Ideal heroines who are perfect for you in every way

Sunday, February 17, 2008

It turns out that even if it's full of ore, even if it's bursting at the seams with Eternium or Awesomite or something, I don't want any part of it. I tried my hand at mining in EVE Online the way you're supposed to (with destroyers filling up a cargo container that an industrial ferries off for processing) and nearly killed myself out of boredom. You don't just sit in an asteroid belt watching your cargo hold fill and your ass grow. If so I could play the newly acquired Jeanne D'Arc and be happy. But no: you have to constantly fly back and forth between the asteroid and container, keep your eyes open for pirates, prioritize special asteroid types first and switch between asteroids as they disappear. Call it precise tedium rather than general boredom, but it's still boring as hell.

Instead, I'm running agent missions. Unlike the unique quests of World of Warcraft that involve finding ten wolf hides or killing twenty spiders or finding ten troll charms (I did say "unique", right?), quests in EVE repeat a lot. A whole lot. Go to this sector and destroy a pirate base. Come back. Get reward. Go to the same sector and destroy a pirate base. I had that happen to me once. None of the character portraits in this game are animated, so my agent couldn't at least look ashamed of herself. But for me, combat (what the kids call "pew pew") is where the game still shines and what I still thoroughly enjoy.

Once my fondness for Japanese anime is revealed, people ask if I'd like to visit Japan. "No," I say emphatically. The Japanese are wierd (um, no offense intended to any Japanese person reading this). I don't feel like I need to see the Mecca of anime. I'm perfectly happy with whatever sanitized exports venture overseas. Okay, that last sentence was an utter fabrication. Most of the sanitized anime exports are atrocious, but I don't think that getting closer to the source would reveal greater treasures. The real heart of the anime hive that I've seen scares me to death.

Welcome to the NHK provides a glimpse into that honeycomb hideout. This is Chirokitsune's second recommendation (the first being Coyote Ragtime Show) and he's two for two on entertainment value. Oh sure, Coyote Ragtime Show was awful: a masterpiece of dreck. But even though I was laughing at all the wrong times it remained watchable.

This show isn't nearly as bad. It is, in fact, good. It feels like a cross between The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Genshiken. I know we've all been subjected to enough Haruhi to drown a moose, but if any of you aside from the recommender of this show had seen Genshiken then I wouldn't have to explain anything.

Dot dot dot. Plot summary and review follows.

NHK is about hikkomori, a Japanese term for a shut-in with extreme social phobias. Our... "hero", Sato, hasn't been outside his apartment for a year after graduating high school. His place is a wreck. He drinks, smokes, and appears to do nothing except watch a little TV. Don't ask how he affords rent or electricity without a job. I imagine his parents left him some money but they fail to check up on their genetic investment and so he's fallen into this pit. The only real thing keeping him down is his neighbor who blasts anime music through the thin walls. Then one day a girl appears at his door who wants to cure him of his condition.

It's slightly more complicated than that, but Sato's interactions with Misaki (at least on disc one) are infuriating. It's practically a tutorial on how to lie badly to women. When she confronts him about his condition he denies it. About his unemployment, he invents a job: game programmer. When she asks to see one of his games, he tells her to wait a month while he looks for one he can show to the general public. Misaki has a steady, honest voice and doesn't even knowingly acknowledge the wild lies spouted by this stammering reject. She gives him that month to produce a game. I'm willing to tolerate her tolerance (up to a point), but the innocent act got on my nerves real quick.

Misaki's challenge motivates Sato to make that game, but what can he throw together in a month with no programming skill? Nothing, of course, but in a fit of anger he busts down the door to his noisy neighbor's room and discovers his old friend Yamazaki, a true anime otaku, who knows a thing or two about game programming. They team up to make the only kind of game that can be thrown together in a month (um, in Japan): a hentai game.

The proper term is "ero game", "moe game" or "gal game" (which they settle on), but to the Americans watching it's a hentai game. For the uninitiated (i.e. anyone who wisely didn't click on that last link), a hentai game is a Myst style adventure where you try to win the hearts of various girls by acting nice or mean. They're masturbatory aids, playable exclusively with the mouse. If NHK is to be believed, the companies that make these games can realize huge profits, churning out sequels, merchandise and even special CDs for each girl.

I see some parts of myself in NHK, and no I don't just mean the hentai game part (the last one I played was years ago and I hated it). Yamazaki and Sato have an ambitious conversation about their game - before they even start it, mind you - that mirrors many of my conversations with Sephiroth.

Aside from that, I'm not a total shut-in anime figurine collecting loser. I mean, there's an eight inch statue of Haruhi Suzumiya to my left, flanked by five ladies from My HiME and My Otome, but they were gifts. And the Big Daddy to my right came with the collector's edition of Bioshock, so no harm there. And the Final Fantasy airship in the middle isn't even a person, so it doesn't count.

That's right, it's not just a river in Egypt. Thanks for asking.

Yamazaki instructs Sato on hentai games by giving him ten of them to play from his substantial archive. I find it a little hard to believe that a shut-in with money and Internet access wouldn't have plumbed these depths already, but Sato is a newbie. When he finally gets the hang of how to interact with the girls in these games he becomes obsessed, but no more educated on how to design one himself. So Yamazaki has to give him another lecture, another mirror conversation, this time one I have with myself. As hentai games have patterns, so does regular anime, and hence why I love genre defying titles like Haruhi.

Sadly, Yamazaki's advice falls on deaf ears. Sato comes no closer to designing his game for Misaki or signing the "How to stop being a hikkomori" contract she gave him. They even go to Akihabara, the Mecca inside the Mecca, visiting anime cafes with girls dressed as maids, buying figurines and body pillows (yuck), and wallowing in what even the NHK DVD commentary calls a "cesspool". It was hard to watch.

But the spoilers I read on Wikipedia gave me some insight on the upcoming discs and explain enough of Misaki's personality that I'll be continuing Welcome to the NHK. Once my figurine of Mai Tokiha arrives, that is.