Thoughts on a double bill: the Way of the Dragon (1972) and Gamera Guardian of the Universe (1995)

This is a double feature I intended to view after watching YakitateJapan due to Tamoor Hassin’s recommendation on Jeff Jeff Bizarre Adventure. YakitateJapan is a manga-turned-anime about bake-off and much like its younger and sexier cousin about cook-off Food War! Shokugeki no Soma, sometimes it just wanted to do parodies.

One of those parodies disguised as bake-off is about colored animal shape bread. To choose between a “gold dragon” and a “jade turtle”, soon enough the judge pulls out nunchaku affected by the former then the twin-rod wielder starts to spin in the air after eating a piece of the latter. I looked at the Criterion Collection’s Bruce Lee His Greatest Hits and Arrow Video’s Gamera the Heisei Trilogy on my shelf, thinking now that’s an idea for double feature: a movie starring Brue Lee followed by one about giant flying turtle.

The reason why Naughty Dog can never impress yours truly: the Way of the Dragon

With the 1995 Gamera movie having somewhat a nationalist undertone, I originally picked 1971’s Fist of the Fury. But clocked at 114 minutes, it was the longest among the 4 starring Lee thus the poorest choice for a double bill in the bunch. So instead, I watched the 95 minutes long Way of the Dragon, sometimes titled Return of the Dragon and declared peak of cinema by Jeff Grestmann during a 2014 episode of the Bombcast. Also out of all 4 Lee’s Greatest Hits, it’s the only one Professor Daniele Bolelli did not criticize the script of.

Following a martial artist out of the slum of Hong Kong into the “eternal city” called Rome, this is an action comedy of 1970s that would serve as the cornerstone of Golden Harvest’s 1980s outings. Half fish-out-of-water slapstick comedy and half serious martial art business, the careers of Jackie Chan and Sammo Kam-bo Hung would have looked very different without this movie for them to learn from. And without watching those 2 in better action comedy growing up, I just might have bought into Naughty Dog’s “zombieland fantasy” known as Uncharted.

I personally think the camera angles during this movie’s action had inspired more than one generation of video games. There are of course the fabled profile shots. This perspective is present in musicals especially during dance numbers. Nothing displays choreograph better than that whether the dance is delightful or deadly. Side scrolling action games and fighting games can have complex character sprite movement are clearly mimicking this camera angle.

Then there is the camera behind a fighter’s back like them modern polygonal extravaganzas. When Bruce Lee and Chuk Norris went on the offense in this movie, they both got shots with camera following close behind their backs. “On the offense” since they managed to parry or dodge every strike thrown at them while landed every one of their blows on their opponents. Shout out to the late Robert Wall, who would “return” in Enter the Dragon as part of the rogue galley there. Lee fought him on a dusty field here, and you just know that all the strikes thrown by the writer-director-leading-actor landed for the clouds of dust around poor old Rob in those shots. Damn, they rarely make it like this anymore.

The stuff childhood delight is made of: Gamera Guardian of the Universe

The digital effect heavy modern science fiction adventure cinema hardly registers as live-action in my mind. In the early 1990s, Ultraman, the special effect heavy sci-fi adventure show from 1960s’ Japan, was sold to where I resided as a kid’s show and my 4 years old self tuned in whenever that little kid could. Build a miniature then blow them up you cowards, how hard can it be.

If Gamera Guardian of the Universe was sold there when it was a new release then it could have become my 5 years old self’s favorite movie ever, for Ultraman flies. Seeing Gamera taking off on jet legs after some glorious miniature destruction, my cynical in the 30s ass still yelled “Holy shit! It’s just like Ultraman!” within. Maybe my 5 years old self would just be scared shitless by it. Batman & Robin, and I do mean THAT Batman & Robin, frightened my 7 years old self after all.

Nowadays, it’s likely that more people read Dr. Ebert’s review of this movie than actually watched it. So, it would be shame for those people to think 1995 Gamera’s practical effect as “flawed” and Air Force One’s dated CGI as “flawless”. Both are flawed apparently, but the former simply holds up better for being shot in more tangible fashion.

If you have watched 2014’s Godzilla, then you have already seen a watered down and dragged out version of 1995’s Gamera. Both paid homage to Jurassic Park though. 1995’s Gamera was sold as a dark gritty reboot for a monster series started as campier affair for kids. Guess being Spielbergian is a nice balancing act for making a dark movie people still would take their kids to see.

1995’s Gamera runs tightly for 95 minutes and has 3 Gyaos for the titular monster to fight rather than 2014’s Godzilla only has 2 MUTOs in its 123 minutes. Having 3 means once the giant turtle showed their full glory to the camera, or, in the case of this movie, a night-vision goggle of a helicopter pilot, they can just slap one out of the sky and establish their dominance. The hour followed is just fun for people would tune for monster movie. Yeah, yeah, I know there is an animated Netflix show bearing the Gamera title coming, but I always consider the monster stuff better experienced as live-action things, it was burned into my thinking as a very young age.

To bring it all back to video game, do you know that Bowser and his Coopa clan are inspired by this giant flying turtle? Me, either or at least ain’t so sure about it.

Thoughts on Muv-luv Extra and its Meiya route

Em Marko of Abnormal Mapping fame is someone yours truly trust when it comes to weeb stuff. So, when they said how much they enjoyed the visual novel Muv-luv, I knew I was doomed to make an impulse purchase on Steam.

Well, the Steam product known as “Muv-luv” is actually the combination of 2 originally separate visual novels: a rom-com titled Muv-luv Extra and a military science fiction novel subtitled Unlimited. This piece is all about the former as I am tearing myself away from reading the latter to write this.

On the route

A high school boy and a pretty but not that pretty high school girl are childhood friends. They start considering entering a committed relation with each other on their own. “Not that pretty” is added here not just to be mean, but rather for comparison coming up. Stories like these do not really start until a girl out of this world came crashing into their life, and the boy got a choice to make.

“Is Urusei Yatsura the subject here?” I hear you asking. Indeed, the Rumiko Takahashi book is one of the subjects here just like visual novel Muv-luv and comic book Nisekoi. All 3 share the similar premise yours truly put up there. The 2 comic books also have 2 other things in common. A both kept their original Japanese titles when translated into English and B both got “a woman’s touch” to yours truly. Urusei Yatsura is authored by a woman while Nisekoi was recommended to yours truly by a woman.

Yours truly went down the Meiya route mostly because of reading those 2 funny books, since she is the “out of this world” archetype of Muv-luv and the boys in those books eventually chose the one out of his world over the childhood friend. Though the boy and the girl in Muv-luv are very different from their comic book counterparts.

Meiya Mitsuruki (A Japanese family name I am tempted to translate into “Saber” just to take a piss at Type-Moon) is out of this world in a different way. Ram in Urusei Yatsura is a space alien while Chitoge in Nisekoi is blonde bombshell among shades of raven hair. Meiya is one of two potential love interests with raven hair and she is certainly not an alien, her family is just filthy rich. In many ways, Urusei Yatsura readers can see her as the gender bending version of Shutaro Meido.

Player point of view character Takeru Shirogane is a very typical “dumb boy”, his mother just refers to him as “my idiot son” after all. Though he is not a playboy like Urusei Yatsura’s Ataru Moroboshi, he is by all means and purposes, a gamer. As much as yours truly dislike that G word, there is no other way to describe someone indulging that particular vice across arcade cabin, home console (PS2 does exist in Muv-luv’s world, though the S does not stand for “station”) and dedicated handheld (Called Game Guy, not sure if it’s an homage to Game Boy or Game Gear). By the end of Meiya route, he finally got to spend some quality time with his wife (I believe this route is the only one ending with him legally married.) and he wanted to play Tokken (Apparently Tekken “with serial number filed off”.) on PS2 with her.

Their relation building does interrogate the question about fates and promises. Shirogane and Mitsuruki are 2 families that would not cross path in a million years, however Takeru and Meiya met once when they were 4. To add to the dramatic, the story has them share the same birthday. And the boy being smoother operator back then promised to marry her. Then of course as the vice known as gaming did to many of us, he forgot all about it until after their eightieth birthday. This story would have been blader if the 2 did not get married and the promise ended up being moonshine made up by a kid not knowing what he was saying. But this is a dating sim with the goal of “get the girl”, so hope for a balder conclusion like that is against the whole idea of playing a dating sim.

On the game

As a game came out 2 whole decades before the time of writing, Muv-luv does feel refreshing compared to its modern time counterparts. The streets in Extra are jam packed with various character sprites, maybe just to be a contrast to the empty war-torn streets in Unlimited. The game is a sprite fest where it comes to the speaking roles, one can see up to 5 of them at once interacting on the screen.

