When it comes to shonen manga, anime and games, there are few with as much knowledge and love as the Shonen Otaku. Join me as we look at all different varieties of action-packed media. Mostly games.
I was holding off on this one because I already knew this was going to be one of the most, if not the most, edited episodes. In this episode, Joe and Junior are on the run from Biankies and the returning Bianco Billy and Junior gets help from the old man that found Machine Six and his friend Gina.
The episode is a reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There's a bit with Junior referencing the scene where Sundance says he can't swim and the English dub even references the characters directly.
The episode name, Bianco Billy Rides Again, is probably named after the McCloud episode titled Butch Cassidy Rides Again, which is about a bank being robbed by guys who look just like the famous outlaw himself. A fitting reference, since Billy is the villain in this scenario.
Good used game sellers are an important part of gaming. It’s thanks to places like Ebay, Gamestop,
Half-Priced Books and smaller retail shops that we’re still able to buy games long
out of production at generally reasonable prices. Say what you want about Gamestop, because
they deserve it, but there are several used games I couldn’t have gotten
without them, one of which was a big contributor to my Namco vs. Midway series
(sorry I haven’t gotten back to that, but I hit a snag with one of the
games). Without these decent sellers I
would have never gotten games like Neogeo Battle Coliseum, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon
Sword or the King of Fighters Maximum Impact games. These are the people that should be
supported.
The evil twins of these sellers are the scammers. Also commonly called scalpers, scammers do not
care about selling games at a reasonable price.
They care solely about fleecing as much money as they can out of people
who just want to play them. These
scammers attempt to force people to pay more than the original game’s initial
retail price even though a used game is degraded and thus worth less than when
it was new. They treat games like
they’re some kind of collectible rather than a mass-produced product that’s the
same as any other copy of the game that was sold for 50 dollars at launch.
In this episode, Joe and the Jadow trio wake up on a mysterious train full of toys, run by an enigmatic kitty conductor. It's an episode that focuses squarely on Joe and the Jadow trio with all of their allies excluded from the plot. This one is a favorite among fans for its underlying theme of childhood innocence and feelgood nature of the whole thing in a time where so much anime is blood and violence like Bleach, Chainsaw Man and Demon Slayer.
There's a lot to like about this episode and for me one of those things is Bob
Papenbrook. I've talked him up before, but for a lot of the Viewtiful Joe anime up
to this point he's been doing his Almighty Leader voice and hasn't
played Captain Blue since the first few episodes. Blue's Japanese voice
sounds like he's going through the motions, but every line delivered by
Papenbrook really feels like an old-school hero. Big ups to a voice
acting legend. If he were still around he would be the Great Old One of the West instead of Peter Beckman.
The movies this episode is based on are Toy Story and the Polar Express... Or is it? Joe references the Polar Express by name in the English dub, but on closer inspection, the train setting might be a wild coincidence. The Viewtiful Joe anime started right at the beginning of October of 2004 in Japan and Robert Zemeckis' hit movie The Polar Express didn't make its debut until partway into October of the same year. There was no time for the movie to be a classic like the other movies referenced in this anime. The popular children's book the movie is based on was almost 2 decades old by then, but so far Movieland has had places based on movies and only movies.
Toy Story is definitely an inspiration here though without a doubt and if you don't see it by the end, you're blind.
Considering this is an episode with toys, children and rules against violence, you can't expect a lot to be edited out for inappropriate content.
After Capcom released Ninja Theory’s Devil May Cry reboot, I
don’t think anyone was expecting a sequel to Devil May Cry 4. I think Ninja Theory’s game gets way too much
flak because of its title, but regardless of the merits of the game itself,
fans wanted a Devil May Cry 5. However,
in the intervening years Capcom came out with Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes,
which became a monster hit despite no advertising or promotion whatsoever, and
then later followed it up with Sengoku Basara 4 in Japan. Over the years Sengoku Basara 4 built itself
up as the most hyped English version of a game in the history of the human race
to the point that everyone forgot about wanting a Devil May Cry game. Something very strange happened though. Instead of releasing Sengoku Basara 4 in
English and bringing about world peace and a panacea for all diseases, Capcom
not only made Devil May Cry 5, but fully dubbed it and released it in English.
