Bub from Bubble Bobble

Alena from DQIV (recolored)

Heracles from GoHII

I think the Heracles one nicely incorporates some bit of enacted “story-telling” that’s true to the series. Jump (down)! Jump weakly, boy!

And I also made one from scratch:

An original character by myself

Not much of an artist, as you can see.

The Help, 31/10/2011

The Help, starring Emma Stone

Powerful melodrama about post-slavery separatism in Southern America of the 60ies with strong actor performances. Hollywood at its best.

Anonymous publishing seems to be a trendy motif in cinema right now, I wonder if it has anything to do with a certain internet movement. But should Hollywood really give them more Robin Hoods to dress themselves with? The movie is great either way.

London Boulevard, 07/11/2011

Because of trouble with reading the barcode of online tickets, some people, including myself, didn’t get a proper ticket that day. Very atmospheric gangster movie directed by William Monahan and starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley, though a bit too realistically violent for my taste.

Hysteria, 14/11/2011

Hysteria

A story about medical and social progress in the age of the discovery of electricity set in the late 19th century. Not at all boring as it sounds but a positively hysterical comedy.

Perfect Sense, 21/11/2011

Perfect Sense

A more fantastic version of Contagion where one human sense after the other is lost in an epidemic fashion. Cheaper budget but deeper meaning.

Jane Eyre, 28/11/2011

Jane Eyre

Not many people seem to have appreciated this adaption of the 19th century novel by Charlotte Brontë as some even left early. Too bad some creep had to stay and spoil the movie for everyone else with their loud chauvinist reactions and commentary. The audience sucked but the movie didn’t.

Let Me in, 05/12/2011

Let Me In, starring Chloë Grace Moretz

A grotesque vampire horror movie with child protagonists and ultra violence. This millenium’s Claudia is a survivor.

The Ides of March, 12/12/2011

The Ides Of March, starring and directed by George Clooney

A fictional primary race of Democratic presidential candidates. Just as ugly as real politics.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, 19/12/2011

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, directed by Guy Ritchie, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law and Noomi Rapace

Today’s Sherlock Holmes brawls like a match of Tekken and it indeed is like a game of chess.

Money Ball, 26/12/2011

Money Ball, starring Brad Pitt

Thinking outside the box wins you games, who would have thought. Baseball on a budget, but as the ending shows the big wallet players can steal any strategy. Produced by Sony, a.k.a. wishful thinking company of yesterday’s glory.

J. Edgar, 02/01/2012

J. Edgar, directed by Clint Eastwood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio

Watchmen, the reality edition. Again, Hollywood at its best.

The Muppets, 09/01/2012

The Muppets

Even more people left early than with Jane Eyre. Very funny though, especially the many cameos by stars of the small and the big screen.

What’s Your Number?, 16/01/2012

What's Your Number?, starring Anna Faris

A raunchy love comedy with great dialog and all the ingredients to make an entertaining movie one might pass by because of lack of big names. Very much worth watching though.

Hugo, 23/01/2012

Hugo, directed my Martin Scorsese, starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Sacha Baron Cohen

Shown in 3D and well worth the extra euro for the glasses. Seriously, this movie has to be watched in 3D. Clockworks and the Paris train station make for a far more impressive 3D stage than a battlefield on an alien planet. The story is another celebration of the mechanical illusion that is cinema. Sounds shallow but actor performance and visual presentation more than save it.

What was it like to work with director Yoshinori Kitase?

I have been working with him since Final Fantasy V. When he joined Square, he told me he initially wanted to become a film director, but that he thought this would be impossible in Japan. The previous version of Final Fantasy could be called puppet shows compared to this one. It’s a real film requiring innovative effects and various camera angles. His experience studying cinematography and in making his own films has contributed a lot to the making of the game. He is the director of this game. (From an interview with Final Fantasy VII producer SAKAGUCHI Hironobu.)

SAKAGUCHI comparing the Final Fantasy games previous to VII to puppet shows is interesting both when looking at the plot twists outlined in the last installment of this series of articles and when looking at the in game character presentation. FFVII indeed applies many cinematic techniques which hadn’t been possible in the predecessors but the characters themselves look more like puppets than ever, a fact that was “remedied” in the next sequel, Final Fantasy VIII, where the characters for the first time are realistically proportioned at all times.

Bunraku, the real art of Japan (youtube video)

I have drawn connections to the one particular Western puppet that is the namesake for this series of articles but of course the Japanese have their own puppet tradition that predates any influence Pinocchio could have had. The traces of Pinocchio we find in the works presented here mix with this older tradition and it’s time to have a look at bunraku, the traditional Japanese puppet theater.

Chūshingura

As we can see in these youtube videos, the movement of the puppets is very life like but the facial expressions are lacking animation mostly. FFVII has a similar presentation and aesthetic, using very fluid motion compared to the 2D sprites of earlier FFs but hardly animating the facial expressions (except in some more detailed pre-rendered cutscenes), which was the most important way to express emotions in the 2D FFs. Instead body language is emphasized as in bunraku plays.

Bunraku players have to train ten years as the feet before moving up to controlling the left arm. Another ten years before they finally "level up" to become the main actor who controls the right arm. (from a Japanese TV show about bunraku)

The themes of the bunraku literary tradition also found their way into FFVII. One of the most popular bunraku pieces, the Chūshingura, tells of the 47 rōnin of Akō who follow their lord into death, by having their revenge on the daimyō who ordered him to die. This story is heaviliy entangled with the ideas of bushidō, the way of the samurai, being loyal to your master and prepared to die for them. ((Of course it also questions where this loyalty lies exactly, to one’s immediate lord or the lord of one’s lord. As it favors one’s immediate lord it can also inspire rebellion so the events portrayed in this story weren’t exactly welcomed by the rulers of the country.)) All these bushidō values are questioned in FFVII, the game has the player confront a part of their tradition by turning them into a bunraku puppet and ultimately dispenses with some of these traditional ideas.

The birth of Tetsuwan Atom

Cloud being manufactured to be a substitute for Sephiroth (although he ends up being one for Zack, by his own choice), him becoming an electronic puppet, this echoes the great superhero classic of post-war Japanese comics: Tetsuwan Atomu (Atom with the Iron Arm, 1952) or Astroboy, as he’s called outside Japan, was a substitute for Dr. Tenma’s son who died in a car crash. In this manga TEZUKA Osamu continues to draw upon concepts from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) which had already inspired his earlier work of the same name (1949). That one also had a robot protagonist but only in Tetsuwan Atomu the robot became a substitute for a deceased family member. Instead of the wife Hel it became the son Tobio that was “resurrected” as a robot. But like Cloud by Hojo, Atom is judged to be a failure by his father Dr. Tenma and is discarded accordingly.

Hyakkimaru's father sacrifices his son for his ambition (from Dororo)

One of TEZUKA’s later works, Dororo (1968), set in the sengoku era of the warring states, reimagines Atom’s story in the past rather than in a sci-fi future. The hero of the story, Hyakkimaru, is a pre-modern cyborg, born without 48 of his body parts claimed by demons who grant his father rulership over Japan in exchange. Hyakkimaru’s missing organs and limbs are replaced with prosthetics which make him actually stronger than any human but yet he seeks out the demons to reclaim his lost organs. Every time he defeats one of them a superhuman ability granted by mechanics is lost and replaced by an ordinary biological one. In a reversal of typical bildungsroman and RPG narrative Hyakkimaru actually grows weaker by seeking to become the human he was never allowed to be.

In this regard Hyakkimaru’s goal resembles that of Pinocchio who als wanted to become an actual human. It still is a bildungsroman in the true sense of the word, growing up to become an adult (or human, as children are treated as objects in the Pinocchio narrative). The story of Dororo ends prematurely before Hyakkimaru achieves this goal though. His sidekick Dororo, after which the manga is named, drops out of the story when she is revealed to be a girl cross dressing as a boy ((Gender ambiguity abounds in other works cited here as well. Atom’s predecessor Micchi, hero of TEZUKA’s Metropolis, had a switch to change his gender at will. Cloud cross dresses as a girl to rescue Tifa from a brothel. And of course Pino in Wonder Project J is succeeded by a female version Josetto, just one of many female robots in Japanese comics, Gally and Arale having been our first examples.)), with Hyakkimaru continuing his quest alone, his remaining bildungsroman untold in the pages of the manga.

Boy (as Peach): Mario, save me!!

Boy (as Bowser): Gwahaha, Mario, I got your precious Peach!

Boy (as Mario): Bounce bounce… Super Jump!

Boy (as Bowser): Gawahaha, how could a wimp like you hope to defeat me! Gwahaha!

Boy (as Bowser): Hoho. Peach, you’re coming back with me to the castle!

Boy (as Peach): Eeek! Someone rescue me!

Boy (as Peach): Rescu… (sees Mario)

Boy: Ah!

Boy: Ma-ma-ma…

Boy: Mama! A customer!

Mother: On my way. Welcom… Oh, if it isn’t Mario.

Mario: (greets)

Boy: Mario!?

Boy: The beard and the hat, he looks just like him! Are you… the real deal!?

Mario: > (real deal), (you’re mistaking me)

Boy: You’re really the real Mario? It’s, kinda hard to believe… Prove it!

Mario: (jumps)

Boy: Wah! You’re really Mario! Hey Mario, let’s play Geno together!

Mother: Hey hey, Toydoe. Mario came to get some rest, don’t bug him like that.

Toydoe: But mom, you never play with me.

Mother: What am I going to do with you… Mario, could you please play with my son for a bit?

Mario: (nods)

Toydoe: Great! Since Mario just got knocked down, why don’t you play Bowser? And I play Geno!

Toydoe: Let’s go! We’ll continue where I left off! You ready?

Mario: (hops twice)

Toydoe: (also hops twice)

Toydoe: Ju-u-ust a moment!

Super Mario RPG, released 03/09/1996

Toydoe (as Geno): I, the great Geno, will bring you down, Bowser! Hiya! (bumps into Mario holding Bowser)

Toydoe (as Geno): Make your move, Bowser!

Mario: (bumps into Toydoe holding Geno)

Toydoe (as Geno): Crap… If I don’t turn this one around I’m done for…

Toydoe (as Geno): Here I go! Shooting Star! Shot!

Toydoe: Oops, I hit the wrong one…

Mother: Eek! Mario, are you alright!?

(screen fades to black)

(screen lights up again, no one is in the room but the puppets)

(a star floats down, circling in on the Geno puppet, which suddenly comes alive and walks away)

Geno, which rhymes with Pino, is Square’s interpretation of a Mario-like hero player avatar as a marionette. ((They weren’t the first to make this connection though. The toads populating Mario’s world since Super Mario Bros. (1985) are called Kinopio in Japanese which is an anagram of Pinokio, the Japanese spelling/pronunciation of Pinocchio. So Miyamoto and the other designers at Nintendo probably already saw a connection between Mario and the word marionette.

Mario at first didn’t have a name and was referred to as Mr. Video then Jumpman in Donkey Kong. He got his name only later from American businessman Mario A. Segale. )) The boy imagines himself into the story by becoming Geno, one of the toys he uses to act out his fantasies. When he uses his puppets to play out his stories, he has to play all the roles. This is very similar to scenes in which the mute Mario relates past events by acting out all the roles. For example in this scene in which he returns to the castle after Princess Peach has been kidnapped yet again and he failed to save her:

Narrating: Hero

Narrating: Villain

Narrating: Princess

The game and its characters interpreted as a boy playing with his toys, Nintendo returned to this allegory in Smash Bros. for N64 in 1999 after also utilizing a similar one in Yoshi’s Island (1995) where little Bowser changes the story in his picture book. Mario and the other Nintendo mascots come to live in a similar fashion to Geno and Pinocchio in Smash Bros.‘s opening:

Smash Bros., 01/21/1999

Square on the other hand adapted motifs from Super Mario RPG into their biggest success, Final Fantasy VII for Playstation in early 1997, as well as the new polygon rendered 3D visuals first utilized by Square in Super Mario RPG. ((Not having the necessary processing power to render these graphics in real time as the new console Playstation could, Nintendo’s second party UK developer Rare made a game based on an old Nintendo character, Donkey Kong, that used pre-rendered polygon graphics that were visually even more impressive then the real time visuals of the Playstation, but lacking dynamic player controlled cameras which meant the gameplay basically had to be kept 2D. Still the second step was made (the first being the also UK developed Star Fox (released on 02/21/1993, developed by Argonaut) that used a special chip to render low polygon real time 3D).

Square used the same pre-rendered 3D graphics as Rare’s Donkey Kong Country (released on 11/24/1994) in SMRPG and pre-rendered environments with real time polygonal characters in Final Fantasy VII on Playstation. So these two games mark Square’s venture into 3D. Added on 11/20/2011.)) When Mario and Maro chase a dinosaur robber through a forest early in SMRPG this summarizes the plot of the first RPG to be based on Mario lore: Dragon Quest (1986). Same as Mario, the hero of DQ saves a princess from a reptile, a Godzilla-like turtle in Super Mario and a dragon in DQ. A dragon kidnapper steals the princess, the robber dinosaur in SMRPG steals a frog coin. Frog is homophonous with return in Japanese, like returning to one’s childhood where boys fantasize about saving princesses.

Chasing

In Final Fantasy VII Cloud chases Sephiroth who wants to have his reunion with his mother Jenova. Sephiroth is a samurai war hero, an idol for young boys as Cloud once was. But after Cloud becomes witness of Sephiroth going insane and burning down his home town Sephiroth has become a villain rather than an inspiring idol.

On his journey Cloud and his friends will find out that Cloud’s recollection of his becoming a member of the elite force SOLDIER and meeting with Sephiroth wasn’t quite true. A first hint to this is seen in Cloud’s relationship with Aerith:

Final Fantasy VII, released 01/31/1997

Aerith: Hmm. Same as him.

Cloud: Same as who?

Aerith: The first person I fell in love with.

The person Aerith is talking about here is called Zack, another SOLDIER having fought alongside Sephiroth. After Sephiroth, a once hero turned villain that fuses Mario with Bowser, kills Aerith, she becomes the Peach who couldn’t be saved. And Cloud is told that he has no reason to be sad:

Sephiroth: Hahaha! Stop pretending to be sad!

Sephiroth: Because, Cloud, you’re nothing but a…

Later in the story, when Cloud finally catches up with Sephiroth, this unfinished sentence is at last completed:

Cloud: …this is the scene as it really happened 5 years ago.

Cloud: However…

Cloud: I’m sure the one coming out of the Shinra mansion won’t be me.

(A man dressed like Cloud but with dark hair comes out of the Shinra mansion. He is Zack, Aerith’s first lover and the actual SOLDIER that Cloud never was. ((This image and paragraph were added on 11/20/2011.

Both Cloud and Zack have spiky hair reminding manga fans of the heroes in Dragon Ball by TORIYAMA Akira who also designs the characters for the most widely played JRPG series Dragon Quest. The Saiyajin heroes in Dragon Ball can become even stronger fighters by becoming legendary Super Saiyajin which will make their natural hair color, most times black, go golden blond. Children of humans and Saiyajin will usually achieve this transformation more easily. The unnatural blond hair color is often reason for them to be referred as yankees or furyō, delinquent youths who are into American popular culture like black music or sneakers and sports wear.

Cloud never having gotten into SOLDIER and being called a failure as a Sephiroth clone (or copy in the Japanese) can be seen as him being an avatar for Westernized Japanese players who failed to live up to old samurai moral concepts (bushidō) which were fused with Western ones during the modernization of Japan since the Meiji restauration in 1868. Zack with black hair represents an older generation whereas Cloud represents the younger one which has started to dye their hair and become shinjinrui, a term meaning new human breed used by adults to refer to the younger generation that has grown alien to them.

Cloud emancipating himself from fabricated memory and defeating Sephiroth can be seen as a defense of the shinjinrui generation, the story of Final Fantasy VII a symbolic retelling of a change in Japanese society. It draws on imagery from Dragon Ball, which also affirms the furyō and shinjinrui with positive protagonists and frequently demonstrates the futility of suicide attacks. The readiness to give up one’s life for one’s lord is a major requirement of the samurai code.)))

Cloud: 5 years ago, in Nibelheim. I wasn’t there.

Cloud: Is that what you’re trying to say?

Sephiroth: Seems like it finally dawned on you.

Cloud: I don’t have reason to be sad. Because I…

(Cloud is lifted by an invisible force ((Cloud being pulled up like a marionette by Sephiroth’s mother Jenova looks similar to how Sephiroth’s ghost is floating in the previous scene where he has just killed Aerith. They’re both being manipulated by Jenova.)))

Jenova: Because you are… a puppet.

Like Geno, Cloud turns out to be really just a puppet. As a character in a game his story is predetermined, his chasing Sephiroth makes Cloud Sephiroth’s marionette. The player is reminded that he isn’t a hero but just pretending to be one by playing Cloud’s story, also becoming a marionette lead by the game design:

Cloud: I never was in SOLDIER.

Cloud: All the things that happened 5 years ago, and me being in SOLDIER, it’s a fantasy I made up.

Cloud: Even though I must have seemed so very gloriously heroic when I left town, I never made it into SOLDIER…

Cloud: Being too weak to admit my shame I started to believe the story my friend Zack told me had happened to me…

Cloud: I even mixed it up with things I had seen myself and invented another me in this fantasy…

Final Fantasy VII‘s story is a joint effort by many people among them Final Fantasy inventor SAKAGUCHI Hironobu who also produced Super Mario RPG. But it was compiled from its many sources and finished by NOJIMA Kazushige who had earned SAKAGUCHI’s recognition ((Kitase: Before Nojima-san came to Square (currently Square-Enix) he had already made other games like “Glory of Heracles III” (an RPG for the Super Famicom using motifs from Greek mythology, published by Data East) so we knew he could write interesting scenarios. I’m guessing that is why Sakaguchi-san insisted on having him join the FFVII team.

From an interview in Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Ω, page 567. Footnote added on 01/30/2012.)) with the scenario for his classic Glory of Heracles III. ((ヘラクレスの栄光III. Since Heracles means glory of Hera (Hera being Heracles’ adopted mother) the title kind of translates to the glory of the glory of Hera. Heracles’ relationship with his mother is pronounced in his name and he becomes her successor as a giver of glory in the game title, similar to Sephiroth becoming the marionette of his alien mother Jenova and idol to young boys. He was born from a human mother Lucretia though. The Japanese word used for glory literally means light of honor. The members of SOLDIER gain their superhuman abilities from makō, demon or magic light. This magic light is showered on them, kind of like the light of the TV showering the player with heroic imagery. )) Many motifs from this game found their way into Final Fantasy VII, among them the search for oneself after having lost your memory, the planet Gaia as mother (in the opening Aerith’s pose is very reminiscent of Gaia’s in GoH3) and the legendary hero Heracles inspiring youths to become heroes. Cloud failed to become an elite SOLDIER but gets a second chance, living another man’s life. Fallen to rise again, Super Mario RPG and Glory of Heracles both feature this image right at the beginning of their stories:

Having their strings cut both Mario and Bowser fall down. One a western type hard working hero, the other a devil general, they will have to join forces to save their princess and world from alien invaders. The earlier Glory of Heracles III features a similar scene in which the immortal mute hero ((A game character never really dies as he has unlimited lives or continues.)) survives a deep fall:

Glory of Heracles III, 04/24/1992

In Smash Bros. Brawl (released on 01/31/2008) NOJIMA brings his Greek themed game writing to Nintendo’s Kid Icarus before returning to the Glory of Heracles series with the latest DS installment (released on 05/22/2008), the first one to also make it to the US (in early 2010).

Game chronology ((Added on 11/20/2011))

Super Play #28, pages 14-15: Fantasy Quest article by Nic de Costanzo and Zy Nicholson

The point of this series of articles is to show the influence the novel Pinocchio had on Japanese popular culture and the robot hero type common in manga and games. The examples in the last installment feature strong parallels with Pinocchio but it could be argued that these might be purely coincidental. This time I will showcase a much more obvious example of Pinocchio being reworked for a Japanese audience. The Wonder Project J games by Enix for SNES and N64 also have an original setting but the key characters inspired by Pinocchio retain the same or similar names as in the source work: the creator is named Geppetto and his puppet looking robot creation is named Pino.

The dancer Jichael

I didn’t play the first game, Wonder Project J: Mechanical Boy Pino, at all but it got some coverage in UK magazine Super Play in its column presenting Japanese games, many of which were never localized. The N64 sequel, Wonder Project J2: Josetto of the Corlo Forest, also never officially localized, I bought used but also hardly played back then. In this sequel Pino is succeeded by another robot, this time a girl named Josetto (rhyming with her creator’s name). In both games the player takes the place of Geppetto as a substitute parent for Pino and Josetto. The games are adventures with a strong emphasis on raising simulation elements. ((The major game to start this genre would be Princess Maker by Gainax for Japanese home computers in the 80ies. A better known example would be the later Tamagotchi portable pet raising sim games.)) The player cannot influence the game world directly but uses a personalized cursor to try and teach the main character how to advance in the game world.

"But we have to make these movies. Otherwise who knows what they'll do to us.""

In Wonder Project J2 this is done by giving the character items to use. Josetto will try and use these items to her best understanding and it’s up to the player to approve or scorn her actions. For example, she might eat non-edible items which were supposed to be used as tools or to be read. Or she might kick things or throw them away which isn’t completely without benefit though, as she becomes stronger this way. When she balances books or other items on her head this might also not be what the player wants her to do but in fact her improved balance does help to cross bridges in certain places. In this way Josetto learns from the player but the player also learns not to discourage everything just because it might not seem immediately useful, or well behaved.

One of the many jobs takes Josetto to mine corridors rendered in old school 3D

Josetto also has to work to raise funds and buy more items which are needed to teach her. The more she learns the more varied the jobs she can take and the higher the payment. In this way progress of learning, by trial and error or studying with books is interdependent with work and career. Communication is limited to yes/no or good/bad comments by the player following Josetto’s actions or questions she addresses to the player. These have to be carefully considered as Josetto will react with a wide range of emotions which affect how well she will receive the player’s attempts of teaching her.

"This feels like being ordered around, which I don't like but I guess it can't be helped."

In Pinocchio and works inspired by it the recipient is usually supposed to identify with the protagonist who serves as their avatar but this being a raising game they have to take the role of the parent. The distance between player character Josetto and the player themselves is pronounced by Josetto and the player interacting and even talking with each other, and Josetto knowing that the player is in another world which she cannot see. She keeps running up to the screen as if to close the distance between herself and the player but yet both remain trapped on their respective sides of the screen that separates the anime styled game world and the reality which the player inhabits.

3D flying into the 2D world

The game came out on the N64 in a hardware generation which marked the shift from 2D to 3D graphics, yet it uses a very low amount of 3D elements in its mostly 2D anime world, thus ignoring its new hardware’s 3D capabilities for the most part, instead using the increased storage for more (and more detailed) animations but keeping the style of the earlier SNES generation prequel. When polygonal 3D graphics are used they stick out, like a touch of realism that invades the hand drawn fantasy. On the other hand, when Josetto runs up to the player instead of left and right on the 2D game stage the hand drawn graphics are used for 3 dimensional movement that targets the players reality.

Siliconian the 13th

In this way the lines between real parent and imagined child become blurred, and the player might notice that in a way they they are teaching themselves, even if the roles are inverted. This furthers mutual understanding of parent and child side but there’s also a common enemy which is a suppressive authority, an evil villain version of the parent role. The Siliconians are occupying Blueland, the island the story takes place on, and the Siliconian leader is rendered in polygonal 3D, invading the 2D game world both in action and in visual representation.

"If you're interested in martial arts, go watch some of our Siliconian movies!"

Same as the player decides what books Josetto should read and what movies she should watch the Siliconians also tell the occupied Bluelanders what movies to watch and even to produce. This is a key element in the cut scenes early in the narrative. The Siliconian invaders are of course a distorted version of something from the game makers’ reality and even though it’s exaggerated it does express an aversion against a perceived evil, an interpretation rooted in childhood as much as the visuals of the game. To escape being trapped in a child’s world the player has to become a parent and walk in the villain’s shoes, even if he will still seem rather heroic compared with the other fantasy invaders, the over the top evil Siliconians.

One of the manga I read back then was Battle Angel Alita by KISHIRO Yukito or Gunnm (A Dream of Guns), as it is called in Japanese. Another one was Dragon Ball, which of course was preceded by the more light hearted Dr. Slump by the same author, TORIYAMA Akira. Dragon Ball, Dr. Slump and Gunnm were among the first manga I tackled in Japanese, although I was reading Alita in translation as well, simply because it was available which then wasn’t true for the TORIYAMA ones.

What did strike me was the similarity of motifs between Pinocchio and those android hero manga like Gunnm and Dr. Slump. Pinocchio being a world classic of children’s literature it’s not far fetched to assume that indeed Pinocchio could and must have influenced the latter two. I didn’t watch it much but in my childhood there was an animated TV series based on Pinocchio running in Germany which was made in Japan so this was already proof that the Japanese must have had some exposure to this classic.

Looking at Wikipedia now Pinocchio was translated into Japanese as early as 1920, by NISHIMURA Isaku, who narrated the story to his 12 year old daughter Aya reading and translating word by word from a Western version of the book. Aya wrote the story down and it was published by Kinnotsunosha the same year. ((http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%94%E3%83%8E%E3%83%83%E3%82%AD%E3%82%AA%E3%81%AE%E5%86%92%E9%99%BA#.E4.B8.BB.E3.81.AA.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E8.AA.9E.E8.A8.B3, 31.10.2011)) A more official one was published much later in 1970 by children’s story author ANDŌ Yukio ((http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%94%E3%83%8E%E3%83%83%E3%82%AD%E3%82%AA%E3%81%AE%E5%86%92%E9%99%BA#.E4.B8.BB.E3.81.AA.E6.97.A5.E6.9C.AC.E8.AA.9E.E8.A8.B3, 31.10.2011)), decades after the 1940 Disney movie adaption of Pinocchio was screened in Japan in 1952 ((http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%94%E3%83%8E%E3%82%AD%E3%82%AA_%281940%E5%B9%B4%E3%81%AE%E6%98%A0%E7%94%BB%29, 31.10.2011)). The god of manga TEZUKA Osamu adapted Pinocchio as a comic ((http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%94%E3%83%8E%E3%83%83%E3%82%AD%E3%82%AA%E3%81%AE%E5%86%92%E9%99%BA#.E6.BC.AB.E7.94.BB, 31.10.2011)), also in 1952. And in 1972 the first anime adaption by Tatsunoko Pro Studios ran on Japanese TVs ((http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A8%AB%E3%81%AE%E6%9C%A8%E3%83%A2%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF, 31.10.2011)), years before the 1976 version by Nihon Animation that also ran in Germany ((http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%94%E3%82%B3%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%8E%E3%81%AE%E5%86%92%E9%99%BA, 31.10.2011)). So it’s fair to say that this world classic had similar influence on Japanese children as it had in the rest of the world.

Carlo Collodi’s 1883 original story portrays Pinocchio as a wicked boy, who keeps on disappointing his well meaning father Geppetto and to a slightly less degree also the fairy who becomes his mother substitute in the longer second half of the story. This certainly owes to it being written over a century ago but also to certain Christian ideas of man being inherently evil and having to be raised to be good. Dr. Slump‘s robot girl Arale on the other hand is a perfect example of the Japanese idea that children are pure and good, as opposed to adults like her creator father Senbee, who are already corrupted by mature traits. Arale also is a bit mischievous at times and gets Senbee into trouble but she’s never portrayed as wicked rather than naïve and excessive in her usage of her super human powers endowed to her by Senbee. She’s certainly not put through harsh hardships like Pinocchio to become a better person either, instead Senbee is ridiculed for being much more wicked than his daughter. In 1980 Japan was also a much wealthier place than Italy in 1883, so the authors Collodi and TORIYAMA simply had different backgrounds to put into story. In Gunnm Gally and her ‘creator’ Ido are even more idealized morally, both having to kill for a living in a bleak future where almost everyone has cyborg parts but neither being portrayed of bad character really. The setting does provide enough hardship and opportunities for character building to match Pinocchio in this regard though.

Pinocchio is of course also a novel of education, or bildungsroman as it is called in German, a term often used in reference to works of manga and games in Japan. Geppetto is an avatar for his author as much as Pinocchio was one for his readers, cursed to be a puppet which cannot grow up until it meets the high standards of its parents. Looking at and comparing some of the early motifs in these three stories I want to show how the relationship between parent and child is portrayed in these works.

Material

Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm.

I do not know how this really happened, yet the fact remains that one fine day this piece of wood found itself in the shop of an old carpenter. His real name was Mastro Antonio, but everyone called him Mastro Cherry, for the tip of his nose was so round and red and shiny that it looked like a ripe cherry.

As soon as he saw that piece of wood, Mastro Cherry was filled with joy. Rubbing his hands together happily, he mumbled half to himself:

“This has come in the nick of time. I shall use it to make the leg of a table.”

He grasped the hatchet quickly to peel off the bark and shape the wood. But as he was about to give it the first blow, he stood still with arm uplifted, for he had heard a wee, little voice say in a beseeching tone: “Please be careful! Do not hit me so hard!” ((CHAPTER 1, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO by C. Collodi [Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini], Translated from the Italian by Carol Della Chiesa.))

Too good to find an early end in a fire stove Pinocchio’s first sensation as told in the story is one of pain. Only at this point his person status is revealed. Still he’s found to be good material for craft but resisting being manufactured. In Gunnm, Ido wanders the scrapyard for parts to use when he finds a female cyborg head:

Ido: (breathes heavily) W-what’s this…?

Ido: Unbelievable…

Ido: (laughs) ((Gunnm Volume 1, page 9.))

Gally’s person status is immediately apparent and Ido ((The distinction between Maestro Cherry and Geppetto is skipped and the characters are fused in Ido. His laugh betrays a sense madness in the same way as Maestro Cherry hearing voices from an inanimate object.)) will repair her rather than create her from scratch. Trash and firewood, both didn’t have a future before being found. Her being only a head bears witness to earlier experienced violence and pain.

Birth

After choosing the name for his Marionette, Geppetto set seriously to work to make the hair, the forehead, the eyes. Fancy his surprise when he noticed that these eyes moved and then stared fixedly at him. Geppetto, seeing this, felt insulted and said in a grieved tone:

“Ugly wooden eyes, why do you stare so?”

There was no answer.

After the eyes, Geppetto made the nose, which began to stretch as soon as finished. It stretched and stretched and stretched till it became so long, it seemed endless.

Poor Geppetto kept cutting it and cutting it, but the more he cut, the longer grew that impertinent nose. In despair he let it alone.

Next he made the mouth.

No sooner was it finished than it began to laugh and poke fun at him.

“Stop laughing!” said Geppetto angrily; but he might as well have spoken to the wall.

“Stop laughing, I say!” he roared in a voice of thunder.

The mouth stopped laughing, but it stuck out a long tongue.

Not wishing to start an argument, Geppetto made believe he saw nothing and went on with his work. After the mouth, he made the chin, then the neck, the shoulders, the stomach, the arms, and the hands.

As he was about to put the last touches on the finger tips, Geppetto felt his wig being pulled off. He glanced up and what did he see? His yellow wig was in the Marionette’s hand. “Pinocchio, give me my wig!”

But instead of giving it back, Pinocchio put it on his own head, which was half swallowed up in it.

At that unexpected trick, Geppetto became very sad and downcast, more so than he had ever been before.

“Pinocchio, you wicked boy!” he cried out. “You are not yet finished, and you start out by being impudent to your poor old father. Very bad, my son, very bad!”

And he wiped away a tear.

The legs and feet still had to be made. As soon as they were done, Geppetto felt a sharp kick on the tip of his nose.

“I deserve it!” he said to himself. “I should have thought of this before I made him. Now it’s too late!” ((CHAPTER 3, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

As soon as Pinocchio gains the capacity for it he starts playing pranks on his creator. Geppetto blames himself for not planning his creation properly. The manufacturing of his puppet which creates its shape can be seen as an allegory for education that shapes character. Dr. Slump begins in a very similar vein:

Arale: Yawn…

Arale: Ahhhh…

Arale: (mumbling)

Arale: I’m so bored!

Senbee: Great idea starting with the head, now she’ll keep nagging me.

Senbee: Looking good, now try moving your right arm a little.

Arale: Okay.

Arale: Hiya.

Senbee: Ahh, ahhh…

Senbee: A LITTLE, I said A LITTLE!

Arale: Wow, your eyes are protruding.

Senbee: I felt like I was going to die…

Arale: Flat as a flounder…

Senbee: Stop complaining! ((Dr. Slump Volume 1, pages 6-7.))

As pointed out earlier, Arale isn’t ill spirited but rather clumsy. The creator blaming himself for not thinking ahead is repeated here though. Like Geppetto he started out at the top, giving her capacity to speak first. The limbs also soon become a source of pain for him once he comes around to making them.

In Gunnm it takes more time to make Gally as she remains unfinished until later:

Gon: Why did you even bring that thing, Ido?

Ido: Don’t you call her a thing.

Ido: She’s a human like us.

Ido: Looking at her parts she must be a model from at least 2 or 3 hundred years ago.

Ido: Somehow she must have gone into hibernation so her brain was conserved.

Gon: You sure like to collect old stuff…

Gon: She woke up!

Ido: Hi! My name is Ido. What is yours?

Girl: My… name…?

Gon: She’s broken. Amnesia, probably.

Ido: She’ll remember it soon enough. Haha.

Gon: You want to raise her?

Ido: Gotta make her a new body. But first things first…

Ido: It’s decided!

Ido: From today your name will be Gally.

Gon: Isn’t that the name of your cat that died last month?

Gon: And wasn’t it male?

Ido: Who cares. Just until she remembers her real name. ((Gunnm Volume 1, pages 10-11.))

Rather than turning an inanimate object into a human, Ido repairs Gally instead of creating her. The harmony between father and adopted daughter contrasts the pranks in the other two works, but criticism of being a maniac collector is raised at the ‘father’ by his friend Gon which echoes criticism many of the otaku readership of manga like Gunnm might encounter.

Imperfection

All three of our artificial humans have a major flaw established right during or after their creation:

After the eyes, Geppetto made the nose, which began to stretch as soon as finished. It stretched and stretched and stretched till it became so long, it seemed endless.

Poor Geppetto kept cutting it and cutting it, but the more he cut, the longer grew that impertinent nose. In despair he let it alone. ((CHAPTER 3, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

The long nose of course has become a proverbial signifier for lying which is Pinocchio’s biggest flaw, expressed visually. There’s another one:

The little old man wanted to pull Pinocchio’s ears. Think how he felt when, upon searching for them, he discovered that he had forgotten to make them! ((CHAPTER 3, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

No ears to be pulled, no ears to listen to Geppetto’s guidance. Pinocchio is missing a means to make him obey. Arale on the other hand, for all her superior abilities, has the common geek flaw:

Senbee: Can you read this?

Arale: (reads the wrong character)

Senbee: Huh!?

Senbee: How about this one?

Arale: (wrong again)

Senbee: Not even close…

Senbee: Well, and this one?

Arale: Ba ll

Senbee: You must be kidding me. Is this a practical joke!?

Arale: ?

Arale: Wah, now I can see!

Arale: Oh! King Kong!

Senbee: Shut up!! ((Dr. Slump Volume 1, page 10.))

She’s near-sighted and has to wear glasses. Gally’s imperfection on the other hand isn’t visible:

Ido: I want to know more about you, Gally.

Ido: You must have had a real name, a family, a home…

Gally: My real name…

Gally: I don’t remember…

Ido: Don’t worry. Take your time.

Ido: For now you’re Gally, hahaha.

Gally: Yeah.

Ido: Anyway, I was hoping to find some parts to use for your new body here…

Ido: But no such luck.

Ido: Dammit!!

Ido: Sorry, didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.

Ido: I’ll make a great body for you, I promise. ((Gunnm Volume 1, page 13.))

She has no identity, no remembrance of her past.

Creator’s Dream

All three fathers have plans for the future of their children:

“This morning a fine idea came to me.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I thought of making myself a beautiful wooden Marionette. It must be wonderful, one that will be able to dance, fence, and turn somersaults. With it I intend to go around the world, to earn my crust of bread and cup of wine. What do you think of it?” ((CHAPTER 2, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

Pinocchio is supposed to make a livelihood for Geppetto, an investment to the future. His role is given to him also in name:

“What shall I call him?” he said to himself. “I think I’ll call him PINOCCHIO. This name will make his fortune. I knew a whole family of Pinocchi once—Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the mother, and Pinocchi the children—and they were all lucky. The richest of them begged for his living.” ((CHAPTER 3, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

The name will make his fortune, it will decide his fate. Senbee on the other hand just wants Arale to bear witness to his great genius:

Senbee: I’m such a genius, it’s almost terrifying…

Senbee: Who would have thought it’d be this easy to create the perfect android…

Arale: Professor!! ((Dr. Slump Volume 1, page 8.))

