had a blank spot on the versus screen where it said something like "Mr. Nasu please write us some English to put here.") where we had pretty much gibberish floating on the screen. This little piece begs for a booming announcer voice, like that in Soul Calibur or the Fist of the North Star fighting game. Ah, Melty Blood, if only you weren't published by the Death Crimson people!

game logos look good on top of blog posts don't they?

It's true that I have not been working without limit on my blog. I blame finals for sapping my energy and making me too lazy to finish writing anything, but the truth is that I'm naturally lazy in the same sense, that, say, the Natural Playboy is naturally a playboy. It's just how we roll. Blogging Tsukihime is a large and perhaps discouraging task, but like everything else I'm going to shrug and say "I'll get around to it." Expect progress soon!

Until then, let's talk about something that is peripherally Tsukihime: the way kickin' fighting game Melty Blood. Perhaps one of the 2D fighter genre's last triumphs, Melty Blood was a collaboration between Type-Moon themselves (right before they went pro) and Watanabe Productions (still in the doujin game and still turning out pro-quality work; now French-Bread). Type-Moon provided the characters and story; Watanabe brought the ruckus.

The PC game was of such quality that it caught the attention of Ecole, a  Japanese publisher that we, um, have to "thank" for the Saturn cult anti-classic Death Crimson (which inspired what is very likely the best gimmick controller ever made).

Ecole brought Melty Blood to the arcades as Melty Blood: Act Cadenza (French-Bread's name disappears from the game at this point; what shady developer politics were behind this we may never know). They did very well with it; as of this two-month-old issue of Arcadia I've got here they're the #4 most popular arcade game in Japan, right behind Virtua Fighter 5.

Very recently, Ecole ported the game to the PS2. The fanbase that had been playing Melty Blood on their PCs all this time probably felt screwed, but the PS2 players were not far behind. The week after Act Cadenza's PS2 release, Ecole announced Melty Blood Act Cadenza: Version B for the arcades. If your arcade game is popular enough, this is a time-honored fan-screwing tradition: you make your money in the arcades. When the cash flow dries up a little bit, you put out a home version for the last remaining hardcore fans to buy. Then, you put a new version into the arcade and repeat the procedure. You get a nice bit of supplemental profit and you get your main line of profit going again. Who wouldn't do it?

Anyway, it looks like Ecole is doing a PC release of Act Cadenza after all, and it's Version B. Good things come to those who wait their turn to get screwed, I suppose? The demo just went up today; it's getting hammered by the international legion of Type-Moon fans so be patient. Myself, I just got done playing around with it.

There are two characters, neither of whom appear in the Tsukihime I'm blogging: Len and White Len. They're palette-swap characters, like Ryu and Evil Ryu. White Len is this game's new character (yes, one new character and she's a palette-swap; insult to injury, I know), and she's actually kinda fun to play as. Look how chill she is! We're bobbin'. We're weavin'. We are relaxed.

White Len used to be the final boss character. While she wasn't the kind of pain in the ass that say, Omega Rugal is in King of Fighters, she could still be god damned infuriating, and making her playable as she was would have broken the game irrevocably. As such, they made a whole other character out of White Len. She is not the terror she was, but my preliminary research indicates that she has retained a little bit of her ass-kicking ability. Isn't that a nice screen? Icily flash-kicking one's doppelganger under the full moon. Sigh.

Her big super move is just her laughing at you for a couple seconds. It's shamlessly no-budget but I can't say it isn't satisfying.

Tsukihime - Arcueid Route - Day 1 - The Little Critters of Nature

So where were we? Waking up to mysterious noises-- OH SHIT IT'S A, uh, a blue crow? This isn't creepy, and neither is this "awooo" business that's going on. But Shiki is really creeped out. Biologically creeped out, and when people in the movies are creeped out by animal noises they step outside in search of said animals.

This next bit is kind of weird: Shiki says that he headed for the right side of the Tohno mansion's courtyard but he totally looks like he's standing on an empty stretch of highway. Anyway, there aren't any damn crows or dogs or anything here; just some dude. As poor, editorless Nasu puts it: "Under the light from the streetlight that carves apart the darkness stands a man in a dark coat."The noise persists; a crow seems to fly into the man's jacket. He turns to face us now (and Shiki can't breathe, all of a sudden), but he doesn't really give much of a damn. He is looking for someone and it seems they're not around. He leaves. Shiki's breathing resumes as normal.

Back at home, though, he has an attack. He starts to see the lines again, through his glasses. Twitching and nauseous, Shiki passes out in bed.

That's all for Day 1! Look forward to Day Two (of a bunch of days) soon!

Tsukihime - Arcueid Route - Day 1 - Moving In

So Shiki is all bummed about the whole thing with getting disowned because a car windshield stabbed him, and the whole thing with getting invited back eight years later. He thinks of poor lil' Akiha; she was like a French doll, he says. I repeat that because it's just really hard to disregard that line when you know it was written by an otaku. Must everything be a collectible, god dammit?

