This week has been a rather quiet week. I’m done celebrating the end of Odd Thomas 3 (House of Odd), so I’m settling down into doing some doodling while the next book is being figured out. Apart from doodling, also crafting, of course. And catching up on some reading and gaming.
Step 1: I bought this off Rakuten.co.jp again. I belated noticed that this one was listed as "challenging" (ie. the hardest difficulty level). Be prepared for bloodied fingertips!
Step 2: Pull everything out of the box, and check that it's there.
Step 3: Start stabbing the main body of the cake. This one takes the longest, since you're taking a big wad of wool and making it shrink and adhere to a certain shape.
Step 4: Finally get the roll cake done. Add some nice strawberry filling and cream to it.
Step 5: Hash out the remaining bits and pieces, including the strawberry and blueberry. The strawberry was a specific shape, so it took ages to do.
Step 6: Stick everything on top, and needle it in. Only the small flaky bits left!
Well, I am back from Brisbane, and back at the working table, ready to work on my next book. I can’t say much about it yet, except that it’s a prequel to a series of best-selling fantasy novels, by Kylie Chan. It’s a Chinese-fantasy story, so I’m going to be in my element. So excited to be able to draw Chinese fantasy! I need to sort out the schedule with the publisher first, so you’ll hear more about it when that’s done and I start work.
As promised, this week I recommend an oldie but a goodie – Hikaru no Go. A manga about… the ancient Asian board game of Go. Drawn by one of my favourite artists (Takeshi Obata) this sits right in the middle of his work to date, so if you’ve been following Obata over his long career, this manga shows his biggest evolution in style. Obata has done other, better-known works since then (such as Death Note and Bakuman), but I assure you, Hikaru no Go is heads and shoulders above his other works.
Hikaru no Go (Takeshi Obata) 23 volumes
It’s impossible to mention Hikaru no Go without talking about its artist. Takeshi Obata is a manga artist I’ve followed since the beginning of his career, since I was 12. At the time, I picked up some random manga magazine, and read some goofy gag story about a meddling robotic grandfather (yeah, you read that right). This is unusual. Normally, I dislike gag stories, but this artist was… different. Special. He had good comic timing, a pleasant style of story-telling, and I really liked the characters. The art style resembled the artist who does Magical Taruruto-kun (a wacky gag manga with a style I dislike), but this artist’s style was inexplicably acceptable to me. I made a mental note of this guy, to see what else he has done. And then I totally forgot about it.
Unknown to me, that work was the debut work of Takeshi Obata, and was called Cyborg Jii-chan G. He had just started working for hit manga magazine Shounen Jump, and so talented was he that even some random 12 year-old knew he was the real deal. The editors at Shounen Jump clearly did too, and he was soon plucked from the ghetto of gag, and paired up with a number of writers in the hope that he can deliver a hit. It took him 9 years before he found it (with writer Yumi Hotta) – and that super-selling hit was Hikaru no Go.
Plot
Shindou Hikaru is an ordinary 6th grader scrabbling in his grandfather’s attic one day, when he comes across an old Go board. Hikaru doesn’t know (or care) about Go, but he noticed that this board had a blood-stain that no one else but him can see. The reason for that soon becomes clear – the Go board is haunted by a ghost named Sai, a highly-skilled Go player who committed suicide 1000 years ago. No one else can see Sai but Hikaru, and Sai has no desires other than to play Go, and now that he’s haunting Hikaru, badgers him non-stop to play Go on his behalf. With little choice in the matter, Hikaru gives in and agrees, and begins to frequent Go clubs so he can play on Sai’s behalf.
On his first trip, he meets a young Go prodigy named Touya Akira, who he develops a rivalry/friendship with. Eventually, Hikaru grows tired of being only Sai’s proxy, especially when he’s the only one in the room who can’t understand what’s happening on the Go board right infront of him. Immersed in a world full of people passionate about Go, Hikaru starts to take an interest in the game, and begins to play for himself. He’s terrible at first, but under Sai’s tutelage, comes to realise his own innate talent for the game, to the point where he decides to become a professional Go player. And so the story follows him, through his trials and tribulations, as he struggles to become a great Go player.