Ido wants Gally to be safe from the harsh realities of the world, kept away from its violence:

Ido: For your sake I will gladly behead as many evil-doers as necessary.

Ido: I don’t mind the blood stain.

Ido: But you, I want you to remain as in my dream. ((Gunnm Volume 1, page 39.))

Without noticing, by not expecting anything else from her he completely wants to keep her a dependent child.

Defiance

Gally won’t have that though. Even though Ido protested to Gon for him calling her a thing she points out that Ido sees her exactly the same way:

Gally: I’m not a doll for you to dress up, Ido! ((Gunnm Volume 1, page 39.))

Gally wants meaning beyond that which her father gives her:

Gally: For me, for myself… ((Gunnm Volume 1, page 41.))

Pinocchio also defies his father but much more aggressively and without being able to articulate or argue a need for it:

When his legs were limbered up, Pinocchio started walking by himself and ran all around the room. He came to the open door, and with one leap he was out into the street. Away he flew!

Poor Geppetto ran after him but was unable to catch him, for Pinocchio ran in leaps and bounds, his two wooden feet, as they beat on the stones of the street, making as much noise as twenty peasants in wooden shoes.

“Catch him! Catch him!” Geppetto kept shouting. But the people in the street, seeing a wooden Marionette running like the wind, stood still to stare and to laugh until they cried.

At last, by sheer luck, a Carabineer* happened along, who, hearing all that noise, thought that it might be a runaway colt, and stood bravely in the middle of the street, with legs wide apart, firmly resolved to stop it and prevent any trouble.
* A military policeman
Pinocchio saw the Carabineer from afar and tried his best to escape between the legs of the big fellow, but without success.

The Carabineer grabbed him by the nose (it was an extremely long one and seemed made on purpose for that very thing) and returned him to Mastro Geppetto.

The little old man wanted to pull Pinocchio’s ears. Think how he felt when, upon searching for them, he discovered that he had forgotten to make them!

All he could do was to seize Pinocchio by the back of the neck and take him home. As he was doing so, he shook him two or three times and said to him angrily:

“We’re going home now. When we get home, then we’ll settle this matter!”

Pinocchio, on hearing this, threw himself on the ground and refused to take another step. One person after another gathered around the two.

Some said one thing, some another.

“Poor Marionette,” called out a man. “I am not surprised he doesn’t want to go home. Geppetto, no doubt, will beat him unmercifully, he is so mean and cruel!”

“Geppetto looks like a good man,” added another, “but with boys he’s a real tyrant. If we leave that poor Marionette in his hands he may tear him to pieces!”

They said so much that, finally, the Carabineer ended matters by setting Pinocchio at liberty and dragging Geppetto to prison. The poor old fellow did not know how to defend himself, but wept and wailed like a child and said between his sobs:

“Ungrateful boy! To think I tried so hard to make you a well-behaved Marionette! I deserve it, however! I should have given the matter more thought.” ((CHAPTER 3, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

Criticism is raised at Geppetto but we as reader know it’s unfounded. Still in the real world the stereotype often proves true and Collodi simply chose to make his character Geppetto better than the prejudice. The novel habitually defends the parent over the wicked child, it’s one sided in this regard.

Even Arale tries to make her own decisions, apparently craving to become more feminine:

Senbee: Hey, Arale…

Arale: Mmm.

Senbee: Huh?

Senbee: What are you up to now?

Arale: I’m making a spare head.

Arale: See?

Arale: Isn’t it pretty?

Senbee: Don’t be silly!!

Senbee: You’re supposed to look like a high school student!!

Arale: No good?

Senbee: Instead of fooling around you should rather get me some cigarettes.

Arale: Crap, and I spent so much time on it too… ((Dr. Slump Volume 1, page 56.))

As Geppetto, Senbee is concerned more with keeping appearance.

Killing

When Pinocchio returns to the empty house alone he meets the cricket who would become his sidekick in the Disney movie. But in the original book Pinocchio kills the annoying cricket in an outrage of fury:

“Poor Pinocchio, I am sorry for you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a Marionette and, what is much worse, you have a wooden head.”

At these last words, Pinocchio jumped up in a fury, took a hammer from the bench, and threw it with all his strength at the Talking Cricket.

Perhaps he did not think he would strike it. But, sad to relate, my dear children, he did hit the Cricket, straight on its head.

With a last weak “cri-cri-cri” the poor Cricket fell from the wall, dead! ((CHAPTER 4, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

In the edited German translation I read as a kid a paragraph is added where Pinocchio, realizing what he has done, regrets his reckless physical retaliation to the harsh words but it seems to be missing in the original version.

The squashing of an insect, Gally’s first kill looks a lot like this as well:

Ido: G-Gally…

Gally: Did I…?

Ido: That technique, it surely was a Panzerkunst* of ancient Mars lore…

*Armor art, said to be the strongest martial arts school among the many developed for single cyborg units. ((Gunnm Volume 1, page 30.))

The planet Mars, named after the Roman god of war, a German word ((Gunnm‘s author KISHIRO using German words throughout the story shows that he has at least superficially studied the language. If he also was aware of one of the German subtitles of Pinocchio, Das hölzerne Bengele (The Wooden Brat), Gally being referred to as a metal angel or battle angel in the English translation might also come from his knowledge of German. Skip one letter in bengel (brat) and it becomes engel (angel). Evil becomes good, Pinocchio becomes Gally. )) referring to war tanks in a Japanese comic, drawing up associations of WWII, an instinct for violence that is remembered despite general amnesia, these are the reasons for why the Japanese reader’s avatar might have lost her recollection of her past. Amnesia is a common motif of Japanese post war literature born from the pacifistic urge to wipe away the war past. Ido’s attempt to never let Gally use violence makes him an avatar for the American occupants trying to calm Japanese warrior tradition by prohibiting certain type of samurai and revenge stories. An American father who has to kill to protect his own and a Japanese daughter who wants to become her father’s equal.

Arale, being a gag manga robot heroine, never kills but yet she naturally assumes to have the capacity for using weaponry right after her birth, to fight evil of course:

Arale: So can I at least shoot missile from my stomache?

Senbee: No!

Arale: Then how am I supposed to fight evil…

Arale: I guess I’ll have to use the weapons of a woman…

Senbee: Who said you should fight evil!! ((Dr. Slump Volume 1, page 9.))

Children’s heroes in post war pacifistic Japan need to be pure to fight villains, even pure of recollection of their history. If this children hero type is interpreted by and for an adult audience we get something like Gunnm.

Stranger

A major concern of parents will of course always be to keep their children safe from seductive strangers which might cause them harm. After Pinocchio has already left Gepetto he encounters the fox and cat for the first time who are the main villains repeatedly getting Pinocchio in even worse trouble than he does on his own.

“Look at me,” said the Fox. “For the silly reason of wanting to study, I have lost a paw.”

“Look at me,” said the Cat. “For the same foolish reason, I have lost the sight of both eyes.”

At that moment, a Blackbird, perched on the fence along the road, called out sharp and clear:

“Pinocchio, do not listen to bad advice. If you do, you’ll be sorry!”

Poor little Blackbird! If he had only kept his words to himself! In the twinkling of an eyelid, the Cat leaped on him, and ate him, feathers and all.

After eating the bird, he cleaned his whiskers, closed his eyes, and became blind once more.

“Poor Blackbird!” said Pinocchio to the Cat. “Why did you kill him?”

“I killed him to teach him a lesson. He talks too much. Next time he will keep his words to himself.”

By this time the three companions had walked a long distance. Suddenly, the Fox stopped in his tracks and, turning to the Marionette, said to him:

“Do you want to double your gold pieces?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you want one hundred, a thousand, two thousand gold pieces for your miserable five?”

“Yes, but how?”

“The way is very easy. Instead of returning home, come with us.” ((CHAPTER 12, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

In addition to attempts of persuading Pinocchio, the cat also displays an outbreak of violence against a voice of parental rationale. This particular aspect is echoed in Gally encountering a brain eating endorphin junkie she’s out to collect the bounty of:

Arale on the other hand, after trying to make a sexy face for herself and being sent to buy cigarettes, lets a gangster kidnap her, too naïve to even grasp his intentions:

Immobilized

All three of our artificial heroes lose their freedom of movement after defying their creator:

He returned home as wet as a rag, and tired out from weariness and hunger.

As he no longer had any strength left with which to stand, he sat down on a little stool and put his two feet on the stove to dry them.

There he fell asleep, and while he slept, his wooden feet began to burn. Slowly, very slowly, they blackened and turned to ashes. ((CHAPTER 6, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

Arale is tied up in what she thinks is a game:

Arale: Huh? What are we playing?

Gangster: Ehm, like I’m a gangster that kidnapped you! I won’t hurt you. ((Dr. Slump Volume 1, page 59.))

And Gally’s fragile body is torn to pieces after getting hit by her giant opponent.

But as opposed to Pinocchio our Japanese heroes don’t have to fully rely on their creator to rescue them. Arale is strong enough to tear the rope:

Gangster: Norimaki, Norimaki. Damn, I can’t find his number! ((Dr. Slump volume 1, 60))

And Gally can retaliate the attack on her while still in mid-air:

Rescued

The poor Marionette, who was still half asleep, had not yet found out that his two feet were burned and gone. As soon as he heard his Father’s voice, he jumped up from his seat to open the door, but, as he did so, he staggered and fell headlong to the floor.

In falling, he made as much noise as a sack of wood falling from the fifth story of a house.

“Open the door for me!” Geppetto shouted from the street.

“Father, dear Father, I can’t,” answered the Marionette in despair, crying and rolling on the floor.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because someone has eaten my feet.”

“And who has eaten them?”

“The cat,” answered Pinocchio, seeing that little animal busily playing with some shavings in the corner of the room.

“Open! I say,” repeated Geppetto, “or I’ll give you a sound whipping when I get in.”

“Father, believe me, I can’t stand up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall have to walk on my knees all my life.”

Geppetto, thinking that all these tears and cries were only other pranks of the Marionette, climbed up the side of the house and went in through the window.

At first he was very angry, but on seeing Pinocchio stretched out on the floor and really without feet, he felt very sad and sorrowful. Picking him up from the floor, he fondled and caressed him, talking to him while the tears ran down his cheeks:

“My little Pinocchio, my dear little Pinocchio! How did you burn your feet?” ((CHAPTER 7, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

Arale, after bringing Senbee his cigarettes goes back to the gangster who isn’t a real danger to her. But when her energy runs out she again is immobilized and assumed to be injured by the panicking gangster. Senbee, who saw this coming, is off to her rescue with a robot dog he built in an instant:

Gangster: Uwahh, this can’t be happening!!

Doctor and nurse (dancing): He-ho, he-ho.

Senbee: Hah, hah, finally found her.

Senbee: Hah

Senbee: Hah

Senbee: Hah

Senbee: Excuse me, did you by any chance see…

Senbee: A-Arale!!

Nurse: This is specially for you…

Gangster: Wahhhh

Doctor: Hmm? ((Dr. Slump volume 1, page 65))

Using his pointy missile hammer, Ido finishes off Gally’s already heavily injured opponent.

Repair

In less than an hour the feet were finished, two slender, nimble little feet, strong and quick, modeled as if by an artist’s hands.

“Close your eyes and sleep!” Geppetto then said to the Marionette.

Pinocchio closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, while Geppetto stuck on the two feet with a bit of glue melted in an eggshell, doing his work so well that the joint could hardly be seen.

As soon as the Marionette felt his new feet, he gave one leap from the table and started to skip and jump around, as if he had lost his head from very joy. ((CHAPTER 8, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO.))

Very similar scene in Gunnm:

Gally: Hah

Gon: She woke up.

Ido: Gally!

Gon: How are you, Gally?

Ido: Do you feel different?

Gally: Huh?

Gally: Ah!

Gally: My new body! ((Gunnm volume 1, page 104))

In Dr. Slump the scene isn’t as obviously inspired by Pinocchio (if at all) but still the common set of motifs is completed here as well:

Doctor: And you are…?

Senbee (thinking): This ain’t good. If he examines her…

Senbee: Erm, I’m her father, yes, that’s me.

Gangster: Crap!

Senbee: Look!

Doctor: Huh?

Senbee: (feeds her oil)

Senbee: Rain, rain ♪ go away ♪ come again another day ♪

Nurse: ?

Arale: Achoo ((Dr. Slump volume 1, page 66))

Treating humans as objects or giving objects human like traits, there’s a pathology to this tendency evident even in normal human relationships. Literature only serves to magnify this fact in fantastic exaggeration. Parents as creators, this contradicts scientific fact but gives them power on an imaginary level which compliments the child mind and allows taught values to take root at an early stage.

Pinocchio is the story of breaking the child for ‘its own good’, Dr. Slump a humorous celebration of the child being victorious over their flawed maker and Gunnm an uneasy attempt at coping with continuously being put into the child’s shoes even at an adult age.

Number 5: Contagion

A large ensemble of high profile actors and a beautifully shot vision of an epidemic with a high budget and convincing plot to make the unimaginable seem reasonably real, this reminded me of L: Change The World ((The third Death Note movie, based on the comic of the same name.)), just on a larger scale and sans the shōnen manga drama. Deadly viruses are a recurring motif in Japanese comics but this Hollywood take on the subject by Steven Soderberg brings it awfully close to a realistic scenario, which is mostly thanks to the money he was able to spend on this movie.

Number 4: The Change-Up

Body switch comedies are overdone, there’s not much to do with the genre anymore but still every few years a new one gets made. In this case the actors were convinced by the creative team of writer and director who worked on some of the more interesting comedies to make an impression on  movie audiences during the last few years. When you go watch a sneak preview weaker entries are bound to appear as well and I expected this to be an example of this statistical fact but it ended up being quite enjoyable and even orginal. A fresh and warm hearted take on the genre which isn’t that bad after all.

Number 3: Another Earth

What I liked about this one was that it is essentially a sci-fi (or rather a fantasy) movie with almost no special effects. Instead this story about an encounter of planets is told as an encounter of people and puts its actors before the surreal sci-fi plot. Same as the recent Melancholia the base idea of planets meeting reminded me of similarly anthropomorphized heavenly bodies coming up in video games which I wrote a series of articles about (in German). And I think it’s no coincidence that the two people encountering each other in Another Earth are having a match of some kind of Wii boxing at one point in the movie. A great subdued take on the reality of the virtual.

Number 2: Friends with Benefits

This is the first movie I saw at the sneak preview and the only one I saw coming. It was scheduled to start screening on the following Thursday and I really wanted to see it and would have gone even if it hadn’t been in the sneak. I love romantic comedies, I love Justin Timberlake, both as a singer and recently as an actor in The Social Network, and I loved Mila Kunis in That Seventies Show and in Black Swan. This movie totally delivers and is one of my favorites in the genre, hands down.

Number 1: 30 Minutes or Less

First thing to tell you what you’re in for in this comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg is the fantastic hip hop soundtrack, and everything else about the movie just works together to drive the viewer without ever giving them time to rest. The first scene already cleverly shows Eisenberg’s character Nick failing to keep the title’s promise but with such perfect timing that we still understand that he has the skill to pull it off even when he fails. Great dialogue and characters (both Nick’s Indian friends and the goofy villains) make it an enjoyable ride from beginning to end. I was positively blown away by the well written narrative that doesn’t ever resort to cliché instead betraying the viewer’s expectations which gives the humor the necessary oomph to match the booming soundtrack.

 See you in five when I’ll return to this list which then will have grown into a top ten!

Die Wii und ihre Spiele wie Wii Sports sind ein bisschen wie Monopoly, Scrabble oder andere traditionelle Gesellschaftsspiele. Man holt sie raus, wenn man Freunde da hat. Man spielt sie mit der ganzen Familie. Aber schon ein etwas teures Monopoly, oder? Werden sich die ganzen Wii-Käufer auch das Nachfolgemodell holen? Oder muss die Wii U ganz auf „you“ setzen, den etwas vernachlässigten jungen Intensivspieler?

Microsoft und Sony sehen sich mit Kinect und Move erstmal nach den Gelegenheitsspielern um. Nachdem ich mir vor einigen Monaten das Move-Paket auch endlich zugelegt habe, bin ich etwas ernüchtert. Die Kamera ist im Gebrauch wie erwartet umständlicher als die Sensorbar. Wollte ich sie oben auf meinen TV stellen, würde sie sicher leicht runterfallen, unten sind aber alle möglichen Dinge auf dem Couchtisch im Weg. Bequem vom Sofa spielen ist nicht so leicht, wegen der entstehenden toten Winkel.

Unter den Demos, die ich ausprobiert habe, war auch Blokus. Die Umsetzung eines Brettspiels. Das war ziemlich spaßig, aber ich fragte mich dann, warum soll ich das am TV spielen? Da hole ich mir doch lieber die analoge Version für an den Tisch. Die aber im Kaufhaus fast doppelt so viel kostete wie der Download. Das spräche dann schon wieder für die Konsolenvariante.

Wenn ich mir diesen Screenshot so ansehe, glaube ich, dass die Wii U schon auf dem richtigen Weg ist:

Und die richtigen Spieler können ihr Hardcore-Game abends aus dem Wohnzimmer mit ins Bett nehmen, ohne sich sowohl Konsole wie auch jedes einzelne Spiel doppelt kaufen zu müssen. So das Konzept von Sonys PS Vita als portabler Ergänzung zur PS3.

Diese können sich im Lauf der Zeit auch wieder ändern, der frühere Platingewinner 428 hat heute „nur“ noch eine Goldauszeichnung. Derzeit hat auch nur ein Spiel diese oberste Auszeichnung verdient, nämlich das RPG Xenoblade von Monolithsoft.

Alle Gold-, Silber- und Bronzegewinner in der jeweiligen umgekehrten Reihenfolge ihres Erscheinens:

Stefan Raab hat mittlerweile ein Zuhause bei Pro7 gefunden und produziert eine Großzahl der Aushängeschilder „seines“ Senders. Und auch wenn Raab wie alle Stars mit Mainstream-Erfolg heute sehr viel braver ist als zu seinen frühen Viva-Zeiten, so ist er sich doch inhaltlich treu geblieben. Viele seiner Rivalitäten gehen noch auf seine Zeit bei Viva zurück, wo er seicht produzierte Dance-Produktionen wie Fun Factory oder DJ Bobo genauso veräppelte wie einheimische Gangsterrapper wie Moses Pelham, von dem er sich dafür auch schon mal eine blutige Nase holte. Die Kelly-Family waren stets ein leichtes Ziel für alle Komiker und Raab machte keine Ausnahme, was heute in eine freundschaftlich sportliche Rivalität mit Joey Kelly übergegangen ist. Und man mag es heute kaum glauben, aber Dieter Bohlen wurde (ebenso wie Jürgen Drews und andere deutsche Musikgrößen) von Raab regelrecht vorgeführt, und Raab trotzdem regelmäßig von Bohlen wieder in seine Villa eingeladen.

Bohlen produzierte zwar nach wie vor erfolgreich immer dieselbe Musik und es ging ihm finanziell bestens, aber ohne eigene Band oder eigene TV-Sendung war seine Medienpräsenz eher begrenzt. Die bestand zu der Zeit vornehmlich im Breitwalzen der Scheidung von Verona Feldbusch, heute Poth, die damit ihre eine Weile sehr erfolgreiche Karriere begründen konnte. Für die meisten Deutschen war Bohlen aber eher eine Witzfigur, musikalisch überschätzt und ohne viel aktive eigene Fans. Genau dieses Image zeigte auch Raab bei seinen Besuchen bei seinem Freund, den er freundlich (aber gnadenlos) veralberte.

Mittlerweile ist Bohlen dank „Deutschland sucht den SuperStar“ wieder voll da. Dazwischen gab es noch ein Comeback mit Modern-Talking-Kollegen Thomas Anders, aber noch mehr Aufmerksamkeit beschert ihm der Jury-Posten in mittlerweile mehreren Casting-Sendungen auf RTL, wo er eine ähnliche Rolle einnimmt wie Raab auf Pro7. Beide repräsentieren ihren Sender, beide setzen auf Lästerhumor und beide haben es mit ihren Sendungen in die Königsklasse der TV-Unterhaltung geschafft, die Samstagabend-Show. Dass Bohlen den Witz auf Kosten seines Gegenüber sucht, könnte er sich auch von Raab abgekuckt haben, schießt aber mit seiner späten Rache an Unbeteiligten etwas übers Ziel hinaus. Zwar werden beide regelmäßig wegen ihrer derben Scherze kritisiert (und zuweilen auch verklagt), doch ist Raab doch noch etwas sympathischer in seiner Rolle des netten Lästerers. Bohlen hingegen legt auf das Attribut „nett“ kaum großen Wert.

Das ist jedoch nicht der Grund, warum ich Bohlens Sendungen lange Jahre partout gemieden habe, vielmehr kann ich dem Konzept der Castingshow nichts abgewinnen. Die Ergebnisse dieser Sendungen sind aber auch an mir als Chartjunkie nicht vorüber gegangen. DSDS „erfreut“ den Musikfan regelmäßig mit sehr erfolgreichen Künstlern mit begrenzter Haltbarkeit. In anderen Worten, ein Nummer-1-Hit ist für DSDS-Absolventen quasi garantiert, aber außer Mark Medlock hatte kaum ein DSDS-Star auch den superlangen Atem, um sich über Jahre hinweg in den Charts zu behaupten. Anders der deutsche Castingshow-Pionier Popstars auf Pro7. Zwar ist die letzte Erfolgsband des Formats, Monrose, schon wieder einige Jahre alt und trotz anhaltendem Erfolg im Auflösen begriffen, doch immerhin traten sie in die Fußstapfen noch erfolgreicherer Bands wie BroSis oder den europaweit bekannten No Angels.

All diese Bands haben ihrem Erfolg durch Auflösung selbst ein Ende gesetzt, vielleicht auch um dem Musikmarkt zuvorzukommen. Der hatte wenig Gnade mit dem Comeback-Versuch der No Angels und favorisierte mittlerweile ihre „kleinen Schwestern“ Monrose. Deren Auflösung wiederum wie ein Versuch erscheint, den in Massen scheiternden Nachfolgerprojekten von Popstars bessere Chancen zu verschaffen. Popstars gehört nicht zu den Sendungen, die Raab produziert, vielmehr liefert sie ihm Material für seine Zapping-Sendung TV-Total, wo er sich über Ausschnitte aus Popstars lustig macht, damit aber dennoch dem Werbeauftrag des Senders nachkommt. So ist auch Raab in die Popstars-Maschinerie mit eingebunden, doch hat er auch eigene musikalische TV-Formate, die die Sender interne Konkurrenz in Sachen Erfolg mittlerweile deutlich hinter sich lassen.

Schon zu Viva-Zeiten nahm Raab erste eigene Singles auf und übertrug seinen anarchischen TV-Humor in die Songtexte. Zwar war er da noch nicht so erfolgreich wie Bohlen, aber immerhin stand sein eigener Name auf dem Cover der CDs, die er verkaufte, was ihm eine Präsenz verschaffte, die Bohlen verloren gegangen war. Und die letzte Nemesis von Raab, die ich oben unterschlagen habe, Ralph Siegel, spornte ihn an, den „Eurovision Song Contest“ zu bezwingen. Nach dem einen von Siegel produzierten Siegertitel „Ein bisschen Frieden“ von Nicole war weder Siegel noch sonst einem anderen deutschen ESC-Beitrag nennenswerter Erfolg gegönnt. Das wollte Raab ändern, zunächst mit einer seiner absurden Witznummern, die er als Alf Igel für den Comedy-Schlagersänger Guildo Horn schrieb.

Das mittlerweile herrschende Desinteresse der Stammzuschauer am ESC ermöglichte es, dass Raab-Fans das Lied mit ihren Anrufen bis zum Auftritt beim Wettbewerb schicken konnten, wo es erstaunlich erfolgreich war. Dementsprechend bekam Raab mit „Wadde hadde dudde da“ eine weitere Chance, seinen Nonsenshumor diesmal selbst beim Wettbewerb vorzuführen, die er nutzte und dem Erfolg Horns noch einen draufsetzte. Mit zwei Top10 platzierten ESC-Beiträgen hatte er zumindest den Siegel der letzten 10 Jahre alt aussehen lassen, aber Ziel war natürlich das Schlagen dessen Gewinnertitels. Und so veranstaltete Raab seine erste eigene Castingshow und setzte mit dem Publikumsgewinner Max Mutzke auf anspruchsvollere Töne. Leider kamen diese nicht so gut an wie die lustigen Vorgänger, woraufhin Raab das Vertrauen in den ESC als eine Sendung verlor, in der deutsche Musiksensibilitäten ernsthafte Chancen hatten. Seine Antwort war der „Bundesvision Song Contest“, bei dem jedes Jahr garantiert ein deutscher Beitrag gewinnt.

Danach kehrte alles zum Alten zurück, die Punktevergaben waren für den deutschen Zuschauer auch bei vermeintlich viel versprechenden Beiträgen nach Raabs Ausscheiden wieder eine Enttäuschung sondergleichen. Die hinteren Plätze der Nachfolger Max Mutzkes ließen dessen Platzierung im Nachhinein wieder wie einen Erfolg wirken.

Raabs weitere Casting-Formate erreichten zwar nicht den breiten Erfolg von DSDS, konnten aber, da sie das Hauptaugenmerk auf die Musik legten, längerfristig erfolgreiche Künstler etablieren. Für die ARD war Raab sowieso die einzige Hoffnung, den ESC für Deutschland zu retten, und so durfte er das offizielle ESC-Teilnehmer-Casting bei Pro7 ausrichten. Max Mutzke war damals bei Pro7 als Teilnehmer für die offizielle Auswahl in der ARD gecastet worden. Dieser zweite pro forma Schritt wurde 2010 übersprungen und die Siegerin des Pro7-Castings, Lena Meyer-Landrut, war automatisch die deutsche ESC-Teilnehmerin. Ihr Song „Satellite“ vereint die humorvoll beschwingte Seite von Musikproduzent Raab mit seiner seriös anspruchsvollen. Der Song ist erstaunlich gut, aber nicht zu gut, denn wie die Erfahrung zeigt, ist zu viel Niveau beim ESC eher deplatziert. Irgendwie ist Raab das Kunststück gelungen, das er sich Jahre zuvor nicht zugetraut hatte: Den deutschen und den ESC-Geschmack unter einen Hut zu bringen. Aus diesem Grund hatte ich dem Song gute Chancen auf eine hohe Platzierung unter den ersten Fünf zugemessen, an den ersten Platz hatte ich aber trotz der Vorschusslorbeeren durch die Wettbüros nicht geglaubt.

Um Siegel endgültig hinter sich zu lassen, muss Raab diesen Erfolg wiederholen. Wenn nicht in diesem Jahr, dann in einem der nächsten. Doch nun ist Lenas Titelverteidigung erstmal eines der großen Fernsehereignisse dieses Jahres. Genau eine Woche nach dem diesjährigen DSDS-Finale drängt sich erneut der Vergleich auf zwischen Bohlen und Raab und zwischen RTL und Pro7.

Auffällig bei DSDS ist, dass die Sendung kaum weibliche SuperStars produziert hat. Schon eine weibliche Finalteilnahme ist eher selten. Ganz anders bei Pro7 und Popstars: dort werden häufig von vorne herein Girlbands produziert und rein männliche Bands sind eher die Ausnahme. Genau andersherum als bei DSDS, aber natürlich auch durch das Format bedingt. Raabs eigene Casting-Sendungen suchen hingegen wie DSDS Solisten, und unter den Gewinnern finden sich mit Stefanie Heinzmann und Lena mehr weibliche Künstler. Daher war die Finalteilnahme von Sarah Engels ein Hoffnungsschimmer im männlich dominierten SuperStar-Lager. Klar, dass die letzte gescheiterte Popstars-Girlband LaVive Engels anfeuerte und sich wünschte, dass dort auch endlich mal wieder eine Frau gewinnt. Ebenso argumentierte Jurorin Fernanda Brandao, als sie in der vorletzten Sendung nach ihrem Favoriten gefragt wurde. Auch die anderen Jury-Mitglieder und das Publikum schienen den Sieg von Sarah Engels zu wollen, warum ist sie es also doch nicht geworden?

Der Moderator Marco Schreyl begann die Sendung mit der Begrüßung der Zuschauer, die sonst nie DSDS sehen und ich dachte noch, woher weiß er, dass ich eingeschaltet habe? Drübergezappt, ja, Beiträge zu DSDS im restlichen RTL-Programm, ja, aber nie eine ganze Sendung von Anfang an. Aber da ich nun mehr und mehr meiner Zeit dem DSDS geprägten RTL-Programm geopfert hatte, wollte ich auch Sarah Engels gewinnen sehen. Da war ich aber anscheinend einer von eher Wenigen, denn die Einschaltquote dieses DSDS-Finales blieb fast eine Million unter der des Vorjahres.

Die Sendung machte deutlich, dass die beiden Kandidaten singen können, aber nicht sehr viel mehr. Im Gespräch mit dem Moderator stießen beide, aber vor allem Lombardi, schnell an ihre Grenzen. Gut, dass Engels meist zuerst antworten durfte und Lombardi ihr dann nur noch zustimmen musste. Sarah Engels und ihr Konkurrent Pietro Lombardi sind außerdem ein Paar. Daher war es nach Engels Aussage auch nicht wichtig, wer von beiden gewinnt, der Abend sei auf jeden Fall ein schönes Erlebnis. Diese Bescheidenheit, die sie sich durch ihr frühes Ausscheiden in der ersten Motto-Show angeeignet hat, könnte ihrem Siegestraum einen Strich durch die Rechnung gemacht haben. Zu sehr von sich überzeugt, war sie wohl als Zicke verschrien, und musste ja wirklich dankbar sein, nochmal wiederkommen zu dürfen. Leider hat sie damit auch den ganzen jungen weiblichen Fans, die sowieso viel lieber für den süßen Pietro anrufen wollten, die nötige Absolution dafür erteilt. Vielleicht muss man weibliche Loyalität beständiger einfordern, aber andererseits hatten viele der weiblichen Fans wohl schon gar nicht mehr eingeschaltet, weil dieses Jahr nur ein männlicher Kandidat im Finale war. Das würde die niedrigere Einschaltquote erklären.

Lombardi hingegen ist Unterhalter, ein Clown, wenn man so will. In einem Eröffnungsbeitrag spielen Engels und Lombardi sich selbst und sagen mehr schlecht als recht ihren Text auf. Das zeigt erneut, warum es den DSDS-Teilnehmern doch irgendwo an Star-Talent fehlt, aber eine weitere Aussage von Engels, die Bohlen gleich darauf aufgreift, wird wieder zum Stolperstein. Ich glaube ja, dass ihre Bezeichnung Lombardis als Erdmännchen ihr in den Mund gelegt worden war, aber Bohlen legte den Scherz als Meinung aus und beschrieb die beiden Teilnehmer als eine tolle Sängerin mit großer stimmlicher Bandbreite und ein, „wie Sarah es ja gerade gesagt hat“, lustiges Erdmännchen, das die Leute unterhalten kann. Klingt so, als lobe er Engels in den Himmel, doch sichert er auch die Sympathie für Lombardi, macht ihn zum Underdog. Engels wirkt hingegen durch Bohlens Formulierung fast schon arrogant, als ob sie über Lombardi spotte. Damit fiel es sicher vielen Männern leichter, für Lombardi anzurufen. Er kann sich seine englischen Texte, die er nicht versteht, kaum merken, musste zur Teilnahme gezwungen werden und hat wie auch alle anderen nie an seine Finalteilnahme geglaubt. Eine Erfolgsstory wie aus dem Bilderbuch. Mit ihm kann man(n) sich identifizieren, und will man(n) wirklich, dass eine übertalentierte Frau gewinnt?

Aber diese Sympathielenkung seitens Bohlens war nur ein Tropfen auf den heißen Stein. Die Entscheidung fiel, als zuerst Engels und dann Lombardi den von Bohlen komponierten neuen Song zum aller ersten Mal performten. Zwei Kritikpunkte, die immer wieder an Engels geäußert wurden, sind, dass sie in den Coversongs ihre Vorbilder fast perfekt nachahmen kann, es ihr aber etwas an Individualität fehle, und, dass sie sich nicht auf der Bühne bewegen könne. Dementsprechend mag es für sie schwierig gewesen sein, einen neuen Song selbst zu interpretieren. Nach ihrem Auftritt äußerte sie sich bemüht lobend zu dem Lied, es ginge von den tiefen Tönen zu den hohen und ermöglichte es ihr so, ihre Range als Sängerin zu demonstrieren. Sie fühle sich außerdem zu Hause in dem Song, hätte ihn schon zu ihrem eigenen gemacht. Doch wem machen wir etwas vor? Bohlens neues Stück ist derselbe seichte Schund, den er schon seit Jahrzehnten über Wert verkauft. Lombardi mit seinem Talent als Stimmungskanone war tatsächlich viel mehr in dem Song zu Hause, machte ihn sich mehr zu eigen, weil er ihm wie auf den Leib geschrieben war.

Aber warum hat Bohlen, der Engels ständig über den grünen Klee gelobt hatte und der sie sogar nach ihrem Ausscheiden wegen ihres Talents wieder in die Sendung geholt hatte, einen Song komponiert, der Lombardi einen Vorteil verschaffte? Der Grund dafür wird deutlich an seinem „Lob“ für Engels Whitney-Houston-Cover, das sie in derselben Sendung performt hatte. Zwei Drittel seiner Bewertung bestand darin, auszubreiten, was für ein Wrack Houston mittlerweile sei, womit er wohl Engels gelungene Interpretation eines verglühten Sterns unterstreichen wollte, quasi besser als das Original. Aber seine einzige Aussage zu Engels selbst war, dass sie eine kleine deutsche Whitney Houston werden könne. Engels hatte mehrere Houston-Songs während dieser Staffel performt, sicher weil sie gut geeignet sind, ihre stimmlichen Fähigkeiten zu demonstrieren. In Houstons Fußstapfen treten zu können, müsste für sie einem Traum gleichkommen, aber bei Bohlen klang es eher schäbig, die Juniorversion einer Künstlerin mit begrenzter Haltbarkeit, über die man sich heute lustig macht. Also irgendwie auch ein DSDS-Star, hurra!

Tatsache ist, dass Bohlen niemals einen Song schreiben könnte, der Houstons Fähigkeiten gerecht werden würde, auch nicht der einer kleinen Houston. Sein Lästern über ihr Scheitern ist ein bitteres Eingeständnis seiner eigenen Beschränktheit als Komponist. Nachdem die beiden Finalisten ihre Interpretation des Bohlenwerks vorgeführt hatten, schätzten sowohl Brandao wie Bohlen das Zuschauervotum zu Gunsten Lombardis ein, eine Einschätzung, die ich leider teilen musste. Lombardi war nicht besser als Engels. Aber sein Auftritt war überzeugender, weil ihm Bohlens Stück einfach mehr lag.

Das Stück, mit dem Lena beim diesjährigen ESC antritt, ist anders als „Satellite“ nicht von Raab geschrieben. Da die erneute Vertretung von Deutschland beim ESC durch Lena bereits beschlossene Sache war, castete man bei Pro7 diesmal nicht den Künstler, sondern den Song. Vorgestellt wurden daher vor Lenas Auftritten auch nicht die (immergleiche) Interpretin, sondern der Song selbst und seine Komponisten, die erzählen durften, wie er entstanden war. Diese Idee gefiel mir sehr gut, aber nicht viele außer mir scheinen sich für die Menschen hinter dem Star zu interessieren. Und da die Auswahl in zwei Teilen ausgestrahlt wurde, wobei die erste Sendung bereits den Favoritensong enthielt, fielen die Quoten beim zweiten Teil nicht übermäßig gut aus. Dafür die Verkäufe des Albums und der einzelnen Lieder als Download. Man kauft etwas eben lieber, wenn man schon weiß, was man kriegt. Quotentechnisch also durchwachsen, aber eine gelungene Werbeaktion für die Musikabteilung.

