Done and done, yo.

Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix is in the can!

Some background to this momentous event.

(car) Tuner culture over in Japan has a lot of similarities to its counterpart here in the States, but a lot of differences too. One of the key differences is in the very public arena of street racing. In the USA, racing your street car is basically illegal on a public road, and legal on the track. There are almost no exceptions to this, in any state and in any circumstance. You cannot race your car on a public road without risking police entanglements. You also risk ticketing, arrest, and/or impounding of your vehicle if you take part in a street racing ‘meet’ (a la scenes in The Fast & The Furious), even if you aren’t doing any actual racing yourself. Over time, as tuner culture has approached closer to mainstream consciousness, advice even amongst the formerly edgy magazines and shows has been to take the racing to the track. Cities with large car segments have been making track time available specifically to street racer potentials—anyone wanting to drive fast can have access. A lot of official drag racing events have tuner-oriented aspects to them, and a lot of tuner shows include time at a nearby track. American tuners may enjoy the same forms of racing that they do in Japan; time attack, touge, circuit drifting, etc. but the overwhelming preference is for drag racing. A quarter mile drag race can happen quickly (and with a minimum chance of attracting the authorities) as long as any reasonable traffic-free straight stretch of road can be found.

In Japan, street racing is also technically illegal but how the law is enforced differs substantially from America, and can even change month-to-month, year-to-year, depending on what problems and pressures the relevant authorities are feeling at the time. In ‘good times’ the cops generally turn a blind eye or rely on automated ticketing procedures (like cameras) to ticket drivers. So racing will flourish in this environment. In ‘bad times’, not only will they ticket the crap out of you, the police may even set up checkpoints to check any suspicious cars for modifications to their cars not covered by driver paperwork or the law. A lot of the car clubs have members that spend time monitoring the political and social climate around their favorite streets to determine the efficacy of racing without getting into trouble. Races, typically termed ‘battles’, typically take place on the expressways (for highway battles) or on winding mountain roads (touge)… all very late at night when traffic is at a minimum. In the case of highway battles, encountering and evading what little civilian cars there are is all part of the deal. In the mountains, they have team members on cell phones actually giving an all-clear when a stretch of road is free of cars.
Legal circuit racing is very popular in Japan also, with time attack, drifting, road courses all seeing popularity with tuners… drag racing included, but by far the least popular. Gasoline being hugely expensive, and with space and population issues, big powerful cars are not aligned with Japanese society. Their choice of motorsports reflects this with an emphasis on the technical skill, in driving and setting up a car, that road racing and time attack require, as opposed to the raw horsepower on display at the dragstrip.

With all of this in mind, Genki a long time ago decided to tap into Japan’s tuner culture and general love of automobiles with some very unique racing games.

Genki started its Shutokou Battle series, so named for the network of Shuto expressways encircling Tokyo, way back for the Super Famicom (SNES). At that time it included highways, touge, and circuit racing, formats that would all get their own series as time went on. Subsequent chapters of Shutokou Battle concentrated on highway battles, with touge moving over to the Kaido Battle games, and circuit racing picked up by Kattobi Tune and later, Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix. Common to all these games was the concept of a sort of game world complete with individually identified rivals. In the early games it was just a name, a car, and maybe a picture. The driver might say some trash talk before a race. But as these games have evolved, the rival concept has been expanded to the point it mirrors real-life Japanese underground race culture, though dramatized and simplified in the same way movies or comic books might do it. The rivals now carry through from game to game, consistently driving their recognizable make or model of vehicle. They have individual ‘stickers’ identifying them or the club they belong to. They each have information on their tuning strategies or philosophy along with info about their day jobs. And they communicate with the player through a faux BBS and email system within the game.

