Gaming Focus: Coming (cough) Attractions
I have to confess: I haven't read any manga lately. I've watched some anime---gotten quite hooked on the Cartoon Network's run of "Inu Yasha"---but that's about it. Haven't even cracked open a doujinshi. So what Japanese media phenomenon could I possibly talk about for this month?
Why, games, of course. Lest you point accusing fingers and say that games have nothing to do with yaoi, allow me to redirect those accusing fingers toward the stacks and stacks of Final Fantasy, Angelique, Devil May Cry, King of Fighters, Saga Frontier, and about a billion other game-based doujinshi in the Aestheticism Cybershoppe. Most of these games, as conceived by their Japanese developers, contain a little something for everybody: action for the boys, fanservice for the girls. You know what that means, gentle Aesthe readers: hordes of doujinshika creating an entirely different kind of action for the game characters.
So since I consider myself something of a game and yaoi afficionado, and since this is the start of a whole new year, I thought I'd give all of you a heads-up on what new yaoi trends might be coming down the pipe.
From the people who brought us the eminently droollable Dante of "Devil May Cry", we get yet another game with badass male characters who resemble J-Pop refugees. "Chaos Legion" practically drips yaoi potential with its "former friends now archenemies" setup between crabby-uke protagonist Seig Warheit and Sephirothlike evilbadguy Viktor Delacroix. Initial previews for the game use words like "gothic fantasy opera" to describe it, and rumor has it that the Japanese version of the game will include voices by a number of popular seiyuu (including some who've done work in boys'love anime). Unfortunately, if there is a US version, their voices will almost surely be dubbed over with bland American actors. Sigh.
I don't really know what the game is about --- the end of the world or something, the usual --- but with doujinshi bait like this, who cares?
A few years ago, a game came out for the PS1 called "Galerians" which went almost completely unremarked by the gaming world. Only a few die-hard or eccentric gamers like me seem to have tried it --- and in my case, I have to admit, I only tried it because the main character is a cute angsty bishounen wearing a collar. Sorry, it's a fetish. I was surprised to see almost no doujinshi for it, given that the cute angsty bishounen got to face a couple of hot guys in battle during the course of the game, including his own leather-fetishist Evil Twin (tm). Mmm, BDSM twincest... sigh.
Despite this oversight by the yaoika, apparently enough other weirdos out there bought it that they've made a sequel. This time around, the cute angsty bishounen (who's an orphan psychic drug addict! Aww!) gets to face all his old enemies again along with some new ones. I was pleased to hear that they're bringing back the Birdman, one of my favorite bad guys from the old game---a psychotic long-haired biseinen with unfortunate taste in clothing (coveralls, ugh) and a way of leering at the hero that spoke yaoiesque volumes. I'm also pleased to see that Rion (the cute angsty bishounen) has gotten a new collar this time around.
The first Galerians was surreal and cyberpunkish, which may be what kept the djka away, so I don't know if this one will fare any better among the yaoi hordes. I'll just keep my fingers crossed.
I'd be remiss if I didn't offer some follow-up to Donna's yaoi-centric review of the first Devil May Cry. This time out, the half-human, half-demon Dante battles the monsters of an evil corporation that's trying to take over a magical version of Haiti (or maybe Cuba) because it has nice rocks.
...Um. Well, that sums up the plot problems with DMC2, but the bigger problem is that there's not much yaoi-fodder this time around. Dante gets yet another slightly-skanky female companion who's easily dismissed, and he gets a new outfit brimming with leathery goodness, but... where are his talking demonic weapons (whom douijinshika have conveniently anthropomorphized for your yaoi reading pleasure)? Where's the (contrived, silly, but fun) angst of Dante battling his Evil Twin (tm)? Why don't we have Dante's equally handsome bespectacled father available as a hidden character to stir our incest fantasies to new heights? I haven't finished the game yet, but so far there seems to be no particular bad guy to play off Dante---certainly not one with the buff, barechested machismo of Mundus, the bad guy from the first game.
I can't even find an appropriately droollable image of Dante to post, so I'll end this preview here. But if you want to talk with fellow fans about the yaoi possibilities of either game, there's now a (small, new) Devil May Cry Yaoi mailing list available for that purpose.
Not much to say about this one. Xenosaga is the follow-up to Xenogears, a sleeper hit that featured a number of yummy male characters and stirred quite a bit of interest among the doujinshi hordes... but I could never figure out how to play the damn thing, so I don't know much about it. (Maybe I'll bug Donna or Katchan to review it.) Thus far I haven't seen any particularly impressive character designs; the developers seem to be going for "cutesy" rather than "cool" this time around, and that's not my cup of tea. But cutesy has never stopped doujinshika, so maybe we'll see some Xenosaga material soon.
The first FFXs had lots of yaoi potential, and got quite a bit of attention from djka. Unfortunately, this sequel (to a sequel of a sequel to the nth power) seems to focus much more on the female characters of the series, sexing them up and sending them out on a mission that makes no sense. They might as well have called this one Frequent Fanservice XX. Ah well, at least the yuri-lovers will be happy...
Just to prove I'm not completely biased in favor of the PS2, I include this title, which brings back the character of Leon from Resident Evil 2 (which came out for the PS1 a few years ago). Leon's gotten a much better graphical treatment this time around, which is good because he's pretty much the only character in the RE series who's inspired any sort of doujinshika interest as far as I've seen. Western fans have been a bit friendlier to some of the other male characters of the series, such as Chris Redfield and (shudder) Albert Wesker, but I think they're a little too beefy and butch for Japanese fans' tastes.
There are no details out yet about the game, but I think it's a safe bet that this one will be exactly the same as all seven previous REs (including some prequels and side stories, in case you're wondering why I can't count). This means the plot will be: go into a scary place, find and use lots of guns, try to get out alive. Maybe this time around we'll get another male character to comfort poor Leon throughout the horror.
Please note: The fact that I have included no XBox games has nothing to do with the fact that I consider Microsoft to be an evil unscrupulous corporation bent on world domination through bad software. It's just that XBox developers, for reasons known only to themselves, seem to cater only to the tastes of adolescent (or adolescent-minded) heterosexual male players. Their loss, says I.
Additional note: I'm focusing on console games here in part because among English-language games, consoles seem to be more yaoi-friendly. It's much easier to drool over a character when he's beautifully rendered in 3D full-motion video on your TV screen, than when he's chunky jerky pixels on a computer monitor. However, Japan has as usual led the way in proving that PC characters can be yummy, too. Next time I'll focus on some Japanese boys' love games, for those of you out there who can acquire and play them.
Until then, sweet (gaming) dreams.