Wichtig ist jedoch, dass Raab nicht den größtmöglichen Konsens sucht, sondern gerne mal andere Wege geht. Damit hat er schon viele neue Formate etablieren können. Außerdem gibt er seinem Star Lena die Möglichkeit zu wachsen, eigene Songs zu schreiben und mit anderen Komponisten arbeiten zu können. Raab steuerte viele Songs zum Album „Good News“ bei, aber nicht die Mehrheit. Damit sorgte er für stilistische Bandbreite und ließ dem Zuschauer eine echte Wahl, auch wenn die Interpretin schon feststand. Diese Wahl haben DSDS-Absolventen nicht wirklich, sie müssen Bohlen interpretieren. Und wenn sie nach dem Sieg nicht mit ihm zusammen arbeiten wollen, endet ihre Laufbahn noch schneller, als die eines üblichen DSDS-Kandidaten.

Der DSDS-Moderator resümierte gegen Endung des Finales, dass DSDS nicht nur eine Castingshow sei, sondern die oft sehr jungen Kandidaten auch ein Stück weit beim Erwachsenwerden begleite. Eine Sendung mit Bildungsanspruch also. An deren Ende es für den männlichen Kandidaten Pietro Lombardi dann hieß: Du bist SuperStar. Und für die weibliche Kandidatin Sarah Engels: Du darfst den SuperStar jetzt küssen. Die RTL-Traumhochzeit, nun mit Dieter Bohlen statt Linda de Mol. Ich jedenfalls war enttäuscht und es tat mir am Ende Leid um meinen TV-Abend. Aber andererseits konnte ich mir so auch endlich eine Meinung zu DSDS bilden.

Und ist RTL also doch der Teufel? Ich persönlich glaube nicht, dass das Fernsehen seine Zuschauer verdummt. Vielmehr glaube ich doch, dass wir genau das Programm kriegen, das wir verdienen. Gesendet wird, was ankommt, sonst wird es zügig abgesetzt. RTL ist so erfolgreich, weil es den kleinsten gemeinsamen Geschmacksnenner anspricht. Der oft eher geringe Überschneidung mit dem größtmöglichen Niveau hat. Aber andererseits kann etwas, das so vielen gefällt, auch nicht vollkommen schlecht sein. Das Problem mit RTL ist auch nicht das Niveau, sondern der affirmative Charakter des Programms. Vielleicht bejaht RTL die bestehenden Zustände zu sehr, ohne sie herauszufordern. Raabs anarchischer Ansatz erlaubt ihm jedoch, neue Wege zu gehen. Er parodiert das Normale und versucht das Absurde. Das führt nicht immer irgendwohin. Aber zumindest kann man ja mal kucken, was es da noch so gibt.

In The Rise and Fall of the Unparalleled Band machen sich Möchtegernverbrecher des Träumens schuldig, schlagen dabei aber einer nach dem anderen den Solopfad ein. ★★★★★

In DumBeast wird nach dem vermissten Autor eines gleichnamigen Buchs gesucht, mit dem dieser die kollektive Anime-TV-Jugend der Japaner als Roman verarbeitet und damit den Unmut seiner auch im echten Leben überzeichneten Protagonisten auf sich gezogen hat. ★★★★★

Der Ausnahmeanimationsfilm Midori-ko erzählt mit 10 Jahren Arbeit in 56 Minuten, wie man auch ohne Fleisch zu essen Mama werden kann. ★★★★☆

Mit der Doku The Duckling reinigt Nachwuchsregisseurin Sayaka ONO tränenreich ihre Seele und die ganze Familie spielt mit. ★★★★☆

MILOCRORZE vereint drei Geschichten, drei Genres und drei Stile zu einem passenden Ganzen, mit überraschenden Sprüngen und raffinierter Inszenierung. ★★★★★

Übermüdet bin ich zu später Stunde während Sketches of Kaitan City ständig eingenickt, aber die wach wahrgenommen Teile waren gut genug, mich auf Verdacht 4/5 Sterne abreißen zu lassen. ★★★★☆

Arrietty ist der schönste Film, den ich seit langem gesehen habe, und hat meine Liebe zum traditionellen Trickfilm wiederbelebt. ★★★★★

In Permanent Nobara scheitern starke Frauen an schwachen Männern, das aber voller Liebe, Lebensfreude und schwarzem Humor. ★★★★★

Das dialoglastige Beziehungsdrama Love Addiction setzt auf authentisch wirkenden Stil, Improvisation und überzeugt in seinen besten Momenten sogar als Satire. ★★★★☆

Wig ist eine nette Mainstreamkomödie, die aber auf vielen Ebenen funktioniert und das Hirn sogar mehr belohnt als die Lachmuskeln. ★★★★☆

Helldriver ist wie eine trashige Splatterversion von Dororo, wenn dessen Titelfigur selbst die Heldin gewesen wäre. ★★★★☆

The Last Story begins...

Hironobu Sakaguchi has an eye for talent, he understands what kind of game-play works and who can make things work. It didn’t seem that way when he produced one commercial failure after the other during the early Square days. But when he made Final Fantasy, one of the first original Japanese role-playing games, he finally found his genre: As he himself commented he’s much better at telling a story then at making an action game.

Inside this story heavy genre he still tried different things, leaning both towards the action side of the spectrum with the Final Fantasy spin-off Mana series and the Nintendo co-produced Super Mario RPG, and towards the strategy side with Front Mission and Final Fantasy Tactics. Some of the risks he took payed off big, like betting on the CD medium and polygon 3D graphics, which gained his already successful Final Fantasy series worldwide recognition. His attempts at an expensive Final Fantasy CGI movie and a Final Fantasy version of the fresh MMORPG genre were perceived as flops though and Sakaguchi took responsibility for these commercial failures and left the company he made what it is today, right around the time it merged with its biggest rival, Enix.

His newly founded company Mistwalker is made up of only a few people and most of the colleagues he had worked with before stayed at Square, Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu being the biggest exception. Most of the development side of Mistwalker games is left to other companies who work under Sakaguchi’s guidance. The first two of which were high profile titles funded by Microsoft who probably hoped Sakaguchi could recreate the success of Final Fantasy on their new Xbox360 console. That didn’t quite work out and so the following titles ended up being more low budget games for Nintendo DS, which also allowed Mistwalker to be more experimental with these titles and explore the more niche RPG sub-genres. They were mostly strategy RPGs and a few action ones as well.

The experiences gained with these smaller bridge titles show in Mistwalker’s latest (and maybe last) traditional RPG The Last Story, which fuses these two genres masterfully while retaining the typical RPG framework. While Sakaguchi didn’t feel confident to make a good action game he always knew how to spice up turned based RPGs with some action elements, like the timing based bonus damage he introduced in Mario RPG and reused in Final Fantasy VIII and Lost Odyssey. Another example being the seamless battles inside the same exploration maps typical of action game which made the turn based grinding in Chrono Trigger much less distracting. The Last Story takes quite a few steps more into this direction though, more on which below.

Elza and Quark talking in old school strategy RPG presentation style, used in select dialogues

With Mistwalker Sakaguchi seemed to mostly draw upon his previous work. Blue Dragon owes a lot to Chrono Trigger, his collaboration with his JRPG rival Yūji Horii. The immortal hero storyline in Lost Odyssey owes a lot to the critically acclaimed Glory of Heracles games, which started off the career of Playstation era Final Fantasy scenario writer Kazushige Nojima. Nojima was just one of many game creators washing up at Square during the SNES days, who then contributed to some of the biggest hits of the following Playstation era. Another one was Yasumi Matsuno and many of his colleagues from Quest. The Last Story owes a lot to Final Fantasy Tactics, which was a Final Fantasy version of Quest’s strategy RPG masterpiece Tactics Ogre, re-imagined by most of its original team, but produced by Sakaguchi at Square.

This is (not) a Matsuno game

Physical weapons can be endowed with the element of a spell casted

When The Last Story was announced for Wii the developer Sakaguchi collaborated with this time wasn’t revealed right away and only referred to by his initial Mr. M on the Mistwalker blog. There had been rumors that Matsuno had been working on a Wii title ever since he quit work on Final Fantasy XII before it was finished and made a promotion interview for Nintendo’s Wii where he stressed the possibilities Wii offered for creating new intuitive ways to control a player character. Obviously many fans (including myself) were hoping Mr. M from the Mistwalker blog might be Matsuno. But it was later revealed that Mr. M was in fact Takuya Matsumoto (who had worked with Mistwalker before as director of Blue Dragon) and The Last Story, for all its innovative game-play, completely ignores the Wii specific control methods.

But nevertheless this game is so very reminiscent of Final Fantasy XII and the whole Matsuno style it begs the question if Mistwalker didn’t try to make a Matsuno game, even without his personal involvement maybe. The cryptic M-san abbreviation only lends to stir likewise rumors. As in Final Fantasy XII the environments are rich renderings of medieval places with too many characters walking around to all have their own dialogue. Instead there are some that can be talked to indicated by an A above their head, and some who can be overheard when walking by or addressing the player character when they spot him. As in FFXII the battles are seamless and occur in the same environments which the characters walk, talk and live in. As in FFXII lines indicate character targeting their enemy for attack. It’s pretty clear where Mistwalker got their inspiration from with The Last Story.

Taking aim, and checking the enemy's weak spot as well

But they manage to best Matsuno at his own style and to bring a lot of the kind of strategic game-play his previous games offered to a more traditional RPG with fully rendered game world. It’s of course to be expected that they would expand on what FFXII did right and remedy the problems. One problem being that the battles were mostly automatic and boring exercises at watching rather than playing. The programmable Gambits only demonstrated how formulaic most of Final Fantasy battle strategy was without living up to the potential of what it added to them, positioning the characters in a 3D play-field. In The Last Story on the other hand, attacks are still activated automatically but the terrain and obstacles in it are much more important. Hiding behind corners, making use of difference in height, projectile attacks, surrounding enemies, all these concepts from Matsuno’s Tactics games are incorporated by real time actions lent from stealth games like Metal Gear Solid and other action oriented titles.

When Matsuno himself took the step to real time controls with Vagrant Story he reduced the amount of party members to one and the number of foes battled simultaneously to three. These limitations were also due to the switch from sprites to polygon models and the Playstation hardware not being powerful enough to render more characters in real time. In Final Fantasy XII the party had three simultaneous player characters (mostly because that was the number now typical for the series) and hordes of enemies to battle at any one time. Still a far cry from the five or more characters per team in Matsuno’s strategy games and in the game Matsuno was actually working on recently, a remake of his Tactics Ogre for PSP, one of the main innovations is increasing the party size even more to allow for more dynamic battles. The Last Story takes the same route and has around five simultaneous party members on average, sometimes more, sometimes less, and often thrice as many enemies, with back ups joining the fight mid battle.

Use Wind to pause the game and dash to the left magic circle to heal all your allies or to the right one to break the enemies' defense with fire

The big hurdle is of course how to strategically control this many characters in real time. As in FFXII the characters act independently based on AI with optional menu controls. But the game also gives the main character many ways to work with his fellow party members and the effects of the spells they cast. He gains the ability to draw enemies towards himself when he triggers his Gathering stance. This way he can keep them away from magic casting allies or lead them to magic circles, i.e. the areas where spells are at work. He can also revive fallen allies by touching them in Gathering mode, use his Wind ability to quickly move along the battle field, and interrupt enemy spells or widen the effect of ally spells, by moving onto their magic circles with this dash ability. Usage of this special skills is limited by meters building during battle and each character has five lives per battle which limits the times they can be revived. Another cue from the action genre, so instead of stocking up on heal items and keeping one’s magic points up the player has to keep track of what his allies are doing, to help them and make best use of their spells as well.

Gathering can also be used in combination with hiding behind parts of the surroundings to disorient foes and ambush them for extra damage. There’s a wealth of possible actions most of which map to one single button respectively that does the same thing regardless of context. For example C will activate Gathering, no matter if you’re attacking or defending by holding B. So it’s easy to remember these techniques without the controls getting convoluted. Few of them require precise timing and for all the action game-play it boils down to choosing the right action for the right moment and occupying places which work to one’s advantage. If the battle gets hectic there’s abilities like Wind which pause the real time action and allow to look around the field to get an overview. Before a battle starts there’s often a top-down view on the surroundings complete with enemy formations and strategy discussion with the other party members. Since the party is a team of fellow mercenaries interesting and atmospheric dialogue abounds before and during the battles, with members providing hints or asking for help.

Bumping into people

But the surroundings aren’t just important during battles. In previous RPGs there were frequent awkward situations where you couldn’t advance your character on screen because someone or something was in the way. Maybe the obstacle was just overlapping your way by a few pixels but still movement was obstructed. Or a clueless non player character wandering around randomly just didn’t try the one direction where they could go out of the way. In The Last Story you can bump into people, even knocking them over. Normally you won’t want to do that of course so for the first time you will find yourself avoiding NPCs when walking around the streets. If you still bump into one, on purpose or accidentally, many will react to that, scold you, get angry or sometimes even cheer for you one once they realize who you are. The latter type are mostly kids who admire the hero for being so cool or girls having a crush on him.

Look where you're going! Or where you're running from...

This collision detection feature becomes crucial during run and chase sequences. Bumping into people will slow you down and you may even knock your head against a hanging sign. You can also look behind you by holding B which changes the camera perspective, which of course also increases the possibility to bump into people which only come into view when you’re right next to them.

Taking a look around

When you press and hold Z the game changes to a first person perspective which is used to aim a projectile weapon or simply look around the vicinity. Sometimes a Z icon will appear to alarm you of things to spot. It’s like an instinct that makes you aware of things your were going to pass by. If you find spots with a box around them you notice things in a distance or items/bonuses lying around. These can then be interacted with, triggering scenes or strategic choices in battle, where you can give commands to the other party members. This way NPCs, treasures, passages and even whole story chapters can be discovered. The chapters are mostly predetermined events but the order in which they can be found isn’t wholly linear. Much of the narrative is a result of traditional RPG exploration and listening to NPCs. There’s side quests revolving around procuring materials and trading resources, buying for cheap and selling when prices have risen.

The town is cozy and small but quite detailed

The scope of the world in The Last Story is limited to only a few places, the story taking place mostly on Ruri Island and the sea surrounding it. But this means that the town below the castle, even though it’s not that big, is rendered in realistic detail and many little episodes and events can be discovered. The game as a whole is a bit on the short side, looking high budget but keeping the cost down by concentrating on fewer locales which do offer at least the same amount of richness as in FFXII, but being fewer in number. Instead of a journey over the whole globe it’s a more personal story, revolving around two island nations.

You’re (not) free

Many RPGs today allow a wealth of customization, letting the player choose what to learn and how to combine abilities. The Last Story on the other hand goes for the story governed style Sakaguchi already used in his defining Final Fantasy entry, FFIV. As in that classic, who is in your party and its size, what abilities each character learns, all this is defined by the story and the role of the characters in it. There’s some customization involved in what equipment you use but this is simply pre-battle strategy, for which there’s some room to express your personal style. More important are the strategic decisions during battle, which you’ll have to do in real time. Freedom in performance is used as a tool to put pressure on you, allowing you to shape the details rather than the greater narrative.

But like mentioned above, The Last Story isn’t quite as linear as Final Fantasy IV was. There are always optional events in any RPG and The Last Story has those as well, but whole chapters being skippable or in need of discovering, the game lets you choose your own pace as well as what aspects of your player character your interested in and want to see developed and illuminated. You play Elza, member of a band of mercenaries, who come to Ruri Island on one of their journeys. They get hired to work as body guards for the royal family, backing up the knights of the court. The Gathering ability Elza acquired on his way to Ruri Island draws the attention of Count Arganan to him, who is interested in utilizing this force from a foreign land for his political agenda.

The castle's throne room

When war breaks out Elza is asked to become the savior of Ruri Island and he even gets a chance to become a true knight instead of a lowly mercenary, ((In this way The Last Story is a shusse-mono (career story), the most popular genre of mass literature during the late middle ages, end of Muromachi to Tokugawa period. In the fantasy themed otogi-zōshi for commoners, which compare to Western fairytales, usually a person of low descent acquires great riches by making a career, gaining almost aristocratic or samurai status. This was a very appealing dream in times of rigid class systems and it’s interesting how The Last Story goes back to this genre which in a way started popular fantasy in Japan. The motives in these stories draw upon the older aristocratic literature tradition constituting high culture, in fact most of the otogi-zōshi stories originate from the court environment but were retold for the common people later. So court nobles and samurai in a way set the standard for the common people, which is (critically) reflected in The Last Story by Elza and his friends wanting to become knights.)) a dream he has shared with his other fellow mercenaries and their leader Quark. A dream that is at odds with the one he soon starts to share with Princess Kanan: She knows that knights are used for unjust wars and would rather not see her lover Elza become a knight.

The story includes many more motives from JRPG lore and especially Sakaguchi’s works: the locked up princess seeking freedom, having to follow orders the hero doesn’t agree with, taking to the seas to travel to foreign countries, being trialed in court, escaping from prison, acquiring legendary power, magic disappearing from the world, nature on the brink of destruction… If you played RPGs before there aren’t many new concepts that haven’t been done already. But The Last Story manages to combine these motives in new ways, staying unpredictable without giving up on the mature approach to the setting it also borrows from Matsuno’s style.

We hate predictable

Party members take guard near wherever you need to go next, although here it's kind of obvious...

It manages to do this by keeping everything fast paced and throwing out the filler. You can relax in the city at times and do little side-quests, but the main story is very tight and dramatic. Also since the story is played rather than just watched, the stage of the story, i. e. the play-fields are essential to keeping everything unpredictable. Locales, as well as the layouts of the rooms and places you traverse, change all the time to keep both the narrative and the action fresh. This is especially, but not only, apparent during battles. Every single battle is unique and meaningful, both in dialogue and in strategy. And since the strategy depends largely on the terrain, it’s easy to visualize what is kept abstract in many other RPGs.

Battlefields might be tight passages or wide open areas, elevated platforms to hurl foes down from or wet ponds. Obstacles abound, to hide behind, roll over or even smash. The terrain has to be considered to plan your movement as well as to find opportunities to use the environment against the opponent. Party members also change all the time, people join and leave from fight to fight, the party splitting up in dungeons with branching paths or getting support from the court knights stationed at different parts of Ruri Island when it’s under attack. The player has to keep adapting to ever changing situations and won’t be finding themselves doing the same things over and over again. Sometimes you’ll have to remember an ability you didn’t use in a while, but the other party members will remind you in helpful real time dialogue. There are no unnecessary battles unless you choose to grind at enemy summoning spots or by going back to already cleared dungeons. The frequency of battle isn’t constantly high either, often you will expect to have to fight in certain situations but they end up being events without enemy confrontation.

Battles are a part of the story, too

Magician's have to give up their hiding to cast their spells, which makes them float into the air

With FFXII already some ideas of Matsuno’s strategy RPGs were applied to traditional RPGs, but the high battle rate and experience building style remained untouched. The Last Story is more thorough in bringing Final Fantasy Tactics type of game-play to the traditional RPG framework, giving up on repetitive simple battles and making every battle count by meaningfully incorporating them into the story. The battles being seamless, the player always in control over the movement of his avatar, this gives battle and exploration a common style. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a city or in a cave, if you’re listening to NPCs or fighting lizards, most of the basic controls are the same in all situations. You can even shoot banana peels to make NPCs trip and fall, same as enemies by freezing the ground beneath them.

The only thing interrupting this common interactive story telling mode are of course the cut scenes, but even these can be fiddled with. You can adjust the camera slightly or fast forward a scene, no matter if you’ve seen it before or not. Instead of just skipping whole scenes you still have to watch them at high speed, so game and story cannot be divorced from each other. Every bit of game-play is enacted story, every automatic event retains a minimum of interaction. ((Except for the few pre-rendered cut scenes which really can only skipped entirely.))

Onlinemultiplayer

Choosing your character, battlefield and team preference in the Versus Lobby

When you have cleared the game or just want to take a break from the story you can also use the multi-player mode to battle with people all over the world. Up to six players can duke it out in versus, battle royal style or in teams of two, or join to fight some of the in-game bosses again. You can freely choose your character in these, from all of the party members and in versus even guest allies and human(oid) bosses are selectable. Playing as a magician or boss is really fun as you play as Elza for most of the main game. Everything’s in real time and lag was not an issue, playing from Germany over the Japanese servers. Finding people to play with is quick too, as is lobby navigation.

Choosing what to say

To communicate with other players four pages of preselectable voice messages are available. Some of these are also mapped to direction keys and events to quickly access even during battle. All the messages can be selected from large lists of expressions by all the in-game characters, grouped by situation to use it in. If you don’t want to bother finding the best ones for you, two pages are preselected with all purpose lines automatically expressing things like saying “hallo”, “thanks” or “heal me”.

The battle system translates really well to multiplayer, with some adjustments: resurrecting fallen allies is available to all characters in boss battle mode, not just Elza. Gathering is disabled, but everyone has their own Wind-like technique and projectile attacks. Aiming Wind doesn’t interrupt the game flow (and movement of the other players)  but needs to be done in real time. The surroundings can still be used strategically and the selectable fields offer variety even though they’re few in number.

The Last Story?

The Last Story...

If this game indeed turns out to be the last game Sakaguchi ever makes, there couldn’t be a better one to remain as his legacy. This game, for all purposes, succeeds brilliantly at what it does and there’s no real criticism to address. It’s quite perfect and finally brings all three schools of RPG together, retaining their best parts. Even the graphics, though technically limited by the Wii platform, are impressive both in style and in detail rendered on screen. You couldn’t claim that the game-play is limited in any way by horsepower either, considering the way all the design choices fall into place to create an experience that is never annoying and always rewarding. The difficulty starts out pretty low to ease the player into the many complex yet accessible game-play systems, but towards the end the challenge rises considerably, making the clever battles all the more rewarding.

As with previous Mistwalker titles, since it lacks the brand recognition of Final Fantasy and isn’t published by major RPG publisher Square Enix, sales didn’t live up to Sakaguchi’s earlier success titles but the game-play is as good, and in many places even better, than Square Enix’ recent efforts, like Final Fantasy XIII or Dissidia. To put it simply, The Last Story turned out to be the game I expected Final Fantasy XII to be. If Matsuno’s team gets another shot at doing a mainline Final Fantasy game I hope they will closely look at what The Last Story achieved and try to outdo their prodigal imitators. And maybe the higher ups at Square Enix will have more trust in the possibility of making a strategic game that is accessible to casual gamers even without being dumbed down.

Somit ist zumindest der Soundtrack des Spiels jetzt fertig, 6 Stücke untermalen die gut 20 Stages. Spielt doch mal rein und lasst den wirklich gelungenen Retrosound auf euch wirken. Passend zum Gameplay, das euch alle paar Stages mit einem neuen Track belohnt. Wer den ganzen Soundtrack danach noch in optimaler Qualität hören will (für das Spiel habe ich aus Performancegründen die Qualität der Streams etwas tief ansetzen müssen), wird auch auf der oben verlinkten Soundcloud von UPPERCUT.CONTINUE fündig.

Fantasie und Wirklichkeit

Der Film beginnt mit einer Autofahrt zu dem Ort, an dem sowohl eine fantastische Welt wie auch die realen Schrecken des Kriegs warten. Die Mutter der jungen Ofelia rügt ihre Tochter für deren Versunkenheit in Büchern voller kindlicher Feenfantasien. Sie ist schwanger mit dem Sohn des Hauptmanns der spanischen faschistischen Armee, hat sich also mit der erwachsenen Realität nicht nur arrangiert, sondern ihrer Meinung nach sogar etwas Großes erreicht. Ofelia hingegen erinnert sich und andere wiederholt daran, dass der Hauptmann nicht ihr wahrer Vater ist.

Ein Mädchen, dass sich angesichts einer schwierigen realen Situation in eine Fantasiewelt flüchtet, ((Die schwierige Situation besteht auch in diesem Fall zumindest teilweise aus dem baldigen Erwachsenwerden, für Ofelia verbunden mit Aspekten wie Schwangerschaft der Mutter, dem strengen Patriarchen, allgemein Angst vor männlicher Gewalt auch bei ihrem noch ungeborenen Bruder. Durch das Setting drücken sich männliche und erwachsene Strukturen aber auch in der Extremsituation kriegerischer Auseinandersetzung aus, von der Ofelia aber direkt gar nicht so viel mitbekommt.)) dieses Motiv findet sich schon beim Zauberer von Oz, doch in Pans Labyrinth wird die Realität durch das Entdecken des Fantastischen nicht ausgesetzt, vielmehr erzählt der Film zwei Geschichten parallel, eine überaus reale und eine mit ihr eng verflochtene fantastische. Ofelias erwachsenes Gegenstück Mercedes hat auch einmal an Feen geglaubt, wie sie Ofelia auf ihre Frage danach zugibt, doch jetzt äußert sich ihr Glaube an das Gute in ihrer Bereitschaft, die Partisanen als Informantin zu unterstützen. Ofelia durchschaut dies ziemlich schnell. Auch wenn sie zu naiv erscheint, das wahre Ausmaß des Schreckens zu verstehen, sie hat einen intuitiven Zugang zu der Situation, in der sie und Mercedes sich befinden.

Ofelia hält Insekten für Feen, als sie einer Art Grashüpfer ein Bild einer Fee aus einem ihrer Bücher zeigt, verwandelt sich dieser tatsächlich in ein Abbild der Illustration und führt sie zu einem Pan. Dieser eröffnet ihr, dass sie die wiedergekehrte Prinzessin seines Königreichs sei. Doch um dorthin zurückzukehren, müsse sie drei Prüfungen bestehen, die sie aus einem Buch erfahren würde, das er ihr gibt. Dessen Seiten sind zuerst leer, sie schreiben sich erst im Augenblick, als die Ereignisse sich anschicken, tatsächlich zu geschehen. Das Fantastische bleibt somit auch in der realen Entdeckung literarisch. Der Pan als Personifikation der Erde und Natur macht die Bedingungen, unter deren Erfüllung Ofelia ganz Teil der literarischen Fantasie werden kann. Mercedes warnt sie davor, dass Pane als trügerisch verschrien sind und man ihnen nicht immer trauen könne.

Die Interpretation von Gut und Böse ist sehr strikt in Ofelias Prüfungen, die kleinste Abweichung von den Regeln, und sei es nur das Essen einiger Trauben, fordert den Tod einiger ihrer Feenbegleiter und scheint ihr den Weg zurück zum Prinzessinnenthron zu versperren. Plötzlich ist sie wieder in der Realität gefangen, ohne Aussicht auf Entkommen. Gleichzeitig spitzen sich die Ereignisse im realen Handlungsbogen zu, wo das wahre Böse sich entfaltet. Der Schurke ist keine hässliche Verzerrung eines realen Übels, vielmehr ist er ein Beispiel für ein reales Übel, das auch in einer fantastischen Interpretation nicht mehr deutlicher in seinem schrecklichen Ausmaß gezeichnet werden könnte.

Das reale Böse

Der Hauptmann kämpft unbarmherzig gegen die roten Partisanen und ihre Idee davon, dass alle Menschen gleich seien. Ohne Mitleid tötet er mit äußerster Brutalität einen jungen Bergbewohner und seinen Vater. Als der Grund dafür sich als Fehler herausstellt, zeigt er keinerlei Reue, sondern bestätigt seine Überzeugung, dass seine Opfer anders als er nichts wert seien und selbst die Zeit zum Töten zu schade gewesen wären.

Seine Frau betrachtet er als bloße Gebärmaschine, lässt sie ständig von einem Arzt betreuen. Dass es ihm dabei aber nur um das Wohl seines Sohnes geht, wird deutlich in seinem präventiv geäußerten Befehl an den Arzt, falls nötig das Leben des Sohnes auf Kosten dessen der Mutter zu retten. Als beim Abendtisch einige der weiblichen Gäste der Ehefrau Details entlocken, wie sie sich kennengelernt haben, sie ihre niedere Herkunft offenlegt, und ohne es zu merken in einer naiven Formulierung den Zufall ihres Zusammenkommens mit dem Hauptmann als dessen Plan entlarvt, ist ihm das unangenehm. Er gönnt ihr keine Kompetenzen jenseits des Gebärens des Stammhalters, verkrüppelt sie symbolisch, indem er ihr „zu ihrem eigenen Wohl“ befiehlt, die letzten Wochen der Schwangerschaft in einem Rollstuhl zu verbringen.

Gefasste Partisanen verkrüppelt er hingegen tatsächlich, sowohl seelisch wie auch körperlich. Die Folter, durch die er sich verlässliche Informationen verspricht, ist auch eine Bestätigung seiner kranken Vorstellung davon, seinen Mitmenschen überlegen zu sein. Als er erkennt, dass sein Gefangener stottert, zeigt er sich gönnerhaft, verspricht ihn laufenzulassen, wenn er es schaffe, ohne zu stottern bis drei zu zählen. Keiner stehe über ihm, der ihm diese Gnade verbieten könne, wie er sich von seinem Untergebenen bestätigen lässt. Dieser Gnadenakt ist jedoch eine reine Machtdemonstration, er inszeniert seine „Überlegenheit“ und spielt die Behinderung als Trumpf gegen sein Opfer aus, als „Beweis“ dessen Unterlegenheit, in einem kalkulierten Versagen, das ihm und dem Stotterer „beweist“, dass sie nicht auf einer Ebene stehen.

Gehorsam

Als der Stotterer am nächsten Tag durch die Folter völlig entstellt den Arzt um den Gnadentot bittet, sieht er aus wie eine der Kreaturen aus einer Fantasynarrative, doch ist es der reale Handlungsbogen, der hier von dieser Art Maskenbild Gebrauch machen muss. Der Arzt hatte die Partisanen die ganze Zeit über heimlich unterstützt, erst am Tag davor Mercedes zu ihrem Lager begleitet, um dort die Wunden der Verletzten zu versorgen. Auch den Stotterer hatte er dort getroffen, und den Geliebten von Mercedes, den er fragt, warum er nicht mit Mercedes außer Landes fliehe. Der Doktor kann dem Krieg nichts abgewinnen, selbstverständlich nicht der Sache der Unterdrücker, aber auch der Kampf der Partisanen scheint ihm sinnlos, da er anscheinend nur mehr und mehr Opfer fordert, die der Doktor dann beim Sterben begleiten muss. Oder auch ihre Verkrüppelung vollenden, als er einem der Partisanen das nicht zu rettende Bein amputiert.

Die perverse Logik des Krieges gipfelt für den Doktor im blinden Gehorsam. Als der Hauptmann ihm auf die Schliche gekommen ist und den Doktor zur Rede stellt, macht er dies in seinen Worten deutlich. Menschen wie der Hauptmann leisteten blinden Gehorsam. Der Doktor hingegen widersetzt sich dem Befehl des Hauptmanns, wendet ihm den Rücken zu und läuft ruhigen Schrittes von ihm fort. Durch diese Demonstration seiner Prinzipien erntet er den Tod durch Erschießen. Am Ende konnte er weder fliehen noch den Krieg aufhalten. Der Hauptmann, der nach eigenen Aussagen an der Spitze der Befehlskette steht, folgt weiterhin blind seinen eigenen kranken Ideen.

Gehorsam wurde auch von Ofelia erwartet und wie oben beschrieben beendete ihr Ungehorsam ihre Aussicht auf Realitätsflucht vorläufig. Doch sie erhält noch eine Chance. Der Pan trägt ihr auf, mit ihrem frischgeborenen Bruder zu ihm in sein Labyrinth zu kommen. Dort erfährt sie, dass für ihre Rückkehr unschuldiges Blut vergossen werden muss, ihr Bruder also sterben soll. Wird sie diesmal dem Befehl des Pans gehorchen? Der Hauptmann, der ihr gefolgt ist, um seinen Sohn zurückzuholen, kann den Pan nicht sehen. Für ihn ist er ein Hirngespinst von Ofelia, so unsinnig wie die Idee von Gleichheit.

Flucht in die Fantasie

An dieser Stelle möchte ich darauf eingehen, wie sich die fantastischen Ereignisse im realen Handlungsbogen auswirken. ((Die strukturellen Parallelen zwischen fantastischem und realem Handlungsbogen, auf die ich hier bewusst nicht eingehe, werden anhand der wiederkehrenden Motive sehr schön im Wikipedia-Artikel unter Struktur und Interpretation aufgezeigt. Es bleibt darüberhinaus anzumerken, dass sowohl der Schlüssel als Symbol für Wissen und das Messer als Mordinstrument phallischer Natur sind, Mittel zum Erlangen und Ausüben von Macht.)) Zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt gibt Ofelia einmal der Pflege ihrer kranken Mutter den Vorzug gegenüber dem Antreten einer der Prüfungen. Wie die Narrative blendet auch sie als Figur die Realität nicht zugunsten der Feenfantasie aus, wofür sie aber indirekt vom Pan gerügt wird. Um das Hindernis zum Erfüllen der Prüfung aus der Welt zu schaffen, gibt er ihr eine Alraune, die sie in einem Teller mit Milch unter das Bett der Mutter stellt und die sie täglich mit zwei Tropfen Blut füttert. Dieser Zauber scheint zu wirken, die Mutter geht es schnell wieder besser, wofür auch der Doktor keinerlei Erklärung hat. Doch als der Hauptmann Ofelia unter dem Bett entdeckt und die Alraune hervorzieht, glaubt ihr keiner, dass sie die Mutter geheilt hat.

Die Alraune, eine Wurzel, die davon träumt, ein Mensch zu sein, sie sieht fast aus wie das heranwachsende Kind im Leib der Mutter. Doch die Mutter glaubt nicht an Feenmärchen und wirft vor Zorn über die durch Ofelias Handlungen erfahrene Demütigung vor ihrem Ehemann die Alraune ins Kaminfeuer, worauf sie sofort starke Schmerzen in ihrer Bauchgegend erleidet. Doch wider Erwarten stirbt nicht das Kind in ihr, sondern sie selbst. Die Alraune, die davon träumte, ein Mensch zu sein, sie ähnelt als Pflanze dem Baum, den Ofelia von der hässlichen Kröte befreite. Sie ist ein Teil der Natur, die der Pan verkörpert. Sie ist eine naturgeprägte literarische Fantasie, ein Feenmärchen. Ofelias Mutter hatte nicht daran geglaubt, sie hat nicht an sich geglaubt, und es scheint, als habe sie ihren eigenen Tod herbeigeführt.

Ofelia hingegen glaubt daran, folgt dem Pan bis zum Schluss. Doch das unschuldige Leben ihres Bruders kann sie nicht opfern. Bei den Käfern, die die hässliche Kröte mit ihrer langen Zunge fraß, war Ofelia weniger zimperlich, sie als Köder für eine tödliche List gegen die Kröte zu verwenden, aber ihren Menschenbruder will sie nicht opfern. Daher konnte sie die Kröte vergiften, wohingegen dieselbe Strategie beim Hauptmann (mangels Opfer?) keine Wirkung zeigt. Dieser entreißt ihr den verschonten Bruder und erschießt sie. Während sie in der Realität stirbt, breitet sich vor ihrem geistigen Auge das Ziel ihrer Wünsche aus. Der König und die Königin empfangen sie zurück auf ihrem Thron, der Pan ist zufrieden, dass sie ihm nicht blind gehorcht, sondern selbst erkannt hat, was die richtige Entscheidung war. Eine versöhnliche Szene, die jedoch nicht anhält. Die Geschichte kehrt zurück in die Realität, in der Ofelia ihren letzten Atemzug macht. ((Mit derselben Szene rückwärts abgespielt beginnt auch der Film. Dadurch wird ihr Tod und wie es zu ihm kam zum Eröffnungsthema.)) Am Ende erleidet sie doch dasselbe Schicksal wie ihre Mutter. Oder das Ziel ihrer Wünsche. Beide Interpretationen sind nicht nur möglich, sondern sogar zwingend, nach der Logik der Geschichte.

Realer Kampf

Doch wie endet der reale Handlungsbogen? Nachdem der Doktor entlarvt wurde, scheint auch Mercedes bald durchschaut. Sie unternimmt daher mit Ofelia einen Fluchtversuch, wird aber gefasst und vom Hauptmann zum selben Folterort gebracht wie zuvor der Stotterer. Doch die Überheblichkeit des Hauptmanns soll ihm erneut zum Verhängnis werden. Gerade erklärte Mercedes ihm noch, dass sie nur unbehelligt spionieren konnte, weil er in ihr als Frau nie eine Gefahr gesehen hatte. Gerade gibt er noch zu, dass dies sein größter Fehler gewesen sei. Dennoch wendet er ihr den Rücken zu, um sein Folterinstrument auszusuchen. Ohne dass sie jemand im Auge behalten würde, kann sie das Messer, das sie sich stets in die Schürze klemmt, hervorholen und die Fesseln durchschneiden. Noch bevor der Hauptmann sich ihr wieder zuwendet, greift sie ihn mit dem Messer an, sticht zweimal zu und schneidet ihm dann mit dem in seinem Mund gesteckten Messer die Backe auf. Sie habe vor ihm schon andere Schweine abgeschlachtet, kommentiert sie ihre Fähigkeit zum gewaltsamen Widerstand.