As someone who cut their teeth with Type-moon products it comes to full-priced visual novels, Muv-luv just seems so better paced. The days usually keep going for a nice 20 to 30 minutes long run time, though the days do get longer as endgame approaches.

The game is marketed as an “All Age” title though I would add 2 pieces of contents warning.

First there is a comedic scene regarding under age drinking. All present there are 18 and above though, with the game expressively saying that all the high schoolers are about to graduate. Kinda of a “we would let this one slide just do not make a habit of it” thing it comes to 18-year-olds drinking alcohol.

Second there are 2 up skirt panty shots in my playthrough. They are not gross for yours truly but sensitive type be aware. The er, unsavory bit of the picture is on the bottom of the screen rather than front and center but I don’t think it helps. The text is displayed on that level after all. I have my theory about why those made into the clean version: the girls have their shirts, panties and stockings on, combined with the fact that there is a skirt to look up into, the images are considered as fully clothed instead of nudity.

Anyway, the game does deal with sexy characters with a little more consideration than say er, Neon Genesis Evangelion. There are 2 hot teachers with big tits, one likes to show them while the other covers her assets with a sweater, it’s at least better than Anno wanting 2 tits out ladies instead of one, wouldn’t you say?

So, I guess even after 20 years after its launch, Muv-luv is a visual novel worth checking out. The Steam Deck has a community layout making the game operates more than a console title, it’s a nicer way to enjoy some rom-com on the go.

Thoughts on Beatless by Satoshi Hase

（All speculations in this pieces might just be your truly thinking out loud their more pattern recognitional thinking.）

This Roaring Twenties we currently live in is a reminder that no matter how scientific science fiction can be, it still is fantasies like its less scientifically minded cousins within the term “speculative fiction”. Even though laws had been made and amidated regarding artificial machine intelligence, the wastelands within Terminator movies still seem like greener pasture compared to bleak and, more importantly I might add, boring reality. Compared to the five decades after Singularity future of Beatless, we might as be living in hell even though the book does not pose its speculated future as utopian.

The hired hand between a defense attorney and a yes man

Satoshi Hase can be considered as an old friend to yours truly. I started the endeavor of blogging about books here with MGS 3 novelization by Mr. Hase. He was the second Japanese writer employed by Konami to write Metal Gear books, and Hideo Kojima had the least to say about his work while the other 2 Japanese writers gained a lot from the so-called video game auteur.

Project Itoh is the pen name of one Satoshi Ito, blogger, graphic artist and novelist who past at the tender age of 34 in 2009 because of cancer. Mr. Ito wrote the novelization of MGS 4 and claimed himself to be a “Hideo Kojima fundamentalist” long before that. Kojima did acknowledge him, one can read all about it in Creative Gene. If Driving Off the Map is about uncovering a magician’s tricks, Ito’s pieces are more about defending Kojima’s works while many of his Japanese peers are in the “MGS is just like some anime. The fuck so special about that?” camp.

Hitori Nojima is the pen name of one Kenji Yano, who worked as an editor of Newtype when Beatless was serialized on that magazine. Before Konami showed Kojima the door, Mr. Yano had banged out novelization of 4 MGS games branded “A Hideo Kojima Game”, Peace Walker, 1, 2 and Phantom Pain, in Japanese. Mr. Yano works at the new Kojima Production now, probably typing out flavorless fictional emails for the Death Stranding sequel as the time of writing. So, if you got problems with Death Stranding’s scripts, you ought to think about this yes man more than Kojima himself.

Mr. Hase is more of a novelist than those 2 men combined yet the late Ito managed to better him twice at the prestige Seiun Awards, once in life or another time after death. Hase’s first hard science fiction novel A Story for You was beaten by Ito’s second novel Harmony in 2010. 3 years after Ito’s passing, Beatless was beaten by Empire of Corpses, a novel started by Ito and finished by someone else. But I have my suspicions that Hase has his secret fans within the indie dev scene.

Take Eliza for example. This so-not-a-dating-sim visual novel is about dealing with one tragedy in Seattle’s tech scene. The science fiction world Hase created and owns wholesale since A Story for You is set in late 21^st century Seattle where sad stories happen in and around the near future tech scene. Even the title Eliza, referencing to this piece of shrink app in the VN can be seen as taken from Beatless: Eliza is the name of “mother” for all 5 sides in the battle royale.

Male gazey but that male gazey

Beatless, started as Project Lacia, was something masterminded by Newtype magazine, Katokawa Shoten’s “state-owned” wing when it comes to anime coverage. An illustrator pen named Red Juice was hired to draw 5 pretty girls as figurine blueprints after they done doing character design for animated series Guilty Crown in 2012. In order to sell those designs better, novelist Satoshi Hase was hired to write a story about said pretty girls. According to the paperback author’s afterword of Beatless, Hase was given carte blanche other than incorporating the 5 designs in. So Hase wrote a hard science fiction novel about a battle royale fought for the future of humanity among 5 different machine intelligences.

The year is 2105, and five decades had passed since the Singularity. Androids known as Humanoid Interface Element, HIE or Interface for short, are common. An Interface manufacturer called Meme Frame had an accident and five advanced protypes of Interface broke out. I introduced two already and here are the rest.

From left to right we got Kouka, Saturnes and Methode.

Kouka is the one designed especially for combat. To paraphrase Maeve in Westworld’s third season finale on HBO, this one is also built with an affection for lost causes. As the first causality of the five, she pretty much perishes fighting for one lost cause.

Saturnes, and later Mariage after a tea brand, is one with a 3D printer dubbed Gold Weaver. She is the winner of battle royale by War Game rule: the only way to win is not to play. She does not engage in active combat other than defending said 3D printer and the girl who currently owns her.

Methode is literally a fire breather and pretty much the antagonist of this story. Voiced by Sora Amamiya in the animated adaption oppose to Lacia played by Nao Toyama. Ms. Amamiya and Ms. Toyama seemed to start a collaboration where they play antagonists to each other for the last five years.

While we like to tell people not to judge books by their covers, one can safely assume, from various covers of Beatless and how it comes together, that the book is jam packed with male gazes.

To start with, yours truly feels reluctant to call Lacia the protagonist, since the book is written mostly through the point of view of Aruto Endo, who “happens” to be her owner. Mr. Endo is a 17 years old boy who comes cross Lacia, and went over the moon for the gorgeous robot. Can you really fault the teenager for looking at his er, new hot “desktop case” a few more times?

Besides, there are worse cases like Altered Carbon out there, while this book keeps its “Juvenile/Young Adult” line firmly. While Interfaces are used as sex bots in the world of Beatless, Lacia tells young Endo several times that they can only do it after the boy’s 18^th birthday.

A bricky page turner

Since Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan has been dragged through the mud up there, it’s time to roast the author himself a bit. Yours truly read AC shortly after finishing Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, and all those “praises” about how action-packed the Morgan book is became head scratchers. I mean, Simmons can keep his readers on the edge of their seats for 20 and more pages on one single action scene, while Morgan’s action barely lasts beyond one short paragraph of merely three lines.

Beatless is more in the school of Simmons, and I do not just mean how final chapters of the Japanese novel share similarities with Fall of Hyperion and Rise of Endymion. The book was originally serialized over the course of 13 months on Newtype, each installment has its own hook when it comes to action and locations. Collected as a thousand pages long epic, the vivid description would be more than enough to keep one reading on.

The Nolan loops

“Which Nolan?” is my question to anyone who might ask me about my thoughts on Nolan pieces. I mean there are at least 2 Nolans active in Hollywood right now, big Chris in movies and young Jonathan mainly in television. In terms of entanglement between one J Nolan and Beatless, things are certainly very interesting.

The fourth chapter of the book is called Automatic World, where Lacia and Endo infiltrate a high-rise by wearing very elaborately explained stealth camouflage. Said camouflage is originally Lacia’s weapon against high-tech foes since it turned non-organic devices both invisible and blind. So, when worn as camouflage, Lacia uses the visualizing sonar to see.

Consider how much Person of Interest and that new Westworld on HBO have in common with Beatless, if the sonar thing at the end of Dark Knight was indeed thought up by J Nolan, it’s going to be quite poetic.

Take 2020’s Westworld Season 3 the New World for example. The way Caleb and Dolores meeting in a dark ally is uncannily similar to Aruto Endo meeting Lacia for the first time. The sentiment that Dolores is the only real thing in Caleb’s life had me laughing out loud in those early lockdown days.

Reality might never catch up but its peer already did

With Deepfake and more recently ChatGPT, maybe it is truly a blessing that when reality decides to give us the robopoclypase, it turns out to be a dumber farce than anyone can speculate. Still, nice to look at hardware is missing. Killer bots in do not look cool in a merchandising sense, and over-the-counter pleasure models like Beatless’ Interfaces might never see the light of day for way too many good reasons.

