Sengoku Jidai and a Super Dimension Fortress

Back when I was eight or nine years old, I was out at my uncle's farm one weekend, as my parents were attending some wedding. As I was sick, I was unable to go outside and hang out with my country kin-folk, so I vegged out and watched what I then thought to be a Wonder of Wonders, Satellite Televison!! Hey, I had basic cable, and back then in Westlock, basic cable was Basic. Channels that showed nothing but movies? Dear Lord, that's amazing!! And it was on just such a channel, an that very day, that I had one of the best cinematic experience of my childhood.

I was absolutely blown away. It was sub-titled, it had breathtaking colours, and it had THOUSANDS OF SAMURAI IN HUGE BATTLE SCENES!!!! I missed the first 5 minutes or so of the movie, so I never saw the title (Later, when I Was 18 or so, I figured that it was almost definitely a Kurosawa film, either Ran or Kagemusha) It was the first time I had ever watched a sub-titled movie, but it didn't seem to matter. The samurai, the colours, and the story (which I have almost no recollection of now) had me hooked. I had read of samurai before, in a World Book Childcraft story about the Mongolian Invasion and the Kamikaze, but I still had trouble visualizing some of it. Then this film, whichever it was, just captivated me with its authenticity. The massive battle scenes, with each colour-coded army deploying in "Rolling Wheel" or "Crane" formation (iirc), and the samurai with their coloured banners attached their backs and their razor-sharp swords, and the unique japanese armour worn by all the main characters. Suffice to say it made me a big fan of things samurai, and I was very dissppointed when they were depicted poorly or inaccurately. Yes Turtles in Time, I'm looking at you. I have seen a samurai film sir, and you are not it.

Now then, what the hell does this have to do with anything, the patient reader asks. Well it explains what I've spent too much time doing these past 3 days. No, not watching the film again, thats the plan for next weekend (gonna watch both, in an attempt to find out if my memory is playing silly buggers with me). No, I went into Blockbuster on Saturday to pick up the next two disks in the anime series I've been working through(more on that in a bit), when I noticed that Blockbuster has some PC Game Classics bundles for about 5 bucks. although most were trash, I found one with Full Throttle, Outlaws, and Shogun: Total War. Now, Grim Fandango and The Secret of Monkey Island are the only adventure games I've ever enjoyed, and I heard Full Throttle was pretty good as well. Outlaws I don't really remember much about, except its a FPS set in the Old West. Shogun: Total War (STW) was the real prize. It's a game set in the Japanese Sengoku Jidai (Warring States Period), which is where Kurosawa set both films. In fact, the stated aim of the game designers was the make the game look just like a Kurosawa film. When it first came out in 2000, I wanted it but didn't have a PC capable of running it. Then, when the expansion and warlord edition came out, I didn't figure tiw as worht the money. But 5 bucks for 2 games that consistently got great reviews? Sold.

So, after watching the second disk of the anime series, I began an easy campaign as the Shimazu Clan. 4 am suddenly rolled around, and I realized I haven't played a game like this since I cut myself off from Counter-Strike NB: for those of you who recall that fixation, don't worry, this is single-player and turn based, so I really can quit anytime I want ;-). This game kicks ass. The upper-level Strategic game is great, so far its been the best part as far as gameplay goes. It plays out just like a board-game on a map of feudal Japan, with your units deing depicted as game pieces. You can even hear the pieces as they slide across the "table". Sending Shinobi and Ninja in for deep intelligence and assasinations while maneuvering armies around to lock down Kyushu and expand my holdings on Honshu made me feel like I was back in high school playing A&A or StarCraft again. And that's only half the game.

The real-time tactical battles look amazing, even on the celeron clunker I'm currently stuck with. It looks almost exactly like the battle scenes I remember from the Kurosawa film ( and if I had a better video card, it would be even closer). Watching Warrior Monks charge down a hill and scatter the enemies Yari Ashigaru while bringing my Cavalry Archers around the flank made me feel like I was inside that movie I watched long ago. As cool at it is, there are some problems with the tactical game. I found controlling units to be difficult, manually clicking each unit to group it got tedious. Maybe I'm just too used to the Craft games, but box-banding (or is it band-boxing?) the standard bearers to make a group would be far better. Although that might be in keeping witht he realism, as back in the day all a Daimyo had for battlefield communications were flags, drums, and horns. And the biggest problem is the camera. Now, I'm sure its because it was one of the earliest 3D RTS games, but I find it clunky as hell. The mouse-loook is better thna using the keyboard, but it's far to difficult to move the camera left-to-right without panning. And being able to zoom in on my guys, a la WarCraft 3, would be nice. Setting it up so the mouse does forward and back, and left-to-right strafing as default, panning and tilting performed when holding down the third mouse button, and zooming in with the click-wheel would work better. Of course, I say this 4 years after release, with one sequel already released, and another upcoming, so I'm a little late (Has anyone else play Medieval: Total War? Is the camera control better?). Because of this, I tended to let the computer automatically resolve the battles, although once my army started getting big I tried fighting personally more and more.

So, at 4 am, with Kyushu, Shikoku, and South-West Honshu (up to Kyoto) solid green, the Emperor declared the Daimyo of the Shimazu Clan (me) to be the new Shogun. The game wasn't over, as I still need to Bring the Hojo, Takeda, and Imagawa clans to heel, but I was just too damn tired. Hopefully by Wednesday I'll control all of Japan. Seriously, this is a great game. If oyu don't have it, get it so I can play someone.

Now, back to the anime serires that I went to Blockbuster for in the first place. Back in my second year at the U, Angela Thomas and Joel Pepin got me hooked on Macross Plus: The Complete OVA. I'll elucidate further on that masterpiece of cinematic animation later, but essentially it made me realize that anime was far more than Sailor Moon and Pokemon (although Pikachu can rock!), and made me understand why some people made such a big deal about Japanese Cartoons. So, after being introduced to Macross, I wanted to go back to the start and watch the original TV series: Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Others may remember it as Robotech, which was essentially SDF Macross and two other totally different mecha-based anime series stiched together and dubbed for North American audiences. I had never thought it worth my while to go buy the SDF Macross series, so it was just another entry on the "Things to Watch" list I keep in my head.

Then, a few months ago, I noticed that Blockbuster had an anime section. Threw me for a loop. Hoping it was thre, I found the entire SDF MAcross series on DVD, sans dubbing, with sub-titles (the best way to watch anime, unless the dubbing is really well done, like Princess Mononoke or Macross Plus). But, it was on the expensive, 2 day new release rack, and I figured that while in class I should focus on other things and then binge once it was a full-week rental. So, I waited out Blockbuster, and 2 weeks ago I went in and they were now full-week rentals. So I grabbed the first disk, figuring if I liked it that I could go full out when I had a spare weekend. And despite the absurdity and non-sensical nature of some of the plot elements, the un-even quality of the animation (from excellent to crap-tastic), and the laughably melo-dramatic theme song, the high points of the story and the overall concept were definelty enough to keep me interested.

I'd write more, but this post has taken me two and a half hours so far, and I haven't even spell-checked and inserted funny links yet. So, to sum up, I have now watched episodes 1-12 of SDF Macross and am hooked on Shogun: Total War. That is all, you may continue reading more interesting blogs now.