This determination to reflect the actual culture, and the details that make it attractive, not only extend to the rivals, but also to the cars. In the beginning, small company that they were, Genki’s ability to get actual sponsorship and licensing went about as far as getting Keichi Tsuchiya (Japan's celebrity Drift King) involved and that’s it. The cars all had to be referred to in the game by their chassis code as opposed to their name, but the games usually had a screen for changing the name to the real one if you wished. Genki stayed hip to what sort of parts tuners bought, and what sort of modifications they made, so the games reflected—with increasing sophistication through the years—what you could find in any nighttime parking area around Japan. Nowadays, with sales and money comes the ability to attract and pay for the real names, so Genki games now are populated with the real car manufacturers, models, and aftermarket parts suppliers.

As described in another previous post, Genki racing games appeal to gamers that want more color or atmosphere. But one of the great things about the game world, besides the cultural details, and the continuing cast of characters, is the type of ‘freedom’ you have. A better word escapes me. This is kind of a hard thing to describe accurately. In many racing games (Gran Turismo most prominently) you just have a list of races or tracks, some starter cars and parts available, and you pretty much just work through the choices, winning as you can, getting more money, buying more cars and parts, tweaking as you go, until you eventually complete the game. At the other end of the spectrum you have those games who hang your progress on a detailed plot (Race Driver Pro for example) and you pretty much need to complete the races and get the cars more-or-less in narrative order, to climb your way to the top of the racing heap.

The Genki games have found a good balance between the two extremes. You have only a minimum plot, usually about ‘the greatest racer’ having disappeared and a power vacuum being created, which you, naturally, are going to try to fill by contending with all the other wannabe racing kings. You can then roam the highways looking for rivals, race as many times as you wish, talk to other racers, or frequent the shops. It is pretty much all done at your own pace. It isn’t the goal of attaining champion that is the fun part, it is the journey.
Some days, you might find yourself in constant white-knuckle races, other days you might do nothing but shop and modify your cars. All at your pace. You’ll have friends and supporters. You’ll have drivers that dislike you for no good reason. You’ll have rivals you hate because game after game they keep giving you trouble. Only the Need For Speed: Underground series and its spinoffs seem to have hit a similar note, but with even more emphasis on real-time free roaming in your car than the Genki games… though NFS: Underground still seems to need to wedge a fairly serious ‘plot’ into the proceedings.

Genki racers are something of an acquired taste. At first glance it may be hard for the average gamer to see what the fuss is all about. But there is a lot of fun, excitement, and drama under the surface. It takes some dedication to see that. These games bring back one of the killer reasons why many people play video games in the first place: anticipation. To see what is next. To complete goals. To finish the game. It isn’t just endless repetition once you start talking to the other drivers, or opening up new tracks. You actually learn to feel dread, hatred, or dismay when you see a familiar sticker from a rival you remember handing your ass to you multiple times in a previous game. Like Cave shooters, or SNK fighting games, Genki racers are a cult phenomenon. Not so easy for the mainstream to crack.

Despite all this street racing emphasis Genki has had some titles take the racing to the track. The very first episode of Shutokou Battle had a circuit aspect to it, and later on during shelf life of the editions for the PSX and the Saturn there was Kattobi Tune, and most recently Racing Battle, the inspiration for this post in the first place, came out in 2005.

As recent as it is, Racing Battle has had the benefit of all the other titles that have come before it, so Genki decided that the rivals, communications, and color of the ‘illegal’ racing titles, in addition to the cars and parts should come over and test their mettle in the new environment. Many of the rivals have gotten sponsors and changed or upgraded their rides to meet the conditions and challenge so different than the highways or mountain roads. In point of fact, they’ve cordoned off some sections of the expressways from Shutokou Battle to make street circuits so now fans get to drive these familiar areas in the daytime. Since cars and rivals from both current Genki series (Shutokou and Kaido Battle) are included, there needed to be several race ‘modes’ to cover the skills on display in those games. Racing Battle includes both racing and drift segments, and all rivals are capable of racing in all modes. Completing the game, in fact, requires you beat everyone at each type of contest. Like most Genki racing games some detail and realism in the graphics has been sacrificed to keep the sense of speed up (Gran Turismo looks like it crawls in comparison) and to budget in all the rivals, parts, background, communications, etc. that are part and parcel of their game world. It won’t win points for beating Gran Turismo or Forza’s realistic cars and tracks, but it does have a much more immersive framework in which to race. The customization level is much higher than almost any other racing game as well, including the ability to place vinyls on the cars that you derive from pictures taken with the EyeToy accessory.