However, “5 years ahead of the curve at best” in Hase’s afterword for the paperback was cut down about only one year after the book’s initial 2012 outing. One did not have to write machine intelligences readers suppose to root for by having a dumb boy falling head over heels for them. One can write as said machine intelligence in first-person narration.

Hugo awards had been given out to this newer approach, like Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie and Martha Wells’ Muderbot Dairies. Especially the latter, when people ask why Muderbot’s disguise as human look not so good, they reply that they don’t have to be pretty as sexbots or Pleasure Models. Of course the works of those 2 older writes are set in the far future when space travel is common, but I’m sure hard sci-fi with near future setting has such counterparts as well.

Wasted potential

Yours truly came across this book like they came cross many books: there is an audio-visual adaption out there. Just as Westworld’s second season winding down in summer 2018, the paperback promoting Beatless’ less than ideal animated adaption appeared on the bookshelf of a Japanese language bookstore yours truly visited regularly. It was an instant purchase. I am dedicating the last portion here for the animated adaption.

The series director they had is the right choice. Seiji Mizushima had directed Mobile Suite Gundam Double-O, the gundam show going back to the series’ “lifting things from Arthur C Clarke” root and looks slicky near future. Clarke references (Lacia’s weapon is called Black Monolith and that dumb boy Aruto says “This just might be the end of childhood for us humans” for calling out loud!) and near future slickness are what Beatless’ strength lies. But funding and such had kept the show from becoming a potential classic.

So, I guess I am still recommending people to read this book. Especially those with more leftist laying. Boy, you all are going to hate this book’s guts, but criticizing this book’s brand of liberalism is something you all going to be gladly dong.

Waypoints in print

This is a Hideo Kojima adjacent book report since I would never have known this comic without reading an article by that snake oil salesman.

The book with yellow cover pictured above was translated into English as the Creative Gene, a collection of magazine column articles written by Hideo Kojima between 2007 and 2013. Most of those are book reports. Cover of the English edition says “How books, movies, and music inspired the creator of Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid.” Or like Waypoint Radio hosts once said “to nerd out and deep dive into the culture, art and entertainment that inspire and provoke” the so-called video game auteur.

The one on 2001 Nights is more interesting by comparison. For one thing, it recounts both Kojima’s childhood encounter with Japanese comics and his early days at Konami. Since the article is dated to February, 2008, I am inclined to think that the death march to finish and ship Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of Patriots made the man recalling his grunt days at the company. For another, there is the following passage:

2001 Nights has Asimov’s scientific pursuits, Clarke’s lyricism, Heinlein’s heroism, and even Bradbury’s fantasy.

I am actually calling Hideo Kojima a snake oil salesman out of respect, since he is not only good at selling “his own” products, but even better at selling things made by someone else. Calling a “funny book” the blend of all Big Three and Ray Bradbury is an instant sell for a reader of science fiction like yours truly. Though the book is hard to get hold of outside Japan. I didn’t read it until came out, sadly with the Kindle version on an Amazon Japan account. “Gob smacked” cannot even begin to describe my reaction.

Don’t call it a “funny book”

When the word “manga” is used in Japanese, it does come closer to “funny book”, for there is a counterpart called “gekiga” which is closer to “graphic novel”. Think how Emmy Awards separate scripted television into comedy and drama, and the difference between “manga” and “gekiga” shall be clear to you. The difference also comes down to art style. Manga is usually more cartoony, while gekiga is the photo realistic graphic of the 1970s before graphic became an essential aspect of video games. Between those 2, when the English phrase “comic book” was written out in katakana, it usually means the “larger than life” or “over the top” stuff.

On that regard 2001 Nights is a bona fide comic book laying towards gekiga. Its author, Yukinobu Hoshino is a stranger to me, mainly because of my bad habit: I almost exclusively read Japanese comics that have animated adaptions. Mr. Hoshino’s works have dense art style and denser scripts that just would keep most animation producers away.

Mr. Hoshino also loved to research the shit out for his works. Yamataika, a fantasy book that won him his first Seiun Sho Best Comic Award (the Japanese counterpart to Hugo Best Graphic Story), has a bibliosoph rivaling them non-fiction books. His work in the field of hard science fiction was not recognized by Seiun awards until the early teens. Inherit the Stars is a graphic novel based the first 3 Giant novels by James P Hogan.

I mention Inherit the Stars here partially because Kojima’s first book report in Creative Gene is about that book. Maybe it’s because Hogan got canceled for being a Holocaust denier, or maybe the Hogan estate is just stubborn, the English copy of those Giant novels were hard to come by when I heard about it in the late teens. With a in for a penny in for a pound mentality, I might as well read those much-more-beloved-by-Japanese-readers sci-fi novels in Hoshino’s comic form. The detailed and grand art sure made the ride worth it.

2001 Nights was years before those 2 books. The year when it was eligible for the Seiun, a Rumiko Takahashi classic titled Urusaiyatsura won the award. Guess a book about sad astronauts just could not beat a comedy featuring alien visitors at that time.

1980 nights short

The title 2001 Nights is obviously a mixture of 2 things. One being 1001 Nights or the Arabic Nights, a collection of bed time stories. Another being 2001 A Space Odyssey, the brain child of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke. To put it bluntly, 2001 Nights is about the next 4 to 5 centuries where astronauts are sad for a variety of reasons.

Those are the English chapter titles I screen capture from the book’s Wikipedia page. Funny thing about this, there is one chapter before the First Night and another chapter after the Final Night, neither was translated into English. So, Hoshino made 21 nights out of 2001. At least that is a round number short.

The left untranslated first chapter is called Our Great Ancestors, and obviously a more violent retell of 2001 A Space Odyssey’s Dawn of Man segment. The first half focuses on how smaller primates had to keep running in the dangerous pre-historic Earth. The second half is about how the chimpanzee like human ancestors devasting everything in their way with a piece of bone, a full bloody page of different animals killed. The coda being chimpanzee in a space shuttle leading to none other than Major Gagarin of the USSR, the first man in space. Well, this story does give me the idea to type “monkey paw” a lot in this one.

The twenty first and final story Hoshino did in the 2001 Nights universe is titled In the Ocean of the Night. It’s more about First Contact and takes place about a century after the Final Night. Maybe it’s deemed not about sad astronauts enough, so the brand is “side story” and it’s not included in the 3 volumes of 2001 Nights. One has to purchase Hoshino’s looser anthology titled 2001+5 to read this one.

A gift keeps on giving to Kojima and company

Now onto what English speakers can read. I would not know too much about “scientific pursuits”, but structure wise 2001 Nights does mimic Isaac Asimov’s first three Foundation books and I, Robot. The Nights are rather loosely connected to each other. The discovery or advancement made in the previous chapter does impact the next, but do not except returning characters too often.

Earth Glow is a story very likely influenced the writing style of “A Hideo Kojima Game”. The plot is about a USA space shuttle delivering a payload to USSR space station L N Tolstoy. The Americans aboard think they are firing a nuke, but in fact it’s an arranged meeting between US president and USSR chairman. “Mr. President” bookend a conversation is a must-have there. The yank’s reaction to Tolstoy is “Truly War and Peace, heh?”, very tongue-in-cheek. One thing MGS3 evolved from previous was having references like that instead of just repeating.

Writers were not the only ones inspired by this book over at Kojima and company. There are two panel from A Stranger’s Footsteps. The story is a tragedy where a sentient planet unintentionally killed every human settler landing on them.

As you can see the space suits here are rather form fitting. Compared to those, the suits in previous stories usually has a Renaissance collar look to them. Also, I’m inclined to think that the sneaking suit protype in MGS3 is lifted wholesale from here. But, good “Hideo Kojima Game” is not the only ones to “steal” from this book, not good one did too. Here is a panel from Symbiotic Planet, the direct continuation of A Stranger’s Footsteps for people trying to avoid the fiasco in that story.

I got to admit that not-so-pleasant-to-look-at flying blubs like those are not exactly the most original of creature design, though seeing similar design during Death Stranding’s Washington DC still makes one think. The blubs in this comic are pacifiers while Death Stranding used similar design to break into Resident Evil territory. Very typical of video games.

Perhaps the biggest offender is how the relucent showdown between 2 sad commandoes plot in MGS3 was lifted from a story titled Colony. From jungle fighting to nuclear weapon in the hands of a single infantry unit, that story has it all.

Anti-matter, fossil fuel for the FTL age

The first several stories in 2001 Nights do just feel like 2001 A Space Odyssey homage:

Sea of Fertility is about a dig site on the Moon, though instead of an alien artifact they dug fossil of alien fishes.