Why I Recommend this Story Hikaru no Go means “Hikaru’s Go”, but is really the story of two people – Hikaru, and his arch-rival Touya Akira. Akira is a boy Hikaru’s age, a Go prodigy who appears in the first volume as Hikaru’s opponent. Sai plays him through Hikaru and soundly defeats him, something that has never happened to Akira before. Naturally, Akira thinks that Hikaru was the one who had so easily beaten him, and tries to initiate a re-match. This sets into motion something resembling a game of tag, fraught with obsession, strong character drama and suspense. For those who think Hikaru no Go is about the relationship between Hikaru and Sai, you probably missed the true heart of the story. While the relationship between Hikaru and Sai is characterised well, it pales in comparison to the passion Hikaru and Akira create in each other – for the game of Go.
Alright, you can read all kinds of homoerotic subtext in the above paragraph, but Go, like chess, is about a meeting of like-minds. You either ‘get’ the game or you don’t – and if you have a mind built for Go, you’re in a separate structural universe, speaking a different language. The people in this story converse with each other over a Go board, in ways that words can’t express. A Go game needs two people to play after all (preferably both living), and Hikaru and Akira’s “relationship” exists entirely within the world of Go. They have little in common outside their game, the same as most of the people who live in their world, so it’s a testament to the importance of Go in their lives, that these people form a community with a playing board at its centre. Go is the glue which binds them all together, and what this story excels at is showing what it’s like to live, work and breath in the narrow world of competitive Go-playing.
All this passion and single-minded devotion. Does this mean that it’s one of those dreaded… sports manga? People who read my recommendations section will probably know that I can’t stand sports manga – that special genre replete with cliches, grandiose speeches, and people silhouetted against the setting sun. Go is a game that is won by calculating the number of stones you take from your opponent, so the “matches” have a sporting quality to them, but like that great basketball manga Slamdunk, Hikaru no Go manages to gracefully sidestep all the pitfalls, and be about its characters. Yes, there is enough technical information in the manga about Go for you to grasp all the basic strategies and important rules. No, there’s not so much that you won’t understand it if you don’t care about Go. Like the very best sports manga, it’s a manga about people who happen to be into Go, as opposed to a manga about Go with people filling in as actors.
And it’s a story that is told in a subtle, realistic way, rather than bombastic and fantastical. Only Takeshi Obata can make people laying down Go stones seem like action-suspense, but Sai is the only supernatural element in the story. Like Genshiken, the characters may not seem realistic, but they have the feel of the real. They’re devoted to Go, but they also have to fill out tax applications, go to boring charity events, and deal with lost-in-translation issues with Go players from other countries. Top Go players sometimes go on a losing streak, have their confidence shaken, is plagued by bad luck, is hit by health issues, is followed around by journalists… all the sort of things you would expect with being a professional in an insular industry with its fans, hangers-on, schools, clubs, championships, governing bodies and celebrities. All of it drawn in great detail, probably based on real photographs.
All this activity is anchored by the game of “tag” between Hikaru and Akira, an undercurrent that runs through the entire series, and comes to a calm and satisfying conclusion that isn’t really a conclusion. But you wouldn’t expect there to be a conclusion in the traditional sense, would you? At the beginning of the story, both Hikaru and Akira are 12, and Akira mistakes Sai for Hikaru. A re-match ends up seeing Akira play Hikaru (without Sai’s help), and Akira is horrified and insulted at seeing how badly Hikaru played. Hikaru spends the rest of the series trying to raise his level up to Akira. The end of the series sees both Hikaru and Akira as 15 year-olds, with an equal level of skill, acknowledging each other as proper rivals, a dynamic that will probably last for the rest of their lives.
It’s just as well that the story ends here, at volume 23. It was popular, and could have easily continued, but it ended at the right place (a miracle, in manga terms). Everything that needs to be said about Hikaru and Akira, and the people that revolve around them, has been said, and said very well. Rarely has a story that is so encompassing about a world and its inhabitants been ended so perfectly.
I’ve finished ALL the inks of “House of Odd”, the third Odd Thomas book, and I have been doing happy jigs all week! The book still needs to be toned by Dee (wonderful toner), so it’s not all finished, but I’m estimating that the whole thing will be done by the end of September. I’ll do a post about it when the time comes for the actual release, which will probably be in April 2012. For now, I shall celebrate!!