If all of this sounds a lot like the other ‘epic’ motorsports titles like Gran Turismo, Forza, or Enthusia Racing, it is. Only it is Genki’s take on the specific subgenre of circuit racing, and it brings along a lot of what makes their other racing titles so compelling.

So my personal story with this game: I had played numerous Shutokou titles and become a big fan, including buying, playing and completing Japanese versions when it appeared I just wasn’t going to be able to wait for them to release in the USA. When Kaido Battle came out, I waited out the arrival of an English version. But then played it through rapidly, enjoying the different take on the ‘Genki system’. I was all set to skip Kaido Battle 2 (I’d heard it wasn’t different enough from Kaido Battle 1, though it was a better game) and move onto Kaido Battle: Touge no Densetsu, when I saw Racing Battle for sale. In Densetsu, the plot is that Shutokou bosses come out to the mountains to challenge the Kaido racers… kind of a crossover between the two series, so I was really ready to get to that.
The only thing that would’ve stopped me was an even more jaw-droppingly nerdy event in the Genki racing world, but that was exactly what Racing Battle was. A different crossover of rivals from both series battling it out on official circuits, with technical supervision from racer/drifters Orido and Taniguchi… just like in the ancient days when Tsuchiya would advise on Shutokou games. So I put Densetsu on hold, bought Racing Battle till my hands ached. This was not a simple task. Where Shutokou and Kaido Battle games had English versions so one could figure out a subsequent Japanese chapter, those games also tended to have a fair amount of English in the menus and captions. Not so Racing Battle. Very extensive Japanese text, a system dissimilar in a lot of ways to the other series’ AND almost no English language help or players online.

I was alone in my Racing Battle corner of the Genki universe.

Now a site named NTSC-UK does (at the time of this writing) have a guide to the most common menus, and this was absolutely invaluable. They actually used screen shots so the learning process is way quicker than most all-text FAQs you might use to learn a Japanese-heavy game. All props to this site for posting such a professional, useful tool. So with at least the main menus translated, and a lot of determination I worked my way through the game. It was A LOT OF FUN. As I was playing I found I was really missing out on the BBS/email communications… in fact ANY communications or info on the rivals, really, and learning what you gain from all the different items you can buy. The game lets you buy stuff to decorate your in-game garage, wear on your person, or keep with you as you drive… and these items can change certain attributes or gain you advantages, ie wearing the helmet reduces the amount of damage hitting a wall does to your SP bar. By lurking around the very few English threads on this title, I was able to get an idea what some of the items do. None of this stopped me from playing and enjoying the game. And getting good at it.

There comes a time in every Genki racers time with a game when he has to knuckle under and ‘find all the wanderers’. Usually you’ve fought and defeated all the rivals in the main narrative of the game (such as it is), and now there are just the rivals left that have special conditions required to make them available as opponents. The conditions can be as simple as a certain day of the week, or a weather condition. They might require you to be in a certain model of car. Sometimes the requirements can be more difficult, like having defeated certain previous rivals, or owning a certain number of cars. In the English versions of the games, the communications from or about the drivers often give you enough information to get most of these people out. Typically, there will be a last dozen or so, that you just can’t make appear. Or if you are playing a Japanese version it might be many more, since you can’t read the Japanese-language clues. This is where the online guides come in. Most people do not have the patience, or in my case the time, to really sit there and find every last wanderer strictly without help. Although their requirements do fit in with each driver’s background and profile, they are often just too obscure to reason out.