Maelstrom III is about a miner in Asteroid Belt trying to escape after his facility hit by solar flare, the action is quite like how David trying to getting back into Discovery. Also the miner’s grandchild has a role to play in the last 2 stories of this book.

Posterity was cheekily subtitled Star Child in Japanese. I’m saving the content of this story for later into the article though.

Rendezvous also has the subtitle Star Gate in Japanese. The story is about cryo-sleep experiments overseen by old men like old David in the third act of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Also, a younger man into the cryo-sleep saw things we people wouldn’t believe.

Discovery is called Faraway Traveler in Japanese. The English title is referred to the deep space exploration vessel named Discovery. On board, an AI called KARC 9000, who would be called HAL by the men on the ship. KARC would meet a fate worse than death when they resurfaced in other stories of 2001 Nights.

Then there is Lucifer Rising, a 140 pages long epic marking 2001 Nights coming to its own. It’s a pivotal point for the book since human get fuel for faster-than-light on the fabled “tenth” planet (The story was written in the 1980s when Pluto still counted as planet.) of our solar system, Lucifer. Astronauts are sent there due to an accident when anti-matter caused explosion by simply touch matter. Among them a devoted catholic scientist Father Ramon handpicked by the Pope. The plot follows also includes a murderer mystery since the crew members are killed one by one.

The story has cosmic horror vibe since astronauts do see ancient creatures enclaved in the transparent chunks of anti-matter. But they might just be dead. This story is not about ancient evil waking up doing mind fucks, instead by accepting the too-ancient-to-be-recorded natural history of our solar system is more than enough for us furless monkeys to do mind fucks to ourselves. Coupled with the arts, the consistent quotes of Paradise Lost do not feel corny at all in this story. My words would not be sufficient enough to sell people on this story. You all should read it for yourself.

Keeping up with the Robinsons

Volume 2 of 2001 Nights opens with a pretty typical sad astronauts story titled the Lights of Heaven, where a Russian lady test pilot for the FTL engine would recall her brother’s death at his childhood. The one after this one titled Journey Beyond Tomorrow contains 2 stories actually.

The first story dealing with KARC and their worse-than-death faith. The AI was sent before human achieve FTL speed, so when people caught up them, the machine was simply ignored.

The second story dealing with the fictional Robinson Foundation’s effort in terraforming an alien planet. It looks simple on the surface, but its connection to an early story became an emotional thread of this whole book.

Posterity, or Star Child, deals with the pursued funder of Robinson Foundation and his wife donating both gene and meme for a space seed plan. Their genic material would be stored on a starship using a meteor for interstellar flight. Once the ship found a habitable planet, it would start making babies. The nanny bots on board would appear as Mr. and Mrs. Robinson to teach the kids everything they need to survive in the new world. Mrs. Robinson bot would ever shed tears for a kid died on the ship. The kids land on the planet called Ozmar III almost 4 centuries after departure. They think they are lucky and their new home was actually terraformed by a long died brother of theirs.

Without going to the details, I call tell you all that once out of that convoluted mystery box of its, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim tells the same exactly story. Though the raised by the Robinsons kids do not go to that good night just yet, they have one final test in Final Night: Children of the Earth or Songs of Distant Earth in Japanese. This book might as well go out with another Arthur C Clarke reference. Some of them chose to go with a space born human branch called New Generation for a voyage across the galaxy.

No one is welcomed

The thing about listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast, one would come to the conclusion that it’s not only the void outside our planet that does not want us there, the planet itself would keep us out with mountains, desert, steppe and oceans. All those terral at least have air for us to breathe.

The unmentioned until this point 2001 Nights stories all deal with the subject of how fucked up it is to be in space or on an alien planet:

Medusa’s Throne is a bit of play-it-for-farce take on the theme. Presented as a trilogy, truly ancient Greek tragedy play contest style, we got people crashed by rolling stone because they thought they saw a city. We got people swallowed by a tsunami made of sand instead of water. We got people cannot move because they would have been dead before stop in a total vacuum, they got burnt by a sun instead.

Final Evolution deals with 2001 Nights take on the perfect organism. But instead of that psychosexual piece H R Giger made for the 1979 cinematic classic, it looks like a black hole but does not act as people predict black holes would act.

Elliptical Orbit is a heartbreaker on many levels. A young and hot pirate queen style space trucker lady and an older man have to deal with a terror plot. By the end it is revealed that the man is actually the lady’s son, she just went into FTL trips a lot while his longer life became full of sorrow during her absence. This is not Robert A Heinlein’s time travel fuckery but it’s real close.

An Hour’s Song in a Birdless Sky and So Brief, so Lasting a Love both deals with human colony being destroyed on alien planets. The former due to sun fuckery yet a kind of local birds can time travel out of disaster. The latter due to local food source being toxic, but at least the leading lady there gets to rejoin her husband in a descent into an event horizon.

Odyssey in Green is a direct prequel to Final Night, where the dream of one Adam Robinson was crashed. He hoped to make First Contact with alien and only found some vegetable trying to escape their doomed planet. Space is too big to understand, yet contains so little for life.

Conclusion

Despite this being my longest book report to date, 2001 Nights is actually the briefest read of them all. I once thought that literature is the only good way to do the so-called hard science fiction, all after nothing can explain bullshit better than mere words. The book made me see the potential in comic since pretty pictures can success where dry words fail.

If all else fail, the stories about astronauts being sad here can give Hollywood’s endeavor in the genre as a whole a run for their money. Like the Abnormal Mapping duo said and I know how hard to take hold of them (I tried.), you all just got to read this.

(Full spoiler for a book titled the Three-body Problem. Though due to more or less unorganized nature of the text behind, one might have to read that book to understand the bloody thing.)

It can be said that this is a Hideo Kojima adjacent book report. The connection between the Three-body Problem and that snake oil salesman is two-fold, one direct and one otherwise.

The direct one first. Japanese translation of this book was published in 2019 and Kojima contributed a praising “back of the box quote”. Apparently, he found time to read and enjoy this pretty heavy and dense science fiction novel when the unreported crunch to finish and ship Death Stranding started.

The indirect connection between those 2 is something very personal to yours truly. Allow me to take you all back to the year 2006. Back then, Kojima and company were probably still trying to figure out the black box we know as PS3. My 16 years old self finally made first contact with “A Hideo Kojima Game”, Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance on PC. As far as “first contact” goes, it was a bumpy ride that led to me calling Hideo Kojima “my sworn enemy” after seeing credits roll twice in MGS2.

In that 6 to 7 months long time when I tried to turn the Tanker Discovery and the Plant Big Shell inside out, the Three-body Problem, or just Three-body was being serialized on the Chinese magazine called Science Fiction World. It tells the story of First Contact with 2 parties end up as sworn enemies to each other.

A Master of horror who co-owns a rocket-shaped trophy

By 2006, I had been a reader of Science Fiction World for 3 years. On the so-called hard science fiction side, Cixin Liu was the king for that magazine. But Liu did not ignite my interest in sci-fi since. My interest in the genre started in the mid-1990s, while his works in that field did not start until 1999.

Instead, his works wet my appetite for horror. The first of his I read titled Devourer contains both horror on individual level and geographical hell on earth brought by future or alien weaponry. Let’s just say that by the time I saw Alien for the first time in 2007, that 1979 flick felt tame in comparison. Monsters and implied deeds have nothing on what extreme environment can do when it comes to fouling humans up.

While Liu’s stories are mostly in short form, his did dip into novel territory. Ball Lightning, the event of which the Three-body Problem would reference sporadically, came out in 2004. Then there is his magus opus, Remembrance of Earth Past trilogy started with Three-body. Writing those 3 books must have burnt Liu out since it’s hard to find a new piece of science fiction by Liu beyond 2010.

One would think the whole science fiction writing was behind Liu by then, except some loyalty payment whenever his stories get republished of course. Then the damnedest thing happened, a Hugo rocket for Best Novel landed under his name in 2015. Yours truly still trust Hugo Award to a certain degree. Had the Last of Us Part 2 won the one-time Best Game in 2021, I would have played that loathed-by-many sequel to a game I loathe so much. But thank the gods for their stories in Supergiant’s Hades won instead.

So, in the initial lock-down in 2020, I picked up the Three-body Problem British paperback (9 quid it cost, governor.) I bought years before that and started to read. It was a pleasant surprise in more than one way.

Editing choice for genres

When Three-body came out as a Simplified Chinese book in 2007, one who read the novel during the period of serializing, like yours truly, would find the first page jarring. The book skipped the first installment of serialization and began with the second one. Readers of the English edition would not notice, since “Part 1 Silent Spring” in their copies of the Three-body Problem is that first installment us “first readers” saw.

