Densha Otoko

Well, as anyone who was paying attention the other night might know, I finished watching Densha Otoko, an awesome Japanese live-action drama. Well, comedy/drama. It’s based on a true story, from post compiled on a Japanese forum.

It’s about a Japanese anime otaku by the name of Yamada (name in the TV series only–just called Densha in other places). He’s often bullied around by his boss and coworker and can never seem to get anything right. People see him as disgusting because he’s an otaku. But when riding home on the train one day, he notices a beautiful young woman. When a pervert starts harassing her, Yamada stands up for the first time in his life, soon finding himself in a fight with the man. The young woman, grateful for his bravery, asks for his address so she can send him a thank you present.

When he gets home, he gets online and goes straight to a Single Men Rant Thread, where he tells everyone on about what happened. And from that point on, he becomes the star of the thread, a (somewhat whiny, but honest) young man trying to win the heart of a lovely, rich young woman. The others help him out, giving him suggestions even though they have no idea where he is or how he looks. Thanks to the awesome artist guy on the thread, he gets the nickname Densha Otoko. On the thread, the girl becomes known as Hermes due to the gift she sent him.

Enough of the summary, though. It has moments of pure sweetness that can make you cry, and then moments of over-dramatized reactions that’ll make you laugh. And, a complete jerk gets hilariously trolled by a chicken (it makes sense in context!). All in all, it’s a good balance. One thing I enjoyed was that it really puts the average life of a Japanese person in perspective, showing the customs that I’ve only learned about before. (Also, the main character has the same birthday as me )

It’s only eleven episodes long, with two specials. It has a habit of ending episodes with huge cliffhangers, but I was so drawn in yesterday that I was watching it non-stop anyway.

Densha Otoko is absolutely adorable, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hangs out online (meaning all of you Midnight Heartians!). The members of the thread become nakama, which I can really relate to with Midnight Hearts. And the things they do for each other, the ways they help each other… it’s really inspiring. The people on the forum begins changing, with the strength of their online nakama backing them. Just the way Yamada changes is inspiring for them, but the bond they make becomes strong. My absolute favorite moment is when they really come together to help Yamada (though I can’t say much more without spoiling it).

I’m going to leave it off with one of my favorite quotes, which I completely agree with:

“I can say this about the people on the Net. Though I don’t know their names or faces, to me, they are true friends…
If I had to chose one thing to be proud of, I would hold my chest high and say that meeting them was it.”

Graces F may lead to more Tales localization…

…but not because Namco has decided to stop trolling its North American fanbase. No, it’s because we find ourselves in an interesting situation wherein we may be able to convince Namco to localize more Tales games. “But David, whatever do you mean?” you might be wondering. Allow me to explain.

For some time now, the entries in the Tales series in Japan have been showing relatively lackluster sales. The last truly good-selling title in Japan was Abyss, which sold approximately 600,000 copies. After that, sales started tanking hard with Tempest at 200,000; they’ve hovered around that level ever since (these numbers taken from this Tales Union article). Now, you could spend some time debating why this happened, but that isn’t the purpose of this post. I am going to simply assume for the purposes of this post that at least a part of the reason (if not most or all of it) is that the Japanese market is currently flooded with Tales games in a way that it wasn’t when the titles still sold well.     

30 Days of Gaming: The Rest of Them

Well, since I’m super lazy it seems and don’t seem to want to do one a day. I think I’ll just put the rest of them in one post! Anywho, sorry for the huge delay (Not that you guys actually care to read the posts, lawls), so here are the last four days gaming!

Day 27: Most Epic Scene

It took me a while to decide this actually! I didn’t know what to choose for the longest time, but that’s not why I was delaying the posts. I was just lazy. Anywho, the most epic scene would have to be, most definitely, from Sakura Taisen: Atsuki Chishio ni. Oh yes, Sakura Taisen, with the Teikoku Kagekidan Hanagumi! The first game’s remake! Click the more button for the rest of this day, and the last 3 days!

30 Days of Gaming: Day 26 – Best Voice Acting

Persona 3 and 4 are good contenders for this! Atlus did a great job with the dubbing for these. I’m really fond of them. Also, I did rather like Valkyria Chronicles II’s dub very much! Although I played the original with the Japanese voices, I’m thinking of playing through it again with English voices just for the heck of it! Although once I do get used to one language it’s kind of hard to get used to the other. But I’m sure I’ll like them, I think. I didn’t really like Alicia’s English voice all that much  at first, but we’ll see.

In terms of Japanese voices, I really like Ar tonelico’s VAing. All three of them! Sawashiro Miyuki as Chroche is just awesome, and really helped me like the character and the VA herself! Now I’m all squeeee whenever Sawashiro Miyuki is in a video game or anime now. She’s going to be Mira in Tales of Xillia! I’m ever so excited. :3

30 Days of Gaming: Day 25 – Game I Plan on Playing

Hi! I have too many games I plan on playing, way too many! So yeah. The games I’m looking forward to playing the most though, that are already in my collection are all the Sakura Wars titles that I’ve collected and wanted to play. Also, Trinity Universe, Namco x Capcom, other Tales games, etc. Lots of RPGs of course. I also really would like to get into Okami sometime soon! But gah, my backlog. I need to find a way to get myself to just stop gobbling up every new game that comes out that I even just remotely want. And start giving into deals so I could have time to play these games. But whatevz. We’ll see what happens next year~

30 Days of Gaming: Day 24 – Favorite Classic Game

Yoshi’s Island, if that counts. Probably my favorite platformer ever. Just can’t beat those epic boss fights, the awesome music, and Yoshi’s first venture as the hero of his own game! It being a prequel of the Mario games is also a nice touch I guess. Even if it retcons them being from Brooklyn. But yeah, Yoshi is probably my favorite Mario character. Since childhood he has been! So I can’t not say Yoshi’s Island. It’s definitely one game I have very very fond memories of.

I do want to go back and complete it one day, no matter how annoying it is to 100% all the stages! But I doubt that will happen for a long time, considering my huge backlog. Yoshi’s Island DS was a pretty decent sequel, it was just underwhelming in terms of bosses and music, and it’s Nintendo Hardness kind of sucked. But it was decent enough, I liked it and accepted it. Here’s hoping for more!

30 Days of Gaming: Day 23 – Game with the Best Graphics

Well, I’m not really one to really care about graphics or art style as long as the game is fun, but it really does kind of help the enjoyment sometimes! The GUST games especially, to tell the truth, the only reason I was drawn to Atelier Iris 1 when I randomly saw it in a game store one day when I was a young lad, was when I saw the boxart for the first time. I saw it and thought it was the prettiest boxart I’ve ever seen, and was interested in it instantly! Who knew the franchise would become one of my favorite series ever? I sure did not! Well, this post isn’t actually about Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana at all (although I did kind of make it about it at first I guess, since I was explaining about how I was drawn to it’s artstyle to begin with), but a distant sequel of sorts…