Seriously, HOW ABOUT THAT MEAT DIMENSION, HUH?
 

You know, I thought the last time I wrote a lengthy post about the declining Japanese game industry, I was more or less done with the topic for a long while. When Japan's place in the gaming economy comes up on the Internet, a lot of cliche and sometimes xenophobic arguments come out of the woodwork. Quite frankly, I don't have the time to reply to and/or deal with all of that; I've got a busy school schedule and I have better things to do with my life than plead, "Please, for the love of God, get the hell over WWII." But this thread made me break my quasi-vow of silence for an interesting reason. It's not that it was overtly prejudicial or malicious; in fact, for the most part, it's pretty decently written. It was the heavy emphasis on culture being the responsible factor for a lot of personal woes that threw a red flag for me because, for me, that does an intellectual disservice to the debate. Instead of thinking of logical, realistic reasons as to why Japan's game industry might be having problems, attributing culture to it and ultimately a lot of other things makes it easy for people to just sit back and simplify matters more than they should. It can make Japan, "the other," an entity that inherently cannot be comprehended since it's not "us." It was a mentality I've always had trouble swallowing in the past and now I can't ever hope to simplistically boil things down to just culture and "the other" after, you know, living and studying there myself.
 
That's where my reply to the thread came into play. It hasn't been proofread because I was getting sleepy and just wanted to finally get a lot of broader philosophical thoughts jotted down somewhere, but hopefully it serves as a good companion piece to the other post I have on here about Japanese games. It wasn't intended to be that way at all, but in the end, they certainly cover different territories and together better serve to summarize my thoughts and opinions.
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 Like other people have said, your post is well written, but I hope you give me luxury of disagreeing. Attributing a lot of the economic and creative issues that the Japanese side of the industry is having at the moment to "differences in culture" is a mentality that has a tendency to create too slippery of an argumentative slope for my tastes. It creates this unnecessarily mystical aura and a sense of "the other," making it all too easy to comfortably think that things are the way they are over there just because. The Japanese bow a lot because that's just how they do things. They take their shoes off upon entering a house because that's how things have always been. They're hellbent on etiquette and humbleness because that's just how the culture is. Their games just aren't plausible or viable anymore because they're from Japan. The reality of most anything is too complex to just be boiled down to supposed "cultural differences." There are logical reasons for how and why things happen the way they do in Japan and that most certainly includes their games.
 
It's not the culture that makes their games, their manga, their anime, their what-have-you; it's always, always the people and their individual life circumstances and perspectives behind them that are the driving factors. To boil it down to culture is to imply that everybody has the same mob mentality when that's hardly the case. If Metal Gear, Devil May Cry, Final Fantasy, and the like are flashy and without substance, it is because that's what the individual creators and development team were attempting to accomplish: something that's merely entertaining, not transcendental. If they can put a smile on a person's face or make them laugh or evoke most any other emotion, they've done their job and hopefully gotten paid for it. It was the decision of the people on those teams to go in that particular direction and economically, can you really blame them? It's not as though a lot of games throughout the world are superficial without a reason; consumers aren't all necessarily looking for metaphysical rhetoric a la Bioshock and nor are the thoughtful creators always able to produce the deep, meaningful games they probably entered the industry to create. If there are situational issues with Japanese games being too base, then part of it is at least a supply and demand sort of thing. People are buying these games and that tells the creators and company leaders that they probably want those styles perpetuated. But conversely, it's just as much a deliberate decision to go forward and try something quirky, daring, bold, or provocative if a game goes those routes. The lesser-sung heroes of the Japanese game industry from a creative standpoint, the Personas, the No More Heroes, the Trauma Centers, the older Final Fantasies all are the way they are because it was the people behind those games that opted to design those games that way. No More Heroes is not such a violent, oddball because that's just what Japanese culture loves; it's an oddball because it came from a dude who came up with the idea while sitting on a toilet.
 