I am at least a moderate fan of the Devil May Cry
franchise. Devil May Cry 3 is one of my
favorite action games of all time and of course you know Devil May Cry 4 is good because it has the same producer as
Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes.
That said, it’s curious that instead of translating and
dubbing a fully released, content-rich game being exalted as one of the
masterpieces of the gaming world that everyone and their dog wants, just like
they had already done for the previous game in its franchise, Capcom instead
made a new game from scratch with an English version. That would have to mean that Devil May Cry 5
is practically godlike and I had to take a look to see for myself if it truly
lives up to that hype.
With Nobunaga dead, the last 2 parts of the Extra History videos cover Hideyoshi, his death and the battle of Sekigahara. This post is going to be shorter than the other ones because, well, the videos go into a lot of backgrounds that Sengoku Basara chooses to push to the wayside for the sake of an exciting action story, but there is still a fair bit to note.
I've held off on discussing Nobunaga's Sengoku Basara design. Everyone knows it. He's portrayed as an evil overlord with a spiky and intimidating outfit with a blood red cape and he laughs at the carnage and atrocities he commits. Up to this point in the Extra History videos though, Nobunaga has just been a very tactical and pragmatic warlord, not a lot worse than the others. It's starting around here where we start to see where his reputation comes from.
We aren't done with Sengoku Basara yet. In the first part of my Sengoku Basara retrospective I directed people to a series of videos from Extra Creditz, specifically their Extra History sub-series. This 6-part series of short videos does a good job of detailing all the most important moments of the Sengoku period while making them fun and expressive through the use of artwork. Even more fun an expressive is one of my favorite franchises, Sengoku Basara.
It's always funny to me when I learn something about history and think back to how the madcap action of Sengoku Basara interpreted that, especially with Sanada Yukimura Den steering closer to real history. As such I thought it would be fun to go over some real history and how that was interpreted into what we see in the games. The Sengoku era of Japan is already pretty crazy, as the videos show, so watching it become more crazy is pretty entertaining.
I originally ended my Sengoku Basara retrospective at
Sengoku Basara 4 because the main series and all the English media was already
covered and the last game, Sanada Yukimura Den, is story-focused when fan
translations are already incomplete and sparse for Sengoku Basara 4, which is
still more than Sanada Yukimura Den got.
Since then I discovered a miracle.
An app for the iphone that, in a way, breaks through Capcom’s attempt to
stop American players from enjoying Sengoku Basara 4: the translate app.
With the translate app, players can take pictures of the
screen as the dialogue appears and form halfway comprehensible translation of
all the text.It doesn’t make the
Japanese voice acting any better, but with the help of the translation app I
can finally understand and somewhat enjoy the stories of Sengoku Basara 4,
which, it turns out, are wonderful.Sengoku Basara 4’s stories have something for everyone.It has stories that are funny, sad, cute,
awesome and everything in between.It’s
a pain to have to take constant pictures of the screen as the dialogue goes
along and it doesn’t alleviate the depression of Capcom’s vicious betrayal, but
it does make it partially possible to play the game to the potential it was made
to be played.
It also means that Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den is on
the table.Now that I can understand
this more story-centric game, I can give my thoughts on it proper.
In this episode, Joe helps a young girl reunite with her mother while inspiring a team of little league baseball players led by Mona Marshall to not give up, all the while Gran Bruce concocts a plan to defeat Joe by cutting him off from cheeseburgers.
This episode is probably taking beats from a sports movie (pick one), but the movie it seems to take place in is Friday the 13th. Yes, really. I'll get to that.
I remember where I was when the first trailer for Sengoku
Basara 4 was released. I’ve never been
so hyped for a game in my entire life.
No other game can come close to the excitement and anticipation for a
sequel to one of the greatest games of all time and everything else in the
meantime was just something to occupy me until I could finally play it.
Years passed. The
game came out in Japan,
where it was promptly exalted as one of the all-time master works of gaming. People outside of Japan kept
importing it and sang the same praises. Then the updated version, Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi, came out and
importers further cemented it as the greatest game of its genre ever made.
I told those people to stop.