So imagine my difficulty coming to that point in Racing Battle and finding absolutely NO wanderers guide whatsoever. And the game was not popular enough in the English-speaking world to warrant even a regular forum to discuss the matter. Eventually having persevered I got the leftover wanderers down to about twenty, mostly by filling conditions bound to get taken care of if you race enough days and beat enough opponents. I used Genki’s official Racing Battle website to find Japanese fan pages and then ran them through Babelfish. I found two usable wanderer lists, and these got me down to about eight. Unfortunately this was the place where the inaccuracy of the Babelfish facility showed itself. Genki racers are a minority subset of tuner culture which is itself a corner subculture in the much larger universe of automobiles. There are terms unique to automobiles, terms unique to tuners, and terms unique to this family of racing games. So any vagueness was incredibly difficult to decipher. Finally, stymied I had to put the game down for awhile. I’d come back to it and finish it after I’d taken a break from racing games altogether.

A long time passed. In that intervening time, the few English language bits and all the Japanese fan material seemed to dry up. As I was farting around with an STG or learning about the Wii Virtual Console, Racing Battle was becoming more and more obscure. Since Racing Battle had, at the time of its release, topped sales charts in Japan, I had no idea that it was going to fade like this. Partly time got away from me too. I really hadn’t intended to go THAT long without taking another stab at it. In that time also, Densetsu got an English release, making my Japanese copy a non-starter. Fiddling around with Densetsu got me feeling like I had unfinished business with Racing Battle. So before Densetsu hooked me completely, I needed to close that previous chapter. I tried scouring the ‘net for help once again, but found myself to be even more alone than when I first started playing it. Even the Japanese pages were gone. I had made a copy of what seemed to be the best one, so I had my main wanderer help, but it looked like this could be really grueling slog to the finish…a feeling I was starting to remember when I first took my break from the game.

Turns out my fears were unfounded. I don’t know what I was NOT doing earlier but I had no problems following this FAQ and getting the last few wanderers to come out. Actually defeating them was another matter. In the time I’d taken off, my skill had atrophied somewhat. I was okay in the various racing events because racing ability in one game can frequently give you a leg up on another one, and I’ve played a lot of racing games in my life. But the drifting was another matter. Not as many of those played and really only one other Genki one (with its unique physics and system). So the Drift battles were rough. Very rough. Especially the ones requiring the use of cars far outside my preferences or experience… drifting in a front-engine front wheel drive vehicle is an experience I don’t want to repeat too often.

Finally, ‘Wanderers Completed 100%’ flashed across my screen, and when I went into the garage the next day, there was an email. The final boss labeled ‘Unknown’ was calling me out. Now this guy is well known to serial players of the Shutokou Battle games. He is labeled ‘Unknown’ or ‘???’ in all the games he appears in, with his sticker being a horned skull suspended above a hexagram. He is always the last guy you fight, and he typically drives a very innocuous looking 1980’s version of a Nissan/Datsun 240Z colored blue. The appearance is deceiving of course, because it is small, light, and souped up the max. It probably doesn’t corner all that well, but he usually challenges you on the Wangan section of the Tokyo expressways which is miles of straight freeway. So beating him is typically an exercise in maximizing your car’s power while really getting good at dodging freeway traffic.

He’s different in Racing Battle. Japan has a professional race series called Super GT. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, and Mazda all contribute a lot to the series, including technology and machinery for automobiles. They all have unbelievable versions of street cars on the track and Unknown’s car is basically the Nissan 350Z in its Super GT version, with a tiny nod to his old street ride in the form of the form of his driver side front fender being blue, with an old 240Z style headlight and fender mirror.

To wrap up this very long post, I used my traditional cars to beat him. I typically have in my garage in every Genki racing game a Supra RZ, a Silvia S15 (or a 180SX), and a Lancer Evolution. In the three contests against him all three cars played their part, amongst many others used to bring out the last wanderers.