In other news, I’m heading off to the Brisbane Writer’s Festival next week, held on the 6th-7th September. I’m mostly going because I’ve never been to a Writer’s Festival before, and it would be fun to see what it would be like. It’s also because Yunyu’s going to be there with writer Marianne De Pierres, to promote their collaboration on Marianne’s book Burn Bright.
So, this week I get to show you my felt clock. My felt Cat Clock, which I made for my niece. Once again, this was made from a kit, but it was simple enough.
Step 1: This is a Korean kit I bought at Morning Glory for about $10. I can't read Korean, but luckily the instructions were in pictures and not that difficult to decipher.
Step 2: I check that everything's there, which it is.
Step 3: I cut out the paper shapes and trace them onto the felt. This kit seems to have skimped on the felt a bit... I've not had a kit where you had to be so careful about where you draw the outlines on the felt. I had almost ZERO felt leftover. Phew.
Step 4: Putting it all together, to make sure I cut the felt right. Yep, it seems okay.
Step 5: I sew the front of the face on, and puncture a hole so the clock can point through (where I put the hands of the clock on). I also sew on red buttons to represent the time.
Step 6: The back of the cat clock, where I put the cardboard box that holds the clock. I stuff it and sew on the back flap.
Step 7: I cut a small flap in the back for the battery, so it can be replaced. This wasn't included in the instructions, but it seems like commonsense. How else can you replace the batteries, if it's all sewed up? I also added a button to "tie" it down, so it looks better.
This week I was going to recommend the manga Hikaru no Go, but then I had a change of heart. I’ve recommended a lot of manga (and a few books) in my “Recommendations”, but I now feel I should recommend things that aren’t necessarily book-related. It’s true I read a fair amount, but I also play video games and watch a lot of movies. There’s a number of works in the latter 2 categories that I would recommend without hesitation to anyone who’s interested, so why not include these in my recommendations list too? I guess HoG will have to wait a week or so.
I’ve recently revisited a game that I like very much, a game that’s been around long enough (in gaming years) to qualify as a “classic” game. Not a “retro” game by any stretch (that would require going back further than 20 years), but a game that’s been around 15 years, and yet still hold up reasonably well to a lot of its contemporaries. Not just those games in the same genre, but also those in the same series. Yes, this week I recommend Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Konami) (1997, Playstation)
SOTN is the, oh, I dunno, tenth in a series of games in the Castlevania series, I’m guessing. Most of the older games have been straight-forward action-platformers, none of which I particularly liked, largely because I wasn’t good at any of them. Heck, as a kid, I couldn’t even get past the first stage of the original Castlevania. So when SOTN scaled back the otherwise murderous difficulty level of the earlier Castlevanias, I was pretty darn grateful.
Plot Castlevania is a series that’s been around almost as long as Super Mario Bros. has, and the plot has always been very simple. Every 100 years, Lord Dracula awakens and his demonic castle materialises out of nowhere, filled to the brim with monsters from every mythology ever. Before evil spreads across the land, someone has to stop the Lord of Darkness and put him to sleep for a while. Usually, this is the job of the Belmonts, a family of warriors who wield a vampire-vanquishing whip known as the “Vampire Killer”. However, in SOTN, you only get to play briefly as Richter Belmont, the current generation of vampire slayers (up until you beat the game anyway). You instead spend most of your time as Alucard, the damphir son of Dracula.
Alucard has a beautiful character design. I feel compelled to mention that – so gorgeous and gothic are Ayami Kojima’s designs that an entire generation of fangirls descended on SOTN to sigh at the male characters. Anyway, Alucard gets involved when he hears that Richter Belmont has vanished, and that Castlevania has once again appeared – with no Belmont around to stop it. He decides to storm Castlevania himself, and find out what happened to Richter.
Why I Recommend this Game
I love Metroidvania games. “Metroidvania” is a term used to describe a rather uncommon category of games – games that play like a cross between 2D-action/platformers and RPGs (role-playing games). Mind you, the original “Metroidvania” game was the Metroid series, again a series as old as Mario. However, while Metroid was reasonably popular, for some reason everyone rushed out to clone Super Mario Bros., and nobody wanted to copy Metroid. Why? All the Metroid games were great games (at least the 2D ones were), but even the original Castlevania resembled the Mario games more than the Metroid games. SOTN was the first Castlevania game to copy the Metroid formula, and since it was so successful, all the subsequent 2D Castlevania games just followed in its wake. Which can only be a good thing. More games for me to play.