I told them to buy the English version when it comes out. Just like Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes,
Samurai Kings, Samurai Legends and End of Judgement, Sengoku Basara 4 was going
to have an amazing English release and those people importing it were both
buying a worse version and putting time into game progress that would not carry over. That’s what I believed. Why wouldn’t I? This was Capcom, the greatest game company there was. They were on fire in the
early 2010s, with hit after hit after hit after hit and the occasional Bionic Commando-shaped fumble,
but nobody’s perfect. I believed in
Capcom.
Year after year after year after year after year after year
I kept thinking that it would finally be the year we got the English version of
Sengoku Basara 4 and that with all that time being spent on it, the English
version was going to be as perfect as possible.
They must’ve been doing 100 takes on every single line of English
dialogue so that the sound of it touches the pleasure sensations of the brain. There was going to be more extra content in
the English version than the English release of Kingdom Hearts. I kept buying Capcom’s games, feeding them
money, comfortable in knowing it was going into the English version of the
greatest game ever created, maybe even the greatest thing ever created in the universe as a whole.
The hype grew with each passing year. Sengoku Basara 4’s English version is so
hyped up that playing it might put someone into cardiac arrest just from
starting the game! I took that built-up
hype to every Capcom showcase. “Maybe
we’ll get a release date for the English version of Sengoku Basara 4!” People kept telling me there wouldn’t be one, but there was no reason to believe that. Capcom made Sengoku Basara:
Samurai Heroes, one of the hallmark titles of gaming.
They gave us that game because they knew the world needed it and not
Devil Kings. There’s no reason why they
wouldn’t just do what they already did for one more game. That would be a complete and utter betrayal
to every single Capcom fan. I made the
foolish decision to believe in something.
Never believe.
It took many years for me to realize that Capcom is no
longer the good company that gave us Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes. They have no intention of delivering nirvana
to their fans. Sengoku Basara 4 will never
come out in English and they have made it their mission to make their fans as
miserable as possible, keeping the English version of Sengoku Basara 4 from
them just to watch them squirm. They are, simply put, evil.
When I came to grips with that, I finally just imported the
Japanese version after all those years of hype and it is the single most depressing,
soul-crushing game I’ve ever played in my life.
Not because it’s bad, but for the polar opposite reason.
With the success of Sengoku Basara 2 in Japan, it was
only natural that Capcom would ride the merchandise train and branch the
franchise off into other media as well as a few spin-off games. Eventually some of that media would come to America
alongside the first properly translated English game, but since the spin-off
games were made during Capcom’s terminally stupid era, they were not released
in English.
There was a pair of stripped-down PSP games, Sengoku Basara
Battle Heroes and Chronicle Heroes, as well as a fighting game called Sengoku
Basara X. Normally I wouldn’t bother
going over them because they’re not especially notable, not part of the main
games and I haven’t played them, but it just so happens as I was writing the
retrospective that a local arcade had Sengoku Basara X, so I can touch on that.
Capcom pretty much perfected the Sengoku Basara formula the
first game created with Sengoku Basara 2 Heroes. After riding that for a few years and
releasing a fighting game in the interim, it was time for Sengoku Basara to
evolve with the console hardware. With a
new game engine and new play style, the next Sengoku Basara game was indeed an
evolution, but the most important evolution of all was that IT’S IN
ENGLISH! IT’S IN ENGLISH! IT’S IN ENGLISH! IT’S IN ENGLISH!
They even got T.M. Revolution to do the opening in
English! I don’t blame anyone for
thinking it’s not though.
When Capcom makes a hit game, it’s almost a compulsion for
them to also make an updated version of it later.It’s a practice almost synonymous with Capcom and Sengoku Basara 2
follows that tradition with Sengoku Basara 2 Heroes, or at least it kind of
does.
That is one of the best openings ever and it made me buy Blade Chord on the itunes store.
The first Sengoku Basara wasn’t exactly a big hit in Japan, but it
was received well enough so a sequel was inevitable. The first game had a lot of room for
improvement, to put it lightly, so this was another chance to do the formula it
established better and boy did it ever.
Sengoku Basara 2 is where the franchise really starts. It’s like the Street Fighter 2 or Metal Gear
Solid of Sengoku Basara. Like those
franchises, the improvements are so drastic, and the story so unrelated, that the first game can be ignored.
