Archive for the ‘Manga/Anime’ Category

How to get to Otome Road in Ikebukuro

I actually thought about doing this while I was on my trip, but I didn’t have time. I had a really tough time finding Otome Road, but once I got it down (took a couple times), I thought it would be great to have a photo guide because there are some good landmarks for it. This guide starts from Ikebukuro station since you’d have to be crazy to drive in Tokyo.

Now, one of the simplest ways if you’re ok with asking people directions (and they either don’t know, or you’re shy about asking where Otome Road or animate is), is to ask how to get to Tokyu Hands. The Tokyu Hands store is a hop skip and a jump away from Otome Road, just on the near side of the highway overpass.

If you’d rather find it yourself, here’s a guide.

First, a linkie to a Google Map of walking to the Ikebukuro Animate. If this is enough, fantastic. However, when I went, I had the Otome Shopping Guide with a diagram that looked pretty similar to this, and I TOTALLY got lost. Partly my own fault for thinking I could wander around and find it.

Anyways, start off in Ikebukuro station. Depending on which train/subway line you take it will be different places, but once you exit you’ll likely be underground. Now, if you can, use exit 35. This is the closest to the street you need to go down to get to Otome Road. It may feel like you’re walking underground forever, but it makes things easier!

Exit 35.
If you can’t, you may end up going out the main entrance. You want to cross the big road in front of you, and start going the road that looks like this.

The red box is the Exit 35, you want to be on that side of the road. Notice on top of the building above it, the red cube with the Bic Camera (in Japanese) on it.

Now,once you get to exit 35, turn around and look back, you should see something like this:

Tuen back around and continue going down this street, but not far. There will be a crosswalk, and two roads going off to the left. Don’t go down the first one, but the second – the Lotteria should be on your left.

Leading up to the turnoff.

See the red box? That’s the Lotteria, you should go on the road to the right of it.
 
Now if you see this before you, you’re practically there!

Lotteria on the left, Sanrio on the right. Now just keep walking down this road, past a Denny’s:

Past KFC…

Past Book Off (it took me a while to find this as well, since in addition to being recessed the sign is orange instead of yellow!):

Actually if you have time check the Book Off out, it`s pretty good.

And finally you`ll get to Tokyu Hands – almost there!

Now, see the overpass? You’re going to go under that, and get to that glass building, the Toyota Amlux building..

(This pic is shown from where you end up across the street.) Admire the cars inside – just kidding, we have otome shopping to do! Now at this point, you can either go straight from the crosswalk, or you can turn right. Both choices are good, but I’m going to go right. Just ‘cuz. So follow those mini trucks!

Hmm, what’s this 7 story building? It’s Animate! You have now arrived at Otome Road, dance, jump for joy, whatever you feel like!
Now, Otome Road can both feel small and big. When you first see it, it seems small. Yay an animate, yay a K Books. But don’t be fooled. Let’s take a tour of all the otome shops (or at least the ones I went to).
Once you’re done with Animate, keep going down the same road. Two doors down past a ramen shop, there’s Lashinbang:

If you find out what the deal is with the name, please tell me. This has games, DVDs and CDs, and I’m not even sure what they have on the second floor.
And look what’s right beside it! K-Books Anime. Enjoy this as well.
You may be thinking, “Is this it? Is this all of Otome Road Lijaka?” NO. NOT AT ALL.
Continue down the road.

I didn’t go into this K Books, because I think it’s mostly cosplay and I was on a serious game mission. But I’d love to go and explore. And hmm, I see a red sign on the right, what could that be?

Hm still can’t see very well.

Oh yes, the holy of holies for doujinshi, Mandarake. This may not be the multi-story monstrosity in Akihabara, but it is almost ALL for women. Rock on.
You may feel an urge to stop here. Animate, Lashinbang, K Books Anime and Premium, and Mandarake can take quite a bit of time. It seems like this might be the end. But I think we should keep going. Don’t turn around (in fact I would save Mandarake for later to browse at leisure), but keep going down the same road.

Focus on the red box. Let’s get closer…

K Books Doujin. This is the ONLY place I found doujin otome games. They had one small shelf upstairs for games, and I found them there. If I could go back right now, that’s one of the first places I’d go.
Surely, you’re thinking, that must be it? But don’t you feel like something’s missing? I can’t quite place it, so let’s go down just a little further.

K Books Comic. Just in case you haven’t gotten enough otome stuff, this can probably fill some empty spots in your bag (and empty some of your wallet). They had back issues of otome gaming mags here…very tempting.