It was a great game. A very long, drawn out experience, but well worth it in the end. It may not be my favorite Genki racing game (that might be another post) but it is probably the best-quality overall, of all of them. Certainly the most in-depth, though Densetsu looks to rival that. With all the effort required it was still hands-down a better time than Gran Turismo or any other game like that.

Wrath.

The word 'vreid' is Norwegian for 'wrath'.

There is a metal band named Vreid that I started listening to about two weeks ago. Go buy or download their album 'Milorg'. I will brook no argument on this point. No discussion.





Oh, okay. SOME discussion. They are a black metal(-ish) band along the lines of Enslaved, though with a more of a thrash leaning than that band. Kind of like pushing Enslaved and Death Angel together. Some bands like Naglfar or Susperia are called 'blackened thrash' and I get that, but Vreid is literally black metal and thrash TOGETHER.

Pretty sure I'll be picking up just about everything else they have too. I've been listening to a lot of good new music lately but these guys just jumped out at me. I need to check out Windir, their previous band, as well.

Now go do what I told you.

Battojutsu!

The head of our dojo, in the last couple of months, has really been emphasising sword work. Normally I attend a once-a-week iaido (aiki-ken more precisely) class, while the rest of my family are in their karate class. Then one or two other nights a week I go down to the dojo and practice what I learned. Up to this point, we've memorised:

seven basic cutting drills (suburi),
an eight-direction cutting drill (happo-giri),
a footwork drill (happo-undo),
two partner exercises (kumitachi),
ten 'official' kata (the seitei series)
two jodo kata (18step, and one from kenshin-ryu)
various other waza or parts thereof.

Now my regular instructor for all of this is not the head of the school, but when that head (shihan) wants to get all into sword work, not only do you let him, but if he is doing something different than your regular class you can bet he's going to expect your class to get on board. So he has been acclimating the karate regulars to eight basic Toyama-ryu batto drills, and we've got to incorporate them. I don't mind, but I don't really remember the last time I actually had to really stretch to memorise in a martial arts class. But I sure do now. Not least because none of us in MY class have that much direct exposure. I will persevere.

Remember, its supposed to be fun, but its still work.

I AM The Legend, Baby!

Wow. I just started to really get into playing Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 (Kaido Battle: Touge no Densetsu)... and this is just a kickass game.

I know I need to get over my frustration with Blazing Lazers and just finish the damn thing, but it'll be hard while I've got this one going on. Drift 2 is not a new game in terms of release date, and I actually bought the Japanese version quite some time ago, but by the time I was ready to play it, news of the English one was out, so I waited. I got into Racing Battle: C1 Grand Prix and then got stuck trying to find all the 'wanderer' character cars in THAT game when I bought the English Drift 2.

So blah blah blah, long time 'til I started this game that I should've started (and finished) a long time ago. This game just reminds me of why I love GOOD video games (or books or movies)-- immersion. And I pretty much go through this every time I start a new Genki racing game. These games are not well-loved by the critics. They are very kvlt, especially in English-speaking countries, most players totally dismissing them as not enough of a simulation, or not up to Gran Turismo or Forza graphic levels. Or having 'skatey' controls. Missing the point of the games one and all.

Genki games have COLOR. Gran Turismo is pretty, and realistic (for a medium that can't actually grant you the physical feedback of being in a real car), but has shite for driver AI and is the driest, most plot-bare game world you can imagine. The other end of the spectrum is the Pro Race Driver series and they are perhaps TOO story-oriented, tracking you pretty linearly through an adventure game-style plot, but with cars instead of guns or items, and races instead of fights. Games from the Genki Racing Project have a world. Opponents with names, identities, and driving styles. They communicate with you. You have to go find them sometimes... or wait when they get off work, or when they agree with the weather. The controls are slippery in some sense, but nothing I've found that is particularly difficult to get used to, and it actually enhances what upgrading your car will do for you. If you want your car to control just like it would in some other racing game, some effort and the right parts and settings will get it there. And it usually doesn't take very long. Genki racers aren't about grueling your way through 500 of the same goshdamn race for peanuts at a time. There is some repetition, but you get different styles of course, variable weather, different victory conditions AND a staggering number of individual opponents. The game has a constant flow of goals for you to reach. Not just 'man I gotta win this race 61 more times and I can get that Skyline R34'. You are always in a state of wanting to see what comes next, whether it is a new track to be unlocked, a new gang of drivers to defeat, or just wanting to get on the ingame BBS to read the trash talk or cries of defeat from your rivals. Reading what defeated drivers say to you when you walk up to them at a later date in Drift 2 is worth the price of admission, re: 'You spanked me so bad last time, I don't even want to talk to you, yo.' or 'It's the drift god! I'm not worthy!'.

