It's Time to Save the World!... Or Not.

Originally I was going to write a piece about the "Tales of" series's current position in the gaming world and where I believe its future lies.  As I was playing through Tales of Berseria I was filled with all these thoughts about the series and excitement and hope for where it can go from here, and those thoughts may still make their way into this article.  However, after finishing Tales of Berseria my attention was drawn to another matter that I thought warranted discussion.  This is an issue that is rather prevalent in the JRPG genre, or just the RPG genre in general, but has always been especially bad in Tales games.  That is timing of side quests in respect to the main story.

Before I continue let me make this clear, I loved Tales of Berseria.  It has usurped Tales of the Abyss as my new favorite Tales game.  The combat was dynamic and fluid, the characters were some of the most colorful and interesting featured in any Tales game, and the natural connections made to its predecessor, Tales of Zestiria, were brilliant.  Most of all the story was the most gripping and engaging of any Tales game to date and the perfect pacing constantly drove me forward to progress.  It's because the story was so phenomenal and the pacing so on point that it was all the more important for side quests to not interfere with that.  And for the most part, Berseria accomplished that.  The side quests were minimal and and the ones that were there rarely detracted from the main story for more than a few minutes.  This was the case all the way until the the very end of the game, right when the final dungeon revealed itself and the final boss loomed ominously ahead.  The world was in imminent danger and instead of pushing me, the player, with urgency to save it, Berseria decided to instead reveal hours upon hours of side quests for me to complete.  Whatever urgency there was to save the world from impending danger was completely lost.

I Refuse to Make a Switch Pun (Part 2)

With the background of the Switch’s unique announcement period out of the way, this brings us to the present and the future.  Even after the January 12^th presentation there are still many question marks surrounding the Switch such as the nature of the eShop and Virtual Console and they’re odd but unique take on voice chat using a smartphone app.  These questions are causing hesitation in some potential buyers so one can find it strange that Nintendo has left them unanswered so close to release.  Yet here’s the thing, the Switch is still sold out of preorders across all major retailers around the world despite those unanswered questions. 

Die-hard Nintendo fans, of which there are many, were going to buy the Switch at launch regardless.  Nintendo has those initial sales on lockdown.  While this was also the case with the Wii U, the difference is that there is a palpable excitement in the air surrounding the Switch.  Buzz for the console on social media and news outlets has been more or less positive, although not overwhelmingly so.  Nintendo doesn’t have a reason to release more news that could potentially dour those expectations.  It goes back to the confidence they’ve been showing throughout the announcement period.  They believe that once the Switch is out in the wild and people discover for themselves that the core aspect of the console itself is solid and enduring, then consumers will be less bothered by the less favorable, smaller details.  This extends to the Switch’s launch line-up as well which, besides Zelda, is pitifully weak.  But because Zelda is there that alone gives the die-hards enough reason to pick up the Switch at launch and support the platform until later games release.

This is for the first few months of the Switch’s life but what about after that?  A console of course needs to live off of more than its dedicated fans.  Here’s where the make-or-break period begins for Nintendo.  The Wii and Wii U lost almost all third party support from major AAA developers and the consoles suffered for it.  While Nintendo’s own first party titles continued to provide mostly top notch experiences, they couldn’t make up for the month long gaps that came between them.  This will be alleviated somewhat by the fact that the Switch will be absorbing most of the Wii U, 3DS, and PS Vita markets but that still will not be enough.  It’s been said time and time again and now it’s all the more important that Nintendo recapture the interests of those third party developers to pad out those month long periods in between first part Nintendo games.  This will be, and always has been, an uphill battle for Nintendo as they consistently deal with weaker hardware than their competitors Sony and Microsoft.  Nintendo must show major third party developers that allowing their consumers to take their games anywhere they please is a feature worth investing in.  Nintendo does this, of course, through raw sales of the Switch console.  While the Wii U failed to accomplish this, the Switch stands apart in one key distinction: it advertises itself.

I Refuse to Make a Switch Pun (Part 1)

The Switch marks an important milestone for Nintendo.  While the original Wii met with massive market success by capturing the imaginations of the casual audience, it came at the price of losing much of the core gaming audience.  Nintendo attempted to recapture the core gaming market with the Wii U but largely failed in its endeavor and, furthermore, couldn’t even retain the casual audience it obtained in the previous generation.  The Switch now stands to recapitulate those losses and prove that Nintendo can still make a place for itself in the console gaming market through innovation rather than raw power.

From the very beginning the Switch has been somewhat of an anomaly in the video game industry.  First announced almost off-handedly as the codename NX back in March 2015 at a Nintendo investor’s meeting, virtually no official information about the console was given for over a year.  It wasn’t until Nintendo unceremoniously released a three-and-a-half-minute reveal trailer on October 20^th, 2016 that we finally got out first look at the console as well as its official name, the Nintendo Switch.

The trailer, short and sweet, forwent the standard approach of showcasing new games for a new console and instead placed the focus squarely on the Switch hardware itself.  This gave consumers a clear picture of exactly what the Switch console would be capable of and that it would be a distinct departure from Nintendo’s previous consoles, home and handheld alike.  This messaging was especially important considering the Wii U’s first stumble out of the gate was just that, with many people thinking that it was a simple extension to the original Wii rather than a brand new console.