Part of the reason why I love Metroidvania games so much is the exploration element. Unlike a lot of people, I play games mostly to explore virtual worlds, and SOTN gives you the whole of Dracula’s castle to explore. The game was a lone 2D game in a sea of 3D games, and to make itself stand out, it pulled out all stops in the design and rendering department. Alucard is beautifully animated in fluid 2D, the likes of which I’ve not seen since. Each segment of the castle has its own theme and accompanying music, and it was simply lovely to backtrack your way through all the various spooky environments, meeting unique monsters along the way, and then killing them. There are loads of weapons, armour, items and familiars to collect; dozens of special powers and magic spells; an encyclopaedic array of monsters and bosses to destroy… and a massive map (with many hidden areas) to discover and traverse. For people who like to explore virtual environments, this is the best kind of gaming experience to have.
Interestingly, the biggest “problem” with this game is also the reason why I like it so much. SOTN is quite an easy game. Since it has an RPG leveling-up system where you increase your stats from gaining experience points, you can get really powerful, really fast. Combine that with some of the stronger weapons you collect, and the game becomes a total cakewalk only halfway through. Some people will complain about that, but any game that doesn’t get in the way of me doing my exploring gets a big thumbs up from, so curiously, I mark it up in this department. Besides, those who want a SOTN-style game and a decent challenge can look up the other games in the series.
Other Castlevania Games (in the same style) Castlevania, like a lot of game series, has evolved into the 3D realm, but not with much success. I haven’t played the 3D games (nor do I want to), but at least the 2D SOTN clones are of a reliably good quality. I’ve listed all the ones I’ve played here, so if you’re a huge fan of exploration-action games, you can check these out:
Circle of the Moon: This game was made for the Gameboy Advance, and given the limitations of the GBA, it’s decent. You play as Nathan Graves, something of an honorary Belmont, so he is armed with a whip. The controls aren’t great, but then it was made cheaply to capitalise off SOTN on the handheld market. It did well enough that they decided to make more of them on the GBA.
Harmony of Dissonance: Also made for the GBA, but this is a little strange. Graphics-wise, it is far more intricate and detailed than Circle of the Moon, but the colours are scary-garish, especially the reds. You play as Justin Belmont, armed with his whip and a glaring red coat that will stab you in the eyes. Justin’s sprite is also strange-looking… with what appears to be an oversized head. Rumour has it that this was originally made for a console like the Playstation, but scaled back to a GBA release. Hence the weird graphics.
Aria of Sorrow: This is the GBA game to play, and is definitely the best game out of the GBA Castlevanias. It goes back to the inventory system of SOTN, and you play as Soma Cruz, an exchange student in Japan. The game has a soul-collecting mechanic, which allows you to copy the attacks of your enemies, making for a lot of variety. It also drives completion-ist types crazy, as they go back and forth in Dracula’s castle, trying to collect all the souls to make 100%.
Dawn of Sorrow: This is the first Castlevania game on the Nintendo DS, and it is exactly like Aria of Sorrow but with much better graphics and a few new additions. It’s an improvement in every way on AoS, except for the designs, which all of a sudden has gone anime-ish. It’s a small complaint (done to appeal to a younger market), but I miss Ayami Kojima’s designs (though by then, they were getting a tad old).
Portrait of Ruin: A solid follow-up on DoS, this DS game stars Jonathon Morris and Charlotte Aulin – two vampire slayers instead of the usual one. This game has some kind of buddy-system going, and due to the story having them go into portraits, a wide variety of terrains and areas are available. A welcome change from Dracula’s castle again, I guess. Unfortunately, I didn’t much enjoy this game, possibly because I wasn’t much taken in by the buddy system.
Order of Ecclesia: This DS game is possibly the hardest game in the whole series – you play as Shanoa (a girl! Not since the ret-conned Sonia Belmont!), a member of a secret cult sworn to destroy Dracula. You go through a vast array of environments before you end up in Dracula’s castle, so it’s more varied and feels longer than the other Castlevania games. It also has a soul-absorbing magic system where you can absorb enemy powers, but also at the cost of collecting no actual weapons. All-in-all, I like this game, but I’m too ham-handed to play it at anywhere near its best.