Selbst die folgende Flucht scheint diesmal zu gelingen, da auch die anderen Soldaten sie zunächst unterschätzen, tatsächlich einige annehmen, der Hauptmann hätte sie laufen lassen. Sie kommt ziemlich weit und als sie im Wald von mehreren berittenen Soldaten umstellt wird, wendet sie das Messer gegen sich, um erneuter Gefangenschaft zu entgehen. Ihre Bereitschaft zu sterben wird nicht lange auf die Probe gestellt, die Partisanen kommen ihr zu Hilfe und erschießen ihre Verfolger. Danach führen die Partisanen ihren Gegenschlag aus und empfangen den Hauptmann bei seiner Rückkehr aus dem Labyrinth. Er akzeptiert seine Niederlage und seinen Tod, übergibt Mercedes seinen Sohn. Nach wie vor in seiner Überheblichkeit gefangen trägt er ihr wie gewohnt auf, wie sie seinen Sohn aufziehen und was sie ihm von seinem Vater erzählen soll. Der Hauptmann glaubt offenbar immer noch, dass sein Vater in seinem Sohn weiterleben wird, so wie der Vater in ihm weitergelebt hatte.

Doch Mercedes beendet seinen Wahn, erklärt ihm, dass sein Sohn niemals auch nur seinen Namen erfahren wird. Gleich nachdem er dies verstanden hat, wird er erschossen. Mercedes zeigt ihm gegenüber genau so wenig Mitleid wie er zuvor seiner Frau. Mercedes holt sich zurück, was der Hauptmann seiner Frau auf Kosten ihres Lebens geraubt hat. Zwar haben Mercedes und die Partisanen gesiegt, doch angesichts der vielen Verluste zeigt der Film Mercedes am Ende in einem Moment tiefer Trauer. Sie ist die erwachsene Heldin, die anders als die kindliche Protagonistin überlebt hat. Ofelia hat ihr reines Gewissen bewahrt, sich geweigert, ein unschuldiges Menschenleben zu opfern. Prinzipientreu wie der Doktor findet sie Erfüllung im Tod. Mercedes hingegen musste ein stückweit so werden wie ihr Peiniger, der Logik des Krieges folgen, die der Doktor so verachtet, auch den Tod der eigenen unschuldigen Partisanenkämpfer in Kauf nehmen, um sich die Freiheit und Gleichheit zu erkämpfen. Ihr Glauben an das Gute ist reifer und pragmatischer.

Und der Zuschauer?

Pans Labyrinth gelingt durch seine Kontrastierung von Fantasiewelt und Realität eine differenzierte Beleuchtung der Bedeutung von Fantasie für die Wirklichkeit. Ofelia ist zu jung, um den Glauben an das Gute in der Realität zum Erfolg zu führen, ihre Mutter hingegen zwar alt genug, aber zu lange der Idee von Gerechtigkeit entfremdet, um den Versuch überhaupt zu wagen. In Mercedes erfährt man als Zuschauer die Genugtuung, über das historische Böse zu siegen, doch ohne dabei den Preis der Gerechtigkeit leugnen zu können.

Und der Kampf um Gleichheit ist nach wie vor aktuell. Die Natur, die von Ofelia als Feenfantasie verklärt wird, hat uns nicht gleich gemacht. Trotzdem haben wir alle dieselben Rechte. Oder sollten sie zumindest haben. Da wir jedoch alle verschieden sind, gehen auch die Meinungen darüber, was für Rechte wir eigentlich haben, auseinander. Die Verhältnisse sind heute nicht so schwarz und weiß, wie sie im historischen Kontext des Films erscheinen. Der zwar selektiv ist, der fantastischen Realitätsflucht jedoch auch eine ganz andere Tragweite verleiht. Aber gerade im Extrem, das immer wieder auftritt, und auftritt, weil wir es zulassen, wird die Dringlichkeit der Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Frage deutlich.

Der Hauptmann und die Partisanen, angeführt von Mercedes’ Geliebten, sind nicht so verschieden. ((Tatsächlich ließen sich Parallelen zwischen fast allen Figuren aufzeigen, die Themen Flucht, Gehorsam, (Un)gleichheit schaffen hier die Schnittpunkte, anhand die Figuren sich in ihren Unterschieden und Gemeinsamkeiten charakterisieren.)) Jedoch hat der eine die Macht und der andere will sie. Der eine kämpft für Unterdrückung, der andere für Gerechtigkeit. Als Unterdrückter ist man prädestiniert, für Gerechtigkeit zu kämpfen. Oder sich unterdrücken zu lassen. Als Mächtiger hat man die Wahl, für was man kämpfen will. Als Machtloser nur die Wahl, zu kämpfen oder aufzugeben. Macht bringt die schlechten Dinge im Menschen zum Vorschein, doch gerade deswegen müssen wir unsere Machtansprüche geltend machen. Wenn wir zu viel Macht anderen überlassen, bereiten wir ihrem Missbrauch den Weg. Kein Gehorsam ohne Gewissen.

Es kann nicht jeder ein Herrscher sein, es kann nicht jeder über allen anderen thronen. Doch es ist nicht verkehrt, von Macht zu träumen und sich so ermutigt reale Ziele zu setzen. Solange wir verstehen, dass die Spielregeln in der Realität weniger simpel sind. Und dass mit Gleichheit nicht Gleichheit der Fähigkeiten gemeint ist, sondern Gleichheit der Rechte. Der Hauptmann in seinem Größenwahn ist ein schlechter Machthaber, Ofelia in ihrer kindlichen Fantasie eine machtlose Herrscherin. Mercedes hingegen ist der reale Mensch, der aus der fantastischen Idee gewachsen ist, weil sie ihre Rechte beansprucht hat.

What kind of choices are present in computer games?

There’s action choices and dialog choices. Action choices might take the form of what part of the game world to interact with and what events to trigger by doing so. Or as part of an event there could be a multiple choice menu giving a set of action descriptions from which the player can choose one. This kind of action choice is almost identical to dialog choices, which can also be viewed as a special type of action, namely speaking. By means of microphone-based voice detection or certain words and phrases being mapped to button presses like other actions are, dialog choices have the potential to take the same form of free interaction (without menus) as more standardized actions but this potential is only beginning to be realized in adventure games like Hey you, Pikachu! (1998, 2000) or raising simulations like Wonder Project J (1994).

Are choices in computer games really free? Can the choice be escaped?

Of course the player can only make meaningful choices in regards to the narrative when the writer of this narrative has foreseen that the player might want to make this choice or planned to allow the player to make it. Thus the freedom is necessarily limited by what is feasible in including in the narrative without making production time and man power explode. It is further limited by what the game creator wants to allow to the player.

Also, if the player doesn’t want to choose they could just press the button to confirm whatever choice is preselected. Devil Survivor (2008) by Atlus is a rare case of a game that avoids this by not preselecting any option at all. The player has to press a direction button first before an option becomes selected and thus confirmable and the player can enter the ordered list from top or bottom, so the order doesn’t favor either one option by making it more quickly selectable than all others.

Initiating the predetermined ((Section added 22.01.2011))

As mentioned above, apart from forced choices that take the form of menus where a selection has to be made to go back to the uninterrupted gameplay there’s also choices in free interaction screens, what parts of the game world to interact with and when. This can be treasures to be procured or information gained by talking to NPCs or observing certain parts of the world. In terms of dialog a considerable amount of in-game text is acquired this way, the player has to seek out the people who can tell them what they need to know about the setting of the narrative. Some of these interactions are necessary to progress in the game but many of them are optional and only enhance the gameplay experience. The player is in this way free to dictate pace and level of detail of the narrative to some degree.

In-game dialog is largely predetermined and little of it dynamically changing with players’ choices. The options the player has are often reduced to who and when to talk to, but even here there is room to create better player involvement. In early games talking to a NPC would always result in the same text said over and over again. If the narrative progressed beyond a certain point dialog for this NPC might also change but at any one point in the game conversation would be severely limited. This is not a problem per se, in the same way as a reader of a novel is allowed to browse back to a previous page and reread dialog or a movie viewer to rewind and rewatch a scene, this makes sure the player can ask for crucial information again they might have missed the first time.

But by splitting long dialog parts into several smaller bits where the player has to repeatedly talk to a NPC to get all the information, sympathy and interest towards a certain NPC can be expressed, creating another layer of choice. In recent games most NPCs have several things to say and the player will get new dialog at least for three or so tries, the actual amount varying by game and character. To get all out of a NPC the player actively has to initiate conversation again and again, and although they can’t control what to say themselves ((Most of the time the protagonist is mute (see Playing the role: Defined characters versus blank slate avatars) in this kind of conversation, regardless of his status in other situations.)) the choice how often to initiate conversation is meaningful.

Prince of Persia (2009) is an example where this choice of when and how much to talk is utilized very effectively. There’s only one character to talk to but since she is always by the protagonist’s side dialog can be initiated almost anytime, by pressing a dedicated button and without interrupting the action game play. While dialog text is displayed and voice overs are heard the player can go on interacting with and advancing in the game world. Dialog depends on the surroundings, is informative in regards of the game world but also characterizes the two characters having the conversation. Both length of dialog bits and their amount is high, giving interested players lots to listen to but without forcing them to do so. It’s an unintrusive way of mixing text and action.

The opposite example would be when a NPC conversation is unexpectedly long, interrupting the game flow until it’s over. Sometimes this kind of NPC (like Maechen in Final Fantasy X) might warn the player that their tale is a long one and ask them if they really want to hear it. It might be so long that the NPC will ask the player midway through if they should go on with their tale. The choice is the same as in the above cases, is the player patient and interested enough to listen to everything. But the way the choice is accentuated is different. In the above cases the player actively has to keep the conversation going, in this case they have to actively decide to turn it down or stop it.

How is the narrative affected by these choices?

Some choices only flag minor events, changing small details in an otherwise fixed narrative. In this case the non-linearity, i. e. the branching paths, are short lived, keeping the overall plot manageable for the writer. Other choices more immediately and drastically affect story development, with longer chains of events only available depending on what choices the player makes. Structurally this distinction is purely based on quantity or length and amount of branching paths. But for the player to experience the non-linearity as freedom high amounts and longer deviations are preferable. They are also what makes the plot increasingly harder to manage in terms of consistency. Traditional narrative concepts as derived from other media and playful freedom are thus two opposing poles in governing what form the game narrative should take.

Giving the player moral choices

One of the first systematical approaches to shape and guide player choice dates back to even before computer games. Dungeons & Dragons, the first pen and paper role-playing game, used a two axis moral alignment system to define how the character the player creates should act when faced with moral choices in the narrative conceived by the group of game master (the main narrator) and role players (the narrators or actors of one individual character in the story). One axis reflected the notion of good and evil, the other of lawfully governed order or random chaos. D&D already acknowledged that the ideas of good and evil were dependent on the society in which the character lived and the second axis reflected concepts like duty/reliability opposed to whim/fancy. A lawfully evil character would maraud and abuse without fail, whereas a chaotically good character might save the damsel in distress only if he was in the mood for it.

In computer games both this alignment system and the idea of moral choice were adapted, many recent Western games like Fable stress the freedom to play an either good or evil character, however in many cases little affecting the core narrative. This is actually true of older Japanese examples like Shin Megami Tensei as well which uses an law-chaos moral alignment axis. But when moral choice is given to the player another question arises. Are these choices judged, meaning that the game encourages one choice over the other, maybe even penalizing the opposite one?

An example for a judged moral choice

In Zelda: Link’s Awakening (1993) for Gameboy instead of using a menu to select what to buy in the local shop players can pick up goods and carry them to the cashier to select them for purchase. If the player tries to carry it straight to the door and leave without paying the shop owner will scold them and disallow leaving. But the shop owner randomly looks the other way creating the opportunity to leave without paying. The creator actively leaves room for the player to decide to steal and also does this by utilizing standardized actions like item pick up and walking, making it feel much more intuitive and player initiated than a menu option which more explicitly alarms the player to both possibility and importance of the choice. In fact this is a brilliant inclusion of moral choice in game play.

It is also heavily judgmental, since on return to the shop the player will be killed by the shop owner (which in terms of the game’s rules is less gruesome than it sounds because the player has unlimited lives) and branded Thief which substitutes the name they inputted at the beginning. The player will then be reminded by every non-player character (or NPC for short) addressing him by his (now changed) name of his action and also denied the perfect play-through and its ending available to players who beat the game without dying. The choice is thus an example for a small scale alteration of the narrative affecting only some details, although sticking out by being so over the top.

And although it is judgmental the fact that this option is even there in a game appealing to all age groups including children is a refreshing taste of Eden’s apple in the most effective way this kind of experience can be created in games. Stealing is also an action that’s hard to escape consensus on its moral status, no matter what society. Although the penalty considered appropriate will vary. In the case of the Zelda Gameboy title the penalty happens to be the most drastic one imaginable.

The moral dilemma

In Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (1995) for Super Famicom the player has to make choices in a war situation, fighting for the freedom of his ethnic group. When the populace of a village enslaved by the leading ethnic group is freed but unwilling to go to battle to fight for their ethnicity’s cause, the leader of the army the player’s character is a member of commands him to kill all villagers and blame the other side, as to better persuade other civilians to make the “right” choice in the future, the right one being the one favored by the leaders of their army.

Depending on if the player carries out this order or opposes it they choose one of two very long branching paths, heavily affecting two out of four chapters in the game narrative. The law path, where the player followed this order, determines both next chapters, the chaos path initiated by opposing the order allows for another branching changing the alignment to neutral. While common moral notions would seem to judge the law path as evil and the chaos one as good the dialog reflects that utilitarian and political interpretations, in other words adult considerations, justify this path. The chaotic player on the other hand, while having a clear conscious, is considered childish and unable to join the grown ups in their ability to make the “right” decisions.

Again, the choice and its consequences are extreme, but the empowering sense of freedom is also very evident for exactly this reason, affirming or shaking the moral ideas the player might have had before.

Playing the role: Defined characters versus blank slate avatars

Most choices in games are not really moral ones though and some are even considered right or wrong in a non-moral sense. ((In Computer Games have Words, Too: Dialogue Conventions in Final Fantasy VII Greg M. Smith assesses game text by comparing it to previous text narrative media, where he naturally has to deal with the opposing poles of linear narrative and playful freedom mentioned above. Unfortunately he misses many peculiarities of the new narrative medium, too quickly applying concepts that don’t quite fit his subject. The points he raises on character moral alignment hold true when he discusses the characters other than the protagonist because they match the conventions he is used to from film, but when he discusses the multiple choice options he doesn’t seem to notice that the examples he gives aren’t actually moral choices, which are in fact mostly absent from the game he discusses. He writes:

One significant way that this moral evaluation differs between games and film is that we occasionally have options to choose conversational responses in Final Fantasy VII. By choosing to deny vehemently a romantic attraction to Tifa (the “no way” response), we take a different kind of ownership of the character’s moral stance. If we are allied with a film character who then does an action we morally disapprove of, we can more easily detach ourselves from this allegiance. After all, the character has made the choice, not us. But when we choose for Cloud to behave gallantly or badly, we are complicit in a more complicated involvement. Final Fantasy VII does not allow totally free choice in these “interactive” dialogue situations.

If the player has romantic feelings for Tifa they want to reflect in their choices or decide to either admit or deny something for their player character isn’t a moral decision in any way. There can’t be moral consensus on what individual to have feelings for. So it escapes the notion of morality altogether. Regarding decisions on how to make Cloud behave, again this is etiquette rather than morals and the significance of these choices lies in shaping relationships, more on which I write in section Relationships between characters.)) In Final Fantasy VI (1994) a girl named Terra was controlled by an evil empire to carry out their orders using her magical talent. Freed from the slave crown controlling her she is helped by a group of people who are members of the Returners and oppose the evil empire. Terra is characterized as scared and feeling guilty over using her magic for evil. When she and her new found friends reach the base of the Returners they ask for her help in fighting the evil empire. The player is given the choice to either answer their request or politely turn it down.

This seems like one of the many non-choices present in games where only one will really advance the game plot and the player has to come back to it to make the “correct” choice this time. But in fact this choice can only be made once, and by the game’s evaluation turning down the request is even the better option, rewarding the player with some extra items to procure from Returner members trying to still convince her and new dialog by each of them expressing their understanding for her reluctance to join their fight. In fact, by interpreting Terra’s motives correctly the player can make a decision that better fits with her character as established by previous events. ((So instead of making a moral decision (if it were a moral one then joining the Returners should always beat remaining passive) the player has to stay consistent with the story, another aspect Smith correctly identifies when dealing with FFVI‘s sequel but incorrectly applies. He writes:

Often it offers two separate possible responses, only one of which is truly enticing or plausible. When given the choice of making sweet feminine Aeris a flower seller or the town drunk, only one choice maintains any kind of narrative consistency.

In fact, the choice being present (though inconsequential) hints at Cloud’s memory being fuzzy, foreshadowing a majot plot detail, Cloud being amnesiac and impersonating his dead friend without even being aware of it. The player doesn’t notice it yet but whatever they choose it will end up being consistent with the narrative.

Smith also talks about non-choices that make the player drop out of the narrative, but ironically in this case to stay consistent they have to make the decision that is easily mistaken for a non-choice or drop out. The examples of drop outs Smith gives are from a different game but also in fact viable choices. He writes:

Frequently we are given a choice between doing something that advances the plot or doing nothing (“No thanks,” “I don’t care”), providing the appearance of choice while allowing the game to continue its story arc. To make such a “non-choice” is to drop outside the game.

Again, Smith seems to be too quick to assume that a bias formed in encountering previous games will apply in his examples as well. Although he previously acknowledges how protagonist Cloud is characterized in the game, being a non-caring mercenary, he dismisses this choices as drop outs even though they allow the player to act the role staying true to previous characterization. This is where the notion of consistency, which he me misused earlier, actually applies. The “non-drop out” choices would be the player trying to change Cloud’s previously established characteristics, a process that will be advanced by the plot even if the player doesn’t take these earlier chances to advance it. He goes on stating this about decision making in games:

Final Fantasy VII loads the dice to induce us to make the right choice. We inhabit the characters’ behavior more fully partly because we choose that behavior, even when that choice is rigged. One of the many ideas implicit in the concept of “interactivity” is this more complex notion of moral judgment that is no longer as externalizable as it is in film.

I very much agree with Smith stating that judgment isn’t as externalizable anymore as it is in film, but as I pointed out above not all or even most of this judgment is of the moral kind. Instead the notion of the “right” decision refers to consistency, if the player is supposed to act out a defined character, or to what the player feels to be the right choice in developing their player character, if they have the opportunity to shape the character.

Also the choices aren’t rigged as they do affect the narrative or illuminate details of it, a fact Smith ignores completely. )) She does join them afterwards anyway, and the players taking the more obvious but misleading choice miss a part of the narrative that actually makes sense in the context of the story.

There’s really two approaches to role playing, either acting the role given to the player or the player being able to define their role themselves. The latter approach is hampered by the difficulty in granting the player enough freedom to really do this. The easiest way to somehow pull it off is to characterize the player character as little as possible and not involve him in the details of the story too much, leaving the actual characterization to the player’s imagination. In most cases such a player character will have no dialog at all and is referred to as a mute hero for that reason. Player freedom is pushed out of the scope of game play and into their imagination in this case, similar to linear narratives, like reader imposed characteristics on a character in a book for example.

Even if the hero is not mute, this type is very different from a strongly defined character like Terra, where the player has to act her role. Cloud in Final Fantasy VII (1997) is a mixture of defined and mute character and by giving him frequent dialog choices the player can bring some of their own personality to the narrative.

Relationships between characters

Most decisions in Final Fantasy VII lead up to a dating event and they involve distribution of information (being openly sincere or holding back information), trying to impress or alienate others, in general how to interact with fellow party members. This raises or lowers sympathy for Cloud in these fellow party members and determines who he will go out on a date with later. ((See Fergusson, FF7 ‘date’ mechanics, 1999~2009. )) In other games like the Star Ocean series (first game released in 1996) it might affect how well the characters interact in battle and allow for useful actions triggered by strong emotional reactions based on deep relationships.  Or simply open up or block paths to certain events, the most extreme being who to marry and have a child with, which will become the next player character, something first tried out in Phantasy Star III (1990). As opposed to the above example with Terra all options are equally valid since the rude choices fit his previous characterization but deviating from his rudeness can always be interpreted as affection for a certain character or more generally speaking growing into a more caring individual, thus allowing for player controlled character development inside the boundary of the fixed broader narrative which after the dating event cannot really be altered anymore, only parts of it missed.

This again is an example of small scale freedom by giving a high amount of very short branching paths. The earlier Shin Megami Tensei and Star Ocean games also follow this pattern of letting the player shape minor details, which add up to one big event with multiple versions, but instead of midway through the game as in FFVII‘s dating event this event is the final one, the ending. SMT uses it to show how the player’s alignment changes the world he helped rebuild, Star Ocean shows how character relationships end up depending on the player’s behavior during the game. ((See Welch, Ending/Relationships FAQ, and Feral, Star Ocean 2nd Story ending compendium, both 1999.))

Bad or premature endings

One way of giving the player freedom without convoluting the narrative are dead ends. The player can frequently make decisions but one is clearly wrong, resulting in an undesirable ending. The player then has to go back to before this decision and take the “correct” path this time to go on with the canonical narrative. Not all of these premature endings are disappointing or straight out bad, in Chrono Trigger the game can be beat early at any time in the narrative, with the resulting ending focusing on the events the player was experiencing right before they beat the game, often hinting at the events that would have followed if they hadn’t prematurely ended the game. ((See Pringle, Chrono Trigger Endings, 2007~2009))

Also, inside of the big narrative there are many little narratives dealing with a specific character. If that character is allowed to die by the rules of the game, their part of the narrative will also end prematurely and all of their personal story will be missed in the rest of the game. This is only the case for certain characters in most games ((Cid and Shadow in FFVI being prime examples. Shadow can be saved if the player decides to wait for their ally in face of great danger, Cid can be saved by feeding him with healthy fish when he’s lying on his sick bed. If the player fails to take these chances they will die, complete with dramatic scenes reflecting their loss. )) but in many strategy RPGs like the above mentioned Tactics Ogre any character but the one representing the player can die without ending the game as a whole. ((The Fire Emblem series, which started this genre of strategy RPGs, is also the one most representative of this mortal game characters concept. In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of Holy-War the series also incorporated the opposite concept of lovers having children. Like in the above mentioned Phantasy Star III (1990) and after it also in Dragon Quest V (1992) characters in this FE game could fall in love and have children, only this time it wasn’t limited to just the main character anymore. ))

Dynamically shaping the narrative

Little choices adding up later are the most frequent type and there’s also fake-choices that don’t affect anything and only draw the player’s attention to their own behavior but the most powerful ones are still those that have immediate and lasting consequences, like the ones in the above mentioned Tactics Ogre. This game relies heavily on explicit menu choices that are less frequent in number and less intuitive than free input actions which the player doesn’t even notice they are choices at first, but TO manages to also include little choices into the equation by basing alignment and sympathy towards the player character also on battle performance. Basically each time a character is killed or saved from death this adds up and affects the ending, ((See the section dealing with the chaos frame in TO at the end of this article over at http://luct.tacticsogre.com/.)) as in some other games mentioned above. But even though these are small scale details because of the subject matter (death) and the increasing difficulty having to fight without a potentially valuable ally they have a more lasting effect than other small scale choices, because they are more strongly interwoven into game play, linking it more strongly to the narrative. Player triggered dialog by choice of party members gets a lot of variation out of the seemingly formalized game play.

A good balance of small scale and large scale choices, appropriate usage of obvious menu options and naturally played out action events and a complex statistical evaluation of alignment and relationships between characters, as well as linking game play and player strength to events in the narrative, with each one of these techniques utilized further layers of free narration are brought to the game. When skillfully applied and combined they can even enhance the narrative rather than hinder its natural development.

10: Das Kampfsystem sieht auf den ersten Blick kompliziert aus, ist aber tatsächlich selbst für Gelegenheitsspieler leicht zugänglich. Und es bietet dennoch viel strategischen Tiefgang. Alle Figuren sind ziemlich geschwätzig und so kommt die rechte Stimmung auf, mit Gefährten gemeinsam ein Abenteuer zu bestreiten. Da man die Farben der Ausrüstung ändern und viele Accessoires tragen kann, kommt auch die modische Seite nicht zu kurz, was ebenfalls für Laune sorgt.

10: Den Machern ist ein RPG gelungen, das Spieltiefe und komplexe Strategien bietet und dennoch einfach zu spielen ist. Dank vorteilhaften Einflussmöglichkeiten wie “Gathering” und “Wind” suchen die Kämpfe ihresgleichen. Daumen hoch für die anschaulich illustrierten Tutorials. Die Figuren sind ständig am Reden und man baut so zu seinen Gefährten eine enge Beziehung auf, was mir gut gefallen hat.

9: Die Kampfaktionen wie Gathering und der Magiekreis sind abwechslungreich und unterhaltsam. Dank erklärender Filme ist alles sehr zugänglich. Mit entsprechendem Geschick gibt es findige Stratgien zu entdecken, mit der die Endgegner leicht zu besiegen sind. Die Story ist orthodox, aber dank der dramatischen Ereignisse will man stets wissen, wie es weitergeht. Auch der Soundtrack weiß an entscheidenden Stellen zu beeindrucken.

9: Ein orthodoxes RPG, das dennoch spaßige Action und strategischen Tiefgang eines Taktikspiels vereint, das macht die Kämpfe erfrischend neuartig. Nach und nach eröffnen sich dem Spieler immer mehr kreative Möglichkeiten wie das Anlocken von Gegnern mit Gathering oder das Ausweiten der Wirksamkeit von magischen Effekten. Was mir auch gefallen hat, war die frei wählbare Perspektive an vielen Orten in Städten und Dungeons, die man so sehr schön erforschen konnte.

Quelle: http://jpgames-forum.de/final-fantasy-future-de-foren/news-rund-um-japanische-videospiele/10757-the-last-story-famitsu-artikel-und-wertung/

Basically you control a magnet, rotate it, move it around, and if you’re playing on Wii also in and out of the screen. Blue attracts red and the other way around. If two balls of the same color touch, one changes its color. Your magnet balls never change so you can use them to color the free moving balls.

Each round you’re given a target to be met within the time limit. Color enough balls correctly and score points. With each round the time limit grows shorter and the points you get increase.

Click to play!

Zelda 1 (1986)

Around the time fantasy RPGs became popular on Nintendo’s console Famicom (or NES as it is called outside Japan) Nintendo developed their own take on the medieval sword wielding hero called The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Fantasy. The story, simple as it may seem, was a straight port of the Mario myth into the new setting, a male placeholder fighting a villain to free a damsel in distress. The Zelda from the title was another princess to be only seen after the hero conquers a number of levels (or dungeons as they are called in fantasy games). Yet the Mario games always had their hero’s name in their title whereas in The Legend of Zelda it’s the kidnapped woman who represents the series in name, even in those sequels were she isn’t even part of the game’s narrative.

Zelda 2 (1987)

The only Zelda game that has the hero Link’s name in it was the first sequel, The Adventure of Link, which is also the black sheep in the series, an excellent game in it’s own right but not sharing most of the typical Zelda play mechanics to which the series returned for all further sequels. In this second Zelda game the player gets to see the princess from the very beginning but like Sleeping Beauty she fell into an eternal slumber remaining passive until Link seals away the evil left behind by his archenemy Ganon. In the previous game Link defeated Ganon but Ganon’s followers threaten to revive their lord by means of a blood sacrifice of his slayer Link. Link has to fight a phantom version of himself to make the seal complete, a metaphor hinting at the threat of Ganon’s revival referring to the possibility of Link becoming the next villain.

It must be noted that even at his oldest each Link of each Zelda game is a youth at most, Zelda always around the same age as the hero and Ganondorf, Ganon’s human form, always a grown up. His monstrous form Ganon, a horned boar, which in some installments is the only one to make a showing is always considerably larger than Link, keeping with the small versus big, child versus grown up antagonism.

Zelda 3 (1991)

The next The Legend of Zelda only came out on Nintendo’s second generation of game hardware, on the Super Famicom. It was called the Triforce of the Gods ((For the localized version Nintendo of America came up with a pun to sneak Link’s name into the title, calling it A Link to the Past)) (A Link to the Past outside Japan) and remakes the original Zelda vision on a grander scale, also introducing more complex interaction with both non-player characters (NPCs) in towns as you commonly find them in RPGs and the inanimate surroundings which stressed its action play mechanics. The player controlled hero gets to meet an awake and talking Zelda right at the beginning of the game, before her eventual final kidnapping, but she keeps on informing him telepathically about the state of the game world and his play objectives. She still is a woman who needs to be rescued but she already provides the hero with the wisdom he needs to take the actions necessary to beat the game. For the first time she is a partner instead of just a prize to look forward to.

Zelda 4 (1993)

The Legend for Zelda on Gameboy, Nintendo’s low tech but cheap and children friendly handheld, marked the first entry into the series to paradoxically not actually have Zelda in the game but there were more to follow. It’s more experimental both in gameplay and narrative than the usual Zelda games but still remains true to the core mechanics introduced in Zelda 1 and 3. In the Dream Island ((Yume wo miru shima can both mean The Dreaming Island or The Dreamt About Island, NoA avoided this ambiguity by coining the rather clever title Link’s Awakening.)) (Link’s Awakening outside Japan) the usual hero-villain roles are put upside down, since the island Link is trapped on is just a dream, to escape he must end the dream and effectively destroy the island. The demons on the other hand who usually seek to destroy (or at least conquer) the world try to stop Link from doing what would usually be their job. ((AYASHIGE Shōtarō discusses this role reversal aspect of the game’s story in detail on his site GAMIAN (Japanese).)) Like Zelda Ganon is absent from the game world and Link is the only original Zelda character to make a showing.

But even Link isn’t really called Link, unless the player chooses this name. As opposed to the Mario games, where even in their RPG variety his name is always fixed the player could freely choose the hero’s name from the very first game. And whereas the usual Zelda cast is missing from the “story as coma” island many of the characters of the Mario universe including Mario himself are parodied in some of Zelda 4‘s NPCs. Instead of a kidnapped princess Zelda the female lead Marin, who is the the daughter of the Mario look-a-like Tarin, helps Link both with her knowledge of the island and her singing voice which awakens a walrus obstructing Link’s path. This forecloses the song Link plays at the end of the game to wake the wind fish and in effect himself from the dream he’s trapped in.

Music has played a crucial role in all Zelda games from the very beginning, Link uses instruments (most of the time a kind of flute) to magically warp from one place to another or cast other kinds of spell-like effects. But in this game it also becomes pivotal in the game’s plot which surely takes its inspiration from Nintendo’s modern day SF-RPG Mother (1989) for the earlier Famicom, in which music even becomes a weapon to defeat the final boss. Another notable innovation in Zelda 4 is helping out the NPCs by trading items with them, to advance in the story and to get a powerful bonus weapon if you complete this partially optional side quest. The Zelda games try to provide a kind of moral guidance and 4 even gives the player the choice to make Link steal from the shop owner, only to harshly penalize him if they return to the shop later.

Zelda 5 (1998)

The next Zelda game for the N64 is another title reinventing the original game, this time in 3D. For Mario, which first made the switch to this new way of creating game environments, the change was very drastic and the difference in gameplay quite radical. But with Zelda the new technology enabled Nintendo’s game designers headed by MIYAMOTO Shigeru to finally make the Zelda game they always envisioned. AONUMA Eiji joins the Zelda team around this time and will become the developer representing 3D-generation Zelda together with MIYAMOTO. Apart from the more realistic environments and the new ways to interact with them The Ocarina of Time also allows the player to play the notes on the flute themselves. Instead of just triggering preprogrammed melodies they have to learn them note by note and input them in sequence to create magical effects. ((

Music games have become one of the major genres in video game culture, utilizing all kinds of new interaction interfaces like instrument shaped controllers, dance mats and karaoke style microphones. This trend started in Japanese arcades with Konami’s music games like Guitar Freaks (1999) or Dance Dance Revolution (1998), before it was taken up by Western developers like Activision who later created Guitar Hero (2005) or SCEE (Sony Europe) who popularized home karaoke with SingStar (2004).

But even before these elaborate musical controllers games like Ocarina of Time tried to create a similar experience with tradtional controllers. It might have been influenced by NanaOn-sha’s dedicated music game Parappa the Rapper (1996) for Playstation. But a more obvious influence would be the Glory of Heracles series for Famicom and Super Famicom by Data East, which featured harp playing courses and concerts as part of its role-paying gameplay. As with Zelda 5‘s ocarina the harp was played by pressing certain buttons on the controller. ))

The more detailed graphics also raise the issue of Link’s age and appearance: in earlier pixel art representation he could be rather young or close to adulthood, it wasn’t very clear from the presentation and thus not much of a consideration to the player. But in 3D the age is quite evident and the developers had a very interesting idea to make him both a child and an almost adult youth. In Zelda 3 Link could travel in between a light and dark version of Hyrule by means of portals and a mirror. In Zelda 5 he can travel between past and future, the past being his carefree childhood and the future his early adulthood under Ganondorf’s reign.

Zelda also sets a new record of time spent in freedom, escaping Ganon until the very end and actively helping Link, disguised as a kind of male ninja knight called Sheik. Even the player doesn’t learn this before Ganondorf does and promptly captures her. To acquire complete domination of the fantasy world Hyrule, Ganondorf needs all three Triforces, each representing a virtue of the three main protagonists. Link has the Triforce of courage, Zelda the one of wisdom and Ganondorf himself the one of power. He kidnaps Zelda as a bait for Link to get all three. When Link finally confronts him and defeats his human form, he and Zelda have to flee from the castle which Ganondorf occupied. Zelda is much more active in this game, staying independent even during Ganondorf’s reign in Link’s adult world, helping Link with much more than her wisdom, but in the end she doesn’t participate in the last battle, even when Ganondorf comes back as the hellish beast Ganon.

Zelda 6 (2000)

The N64 sequel Majora’s Mask again takes Link to a world outside Hyrule, without Zelda and Ganondorf. He becomes a mask merchant, transforming into different characters and even making spiritual clones of his different guises to occupy spots that serve as step switches to open passages. In previous games Link could only activate those switches himself or put inanimate objects on them as weights to keep the switches triggered. Now the line separating inanimate and animate objects becomes blurred, although in actuality all things appearing in video games, including the characters, are really just objects given life by computer generated animation. Zelda 6 reflects this fact in aspects of the play mechanics like this one.

With Zelda missing, Link’s fairy cursor and tool tip provider introduced in Zelda 5 becomes the female lead so to speak, providing him with the wisdom and knowledge to perform the actions necessary to advance in the game. In Zelda 5 she was called Navi, like a navigator, in 6 her successor is called Tatl, who is more cheeky and less reliable than Navi. One could even go as far to call her a bit ill-spirited but she also has more character for that reason.

Ico (2001)

The next Zelda game isn’t really a Nintendo game. On Playstation 2 UEDA Fumito created his own interpretation of the Zelda myth, which really is the European medieval setting as Japanese fantasy that constitutes so many fantasy game narratives. His Zelda is called Yorda, a clever allusion to Zelda’s name. When written in Japanese syllable writing both names are made up of three characters; Zelda reads ゼルダ (ze ru da) and Yorda reads ヨルダ(yo ru da). Except for the first character the names are identical. The one character differing starts with a Z in the original name. The last letter of the alphabet and a rather rarely used one at that. UEDA’s Yorda has the initial Y which is the second to last letter and even rarer than Z. Yorda takes the Zelda myth back to its base, to the European medieval influences which is the origin of all fantasy literature.

The hero is called Ico, marking him as an iconic character rather than a real person. Like Link he is everybody, an avatar for the player in the truest sense of the word. Ico is born with horns and banished from his village at a young age. The village’s clerics lead him to the witch’s castle where he’ll be locked up. They open their way with a huge sword, a phallic key to a large room full of stone coffins and imprison Ico in one of them. Like in Zelda 5, where pulling the master sword makes Link an adult man, the phallic sword is a symbol of male adulthood, used to inseminate the castle’s womb with Ico.