The best entertainment experiences are about immersion. This whole world in each Genki game comes at the cost of the most detailed cars or most realistic physics. It is a compromise or a balance. I don't know if I'd characterise these as arcade racers so much as sort of 'idealised'. While the controls may seem odd at first, you can adjust so much (including your controller's sensitivity typically), that once you get used to it, the number of cars, parts, tracks, track conditions and all of that put it squarely back into 'simulating' what it would be like to be a highway or mountain pass street racer. If someone is a fan of Initial D or another racing manga getting these games is like dropping yourself into the comics. Especially the Kaido Battle games, since those are based in the mountain passes like Takumi's adventures. And of course Genki includes all sorts of nods to Initial D.

I've recently joined up with a message board for fans of Genki racing games. I guess there are just enough of us to create an online goober space. I'm inspired to find those last few wanderers in Racing Battle, and maybe someone at that forum can help me.

Mikogami no Jokichi

Just got done watching the Mikogami trilogy on DVD, ordered from my local Barnes & Noble. This is a fairly obscure chanbara/jidaigeki (whichever) about an ex-gangster wandering around trying to kill three bosses responsible for the deaths of his family when he tried to go straight. The star, Yoshio Harada, is pretty much my poster child for that sort of wild-haired, long side-burned anti-hero that is so prevalent in 70’s exploitation films from Japan….only he’s in a period film countryside as opposed to hip, urban Tokyo. In the eighties he would star with Shintaro (Zatoichi) Katsu in Katsu’s last period film, Roningai.

I enjoyed the films a lot, with the last one being particularly good. The ending was rather unresolved or obscure but not in a bad way, to me. These films aren’t going to topple Lone Wolf and Cub from their lofty place as the best of the exploitation-tilted samurai films, but they were worth the money.

There is a certain sense of artistry and a command of cinematic techniques that films from other asian countries working in similar genres just don’t seem to match. I love the kung fu film output of the Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest and all the rest, but cinematically, they just aren’t in the same league as analagous films from Japan. That isn’t to say Japanese films don’t have their drawbacks. And their cinematic culture is nowhere near as dynamic in many ways as that of Hong Kong, or even Thailand and Korea right now.

Samurai films are making something of a comeback currently, but these tend to be quieter studies about the feudal lifestyle, and the hard choices faced by peaceful men in a warrior society. The Mikogami trilogy comes from an era of much louder, more forceful ‘samurai’ film, though there are hardly any literal samurai in it.

Valken, Gunhed, Kaido Battle

So some time back I downloaded Cybernator for the SNES from the Wii Virtual Console service. Cybernator is the US version of Assault Suits Valken, which is the followup to the Genesis/Mega Drive cart Target Earth (Assault Suits Leynos). I was a huge Target Earth fan, back in the day. I didn’t have a SNES so the sequel just passed me by, though I DID get the third entry Assault Suit Leynos 2 on my Sega Saturn like the moment it became available from import dealers.