The Switch then entered another period of radio silence.  

No new information was given from Nintendo besides the date, January 12^th, 2017, of a blowout presentation that would go over all the details of the console.  The Switch did make a brief appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, however, which showed the console “switching” between console and handheld mode in a live setting.  An unlikely place to find anything video game related, The Tonight Show cameo demonstrated that Nintendo was taking a different approach to advertising and exposure this time around as opposed to the Wii U’s almost nonexistent amount.

The Essence of a Good Plot Twist

(Disclaimer: There are no spoilers of any sort in the following text or images)

Take a moment to ask yourself what makes a good plot twist.  Think of a plot twist of any sort you've seen in a book, movie, TV show or whatever then ask yourself what specifically about it made it a good plot twist in your mind?  The first requirement is for it to, naturally, be unexpected.  That's arguably in the definition of a plot twist.  Beyond that there can be other aspects such as the accomplishment of it "being right in front of your face all along".  One of my favorites is misleading the viewer from a true plot twist by allowing them to decode a more obvious one to make them lower their guard.  Truly, there are many was to go about writing a plot twist and I'm here to talk about a particular one in the anime Flip Flappers.

Flip Flappers is an... abstract anime to say the least.  While each episode is fascinating in their theming and presentation there is very little of a cohesive plot for the greater portion of the series. Protagonists Cocona and Papika go on adventures in the Dr. Seuss-esque worlds of Pure Illusion to find Pure Fragments that can maybe grant their wishes if they find an unspecified amount of them. The plot is just as zany as it sounds and for the most part that's all the viewer is given to go off of. The appeal of Flip Flappers came from those individual, episodic adventures that Cocona and Papika had and the wide variety of animation styles and aesthetics they showed off.  The seemingly lack of a plot makes the plot twist that happens all the more impressive.

Obviously, I'm not going to spoil the plot twist here, I feel like that would defeat the purpose of this article.  What's important is how this plot twist was executed and how it made me feel.  The plot twist was a simple scene, maybe three or four seconds in length.  It was, for all intents and purposes, a still frame.  No movement, no speaking, no music.  Just a single camera shot.  And yet in those three or four short seconds my feelings and state of mind were immediately aligned with that of Cocona's. The disbelief that this is possible, the unease of the implications this has, and the utter terror of your reality being shattered before your eyes.  All these feelings and more came rushing to my head and sent my mind racing and as I watched I could tell Cocona was feeling the exact same way.

This ability to synchronize the viewer's emotions with that of the character so succinctly and with such pin point precision is something that I had never quite experienced before.  As I thought back on the scene I realized even more how impressive it was considering a large over arching theme of the show was Cocona and Papika understanding and connecting with each other through their emotions. It was as if the show had pulled me in to become a character as well.  Even more amazing was how consistent the plot twist's execution was with the series's "show, don't tell" story-telling style.

What's funny is that in the greater scheme of of the story as a whole (and yes, a cohesive plot did show itself eventually), that plot twist turned out to not be all that important.  You could probably have removed it entirely and the story turn out exactly the same way.  Yet the way it was executed was brilliant and the emotions it made me feel were very much real.  For that, I think it was a better plot twist than most everything I've seen out there and I cannot praise it enough.

Anime at Odds with Itself

An important aspect of anime, or any fictional entertainment medium for that matter, is to be able to allow the viewer to maintain their suspension of disbelief.  Suspension of disbelief is a viewer's ability look past otherwise unreasonable or unrealistic aspects of a story and accept them as part of the story's universe.  When suspension of disbelief is broken, the viewer finds themselves doubting the validity of that particular plot point or the story as a whole in severe cases. The amount a story can get away with depends, of course, on the tone and type of story being told.  In the abstract adventures of Flip Flappers  a meteor could slam into and destroy the earth at any given moment and it would be completely within the realm of what one could expect from the show.  If the same thing happened in the somber Kuzu no Honkai that delves into the the intricacies and complex nature of high school hook-up cultures then the viewer would be hard pressed to reconcile their feelings for the jarring event.  This would be an extreme breach of the suspension of disbelief but right now I want to talk about a show that does this to a lesser an extent.  That show is Yuri on Ice.

Yuri on Ice, as the name may suggest, is about professional men's figure skating.  Let me get this out of the way first, though.  The skating itself in Yuri on Ice is phenomenal.  Still frames do not do it justice.  Studio Mappa accomplished the seemingly impossible task fluidly animating these beautiful choreographies while relying on minimal to no CGI.  The attention to detail that is shown is downright astounding and while I am no expert on figure skating I would argue the skating featured in Yuri on Ice is comparable with that of real life professionals.  The skating is undeniably the greatest strength of Yuri on Ice, but strangely it also is its greatest weakness.