In this episode, Joe and Junior are in a futuristic city and one of the robot servants there washes the V-watch, causing Joe's mach speed to go out of control and function as a flux capacitor. I'm pretty sure the film they're in is Metropolis, which is supported by the city being named Mechatropolis. I can't imagine there's a lot that would need editing for this episode, but let's see.
In a well-lit office building on the top floor, an executive
of a major gaming company inhales a line of a white powdery substance through a
straw up his nose. We will call him
Crappy Com.
Shortly after, Crappy Com’s subordinate comes in.This subordinate knows a thing or two about
game design and what people like in a game.We will call him Captain Obvious.
“Sengoku Basara is a decent hit,” says Captain Obvious.“We should get it ready for America.”
Crappy twitches and stares at nothing in particular.“Yeah.Yeah.America.Yeah,” he says.“I have an idea though.What if we, like, do that, but make it NOT Japan?No Japan.Americans hate Japan.Yeah.”Crappy then sniffs a dribbling nose.
“That’s a terrible idea”, says Captain.“Being in Japan the entire premise.It’s where the title comes from.”
“Glad you like it.Let’s do it!”
And thus, Devil Kings was born.
No T.M. Revolution.We’re already off to a bad start.
Capcom has made some of my favorite game franchises of all
time and there was a time when I considered them the best company in all
of gaming.The Viewtiful Joe franchise
is my favorite in both gaming and anime, Resident Evil is somewhere in the top 5, Devil May Cry is somewhere in the top 15 and I already did a long series all about both Capcom and SNK’s
accomplishments in the arcades, but just below Resident Evil and above Devil
May Cry in Capcom’s portfolio is the greatest crowd fighting beat-em-up
franchise ever made and unfortunately one that Capcom has routinely squandered for
anyone outside Japan. That franchise is the historically questionable Sengoku Basara.
Sengoku Basara has an interesting history, mostly for the western world. What used to be a shining example of Capcom’s brilliance
over a decade ago is now symbolic of why Capcom currently holds the distinction of being the worst company in gaming. To understand how the franchise got to that point, you have to know where
it came from. Everyone
who has ever held a controller who hasn’t already needs to play these games and to explain why, I am writing this retrospective.
For this retrospective, I will go over each main game in
Sengoku Basara’s history; what makes them so great (or rather, what makes the
sequels great) and what made/makes Capcom so bad or otherwise incompetent. I have
a lot to say about some of the spin-off media too, of which there is a lot.I won’t go into the production history because 1: what matters to me most is the end result and the context of when they were released and 2: only one game has anything related to its production officially translated into English.
The crazy story of this Sengoku-era epic starts with the very first Sengoku Basara and its very first opening, performed by T.M. Revolution, who would come to establish themselves as THE rock band of Sengoku
Basara.
With Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves happily promoting a
well-known potential rapist and tax evader, Capcom Fighting Collection 2 was my
most anticipated game of the year and a huge deal for fighting games on the
whole. Just think that in the old days, having
one of the games on a console was worth 50 dollars each and now they’re all in
one place for 40 dollars. Those games on
consoles have had varying degrees of inaccessibility over the years, with one
in particular being virtually impossible to play until now.
This new collection also means that it’s time for another
addendum in this blog’s documented battle between SNK and Capcom. Until this collection I couldn’t take Plasma
Sword, Project Justice, Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper or the first Capcom vs. SNK
into consideration, but now just like with the Marvel Collection, that will be amended
and Capcom will have the chance to break the tie and be the king of
arcades. I will still be going over the
games I’ve already looked at as well to judge any subtle differences between
the versions featured in this collection and the ports I played before.
Joe and Junior travel to a flower field where a mysterious girl with magic powers named Alisa protects a miracle flower that never blooms. This flower is supposed to allow for fairies to come to the human world. Inconveniently this is right before Charles goes after it for an ingredient in his potion.
In today's episode, Joe and Junior help a team of rebels take back their kingdom, now named Black Jadowland, from Jadow themselves. Jadow, meanwhile, pose a wedding for Silvia and Alastor to lure Joe out.
The name of the episode is To Have and Hold Captive, which is likely a play on the movie To Have and Have Not, but if this episode is supposed to be based on that, it's very loose. To Have and Have Not involves France during World War 2, but this one seems to be based more on Joan of Arc, whom the resistance leader bears a resemblance to many modern depictions. I could be wrong though.