Just finished Cybernator and I have to say it is a pretty good game. Somewhere between the two Leynos games in challenge, the first Leynos actually being fairly notorious for its difficulty level (anyone really NOT use the all-weapons trick on the first level?). This episode DID give me some hurdles, but overall not brutal. The US version is missing some of the story events and graphics, including the enemy leader committing suicide, but one can go on YouTube and watch what you’re missing. These games are a sort of run ‘n’ gun/platformer mix with some tactical weapons choices mixed in. Cybernator eschews the complicated weapon choosing aspects of the Leynos games, opting to reduce the choices but make them available all the time. So the game comes off more arcadey than the others, but still pretty recognizable. Warning: huge plot steals from the Gundam anime series.

Around the same time I downloaded Blazing Lazers (Gunhed in Japan), an early TurboGrafx-16 shooter designed by Compile. I must be getting old because this game is just putting the stones to me. I have absolutely no problem getting to the last level. Full power, balls-out rockin’ and then….. pfft. I get killed, lose all my powerups and can’t make any real headway from there.

Part of the difficulty is that this game has a very steep level of ‘Gradius Syndrome’, the video game trope whereby taking a hit removes all your powerups… and if it happens to you in a later level you will rapidly suffer multiple deaths from overwhelming enemy force that you are no longer equipped to deal with. Gradius syndrome is usually referenced when placed in a game that also uses a checkpoint system, (as Gradius itself does), and being sent back to the checkpoint with each death can frequently exacerbate the issue, since you can get thrown back to a particularly difficult point. You wind up running up against the same wall over and over again, cycling through your pea-shooter armed ships getting crushed at ‘that one level’. So pretty much I have no problem with the game up to the last level, and then the combination of complete powerup loss and checkpoints (all before brutal points in the level) sodomises the rest of my ships.

Ugh.

I’ll get it, but the game, great as it is, ain’t THAT fun to play over and over. It is older, with much-lauded graphics for its day… but its day? Long damn time ago. And it is NOT a short game for a vertical shooter. Its one of those games where enough practice on the difficult part will see you through, but my trouble spot is all the way near the end of the game. So it is kind of discouraging my will to see it through to the end. At least for now. Waiting awhile and trying again, might be fine.

Also finally fired up (for real as opposed to just goofing with it) Kaido Battle: Touge no Densetsu. The third installment of the Kaido Battle franchise. I love these stupid things. Genki racing games are an acquired taste but I think they just rock. I’m only a tiny way into it and I’m totally being reminded of why I love Genki Racing Project in the first place. It is pretty rare to have that ‘gotta see what’s next’ feeling when you’ve played as many games as I have, but I’ll be damned if Genki don’t manage that in a game genre that sure as hell isn’t known for variety!

More on Kaido Battle as I get into it.

Zuwhack Or Not Zuwhack!*

Not too long ago I watched the film Love and Honor. This is the third of Yoji Yamada’s recent films about peace-loving samurai forced to confront difficulties in old Japan just prior to the Meiji Restoration (Japan’s abolishment of the samurai caste, and reinstatement of the Emperor as head of the nation—effectively the country’s entry into the modern era). These movies are just the kind of dramatic, exotic, stunningly filmed pieces that film awards, critics, and art houses love. And they pretty much deserve every accolade they’ve gotten.

I’ve long been a martial arts film fan… not much of a surprise considering my involvement in actual martial arts! I like a lot of different subgenres within that rather broad category; kung fu movies old and new, the stunt-driven modern actioners of Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa, the fantastic ‘wire-fu’ of the current wuxia (Chinese swordplay), and at the top of the heap, the jidaigeki (lit. ‘period drama’) or samurai film.

Breaking down what is worthy and fun about all these different genres is probably fodder for a future post, but I’ve enjoyed the Yamada films of late specifically, so some context needs to be offered for these.

Most westerners probably think of ‘kung fu films’ when they think martial arts movies. Or Jackie Chan’s forays into Hollywood. If a filmgoer DOES know anything about jidaigeki, a highbrow fan usually thinks ‘Seven Samurai’ and the lowbrow fan goes with ‘Shogun Assassin’. But Japan actually has a huge, and very rich, tradition in cinema drawing from their feudal history. Some of the films are basically just action adventures (similar in some ways to a ‘cowboy’ western) others are dramatic takes on the conflicts between duty and conscience, and still others are scathing critiques of a social system that much of Japan today looks back on through rose-colored glasses.