When he pushes against his tomb, making it fall out of the wall where it is shelved with many more coffins, he is reborn as the child trapped in the witch’s castle. To get out of the castle he has to rescue Yorda from a cage in which she is kept like a bird. They can only progress through the castle together; Yorda needs to be protected from the shadows, who like Ico were imprisoned in the castle’s womb but mean Yorda ill, unable to escape from the witch’s castle themselves. Ico needs Yorda to pass the inanimate stone statue authorities, who will only make way if a female authority is holding the boy hero’s hand. She is his phallus ((Her authority as princess being her phallus or symbol of power.)) in the grown up world and he her phallus knight in the hero fantasy. ((I had read Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari shortly before I played Ico in 2003, also reading up on Freud in the process, making the phallic imagery all the more obvious even during my playthrough.))

But Ico also has to leave Yorda alone many times to go to places she can’t, calling her to follow him or running back to her when she’s in danger. Yorda is as passive as princesses get, yet she is along for the ride for almost the whole playtime. The player gets his prize early, but since Yorda can’t do anything herself she is reduced to being a burden. Fighting is not a big part of the game but Yorda’s presence will always lure the shadows to her and Ico frequently has to drive them away with a stick before the shadows drag her inside the black hole appearing in the castle’s floors, taking her with them back to where they came from. The shadows’ birth remains incomplete and they don’t want Yorda to escape either.

The annoying and repetitive fights interrupt the exploring and puzzle solving which are also an important part of Zelda play mechanics but Ico puts the focus almost completely on these. In Zelda battle and exploration are pretty evenly balanced, whereas in Ico there’s only one boss battle. When the witch prevents his and Yorda’s escape and takes Yorda away from him he has to find a new phallus. With the huge sword the men from his village used to open the tomb he can make the obstacle statues move himself and can take on the witch to claim Yorda and his right to leave the castle. He loses both of his horns, the first one when he fails to escape with Yorda and falls down a bridge, the second during the battle with the witch. Ico‘s developers traveled Europe and visited authentic local castles to research their setting and maybe they found out about losing one’s horns being a metaphor for coming of age, based on the German idiom, which goes back to the middle ages.

Zelda 7 (2002)

As The Legend of Zelda influenced UEDA his game also made an impression on the following Zelda sequels. The development of involving Zelda more in both narrative and action is continued in Baton of the Wind (Wind Waker outside Japan) on Gamecube, which starts Zelda’s celshading subseries. Instead of the hyperrealistic aesthetics of Ico, which tries to hide its nature as a game as best as possible, striving for maturity in style, Zelda 7 aims to look like an interactive cartoon. The boy becoming the hero of the newest legend of Zelda is first shown as a normal kid, wearing normal clothes and doing normal, non-heroic things. As an initiation into adulthood he, like all boys his age, is given the green tunic the legendary hero is said to have worn, before Hyrule was swallowed by the sea, leaving only a few islands.

He will soon have to live up to this legacy as his little sister is kidnapped by a large bird who was looking for Tetra, who is princess Zelda turned pirate. Since it’s partially Tetra’s fault she helps Link to rescue his sister, making her a valuable ally from the beginning. In her pirate role she’s emancipated completely from the etiquette of a princess and with her ship she also first enables Link to leave his island and travel the world. She still gets kidnapped eventually, she does regain her memory of being a princess, but she also joins Link in the final fight versus Ganondorf. To defeat Ganondorf, traditionally a combination of master sword and light arrows has to be utilized, usually both by the hero. In Zelda 7 Tetra equips the bow to hit Ganondorf when Link creates the necessary opening by distracting him with sword attacks.

Defeating Ganondorf doesn’t restore Hyrule though. The king of Hyrule, turned boat with a lion head, has accompanied Link on his journey from island to island, guiding him like the fairies in previous 3D-Zeldas. He explains to his princess and her boy protector that it wasn’t just Ganondorf’s fault that Hyrule was lost. It cannot and should not be restored, instead they should find their own Hyrule somewhere in the world. The game thus ends with Tetra and Link starting on a new journey to find their future.

Shadow of the Colossus (2005)

The next Zelda on Gamecube and Wii, Twilight Princess returned to the more realistic designs of the N64-installments and was inevitably compared to Ico‘s sequel Wander and the Colossi (Shadow of the Colossus outside Japan). Wander tries to revive the corpse of an adult woman fighting huge stone statues, reinterpreting the setting of Ico, where the male hero was accompanied by an alive, but psychologically empty ((

This emptyness is reflected in a comment by the witch who says Yorda is a mere empty vessel now. It also expresses itself in her passiveness and in the fact that she isn’t characterized in dialogue.

Ico and Yorda each have their own language and can’t understand what the other says. There are subtitles for the made up foreign language voice overs but only the lines spoken by Ico (and the witch) are decipherable to the player, Yorda’s lines use also made up foreign symbols.

Upon beating the game the player is given the choice to start it from the beginning, with altered puzzles. This is reminiscent of the original Legend of Zelda‘s second playthrough which also had a new overworld and dungeon-levels. In Ico‘s case this second playthrough had decipherable subtitles for Yorda as well so the language gap between Ico and Yorda, which the first playthrough conveyed to the player by keeping the meaning of Yorda’s words secret, is closed.

Female author MIYABE Miyuki was inspired to write a novel adaptation of the game in which she told the story in great detail from Yorda’s perspective, including the events that lead up to the castle becoming empty and her getting encaged. In this way MIYABE creates psychological depth for the female lead character that the male developed game lacked. )) woman who allowed him to peacefully pass the authority statues. In the sequel Wander’s anger of a woman’s death makes him take on much fiercer versions of these authorities and he defeats all of them, reviving the woman and becoming a baby again himself, taken care of by the woman. Wander’s actions are reactionary, reverting him to a new born. The woman either dead, or alive and a mother figure.

Zelda 8 (2006)

Link riding his steed Epona in Twilight Princess reminded a lot of people of Wander riding on his horse Agro, as did some of the architecture, but in actuality UEDA was inspired by Nintendo in the first place, Epona making her first appearance in Zelda 5 for N64. The Twilight Princess is also an original character, serving as a second female lead even eclipsing Zelda, very active and powerful, she is the newest walking in-game tutorial accompanying Link, following the fairies Navi and Tatl and the lion head king boat of previous 3D-Zeldas. And she is even deeper as a character than her predecessors. Gameplaywise she doesn’t act as a supporting partner as Tetra did in Zelda 7 but this concept of cooperative single player is further developed in the celshading sequels of Zelda 7 on Nintendo DS.

Zelda 9 (2007)

The Phantom Hourglass continues where Wind Waker left off, Tetra and Link are on their journey to find their new home. The game isn’t about them finding it though, Tetra gets turned to stone right at the beginning taking her completely out of the action for most of the game. Instead Link again has to save the princess. But this time with completely new controls. The pen is mightier than the sword, as they say and in Phantom Hourglass the touchpen is your sword. In story heavy games the player spends a lot of time reading but writing was hard to incorporate into gameplay before the DS. You still only scribble a few notes on the map, mark spots and draw symbols, but this Zelda takes the first step into new gameplay fields that more actively involve the player in the game world, having them interact in new ways and broadening the definition of what games can be.

Zelda 10 (2009)

The stone statues as authorities are reinterpreted in Phantom Hourglass as phantom guardians who Link has to sneak around in stealth gameplay, another Zelda play mechanic developed since Zelda 3. ((

The knight enemies in Zelda 3 didn’t just move around randomly (like most previous enemies) or outright hunt Link but walked along certain paths. If Link entered their field of vision they would start hunting and attacking him. The general idea must have been inspired by Konami’s Metal Gear (1987) for MSX which put more emphasis on avoiding enemies instead of just fighting every one of them.

The stealth gameplay became more defined in Zelda 5 where failing to avoid guards in certain areas would result in Link getting thrown out of the area and be forced to start over. In these areas Link cannot advance by fighting. The same kind of gameplay is also found in Glory of Heracles III (1992) for Super Famicom, which seems to have inspired both the ocarina playing (see the above footnote about music games) and stealth elements in Zelda 5.)) He cannot defeat the phantoms until the very end when he acquires a sword strong enough, if they spot him it will usually end in him getting caught and having to start the floor over. In the sequel and third toon Zelda, Whistle of the Earth (Spirit Tracks outside Japan), Zelda is turned non-corporal spirit and can take over the body ((This is reminiscent of Glory of Heracles IV (1994) which also had protagonists robbed of their bodies who only could physically participate in the game world by taking over other people’s bodies.)) of a weakened phantom to become a mighty ally for Link. The player then controls both their avatar Link and his partner Zelda turned phantom knight, who they can direct along paths they draw, making her interact with the objects and enemies on her way. This makes for some of the most intuitive and deep multiple player character gameplay available today. ((Drawing paths for objects like Link’s boomerang which they followed was utilized in Phantom Hourglass already but Winning Eleven Play Maker 2008 by Konami on Wii first applied this method on multiple player characters, in this case a soccer team. Spirit Tracks was released after this soccer game but the general idea was already introduced in its prequel.))

The Hyrule Tetra and Link must have discovered after Phantom Hourglass is the most modern yet, with magical steam trains substituting the boats from the two predecessors. Traveling the sea was much cause for criticism in Wind Waker, since it took too much time and there wasn’t enough to do to keep the player occupied. In Phantom Hourglass traveling is sped up by the touch controlled path drawing, and the game gives the player more things to interact with and take care off until they reach their destination. In Spirit Tracks the paths the player can draw for the train can of course only follow the tracks that are already there but since the enemy trains also run on the same tracks the player constantly has to plan ahead when to change their course. This is made easier by the fact that the player can change track switches at any time and go other ways than what they drew, the drawn path being simply a preselection of switches that can still spontaneously be altered.

One cannot deny the almost religious character of the Zelda series’ mythology. The spirit tracks provided by divine creation, they’re predetermined paths chosen by very high authorities, putting the player on rails and allowing them only little choice of their own. But this choice still makes all the difference in performance, how much Link travels, where he travels, what he does on his way, it’s completely up to the player. They can rush through the narrative or look for side quests, take the short cuts or go for lazy strolls, follow the rules or only obey them as not to anger their passengers, when they transport one.

Having a fantasy setting with modern elements like these must have seemed ridiculous too many purists but Spirit Tracks tries to give kids an alternative fantasy to the sword wielding ones. It’s a bit of a running gag in the game that instead of a kenshi (swordsman) Link becomes a kikanshi (locomotive driver). Although the words sound similar in Japanese, one must seem decidedly cooler than the other to most players. By turning trains into a divine institution it’s as if the shin in the Japanese bullet train shinkansen, which actually just means new (train line), is associated with the word god ((For another example of this homophone based wordplay see my article on Megami Tensei.)), which is also pronounced shin. Suddenly modern technology is elevated to the same mythical level as the idea of the swordsman, which almost only exists in fantasy anymore. This fantasy isn’t losing sight of reality though; at the end Zelda asks Link what he wants to become after their adventure is over and the player is free to choose either kenshi or kikanshi.

Spirit Tracks is also the story of Princess Zelda losing her body to a demonic chancellor who utilizes her divine powers to summon a fiend that would consume all of Hyrule. When she gets her body back at the end she again equips herself with the bow and light arrows and joins Link in his battle with the last boss, as she did in the first toon Zelda. But this time the player can freely position her and make her shoot at the unprotected backside of the fiend Link has to distract with his sword blows. Wind Waker used scripted action choreographies triggered by good timed sword blows, which was very visually appealing but less interactive than previous Zelda battles. Spirit Tracks manages to make this already great battle even more interesting by allowing the player to control both Zelda and Link at the same time and making the battle fully interactive.

I first wrote this analysis of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles in March 2004 for a seminar on literary theories but the original intent to write it was born during my earlier stay in Kyoto the year before. During that exchange year I started to understand a lot about the themes present in popular literature and it was also when I wrote my original interpretation of Final Fantasy X which I later reworked for publication on this site (German).

I had rented the movie adaption of Queen of the Damned despite the bad reviews and it turned out every bit as bad as its reputation but I nevertheless wanted to form my own opinion on it so I watched it anyway. It was still very much worth watching because when I thought about what was missing from the movie I really began to understand the actual depth of the original novel. The way Akasha is defeated, instinct ripping off ratio’s head, discovering this symbolism was the real starting point for this analysis.

The paper originally was titled “A Lacanian Approach to The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice” and was supposed to be an application of Lacan’s theories to an actual piece of literature. I had read up a bit on C. G. Jung for my FFX analysis and wasn’t really much of a fan of Freud. But although Lacan is Freudian I found some common ideas with Jung in his text which gave me further grounds to showcase the psychoanalytical approach already evident in Rice’s book. Basically I’m just spelling out what is said in the quotations already, using Lacan’s lingo.

This version is more strongly modified than my later Ghost Dog analysis and I didn’t stop at implementing the corrections by my lecturer Andrea Lutz but also tried to explore the meta-novel aspects of the Vampire Chronicles, as suggested by her. I added a short summary of Lacan’s ideas as well which took some rereading of his text “The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious”. This is also why this article took so long to be ready for publication on this site, with Ghost Dog I could basically copy and paste the paper I had handed in years ago only making minor corrections.

I also want to note that in one of the seminars I took following writing this paper I had the pleasure to meet four different students named Claudia all taking the same seminar. Claudia is by no means a rare name but this still was a curious coincidence considering the role of the character of the same name from Rice’s novel.

Riddel in the Forest

While Rice has given up on her vampire novels, thanks to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Joss Whedon and the more recent Twilight by Stephenie Meyer vampires continue to be a mainstay in popular culture and they have a similar importance in Japanese comics and games as well, which of course is my focus on this site. In fact there is a shōjo manga by HAGIO Moto with a similar constellation of two male vampires raising a girl in one of its episodes. The Poe Family (Pō no ichizoku) by HAGIO predates Interview with the Vampire by a few years but Rice’s original short story was still some years earlier than the episode with the vampires’ adoptive daughter in HAGIO’s manga. ((Serialization of The Poe Family started in March 1972 and ended in June 1976. The episode Rideru: Mori no naka was published in April 1975. Rice started work on her novel Interview with the Vampire in 1973 and it was published in 1976.)) It would be far-fetched to assume that they influenced each other given the temporal and language barriers but maybe they share a common influence that made them both write about male vampire couples raising a girl.

It’s interesting to note that in the Japanese variant of this story it’s the male vampires that are condemned to stay children forever and watch their adopted daughter grow older and older. In Rice’s story the adopted daughter is also turned vampire and thus denied her coming of age which her male parents had already passed when they quit the life of the living.

Today’s vampire literature still shows strong traces of Rice’s and HAGIO’s earlier works which is why I decided to juxtapose my analysis with some clips from Buffy and other recent vampire stories for this republication. They’re not directly related to each other but there are common underlying themes, some of which also contributed to this analysis. I was watching the end of Buffy season 6 specifically during my stay in Kyoto.

Lacan’s contribution to psychoanalysis

Vampire Diaries

Before Lacan the unconscious was thought to be chaotic, primordial, instinctual and, most importantly, pre-verbal by orthodox Freudians ((Barry 1996: 79.)) but Lacan introduced the idea that the unconscious itself is structured like a language. Which makes linguistics a viable tool to analyze the unconscious as it manifests itself in language. C. G. Jung had already analyzed the dreams of his patients using an approach not unlike the one taken in literature studies to interpret the psychological traits of characters in fiction and in The Queen of the Damned Rice illustrates this connection between these two fields of analysis.

Lacans addition to previous forms of psychoanalysis that drew on literature studies is the linguistic approach applying Saussure’s association of signifier and signified to the unconscious. Here any one signified can also become a signifier itself, both on its own as well as in combination with other signifieds. Same as simple letters combine to form complex words, each word (or rather the concept represented by it) itself can in turn become a new letter, i.e. a symbol for something else not previously signified by it. In this way signifier and signified form endless chains of associative meanings.

To characterize the nature of these symbols Lacan borrows the distinction between the terms metonomy and metaphor ((Note that all terms based on Lacan’s theories are in italics throughout the paper.)) established by linguist Roman Jacobson but Lacan further associates them with Freud’s ideas of displacement and condensation, the former being an expression of a desire and the latter being a symptom. ((Barry 1996: 80.))

1. A Death in the Family – The Immortal Vampire

Lie to me

In the original Interview with the Vampire, the main character and narrator Louis feels guilty for the suicide of his younger brother. ((In the film version, also written by Anne Rice, the suicide of the brother is substituted with a wife dying at child-birth. This was probably changed in an effort to streamline the lengthy sub-plot about the brother being a would be saint, who had visions Louis just could not believe in. Note that Louis is not married in the book.))He develops a death wish himself in the process, which is granted by the vampire Lestat. But Lestat does not really end his life, and instead turns him into a vampire, a monstrous abomination, which has to kill to survive, and never dies itself. If not taken literally, this monstrous state can be seen to reflect Louis’ self-image. He has an inferiority complex towards his brother, who was highly religious, to the point the more worldly Louis could only interpret this as madness. ((The fact that the brother is kind of an visionary and a mad man actually hints at Rice’s mother being a probable model: “She was a bit of a Bohemian, a bit of mad woman, a bit of a genius, and a great deal of a great teacher.”, Article on Anne Rice at Merriam-Webster.)) Unable to fulfill the role of protecting his younger brother he let him die a meaningless death and as a result loses his own purpose in life. Now as an immortal Louis outlives people younger than himself, like he outlived his brother. ((The situation is much the same in the film version. Louis is likely to feel inferior to his wife, who fulfilled her role by giving birth. He fails as a protector, and outlives his wife and child.)) The victims of his ever repeating nightly killings echo the death of his brother, which he also feels responsible for.

For Louis immortality is very much a curse, but the situation is quite different with Lestat ((Lestat’s story is told in the second book of the vampire chronicles, The Vampire Lestat, Rice 1985.)). Lestat never decided to become a vampire, he had a promising future as a human when he was kidnapped and turned into a vampire against his will. Therefore he does not feel guilty for what he is, and embraces his role as a symbol of evil. While he cannot continue the life of a human, and is in a way robbed of his human family, he defies the dividing order of life and death, and turns his living mother, Gabrielle, into an undead vampire. The lost son is thus reunited with his mother in death. Death meaning dead to human society, emancipated from its rules.

Finally, in The Queen of the Damned we have the human, Jesse, and her Aunt Maharet, who is a vampire. Jesse is the youngest generation of the Great Family, whose history stretches back to Old Egypt, 6000 years ago. Maharet is actually the first generation of the Great Family, and has watched over the family and its lineage since the beginning. She does not interfere with the human affairs of the family though, and since she hides her vampire identity from the younger generations is to them immortal only in name:

Before Maharet, there had been her mother, now called Old Maharet, and before that Great-aunt Maharet and so forth and so on as long as anybody could remember. “There will always be a Maharet” was an old family saying, rattled off in Italian as easily as in German or Russian or Yiddish or Greek. That is, a single female descendant in each generation would take the name and the record-keeping obligations, or so it seemed, anyhow, for no one save Maharet herself really knew those details.(Rice 1988: 147/148.)

This reflects the traditional notion of immortality, becoming immortal in name, one’s lifework and family tree. Maharet is immortal, because there is Jesse, who remembers her name, and continues both her lineage and her legacy. Maharet is not only considered dead, but also acts her part, by not meddling with the affairs of the living. It is the supposed natural order, the old dying before the young. This is turned upside down in the case of Louis, where immortality is an allegory for the prolonged life of oneself when somebody else has died. Finally in the case of Lestat and Gabrielle we have true immortality as a supernatural phenomenon, which we only find in fiction, and remains wishful thinking in the real world. Some religions however, most prominently Christianity, promise immortality in a non-corporal afterlife, and immortality as vampires can be seen as a twisted variation of this Christian idea, as is hinted at by numerous comparisons in the novel:

How many times had Khayman seen such a gesture between immortals, the young one verifying for himself the texture and hardness of the elder’s flesh. Hadn’t some Christian saint slipped his hand in Christ’s wounds because the sight of them had not been sufficient? (Rice 1988: 212)

And Lestat was Christ on the cathedral cross. How describe his overwhelming and irrational authority? (Rice 1988: 230)

“You [Lestat] were born for me, my prince,” she [Akasha] said. “You were tried and perfected. And in those first years, when you went into your mother’s bedchamber and brought her into the world of the undead with you, it was but prefigurement of your waking me. I am your true Mother, the Mother who will never abandon you, and I have died and been reborn, too. All the religions of the world, my prince, sing of you and me.” (Rice 1988: 262ff.)

Like Christ, vampires die and are reborn. Like Christ, Lestat is a symbol of immortality (“But Lestat was just a symbol now. A symbol of himself. A symbol of them [vampires] all.”, Rice 1988: 282.) Like Christ is associated with his mother Maria, Lestat is associated with Akasha, the Mother of all vampires and The Queen of the Damned.

In the Lacanian sense, life and death can be considered metonymies of family, since both the dead members and the living ones can represent the family (lineage). When any one family member dies, we feel the lack produced by the loss of that person, and although it is beyond human knowledge, we often presuppose that in the same way the dead desire to be living again. It is certainly the case with the vampires in the books of Anne Rice, who long to be alive as humans again, or the humans like Gabrielle or Louis who long for the dead. We can consider the vampires as a special kind of humans close to death, a metonymy for human existence. Thus human problems are displaced in The Vampire Chronicles as vampire problems, and the different modes of immortality actually represent human affairs. Life and death are condensed in the religious metaphor of vampires, which Lacan would interpret as a symptom.

2. Sex and Violence – The ‘Evil’ Vampire

Anne

Vampires do not procreate and for that reason have no use for their genitals anymore (“And the organ, the organ we don’t need, poised as if ready for what it would never again know how to do or want to do […]”, Rice 1988: 357.) Instead of the penis they use their fangs to penetrate their partner ((In Rice’s novels vampire lovers drink each others blood without hurting one another. They still need to feed on human victims though.)) or victim and drink their blood. Both male and female vampires do this, and since fangs substitute the penis all vampires are automatically phallic and in effect bisexual.

If we consider vampires as displaced human existence, then blood drinking should likewise be considered a displacement of sex, although a much more violent form of it. Granted at its base normal sex also has traces of violence, e.g. bleeding when deflowered, vocabulary like ‘penetrate’ or phallic imagery of swords etc., but the ultimate end of sex is creating life. On the other hand, when a vampire drinks the blood of anyone but another vampire, it usually means taking a life (it must be noted that neither the giving nor the taking of life is really the reason for sex or blood drinking respectively, the motivation is usually to satisfy a physical need or simply pleasure.) Like sex, blood drinking is also an act of intimacy and union, the victim’s mind and recollections are laid bare before the vampire, and the victim’s death is an obvious metaphor for sexual climax.

This passage about the vampire Pandora will illustrate the sensuality of blood drinking quite nicely:

It had been years since she had sought the exquisite pleasure. She thought not merely of the blood itself, but of the momentary union with another soul. […] She embraced him, crushing his ribs in her haste, her teeth sinking deep into his neck. Alive. The blood poured into her, reached her heart and flooded its chambers, then sent its heat through all her cold limbs. […] The death shocked her, knocked the breath out of her. She felt it pass into her brain. She was blinded, moaning. (Rice 1988: 69)

Humans will usually take contraceptive precautions, so the actual creation of life requires prior decision. In the same way vampires can decide to not just take a human’s life, but to make him also an undead like themselves. In the following passage Armand, who is reluctant to grant his human lover Daniel the wish for immortality, needs some persuading to do so:

“But don’t you see,” Daniel said, “all human decisions are made like this. Do you think the mother knows what will happen to the child in her womb? Dear God, we are lost, I tell you. What does it matter if you give it to me and it’s wrong! There is no wrong! There is only desperation, and I would have it! I want to live forever with you.” (Rice 1988: 113)

In vampires we find different aspects of human existence amplified and exaggerated, but their ‘evil’ still reflects human ‘evil’. About Armand, who was made a vampire before he reached human adulthood, Rice writes:

The point was, Armand didn’t know what men felt. […] of true aggression he knew little. He killed because it was his nature as a vampire; and the blood was irresistible. But why did men find war irresistible? What was the desire to clash violently against the will of another with weapons? What was the physical need to destroy? (Rice 1988: 89)

In the end, vampires and men are quite similar, as they can both give life and take life. These acts become two sides of the same coin, life always implies the possibility of death, and confrontation with death may make one lose one’s belief in the meaning of life in the first place. Which explains Armand’s reluctance to give birth to another vampire.

Still, vampires are considered evil and men good, which raises the question, what exactly makes vampires evil? In Christian, i.e. biblical terms, violence, especially killing, is considered evil, but strangely enough it is forgiven during times of war. Sex is considered solely a means of procreation, the refusal of procreation, which can take the forms of contraception or homosexuality, is considered evil. Sex and violence are condensed in a metaphor of Evil, the fact that for vampires killing is the satisfaction of a physical need suggests that the symptom is mainly a sexual one: “That was the source of the shame. It hadn’t been the killing; it had been the monstrous feeding. It had been the pleasure. Ah, these two were such a pair.” (Rice 1988: 406). The true sin of the vampire is his failure in giving life, it is their essentially selfish/hedonistic and bisexual nature.

3. The Other – The Phallic Vampire

Twilight

Jesse is the human heroine among a cast of mostly vampires, which in the beginning she only knows from the novel Interview with the Vampire ((Anne Rice writes each of her Vampire Chronicle books from the perspective of one vampire that narrates the story either being the author himself like Lestat for most of the volumes following the original one or telling it to someone else like Louis to the human interviewer Daniel in this work. These books both exist in the reality of the reader as well as in the stories of the books themselves, connecting the real world with the fictional one and making Jesse an avatar for the reader, who is drawn into the world of vampires.)):

The main characters of the work––rather glamorous immortals when you got right down to it––had formed an evil little family in antebellum New Orleans where they preyed on the populace for over fifty years. Lestat was the villain of the piece, and the leader. Louis, his anguished subordinate, was the hero, and the one telling the tale. Claudia, their exquisite vampire “daughter,” was a truly tragic figure, her mind maturing year after year while her body remained eternally that of a little girl. Louis’s fruitless quest for redemption had been the theme of the book, obviously, but Claudia’s hatred for the two male vampires who had made her what she was, and her own eventual destruction, had had a much stronger effect upon Jesse. (Rice 1988: 172)

As a member of the Talamasca, an organization that investigates supernatural phenomenon, Jesse is often dealing with spirits, which seem to be the fading memories of the dead, but the idea of immortals seems unrealistic even to her. Keeping with our earlier interpretation as established in chapter 1, we can say that she is deeply rooted in the traditional notion of immortality. But still she is somehow fascinated by the idea of vampires:

“There is something obscene about this novel. It makes the lives of these beings seem attractive. You don’t realize it at first; it’s a nightmare and you can’t get out of it. Then all of a sudden you’re comfortable there. You want to remain. Even the tragedy of Claudia isn’t really a deterrent.” (Rice 1988: 178)

When Jesse sets out to investigate the “facts” described in the book, she finds some of the belongings of Claudia, the character she could identify with in the novel:

She lifted her flashlight. A compartment lined in cedar. And there were things there. A small white leather-bound book! A rosary, it looked like, and a doll, a very old porcelain doll.

For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to touch these objects. It was like desecrating a tomb. (Rice 1988: 182)

Claudia is thus represented by a diary, i.e. her story, a rosary, i.e. her belief, and a doll. About the doll we learn from the diary:

Of course, he [Lestat] gave me [Claudia] a doll as usual, the replica of me, which as always wears a duplicate of my newest dress. To France he sends for these dolls, he wants me to know. And what should I do with it? Play with it as if I were really a child? (Rice 1988: 183)

The identification of the doll with Claudia demonstrates her financial dependency on Lestat, who would keep her forever a child. When Claudia decides to become independent from Louis and Lestat and chooses a human woman to make into her vampire companion, she is sentenced to death by vampire society. (Rice 1976.) Jesse empathizes strongly with Claudia’s fate:

The climactic events of Interview with the Vampire came back to her––Claudia destroyed in Paris. […] Jesse felt a dull shock, and the rapid silent beat of her heart against her throat. Claudia gone, while the others continued. Lestat, Louis, Armand. . . . (Rice 1988 :183)

Robbed from the female character to identify with, only male vampires remain. But as the existence of vampires is proven to her Jesse seeks out Lestat himself and meets him at his concert. Like one of his many fans she touches the rock star Lestat and convinces herself of his existence. But the concert turns out to be a dangerous place and Jesse is deadly wounded by another vampire. Some of her last thoughts before her ancestor Maharet saves her by turning her into a vampire are as follows:

I don’t know what I want. All I know is I don’t want to die! I don’t want to stop living. What cowards we are, she thought, what liars. A great fatalistic sadness had accompanied her all the way to this night, yet there had been the secret hope of this always! Not merely to see, to know, but to be part of . . . . (Rice 1988: 239)

Lestat is Jesse’s The Other, meaning he is everything she is not: male, immortal, empowered, supernatural, famous, disrespectful, evil. As a vampire, Lestat also represents the Phallus, which is a male symbol of power. Jesse’s relationship with him is ambiguous, but in the end the desire for him, i.e. the power he symbolizes is confirmed. In The Interview with the Vampire Jesse’s reality as a reader is displaced in Claudia, a powerless child vampire. In The Vampire Lestat it is displaced in the male vampire Lestat, she becomes empowered by becoming male. ((The closest to being a female lead character in The Vampire Lestat is Gabrielle, Lestat’s mother, who is empowered by her son. Gabrielle’s role is not as big as Claudia’s was, but as Lestat’s mother she holds more authority than his daughter Claudia.)) The Queen of the Damned is finally a story about an all powerful female Vampire, Akasha.

In The Vampire Lestat her role was purely that of a symbol, a sleeping statue of the Mother of all Vampires. In The Queen of the Damned she awakes and starts to really take action only after Jesse herself has become a vampire. Akasha is Jesse as phallic, who takes her revenge on men. In an act of reverse sexism she begins to eradicate men, seeking to destroy the source of all violence by the use of violence. The reasoning behind this plan reveals it to be patriarchy put upside down, she rationalizes her intention of severely restricting male population like this: “And don’t you think the peoples of this earth have limited in the past their female children?” (Rice 1988: 365). What Akasha proclaims is really patriarchy in a different guise, matriarchy as patriarchy.

But Jesse as a woman was not exactly powerless, she was a witch, and member to the Great Family, which is of matrilineal hierarchy. ((Rice 1988: 159.)) Her understanding of spirituality is that of a savage, pre-Christian and without a confirmed afterlife. Jesse belongs thus to a tradition that is entirely non-patriarchal and pre-phallic. She is torn between her human heritage (“In sum, the Great Family is the human family.”, Rice 1988: 428), and the supernatural fantasy of vampires.

4. Heart vs. Brain – The Apocalyptic Vampire

Buffy Huge Spoiler

The advent of Akasha is accompanied by dreams about the twins Maharet and Mekare, who are Jesse’s ancestors. The other vampires comment on the dreams as follows:

“Then the dreams may not be a deliberate message,” he said, his words marked by a slight French accent. “They may simply be the outpouring of a tortured soul.”

“No. They are a message,” Khayman said. “They are a warning. They are meant for all of us, and for the Mother as well.”

[…]

“The dreams must be a communication,” […]

“We were there in the beginning,” Khayman said. “We were the first children of the Mother; and in these dreams lies the story of how it began.” (Rice 1988: 284/285)

In this passage we can sense an almost psychoanalytic approach to the dreams, which is somewhat affirmed by the description of the witches function as related by Maharet, who also narrates the story of the dream:

“We gave the dream potion to those who requested it. And they would fall into a trance, or sleep and dream heavily in vivid images, which we sought then to interpret or explain.” (Rice 1988: 317)

“[…] And in this regard what we did was not so different from what doctors of psychology do in this century; we studied images; we interpreted them; we sought for some truth from the subconscious mind; […]” (Rice 1988: 318)

Maharet tells the story of the twins to a gathering of surviving vampires spared by Akasha. The now vampire Jesse is also present, and although she is described as very powerful, she is quite passive and does not speak up or interfere with the events around her. She is still very much the “reader” in this regard. The story of the twins obviously has relevance to Jesse, since they are her ancestors and it explains the dreams she was having. But it is also the story of Akasha, and of how vampires came into being. Akasha is very religious and suffers a shock of disillusionment when confronted by the brutally rational Mekare:

“ ’Stop your questions. You speak in stupidities,’ she declared. ’You have no gods in this kingdom, because there are no gods. The only invisible inhabitants of the world are spirits, and they play with you through your priests and your religion as they play with everyone else. […]The spirits are real, but they are childlike and capricious. And they are dangerous as well. They marvel at us and envy us that we are both spiritual and fleshly, which attracts them and makes them eager to do our will. […] you live in the lie! But we will not lie to you.’” (Rice 1988: 331)

The belief in gods is revealed to be based on a lie by childish spirits, and historically speaking religion as a whole is said to be rooted in the “childhood of humankind”:

“It is as if the human species has grown immune to such things; it has evolved perhaps to a higher stage where the antics of spirits no longer befuddle it. And though religions linger––old religions which became entrenched in darker times––they are losing their influence among the educated very rapidly.” (Rice 1988: 309)

One reason why many people cling to religion is surely the promise of an afterlife. It is also of great concern to Akasha:

“ ‘What do you know of the life after?’ she [Akasha] asked. And when the spirits said only that the souls of the dead either hovered about the earth, confused and suffering, or rose and vanished from it completely, she was brutally disappointed. Her eyes dulled; she was losing all appetite for this. When she asked what of those who had lived bad lives, as opposed to those who had lived good lives, the spirits could give no answer. They didn’t know what she meant.’ “ (Rice 1988: 338)

Akasha believed that good people should be rewarded by the gods with eternal life. Instead she attains immortality by becoming an evil vampire. It is a selfish immortality that is conditional on the death of others. ((This corresponds to one of the modes of immortality in chapter 1, immortality as an allegory for prolonged life.)) Lestat dreamt of an utopia that is a world without death, where everyone is immortal like himself. It is an utopia in which the disillusioned Akasha has no faith anymore. Yet Lestat insists on his dream:

“There has to be a way without death. There has to be a way that triumphs over death.“

“Now that my beauty, is truly against nature,” she said. “Even I cannot put an end to death.” She paused; she seemed suddenly distracted; or rather deeply distressed by the words she’d just spoken. “An end to death,” she whispered. It seemed some personal sorrow had intruded on her thoughts. “An end to death,” she said again. But she was drifting away from me. (Rice 1988: 367)

As there is no ideal utopia in the afterlife, Akasha seeks to build utopia in the realm of the living, by violently interfering with human affairs. She identifies men as the root of all evil, and decides to rid the world of the male sex. She spares only a select few males, among them Lestat, who she thinks she can control. Masculinity is at the same time both sexual and violent:

“[...] Right now the world burns with masculine fire; it is a conflagration. But when that is corrected, your fire shall burn ever more brightly––as a torch burns.”

“Akasha, you prove my point! Don’t you think the souls of women crave that very fire? My God, would you tamper with the stars themselves?”

“Yes, the soul craves it. But to see it in the blaze of a torch as I have indicated, or in the flame of a candle. But not as it rages now through every forest and over every mountain and in every glen. There is no woman alive who has ever wanted to be burnt by it! They want the light, my beauty, the light! And the warmth! But not the destruction. How could they! They are only women. They are not mad.” (Rice 1988: 369)

Of course, this kind of plan is only thinkable because of her supernatural powers as a vampire. But it resembles what she has done as a human queen, when her power was purely natural.

