But I Digress | Niall no Kuni

It's hard to say whether or not the Japanese RPG has any place in the gaming industry today. 

In the nineties they were the in thing, and in the naughties they got bigger, better-looking, and somewhat more modern—albeit alongside every other genre that joined the HD generation. Yet despite massive investment and a fever pitch of interest, the JRPG simply couldn't keep up with the major new players in gaming, to the point that within weeks of its release, the last Final Fantasy vanished with nary a trace it had ever even existed. And let face it: there is no bigger name in the game than Final Fantasy.

Never one to learn its lesson, however, Square Enix is set to unleash a second sequel to Final Fantasy XIII this year. And who knows? Maybe the third time's the charm. But I doubt it. And speaking personally, I could care less. Not once but twice I got around 20 hours into Lightning's life, only to lose interest lest I lost the will to live entirely.

Granted, my interest in the genre had been flagging beforehand. And it's continued to do so since: the only JRPG I played in 2012 was Tales of Graces f, and again, I got about 20 hours in, looked at a FAQ to see how much more game I still had to play... and admitted defeat. I watched the end of the affair on YouTube. And I don't feel like I lost out on anything.

Be that as it may, I'm not quite ready to give up the ghost on the entire genre. I have at least one more attempt in me before I sign off once and for all: namely Ni no Kuni.

I've been holding out hope for this rare collaboration between Level 5 and Studio Ghibli (of Spirited Away fame—the very same!) since it was announced in 2008, and the copy I pre-ordered way back when finally arrived on Saturday. Despite having a hundred other things to do, I fed it to my PS3 immediately.

I'm 10 hours in already, and over the moon that I can say the time has flown by so far. So maybe Ni no Kuni is the game which makes the genre meaningful to me again. Or perhaps 10 hours from now I'll hit a wall that leaves me with no other option than to grind my life away, or give up on the JRPG after all. 

I so hope it doesn't come to that. I feel like I'd be killing a large part of the kid I once was, and I believe it's important to stay in touch—to a certain extent—with the things we loved when we were young.

I'll report back on my progress through Ni no Kuni even if I don't make much more. Why, if I finish the thing, and there's interest, I might even review it!

But for the moment, the floor is yours, folks. Do you think the JRPG has a place in the gaming landscape of today, or it is as long in the tooth as I suggested earlier? Does the prospect of Lightning's return in Final Fantasy XII-3 excite anyone at all?

And if any of you have been playing Ni no Kuni, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Do tell, too, if for whatever reason you've opted not to.

Millennium Animator

God damn it.

Have you heard the news already? Satoshi Kon, director of some of the most remarkable anime ever, is dead. The Anime News Network reports that he "passed away from pancreatic cancer [on Tuesday] at the age of 46."

I don't know that I want to speak to the fact that this news broke over Twitter. That's pretty sickening in itself, but it had to break somehow, I suppose, so... I'll let it slide.

The man was a legend. You should all watch his films. One in particular: Paprika, which Christopher Nolan called out as one of the inspirations behind Inception. I wonder if he got to see it?

In any case, Satoshi Kon was a filmmaker in his prime. He'd gone from Perfect Blue to Millennium Actress to Tokyo Godfathers to Paprika, and in between times he'd made Paranoia Agent, one of my very, very, very favourite anime series ever. He'd been slaving away at his latest speculative haze for years before the hammer finally fell: The Dream Machine was to be "a road movie for robots," and who knows if we'll ever have the chance to see it now. I don't know that it matters overly much... if we do, it won't be the finished product, and Kon was nothing if not a perfectionist. No doubt GAINAX will draft another director in to polish the last few frames up, but The Dream Machine won't be what it would have been, had Kon lived to wrap up production himself, on his own terms.

But Satoshi Kon is dead - and so young. Long live Satoshi Kon, then, in our hearts, and in our heads.

God damn it.

Castles In The Sky

When it rains, as I've had occasion to find out these past few months, it pours. The obnoxious, if not quite record-breaking heat shows no sign of letting up, but at least it's not dry heat any longer: the skies have deigned to crack open, the better to vent all the perspiration they've cunningly repurposed as rain.

It has rained, and rained some more. It has since, to no-one's surprise, continued to rain. Maddeningly, while we've been suffering through a seemingly endless onslaught of piddling and spitting and showering, two weeks of Wimbledon have been had in the baking sun without interruption - the first time this century rain hasn't stopped play at least once, for that matter.

But we're not talking tennis. Nor, indeed, do I mean to grumble about the weather. In this case, appearances can be quite, quite deceiving: this is a post about Studio Ghibli, of all things. All that burbling there was just context for me to awkwardly segue from, see? Wait for it.

Wait for it...