So we're playing an erogame, and we're in this huge, imposing mansion. What could happen? Could maids, perhaps, appear? Bingo! What is obvious to the reader is implausible to the protagonist, and Shiki has to think long and hard before figuring out that the woman in front of him is, in fact, a maid. And that she smiles like flowers.

Let's make a cultural note even though you, dear reader, probably already know it: "-sama" is a reverent honorific. It's double-moe when a maid uses it, because one rather big facet of moe is unfailing, uber-passive servitude. This is the foundation of the maid cafe, where they use "goshujin-sama" (master). That's really cranking it up to "dangerously moe", like you used to see in the Cheetos ads.

Anyway, let's meet Shiki's little sister. You've gotta love Shiki for having absolutely no moral conscience, here. After the initial shock of seeing Akiha again, as soon as he's able to form words, he's telling her how beautiful she's become. And he's shot down! Being the sole heir of a rich and powerful family, Akiha's become a stone-cold authoritarian. She intends to make a gentleman of Shiki. There will be rules. He will be trained. Silly girl! You can't hold down an h-game protagonist! The h-game protagonist is free, man! Like the wind!

But wait, there's more! Not only does Shiki get to live in a creepy abandoned mansion under the rule of his little sister, he gets his own personal maid! She is so moe, in fact, that Shiki has to bring out the doll comparison again. She doesn't even, like, emote or anything. Her lack of presence is shadow-like, Shiki says! We've moved past dangerously moe. Hisui's moe abilities are supermundane. This is MOST DANGEROUS MOE.

Hisui shows Shiki to his room; they have a discussion on the availability of television in the strict ly traditionalist Tohno home. Hisui says she saw one in her sister's room and Shiki is really slow to figure shit out because he only just now makes the inference that the sister in question, Kohaku, is the maid who greeted him at the door. (Kohaku is amber and Hisui is jade; note their eye colors.) After dinner I get another choice; I can either go see Akiha, go watch TV with Kohaku, or stay in my own damn room. I really wanna watch TV but the walkthrough's word is law; I have to stay where I am or no Arc for me.

Hisui comes in, makes the bed, and lays down the house rules. The gates close at seven. Don't even walk around the mansion after ten. Let Hisui use "-sama" no matter how weird and awkward it sounds. And don't touch Hisui, cause when Shiki taps her on the shoulder she flips out. A seemingly unbeatable obstacle for the h-game protagonist, and a story for another time. Hisui leaves, Shiki goes to sleep, and a howling wakes him. This is getting long, so I'm gonna cliffhanger you with that.

Day 1 is almost over, and we've met everybody but the heroine. I promise she'll show up soon!

Tsukihime - Arcueid Route - Day 1 - A Spot of Tea

And so I come across a free-spirited outlaw. This is Shiki's self-declared rival, Arihiko Inui. His top buttons are undone and he keeps asking Shiki why he isn't nice to him like he is to everybody else. This feels like... subtext. On that note, the guys get to talking about how it's not safe to go out anymore, on account of the serial killings that are going on. Arihiko says their necks are slashed, and he gets corrected by a classmate. Their blood is getting sucked out. So yeah. Some kinda vampires. This is completely obvious to us, the audience, but the kids play dumb.

Now where to eat lunch, huh guys? This is another annoying genre convention, especially in the early game when there are no decisions of note to make. Because the player's only involvement in the game is making decisions like where to eat lunch, innocuous choices can end up irreversibly altering the path of events. It's a very sad business, and being as I've already stated my goal, I'm gonna be peeking at the walkthrough from here on in unless the choice to be made is bleeding obvious.

We're staying in! Wait, wait, we're not. There's no food in here, he says. We've got to go to the cafeteria. Why offer the damn choice to begin with, then, you stupid kid? Christ.

Okay, we're in the cafeteria. Arihiko claims to have a special guest, but she ditched him.  Arihiko only really came in early because he knew Shiki was coming home to the Tohnos' today. He was worried. The special guest stands us up. That was it, huh? I guess the choice made me avoid Ciel. We fast forward to the end of the day and there is another choice; this one is slightly more relevant. Shiki's remembering the past and he's a little worried about that. He can either go to the Tohno mansion already, or he can hang around school and wallow in it. We choose to wallow.

I thought I was avoiding her! Ciel's got a way with pickup lines, though, doesn't she? Shiki is classically dense (I regretfully admit that I might have inadvertently learned my technique from idiots like this), so she has to lay it on pretty thick. Ciel (being sole member of the Tea Ceremony club) ends up dragging him off to the tea ceremony room. At first I figured it would be extra moe (moe in ways we foreigners cannot understand) for her to be doing something like this. But wait! She can't really do it right. It's clumsiness moe then. That's universal. Now I get it.

They small-talk (about anything, Ciel begs) and eventually Shiki gets to leave. They're really buttering you up, here. This isn't even the girl we have our eyes on. It's pretty ridiculous, but hey, I guess it works, right? They've made smooth players of us silly otaku. Nasu's got us walking off into the sunset, smirking, thinking to ourselves, "Sorry, babe. Maybe next time." See why this stuff sells?

Anyway, next is moving in with the Tohnos.