Category: Japan

I was stoked to buy the above three Japanese Fighting Fantasy (FF) books on the recent trip. Each is in immaculate condition for books almost forty years old, and included unused adventure sheets (shown below each in the photo). These weren’t cheap, but I now own 75% of the original Japanese editions and if I see one I don’t own, I’m buying it 🙂

This was a surprise! Tantalon’s Cube describes itself as the first Advanced Fighting Fantasy (AFF) adventure, and is a lengthy quest where adventures must assembled the ‘Cube Of Balance’ created by the legendary King Tantalon to save the Kingdom of Galantaria from invasion. This – a Japanese only book – seems to be full of references to the larger FF world, not the least being Tantalon himself. I’m sure you’ll agree the cover art is wonderful.

The book itself is a traditional RPG module in the bunko (A6) size as was common in Japan when it was printed. It’s full of original art and many half-page small maps like those above. I’ve never seen or even heard of this book before, so I was surprised to find it for a very low cost (under $10)!

I don’t often buy Japanese AFF rulebooks, but I like monster manuals and this recently printed third version caught my eye.

Much like the previous ‘Out Of The Pit’ monster manuals this is loaded with stat blocks for monsters taken from FF books, including the newer titles published during the Wizard and Scholastic era. Lots of lovely art and detailed descriptions for beasts that had perhaps a single line in the original books 🙂

This is the very recent Japanese translation of the FF history book first published in 2014. From what I read this was a kickstarted product that is currently still shipping to backers, so I was surprised to find it in a used store. This was expensive, at about $100.

I was even more surprised when I opened it and found it was actually new! This is a lovely book – printed on high quality paper, hardbound and with a metallic ink and red velvet cover. It’s also written in an interactive format which surprised me, since I’ve got the original 2014 version (and the 2016 update), neither of which were written as a gamebook:

I was so impressed by this updated version I’ve now purchased the English edition, which while hardly as impressive in terms of production quality, means I’ll be able to read it!

But the best part of this premium set is the inclusion of a separate, smaller volume that is a history of FF in Japan. As a collector of the Japanese editions, I hope this is full of answers to many questions I have:

The above example page contains a discussion of Japanese bootleg FF books (!) and the entry itself is impossible to reach if you read the book interactively, which is a joke reference to paragraphs in some FF books which the player can never read without ‘cheating’ 🙂

I’m very much looking forward to reading this Japanese history!

Lastly I purchased nine Queen’s Blade gamebooks. I already owned about twenty, and with this purchase I think I have more than half of them. These remain very inexpensive at the used stores in Japan – none of the above cost me more than $7 – and I’ll continue to buy them as I see them on future trips.