To put it bluntly, Silent Spring is an immersive experience about how one’s life got torn apart in People’s Republic of China at the height of the Cold War, the year 1967 and 1969 to be more precise. Ye Wenjie, the point of view character there, heard how her sister died willing as a martyr for one course, saw her father unwilling martyred for another and her own life almost ruined for taking after her father. Then due to her expertise as an astrophysicist, she was moved to a classified site called Red Coast in inner Mongolia. There is a giant antenna there, shooting towards the stars.

The 2007 Chinese book does not cut this part out, but simply puts it much later into the book. When Wang Miao, the point of view character in the “present day” part of the book, met one of Ye’s student and the latter told her life’s story.

Yours truly sees this choice as adjust the book’s genre to sell more copies. The “present day” in the Three-body Problem starts as a mystery box style paranoia thriller where the pov character being gaslighted by some high tech bs, while Silent Spring is a harrowing piece of historic fiction with a hint of science fiction at its end. Big ass antenna shooting towards space to my 16 years old ass back then still register as “Oh, I guess they were looking for aliens”, thus the novel had landed as a First Contact story already by that point.

Do not call it a game, call it “interactive media”

Part 2 of the book is called Three-body that can be a reference to more than one thing. It takes place “more than forty years” after part 1. In many ways, 2014, when the book came out in English speaking nations and regions, is closer to be “the present day” than the mid to late aughts, when the novel came out in Mainland, China.

For one thing, the book has “the newly completed China Central Television building” in its timeline. That er, monster of a building in Beijing was not completed until 2012, 2 years after Liu finished his intended trilogy. Then 2004‘s “great tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean” happened “more than a decade ago”. Finally there is a reference to Shenzhou 19. Shenzhou is the name for spacecrafts used in China’s space program. As time of writing, early 2023, number 18 is still not launched. I guess reality just does not update as frequently as Liu’s speculation.

Speak of author’s speculation outpacing reality, Virtual Reality technology is way more advanced in the book than in our reality. It is common enough that the longue of National Nanotech Research Center in Beijing, China can just have one in there. The titular “Three Body” can mean the game people play with the V-suit, a VR device that simulate senses beyond audio and visual.

In Tencent’s faithful 30 episodes long adaption in Chinese, Three Body became a massive multiplayer survival game set in a wasteland where cannibalism is a valid way to keep on playing. Not so much in the book. There, the game feels more like a VR chatroom with details noticeable or otherwise to the player. Its goal is more in line with tabletop games, since player’s performance rely less on the pre-programmed mechanic but how much they can describe with the in-game details they notice. Then some hidden Game Master would give out reward, which is usually the knowledge that game world is more doomed than one can imagine. Eventually some sun related fiasco would destroy everything, from frozen to dust to perish in the flame. My favorite is how human body turned inside out when it gets pulled in vacuum by the gravity of two way-too-close-each-other celestial bodies. I told you Liu is a master of horror who would give Hollywood a run for their money.

The game turns out to be a way the alien invaders to recruit local collaborators and generate empathy among humans by the third act. Of course, the closer to reality casino or theme park type video games exist in the world of Three-body Problem just to contrast this VR “masterpiece”. The aforementioned Tencent Chinese series even makes the dry text of one final third act revelation, the one visualized on the cover of first English edition actually, into an interactive VR experience the characters get into.

In many ways this fictional Three Body game is very closer to Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty. Love it or hate it, MGS2 is the poster child of not rewarding players for their agency. One wonder if Kojima loves the book partially because there is the kind of misery sim in the book is like things he and company make.

I am of the opinion of game must be fun and I admit my definition of “fun” is pretty narrow, “no power fantasy, no fun” kind of narrow. If a game wants me to feel powerless, I would rather call it “a piece of interactive media” since other forms of media can make me feel powerless yet remain enjoyable to see and hear. Like reading about someone playing such a game is more than enough for me.

The woman who sold the world

By Part 3 Sunset for Humanity, Ye Wejie, the pov character in the period portion of the book, was revealed to the woman who sold the world. She covered up the fact that Red Coast did make First Contact with an alien race later dubbed Trisolaris and went to extreme length for that, including murdering her husband along with base politic commissar. Neither man knew that she sold our world, but commissar’s further inquiry would reveal that.

Reading this book again on Kindle help me see the seed buried in Part 1 about how Ye would sell the world without a second thought, it’s about how if evil is iceberg then humanity must the ocean under it. That ocean is inherently bad no matter how one look at it so it needs outside intervention Ye’s happier days on Earth were when she provided education for younger members of a community and received warmth distantly from said community. A type of happiness that the so-called Cold War days just did not provide. Funny how her thought is not “Stars are better off without us”, but “Our monkey paws are allowed on the stars and space if what they can do with nuclear power is anything to go by.”

The Two Jacks

Almost to prove Ye’s point about human, the most human character in the book is a former special force member turned cop named Shi Qiang. In the book, he is described to be someone closer to Jack Reacher on the outside and Jack Bauer of 24 fame in the inside. Big dude with agility and wit, a wit so sharp that it’s scare.

On the one hand, when pov character Wang Miao got gaslit by alien invaders, Shi was the only one that can comfort the confused and scared scientist. Tell the man to “Eat, sleep, drink (liquor) if it’s necessary. Then get back to work if you feel better”. It’s about the only way street smart can be of use to egg heads.

On the other hand, Shi is responsible for the last and most brutally effective action set-piece of the book. Operation Guzhen is a chapter goes very well with Ray Escapes and Big Shell, 2 Harry Gregson-Williams tracks for MGS 2, back to back. I remember reading the scene on the magazine back in later 2006, and the more intrigue inducing second half of Ray Escapes was playing in my head. Guess Ocelot talking to “Mr. President” in the cockpit of Ray after a tanker sunk does provoke the image of another tanker got sliced and diced along with its crew on the Panama by a zither made of nano material.

Neither “us” nor “them” are the Aztec, but they are closer

A way the book’s alien invasion collaborators justify their action is to call human kind the Aztec. Though except their action of finding local help, Trisolaris in the book is actually closer to the Mesoamerican natives than humans. Just the humble opinion of someone who had listened to a podcast or two on the subject. Oh, and they are the devil one doesn’t know.

For one, Trisolaris shares a similarly pessimistic world view with Aztec. They found out that there were 12 planets in their solar system with 3 suns. 11 were long gone into the suns, and their world is next. Then this world view was weaponized into some dumb thing called Farmer Hypothesis and taught to humans. Farmer Hypothesis and how humans are the chickens to be slaughtered in the story being the emphasis of Tencent’s show is that show’s biggest misstep if you ask me.

Other thing being how they are better builder just for survival. Even Conquistadors admitted that Aztec could outbuild anyone in Europe at the time. So, the statement about them being lower on the so-called Civilization hierarchy is just utter nonsense.

Guess all is fair in a struggle for Living Space, depicting what one has to do as the malice of an enemy included.

Xin, Da, Ya

Xin da and ya were first taught to me in the Chinese classes during high school. The 3 characters, excuse the pun, form the quality of translated text. Funny how I only heard of them during classes about my native tongue, while in English classes, translation requires 3 other completely different characters: grammar, grammar and grammar.

By the time I had purchased my copy of Three-body Problem I have not thought about that trio for about a decade. Yet Ken Liu, the translator of this book, reminded me in his afterword, though they became “fidelity to the source”, “aptness of expression” and “beauty of style”. Young Ken’s habit of not afraid to use longer English words to get the points through is present throughout the novel itself. Including but not limited to some of Shi Qiang’s more laconic regards. One of Shi’s regards was actually translated incorrectly, as in the original Chinese the line is actual ordering his armed squad member to kill any armed hostile who tries anything, while in English it morphed into he would personally kill any sob who tries anything.

Other than the dense text is pretty close across the 2 languages. In fact, it was clear that whenever English dialogue is required in that Tencent Chinese series, Ken’s text is obviously the base for those scenes. I would call that a feat, especially with MGS2 did what MGS2 had to do in Japanese to English translation before.

Book report on Metal Gear Solid by Raymond Benson

The notes I took for this is almost 3 years old. During the initial pandemic related lockdown, yours truly took the chance to read every science fiction novel on their book shelf. Some real bangers if “Hugo Award winner” is your jam. Then there is this airport thriller ass airport thriller. I somehow took 6 pages worth of notes and now unleash it onto the world as the “conclusion” of my own MGS’ quarter centennial “trilogy”.

