Category: Otaku

Japan Pickups: Gamebooks

June 21, 2024

For the first time in years I didn’t find any Fighting Fantasy gamebooks for my collection this past Japan trip. This is perhaps not surprising since I already own 70% of the Japanese imprints, but you can bet my search will continue.

So what did I find?

I bought two more issues of the Japanese Warlock magazine, including #5. I now have 72% of all the issues, which is surely impressive considering I don’t even live in Japan? Maybe I should start trying to actually read some!

I was surprised to see two brand new rulebooks for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG, and although I don’t actively collect this I couldn’t resist picking both up. I wonder how many people play this RPG in Japan?

As for actual Gamebooks, I picked up the above motley trio. The one on the left translates to (approximately) ‘Find The Great Heritage‘ and seems to be a systemless time traveling book with a female protagonist and terrible art:

The middle book is the first in the 2012 Japanese Grailquest reprint series, which I now have three of. As with the others I own this seems to be an enhancement of the original 1980s versions, with an expanded game and additional content at the end. It’s also got brand new – often creepy – art:

I wish these enhanced versions were released in English.

The last of the three gamebooks is a Japanese version of the first Fatemaster book (‘Treachery in Drakenwood’), which is further evidence that just about every gamebook series seemed to find its way to Japan. It’s mostly identical to the UK version, but includes a nice pull-out character sheet and map:

Lastly, I picked up the two Queen’s Blade The Live gamebooks that I didn’t yet own:

An explanation of exactly what these are is probably beyond the scope of this post, but let’s just say I find it hard to imagine anyone heading to their game store to play Lost Worlds/Queen’s Blade with one of them!

Japan Pickups: Wizardry

June 20, 2024

Once again I made a few additions to my Wizardry collection this past trip, although for the first time in many years of Japan trips I didn’t add any actual games. Here’s what I got:

These are guides for the 6th and 7th Wizardry games, and as with typical Japanese game guides they’re in depth and comprehensive. One of the Dark Savant guides seems to be a transition of a western guide written by the developers (SirTech) but the other is Japan specific and written by a self-proclaimed ‘Wizardry Expert’! It’s worth nothing that I already have other Japanese guides for both games, and it’s quite possible others may exist!

This is a collection of three short stories set in the Wizardry game world. While I can’t read this, I’m guessing they’re all set in the world of the first five games, since things got a bit weird after that. This is yet another in a growing list of Japanese Wizardry novels I own, which now also includes…

This is an absolutely beautiful set of four more Wizardry novels, each by a different author and published in 1992. They share the trade dress of the first three games, and based on the extensive English on the front and back covers, seem to tell stories influenced by the games.

Each of these small hardcovers features a few colour art pages at the start, and have wonderful black and white illustrations throughout:

This is a lovely set of four books, and I dearly wish I could read them! For their quality they were extremely inexpensive as well.

Incidentally there have so far been two English-language Wizardry novels, one released decades ago and one only last year (by the write of Goblin Slayer no less)! I own both and have read the first, which was better than I expected.

My last pickup this trip was something I’d been hunting for a while: Wiz Ball, the Wizardry baseball card game (yes you read that correctly). This is actually the expansion to the original release, which still eludes me…

This contains additional magic and item cards to expand the main game. It seems as crazy as it sounds, and translations of the cards show that the various items improve things like batting strength or running speed and (as with the RPG) can only be used by specific characters. The magic cards utilize the same names as the game, but where Mahalito is an explosive damage spell in Wizardry, here it ‘increases ball speed by 2’!

Why does this product exist?!? Who ever thought to pair a technical and complicated computer RPG with a baseball card game? I’ll never know, but I’m glad I finally own it 🙂

Lunatics Only: ‘Ita’ Bags

June 12, 2024

Look at this women waiting to cross the street:

Her bag displays 24 identical badges of an anime character (who I can’t identify). Furthermore each badge is encased in a protective acrylic case which themselves have been decorated with pearls and a little heart. The woman is probably my age.

The above may seem unusual, but it’s an increasingly common sight in heavily otaku parts of Tokyo like Akihabara (where I took the photo). For example every day I’ve been out since I returned to Tokyo I’ve seen several people with such displays on their bag. Here’s another for instance:

Excuse the blurriness: it was a stealth photo taken of a guy (yes a man) on an adjacent escalator. He had eighty badges of all the five characters in Quintessential Quintuplets; sixteen badges for each girl. His bag was massive!

This phenomenon has its own tools, chief amongst them being the bags themselves. These are called ‘ita’ bags, which is a contraction of itasha which means ‘painful car’ and derived from the practice of covering a car with pictures of anime characters. I’ve seen a few shops selling these bags such as this one:

This company (website here) makes many different types of bags in various sizes and styles. All of them have the essential plastic side for display of badges, and many of them also have a slide-in or reversible piece to make the bags ‘work safe’!

They’re not cheap shopping bags! Even the smaller ones cost $50+, so these are quality bags in addition to enabling the display of badges. At their shop was a sign that suggested they also have bags that allow the display of trading cards, but there weren’t any on display. It’s also worth mentioning that the badges cost as well: maybe $5-10 each, so large displays of identical badges are a sizeable investment!

This is an entirely different level of fandom. It’s normal to have favourite characters, but to almost literally wear them on your sleeve in public to this extent is classic otaku behavior and – in my opinion – is admirable. Fundamentally this is only a few steps beyond wearing a branded t-shirt, which is behavior no one would blink at.

So when I saw the above girl with her eighty identical badges of the same character all lovingly placed so they’re all at the same orientation and offset I of course chuckled (as I reached for my camera) but at the same time I saluted her for her spirit 🙂

Robot Claw