These and other issues you brought up in your post are ultimately ones that pertain to all games equally of every region. Japan is getting the most attention right now because the industry is in decline for a number of reasons (not just alleged creative ones), but if you take a long, hard look at North American, European, and Southeast Asian games, you'll find superficiality and meaningless to be underlying qualities of a lot of games and, ultimately, other things in entertainment as well. Farmville is not a smash hit on Facebook because people are wanting to live the rural life online; it's because it has mechanics that have proven themselves to be addictive. Halo sells because it has a brand of viscerality that people really, really enjoy. Those sorts of games are doing well because they tap into basic human desires and do it in such a way that warrants continued attention and revenue. This is not a by-product of culture from anywhere, but from people who made the smart ideals relative to their desires and situations. The world is such a globalized place anymore that the creative byproducts that come from its people cannot be so simply attributed to culture, but life experiences and beliefs and the culmination of a lot of other factors. Everybody is so connected to each other and sharing experiences that there's just no way that any barriers that might still exist can be due to one monolithic, easily-defined thing. It doesn't do the matter enough justice.
 
If the Japanese industry is problematic to you (and it is for me, too, believe me), it's because of individual people and teams who decided to make their games in ways that just don't resonate with you in the way you want. You might not have been their target audience in the first place. Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, and everything else to come from that side of the Pacific are no more representative of Japanese culture than anything else the country might have to offer. Japan is not just haikus and hanami, honorifics and old castles, pop culture and the arts; anything created within its borders can incorporate elements that give Japan a cohesive national identity, but they can never hope to completely epitomize and encompass all that Japan is and what it stands for because it is entirely relative. Novelists in the US have the same predicaments known as "the Great American novel." Everything from The Catcher in the Rye to To Kill a Mockingbird to Of Mice and Men incorporate elements of what the individual authors and many readers perceive to be America and American, but they can never conceivable describe the entire experience because it's larger than one person and, again, thanks to globalization, even one culture. The same goes for games made in every region, Japan included.
 
I admit that I am perhaps not the most objective person to have this sort of discussion about the Japanese gaming industry with; I speak the language, have lived and traveled in Japan, and intend to return for further university study in the relatively near-future. Japan is, from my experience, both everything and nothing that people make it out to be, so if I seem so insistent on not accepting the cultural argument, it's because those are my personal beliefs from actually being there. I can't expect everybody to agree with them, even people who have or are living there, but since I only speak for myself, I am comfortable with positing those ideas.

Thanks to Chat Roulette, you probably knew that already, but in case you just wanted to be sure, today's GameFAQs poll should quell any lingering doubts quite succinctly.

I like to think I'm an alright student. Got by in high school just fine and I'm naturally enjoying my time picking up Japanese as my major in university. I also come from a family with a history of education and education-related work in both public and private sectors. Suffice it to say that, at least when a class interests me, you'll find that I'm pretty happy to grind through it.
 
Today's women's studies session was not one of those classes, though. Consisting entirely of a Powerpoint filled from quotes from an actually really great and humorous novel, I wasn't exactly feeling all that engaged. I already knew most of the points that the professor was going to bring up, so I basically had 50 minutes of me time.
 
So what did I do?
 
I doodled a bunch in my notebook. In Japanese. I spent most of the time depicting myself as a cat named Boku-tan. I even wrote an anime theme song for it in the notes, should I ever be able to whore it out and make millions upon millions of yen. Other than that, you'll notice that I distinctly accomplished nothing in that class.
 
I have no reason to tell all of you this, but I wanted you to know. Here's the drawing in question below. It's a pretty big image file, but hopefully it won't kill your computer to load it..
 

 If you've been a long-time reader of the Persona 4 forums here on the Giant Bomb, you're probably aware of the fact of how I and a few other people translated a fan-made manga, more or less because we could. It got a pretty nice reception for what it was and surprisingly there were few hentai/ecchi-related jokes, which almost seems to be practically a given for that particular line of work. Distribution issues aside (We have whole archive back online! Promise!), I'd say the endeavor has turned out alright.

It is with that in mind that I'm pretty psyched to announce that everybody directly involved in that project, Fallen181, Bartman3010, and myself, otherwise known collectively as Team Boke, will be returning to work on a larger project of a more serialized nature and with a dedicated blog, to boot. We've decided to tackle something a little more Shonen Jump, but nothing remotely like your usual Naruto, Bleach, or even Bakuman, if you're that sort of crowd. Rather, we're tackling a comedy series currently running in the magazine, as it's a genre that doesn't often receive much coverage compared to its more action-oriented contemporaries. The name: Inumaru Dash.