So those are the stores that I found on Otome Road. Mandarake and K Books Doujin alone took hours of my time, and I think I ended up visiting Otome Road three or four times (in four days, I was getting a little embarrassed by the end because they recognized me).

If anyone is heading to Tokyo, I hope they find this useful – I wasted hours looking for Otome Road, but once you figure out the basics it’s very close to the station, and oh, such awesome shopping!

 

Three Kingdoms – Chinese History

Otome History 102! Not nearly as many otome games set in ancient China, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows up more often. There’s SO MUCH history there. I’m still playing and loving Sangoku Rensenki, and Jyuuzaengi is coming up soon from Otomate, which is also set during the Three Kingdoms, not to mention all the Dynasty Warriors games (totally not otome, but still!). [Edit: I forgot S.Y.K., which is based on a story, Journey to the West, or Saiyuuki, set in the Tang dynasty, AD618-907.] Commenter Julia was nice enough to send me this awesome overview of this period of ancient Chinese history, known as the Three Kingdoms. It’s from roughly 184-280 AD, and is well-known in Asia partly because of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a hugely long, semi-historical piece of Chinese literature written in the 14th century. So here we go! From now on, this is verbatim from Julia, except for some ed. notes I put in parentheses.

Basic overview of the time period is that it’s the end of the Han Dynasty, a 400-year reign of awesome like the Roman Empire, and eunuchs and warlords have taken too much power from the throne, leaving the masses to be oppressed. The droughts and famines really aren’t helping. Suffering peasants join a former-official-turned-religious-zealot named Zhang Jue (often romanized as Zhang Jiao for some reason) and form the Yellow Turban Rebellion to take down the Han. Warlords assemble to repulse the movement, several (Cao Cao and Liu Bei are among the most important later) proving themselves capable and gaining official positions as rewards. The warlord Dong Zhuo is a jerk and decides to take the last Han Emperor and make him into a puppet ruler. The other generals assemble once again and try to take him down while carving out their own spheres of influence. Dong Zhuo eventually gets assassinated by Lu Bu, but the power of the dynasty has been irrevocably lost, and the empire devolves into a bunch of states ruled by warlords beating the crap out of each other, with three kingdoms eventually becoming the main contenders for the imperial throne.

Anyway, quick rundown of major players in otome games (there’s a ton of stuff so don’t worry too much about unfamiliar names and such; I am always willing to sperg more about the Three Kingdoms):

Okay, to fix any confusion, Sangokuren used the style names of all the characters (excepting the women, who probably had them but generally weren’t recorded). Style names (generally designated with 字, read azana) were given to adults when they came of age in China (not unlike something the Romans did, I think)(Ed. also the Japanese, after guys came of age (genpuku) they got a different name e.g. Oda Nobunaga’s childhood name was Kippoushi) and were used in public settings as signs of respect. Japan is weird about style names in their Sanguo stuff; when used in manga and games, they often take on a more private/affectionate nuance, so I’m not 100% sure about this. Buuut it’s not like historiocity is a big concern for this stuff…

Cao Cao, styled Mengde (Moutoku) is the big badass of the Sanguo period. He was a brilliant politician, cunning strategist and gifted poet who knew how to surround himself with the best men available. He eventually gained and held sway over most of Northern Imperial China (much smaller than modern China but still pretty huge) as the leader of the kingdom of Wei. He was also kind of a huge jerk (for pragmatic reasons, but still), which gets played up in just about every media representation of him ever. (He is one of my very favorites. Even though I have like 20 favorites in the Sanguo period alone.)

Generals operating under him include his cousin Xiahou Dun, styled Yuanrang (Genjou, aka the guy they’re actually adding a “route” for in the PSP version because he is so awesome), best known for eating his own eye out of filial piety in operas/the novel, Xiahou Yuan (Dun’s agile archer cousin, featured in Jyuuzaengi), Xun Yu Wenruo (Bunjaku, who was one of Cao Cao’s most loyal and able administrators and secretly Miles Edgeworth if Sangokuren is to be believed [don't ask]), Zhang Liao Wenyuan (don’t think you’ll have to know it, but Bun’en), who almost captured Sun Quan singlehandedly at the battle of Hefei, and many, many more. The eventual patriarch of the victorious Sima clan, Sima Yi, worked under him and eventually usurped the throne from his descendents (who themselves had stolen it from the last of the Han).