Because - here we go - just as you can spend ages waiting for rain, years can go by without word one from the Japanese animation studio to rule all Japanese animation studios. And yet, within a few weeks, there's been news of not one bit of new Ghibli goodness to look forward to, but two. Here's the first:

The Borrowers Arrietty is set to be released in Japan just a few weeks from now. Lucky buggers. It's coming from Hiromasa Yonebayashi, the key animator of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away - two of the studio's best, at least of late - and sure, he's not Hayao Miyazaki, but then, Miyazaki hasn't always been at the helm of Ghibli's incredible creations; and given that the man announced his "retirement" a few years ago, we'd best make peace with what talent there still is at the fan-favourite production house sooner rather than later.

Saying that, The Borrowers aren't exactly my favourite thing ever. I still remember that painful live-action movie from a decade and change ago, with Ian Holmes' would-be Bilbo Baggins as the micro-family's dear ol' Daddy. But this is Ghibli, people. Dodgy subject matter or not, magic will be made. Even the least notable of this studio's output could stand shoulder to shoulder with Disney's best and come out the better for the comparison.

But who knows when we'll see The Borrowers Arrietty here in the UK. What I'm really excited about is Studio Ghibli's other big project at the moment:

Ni No Kuni, transliterally "The Another World," was announced as a DS game first of all. At some point, however, Ghibli must have glimpsed the horrifying compression all their gorgeous animations would suffer on Nintendo's low-rent handheld, and thanks be to the video-game deities, Ni No Kuni wasn't so far along the production pipeline that Level-5 couldn't trade up a platform. No, not even to the Wii. It's coming to the PS3!

After my abbreviated experience with Final Fantasy XIII, I have a sneaking suspicion that I may just be over JRPGs - breaks my heart a little to say as much, but there it is. With story and design from the incomparable Studio Ghibli, though, and the makers of Dark Cloud and the Professor Layton puzzle games doing the legwork behind the scenes, Ni No Kuni should be a hell of a game whether I play it or not.

Oh, Ghibli. Ghibli, Ghibli, Ghibli...

Clearly it's time for a Totoro rewatch, am I right? :)

Chibicats are Go!

The other day, as is their way, io9 republished a press release with no comment whatsoever on its content. But what a press release it was. For you, TSS readers, the highlights:

"Warner Bros. Animation has begun production on ThunderCats, an all-new animated series for Cartoon Network, based upon the iconic 1980s action classic... The 21st century reimagining of the series marks a creative collaboration between WBA and Studio4°C, one of the most vibrant animation studios in Japan, with credits including The Animatrix, Gotham Knights and Halo Legends. WBA is working closely with Studio4°C, utilizing the latter's expertise to give the ThunderCats characters a new cutting-edge look while remaining true to the compelling storylines and mythology of the original series."

Which has to be the best cartoon news since they brought Futurama back from the dead, don't you think?

Or is it just me? I wonder. ThunderCats was my cartoon of choice, when I was but a little lurker on the speculative threshold. My dad made a video tape of twenty episodes on grainy longplay for me, which I watched and watched until there were more scan lines on the screen drawn lines. He cut some black and red cardboard into that iconic cat-face, the show's logo, which I proudly displayed on my bedroom door.

The rest of the cartoons - your He-Mans and Ghostbusters and what not - I'd watch 'em, but they were nothing to me next to the bumbling adventures of Lion-O and Snarf and the rest of the crew. I loved me my ThunderCats.

This re-envisioning, then, leaves me with mixed feelings. There's the little kid inside me, stamping his feet and squealing with excitement, and the rational, critical adult I wear on the outside, thinking... what? ThunderCats, of course, isn't the first treasure trove of 80s nostalgia to be brought kicking and screaming into the modern day, but let's not speak of the others, for fear we jinx this one.

In fact, let's look to the positives. The anime production house lined up to assist in the creation of the new world order of ThunderCats is certainly a promising one. Yes, they've done some passable work in service of Western intellectual property in the past - namely Batman: Gotham Nights, Transformers Animated, The Animatrix and Halo: Legends - but Studio4°C have knocked out a few gems of their own, too: the 1995 film Memories and the mind-bending Tekkon Kinkreet in 2006, not to mention Tweeny Witches (better than it sounds, I swear) or the superlative Detroit Metal City OVA.

Studio4°C is a fine studio, in short, and if it brings its A-game, we can be certain of at least one thing: the new ThunderCats sure will look great. The notion that it will remain "true to the compelling storylines and mythology of the original" makes me giggle a bit, though. I mean, come on. I bought those ThunderCats DVDs collections a few years ago, and you know what? I even tried to watch a few episodes. But no.

I'm not at all sure what to make of this announcement, even now, but consider my interest piqued. To be sure, I'll be keeping my eyes open for the new series, whenever it airs.

Anyone else have happy memories of Lion-O and co. to share?