In short, Inumaru Dash is somewhat like other comedy series such as Crayon Shin-chan, albeit with significantly less outright vulgar humor compared to that series' brilliant English dub. Two of characters receive most of the attention of each chapter's individual plot lines, the titular Inumaru and Tamako-sensei. Inumaru is more or less a really young Japanese boy who, deliberately or not, has no idea of any sort of social etiquette and, to boot, knows more adult things than he probably should for his age. Tamako-sensei, on the other hand, is a newly inducted kindergarten teacher who works at Inumaru's school. She's the sort of bright-eyed, idealistic young teacher hoping to make an impact on her students and is then very quickly brought down to Earth upon being introduced to Inumaru. The stories typically revolve around the two and how they can botch up the standard teacher-student relationship, often to extremely unexpected results. Although some of the humor is pretty Japanese, as one of the people behind the project, I'd (naturally) say it's worth checking out.

Although we have no set schedule for releases because we all still have lives, we do intend to release each chapter at a variety of different venues, including such prominent places as One Manga. In addition, though, we've also set up shop at our own blog, which you can find, again, here. While there, you'll not only be able to keep tabs on our progress, but also access our previous works (including a persistent link to the Persona 4 doujin) and contact us at an email address tailor-made for the group.

So if you're curious, feel free to drop by onto the site and check out the preview version we have going for chapter one of Inumaru Dash. Thanks for your support!

Before writing up my review for No More Heroes 2, I had struggled to come up with a score for it that reflected my thoughts about it adequately. Perhaps more so than other games I've enjoyed in recent memory, for me, the sequel to Suda 51's iconic gore fest was one that had its share of ups and downs. I suppose it's just standard for a Grasshopper Manufacture game anyway, but I found it hard to initially figure out what to think of the game as a whole. Should I give it a more favorable score? It did have improvements and when they worked, they were worthy of being rewarded. Or should I take the more cautious route and assign it a score that isn't flattering, but not degrading, either? For every good point it did have, I couldn't help but recall the stuff I did find problematic. To resolve the debate inside my head, I decided to start up a second run, just to make sure there weren't any ambiguities needing to still be ironed out once it was time to compose the review.
 
I didn't even have to finish that second run to finally push me over the edge. After redoing about half of the game and getting to know the mechanics even better, I was finally confident about giving it a score. It got the less flattering option.
 
This is an interesting turn of events for me because, to be honest, I really, really loved the original No More Heroes. It wasn't a perfect game, but I was, and still am, a fan of its style of combat and storyline. I've probably played through the game at least three or four and still pick it up for short bursts on occasion. It had a brand of craziness that I was more than proud to endorse and employed one of my favorite rosters of bosses in any game I've ever played. Holly Summers in particular remains a huge favorite of mine for a variety of reasons.
 
I expected to really like No More Heroes 2 because it was likely to be more of the same. To an extent, it was more of that and, in conjunction with issues I think it legitimately does have, it may have ironically been partially because of that I found the sequel to be less likable. Part of the original No More Heroes' charm was its individuality with regards to its gameplay and tone. It wasn't ashamed to be what it was and carved out its identity through those means. When you make a sequel to that, it may very well be difficult to replicate that again; a sequel often by virtue doesn't have quite as much originality to call its own as the first installment. This doesn't always have to be the case for a game to still be really, really great, but since the first game really relied on it to be such a cult success, I feel that may have been one of the reasons why Desperate Struggle didn't strike a chord with me nearly as much.
 
Is this nostalgia dictating my feelings? Probably yes, and that's okay. As the first real sequel Grasshopper Manufacture has ever done for one of its original IPs, it's no surprise that Desperate Struggle has to operate relative to the legacy of the original game, for better and for worse. I still felt as though it had enough mechanical and story faults to let those dictate the review instead of these more personal feelings, but at the end of the day, I'd be lying if I said my feelings about the original game didn't play a part in my liking the game less. Games have played such an integral part of my life that I can't outright ignore the emotional attachments I have to the experiences with them.
 
I don't expect everyone to agree with my review and if this GameFAQs thread is any indicator, Desperate Struggle is prone to inspire debates for a long time after its release. Again, that's okay. But I thought I'd devote this space to discussing more personal sentiments about the game as a whole that I didn't address in the main review. That piece still contains the majority of my thoughts about the game, but let this be a companion piece for those wanting some accented thoughts to accompany it. They are what they are and nothing more. I leave it up to you to finalize your own thoughts about the game.