Liu Bei Xuande (Gentoku) kind of came out of nowhere as the leader of a volunteer army against the Yellow Turban rebels. He claimed to be a descendent of a Former Han prince, and thus tried to restore the Han throne, eventually founding the southwestern empire of Shu-Han around what is now Sichuan. His particularly Chinese sense of honor and humanity (meaning these virtues don’t necessarily match up with modern Western interpretations of the words) are played up in media to contrast with the “wicked” Cao Cao. (One of his most popular scenes is when he actually takes his people with him by their request while being chased out of his domain by Cao Cao.) He’s also often presented as kind of a naïve dweeby coward, but historically was pretty damn savvy. He got married off to Sun Ren (aka Sun Shang Xiang) as part of a political ploy, but they split up when tensions between Wu and Shu got too strong.

In operas and the in novel, Liu Bei swore brotherhood with Guan Yu Yunchang (Unchou) and Zhang Fei Yide (Yokutoku), both of whom were supposedly warriors worth a thousand men. Guan Yu was known for his long, beautiful beard (Cao Cao seriously gives him a beard bag in the novel) and is often depicted with a guandao (the big blade-onna-stick) and the horse Red Hare. He actually ended up becoming by far the most popular of the brotherhood, and is now one of the most worshipped gods in China.

Zhang Fei got drunk a lot, was really strong, and that’s pretty much all you need to know. Oh, and in the novel, he held off thousands of soldiers at Changban Bridge so his brother could high-tail it away from Cao Cao. (I like him okay, but he was seriously as dumb as a brick at times.)(Ed. Figures he’s one of my favourites, I tend to love strong dumb guys in otome games)
Zhao Yun Zilong (Shiryuu) operated under both Yuan Shao (I think) and Gongsun Zan (both of whom were warlords eventually defeated before the three main kingdoms were established) before pledging himself to Liu Bei’s cause. He was pretty boss in both the novels and history, being both a scary competent tactician and an excellent warrior.

The most amazingly overpowered character in games tends to be Zhuge Liang Kongming (Koumei), who supposedly agreed to join Liu Bei after the latter visited him three times and turned Liu Bei into a viable contender. Great strategist (sadly a bit overrated in general) but where he really shone was in domestic administration. Also had a pretty awesome wife by all accounts (Lady Huang was so smart she apparently made cooking robots and stuff), so I like him a lot.

Wu is my least favorite kingdom, so I can’t give you much info on them that isn’t laced with “and I hate this guy so much because blah blah blah.” (For me, Shu will always be the best kingdom, followed closely by Wei, so Wu is my default bad guy.) The ruler Sun Quan Zhongmou (Chuubou) was the little brother of the man who actually founded Wu, and Zhou Yu Gongjin (Koukin) was a brilliant strategist who gets character-assassinated in the novel (which I find pretty hilarious but your mileage may vary). Zhou Yu is always popular because he was historically known to be very attractive, but he’s no Sima Yi or Kongming because he’s dead by age 35. Lu Su was the best character not named Lu Meng and I almost wish he had a real route.

Unaffiliated people you may see: Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu were warlords (either brothers or cousins) who wanted the imperial throne for themselves. Lu Bu Fengxian was a Zhang-Fei-esque asshole who betrayed everyone he ever served but was such a badass warrior that nobody could call him out on it. Dong Zhuo was a tyrant who was later betrayed by Lu Bu and totally deserved it. Diao Chan as far as we know didn’t actually exist, but in the novel managed to move Lu Bu to betray Dong Zhuo.

For what it’s worth: Guan Yu and Cao Cao have an interesting relationship (no not like that… okay maybe) in the novel, meaning that there is fodder galore there for Jyuuzaengi. Actually, they chose the capturables really well, since they all have some interaction with Guan Yu in the novel. (I’m especially looking forward to Zhang Liao’s route since he was a certified badass. Though maybe not as much now that I know he’s played by Yusa Kouji… D:)(Ed. Hey now, I love Yusa Kouji! Mostly because of Guido in Lucian Bee’s.)

Thanks so much Julia for this, it makes me love Sangoku even more, and I’m looking forward to Jyuuzaengi! Yay historical games!

Starry Sky comic in English

What the bleep, this was set to publish on Friday, in fact it still says publish on Jan 6. >.<;; Sorry for the delay!

The second straight post on English releases, is this a sign of what's to come in 2012??

Anyways, I might be the last to know (I am sadly late on English news), but DMP Publishing is releasing the Starry Sky comic! Volume 1 comes out in April.