Maharet relates that the customs at the time were cannibalistic, i.e. people ate the flesh of their dead relatives. A few tribes also ate the flesh of their enemies, warring on other tribes for that purpose. Cannibalism is thus ambiguous, on the one hand a healthy ritual to deal with death, on the other hand a violent act of bringing death. Akasha, however, did not differentiate between the two sorts of cannibalism, and used her power as queen to do away with this custom altogether, even warring on other tribes who did not want to give up their customs. On the surface, Akasha’s motives are justified and even sound, but it is a rationality which never satisfies:

“This queen had no true morality, no true system of ethics to govern the things which she did. This queen was one of those many humans who sense that perhaps there is nothing and no reason to anything that can ever be known. Yet she cannot bear the thought of it. And so she created day in and day out her ethical systems, trying desperately to believe in them, and they were all cloaks for things she did for merely pragmatic reasons. Her war on the cannibals, for instance, had stemmed more from her dislike of such customs than anything else. Her people of Uruk hadn’t eaten human flesh; and so she would not have this offensive thing happening around her; there really wasn’t a whole lot more to it than that. For always in her there was a dark place full of despair. And a great driving force to make meaning because there was none.” (Rice 1988: 330)

Akasha’s clinging to religion is a clinging to simple truths:

“Allow me to draw your attention to what I have just said. It was the spiritual question which fascinated her––you might say the abstract idea; and in her fascination the abstract idea was everything. […]” (Rice 1988: 332)

Akasha’s shares a lot of characteristics with the spirits, she is childish like them (“her voice contained still a childish ring to it, a ring which evokes tenderness instinctively in others, and gives a faint music to the simplest words.”, Rice 1988: 331), and like the non-corporal spirits envy the humans for their flesh, Akasha bears a grudge against flesh (cannibalism). If we treat flesh as metaphor for sensuality we can identify a metaphoric chain between religion, spirits, childishness and chasteness. Once again sex is a symptom.

But humans are “both spiritual and fleshly” (Rice 1988: 331); which is metaphorically expressed in the twins. When their mother dies, Maharet is to eat her heart, and Mekare her brain. The heart is a metaphor for the flesh and for feelings, and linked to Maharet. The brain is connected to the eyes, it is a metaphor for ratio, the ability to see and understand, personified in Mekare. ((Rice 1988: 322-323.)) Although two different things, heart and brain are part of the same body, and are easily confusable like the twins: “People always confused us or thought of us as one being.” (Rice 1988: 333). But Akasha separates the twins, which is a symptom for the separation of ratio and feelings.

There are several crimes committed by Akasha against the twins leading up to the separation. First, they are prevented from eating the heart and brain of their mother, thus denies the chance to let go of the dead. Then, as punishment ordered by Akasha and her husband Enkil, they are raped by Khayman, the chief steward. The prohibition of cannibalism enrages Akasha’s human subjects, who try to assassinate her. The rape of the twins enrages the spirits, who turn Akasha’s dying body into a vampire. Khayman, who has raped the twins also turns them into vampires later on, which is the third crime against them.

Vampires are a metaphor and a symptom, here we find the causes for these symptoms. The rape as punishment was perfectly customary and thus allowed by Akasha. It is also heterosexual. Still, this sort of male violence is later despised by her. The feasting on the remains of the dead was also customary, but not by the standards Akasha was brought up upon. If we interpret the eating of flesh as sexual, it would also have been incestuous (daughter/mother) and homosexual (female/female.) The ritual to let go of the dead is not consummated however. Instead vampires are born.

The last crime against the twins is mutilation. Mekare’s tongue is cut off, so the rational part cannot speak its feelings anymore. Maharet’s eyes are also cut out, the sensual part cannot see anymore. After that they are separated and Mekare is lost in the primordial rain forest, and not found for 6000 years. She becomes an animal-like being, reduced to her instincts and only able to communicate through the dreams she sends to Jesse and the others. She is a metaphor for repressed feelings.

In the end, Akasha cannot finish her rational, but overly simple plan of eradicating men. Mekare comes for her and furiously rips off her head. It is a metaphor for instinct prevailing over ratio. Mekare then proceeds to eat Akasha’s heart and brain, the ritual to let go off the dead, in this case the undead Akasha, is consummated.

5. Conclusion

IWAI Shunji's Vampire

When Jesse met her aunt Maharet and spent some time with her, she sensed that there was something different about her and her friends, but she never suspected they were bisexual vampires.

Yet in truth, Jesse never tried to figure it all out. She resisted theories about what had happened as she resisted theories about everything. And it occurred to her, more than once, that she had sought out the Talamasca in order to lose this personal mystery in a wilderness of mysteries. Surrounded by ghosts and poltergeists and possessed children, she thought less and less about Maharet and the Great Family. (Rice 1988: 170)

Maharet is opposed to Jesse joining the Talamasca. She argues, that while supernatural phenomena do exist, they make no difference to the destiny of the human race. Supernatural phenomena are like a Sci-Fi version of magic in children’s stories, a tool to solve all kinds of problems which are not easily solved in reality. Maharet arguing that these in fact exist can be seen as acknowledging the vividness and detail of literature taking on some life of its own but never effecting or making any change in reality. They “should not interfere in human history.” (Rice 1988: 166) Her letter to Jesse ends with the following words:

The Talamasca is an interesting organization. But it cannot accomplish great things.

I love you. I respect your decision. But I hope for your sake that you tire of the Talamasca––and return to the real world––very soon. (Rice 1988: 166)

While the power of art is great it shouldn’t become an obstacle to leading a fulfilling life. For the undead vampire Maharet, it is humans existence that is really fascinating:

Something of the real world was alive still for her now, something that evoked awe and grief and perhaps the finest love she had ever been capable of; and it seemed for one moment that natural and supernatural possibility were equal in their mystery. They were equal in their power. And all the miracles of the immortals could not outshine this vast and simple chronicle. The Great Family. (Rice 1988: 428)

The vampires being characters from a book that turn out to be real, Jesse’s story is the story of a reader shifting more and more from real life to imagined life in literature. And only when this shift is getting close to completion, only when humankind (real life) is threatened by apocalypse at the hands of Akasha (Queen of vampires, i.e. of utopian literature taking on a life of its own), Jesse realizes that Maharet had been right:

A terrible pain welled in Jesse. A terrible pain. To be swept away from all things real, that had been irresistible, but to think that all things real could be swept away was unendurable. (Rice 1988: 429)

In one of the following volumes the vampire Jesse is committing suicide which is in fact a reversal of her already undead status. Killing her literature self she can rejoin the living in reality. Sex, violence and death represent the fearsome realities of adulthood, by giving up her desire for eternal life which she seeks to acquire in never changing literature, the undead remains of living or already deceased authors, by allowing to age even if that means to die eventually she can lead her own life. Suicide is a mere metaphor for those rites of passage, death the beginning of adult life.

Afterword

Normal again

Growing up is a painful process and some of those childish ideals seem to be too good to give up. On 24 February 2002 the episode “Man and Superman” of David E. Kelly’s TV show The Practice aired in which the lawyers Jimmy and Lindsay took the case of a deluded man who caused a terrible accident due to his psychosis of imagining himself to be Superman. The episode had a very corny ending which affirmed the sympathy people feel for Superman wannabes like him despite his illness. Only two weeks later the Buffy episode “Normal again” aired which had a decidedly similar take on this issue, although going for cool and shocking instead of corny. The striking similarities are surprising but as with Rice and HAGIO both probably share a common influence. It’s like TV America joined forces to say fuck you to the latest “superheroes are over” naysaying article in some magazine, struggling to find a balance between ideals and naivety.

What is interesting that some recent movies like Shutter Island, Inception or the new Sucker Punch also seem to have rediscovered this issue.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

1. Anne Rice. Interview with the Vampire. New York: Ballantine Books, 1976.

2. Anne Rice. The Vampire Lestat. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985.

3. Anne Rice. The Queen of the Damned. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988.

4. HAGIO Moto. Pō no ichizoku, Volume 1. Shogakkan bunko, 1998.
5. Neil Jordan. Interview with the Vampire. Movie first screened in November 11, 1994.
6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. TV series running from March 10, 1997 – May 20, 2003.
7. The Practice. TV series running from March 4, 1997 – May 16, 2004.
8. Vampire Diaries. TV series running since September 10, 2009. Based on the books by L. J. Smith.

Secondary Sources

1. Barry, Peter. Beginning theory, an introduction to literary and cultural theory.Manchester Univ. Press, 1996.
   • Lacan, Jaques. “The insistence of the letter in the unconscious.”: 80-106.

2. Sarup, Madan. An introductory guide to post-structuralism and postmodernism. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1989.

3. Green, Keith and Jill Le Bihan. Critical Theory & Practice: A Coursebook. London: Routledge, 1996.

4. http://www.veinotte.com/anne/bio.htm, 29.03.2004. Seems to be down, as of 30.12.2010.

5. Article on Anne Rice at Merriam-Webster, 30.12.2010.

Footnotes

Micky und Oswald

Mit Micky Epic erscheint die Tage eine Spieleperle, die mit Animationsfilm und Videospiel zwei Medien vereint und beide an ihre frühen Anfänge zurückführt. Micky wird mit dem Schicksal einiger seiner Toonkollegen konfrontiert, die es anders als er nicht in die Geschichtsbücher geschafft haben und in Vergessenheit geraten sind. Motive und Figuren stammen aus den ganz frühen Werken Disneys, von Oswald the Lucky Rabbit über die ersten Schwarzweißfilme seines heute immer noch bekannten Nachfolgers Micky Maus bis hin zu dessen späteren farbigen Kurzfilmen. Thematisch oft düsterer als man das heute von Micky Maus gewohnt ist, aber gerade deswegen interessant.

Walt Disney gehört mit seinem Auftreten während der 20er Jahre nicht nur zu den Pionieren des Zeichentrickfilms, sondern des Mediums Film allgemein, prägte es in seinen frühen Jahren. Er war dabei, als die ersten Ton- und Farbfilme produziert wurden, und machte diese neuen Technologien einem großen Publikum schmackhaft. Zwar setzt er mit gezeichneten Bildern auf eine aufwendigere Methode als der die Wirklichkeit abbildende fotografierte Film, doch eignet sich diese besonders für die fantastischen Stoffe, mit denen Disney sein Publikum faszinierte. Disneys Einfluss ist bis heute weltweit spürbar, zwar werden in seinem Namen kaum noch Zeichentrickfilme produziert, dafür aber Unterhaltung in allen Medien und Genres. Am bekanntesten ist er jedoch nach wie vor für seine Trickfilmklassiker und seinen Star, Micky Maus.

Professor: Die wissenschaftliche Bezeichnung für dieses Tier ist Mickeymouse Waltdisniney! Generalinspektor: Aha. Sagt mir gar nichts. (Aus TEZUKA Osamus Metropolis, 1949.)

Natürlich hat Disney auch in den Werken der ihm folgenden Trickfilmschaffenden Spuren hinterlassen, so finden sich schon Einflüsse in den frühen Comics des japanischen Nachkriegscomic- und -trickfilmpioniers TEZUKA Osamu. Dieser bediente sich für seine längeren Storycomics der Techniken nicht nur des Zeichentrickfilms sondern des Kinos allgemein, mit dynamischen Perspektiven, die den eigentlich statischen Bildern bereits Leben einhauchten. In Metropolis, einem seiner Frühwerke, das dem Fritz-Lang-Klassiker das Motiv des menschenähnlichen Roboters entlehnte und Grundlage für seinen späteren Held Astro Boy (Tetsuwan atomu) war, taucht auch eine riesengroße Mäusegattung (siehe rechts) auf, die dort für einige Seiten Unruhe stiftet. Später machte er seinen Traum war und folgte auch im Trickfilm in die Fußstapfen seines großen Vorbilds, heute wird er zu Recht als japanischer Disney und Gott des Comics (manga no kami-sama) bezeichnet.

Mittlerweile wird der Zeichentrickfilm zunehmend vom computergenerierten Animationsfilm verdrängt, eine Entwicklung, die eng verbunden ist mit dem des Mediums Videospiel, in dem viele Techniken dieser Neuerfindung einer alten Kunst ihren Ursprung haben. Noch mehr als beim Zeichentrickfilm, der noch heute durch zahlreiche japanische Vertreter auch im Kino am Leben erhalten wird, hat Japan bei den Videospielen eine entscheidende Rolle gespielt. Und die Comictradition TEZUKAs schlägt sich auch dort nieder, Capcoms Roboterheld Megaman (in Japan Rockman) erinnert nicht von ungefähr an TEZUKAs Astro Boy.

Die Spieleschaffenden in Japan sind sich aber auch durchaus der Ursprünge ihrer Zeichentrickhelden bewusst und Capcom schuf mit Magical Quest eine der gelungeneren Umsetzungen eines Disneystoffes im Medium Spiel. Der Disney-Konzern setzte mit gutem Grund auf japanisches Know-How beim Erobern des neuen Mediums, hatte doch der große Star des Videospielwelt, Nintendos Mario, in den 90er Jahren in Punkto Erkennungswert seinem Vorgänger Micky Maus auch in dessen Heimat den Rang abgelaufen. ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario#cite_ref-75)) Neue Technologien schaffen neue Helden und die alten Hasen müssen schon versuchen, mit dem Lauf der Dinge mitzuhalten, wenn sie nicht von ihnen verdrängt werden wollen, wie das bereits Oswald durch Micky widerfahren war. Also hüpfte Micky in Capcoms „Jump ‘n’ Run“-Spiel wie Mario durch horizontal scrollende Level.

Auch Nintendo musste sich dem technologischen Fortschritt beugen und von teuren Modulen auf das günstigere Massenmedium der optischen Disks wechseln, leider etwas spät und mittlerweile vom ehemaligen Verbündeten Sony ausgebotet. Dieser entwickelte sein geplantes CD-Addon für das Super Nintendo stattdessen zu einer eigenen Spielekonsole weiter, die optisch und namenstechnisch stärker an die Nintendo-Tradition anknüpfte als Nintendos eigene neue Konsole, das N64. Konservativ und progressiv zugleich, was für das N64 in der Kombination Module und wegweisende 3D-Grafik nicht klappte, gelang der Playstation mit günstigem Speichermedium. Dieses ermöglichte auch das Abspielen von vorab gespeichterten Filmsequenzen, die zwar weniger interaktiv waren, aber auch die computeranimierten Trickfilme aus dem Disneystudio Pixar vorwegnahmen, das Disneys eigener Trickfilmschmiede starke Konkurrenz machte.

So ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass Disneys nächstes Videospiel-Großprojekt bei Squaresoft entstand, die mit computeranimierten Filmen in Spieleform entscheidend zum Erfolg der Playstation beitrugen. Mit der auf CDs gespeicherten Grafikpracht von Final Fantasy VII konnte trotz besserer Technik kein Spiel auf dem N64 mithalten. Nintendos ehemaliger Topspielelieferant machte so Sony zum Thronfolger und durfte auf dessen zweiter Playstation mit Kingdom Hearts japanische RPG-Stories und abendfüllende Disneyfilmwelten vereinen. Man spielt Sora, eine originale Squarefigur, die optisch auch aus Final Fantasy stammen könnte. Begleitet wird er von Donald und Goofy und bereist die Welten aus bekannten Disney-Kinofilmen, auf der Suche nach dem verschwundenen König Micky.

Immer bessere Grafik, das schien das Erfolgsrezept der Zukunft zu sein, doch Nintendo überraschte alle mit einem unwahrscheinlichen Comeback, indem sie mit intuitiver Bewegungssteuerung auf Innovationen abseits der simplen grafischen Aufwertung der ewig selben Spiele setzten. Dementsprechend kommt der neueste Disney-Toptitel Micky Epic wieder für eine Nintendo-Konsole und im Gegensatz zu den beiden oben erwähnten Adaptionen diesmal von einem westlichen Entwickler. Diese haben ebenfalls ein Comeback erlebt, durch verstärkten Einsatz auf den kommerziell aussichtsreicheren TV-Konsolen haben sich PC-typische Genres auch dort etabliert und laufen den japanischen Topspielen mehr und mehr den Rang ab. Lediglich Nintendo scheint einen völlig anderen Geschmack zu bedienen und feiert größere Erfolge als je zuvor. Dementsprechend setzt Disney auf die beiden Gewinner dieser Generation, Hardwareentwickler Nintendo und westliche Spielestudios.

Warren Spector, der sich unter anderem mit Deus Ex auf dem PC einen Namen machen konnte, legt hier seinen ersten Konsolenexklusivtitel vor. Seine Neuinterpretation des Micky-Maus-Mythos ist eine Geschichtsstunde des Trickfilms, zitiert alte Klassiker und thematisiert den ewigen Konflikt zwischen Alt und Neu. Mickys Charakter  ist dabei bei weitem nicht so flach wie sein Toondesign, wie in vielen neueren Spielen üblich kann der Spieler als Micky moralische Entscheidungen treffen, statt simplem Gut oder Böse ist man aber etwas subtiler entweder schöpferisch mit Farbe tätig oder eben zerstörend mit ätzendem Verdünner. Beides sind für das Vorankommen notwendige Werkzeuge, doch ab und zu hat man die freie Wahl, eine Situation eher mit Farbe oder mit Verdünner zu bewältigen und so seinen eigenen Präferenze Ausdruck zu verleihen.

Schon im Vorspann tritt Micky eher als Störenfried auf, von einem Spiegel ((Micky ist wie zu sehen beim Lesen von Lewis Carolls Buch Alice Through the Looking Glass eingeschlafen. Dieses Buch diente auch einem Micky-Maus-Cartoon namens Thru the Mirror als Inspiration, der hier zitiert wird. Vor kurzem verfilmte Tim Burton diese Fortsetzung des vielfach bearbeiteten Kinderbuchklassikers.)) in das Labor eines Zauberers gelockt, spielt er mit dessen Kreation herum, malt sich selbst in seine Welt. Und als sich sein Abbild als schrecklicher Schatten gegen ihn richtet, versucht er es schnell wieder auszulöschen, verwüstet dabei aber nur die Welt, die der Magier für vergessene Trickfilmhelden ((Dieses Setting hat auch einiges gemein mit Captain Rainbow für Wii.)) geschaffen hat. Das Phantom lernt stattdessen selbst Verdünner einzusetzen und setzt die von Micky begonnene Verwüstung fort. Dementsprechend muss Micky sich und seinen Opfern erst wieder beweisen, dass er tatsächlich ein Held ist und kein bösartiges Phantom.

Das Spiel verbindet gekonnt Trickfilm- und Videospielelemente. Im Kern ist es so wie Capcoms SNES-Vertreter ein Jump ‘n’ Run, ausladende Sprachausgabe und langatmige Filmsequenzen wie im Action-RPG Kingdom Hearts sucht man hier vergebens, stattdessen darf man fast ständig selbst mit den Filmwelten auf vielfältige Arten interagieren. Die Missionsstruktur lässt dem Spieler über die zwingend zu treffenden Entscheidungen hinaus viele Freiheiten. Das Spiel deckt so fast alle modernen Standards des Spieldesigns ab und es ließen sich viele Vergleiche zu anderen Spielen anstellen, doch hat es vielleicht am meisten gemein mit Super Mario Sunshine. Auch dort musste man den Ruf des Helden retten, der wie die als Bühne dienende tropische Ferieninsel von einem Mario-Imitator beschmutzt wurde. Allerdings kann man dort nur die Graffitis des bösen Marios wegwaschen und nicht wie in Epic Micky ganze Objekte erschaffen oder zerstören. Micky Epic ist eben auch eine Göttersimulation, ein typisch westliches Genre aus dem Computersektor, also Spectors Metier.

Trotzdem, so ähnlich wie Micky Epic würde sich auch die Wasserpumpe aus Super Mario Sunshine auf der Wii steuern. Einfach mit der Fernbedienung zielen und mit dem Knopf Wasser bzw. Farbe und Verdünner verspritzen. Und so wie Sunshine die Waage zwischen frei erkundbaren 3D-Umgebungen und 2D-Retroabschnitten mit klarer Zielführung hielt, sind in Micky Epic die 3D-Areale durch Filmleinwände verbunden, die als 2D-Level gespielt werden können. Wie in Sunshine verzichtet man in diesen auf die innovativen Werkzeuge, zielbare Pinselfarbe und Verdünner sind für die 3D-Abschnitte reserviert. Der Wechsel von 2D zu 3D ist in beiden Medien, Film und Spiel, ein ganz entscheidender.

Das ganze Spiel macht unheimlich viel Spaß und zeugt von einem tiefen Verständnis der beiden Traditionen, die es verbindet. Kindgerecht aber nicht kindisch, düster aber nicht hoffnungslos, man kann es wirklich uneingeschränkt jedem empfehlen.

Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright and Persona 2 Innocent Sin.

Two games, one new, one old, sharing a common theme. The first crossover of the worlds of Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright ((Both are heroes of popular adventure series for Nintendo haldheld consoles. Professor Layton is one of the most successful new franchises on Nintendo DS and Ace Attorney Phoenix Wright rejuvenated the Japanese adventure genre during the earlier Game Boy Advance era. Its ports and sequels on DS finally made it outside their home country; Professor Layton on the other hand didn’t take as long to be localized for the West and achieved even greater success here, especially in Europe.)) is set in a town where fiction becomes reality.

Persona 2 Innocent Sin for Playstation released in 1999 also takes place in a city where rumors become reality. Unfortunately it was never officially released outside Japan but thanks to the new remake for PSP and publisher Atlus’ recent completionist localization record, who now releases almost all of their games worldwide, this is likely to change.

A world that is governed by unreal ideas, may they take the form of a story or that of of rumour, this is closer to reality than we might like to admit. In fact we don’t even inhabit reality but the construction of it, the way we imagine it to be. Who really does understand what is actually happening around them, who doesn’t rely on the media, their friends or smart books to explain the world to them? To some degree this is even necessary but it’s also very dangerous as bias and misconceptions often reach further than our ratio.

Both of these games deal with this topic in a way that questions the very way we view reality. Many games in fact do this but very few do it as openly a these two. Highly recommended.

Suggested reading: ŌTSUKA Eiji “Otaku” no seishin-shi, 1980-nendai-ron. Kōdansha shinsho, 2004.

]]> http://complete.electrolit.net/2010/11/06/alt-gegen-neu-x-old-vs-new/feed/ 0 http://complete.electrolit.net/2010/10/28/kanji-puzzle/ http://complete.electrolit.net/2010/10/28/kanji-puzzle/#comments Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:17:41 +0000 Kay http://complete.electrolit.net/?p=3535

You may or may not have noticed the playable electrolit link in the navigation box at the top of the right hand column but look out for some neat little browser games to be added on this page. The first one has been available for a while now and I thought it was time to plug it on the main site.

The first title, Kanji Puzzle, is a game where you have to find kanji (Chinese characters) that share a certain Japanese reading. Correct answers will be colored to create the dots of a huge pixelated kanji which is also one of the correct answers. Look for the golden answer to give you a hint where the other correct answers are.

There’s as many wrong characters as right ones and each is repeated several times. Which kind of characters are used to create the next puzzle and their difficulty can be selected after solving a puzzle or giving up. You can also switch off the music completely for the following puzzles or choose what kind of helpful hints should be displayed for the kanji your mouse cursor currently hovers over.

Although the game is intended for Japanese speaking (and reading) players, even without any knowledge of Japanese you can just start clicking characters and avoid the ones that get marked with a red cross and look for the ones the get circled. Don’t expect to learn Japanese this way but it might still be fun for a few tries.

Januar bis April

Mario ersetzt den Kranich und wird zur ersten 20-Punkte-Karte im Januar. Im Februar hat Yoshi die Rolle des Japanbuschsängers übernommen und es sich auf einem Ast gemütlich gemacht. Seine grüne Haut ähnelt auch dem Gefieder dieses kleinen Singvogels. Luigi stellt sich im März vor den Vorhang und beansprucht genausoviele Punkte wie sein älterer Bruder. Lakitu auf seiner Wolke vertritt den Gackelkuckuck im April, der dort fliegend abgebildet war.

Mai bis August

Der Seebewohner Blooper tummelt sich am Brückensteg im Mai. Aus den Schmetterlingen im Juni wurden kleine fliegende Paragoombas. Marios ältester Rivale Donkey Kong gibt die Wildsau bzw. den Eber im Juli. Aus dem 20-Punkte-Mond im August wurde ein riesiges verschämtes Buu-Huu-Gespenst, die fliegenden Wildgänse werden vertreten von babyklauenden Magikoopas.

September bis Dezember

Das spielentscheidende Sake-Schälchen fletscht im September als Piranha-Pflanze die Zähne. Marios Nemesis Wario ist, wie man im Oktober sieht, grazil wie ein Reh. Der 20-Punkte schwere Kalligraph aus dem verregneten November lässt sich von Prinzessin Peach vertreten, die begleitet wird von einem Toad. Nicht direkt ein Frosch, aber der Name passt. Und die fliegende Schwalbe macht einem geflügelten Parakoopa Platz. Im Dezember kommt nicht Santa Claus, sondern der teuflische Koopa König Bowser, der wie ein Phönix immer wieder aufersteht, um Mario das Leben schwer zu machen. Das ist ebenfalls 20 Punkte wert.

Nachtrag: Dieses Hanafuda-Kartenset ist derzeit auch in unseren Club Nintendos erhältlich: für 2500 Sternepunkte im deutschen Club Nintendo und für 800 im amerikanischen.

Nintendo Hanafuda cards

It’s Nintendo who give this successful but young video game culture a much longer tradition. Nintendo’s origin leads all the way back to the late 19th century when they started their toy making business during the Meiji era, following the Meiji restauration in 1968, the first event to mark the end of isolation and a run to modernize and Westernize the country. In a way this age was the prequel to the much more radical changes advanced during the American occupation after WWII, modernizing the country in a Western image much more completely than before. What had been pragmatical adoptions of certain Western ways, as to not fall behind their Western competitors who made their markets (and colonies) right before Japan’s doorsteps in East Asia, had to become much less compromised after WWII.

Last Blade 2 Opening A

For better or worse, Japan is what it is now largely because of its relationship with America. The black ships of American captain Perry forced the shogunate to open the country’s harbors to the Western ships on their way to East Asia. The shogunate giving in to this forced opening of the country provided their political opponents with the sign of weakness they needed to launch their campaign to end the shogunate’s reign. This lead to the bakumatsu, the apocalypse of the old Japan under the shogun’s rule and to the Meiji restauration, the tennō being restored as the first man in the state. Actually the xenophobic propaganda that spurned the fight against the shogunate which was denounced to be friends with the barbarians after Perry’s visit was soon forgotten after the shogunate was actually defeated. Instead the architects of the Meiji restauration opened up the country even further, did away with a lot of old structures replacing them with modern ones modeled after Western examples, banned privileges of the samurai elite and made bushidō, the samurai’s code of conduct the ethical foundation of every citizen, most of whom this code had never applied to before.

Asian morals and Western technology, this became the slogan for early modern Japan. This includes the worship of the tennō as a divine deity, one of the things the Americans abolished after WWII since they feared its potential to mobilize the Japanese people for warfare. Basically they tried to also establish the Western value systems which hadn’t been incorporated into modern Japan before, banning certain Japanese ones like bushidō and ada uchi revenge stories. Of course you cannot easily change a whole country’s culture and the Japanese losing their religion by the tennō announcing on radio that he in fact is a human being and not a god must have had a long lasting impact on the country. The now pacifist Japan is proving itself in international economic competition and the regained confidence allows Japan to find its identity torn between Asian roots and American influence.

Video games, like cars or other technology the Japanese are known for their quality in the world, is one such field which allows the Japanese to reevaluate their cultural identity and it is one where the clash of tradition and progress is particularly pronounced. Japanese mythology and folklore, theatrical and narrative tradition, these provide the base for Japanese games as much as Western movies and technology. It makes sense that a lot of the cultural struggle and the feelings toward the changes in the country’s social and political order are expressed in Japanese game plots. Which are also closely linked to comics, another Western genre to gain mass appeal in Japan merging with the country’s own manga tradition.

Rurōni Kenshin

Rurōni Kenshin (Kenshin the Wanderer) by WATSUKI Nobuhiro is one example of a manga that uses the bakumatsu and the following Meiji era as a setting to address issues that arise from Westernization. Taking the process back to its beginnings Rurōni Kenshin tells the story of HIMURA Kenshin, formerly known as Battōsai, the hitokiri helping to bring about the end of the shogunate. Hitokiri means one who cuts people (with a sword), an executioner of sorts. The verb kiru (cut), which is often uttered as a threat, sounds almost like the English word kill. Which is also what it really means in this case. This word having the same pronounciation and meaning in both Japanese and English fuses the cultures represented by their respective languages by means of a violent concept. Which incidentally also characterizes the events leading to this fusion of cultures.

HIMURA is a weaker version of Battōsai born from feelings of guilt. Battōsai assassinated key figures of the old government like an executioner, sanctioned by a higher cause. He still thinks that this was necessary but the fact remains this new better world was built on bloodshed. So he restricts the power of his sword techniques by using a reversed blade hitting his enemies with the blunt side of the sword. He now only fights to help the helpless and vowed to never kill again, which reflects the newfound pacifistic identity of the Japanese.

Last Blade 2

Many popular works dealing with the bakumatsu favor the other side fighting for the shogunate. Expecially the shinsen-gumi, the elite samurai of the shogunate, often become the heroes of these stories. Obviously there’s some desire to go back to the old Japan before it had been changed by Western ways. The trauma of the atom bomb which is rightly perceived to be the final result of the Japanese attempt to keep up with their Western competitors which made them become maybe even worse than the ones they perceived as a threat can cause a wish to go back to this old age of innocence, when Japan was isolated but peaceful under shogunate reign. But WATSUKI embraces the new Japan in his take on this popular setting, defends the Meiji restaurators even though they started a traumatic and violent process of modernization. The manga portrays many viewpoints on the new Japan in fantastic battle scenes, literally reflecting the clash in opinion in likewise action choreographies. The effect of these many showdowns is cathartic and helps the characters to come to terms with their own little histories.

Omura in Last Samurai

At the end of each chapter WATSUKI also comments on his models for the characters in his comic. He jokingly notes that his editors keep telling him not to do this as they don’t want to tell the readers this kind of inside information, which might take away the magic of the story. But these columns are in fact very insightful. Of course WATSUKI bases some of his characters on historic sources, for example he acknowledges ŌKUBŌ, one of the oligarchic rulers of Meiji Japan who fell victim to an assassination by people disappointed with the new age, to have been a very competent politician. ŌKUBŌ’s role in Rurōni Kenshin is to become the target of revenge of the shogunate loyals, who pay the hitokiri back in kind by assassinating one of his leaders. ŌKUBŌ is also the model for an antipathetic politician named Omura in the Hollywood movie Last Samurai acting as an enemy of the noble samurai class, which exactly mirrors the sentiments of many Japanese bakumatsu themed stories to which Rurōni Kenshin serves as a counter example.

Two commented hanafuda matches.

But WATSUKI also models his characters after other manga protagonists and after video game characters. He especially draws upon characters from the Samurai Spirits (known as Samurai Shodown overseas) series by SNK. Who must have felt flattered and blatantly returned the favor by ripping off the character designs of Rurōni Kenshin in their own Last Blade series. The story and characters aren’t exactly the same as in the manga but they take up similar issues and also deal with the impact of history on the individual. But SNK don’t just take the trauma of identity loss back to its point of origin, they also take the medium video games itself back to its roots. In a special mode of the Dreamcast version of Last Blade 2 instead of fighting your opponents with weapons you can battle them by having matches of Hanafuda, the card game video game power house Nintendo made following the events Last Blade portrays.

SNK made their very own set of hanafuda cards for Last Blade 2.

Before their ventures into electronic games the flagship franchises of Nintendo always had been card games drawing on the lyrical traditions of Japan, like the poetry reading Hyakunin isshu (A hundred poets’  poems) game or the more widely known Hanafuda games with suites based on the Japanese months and the plants, animals and other attractions one might see at any one time of the year. They have preserved Japanese traditions in the wake of this process of modernization but they also embraced change and turned it into a profit. Nintendo and video games have shaped national identity and represent Japan to the world. They have created their very own pop culture shared by East and West and Nintendo achieved this by being innovators, mixing and balancing old versus new.

Hauptstadtblume, Tengu, Präsident und Club Nintendo

Von links nach rechts sieht man das günstige Deck der Hauptstadtblumen (miyako no hana), womit die Flora der ehemaligen Hauptstadt Japans Kyōto gemeint ist, wo auch Nintendos Hauptsitz liegt, das des Waldteufels Tengu und die Luxus-Edition mit dem Motiv eines Meiji-Präsidenten. Zuletzt noch eine Sonderausgabe vom Club Nintendo, in der einige Figuren auf den Karten gegen beliebte Charaktere aus Nintendos jüngeren Videospielen ausgetauscht wurden. Die Decks kosten jeweils 1050, 1575 und 2100 Yen, das Mario-Deck gab es für 400 Punkte ((Bei jedem Kauf eines Spiels für ein Nintendo-Gerät oder eines anderen Nintendo-Produkts erhält der Käufer eine Karte mit einer Nummer, die auf der Club-Nintendo-Seite eingegeben werden kann. Für das Beantworten einiger Fragen zum erworbenen Produkt erhält man Punkte in meist zweistelliger Größenordnung. Im europäischen Club Nintendo heißen diese Punkte Sternenpunkte, allerdings unterscheiden sich die regionalen Club Nintendos in Punktevergabe und Sortiment an Preisen, gegen die man die Punkte eintauschen kann. Nachdem die Mario-Hanafuda-Editionen für kurze Zeit im japanischen Club Nintendo erhältlich waren, sind sie nun auch im amerikanischen Club Nintendo für 800 und im europäischen für 2500 Punkte zu beziehen.)) exklusiv im japanischen Club Nintendo.

Man kann Hanafuda in zwei Varianten spielen, Hachi Hachi und Koi Koi. Ich selbst habe nur letztere Variante schon selbst gespielt, weswegen ich mich hier auf diese beschränken möchte. Die Karten unterscheiden sich in Größe und Material von den meisten bei uns gebrauchten Spielkarten. Hanafuda-Karten sind aus Plastik und verhältnismäßig klein, 34 mm mal 55 mm. Dafür ist die Illustration der Karten und die Punktezuweisung sehr viel komplexer als bei einem Romme-Blatt beispielsweise. Statt simpler Zahlen und Symbole, die leicht am Rand der Karten abgelesen werden können, muss man die Hanafuda-Karten schon in ihrer Ganzheit betrachten, um ihre Zugehörigkeit auszumachen. Es gibt zwölf Suiten, die den Monaten des Jahres zugeordnet sind, zu erkennen an für den jeweiligen Monat typischen Pflanzen, Tieren und anderen Motiven. Das Konzept der Jahreszeitenwörter, die eine sehr große Rolle in der klassischen japanischen Dichtung spielen, findet hier in bildlicher Form Anwendung. Hanafuda vermittelt so auch spielerisch ein Verständnis für Natur und Kultur des japanischen Kalenderjahres.

In Koi Koi haben einzelne Karten der Suiten Punktwerte, die 5, 10 oder 20 betragen können. Nicht jeder Monat hat gleich viele solcher Punktekarten, auch die Werte variieren, allerdings errechnen sich die tatsächlichen Punkte erst in der Kombination der Karten. Nachfolgend möchte ich alle Monatssuiten und Kartenkombinationen vorstellen.

Januar: Kiefer und Kranich

Mit dem Kranich (20 Punkte) und einem roten, beschrifteten Band (5 Punkte) bietet der erste Monat des Jahres zwei Punktekarten. Den Hintergrund zieren die Blätter der japanischen Kiefer (matsu).

Februar: Pflaume und Nachtigall

Der Japanbuschsänger oder auch japanische Nachtigall (uguisu) ist 10 Punkte, das beschriftete rote Band erneut 5 Punkte wert. Alle Karten zeigen die Blüten des japanischen Pflaumenbaums (ume).

März: Kirschblüte und Vorhang

Der erste Frühlingsmonat März hat neben dem dritten und letzten beschrifteten roten Band für 5 Punkte einen Vorhang für 20 Punkte. Die gesamte Suite ist mit Kirschblüten (sakura) versehen.

April: Glyzinie und Kuckuck

Im April singt der Gackelkuckuck (hototogisu) für 10 Punkte und das erste rote Band ohne Beschriftung ist wie seine Vorgänger 5 Punkte wert. In diesem Monat blüht die Glyzinie bzw. der Blauregen aus der Familie der Wistarien (fuji).

Mai: Schwertlilie und Brücke

Schwertlilien (ayame) zieren die Mai-Suite, die neben einem weiteren roten Band für 5 Punkte noch eine Brücke für 10 Punkte beinhaltet.

Juni: Pfingstrose und Schmetterling

Im Juni blüht natürlich die Pfingstrose (botan) und zu den roten Bändern gesellt sich das erste lilane. Der Punktwert ist derselbe wie bei den roten, wieder sind es 5, sowie 10 für die Schmetterlinge.

Juli: Süßklee und Eber

Der Süßklee (hagi) schmückt die Juli-Suite, dessen Eberkarte 10 Punkte wert ist. 5 Punkte für das vorletzte rote Band.