Because the skating is shown off in such an ultra-realistic manner I expect the show outside the skating to be presented in somewhat of a similar fashion, especially when it comes to the homosexual relationship between protagonist, Yuri Katsuki, and his Russian coach and figure skating idol, Victor Nikiforov.  The romance that buds between the two had moments of genuine warmth and sincerity but also had other moments, like the first encounter scene below, that seemed to have been included simply to appease the fantasies of high school girls who may be watching.  Quite frankly, such cliche scenes have no place in the series that takes its primary subject matter so seriously, the skating and the gay.

The inconsistencies extend to Yuri himself as well.  The story opens up with Yuri placing last in a competition called the Grand Prix Final after a series of unfortunate events caused him to lose focus during his performance.  Yuri then had what could only be described as a catastrophic meltdown and came to the verge of quitting figure skating all together.  He was depicted as someone who was very weak of heart.  As someone who knows nothing of figure skating competitions, as I'm sure the vast majority of this show's audience is, this led me to believe the Grand Prix Final to be a moderately important event that even someone lacking in confidence like Yuri could qualify for.  Yet after a few episodes you learn the Grand Prix Final is actually one of the biggest skating events in the world with rigorous qualifying conditions, being the top skater in one's respective country being first and foremost.  It is not a competition that a seemingly weak minded individual like Yuri could qualify for.  It would be one thing if the show gave glimpses of Yuri in the past showing the confidence and resolve necessary to make it to this exalted competition, but there was none of that.  Furthermore, Yuri does not demonstrate any such ability during his time with Victor that could prove to us that he could do the same thing without Victor's guidance.

(The Grand Prix Final is a real event in case you were curious.  This year's will take place in, ironically, Nagoya, Japan on December 7th.)

There are other things I want to nitpick as well such as Yuri's parents not knowing at all how figure skating competitions are scored or much about figure skating in general for that matter.  They are normal caring parents, so you'd think they would take an interest in their son's professional skating career.  There's also the fact that every single character from around the world is somehow fluent in Japanese.  It'd be more believable if it was English and I understand that getting voice actors that can speak in the languages of the 10+ countries represented is too much for a humble anime studio.  But again, when the skating is so painstakingly realistic these little flaws pile up and pull me out of the experience as a whole

Yuri on Ice is a good anime.  What it does right, it does extremely well and for the most part the plot moves along nicely and regular character interactions outside the primary pair are a joy to behold.  Those strengths simply emphasize its what would otherwise be small flaws, though.  In many other shows these flaws would not have bothered me nearly as much but in Yuri on Ice they served to consistently pull me out of my suspension of disbelief.  By the end I couldn't help but wanting more from anime's first serious foray into the field of competitive figure skating.

The Absense of Parents in Anime

Anime has a lot of patterns and tendencies that its known for.  May that be the magical shounen formula that can make anything and everything interesting or the fact that every single classroom in Japan apparently has a designated desk for protagonists in the back corner by the window.  There is one tendency, however, that usually flies underneath peoples' radars and that is the noticeable lack of prominent parents in shows.  For many individuals parents were some of the, if not the most influential figures in their adolescent lives.  So when 90% of anime focus around said adolescents, the notable absence of parental figures in somewhat startling.  Most anime feature protagonists that live away from home, or who live with a single parent while the other is away or deceased.  These situations usually allow creators to focus purely on their unique story idea, in the case of the former, or give an easy avenue for later character growth, in the case of the latter.  The few times both parents are around are usually in series where they are used for simple one off comedy scenes.  The number of anime that do not follow this trend can be counted in one sitting.  When you remove magical girl shows from the mix, that number can probably be counted on both hands.

So when I recently watched episode 6 of Demi-chan wa Kataritai (Interviews with Monster Girls) I found myself, honestly, rather mesmerized.  For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Demi-chan takes place in an alternate version of our world where demi-humans, such as vampires, dullahans, and succubi, are born by extremely rare genetic defects and are well known to society as a whole.  The story revolves around high school biology teacher Takahashi-sensei and the three demi-human students in his class.  It's a fun, lighthearted show that is just a joy to watch.

In episode 6 Takahashi makes a house-call to his vampire student's, Hikari, home to meet her parents, a rather common thing for Japanese teachers to do.  It stands to mention that Hikari's parents are not vampires and are just normal human beings.  There we learned of all the considerations Hikari's parents have gone through for their vampiric daughter such as the father dyeing his own hair blonde so that Hikari didn't feel like her own platinum blonde hair made her stand out in her own family.  We also learned of Hikari's own considerations to her family such as her own mini fridge in her room that she stores her government issued blood packs in so she doesn't have to store them in the family fridge with all their food.  And of course there were all the stories of the parents' worries and anxieties over raising such a unique child properly as well.

It's a fantastical situation that could never exist in real life and yet I felt that that segment alone demonstrated more meaningful parental influence than the vast majority of other anime out there that claim to have serious plots of adolescent life.  By the end of the episode I felt it's only natural Hikari be the hyper active goofball she is if she has the kind of parents we just met, and that's something I wish more anime would do.  There's nothing wrong with using the absence of one or both parents to create an easy pocket for drama and character development , but I think taking a more mundane situation and still being able to show a character have compelling growth is all the more impressive.