If you run down to your local Suncoast Video you will easily find some Zatoichi or Lone Wolf and Cub films. These are highly recommended episodic films. You don’t have to watch them in any specific order to get the plots. Films like these do have cerebral moments and often have a lot to say about relationships, status, and honor in a world as harsh and uncompromising as feudal Japan could be. But they are also liberally dosed with tightly-choreographed duels and bloodshed, which are probably the main draw to watching them. Exciting stuff. But there are a number of films (mostly in the 1950s and 60s) that concentrated more on the emotional and political content and less on the dueling. As the 70s came along this sort of more dramatic treatment sort of fell out of favor but has recently been revived by Mr Yamada.

These films are incredibly well photographed, like most Japanese films are, with the typical minimal camerawork in play. Gorgeous color and scenery along with detailed, accurate locales and costuming are the norm. Although Japanese period films of the 70s and 80s often had theatrical, un-historical costumes for many of their heroes (particularly ‘ninja’ characters) there’s none of that here. The whole look and feel is drawn realistically from late-Tokugawa Japan, which unlike almost any other ‘horse and swords’ era we actually have some photographic record owing to how late in history the country’s feudal history lasted.

I’m the first person in line to see some good old sword-dueling, blood-gouting action. But that isn’t what’s on tap here, There is a somewhat gritty duel at the end of each installment… with the climactic battle at the end of The Hidden Blade probably the most shocking or gory, but also with the weakest actual fight choreography. All three films follow a similar plot. A lower-ranking samurai who just wants a peaceful life with his family gets involved in the machinations of his clan and eventually has to kill someone… an act justified by the samurai way philosophy but distinctly at odds with what has become the actual samurai lifestyle, at least the quiet lifestyle of each of these protagonists. The other thing the men have in common is that they are all secretly (more or less) quite expert at dueling, with the same sensei dispensing advice to each before their respective showdowns. The films are not connected continuity-wise in any obvious way, but they share the same mythical clan name and location along with this sword master.

Of the three films the one most likely to have been seen by western audiences is The Twilight Samurai. Hiroyuki ‘Henry’ Sanada is known over here as a protégé of Shinichi ‘Sonny’ Chiba, who has long since made his way into some rather high profile American gigs like Rush Hour 3 and The Last Samurai. In Japan he was quite a heartthrob in those old Sonny Chiba films and is considered a very versatile and bankable actor. This is probably the best film to start with, and considering Sanada’s good grasp of English, the DVD extras can help a viewer get a good understanding of the philosophy and motivations behind these movies. He imbues his character Shinbei with a lot of humanity and pathos. In fact all the leads do, with the movie alternating their warmth, humor, and seriousness in their roles as fathers or husbands.

As I said at the top, I recently watched the third (and presumably last) film in the series, Love and Honor. I knew going into it, from ad copy, that this film’s lead was going to be blinded. Sorry if that is a spoiler. I was skeptical that a duel (assuming the pattern of the first two films was going to be adhered to) could be pulled off in a plausible manner. These characters are good fighters but not preternaturally skilled like Zatoichi, that doesn’t fit with these films intent to portray their samurai as ‘regular joes’. But the movie manages everything believably, so I can recommend this film as much as the other two.

As much as Japan is said to be a conformist society, and the Japan described in the films is mired in a very rigid caste system, these movies are also very good illustrations of how the individual is celebrated and how even a culture enamored of its past has room for a critical look. If a viewer finds the humanity of the characters in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai just as compelling as the action scenes, Mr Yamada has struck just the right notes.

*Onomatopoeia for the sound of a sword striking through flesh in Japanese period films, frequently used also as the translated rendering of the same sound effect printed in period manga.