There are no particular reasons why we started the blog project by playing this game, maybe apart from the fact that it is an intriguing game, at least from the title (Big sister Sword fighting!) and what we can see on the cover. But in fact, it’s a game that we were curious to play for a while. And if we try to think why, it is probably linked to the way this game reveals many important sides of the complex relationship between “Japan and the West” (as problematic as this way of saying is).
First, like many other “generic” Japanese games, it is evidently influenced by Western popular culture, especially through the ubiquitous trend of zombies (which is popular in Japan for a long while anyway), but also through the characters’ representation, especially with their outfits of cowgirls.
Then, in what many tend to associate now with Japan, there is the sexual portrayal of the characters. These characters embody in part what is normally understood as cultural differences between Japan and the West. However, we will not enter into this complex and controversial subject right now (maybe another time, but of course comments are welcome), as there is already an ongoing debate about it since the recent controversy around Dead Or Alive Extreme 3, which Tecmo decided to not release in the West:
Following this, Idea Factory also announced that it will no longer publish games that are subject to censorship in the West:
We will try to play some of these games in the near future to see what could be the implications between representation and play in these games.
But for now, let’s return to the game we played.
The OneeChambara started as a PS2 game developed by Tamsoft (creator of Battle Arena Toshinden, but also the dating sim series Dream Club) and published in 2004 by D3 Publisher for their budget-priced Simple 2000 series (because games in this series cost about 2000¥). It was the Volume 61 in the series and it has since become one the most popular game in this series, along Earth Defense Force.
OneeChambara is now a franchise comprising many sequels and spin-offs, and even a movie adaptation.
For the ignorant and innocent, some games are about making sense of what they are about… trying to figure out what’s happening on screen, and especially how the controls work (button mashing hack n slash can be quite difficult!). But our initial confusion is probably more a result of several interesting features the game displays. What a great idea to start a story by confronting the player with a seemingly overwhelming enemy – who is then in turn attacked by the game’s villain – turning the entire thing into an interactive introduction to the game that ultimately remains vague. But this is just the beginning. This game has everything: Musou Vampire-shibuya-bikini-cowgirl meets vocaloid meets comic strips meets swords and chainsaws and gore, and with trying to make use of all of the PS4 tricks, such as the mic on the controller.
Like many musou games (or hack’n’slash), improvisation (or button mashing in other words) is definitely the key to success in this game. There are still a lot of button controls (see pictures below), but at the end, to know them well does not really matter much as you can advance pretty easily by not exactly knowing what you are doing. But we must admit that we played on casual mode in order to advance quickly in the story, but also because we didn’t have the patience to spend too much time on “repetitive” battles.
And repetition is probably the key aspect in this type of games (and this game in particular). There are some “novelties”, but they are probably too few and far between to make for an engaging and original gameplay experience. For example, over time, after slashing through enough enemies, the (meele) weapons of our heroines are getting soaked up in blood, gore, or whatever it is the enemies bleed. One can then “reload” the weapon in order to clean it and slash effectively again. The first time is funny, but then it becomes quickly an automatic action stripped of its “narrative” context.
Maybe we could try other games in the series in trying to make sense of all this sekai, as there may be something meaningful by looking further, or at least by being more attentive compared to the immediate condemnation of some neophytes of the series:
Sources of the images:
amazon.jp
ngotaku.com/category/news/
wikipedia.org