12 years late to this party

Metal Gear Solid is the novelization of a 1998 game with the same name, written originally in English by Raymond Benson. Published early 2008, this book can be seen as more of a tie-in product to that year’s Playstation 3 exclusive summer blockbuster Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of Patriots. My 18 years old self back then was somewhat an ideal reader of this book.

Yours truly encountered MGS series at the age of 16 back in 2006. That teenager had played through Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance on PC twice despite the poor port, a worse localization into Chinese and a generally negative view on this game. The same year, a file book of MGS in Chinese was published with DVD disc “Snake Eater the Movie edited by Hideo Kojima” attached. While watching it cannot replace actually playing MGS3, I still caught up with the story as far back then.

So, with no access to and no interest in playing the 1998 original on Playstation, this book would have made sure my 18 years old self know the references in MGS4. Of course, playing the original for hot second in MGS4 would still go over the teenager’s head. Shadow Mosses would have been a place they only read about.

But I did not read the book back then, instead I read at the age of 30 all those years later, after binging through MGS 1 to 4 in 2014. Maybe it’s for the better as the difference between game and book is more interesting. Otherwise, there is not much to say about an airport thriller.

Male gaze of combat operative

In many ways, Benson seemingly took this opportunity to make up for the fact that his Bond books writing career started with Tomorrow Never Dies instead of Golden Eye. 1998’s Metal Gear Solid is a game clearly inspired by the 1995 Bond flick, with the whole Janus reveal lifted wholesale and stretched long. The whole Bond villain being another spy commando just like Bond is not hard to see. Though, the usual male gaze agent 007 cast at the women around him is implanted onto the seemingly asexual Solid Snake is a weird change of pace.

For starter, Snake calling every woman he sees “babe”. This is acceptable compared to him calling Meryl Silverburgh a “teenager” while she is in her mid-20s. The book did say her age, only that she was 10 during the Gulf War. This story, according to the game, took place in 2005. Or at least after September eleventh 2001, since Snake thought about the disaster of that day while climbing that two towers in Shadow Mosses, a fairly action packed segment of the game. “Girl” would also make sense with Snake being older than her, but teenager went bit too far on the patronizing women direction. Well, “spank and kiss” is literally the way Snake wanted to show affection…

Or maybe it’s just that English writers would just push action hero archetype towards being assholes. Solid Snake’s comment on FOXHOUND members during Mission Briefing is an example. The original Japanese amounts to “Something out of comic books”. The English translation in the PS game became the laconic “Lovely bunch.” Then this book changed into two lines: calling Decoy Octopus “talented follow” and the whole band “circus sideshow” quite insultingly. Snake do “enjoy all the killing” since he thought “nothing took the place of a living target”.

Maybe to MGS “purist”, the more action hero approach of this book is too much, Snake goes in armed with SCOM pistol and snaps a lot of necks. He even drops one-liners. But I guess with the hero called “combat operative” and no focus on sneaking mission, one might as well just enjoy whatever action is on offer here.

Live by retcon, die by retcon

Perhaps people who had played the 1998 game still needs to read this book before they went into MGS4. The tie-in aspect of the book lies in how it would introduce retcons to those who thought they knew the story already.

Retcon 1

Perhaps the more immediately one is how both Hal “Otcan” Emmerich and Meryl both live, with the those two being a fake “choice matters” thing in the 1998 game. Yours truly’s playthrough in 2014 was with Hal living in the end. My head cannon being that Hal needs Snake saving him while Ocelot probably took the seemingly dead but just unconscious Meryl hostage in case Colonel Cambell went after him. But the book got other ideas. To foreshadow Hal’s heroic resecure of all the hostages out of Big Shell, he liberated all other hostages out of Shadow Mosses.

Retcon 2

Sequel feeding back all around!

Before the shootout between Ocelot and Snake, the older man practically recapped the story of Snake Eater, which was of course not yet written back in 1998.d

Psycho Mantis would spoil MGS4 a little bit before he died, which amounted to “MGS4, coming this summer” back in 2008.

Emma Emmerich was mentioned too, somehow teasing both MGS2 and the sequel book Benson was yet to write.

Retcon 3

This is something that got retconned in 2010 and 2015. Master Miller is a healthy man with all his limbs in this book, still punching a sandbag before some ill shit happens, which is nothing like the broken man in Phantom Pain. He is third generation American Japanese, which was retconned into a bastard son between an American solider and a Japanese woman in Peace Walker. Miller’s service record includes SAS, Green Berets, Marine and of course FOXHOUND, but in the series’ 2010s installments he is just a mercenary before FOXHOUND.

Rection 4

This is actually the first thing one would read when they read this book. Dr. Clark, a woman speaking in “seductive and elegant voice” showed a U.S president(probably Nixon) the birth of Solid and Liquid. This is Kojima and crew putting an old trick with their language while the English translation could not catch up due to the frequency of pronouns. It’s not that Japanese language does not have pronoun, only that pronouns can be side stepped since “Dr. Clark” or “the doctor” can be used more frequently without feeling weird. So when they decided to map Dr. Clark onto lady Paramedic in MGS3, they did not have to think it as retcon.

Retcon 5

The only seen masked Johnny, the one who takes too much shit, is described as “tall and blond”, like how he was shown in MGS4 promotion material. Also, he was “promoted” from bit player prison guard to lead computer-technician on Shadow Mosses. Strange how Hal had nothing to say about the guy.

Pop culture

A fun thing about airport thriller written in English is the pop culture references author drops. The notes yours truly took is mostly about Psycho Mantis and Metal Gear Rex.

PM

Psycho Mantis is described as “a hideously scarred creature with a face that Darth Vader or Frankenstein’s Monster wouldn’t have wanted to possess” after he was defeated. An influential piece of science fiction cinema and the first science fiction novel, you sure are classy Mr. Benson.

Speak of Psycho Mantis, the fight against him is of course not about the non-existence second slot of controllers. Instead, it’s a deep probe into Solid Snake’s childhood involving a theme park in Oregon. It’s something another video game would do more than a year after this book’s publishment. It reminded me of the third Scarecrow fight in Batman Arkham Asylum at least.

MGR

Rex “resembled the hardware appearance of Transformer toys or spaceship in post-Star Wars science fiction movies”, not “hide the fact that it was completely mechanized” in this book. Guess the writer is as confused as yours truly regard how little this design had inspired merch.

Verdict

Reading this between Robert A Heinlein’s Hugo Awards winners sure did not do this book any favor in my eyes. Plus being a typical airport thriller, reading it at home would bring out a certain dryness in the text. But if you need to take a flight recently, there are worse to kill time than reading this.

Mapping Fire Emblem Three Houses cast members upon Naussica cast of characters

Part 2 those remain in print only

On one episode of History On Fire podcast episode with guests, host Daniele Bolelli said “Most people are not evil. Most people are weak. And weakness is fertile ground where evil can thrive.” It’s a line that would summarize the 1984 film titled Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind well but not necessarily apply to the graphic novel with the same name ran from 1982 to 1994. The book is good versus evil in the form of super hero versus super villain. The unusual strong-willed people against the unusual truly evil people wielding superhuman power to be more precious. So nothing is more suitable to begin this chapter than villains who did not make the cut into the film.

1 Another way out of Hades

Makoto Furukawa as Miralupa

(Mr. Furukawa played Sylvain, the “cool guy” womanizer in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Miralupa does not appear in the graphic novel until page 116 of volume 2 and way beyond where the film ends. This seemingly magic wielding evil emperor is a sign of escalation for the story, where the comic book starts in more than one way.

Yours truly chose Fire Emblem Three Houses cast member Makoto Furukawa for 2 reasons, one long and one short. The short of it is that Mr. Furukawa simply sounds like Tatsuhisa Suzuki, the NieR Automata cast member suitable for this role. The long of it is of course more complicated.

Yours truly also think that Mr. Furukawa would make a wonderful Zagreus in Supergiant’s Hades and the way Nausicaa neutralizes this one as threat can be described as “Hades, but a walking sim”. Both end in what seems to be hell, Nausicaa sees Miralupa as the pathetic old man he is and decides to lead him to some place better. Then they walk to somewhere like heaven while Nausicaa wakes up in the real world while Miralupa enjoys a moment of joy before perish. With Makoto Furukawa being in one episode of Jojo Stone Ocean as a villain, maybe he can have longer staying power in another comic adaption.

2 the worse one between two

Kaito Ishikawa as Namalith

(Mr. Ishikawa played Dimitri, the vengeful future king in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Unlike his brother Miralupa, Dorok co-emperor Namalith meets a gruesome fate fitting for a villain as he is. He is the first one Nausicaa nuked on command without she realizing it. Three Houses cast member Kaito Ishikawa is suitable for this part for 2 reasons, his involvement in Three Houses included.

