Momentary Life

Enjoy your stay. I actually had the time and energy to read through Tokyo Babel, which I had been sort of anticipating since the start of the year. With an impressive voice cast and a post-apocalyptic setting involving angels and demons, the game has quite a bit of potentials but ultimately and predictably fails to deliver fully.

Pew pew beam attack!

The world suddenly came to an end. Angels were chased out of heaven, demons lost their home to a deluge, and human (parallel) worlds began to collapse. With nowhere to return to and no one to lead them, many angels and demons committed suicide. Amidst the chaos, the Archangel Michael sacrificed himself to create Tokyo Babel, a floating octahedron purgatory where the surviving angels and demons took refuge in.

"Son of Man, make pilgrimages. Only through the seven pilgrimages will the gates to heaven open once again."

That is God's message. Seven pilgrimages, that is, to ascend all seven levels of Tokyo Babel. Desperate, angels and demons took humans from different worlds to Tokyo Babel in hope of reaching the top of the purgatory, and ascending to heaven through Jacob's Ladder.

However, each level has been taken over by a Ruler, destructive individuals who went mad after hearing the Chorus. To ascend all the levels, the Rulers must be defeated. At the same time, not everyone wishes for things to return to normal; some desire for a permanent end to everything while some seek to change the course of history.

I'm in despair! My missing ahoge has left me in despair!

The story follows Setsuna Tendou (Hiroshi Kamiya), an ordinary-looking boy who is definitely not ordinary, as he battles his way through the purgatory against all odds and searches for the reason of his existence.

Haven't You Got Eyes In Your Head?

Well haven't you?

Anyways moving onto the story of NToJ. Remember Maribel got injured back in TGA when she took Renko to Torifune? Apparently she was diagnosed with delirium caused by some virus that did not exist on Earth. She was quarantined deep in the mountains since the society feared anything that was outside its control. Anyway Renko got the news that Mari had fully recovered, so she went to the sanatorium to meet Mari. Mari complains about how they wouldn't let anyone meet her even though she has no relatives in Japan. Renko asks what Mari's illness really was. Mari says that it's apparently high fever, as well as sleep walking and hallucinations of another world. To which Renko replies, "Eh? Isn't that totally normal to you?"

The two of them then went sight-seeing around Shinsyuu (now Nagano Prefecture), where the sanatorium was. The two of them came across the Zenkou temple, which was caught in the terrible Zenkoushi earthquake. Renko says that back then people thought the dislocations between the temple's main pillar and its base were caused by the earthquake. Of course now they found out it was the result of the wood decaying. However, people would rather keep on calling it the "earthquake pillar" to remind future generations the horror of earthquakes. Mari, however, could see an earthquake that can even deform the entire pillar (Tenshi?).

Heartfelt fancy. Lately not only can Mari see the gaps of boundaries, she can seemingly see the scenery of another world. Furthermore, she can actually move into that world. It was exactly the same back then on Torifune. For Renko it was probably just a dream, but that was reality for Mari. It's because of this, Mari was only one who got injured. The reason she went to the sanatorium was because the doctor thought she was insane. The truth of course is that Mari is perfectly sane, it's just the society cannot accept oddballs like her. Therefore her power must be kept a secret. Renko notices Mari doesn't look too well, Mari says she saw a little too much. When Renko asks her what she saw, Mari replies that she saw Hell (among other things).

My Title Can't Be This Generic

An everlasting instant. That is to say, I've finally had the chance to read 神咒神威神楽 and it was quite an entertaining journey despite being less adrenaline-inducing and refined than Dies Irae. Although to be fair, Dies Irae had a lot of time to grow into what it is today.

The art is downright gorgeous and fits the game perfectly. The style really gives Kajiri Kamui Kagura an air of uniqueness not seen in many other games. Although having played Dies Irae, it is quite strange to see familiar characters in traditional Japanese clothing sometimes. The character and costume designs are more elaborate and colourful than those in Dies Irae, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm more of a sucker for military uniforms than kimonos. It was a real shame that the Yatsukahagi wasn't the least bit menacing, but of course it was understandable given their origins and roles in the story.

I can't be the only one who thought Tokoyo was cuter than Rea

When bad guys aren't really bad guys. I had trouble taking Kei seriously thanks to Kamidori and Arterial, where her voice actress did Serawi and Narumi-senpai respectively...with exactly the same voice. I know it's pretty silly but now every time I hear Kei's voice, someone else pops up in my head. At least my mental image of Beatrice hasn't been ruined yet. Other than that though, the voice acting is very solid and I have always enjoyed Wilhelm/Keishirou's trash talk (can't say his VA did all that good as Gilbert in Baldr Sky though). Speaking of which, trash talk was all over the place back in Dies Irae, and though I enjoyed it I was glad that Masada decided to tone it down in Kajiri Kamui Kagura.

Rust In Peace

Woke up to find my laptop has finally given up on me and stopped working. Not a good start. I lost a good portion of my work and other things as a result. Now I have nothing to show my supervisor. Not that I'm too enthusiastic about my project anyway. I guess it's good that at least the desktop is still running...

Oh well looking on the bright side, that means I might get around to do a few more summaries tonight. Maybe. I have uploaded the scans (this is just the scans) of Trojan Green Asteroid (this includes both the mp3 and scans). Or if you just want to view the images, they are here. I have replaced the link in the previous post as well.

There is indeed a story following Renko and Maribel. The titular Torifune refers to a Japanese space station that had an accident and vanished. Torifune carried many different plants and animals as a experiment to see if they could adapt to the living conditions in space. The station had an ecosystem on board and the ultimate goal was apparently to achieve terraforming? Renko says no matter how many mini ecosystems there are, it's impossible to maintain a space station without humans. Maribel says that she recently saw what's "inside" the space station (in her dream). Even though the station is said to have disappeared, there's a good chance that it's in the Lagrange point in the Earth-Moon system.

And Then There Were No Cakes

I will be quite busy the next few days so I probably won't be able to post any more updates till the weekend. Sorry about that. I'd think that proper translations will be steadily rolling out now that the scans are up, so please be patient. Oh yeah, I managed to get a copy of ZUN's new album, 鳥船遺跡 ～ Trojan Green Asteroid (credits go to the Chinese again).

 

Anyways, let's move on to talk about the book. I will start with Kanako and Suwako's profiles. They are quite long so bear with me.

Akyuu says that Kanako moved her base to Gensokyo probably because she thought that she could get more faith if she had both humans and youkai as followers. Her species is very suitable for being gods. Akyuu says though she'd like to know if Kanako were a human or something else before (becoming a god), it's impossible to determine that now.

She was apparently a god of wind and rain in the past, but now she is the god of the mountain. Although she and the mountain youkai seem to be keeping a mutually beneficial relationship, the truth is that no one knows if that is really the case. It could even be that they are just using each other for their own interests. Unlike the Hakurei shrine, Kanako has all kinds of business activities at her shrine. It seems that faith makes everything better, so she does whatever she can to keep it. She loves technological innovations, and seems to have little regard about traditions. Giving up the outside world and coming to Gensokyo is a very good example of this (probably implying that technological innovation has come to a halt in the outside world).