Apparently its genre is shonen (…lol).

(sorry for the shortness of the recent posts, this thrice-weekly schedule is hard! But I’m almost done routes in Angelique, Beyond the Future, and one other game to put up as reviews)

Final Buys

The last few days in Tokyo were kind of a blur, but I did get out a few more times to buy most of what was left on my list.

Games:

A bunch of games from Bookoff, like the shounen ones, as well as Pandora and maybe Armen Noir? At animate I bought Wand of Fortune II, they only had the limited edition and it didn’t come with any store extras, too bad. And then at K Books I bought Clock Zero, Anniversary Alice, Grimm Director’s Cut, and Bloody Call. I found Takuyo Mix Box in a Bic Camera store, which was great as I had given up hope (Bic and Yodobashi Camera have enormous stores, they’re more like Best Buy than camera stores).
And I also spent some time frantically looking for Alice x Cross cards, since my friends and I want to try playing it. I had thought that I could find them easily at an animate, especially in Otome Road, but they actually only had one (ONE) booster pack, of Junjou Romantica, so I bought that (yay five cards!) I bought most of the following in the K Books Anime store on their second level, where they have all the cool furoku and special random merchandise. I spent at least half an hour standing there going through two boxes of cards (really only one because one was just Hakuouki), and ended up buying the following:

I actually did buy quite a few Hakuouki cards, since that was the only otome game-based series that was plentiful. I found a couple VitaminX cards which I bought up, and then as many Kichiku Megane ones as they had for my friend (BL uber fan) as well as a bunch of Togainu no Chi since they had a ton of those. A girl (junior high? high school maybe?) chatted to me about how cute Akira was, I wish I had been able to do more than just agree, since I’ve never played it.

Apart from that, my last shopping spree was at the airport, when I went a bit crazy after realizing I’d left all my manga in the checked luggage. I bought the new Jump, and a bunch of random volumes of shounen manga (they didn’t have much if any shoujo: Gintama 41, Hunter Hunter 29, Bakuman 14, Bleach 52, and Embalming 6. Well, they probably weren’t random, but since the only one I was familiar with was Gintama they felt that way. I only got through Gintama and some of Bleach.

Otome Road: Part 1

Well, I got to Otome Road too early today(ok, a few days ago, this is late!) and then it started pouring, so I didn’t do much shopping until the afternoon. I found the Book off (conveniently between Ikeubukuro station and Otome Road) and bought a couple games, then headed over.

Since I hadn’t tried K Books yet, I went there, and it was awesome! Lots of stuff, they have baskets of furoku and thingies that you can’t usually get separately. And a great selection of drama CDs, I really have to make notes of what I want now.

Yay, a Nachi facecloth, heh. And finally got WagaHana
Doesn’t look like too much but several solid purchases in there!

Otome Road: Preview

I wanted to do some reconaissance for when we move to Ikebukuro tomorrow, so we went there and I did my first bit of Otome Road shopping.

First I had to find it, which was harder than I thought. Strangely enough, there are no big signs saying “OTOME ROAD THIS WAY!!!” and even though I had the shopping guide, I picked one landmark that was wrong and went kinda far before finding the right way.

However, I soon realized my mistake (the turning point was when I was following people because I figured they would be going towards the station, and it turned out they were going towards a college of some kind) and started paying attention to addresses (you know Japan does addresses by blocks, not streets, right?) and eventually found my way to the entrance. Which, by the way, also does not scream out, “Here is Otome Road! You have found the Mecca of otome games!!”, but at least the animate has its sign fairly high up and large so it’s hard to miss.

Since I have to move all my stuff tomorrow, I wasn’t fussed about buying a lot, more scoping out what’s available, so I just went to the animate and the Mandarake. The animate was good but had almost no extra thingies left for games, which I guess makes sense if it’s the popular place to order otome games from. I did get Crimson Empire finally, and it came with both the preorder special and the animate special, so 2 cds and a washcloth, yay! And I bought a couple clearfiles, because they’re cheap and I haven’t seen much Desert Kingdom or Renai Banchou merchandise. Of course there was tons of merch for Hakuouki and Starry Sky, but that’s always the case.

The mandarake was great, and I again bought a bunch of CDs, and some doujinshi, as well as a few games (yay Bloody Call! I hadn’t seen it yet) they also had several of those huge boxes for the special Neoromance games (like the Treasure Box etc.), but without prices, so I was almost afraid to ask about them.