August: Susuki-Gras, Mondhimmel und Wildgänse

Etwas trist sieht der August aus, der dafür aber reich an Punkten ist. Über dem Susuki-Gras thront der Mond für 20 Punkte und die Wildgänse fliegen für 10 Punkte.

September: Chrysanthemen und Sake

Golden blüht die Chrysantheme und verschönert so den ersten Herbstmonat September. 10 Punkte ist das Sake-Schälchen wert und 5 ein weiteres lila Band.

Oktober: Ahorn und Reh

Der Ahorn heißt in Japan momiji und dieses Wort ist gleichbedeutend mit der Färbung des Herbstlaubes im Allgemeinen. Passenderweise ziert er die Oktober-Suite mit einem Reh für 10 Punkte und dem dritten und letzten lila Band für erneut 5 Punkte.

November: Kalligraph Ono no Michikaze mit Frosch, Weide und Schwalbe

Der 894 geborene Kalligraph Ono no Michikaze aus der Heian-Zeit ist zusammen mit dem Frosch 20 Punkte wert, die Schwalbe nochmal 10 und das letzte rote Band ergänzt mit 5 Punkten den November zum punktereichsten Monat. Geschmückt wird er von Weiden (yanagi).

Dezember: Kaiser-Paulownie und Phönix

Der Dezember beschließt mit Kaiser-Paulownie (kiri) und einem Phönix für 20 Punkte das Jahr.

Kommen wir nun zu den Kombinationsmöglichkeiten. Am meisten Punkte lassen sich natürlich mit den 20-Punkte-Karten machen, und zwar zwischen 5 und 10. Die Punktewerte der Einzelkarten sind also rein nominell zu verstehen, tatsächlich braucht man alle 5 Karten dieses Wertes, um insgesamt 10 Punkte zu erzielen, mit den sogenannten 5 Lichtern (gokō):

Gokō: Kranich, Vorhang, Mond, Frosch und Phönix

Immerhin 8 Punkte gibt es für diese vier Karten:

Shikō: vier 20 Punktkarten

Die sogenannten vier Lichter (shikō) werden auf 7 Punkte abgewertet, wenn eine der Karten durch den Kalligraphen mit Frosch ersetzt werden. Der Kalligraph hält nicht umsonst einen Schirm: Diese Kombination heißt daher vier Lichter mit Regen (ame-iri shikō). 5 Punkte gibt es für drei der hochwertigen Karten, solange die Regenkarte nicht dabei ist, beispielsweise in dieser Kombination:

Sankō: drei 20-Punkte-Karten ohne Regen

Genausoviel Punkte wie die drei Lichter gibt es für den Sake-Trunk während der Blumenschau (hanami) bzw. der Mondschau (tsukimi). Diese beiden Kombinationen bestehen aus lediglich zwei Karten, eine davon 20 Punkte, die andere 10 Punkte wert:

Ein Schälchen Sake zur Blumenschau

Ein Schälchen Sake zur Mondenschau

Dem Sake-Schälchen und der September-Suite kommt also eine entscheidende Rolle zu. So schnell bekommt man sonst kaum 5 Punkte. Aber auch mit den anderen 10er-Karten lassen sich viel Punkte machen: Wenn man die richtigen drei 10-Punkte-Karten sammelt (den Eber, das Reh und die Schmetterlinge), sind diese ebenfalls 5 Punkte wert. Jede weitere 10-Punkte-Karte erhöht den Wert der Kombination außerdem um jeweils einen Punkt, sodass insgesamt 9 Punkte mit den Karten dieses Werts erzielt werden können.

Eber, Reh und Schmetterlinge (inoshikachō)

Die Bänder, die jeweils 5 Punkte wert waren, können in Kombination auch bis zu 5 Punkte Grundwert erzielen. So viel erhält man für die roten Bänder (aka-tan) oder die lila Bänder (ao-tan):

Aka-tan: drei beschriftete rote Bänder

Ao-tan: drei lila Bänder

Jedes weitere Band gleich welcher Farbe erhöht den Grundwert dieser beiden Kombinationen von 5 um jeweils 1. Sammelt man sowohl die roten wie die lila Bänder, ergänzen sich die beiden Kombinationen zu einer neuen, die 10 Punkte wert ist:

Beide Bänderkombinationen

Dieser Grundwert von 10 erhöht sich mit jedem weiteren Band um 1. Immerhin noch einen Punkt gibt es für eine Bänderkombination, die keiner der oben beschriebenen entspricht:

Tan: 5 oder mehr bunte Bänder

Auch hier erhöht jedes weitere Band den bescheidenen Grundwert von 1 um jeweils noch einmal 1.

Wir sind nun also bei den kleinen Fischen angelangt. Auch für fünf 10er-Karten, die noch nicht zur Eber/Reh/Schmetterlinge-Kombination reichen, gibt es einen Punkt. Jede weitere 10er-Karte erhöht diesen Grundwert um 1. Diese Kombi heißt tane (Samen) und kann natürlich im Nachhinein noch zur oben genannten Kombination für 5 Punkte aufgewertet werden werden.

Auch die sogenannten Abfallkarten ohne Punktwert können in der Masse doch noch kleine Punktwerte erzielen. 10 von ihnen sind zusammen 10 Punkte wert, jede weitere dann nochmal 1. Diese Kombination heißt kasu (Abfall).

Kasu: 10 Abfallkarten

Gespielt wird also einer gegen einen. Der Geber (oya) verteilt jeweils 8 verdeckte Karten an sich und den anderen Spieler (ko) und legt noch einmal 8 offen in die Mitte (ba). Wer zuerst Geber sein darf, wird ausgelost, danach wechseln sich die Spieler ab. Beginnend mit dem Geber spielen beide Seiten jeweils eine ihrer eigenen Karten aus und drehen danach noch eine Karte vom verdeckten Stapel auf. Mit beiden dieser so ausgespielten Karten haben die Spieler die Chance, Karten aus der Mitte für sich zu gewinnen: Wenn in der offenen Mitte eine Karte aus derselben Monatssuite liegt wie die ausgespielte Karte, darf der Spieler diese beiden zueinander passenden Karten auf seinen offenen Punktestapel legen. Alles was dort liegt, kann zu den oben beschriebenen Kombinationen zusammengestellt werden.

Spielfeld

Passen die ausgespielten Karten zu keiner in der offenen Mitte, bleiben sie zusammen mit den anderen dort liegen. Passen sie zu mehreren in der Mitte, muss der Spieler sich eine davon aussuchen. Geschicktes Ausspielen der eigenen Karten ist natürlich der Schlüssel zum Sieg. Aber auch der Überblick über das Spielgeschehen insgesamt ist wichtig. Jedesmal, wenn ein Spieler eine Kombination erzielt oder aufrüstet, hat er die Wahl, entweder die Runde zu beenden, oder mit der Ansage koi koi (komm komm) das Spiel weiterzuführen. Diese Option bietet sich an, wenn noch mehr Punkte in Aussicht stehen. Tödlich ist dieser Spielzug allerdings, wenn der Gegner dann vor einem selbst als nächstes eine Kombination erzielt. In diesem Fall kann er nämlich die bisherigen Punkte des „koi koi“-Rufers doppelt für sich selbst aufschreiben.

Wer in 12 Runden die meisten Punkte erzielt, ist der Sieger.

Link: Sloperama Hanafuda (englisch)

Politische Korrektheit ist zwar richtig und durchaus wichtig, aber sie muss sensiblisieren, helfen, auf die Probleme in der eigenen Weltanschauung aufmerksam zu werden und nicht als Besen missbraucht werden, diese Probleme unter den Teppich zu kehren.

Entgegen lustiger Spruchbänder sprachlicher Saubermänner sind Besen nämlich tatsächlich zum Fliegen da. Freie Wortwelten mit grenzenlosem Himmel.

But actually the concept of a story completely without spoken dialogue is quite ingenious. Of course practically all the Nintendo heroes follow the school of the mute hero to allow the player to project their own thoughts into the story. And NOJIMA also started as a writer of Dragon Quest type RPGs and interpreted the mute hero in very interesting ways in his early works. So trying out this concept was probably the most interesting thing he could have done to adapt the Nintendo universe and its characters and he also had the necessary experience to pull it off. I just didn’t see it during my play through. Rewatching the story sequences again later opened my eyes to many things I had missed before, making me want to write another article on the game.

By waiving dialogue the game doesn’t just become the equivalent of a silent movie; in fact all the games before the advent of voice overs were silent. Like silent movies they used text to relay the spoken dialogue. But a lot more of it because the game medium had better ways of putting text onto the screen than the silent movies, which usually interrupted the moving picture with a black screen to show the dialogue. Games completely without any text aren’t that uncommon either, they just usually don’t try to tell a story then.

The Subspace Emissary doesn’t just omit voice overs, like most Nintendo games still do for the most part, but also text boxes. Actually certain in game moves are accompanied by short bits of speech in recent Nintendo games, compromising the mute hero concept, but in text box dialogues Mario still skips his part of the dialogue as to not impose his (absent) personality on the player. Since all the characters in Brawl are like Mario in this regard, since they are all mute heroes, even including the playable villains, the narrative has to do without text altogether. This is in fact very rare not just in games but also in the silent movie genre.

Actions speak louder than words, as they say, and actions are also the thing that is easier to convey into interactive form since actions can be linked to button presses or other input from the player much easier than words. Generating speech interactively would be almost as much of a pain as having it interpreted by the game software. Simply speaking we’re still a long way off from that kind of interaction. So by only showing action in the non-interactive movie sequences they become more like the interactive parts. They’re still automatic but not that different from some scripted game parts which come very close to movie like action where the player does everything themselves apart from talking. But being narrative scenes what the player can actually do is still predetermined by the game. This fact becomes even more apparent when the on screen presentation is restricted to action only. Playing a story means giving up almost all freedom. You become a pawn on the board which constitutes the game, an action figure so to speak.

The Ancient Minister delivers the subspace bomb

That was also the original setting of Smash Bros., action figures coming alive to battle each other. And this is also where the story of The Subspace Emissary starts, with Mario and Kirby having a sporting competition in a huge stadium. Until the Ancient Minister and his minions show up and wreck havok with their subspace bombs. The whole world is threatened by these bombs and all its inhabitants have to face some sort of crisis. The narrative switches between different places in the Nintendo universe to show its heroes and villains battle in midst of the huge detonations of the bombs of the Ancient Minister’s army.

Donkey and Diddy Kong vs. Bowser

Nature vs. Technology

Technology wins

Captain Falcon makes an entrance

The Two Captains

Donkey and Diddy Kong protect the jungle yet untainted by civilization from the devilish Koopa King Bowser, who has come to this foreign place to exploit its natural resources. They get help from the futuristic pilots of the Star Fox games and later team up with another coupling of future and past: The main driver of the racing game F-Zero, Captain Falcon, and the alien captain Olimar and his army of plant soldiers called Pikmin. Olimar actually is a bit similar to Bowser as he also harvests a foreign natural resource but unlike Bowser he treats the Pikmins with respect and feels compassion for their frequent deaths. They are very fragile and even during Captain Falcon’s “cool” entrance a few dozen of them die in the process. In a way it is a black humored commentary on the rise of technology at the cost of nature.

Lucas

The frightened boy Lucas is encouraged by his strong friends Ness and Pokemon Trainer. Lucas has an actual name, whereas Ness is a reference to the family of consoles his games were released for and Pokemon Trainer is just the generic hero of Nintendo’s most successful franchise on Game Boy and later handhelds. It’s as if an actual boy got help from a legendary game console and game series to do the things he didn’t have the courage to do by himself.

Marth faces the bomb

Encaged

Pit and Palutena

Marth, who is just one of many medieval knights in the Nintendo universe to make an appearance in the game, tries to protect his fortress from the blast of one of the subspace bombs. Mario and Link protect their respective encaged princesses. Donkey Kong protects the jungle. Getting a glimpse of the world wide destruction Pit, the angel living in an ancient Greek inspired fantasy heaven, receives a bow from the goddess Palutena to join the heroes protecting all of the world.

Samus and Pikachu find the Power Suit

Snake wants the princesses to be safe

Sheik

On the loose

Ice Climbers

The modern woman Samus Aran is empowered by technology and rivals every other Nintendo hero in strength. The princesses, told to stay put by macho hero Snake after being rescued from their cages, seem to comply with this order at first, but dressing up in her male guise as Sheik, Zelda and the dressed as usual Peach go out to fight alongside their male companions. The Ice Climbers, a team of a man and woman of equal abilities join the larger growing band of heroes.

The evil Wario

King Dedede and his collection: Luigi, Ness and Zelda

Evil princess

Two evil princesses

Encaged princesses turned bad

Master Hand commands Gannondorf

Strings being pulled by a seraphic taboo

Meanwhile the villains of the Nintendo universe go around the world shooting the iconic heroes with a beam cannon that instantly turns them back into action figures and collect them like trophies. They also corrupt the icons turned statue to make them battle for evil. But even the villains take their orders from Master Hand, the boss of the bosses since the first Smash Bros. crossover game. Who turns out to be nothing but a puppet of the real boss Taboo who is pulling his strings. Taboo’s name implies that he symbolizes something which is not to be openly talked about and his weapons are the subspace bombs, marked with an X, equally omitting their real name.

So far we have identified the following themes:

• battle as a fair sporting event,
• video games as encouragement for timid boys,
• conservative tendencies to protect something (usually a place or a woman),
• clash of primal nature and high technology,
• modern women fighting alongside men,
• battle as destructive war associated with a final boss that is a taboo,
• technology providing a weapon that can annihilate the whole world.

Detonation

The last one is especially important to the narrative as a whole. The huge detonation of the subspace bomb provided by the army of the Ancient Minister starts off the story and gives the heroes a reason to fight. The horror of these bombs is linked to their enormous devastative power but also to the self sacrificing robots who bring them to their destinations. They don’t mind blowing up together with the bombs, effectively treating themselves as weapons, as things rather than sentient beings. You could argue that they as robots are indeed just things but you would be wrong.

Stopping the suicide bombers

The Ancient Minister has doubts

Even the heroes and the Ancient Minister feel compassion for the poor robots and try to stop them from blindly acting out their destructive order. The Ancient Minister’s name implies a long heritage, whereas Mario and the other heroes have a much more modest tradition. But in the end they both oppose the destruction and the act of self sacrifice. After working with the Nintendo villains for most of the story the Ancient Minister resists the war campaign spurred by his allies and for the first time attempts to stop the robot soldiers. This turns out to be futile but the Ancient Minister after being set ablaze is revealed to not be a mythical entity but a robot like the members of the army he commands.

The family stands united

Taboo

Trapped in the subspace

In the end all the heroes and villains have to unite to battle the real enemy, Taboo, who controlled even the supposed controller, Master Hand. A taboo is something to be kept silent, like the heroes who can only act. To overcome this taboo they have to confront the truth of war to bring back the places trapped ((The world robbed from most of its locations and the heroes restoring the world to its complete existence was also the concept of earlier games, most prominently Dragon Quest VII in 2000. In that game you had to travel the past to find the lost locations and learn their story before they disappeared.)) in the subspace ((The subspace is called akū (亜空) in Japanese. The second character of this made up term means sky, heaven or space. The first character can also mean Asia but here it refers to the concept of subsequence, of resulting from something else that is its base/origin.)) of the virtual reality of the game.

NISHITANI Aya, born in 1955 in Mie prefecture. Graduate student of economics at Hokkaidō University. Mostly known for his Digital Devil Story books but also for other horror/fantasy light novels.

While the Megami Tensei series never quite enjoyed the same kind of success the other two big JRPG series Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy have, it still is one of the major RPG franchises in Japan, spawning many sequels and countless spin-offs which in turn often grew into their own series, like Devil Children for Game Boy or Devil Summoner for disc based consoles. The anime-heavy Persona spin-off series even surpassed the original series’ success and also put Atlus on the Western JRPG publisher map during the Playstation era. After the first real Megami Tensei game published outside Japan, Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne, was released in the US in 2004 Atlus USA started slapping the SMT moniker on every spin-off title including the recent Persona games but not many Western players are aware of the roots of the franchise which is based on a light novel series by NISHITANI Aya published starting in 1986.

DDS1: Megami Tensei (1986)

Megami Tensei was actually the subtitle of the first book in the Digital Devil Story series ((Digital Devil Story might remind some readers of the Digital Devil Saga games for PS2 which were named to allude to the series’ roots.)) which started as a trilogy but got an even longer running sequel. Like other light novels the DDS books feature manga-styled covers and both color and b/w illustrations, the former at the beginning and the latter spread throughout each volume, drawn by KITAZUME Hiroyuki. The story is a mix of SF, fantasy and horror and its aesthetics and subject matter strongly appeal to fans of manga and games which is typical of light novels. The original trilogy follows the adventures of genius programmer NAKAJIMA Akemi ((中島朱実. NAKAJIMA’s first name is sexually ambiguous, like many Japanese names it can be both male and female, this one being more commonly female. This fits in with NAKAJIMA often being described as effeminate and rivaling a girl’s beauty. The author’s first name Aya is equally ambiguous.)) and his female classmate SHIRASAGI Yumiko. NAKAJIMA writes a program that unleashes digitally summoned demons on the world, in part because, like any genius scientist who discovers something new, he can, but also because he wants to get revenge on two other classmates, the ruffian jock KONDŌ Hiroyuki and TAKAMIZAWA Kyōko, who instigated KONDŌ to beat up NAKAJIMA for allegedly harrassing her the day before. Realizing what he has done he rises to become the hero to fight the demons he himself unleashed. He gets help from the recently transferred ((Yumiko being a transfer student (転校生、tenkōsei) is linked to her being reincarnated by the characters used to write the word. If just one is left out tenkōsei becomes tensei, which means reincarnation.)) Yumiko, who not only becomes his lover but also turns out to be a reincarnation of Izananami-no-mikoto, an ancient goddess ((Izanami-no-mikoto is also the mother of the world. In the Japanese world creation myth a human-like goddess gives birth to the world after discovering sexual intercourse with her husband, Izanagi-no-mikoto. This myth is much more concrete and founded in real life experience than the Judaism/Christian equivalent, i.e. in the bible world creation (by an abstract being) and discovery of sexuality (by humans created in god’s image) are split up into two stories. Izanagi and Izanami are thus at the same time similar to Adam and Eve and to the Jewish/Christian creator god.)), hence the title Megami Tensei (Reincarnation of the goddess).

Yumiko finds out about the demon summon program making her a target of Loki.

The demons lead by the norse god Loki aren’t willing to retreat from the world once summoned and soon endanger Yumiko. With her divine abilities and NAKAJIMA’s demon summon program they manage to fight back Loki, getting help from another demon, Cerberos, who NAKAJIMA befriends. The demons represent NAKAJIMA’s violent and dangerous feelings, resulting in Loki killing NAKAJIMA’s classmates, as much as his potential for heroism, wielding a flame sword and riding Cerberos. In the world of the DDS novels NAKAJIMA’s ability to program computer games that make professional efforts pale in comparison, as his friend TAKAI comments, is exaggerated in the fantasy narrative enabling him to summon real demons by simulating their every detail on his computer. The esoteric and mysterious sounding assembly code becomes actual spells, IT becomes the spiritual successor of Kabbalah and witchcraft. It seems like a childish fantasy but is actually an interesting allegory for how games can be perceived by the player. It’s like the gruesome scenes seen in some games have become reality. Every game has its hero fighting the cruel villain but NISHITANI actually acknowledges the programmer’s role in also creating the adversary, the adversary actually being a part of the creator. ((Hero and villain necessitating each other also is common theme in American superhero comics since the late 70-ies, when the mutant heroes of the Uncanny X-Men were becoming as feared as their evil counterparts. Should the victims be thankful of the hero saving them from the villain or the hero be thankful of the villain for making his adventures more interesting than saving cats from trees and catching bank robbers? In the end both are projections of the comic creator. Same is true of novels and games.))

Coming to the rescue

But the story is also one of coming of age and of sexual awakening. Like Yumiko NAKAJIMA is a reincarnation of an ancient god, Izanami’s husband Izanagi. Rescuing Yumiko from the demon attacks, like Loki’s tentacles, he often gets to hold her naked body aftwards. The aggressive sexual assaults of the demons are juxtaposed with NAKAJIMA’s own timid affection towards Yumiko. Unlike Kyōko, Yumiko is kind and doesn’t ridicule him for his effeminate looks, unlike his absent working mother she is there for him and stands by his side. A reincarnation of a kind ancient mother goddess she’s the one he chooses to protect, to be his lover.

DDS2: Mato no senshi (1986)

In the second novel Mato no senshi (The Warrior of the Demon Capitol) NAKAJIMA’s teacher EBARA, who was raped by Loki in part one, gives birth to Seth, another demon adversary, but only after killing NAKAJIMA’s mother before his and Yumiko’s eyes to get revenge for him slaying Loki. The demons infiltrate more and more of the world including the sphere of politics and the younger brother of Charles Feed of the MIT (a friend of Richard Craft who helped NAKAJIMA write the demon summon program) decides to use the demon summon program again even though NAKAJIMA chooses not to. Yumiko is summoned to a mythical plane to be trained by the real Izanami how to use her divine abilities while NAKAJIMA and his American friends keeps the demons at bay in their home town. They even go to outer space from where the demons start their big invasion.

Snake in Outer Space

When faced with the decision to either save the whole world from being overrun with demons or save Yumiko from dying he chooses to save his lover. After losing his mother, first to her career, then to his evil pregnant teacher (who in a way is the antithesis of his mother as the villains Loki and his son Seth are the antithesis to the heroic NAKAJIMA), he cannot bear to also lose the girl that is supposed to be her substitute, the reincarnation of the mother goddess.

DDS3: Tensei no shūen (1988)

In the last volume, Tensei no shūen (End of the Reincarnation), NAKAJIMA and Yumiko face off with Lucifer himself, whose advent to the human world is heralded by a spreading cult which the frightened humans succumb to. But first NAKAJIMA has to find a cure for Yumiko’s loss of her eyesight. NAKAJIMA seems destined to become the world’s Messiah but like Jesus he is seduced by Lucifer and unlike Jesus he cannot resist Lucifer’s control over his actions. Izanami has to kill NAKAJIMA as he turns on Yumiko. Of course the story doesn’t end with NAKAJIMA’s death, there’s a 6 volume sequel series, Shin Digital Devil Story (The New Digital Devil Story) which continues the battle against Lucifer.

Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei (1987)

The game adaption, which NISHITANI also wrote the scenario for, shares the same title as the first novel, Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei ((The only difference is that Story is written in Chinese characters instead of Latin or Japanese characters like in the novels but it still is meant to be read as Story.)) and adapts the story of NAKAJIMA. The game skips the exposition and depicitions of real life Tokyo and instead starts right with NAKAJIMA and Yumiko entering the demon lair and is basically one big dungeon separated into five areas. NAKAJIMA and Yumiko have to fight off and negotiate with demons to make the needed allies to get through the dangerous mazes until their final confrontation with Lucifer. Unlike the book NAKAJIMA can become the Messiah this time. The series’ mainstays like befriending demons and the fusion system to make stronger demons are already introduced in this first installment. Unlike most other original Japanese RPGs of the time it also used a first-person perspective and an alignment system differentiating along the axis of Good-Neutral-Evil, which both were common in Western RPGs.

Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei II (1990)

The sequel Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei II was made without NISHITANI’s involvement and continues the story established in the first game ignoring the novel sequels. It actually has a much stronger narrative than the first game and introduces another element typical of the later Megami Tensei games, choice. The player still can’t choose or in any way affect his alignment, which remains fixed at Good, but depending on a few choices at crucial plot points he can get a different ending than the standard one.

Blinded Yumiko, NAKAJIMA and Cerberos

The story is set in a bleak future after World War III. The atom bomb has been dropped on Tokyo and people hide in shelters. In one such shelter a boy and his friend, both named by the player, play a video game called Devil Buster ((In the ending Devil Buster is revealed to be the demon summon program written by NAKAJIMA Akemi.)). It is very similar to the first DDS: MT game but with a top down perspective switching to first person for the battles, reminiscent of the Dragon Quest style of presentation. A male hero is coupled with a magician girl, like NAKAJIMA and Yumiko in the first game. They befriend demons to beat the boss of the dungeon. Once the boy and his friend clear the dungeon something weird happens. A demon addresses them and tells them about demons coming to their own reality. He explains to them how they can use the game soft to summon demons in the real world and that they have to use them to save the world. When they stop playing they find themselves in the shelter which is seen from a first-person perspective indicating their return to the “real world”. The Dragon Quest-style game fantasy has been replaced with the more realistic game setting of Megami Tensei again.

NAKAJIMA chooses Yumiko.

The boy’s friend takes the place of the girl from the game and they travel ruined Tokyo together. Until they make their way to Tokyo Tower where they meet the girl from the game in the real world. ((The girl in the game is of course a symbol and a projection of the hero’s image of women as based on his closest female reference, his mother. Finding her in the real world outside the game is an allegory for the shift from affection towards the mother to love for same age girls.)) She seems to know how the player can become the Messiah but the boy’s friend doesn’t want him to listen to her. The player doesn’t have a real choice here and must ask the girl into the party at some point which causes him to have to split up with his male friend. Who then becomes an evil demon summoner trying to stop the player from restoring the world.

Lucifer battling Izanami

At a later stage the player can show mercy to a defeated boss turned frog. This decision leads to the possibility of uniting him with another boss to restore the god Ba’al who then can join the player. With Ba’al in his party the player doesn’t have to fight Lucifer who instead explains to him that devils are just gods of other religions. ((The two demons reunited as Ba’al, Bael and Beelzebub, are actually both interpretations of the same god Ba’al as an evil devil.)) The player can then choose polytheism over becoming the Messiah of a monotheistic god. This is actually the true ending which leads to the world being restored. If the player decides to become the Messiah he helps build the biblical 1000 year kingdom in which according to the game only the strong survive. ((This becomes the law ending in the later Shin Megami Tensei games.)) This can be seen as an expression of the mixed feelings of the Japanese towards the patriarchal values of post war Japan stressing importance of education and achievements in school and the work place and the suppression of some more lenient Japanese values like maternal kindness.

Shin Megami Tensei (1992), PSX Version Opening

For the next installment developer Atlus chose to reboot the series and interpret the original narrative of NISHITANI’s novel in new ways. The title was shortened to just Megami Tensei but with the prefix Shin added. Shin usually means new, as in the New Adventures of or the New Tales of, but here it is written with the character indicating true. In the opening someone is entering cryptic computer code that turns into ancient spells and when he enters the title Shin Digital Devil Story the beginning part Shin is at first converted to the usual New, then to God and finally to True. Digital Devil Story is then converted to Megami Tensei making the title read The True Reincarnation of the Goddess.

Major story motives of the original, like the demon summon program (this time written by Steven, a man in a wheel chair), the death of the hero’s mother, the friendly demon Cerberos (who is created by fusing the hero’s dog Pascal with any demon), politicians controlled by demons ((In the game the American ambassador Thorman turns out to be the Norse god Thor who drops an atom bomb on Tokyo because of the Japanese millitary allying themselves with demons. Thorman (トールマン) is obviously a play on words; if one character is displaced it becomes Truman (トルーマン), alluding the ambassador’s decision to the historical bombing of Hiroshima in World War II.)) and cults spreading are reinterpreted. Also a new alignment axis is introduced: Good-Neutral-Evil is changed to Light-Neutral-Dark and Law-Neutral-Chaos is added ((These are the same two types of alignment also present in D&D, the original RPG to come up with the alignment system in the first place.)). This latter alignment changes with the player’s actions. There’s also two more heroes, the law hero who is accused of having killed his girl friend and the chaos hero who is beat up by ruffians. The law hero actually dies and comes back to life after 3 days to become the actual Messiah ((The alleged murder of the law hero’s girlfriend can be seen as a symbol for war crimes the generation of the law hero hasn’t themselves committed. The law player seeks to distance himself from this past and becomes a Messiah type hero.)) while the chaos hero seeks strength so desperately that he decides to fuse with a demon to gain its power ((Being frequently bullied the chaos player seeks a way out of being pushed around, resulting in radicalization.)). Both try to convince the player to join their side but it’s up to him to remain neutral or choose either one. Law is linked to the Messiah church and chaos to the Gaia church, the former representing patriarchal systems like Christianity in which the mother only serves to enforce male values, the latter maternal goddesses of the world which are similar to Japanese folklore.

Choosing when to fight, choosing who to treat as friend or foe, choosing your own actions and ideology to follow, if the game is a virtual mirror of the real world then giving the player this kind of freedom must be empowering. Shin Megami Tensei also avoids associating either religious stream with light/good or dark/evil. In fact both the law hero and the chaos hero are aligned with light.

Shin Megami Tensei Jerusalem 1 (1994)

This element of choice made a big impression on the Japanese gaming scene and NISHITANI was inspired by this game to revisit his creation, writing his own version of Shin Megami Tensei (The True Reincarnation of the Goddess). The hero-heroine team of reincarnated ancient Japanese gods is replaced by a heroine becoming the mother of god and a secondary hero protecting her (or failing to protect her from the demon rape). In the afterword of the first volume NISHITANI explains his aim with this new novel:

I belief that no work of art is ever created by just one single individual. The music of Wagner for example could only exist because of traditional German folk tales, opera, the environment of his family and the harsh historical background he lived in.

The Pillow Book ((Makura no sōshi, written by court lady SEI Shōnagon in the Heian period.)) also is a literary work which could only exist because of the overripe culture of the nobility, the life at court and the author’s hereditary genius.

A great artist is like a priestess medium, sucking a certain something out of his era. The part emerging as a work of art is but the tip of the iceberg and in the depths of it there is a hidden huge core, of which the artist isn’t even aware.

The bigger this hidden core is, the deeper its layers and the more profound its meanings. The game Shin Megami Tensei seems to me like a large bloom coming out of the border line of such a core.

I’ve heard that most of the development staff of Shin Megami Tensei created the game leaning towards chaos or neutral.

Among the people close to me at least there is no one who played the game taking the lawful route.

As for myself, I only beat the game the lawful way.

Many people assume that the lawful hero route is, in a nutshell, just like any other RPG, but I don’t agree.

Law is not about doing what is right but believing in an absolute ruler and accepting the fate you’re given.

The conduct of a typical benevolent hero like the one in Ultima is not what you would call lawful virtue in theological theory. That is nothing more than a relativistic law. In fact Shin Megami Tensei is the only RPG that contains a lawful standpoint in the true sense of the word.

But there’s something severly missing from the lawful world portrayed in Shin Megami Tensei.

I’m speaking about “Mary”.

Christianity, which represents the lawful ideology, could only become a world religion because of Mary worship. The protestants deny Mary worship but in catholic belief Mary, who in theology is positioned only slightly beneath Jesus, sustains Christianity.

A few years back when I visited Jerusalem I went to a graveyard church built on mount Golgotha, the most holy of places.

The statue of Mary standing there didn’t smile gently like the depictions of the holy mother usually do.

She was grieving for her crucified son, shedding tears and calling to the heavens.

As I saw her sobbing expression all the doubts I had about Christianity were suddenly cleared up.

The world portrayed in the game is truly like the year 0. It’s the world just before Mary would give birth to the son of god.

Just like the prophets of old were telling of coming change this game is now telling of something being born.

I’m giving my all to draw out the lawful element in this.

NISHITANI understands that his novel has taken a life of its own, that it has grown into something bigger than what he created. His world is now shaped by the software developers he teamed up with earlier. So maybe he seeks to claim his part in forming this techno pseudo religion. But he also stresses that Shin Megami Tensei‘s achievement isn’t just to provide an alternative to the standard good RPG hero. He points out that this law stance is unique to Shin Megami Tensei and that it might have more in common with the chaos stance than is first apparent. For NISHITANI law is still a viable choice and Shin Megami Tensei includes this option as well.

Die Leistung des „alten“ 3Ds bedeutete für Videospiele aber einen viel einschneidenderen Wandel, die 3D-Darstellung eröffnete nämlich den verstärkten Einsatz von filmischen Stilmitteln. Natürlich spielten auch die neuen optischen Speichermedien wie anfangs CD, später DVD, eine wichtige Rolle bei der Zunahme von Filmsequenzen in Spielen. Diese hatten auf die teuren Module älterer Konsolengenerationen einfach nicht in großer Zahl draufgepasst. Tatsächlich ist es aber die Berechnung der interaktiven Spielegrafik in Echtzeit, speziell des Hintergrundes, die filmtypische Kamerafahrten und Perspektivwechsel auch während des Spiels ermöglichen.

Als Spielegrafik noch überwiegend 2D war, also aus platten Ebenen bestand, die in 2 Dimensionen, das heißt an zwei Achsen, verschoben werden konnten, standen Videospiele noch dem Bühnentheater näher als dem Film. Ein Zuschauer im Theater betrachtet die Handlung immer aus derselben Perspektive und derselben Entfernung. Ortswechsel sind nur von einem Akt zum nächsten möglich, wenn Zeit ist, die Kulisse zu ändern, und die Größe und Anzahl der Orte ist sehr beschränkt. In diesen Punkten hat das Videospiel dem Theater einige Dinge voraus, das Wechseln der Kulisse geschieht äußerst schnell und die einzelnen Bühnen können sehr groß sein, der Sitz des Zuschauers wird praktisch in einer Ebene nach links oder rechts, oben oder unten verschoben. Es gibt also durchaus Kamerafahrten, nur eben in 2D. Es ist, als sitzt man gleichzeitig in der ersten Reihe und kann das Geschehen aus der Nähe betrachten, aber auch in der letzten, wo man die gesamte riesige Bühne sehen kann und jeden Handlungsort mitverfolgen kann. Die Kamera zeigt immer den Teil der Bühne, an dem das Geschehen spielt, aus nächster Nähe. Auch sind der Zahl der Bühnen nur durch die Größe des Speichermediums Grenzen gesetzt.

Da die Größe der Theaterbühne begrenzt ist, wird die räumliche Tiefe des Himmels oder eines im Hintergrund endenden Weges durch eine platte, gemalte Tapete simuliert. Auch Objekte in unmittelbarer Nähe der Akteure, wie Büsche oder Blumen, werden teilweise durch flache Aufsteller ersetzt. Diese sehen für den Zuschauer, die die flachen Objekte sowieso nur von vorne, nicht von der Seite, sehen, genauso aus wie die Originale, sind aber billiger, schneller aufzubauen, behindern die Schauspieler weniger und sind von einem Bühnenbildner angefertigt, dessen Kreativität die einzige Beschränkung der Requisiten darstellt. Die Bühne und ihr Bildner ist quasi einer der Akteuere. Das Theater arbeitet wie die meisten Künste mit Täuschung, mit make belief. Was im Roman detaillierte Beschreibungen von Dingen sind, die man nicht sehen kann, oder im Kino die Spezialeffekte, die Künste arbeiten mit verschiedenen Techniken der Täuschung, es liegt an der Fantasie des Zuschauers, den Mangel an Echtheit auszugleichen. Die Art, wie das Theater den Zuschauer täuscht, hat viele Gemeinsamkeiten mit der Art, wie 2D-Spiele den Spieler täuschen. Mit dem Anbruch des 3D-Zeitalters ändert sich diese Art der Täuschung, sie ähnelt zusehends dem Kino. Wurde räumliche Tiefe bisher nur rudimentär angedeutet, wird sie nun bis in alle Details nachgebildet. Und durch die Perspektivwechsel fühlt man sich viel stärker ins Geschehen involviert, als stünde man nicht mehr vor, sondern auf der Bühne. Besonders wenn man dann noch Kontrolle über die Kamera hat. In diesem Moment lässt das Spiel den Film in Punkto Immersion sogar hinter sich.