MOST RECENT PART UPLOADED: PART FOUR OF FOUR. GO TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL ARCHIVE.

NOTICE

PART ONE

• It's only the first ten pages. It's short, but I'm working at this thing incrementally when I have free time. I'm posting this many so people who are interested in it have a taste of what it's like.
• Like all good manga, this is kept in its original format, meaning each page is read right-to-left and then top-to-down. It gets to be pretty intuitive quickly enough.
  
• You could call this a beta. I proofread my work and made sure the artistic integrity was kept intact (ie: when having to superimpose text onto a background), so while I endorse this work, there's always the chance things could change in the final version, whenever it is that I actually get around to it.
• This is not the official Persona 4 manga published serially in Japan. Somebody else already works on that stuff and I won't be linking to it here. As such, because this was originally a non-profit, fan-produced effort, it's very likely this wouldn't have seen a commercial translated release abroad. I'm doing this simply for the love of the game and so that English-speaking fans can see a side of the Japanese community they very rarely ever get to witness in their own language.
• While I tried as best as I could to maximize the scan quality, you'll notice that things are usually a bit iffy on the right or left-hand side of the page. This is mostly due to the scanning process involved; the physical copy I own is the only one I have and since very few were published in Japan anyway, let alone imported, I really didn't want to tear the pages out of the margin and do it "properly." I can't do that to one of my own books. It should still be perfectly readable anyway.
• If you're actually interested in helping me out with this, I'm looking for people who know their way around Photoshop, since having an assistant or two to focus on that stuff would make these things go way faster. You'd need to mostly be able to blank out (ie: make completely white) dialog bubbles and be able to impose translated text onto backgrounds, whenever necessary, without compromising the quality of the original background. It's not terribly hard stuff, really, especially since the artwork itself is pretty simple. I can't say I have a specific schedule for this stuff, but if you'd like to help out, shoot me a PM and we'll see if we can work some things out.

Gallery

PART TWO

Gallery

PART 3

Gallery

PART FOUR

Gallery

DOWNLOADABLE ARCHIVE

TEAM BOKE CREDITS

Special Acknowledgement

I haven't? Well, leave it to Zetsubou-Sensei to do the job for me, then. As with most manga, the reading order goes right-to-left, top-to-bottom. This has officially been your Christmas Eve blog from Pepsiman.

For legitimate reasons, too.
 
I know I shouldn't read them. Many of you have chastised me about this habit. But alas, the human psychology morbidly intrigues me and there's no better place to find a bizarre combination of intelligent, stupefying, witty, and ignorant remarks than Kotaku, with all four of those traits often showing up in any given article's comment section.
 
But this time I actually laughed. The context is simple. Brian Ashcraft, author of the unfortunately obscure, yet excellent book titled "Arcade Mania" and all around Japanese market reporter, wrote his usual night note, talking about coming back to the States for Christmas and how his kid likes American food, just not all the time. Understandable. I had cravings for American food while over in Tokyo, too; as much as I loved the food there, sometimes you need to remind yourself that home still exists. But I digress.
 
This got the comments section talking about international food, naturally. Here's one thread's take on Bashcraft's kid wanting Japanese food again.
 

It's hardly a secret that 3D Realms had its own share of issues with getting Duke Nukem Forever out in a timely manner. In fact, there's a really good retrospective that sheds some pretty specific light on what made the game more or less twiddle its thumbs while waiting for a release date. Less often discussed, though, is what was going on elsewhere in both the industry and the world at large in that same span. That's where this site comes in, which, further down the page, compiles both a number of events that happened within the span of Duke Nukem Forever's developer and things throughout history that didn't take as long to accomplish. Here are some of my personal favorites from the list, which I find does a really good job at putting the debacle into perspective:
 

• All three Star Wars prequels were filmed, released in theaters, and put on DVD in the time it took Duke Nukem Forever to be announced and subsequently cancelled.
• Since the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever Microsoft has released DirectX5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9.0c, 10, 10.1, and announced DirectX 11.
• Every Nintendo system from the GameBoy Color to DS Lite was released within that period.
• Team Fortress 2, another shooter which took a seeming eternity to come out, actually got unleashed on the masses.
  
• WWII and the entirety of the Manhattan Project, which eventually produced the atomic bomb, took up less time than Duke Nukem Forever's lifespan.