The blonde boar Dimitri can be seen as somewhat of an edge lord in Three Houses and the penultimate boss of Empire campaign. Calling Edelgard her childhood nick name before getting slain by her sure earned a “This motherfucker” from yours truly back in the dog days of summer in 2019. Guess Ms. Kakuma and him can go and play another game of thrones as Kushana and Namalith here.

Of course the lead I had buried is that Mr. Ishikawa played the titular lead in the infamous Rise of the Shield Hero, a show I had not checked out but slaver power fantasy is not up my alley. Either this actor sounds like someone very suitable for comic book super villain.

3 Given up vengeance for peace

Shizuka Ishigami as Ketcha

(Ms Ishigami played Petra, arguably the best girl in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

I had said that this blog is partly inspired by watching Arknights Prelude to Dawn, but this is the second and last cast choice directly inspired by that show. Three Houses cast member Shizuka Ishigami played a cop with heart of gold named Chen in Arknights, who switch between “I am managing my anger” and “To hell with angry management”. This is the swing Nausicaa character, a Dorok interpreter named Ketcha manage consistently as well.

Ketcha is a character not in the movie simply because her country Dorok was cut out of the movie. In the book, she is main side character in the chapters where bad ass Yupa provides point of view. She is also a love interest of Asbel instead of Nausicaa being fitted into that role like in the movie. Anyway, Ms. Ishigami is fit for character would give up something personally for the greater good.

4 I’m little and I know things

Aoi Yuki as Chikuku

(Ms Yuki played Lysithea, the little Miss Know-it-all of Golden Deer in Fire Emblem Three Houses. And yes, as a NieR Automat cast member, she is more fitting to play Nausicaa or Kushana.)

Here is someone who does not need farther introduction, good old uncle Pascal in NieR Automata voiced by Aoi Yuki.

I had something going in my mind about how Ms. Yuki being the Megumi Hayashibara among millennials, How she is the example of someone who staying in the game for the variety of her performances. Then when searching for images, I just found out that Pascal’s mug is just Chikuku’s mask with upside down.

To Sqaure Enix, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind sure is a gift keeps on giving. Anyway bookworm Pascal is nothing less than a little boy knows the old way, I believe Ms. Yuki can handle this role rather easily.

5 Way of the wild

Yusuke Kobayashi as Selm

(Mr. Kobayashi was credited to play the male player avatar in Fire Emblem Three Houses. No, I refuse to use their “official” name here since naming is the only truly customizable part.)

People adapting to wasteland while not harming others too much is an archetype lots of post-apocalypse fiction intentionally ignore, boiler plate zombie stories being the worst offenders. People of Forest in Nausicaa graphic novel is such a group and their leader, a seemingly young man named Selm plays a critical role in the latter part of that story.

For this part yours truly choose the voice behind Three Houses’ male player avatar Yusuke Kobayashi. But the reason for this is Mr. Kobayashi’s involvement in a more recent Switch port, Witch On the Holy Night. Sojuro, his role there, is a boy living on mountains for all his life before moved to the city, quite fitting for Slem, a person of the forest to share their wisdom regarding crisis on a wasteland.

6 Camping buddy’s childhood friend

Yumiri Hanamori as Ceraine

(Ms. Hanamori played Mercedes, the oldest student in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Ceraine is aforementioned Selm’s sister and her part in Nausicaa puts bit into bit player. It only takes up 5 panels, but one would say it’s a pivotal part. Page 82 of volume 5 is somewhat a “natural” end point for a posy-apocalypse story, the person readers root for outruns a calamity, find a peaceful corner of the world and prepare to perish there. Then the People of Forest come, leave a girl to help her a bit and remind her of the bigger fish she needs to fry. That girl is named Ceraine.

For this part, yours truly chose Ms. Kurozawa’s Laid-back Camp co-star Yumiri Hanamori. Ms. Hanamori played the female lead Nadeshiko of that likely first new show mentioned on the Bombcast, while Ms. Kurozawa played her childhood friend Aya. With the two young actors not sharing much screen time on either Three Houses and Laid-back Camp, maybe the short yet pivotal time in Nausicaa can make up for it.

7 Two would listen, one would act

Takehito Koyasu as Charuka

(Mr. Koyasu played Seteth, a church cop in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

It would be fair to say that if Tamoor had not name dropped Takehito Koyasu on a giantbomb podcast, yours truly would not have put up any of this fantasy booking blog. It just happens that Mr. Koyasu’s character Three Houses Seteth is just like Charuka in Nausicaa graphic novel, minus some action.

Both men command trooper doing the biding of a church and both have some thoughts regarding how their respective church operates. Though the farthest Seteth goes in Three Houses is walking away in the Empire campaign, while Charuka risks stoning for preaching Nausicaa’s way instead. Mr. Koyasu had voiced men who would act throughout his career, he would be home doing Charuka.

8 Triple Casting

Kikuko Inoue as a God Warrior named Ohma, the Master of Garden and the Master of Crypt

(Ms. Inoue was credited to play “Rhea/Seiros”, the final boss for Empire and Church campaigns in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Three Houses cast member Kikuko Inoue is mainly known among video game consumers as “Hideo Kojima’s favorite”. The two went way back to Policenauts. Since 2008’s Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots, Ms. Inoue always got double casting in those “Hideo Kojima Games”. Usually due to the fact that she would play someone new plus a returning character to the sequel. Though here, yours truly just think she is fitting for all 3 bio mess characters in the seventh and final volume of the graphic novel.

First there is the walking nuclear weapon, Ohma, who calls Nausicaa “little mother”. In Three Houses Inoue as Rhea keeps calling Kurozawa as Sotith “mother”. Guess this one the dynamic can play in the open and linear form.

Second one would be the Master of Garden, a keeper of human culture who would human as their prisoner and labor as librarian. Inoue’s ability of switching from warming to menacing is key to this role.

Finally, there is the ultimate evil in Nausicaa, the Master of Crypt, a keeper of technology and just waiting for the old world to rise again. Rhea in her white dragon is the final boss for 2 campaign, so with some voice processing Inoue can be a menacing final boss for a new form of a stone-cold classic.

（The End, thanks for reading.）

Mapping Fire Emblem Three Houses cast members upon Naussica characters

This one came to me when watching Arknights Prelude to Dawn, the animated adaption of a tower defense game on phones. Whenever I was in mood to see episode end credits, I looked at the Japanese voice cast and thought “Ah, she, she and she were in Fire Emblem Three Houses.” Combined with the fact that Arknights’ brand of post-apocalypse fiction share elements with Naussica of the Valley of the Wind, (i.e. established States despite the wasteland), the fever dream below began…

Post-apocalypse fiction seems to be the hot cake when it comes to adapting video games into non-interactive media. There had been 3 pieces in 3 different languages by January, 2023, with Fallout on Amazon coming soon. There is HBO’s Last of Us in English. NieR Automata Ver 1.1a in Japanese came out one week before that. Last but not least, there is Arknights Prelude to Dawn in Chinese, which is already renewed with a second series titled Perish in Frost already in production.

Post-apocalypse has a lot in common in that another genre fiction in video games just love to do: high fantasy. Sometimes the only difference between those 2 is that the former usually starts with a well, apocalypse while the latter usually leads with so-called creation myth. “Seven Days of Fire” in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is both an apocalypse and creation myth. Genesis meets Revelations if you may.

Fire Emblem Three Houses is a high fantasy game yours truly put 200 hours into. It likely would go down as the most time I put into a single game in my whole life. A draft of review on this long game sits somewhere on one of my hard drives, but I have no energy to replay the game just to finish that piece, not with the afterthought known as Church campaign being the only thing left. So, in an effort to not let the long time I put into the game go to waste, I got the idea to do another fantasy booking: how would Three Houses cast members map onto Naucicaa characters.

Age demographic wise, not too well. Three Houses has a quite youthful cast with enough teenagers to fill three full houses while Naucicaa has loads of nice grey beards and gross mid age men with grosser mustaches. Still with some squashing of the eyes, yours truly came up with more than a dozen anime usual suspects across two parts. After all, Three Houses’ intended to be crowd-pleasing high fantasy story share more archetypes with the influential graphic novel. With most of the elder men cut out, allow me to start with a leading lady who can receive a double casting as the pretty little female lead and a matriarch.

Part 1 those made onto film

1. double casting

Tomoyo Kurozawa as Nausicaa and Matriarch

(Ms. Kurozawa played Sothis, the voice inside player character’s head in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Introducing Armia from Arknights, the first and free one for hooking users voiced by Tomoyao Kurozawa.