Wie das Kino täuschen 3D-Spiele viel professioneller, der Rezipient erwartet auch immer mehr Realismus. War im Theater die Täuschung noch sofort zu durchschauen, basierte sie auf gutem Willen des Zuschauers, sich nicht an der Falschheit zu stören, ist der Kinozuschauer eher verärgert, wenn er die Illusion als solche bemerkt. Der moderne Zuschauer kann und will gar nicht mehr verstehen, wie die Täuschung zustande kommt, dazu ist sie zu komplex und zu sehr auf Realismus hin orientiert. Im Theater, wo die Täuschung noch als solche zu erkennen ist, können wir noch viel eher ihren Wert ermessen, verstehen, worin die Kunstfertigkeit des Bühnenbilds besteht. Wer einmal eine Kabuki-Inszenierung gesehen hat, wo Urgewalten von mythischen Gottheiten ein Gebäude erschüttern und zerstören, ein Ausmaß an Details und Spezialeffekten, die im Westen erst im Filmmedium praktiziert wurden, versteht den Reiz der kunstfertigen Täuschung. Sie ist in jedem Moment als solche zu erkennen, in ihrer detaillierten Ausführung aber ungemein beeindruckend. Im Kino hat die 3D-Computeranimation einer Welle von Fantasy-Filmen, beginnend mit dem Lord of the Rings, den Weg geebnet, weil die fantastischen Stoffe durch die neue Technologie erst in einer angemessenen Form für das Massenpublikum umsetzbar erschienen. In Japan, wo fantastische Stoffe schon immer das Theater beherrschten, wartete man nicht erst auf die passende Technik, sondern perfektionierte bestehende Techniken aus der Theatertradition und brachte so Bühnenbilder hervor, die man bei uns erst im Kino zu sehen bekam. Daraus wird auch deutlich, dass Fantasy in Japan ein zentrales kulturelles Anliegen ist und nicht nur eine Subkultur wie bei uns.

Vor dem Anbruch des 3D-Zeitalters waren japanische Spieleentwickler führend im Bereich Grafik und das hat auch etwas mit der Bühnentradition des Landes zu tun. Das kulturelle Umfeld stattet Japaner mit Kenntnissen über 2D-Inszenierung aus, die sie nur noch am Computer umsetzen müssen. Auch Anleihen beim Kino gehen oft auf ältere Theatertechniken zurück; Theater, Film und Spiel stehen in einer Tradition. Mit dem Anbruch des 3D-Zeitalters gerät Japan jedoch ins Hintertreffen, hier fehlt nicht nur der kulturelle Vorsprung, mit steigendem Massenappeal und entsprechenden Budgets schlägt Amerikas Kino- und Computerspecialeffect-Knowhow auch im Spielebereich voll ein. Nur wenige japanische Entwickler können mit solchem finanziellen Aufwand mithalten, und die, die es können, bedienen sich zunehmend westlicher Programmierer und Entwickler. Dass 2D noch nicht ausgestorben ist, liegt einerseits an kleineren Entwicklern nicht nur in Japan, die Spiele machen wollen, ohne dabei gleich ihre Existenz aufs Spiel setzen zu müssen, denn hohe Budgets bedeuten auch hohe Erwartungen. Andererseits aber auch daran, dass es nach wie vor Fans gibt, die die ganz eigene Tradition des 2D-Spiels zu schätzen wissen und auch ihre Entwicklung weiter verfolgen und unterstützen wollen. 2D ist tatsächlich wie Theater, ein Minderheitengenre, dessen lange Kultur geschätzt wird. Das sich aber nach wie vor neu erfinden kann.

Im Bereich Spiel und Film ist 3D vor allem ein Kostenfaktor. Nicht so im Bereich Comics. Der Erfolg des Nachkriegsmanga fußt auf einem Mann, TEZUKA Osamu, und dessen Innovationen in der Inszenierung stammten schon in den späten 40ern aus dem Filmmedium. Dynamische Perspektiven der Einzelbilder imitierten das Filmmedium und brachten den Comic formal enorm voran, alles aus dem Wunsch des Autors geboren, komplexe Geschichten in diesem Medium zu erzählen. Da jedes Bild einzeln gezeichnet wird und anders als im Theater oder Spiel die Kulisse nicht im nächsten Moment weiterverwendet werden kann bzw. muss, steht es dem Zeichner frei, jederzeit die Perspektive zu wechseln, allein seine Zeichenfertigkeit und der Abgabetermin setzen seinen Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten Grenzen. Dementsprechend konnte das Comicmedium Dinge realisieren, die in anderen Medien zu teuer gewesen wären und festigte seine Popularität gegenüber dem Konkurrenten Film. Das Zwischending Zeichentrick, einerseits ein sehr aufwendiges Medium, andererseits aber auch sehr geeignet, um nicht existierende Dinge darzustellen, die man nicht einfach abfotografieren kann, profitierte ebenfalls von den Techniken des Comics und verhalf Genres wie SF oder Fantasy zu Popularität, die bei uns lange zu einem Nischendasein verdammt waren.

Dennoch war auch TEZUKA von Japans Theatertradition beeinflusst. Sein Held Astro Boy, ein Roboter, in dessen Popularität sich Japans Affinität zu Robotertechnik im allgemeinen ausdrückt, verkörpert eine Tradition und ein Knowhow Japans, das ebenfalls auf das Theater zurückgeht. Außer Kabuki und Nō kennt diese außerdem das Bunraku; dieses verwendet kunstvolle Marionetten mit derart vielen beweglichen anatomischen Details, dass diese so lebensecht wirken wie ein vormoderner Roboter. Ebenfalls ein kulturell begründeter technischer Vorsprung eines Volks, das von täuschend echter Imitation fasziniert ist.

Für seine shōjo manga (Comics für Mädchen) ließ sich TEZUKA hingegen von einer eher jungen Theaterform inspirieren, dem Takarazuka-Theater, in dem alle Rollen, männliche wie weibliche, von Frauen gespielt werden. Eine späte Umkehrung von analogen Praktiken in älteren Theaterformen wie Kabuki und Nō, in denen alle Rollen von Männern dargestellt werden. Die westlichen Kostüme und Schauplätze aus den Takarazuka-Musicalaufführungen waren Vorbilder für die märchenhafte Welt von Ribon no kishi, dem Ritter mit der Schleife, einem Prinz, der eigentlich eine Prinzessin war. Die späteren Mädchencomics von weiblichen Autorinnen griffen viele dieser Takarazuka-Einflüsse auf, am deutlichsten in der Rose von Versailles (Berusaiyu no bara), ein Historiencomic vor dem Hintergrund der französischen Revolution über eine Soldatin namens Lady Oskar. So wie der König in Ribon no kishi einen männlichen Thronfolger brauchte und seine Tochter Sapphire als Jungen erzog, braucht in der Rose von Versailles von IKEDA Riyoko ein General einen Sohn, der in seine Fußstapfen treten soll. Nachdem er aber Mal um Mal nur mit Töchtern gesegnet wird, erzieht auch er seine jüngste Tochter als Jungen und nennt sie Oskar. Das Märchensetting weicht einem authentischen, wenn auch immer noch westlichen Historiensetting, doch anders als mit Prinzessin Sapphire meint es die Geschichte nicht gut mit ihren weiblichen Protagonisten, weder Oskar noch Königin Marie Antoinette überleben die französische Revolution, deren historische Chance im Nachhinein zwiespältig bewertet werden muss.

Vorsicht: Ab hier enthält dieser Artikel Spoiler zu Final Fantasy Tactics!

Spiele existieren nicht in einem Vakuum und mit Theater und historischen Mädchencomics habe ich nun zwei Einflüsse auf Spiele vorgestellt, die zum Verständnis von MATSUNO Yasumis Werk Final Fantasy Tactics unentbehrlich sind. MATSUNOs Fantasy-Spiele schaffen alternative Historien, zwar fantastisch, in ihren politischen Intrigen und kausalen Zusammenhängen aber realistisch genug, um als Historienstücke zu überzeugen. In Final Fantasy Tactics dient Religion als Legitimation für Machtansprüche und Kriege im fiktiven Land Ivalice und festigt ein ungerechtes Ständesystem, gegen das die Unterdrückten aufbegehren. Delita kämpft zusammen mit dem adligen Ramza auf der Seite der Machthaber, muss aber feststellen, dass er den Rebellen viel näher steht als den Adligen, denen das Leben seiner Schwester, die von den Rebellen fälschlicherweise für eine Adlige gehalten und entführt wird, nichts bedeutet. Die Rebellen wollen nicht glauben, dass ihre Geisel für sie wertlos ist und töten eine der ihren. Der Zynismus und die Untätigkeit der Adligen, die Delitas Schwester für nicht schützenswert erachten, antagonisiert Delita aber mehr mit den Adligen und er wird zur stärksten umstürzlerischen Macht in Ivalice; er spielt die Machthaber gegeneinander aus, um selbst im System bis schließlich zum König aufzusteigen. So trennen sich die Wege von ihm und Ramza, der danach zwischen die Fronten gerät, als Ketzer gejagt wird und die von den Ränkeschmieden der Geschichte entfesselten mythischen Kräfte bändigt, die vor langer Zeit die Religion von Ivalice begründet haben.

Die Geschichte von Final Fantasy Tactics wird erzählt von einem Historiker, der mit verschollenen Dokumenten einen Teil der Geschichte rekonstruiert, deren Erinnerung verlorengegangen ist. Delita ist als König in die Geschichte eingegangen, von seinem Freund Ramza, der wie sich herausstellt den Untergang der Welt verhindert hat, künden die offiziellen Geschichtsbücher nicht. Der Spieler übernimmt die Rolle von Ramza und spielt seine verlorene Geschichte nach, eine fantastische Ergänzung zu den realistischen politischen Ereignissen, die in den Geschichtsbüchern nachzulesen sind. Das Spiel versteht sich also als Perspektive auf Ereignisse, an die sich niemand erinnert und die die Geschichte in einem anderen Licht erscheinen lassen. Hier kann man leicht in die Falle des Revisionismus tappen, verklärt die Fantasie nicht womöglich die Wirklichkeit? Diese Gefahr darf man nicht außer Acht lassen, aber was genau war denn Ramzas Rolle in der Zodiac Brave Story (so der Untertitel von Final Fantasy Tactics), in der jedes der zwölf Sternzeichen eine monströse, von Menschen beschwörbare Macht darstellt?

Ramza ist adlig, hat aber kaum Macht. Andere treffen die Entscheidungen, er führt sie als Soldat lediglich aus. Als er von diesem Weg abkommt, wird er als Ketzer gebrandmarkt und verfolgt. Den parallelen Aufstieg von Delita verfolgt er dabei mit und begrüßt den Kampf für Gleichheit. Diesen unterstützt er zwar aktiv kaum, räumt aber hinter den Mächtigen auf, besiegt die Monster, die von ihnen entfesselt werden. Um den letzten Endgegner zu besiegen, Ultimania, die den Ursprung der Religion in Ivalice darstellt, muss er sich mit seinen Gefährten in ihre Welt begeben, aus der er nicht zurückkommt. So wird Ramza von der Geschichte vergessen und stirbt, wie auch Prinzessin Ovelia, die er vorher beschützt hat, und die Delita lediglich als Mittel zum Zweck der Thronbesteigung betrachtet hat. In der letzten Szene erdolcht Delita seine Frau Ovelia und scheint am Ende seiner Ziele doch nicht glücklich zu sein.

Video: I wish I weren't a princess.

Ovelia kommentiert in einer Szene, dass sie eigentlich gar keine Prinzessin sein will. Es scheint ihr, als sei sie für das Leid verantwortlich, das um sie herum geschieht. Sie stellt auch viele Gemeinsamkeiten an sich fest zu Ramzas Schwester Alma, die sie im Kloster kennengelernt hat. Alma wiederum kann Ramza nur schwer dazu überreden, sie mit ihm mitkommen und ihm bei seinem Kampf gegen die mythischen Kräfte helfen zu lassen. In einer Szene kommentiert sie, sie bedauert es, ihm nicht helfen zu können und wünschte, sie wäre als Mann geboren worden. Anders als Delitas Schwester Teta überlebt die adlige Alma bis zum Ende der Geschichte und begleitet Ramza bei seinem Kampf gegen Ultimania, aber ähnlich wie Teta ist sie das Opfer der gesellschaftlichen Ordnung.

Die Geschichte von Ständekämpfen ähnelt natürlich der der französischen Revolution in der Rose von Versailles, Ramza und Delita ähneln der adligen Soldatin Oskar und ihrem Freund aus Kindheitstagen André, der aus dem einfachen Volk stammt. André profitiert von den neuen Verhältnissen, Oskar, die den Prozess auch unterstützt hat, stirbt in den Wirren der Geschichte und wird von ihr vergessen. Das Verhältnis zwischen Ramza und Prinzessin Ovelia spiegelt hingegen das von Oskar und Marie Antoinette wider, die ebenfalls unter ihrer Rolle als Königin leidet. MATSUNO, der als Geschichtsfan in Japan IKEDAs Rose von Versailles sicherlich kennt, knüpft also an einige der Konstellationen dieses Comics an.

Delitas Schwester ist gestorben, er wird König. Ramzas Schwester lebt und kämpft Seite an Seite mit ihm. Im shōjo manga ist ein Mann nicht unbedingt ein Mann und eine Frau nicht unbedingt eine Frau. In homosexuellen Liebesgeschichten in solchen Comics nimmt einer der Männer regelrecht weibliche Züge an, wird zum Avatar der mit ihrer Rolle unzufriedenen Leserin. In der Terminologie des sogenannten Yaoi ((Yaoi bezeichnet Parodien beliebter Anime, in denen die männlichen Figuren homosexuelle Beziehungen zueinander haben.)) wäre Delita ein seme, ein Angreifer, eín männlicher Mann. Ramza hingegen ein uke, ein Empfänger, ein weiblicher Mann. Oder eine Frau in männlichem Gewand, wie Oskar. Eine Frau, die von der Geschichte vergessen wird und deren Leistungen nicht von den Geschichtsschreibern gewürdigt werden.

Strawberry Shortcakes von NANANAN Kiriko (2002)

Selbst solche Frauen wie wir

sind eigentlich fast wie ein Stück Erdbeerkuchen.

Putzig   zerbrechlich   und süß.

Mach jetzt die Augen auf, Dummkopf!

So beginnt NANANAN Kirikos Manga über vier Frauen und ihren Alltag in Tokio. Mit von Kapitel zu Kapitel wechselnder Perspektive fängt NANANAN Sorgen und Wünsche moderner japanischer Frauen minutiös ein und thematisiert dabei auch unschöne Aspekte wie Bulimie, Prostitution und Suizidgedanken. Stellen wir zunächst ihre vier Protagonistinnen vor:

Tōko

Tōko ist eine erfolgreiche Illustratorin für Buchumschläge und verarbeitet seit der Trennung von ihrem Freund ihren Frust in Fressorgien.

Ich möchte ganz viel essen, einfach nur essen.

Bis mein Magen so vollgestopft ist, dass mir kotzübel wird.

Einfach nur, einfach nur ganz viel…

[...]

Essen.

Einfach ganz, ganz viel essen.

Und wenn mein Magen dann voll geworden ist, will ich alles wieder aus mir rauskotzen.

Das fühlt sich an, als ob all die unangenehmen Dinge in mir aus meinem Körper herausgespült werden.

Da sie ihre Bilder in Heimarbeit anfertigt, kommt sie kaum aus dem Haus und ihre wichtigste Verbindung zur Außenwelt ist ihre Mitbewohnerin Chihiro, von der sie auch erfährt, dass ihr Ex bald eine andere Frau heiraten wird. Das scheint ihr nichts auszumachen, Chihiro bewundert sie für ihre Stärke, aber innerlich staut sich unverarbeiteter Frust auf.

Chihiro

Chihiro ist vom Land in die große Stadt gekommen und arbeitet als sogenannte Office Lady, ein Beruf, der extra für Frauen existiert, die ohne Ambition auf Karriere aufs Heiraten und dem damit verbundenen Ausscheiden aus dem Beruf warten.

Die große Stadt Tokio.

Ich bin auf dem Land aufgewachsen und mag die große Stadt Tokio über alles.

Aber…

Manchmal frage ich mich,

ob es für jemanden wie mich, die in einer kleinen Firma unwichtige Büroarbeiten erledigt und so ihr Leben bestreitet,

in Tokio nicht irgendeine wichtige Aufgabe gibt, sie außer mir keiner erfüllen könnte.

Sie sehnt sich nach Selbstbestätigung, bewundert die starke Tōko für ihren Erfolg und ihre Daseinsberechtigung in Tokio, während sie sich selbst dort oft deplatziert fühlt. Das Gemüse, das ihre Eltern ihr schicken, scheint sie aufs Land zurückzurufen. Ihre Beziehungen entstehen auf Initiative anderer hin, ihr Freund trennt sich von ihr so sang- und klanglos, wie er die Beziehung begonnen hat.

Satoko

Satoko lebt in den Tag hinein, beobachtet im Park glückliche Paare und fragt sich, wann sie sich wohl wieder trennen werden.

Ach, ich möcht mich verlieben. Verlieben, verlieben.

Fast so, wie wenn du mit zugepressten Augen an nichts böses denkend spazieren gehst, stolperst und plötzlich in einem Wald liegst, den Duft von wilden Rosen in der Nase.

Oder wenn du mit gesenktem Blick spazieren gehst und plötzlich direkt vor dir ein 10 Tonnen schwerer Smaragd vom Himmel fällt, der dir den Weg versperrt.

So will ich mich verlieben.

Etwas, das plötzlich erscheint und mich erfüllt.

Irgendwann wird das passieren, ganz bestimmt wird das irgendwann passieren.

Einzige Abwechslung von ihren Einkäufen sind ihre Treffen mit Freunden, mit denen sie Sake trinkt und sich über Dinge unterhält, die ebenfalls von Träumereien und Schwärmereien geprägt sind. Sie mag den Film Out of Rosenheim, den Maler Rockwell, die Bands The Kinks und The Specials, den Autor KITAMURA Kaoru, das Algenmuß von Momoya, und fragt sich, ob bei so vielen Vorlieben überhaupt noch Platz ist, um einen Mann zu mögen. Satoko hält Distanz; als ihr ein männlicher Freund seine Liebe gesteht, findet sie es belastend, dass er nicht vorher mit seiner derzeitigen Freundin Schluss gemacht hat. Sie will nicht Schuld am Schmerz anderer sein.

Akiyo

Akiyo führt ein Doppelleben: sie arbeitet als Callgirl, um für die Zukunft vorzusorgen. Doch eigentlich steht diese auf wackligen Beinen.

Oh lieber Gott.

Ich liebe diesen Mann. Ich liebe ihn über alles.

Falls dieser Mann, den ich so liebe, meine Liebe nicht erwidern kann,

dann will ich keinen mehr lieben. Ich will keinen außer ihm.

Wenn ich diesen einen Mann nicht haben kann,

dann will ich lieber…

…sterben.

Davon weiß KIKUCHI, den sie vor vier Wochen kennengelernt hat, nichts. Ihm erzählt sie, sie arbeite in einer Bar. Leider hat KIKUCHI eine Freundin und scheinbar nichts für Akiyo als Frau übrig. Auch wenn sie am Tag 90 000 Yen an ihren Freiern verdient, gegenüber KIKUCHI fühlt sie sich fade und wertlos. Während dem Sex mit ihren Freiern denkt sie an KIKUCHI und was seine Freundin wohl im Bett für ihn macht. Vor lauter Liebeskummer vergisst sie, das Wasser für ihren Goldfisch zu wechseln. Als dieser sich vor Qualen windet, überlegt sie, seinem Leiden ein Ende zu machen, bringt es aber schließlich doch nicht übers Herz. Am Ende ist er zwar nicht mehr zu retten, aber zumindest Akiyo gewinnt Lebenskraft aus der Erfahrung und entschließt sich, aktiver um KIKUCHIs Zuneigung zu kämpfen.

So interessant die Geschichte und ihre Charaktere, so interessant ist auch die erzählerische Umsetzung. Comics definieren sich durch ihre Vermischung von Bild und Text, sei es, dass der Text hörbare Laute als Soundeffekte im Bild darstellt und hörbare Äußerungen der Figuren in Sprechblasen widergegibt, oder dass die geheime innere Gedankenwelt der Figuren als Monologtext sich ins Bild mischt. NANANAN treibt die Gewichtung zwischen Bild und Text oft an ihre beiden Extreme, manchmal verzichtet sie seitenlang fast komplett auf Text oder aber sie geht den umgekehrten Weg, mit kompletten Seiten, in denen die Einzel„bilder“ nur noch aus meist schwarzem Hintergrund für den Text bestehen. Auch in letzterem Fall wird der Comic dadurch aber nicht zum Roman, sowohl Schreibstil wie die Aufteilung in visuell in ihrer Größe gewichteten Einheiten behalten die Essenz des Comics bei. Während die inneren Monologe Einblicke in die Psyche der vier Frauen erlauben, dokumentieren die längeren reinen Bildpassagen Momentaufnahmen aus ihrem Leben und schulen die Beobachtungsgabe des Lesers.

Strawberry Shortcakes DVD (2006)

Für YAZAKI Hitoshis Verfilmung des Comics wurde die Geschichte von der Romanautorin INUKAI Kyōko stark überarbeitet, gerade die inneren Monologe lassen sich nur schwer ins Filmmedium übertragen und mussten in eher sichtbarer Form dem Zuschauer vermittelt werden. Die morbiden Gedanken Akiyos zum Beispiel drücken sich daher in einem Schlafsarg aus, in dem sie sich zur Ruhe bettet. Das ist nur ein Beispiel dafür, wie die eher realistischen Bilder des Comics im Film überzeichneten Neuinterpretationen weichen müssen. Der Film entspricht damit fast eher unser Erwartung an einen Comic als die melancholische Comicvorlage; doch trotz allem Humor wird aus dem ernsten Stoff auch in Filmform keine Komödie, dazu sind auch die komischen Situationen zu bitter. Alles in allem ist der Film expliziter, direkter und auch grausamer.

Auch die Figuren selbst wurden überarbeitet, ebenso die Reihenfolge ihres Auftretens. Motive, die an eine Figur gebunden waren, wie das tote Haustier oder die Beziehung zu Gott, tauchen im Film versetzt an anderen Stellen auf oder werden zum übergeordneten Thema, das alle Figuren beschäftigt.

Satoko, gespielt von IKEWAKI Chizuru

Satoko wurde am stärksten überarbeitet und eröffnet den Film mit einer surrealen Szene. Im Schlafanzug klammert sie sich an das Bein ihres Freundes und fleht ihn an, sie nicht zu verlassen, während dieser unbeirrt weitergeht und sie mitschleift. Zwei Jahre später ist sie an dieser schmerzlichen Trennung gewachsen und arbeitet als Telefonistin in einem Callgirlbetrieb, wo sie auch das Callgirl Akiyo kennenlernt. Auf dem Nachhauseweg findet sie einen kleinen Meteoriten, dem sie zuhause einen Schrein baut und zu ihm wie zu Gott betet. Natürlich bittet sie darum, einen Freund zu finden, aber sie wünscht auch dem zudringlichen Chef auf der Arbeit den Tod, der sie offenbar mit einem seiner Callgirls verwechselt.

Akiyo, gespielt von NAKAMURA Yūko

Akiyo wird mehr bei ihrer Arbeit als Callgirl gezeigt, aber es gibt auch mehr Szenen mit KIKUCHI und natürlich mit Satoko, die sie im Comic nicht kannte.

Chihiro, gespielt von NAKAGOSHI Noriko

Chihiro ist im Film etwas selbstbewusster und stärker, ihre Männerbekanntschaften dafür aber leider auch noch unaufmerksamer, rücksichtsloser und offener in ihrer Missachtung von Chihiros Bedürfnissen.

Tōko, gespielt von IWASE Tōko

Tōko soll ein Bild von Gott malen, so wie sie ihn sich vorstellt. Was von Chihiro sarkastisch kommentiert wird: „Da kannst du ja auch Doraemon ((Doraemon ist eine in Japan populäre Comicfigur und atomar betriebene Roboterkatze aus der Zukunft, die aus ihren Taschen schier endlos viele Dinger hervorzaubern kann.)) malen.“ Für Chihiros ist Gott wohl ihr Freund, gibt sie zu, er kauft ihr Geschenke und erfüllt ihre Wünsche.

Im Comic fragt Akiyo KIKUCHI am Ende, ob er um sie weinen würde, wenn sie stürbe. Verlegen weicht er der Frage zunächst aus, bejaht sie aber schließlich. Darauf schließt der Comic mit einem letzten inneren Monolog Akiyos:

Lieber Gott.

Eigentlich gibt es dich gar nicht.

Ich werde KIKUCHI auf diese Weise bekommen.

Im Film wird Akiyo deutlicher. Sie nimmt Satokos Meteorit und wirft ihn ins Meer. „Sowas wie Gott gibt es gar nicht“, erklärt sie ihr.

The Saint for Atonement, Zeichnungen: SHIRAKURA Yūmi, Text: ŌTSUKA Eiji

宇宙の始まりであり (uchū no hajimari de ari)
生命の樹でもある (seimei no ki de mo aru)
「萌え出ずる樹」を („moeizuru ki“ wo)
植えることによって (ueru koto ni yotte)
私達の未来が (watashi-tachi no mirai ga)
始まるとするならば (hajimaru to suru naraba)
（あるいは遠い過去と未来を ((arui ha tōi kako to mirai wo)
つなぐとするならば） (tsunagu to suru naraba))
私達は (watashi-tachi ha)
いったいそれを (ittai sore wo)
どこに植えればよいのだろう (doko ni uereba yoi no darō)
その場所を (sono basho wo)
みつけることが (mitsukeru koto ga)
きっと私達が (kitto watashi-tachi ga)
生き残っていけるシルシになる (ikinokotte ikeru shirushi ni naru)

Wenn unsere Zukunft durch Pflanzen des „sprießenden Baums“ beginnt (bzw. die ferne Vergangenheit und die Zukunft durch ihn verbunden werden), dem Baum, der sowohl der Anfang des Universums ist wie auch der Baum des Lebens, wo können wir ihn denn nur pflanzen? Diesen Ort zu finden, das wird sicherlich einmal davon zeugen, dass wir überleben konnten.

Video: Ys Book 1 & 2 (1989)

So schreibt ŌTSUKA Eiji 1991 in seinem Comic Tsugunai no seisha (The Saint for Atonement), gezeichnet von seiner damaligen Lebensgefährtin SHIRAKURA Yūmi. Er ist im Stil eines shōjo manga geschrieben und nimmt mit dem Wort moeizuru (hervorsprießen) den später aufkommenden Begriff des sogenannten moe vorweg, womit die Gefühle von Otaku für Comicfiguren u. ä. bezeichnet werden. In dieser Auslegung handelt es sich bei moe um das Wachsen des Baum des Lebens. Dieser spielt in vielen Variationen eine wichtige Rolle in allen möglichen Fantasy-RPGs.

Video: Mystic Quest (1991)

In Final Fantasy III wurde mit dem Mana Baum ein solcher Baum etabliert, der zur Grundlage einer ganzen eigenen Serie wurde, der „Seiken Densetsu“-Reihe, deren bekanntester Teil bei uns unter dem Titel Secret of Mana veröffentlicht wurde. Im ersten Teil für den Gameboy, der noch den Untertitel Final Fantasy Gaiden trug (in Amerika lautete der komplette Titel Final Fantasy Adventure, bei uns Mystic Quest), stellt sich der Mana-Baum als Mutter der weiblichen Hauptfigur Sara heraus. Sie wird zum nächsten Mana-Baum und zur Mutter des Helden der Fortsetzung. Der Baum symbolisiert die Natur, also die Mutter, ihre Beständigkeit und Gebundenheit an einen Ort, aber auch die Familie und den Vater, der den Samen in der Mutter pflanzt. Und natürlich das Wertesystem, das in der Familie verkörpert wird. Zumindest hat Sara die Wahl, aber es scheint doch trotz allem ein schweres Schicksal zu sein.

Video: Secret of Mana (1993)

Der Szenario-Autor des ersten Mana-Teils war noch KITASE Yoshinori, der danach ab dem 5. Teil von Final Fantasy die Mutterserie, von der sich Seiken Densetsu abgespalten hatte, als Regisseur, Autor und Produzent entscheidend prägen sollte. Teil 2 der Tochterserie, Secret of Mana für das SNES, war hingegen geistiges Kind von TANAKA Hiromichi, der schon Regisseur von Final Fantasy III war und bei Secret of Mana die Rollen des Produzenten, des Konzept- und Systemdesigners und des Szenario-Schreibers ausfüllte. Neben dem Mana-Baum übernahm die Mana-Reihe den Chocobo und die Moogle aus Final Fantasy, die auch nach Teil 3 noch eine wichtige Rolle in der Serie spielten.

Video: Final Fantasy V (1992)

Der Lebensbaum kehrte in KITASEs Final Fantasy V in korrumpierter Form zurück, als den Tod transzendierender Schurke Exdeath (Abkürzung von exceeding death). Exdeath war von der älteren Generation der Krieger des Lichts bis auf einen fremden Planeten verfolgt und dort versiegelt worden. Statt das Unheil der verschmutzten Umwelt also zu lösen, wurde es nur in eine andere Welt verschoben bzw. in eine andere Generation, sowohl sekai (Welt) wie sedai (Generation) enthalten dasselbe Zeichen se, das Zeitalter aber auch Gesellschaft bedeutet. Die junge Generation von Kriegern des Lichts muss sich nun mit demselben Schurken herumschlagen, dessen Siegel durch Raubbau an der Natur in der zweiten Welt aufgebrochen wird. Die älteren Krieger des Lichts werden mit ihrem Versäumnis konfrontiert und die beiden Planeten, die die beiden Generationen getrennt von einander bewohnten, werden von Exdeath zu einer Welt verschmolzen. Der Spieler, der von seiner Welt in die der älteren Generation aufgebrochen war, bereist die Welt dann ein drittes Mal, diesmal eine Mischung aus Lokalitäten beider Welten.

Der kabbalistische Lebensbaum, bestehend aus Sephirothen

Exdeath als korrumpierte Natur, am deutlichsten ist er wohl ein Symbol für Atomkraft, die in Form der Bombe Japan traumatisiert und in Form von Kernkraftwerken seine Bewohner krank gemacht hat. In Teil 7 macht KITASE daraus Makō-Reaktoren. Makō, das bedeutet Dämonenlicht und es ist auch die Energie, die aus Menschen Elite-Kämpfer genannt SOLDIER macht. Der beste von ihnen, eine Art Fantasy-Version des legendären Samurais MIYAMOTO Musashi, heißt Sephiroth. So heißen in der Kabbala auch die Bausteine des Lebensbaums, womit KITASE mit dem Namen Sephiroth erneut dieses Motiv aufgreift. Der Baum als Phallus, der aus der Erde herausragt, wie Sephiroths Schwert aus Aeriths Körper.

Video: Vagrant Story (2000)

Ein anderes wichtiges Motiv von Final Fantasy VII ist allerdings Selbstbetrug, das von MATSUNO Yasumi in Vagrant Story ebenfalls im Zusammenhang mit Familie aufgegriffen wird. In einer idyllischen Szenerie veranstaltet eine Familie ein Picknick unter einem gewaltigen, Schutz vor dem heißen Licht der Sonne spendenden Baum. Als sie rücksichtlos von Terroristen ermordet wird. Aber wer ist eigentlich der Täter und wer das Opfer? Die Erinnerungen von Protagonist Ashley Riot werden auf die Probe gestellt.

Video: No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (2010)

Genau diese idyllische Szenerie von Menschen, die friedlich unter einem Baum die Natur genießen, diese Szenerie, die dann in Gewalt umschlägt, wird von SUDA51 in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle wunderbar parodiert. Eine kleine Lolita hat den Otaku Travis Touchdown aufgespürt und will sich mit ihm im Kampf messen. Sie ist eine Art Stalkerin, verwendet Internet-Slang und veralbert ihn mit einem zuckersüßen Liebesbrief. Der Kampf endet, vielleicht enttäuschend, sehr unblutig. Travis kann einfach keine kleinen Mädchen töten bzw. seinen Samen in ihnen pflanzen.

Hardcoverausgabe von 2002, 1. von 2 Bänden

MIYABE Miyuki ist eine in Japan sehr erfolgreiche Roman-Autorin, die dank einiger Übersetzungen ihrer Werke ins Englische ((Übersetzt wurden u. a.  Kasha (All She Was Worth), Kurosufaia (Crossfire), R.P.G. (Shadow Family), Bureibu sutoorii (Brave Story), Majutsu ha sasayaku (The Devil’s Whisper), Eiyū no sho (Book of Heroes).)) auch bei uns einen gewissen Bekanntheitsgrad genießt. Außerdem hat sie mit Perfect Blue die Vorlage zu einem Anime von KON Satoshi geschrieben, der auch bei uns erfolgreich auf Festivals (darunter die erste Nippon Connection im Jahr 2000) lief. Dieses Werk stammt aus dem Krimi-Genre, in dem sie hauptsächlich aktiv ist, doch aufgrund einer starken Affinität zu Videospielen schreibt sie auch Fantasy-Romane, 2002 eine Adaption von UEDA Fumitos PS2-Debüt Ico, drei Jahre zuvor bereits ihre eigene Version einer auf japanischen Rollenspielen basierenden Fantasy-Welt, Brave Story. Dieser Roman wird von November 1999 bis Februar 2001 in verschiedenen regionalen Zeitungen als Serie veröffentlicht, was in Japan die übliche Vorgehensweise bei Literatur im Allgemeinen ist, bevor sie gesammelt in Buchform erscheint. Eine erste Hardcoverausgabe erscheint 2002 in 2 Bänden mit 630 und 670 Seiten bei Kadokawa Shoten, 2007 auch eine englische Übersetzung bei Viz Publishing.

Comic-Adation von 2003, 1. von 20 Bänden

Die Vermischung der Medien, ursprünglich von Videospiel-Motiven und dem Romanformat, setzt sich fort in einer Comicadaption, die ebenfalls von MIYABE geschrieben und von ONO Yōichirō zeichnerisch umgesetzt wird. Diese erschien ab 2003 und umfasste am Ende 20 Bände. Die Comic-Version unterscheidet sich vom Original zum Beispiel durch das höhere Alter des Protagonisten MITANI Wataru, der im Roman noch im Grundschulalter ist ((Genau gesagt geht Wataru in der Romanvorlage in die 5. Klasse. Die japanische Grundschule umfasst 6 Jahre.)), im Comic aber bereits auf die Mittelschule geht. Später folgen eineVerfilmung und darauf folgend auch Videospiel-Umsetzungen für verschiedene Systeme, womit die Motive der Geschichte schließlich wieder in ihrem Ursprungsmedium ankommen.

Zeichentrickverfilmung von 2006, DVD

Als 2006 der Stoff als Zeichentrickfilm fürs Kino adaptiert wird, wird auch die Buchausgabe zweifach neu aufgelegt, einerseits in einer Softcover-Ausgabe im Reklamformat in drei Bänden zu je etwa 500 Seiten, andererseits in einer sich an den Film anlehnenden Ausgabe für Kinder, als sogenannte Lightnovel, mit farbigen Comicillustrationen im Anime-Stil und mehr Lesungszeichen bei für junge Leser noch zu schweren Schriftzeichen. Normalerweise werden Lightnovels speziell für diese Zielgruppe von Anime-Fans und eben Kindern geschrieben und dienen oft genau wie Comics als Vorlagen für Zeichentrickfilme, aber Brave Story wird erst im Nachhinein in diesem Format veröffentlicht.

Lightnovel-Ausgabe von 2006, 1. von 4 Bänden

Ursprünglich für Erwachsene geschrieben und auf einem für Lightnovels vergleichsweise hohem literarischem Niveau, ist der Text trotz allem sehr zugänglich und vom Vokabular weniger anspruchsvoll als MIYABEs Krimis, was sicherlich auf die Perspektive des jungen Protagonisten zurückzuführen ist. Brave Story spielt in einer kindlichen Welt, richtet sich aber an eigentlich an Erwachsene, im Endeffekt bereitet sie die Art von Welt, die Kinder in Spieleform erleben, in einem für Erwachsene leichter zugänglichen Medium neu auf. Da der Text aber auch für Kinder und erwachsene Spieler als Geschichte interessant ist, überbrückt er die unterschiedlichen Rezeptionsgewohnheiten der verschiedenen Zielgruppen und wird daher in so vielen Medien und Vertriebsformen für jeden zugänglich gemacht.

Vorsicht: Ab hier enthält dieser Artikel Spoiler zur Handlung des Romans!

Die Handlung von Brave Story beginnt in der realen Welt und es dauert einige hundert Seiten, bevor Wataru seine Reise in die fantastische Welt der sogenannten Vision antritt, eine Kehrseite der Realität, die aus der Vorstellungskraft der Menschen geboren wird. Wer in dieser Welt verschiedene Prüfungen bewältigt, kann schließlich zum Schicksalsturm gelangen und dort die Erschafferin der Vision um die Erfüllung eines Wunsches bitten, der das eigene Schicksal ändern kann. B