Tokyo!!! Shibuya

So today I went to two places in Shibuya, Mandarake and Book Off, but I couldn’t get to the Animate, because Book Off had a problem with my credit card, and by the time I found a way to call Mastercard and check (there was no problem), and go back to Book Off to find out that apparently it was just their machines and that I couldn’t buy any more there, it was too late and I had to get back to the hotel. (cue chorus of booing!)

But I still had a good day out, several games and TONS of CDs, the extras/preorder thingies that Mandarake sells separately. They had SO MANY, in the end I just limited myself to buying the ones under Y1000, and went crazy.

Yeah, tons of CDs, as well as the PC version of Sengoku Ren Senki, though I already bought the PS2 version, it was pretty cheap and came with extras…and some Kanuchi comics. If you can tell, there are some really old games for those CDs – Shirogane wa Houkago no Shirabe, and a really really old R18 game Koiro Tomachi.

Tomorrow it’s animate for sure!

Tokyo – Nakano

I found Nakano because Mandarake has a main location there, but afterwards I realized it has a whole list of places in my shopping guide too! It’s a few stops west of the central Tokyo line, and it is a lot of fun. There’s an arcade that you go through, and once you pass through it and enter the next arcade (Sun Plaza), there are many many fun shops – I could have probably spent a whole day there. Besides the awesome Mandarake shops (they have about 5 separate little shops there with different focuses (focii??)) there are other ones with just about any cult favourite you can think of – models, cult movie posters from decades ago, cosplay, miniatures – it’s a great place to bring people (and then leave them while you go and browse in Mandarake, heh).
So, first I reached the manga section, and got these:


Nade Pro Vol 1 and 2, they were both pretty cheap. And the VitX-Z CDs with my favourite characters (Chisato and Konokage of course!). And Koisentai Vol 1! So I can get excited for when they release that game!

I couldn’t figure out why there were no games, so I asked, and a clerk kindly gave me a map of all the different Mandarake shops in the plaza. Headed over to the games section (it took me a few rounds to figure out where it was because I kept getting distracted by cool stuff), and bought:

Lucian Bees Justice Yellow and Evil Violet, yaayyy! I’ve been wanting to buy the Yellow for forever and held off. Also the VitX to Z fandisk, heehee. I almost didn’t get the Gekkan Ryouran Romance because I thought I might find it with an extra somewhere, but I couldn’t resist. And finally Arabian’s Lost DS, maybe now I will finally be able to get the tutor guy…whatever his name is.

And now a summary of everything I’ve bought for myself, otome-wise, so far:

Not bad…if I do say so myself.

Kyoto Day 3-4, Tokyo again

My netbook lost power for a couple days, so I couldn’t really do much on it, but I didn’t do much shopping anyways.

I got a Betsuma to check out the stories and because it was big, but the furoku was just an extra little book of short stories. Cute but not amazing. I actually read most of it and left it in Kyoto, along with the Lala and LalaDX, because they are waaaay too big and heavy to lug around. Oh, the clearfiles are ones I got at the 100Y store because, hey, Y100!!
And I also got Kyun, one of the magazines that runs otome comics (like Hakuouki), because the furoku was awesome:

Three extra comic books, and two of them included drama CDs!!

On the day we left Kyoto, I got these:

Weekly Jump, which just came out, and a special of Betsuma called Sister, mostly because it had a short by Takanashi Mitsuba (Crimson Hero) who I love. And I had a few hours on the shinkansen to read them, perfect!

Once we got back to Tokyo, we headed out to Akihabara.

From Traders, a used game store, and animate:

Dear Mine Sun!! I wasn’t sure if I could find this so I’m very happy. Also, I got Asuka, with an extra, yay!
The one in the top right has been argued to be one of the first otome games, Abarenbou Princess. I don’t know if it is, the description doesn’t really sound like it, but it was 105Y!!!! So of course I bought it. I think that was from the Book Off in Akihabara.

So, a couple days of no posting, sorry about that, but expect a big post tomorrow! I’m stationed in Shinjuku now, and am poring through my Otome Shopping Guide in preparation.

Day 4 – Hiroshima

Hardly anything yesterday and no otome stuff. I accidentally bought Shonen Sunday for the shinkansen, and later bought Shonen Jump (what I meant to buy earlier) for another train ride. Only read three or so stories in Sunday, and Jump I’m working on (still going through the Lalas too!)

Now we’re staying in one place (Kyoto) for a few days, so I am definitely going to get to an Animate and Book Off soon.