[Shall We Date?: Ninja Love +] Introduction
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Introduction
Well... There's some things I wanted to say about this thing. I figured I'd make a separate post for it so as to not derail the spork too much later on.
1) Otome game/Visual Novel
So... I'm not sure how many people are familiar with this kind of game... It's quite the rage on Tumblr and some gaming forums have threads dedicated to do Let's Plays for these kind of games. Some info and some terminology just in case.
I'm not really good at explaining things, but like I previously said, the closest example I could think of is choose-your-own-story books, except in digital format. Not to be confused with "dating sim(ulation)" games, where aside from the romance you also have all sorts of other stats that would impact the plot (intelligence/strength/whatever else the plot calls for).
Visual Novel is what you call this type of story in general, where you have some text accompanied with character illustrations ("sprites") to indicate the characters' emotions and a background to show you where they are.
Occasionally, dramatic scenes/events are highlighted with special illustrations ("CG").
(I... apologize for the awkward image. I think this may have been an R18 game)
"Visual Novel" (shortened VN) is what you usually call this genre of games. "Otome" is usually used to refer to visual novels with focus on romance, and it's usually the reverse-harem type. It's kind of hard to tell what is considered "otome", because otome itself means something like "for girls", and some girls wants to date girls or play stories about male/male romances. Some people would categorize same-gender romance VNs separately (BL/GL/yuri/yaoi), and some would want to include them.
Not gonna go to the history or development of the game because you can look that up yourself.
Anyways. With the rise of mobile devices, a new type of otome game start to pop up. Instead of the game just dropping you loose in a plot maze and let you stumble your way through choices (and hopefully not die in the process), which would usually mean the game is MAHOOSIVE, the game instead has a common prologue and you purchase the individual love interests' story "routes" separately. The choices would only determine whether or not your love with the dude is successful. Bad ends are usually breakups (or death, if the game has serious themes like war). There's no cop-out "date someone else" option or "threesome" endings, options which would sometimes be made available in the mahoosive games. I have never seen "I didn't love you anyway" endings, and I sometimes rather hope that had been an option, especially when the love interest is terrible.
2) Japanese History
Well, as we all know, the Japanese treat their own history just like they treat everything else: Anything, absolutely anything, flies. Who cares if Oda Nobunaga never actually met Date Masamune in battle? Everyone still loves Sengoku BASARA because it's cool and badass and in anime-land logic can go flying out the window.
Also, Japanese history is very poorly-documented from the get-go. During the Tokugawa reign a.k.a the Edo era (1603-1868), there is major major censorship going on. If they don't like the stuff you write/make? They'll off you. Or at the very least punish you badly. Also, with the popularity of kabuki theatres and bunraku puppet shows, fictionalized accounts of histories spread so far and wide that they eventually became accepted as reality... that is, until people start digging around for truth again in these recent decades. A lot of the stuff that most people think they know about Japan are sometimes one of these overblown rumours/myths.
Then there's the archives that got destroyed in fires/wars, so documents are lost forever. Or people like Toyotomi Hideyoshi who rose from peasantry, and so legit accounts of his early years are practically non-existent because who cares about the low-rank peasants and foot soldiers and servants? So a lot of what we DO have are more or less bullshit written much later.
That's the reason why I'm usually quite willing to forgive history fail or artistic liberties when it comes to stuff pertaining to Japanese history because the reality is so fuzzy that there's leeway to sneak in made-up crap. But when you practically turn history upside-down and backwards and inside-out, then throw the rest out the window, AND the story is STILL BAD? Then that annoys me. Because then the characters are historical figures in name only and so what's the point of pretending that they are who they are? Just call it an original story set in Vague McVagueness Pesudo-Japanland. Don't torment these poor dead guys' souls by casting them into a terrible story!
3) And onwards we go
I will introduce some counts that I have in mind for this thing. Might add more if something comes up later, as per the norm.
CHRONICLES OF WTF: Whenever history is epically screwed up for the sake of not-plot. Also when minute history details are oddly accurate even though it's background material that nobody cares about.
NINJERZ R AWZUMZ!!!: A.k.a the hypocrisy meter. When the heroes not-so-heroic things and the only excuse they have is that they're the designated good guys.
DEMON KING OF THE 666TH HEAVEN: When the villain is doing evil things just to make sure you know that he's evil, and when evil things are attributed to the villain even though it makes no sense.The villain character, Oda Nobunaga, was sometimes known as the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven (a.k.a Mara, a Buddhist demon).
LITTLE VILLAINS GRIND THEIR TEETH: When the enemies are too easily defeated or too dumb to notice things that are dead-obvious, and thus we really have no need to worry that the heroes are in any danger whatsoever. Taken from a Japanese proverb that says "little fish grind their teeth", which means that the person/group in question is in no way threatening or scary.
So... let's begin?
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