She is basically Nausicaa with serial number filed off, a reasonable backstory thrown out and then a pair of long bunny ears attached. Niceness weaponized if you may. Every usual suspect has one doe eyed nice one like this under their belt with the archetype being a dime in a dozen across anime, comic and game. What I consider unfortunate in this case is that the one under Ms. Kurozawa’s belt is for a gatcha phone game. She deserves the chance to play one in a new interpretation of an influential and stone-cold classic like Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Especially since Ms. Kurozawa can be double cast in said classic. Her character in Fire Emblem Three Houses Sothis is in the following fad: girl with sweet face speaking in the tune of grumpy grandpa, just like Power in Chainsaw Man. If she can play a senior citizen convincingly while giving a more recent history lesson(which is all Matriarch does in the book, while she goes through more shit in the film), then she can play the elderly Matriarch of the Valley of the Wind as well.

2 the leading man of another post-apocalypse story

Akio Otuska as Yupa

(Mr. Otuska was credited to play “Jeralt/Narrator” in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Since it’s remake of a Hayao Miyazaki movie based on a graphic novel made by the same man we are talking about here, at least one Miyazaki collaborator should be included on this list. Fire Emblem Three Houses cast member Akio Otsuka had been in 2 Hayao Miyazaki animated joints: first as a bit player zeppelin captain in Kiki’s Delivery Service(1989); then as the dashing American rival to the titular Porco rosso, Donald as shown below.

Yours truly simply think he can age into this man. After a beard and earning some manner plus other skill set of a swashbuckler.

Despite being like a tutorial speaker in a video game, Yupa is a significant second point-of-view character in the graphic novel. His story still has it all: swashbuckling action adventure and internalized lore dump that does not feel like dump at all. The voice behind every playable Snake in Metal Gear Solid series can certainly do this one justice.

3 One to keep close to the chest, literally

Manaka Iwami as Teto

(Ms. Iwami played Ingrid, aka Fate VN’s Saber meets Rider but with flesh and blood in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Manaka Iwami is probably most famous for playing Toru, the female lead in the new and more faithful adaption of Fruit Basket. That comic book show has its own Nausicaa reference, as Toru moves into her new home, sees a mess she needs to clean up and goes “It’s like the Sea of Corruption.”

Anyway yours truly thoroughly enjoy her performance as Ingrid in Fire Emblem Three Houses, the blond, tall and handsome female knight of Blue Lion. And I would love to hear her as one of the earliest plush blueprint characte, the squirrel-fox Teto. (And an excuse to show the titular heroine’s tits since this little thing always crawls into Nausicaa’s jacket when toxic miasma is around) After all, voice actors had voiced animals for a long time. I just love to hearing young Ms. Iwami join the fun.

4 Being August, without gravitas

Ai Kakuma as Kushana

(Ms. Kakuma was credited to play “Edelgard/Flame Emperor”, the final boss of Kingdom campaign in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Ai Kakuma’s performance as Edelgard in Fire Emblem Three Houses is a gift horse I did not know I have until very recently. In the thought process I did for mapping NieR Automata cast members onto Nausicaa characters, I focused too much on Kushana’s gravitas. Mainly because Yoshiko Sakakibara’s performance in the 1984 animated feature is jam packed with gravitas. But Kushana in the graphic novel is not an antagonist like she is in the film, so Ms. Kakuma’s focus on august as Edelgard would do just fine.

I guess Ms. Sakakibara can be cast as Kushana’s mother in the flashback, just as a wink and nod. But since the actor was not in Three Houses and the character does not appear in film, I would just leave it at that.

5 the Chimera

Katsuyuki Konishi as Kurotowa

(Ms. Konishi played Hubert, the imperial spy master in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

There are 2 “plus one” kind of things on this list and this is the one laying on the actor’s merits. Katsuyuki Konishi is probably the oldest cast member to play a teenager in Three Houses. Then again, Hubert sure is a kid grown up fast. Hissing like a snake would age a boy.

Kurotowa is one of those playing against stereotype character. He looks like a bad guy who would betray his mistress Kushana in a heartbeat but survival had those 2 generate a unlike trust between each other, just like Hubert and Edelgard in Three Houses. Maybe the er, chemistry can work the same magic in Nausicaa.

6 “Will you cry when I die, my prince?”…

Yuki Kuwahara as Rastel

(Ms. Kuwahara played Hilda, practically Cher from Clueless all weebed up in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Here is the “plus one” casting that has little to do with the actor’s own merits. Yuki Kuwahara is one of the go-toes for happy-go-lucky-do characters like Thor in Maid Dragons in Kobayashi’s family. Nausicaa’s Rastel only appears for about 10 panels in the graphic novel and just die to drive the plot forward.

Ms. Kuwahara’s Three Houses character Hilda is the closest Gold Deer House has to a monarch’s retainer, as she and head of the house are the queen and king of cool respectively of the cool crowd. And it’s the voice behind this king of cool yours truly want to focus on.

7 …“No, but I will avenge you.”

Toshiyuki Toyonabu as Asbel

(Mr. Toyonabu played Claude, the one everyone seemingly wants to date in Fire Emblem Three Houses)

Introducing Flit Asuno in Mobile Suit Gundam AGE (2011 to 2012), voiced by Toshiyuki Toyonabu, pointing a gun at someone after witnessing a girl die in front of him.

Sure reminds yours truly of this.

Asbel is the twin brother of the aforementioned doomed Rastel and the closest Nausicaa has to a love in the 1984 animated feature though his role in the graphic novel is quite different. While Mr. Toyonabu always play Claude chill in Three Houses, he is fully cable of the furious avenger then chill appearance of Asbel.

(To be continued in Those Remain In Print Only)

Yours truly is in the “minority” when it comes to the Last of Us. By which I mean I loathed it so deeply that I developed a general distrust regarding strangers on the internet telling me what’s “a great game”. It had been 8 years since I touched the game on PS3. So this new show on HBO presented itself as an opportunity for yours truly to play the devil’s advocate against this “masterpiece” more thoroughly without touching the actual game. I have not plan to do the episode review weekly, yet. But since I just watched this 81 minutes long episode titled “When you are in the dark”, I am dropping my two cent here. Spoiler of course is inevitable.

January, 2023 is a fun time to be alive as two piece of perhaps not all deservingly critically acclaimed video game post-apocalypse fiction came to the tv screen again. Only this time the interactivity got left behind. NieR Automata Ver 1.1a debuted on January, the seventh, and it sure is faithful to a fault. I mean why are camera pans indicates gameplay time still in this show’s pilot?

Then the Last of Us was unleashed on HBO on January, the fifteenth, a whole decade after to the week after Fringe (Well, LOU cast member Anna Torv is in it) aired it finale. Yours truly being a devil’s advocate when it comes to the game this show is based on had considered skipping it. But alas, I just want to know. At least see the pilot and write about can make the 82 minutes I spent on watching not a totally waste.

I got to say despite the first 3 minutes being a completely waste, that’s the only bit I like about this show.

Fungiphobia: Starting with a show stopper

It begins with 1968, and we are watching an abc talk show filmed in front of a live studio audience. No corner is cut there. We get a host and two guests, full behind the scene crew and an audience composed of extras in period costumes. One of the guests, played the underrated John Hannah. puts a mad scientist appearance to warn people about Fungi infection being the doom of humanity. It’s certainly the more effective horror story as the show just crosses off everything on a zombie fiction to-do list.

It is a fun scene, perhaps the only fun scene in the pilot. But it does not seem to fit into a zombie fiction all about “Men are the true walking dead”. Put this one in front of things like X-Files, Fringe episodes on tv or comic book B.P.R.D. issue where fungi infection is just another mystery to be solved, this scene would have been a nice set-up. But it’s the Last of Us where all its creators care is the aftermath.

Business as usual

After open credits we jumped to 2003. Guess this show wants to connect with its audience by having it being an alternative reality of current time instead of a near future setting. We have the last day of Joel Miller’s normal life. His daughter cooked him breakfast, his brother Tommy came over to tell him about work. He went to work and the focus became solely on his daughter. Help the neighbour, go to school and get his watch fixed. And people who run the watch shop sure seem spooked about all the police and even military presentation on the street.

Then the first scene of the video game starts at the 15th minute time mark. All above is meant to make one care about Sarah or Sally, you know the doomed daughter of the game’s player character Joel. I don’t think it’s a prestige thing. 9 out of 10 horror movies from the last decade, even the ones yours truly thoroughly enjoy, has this type of “first act problem”. Meaning, just skip to the genre bit and fucking stop manipulating me into caring about obviously doomed characters.

Once them mushroom(though no moving one is visible so in this pilot) zombie appears, yours truly began to think if they were watching a parody. What’s her name Miller went into a neighbour’s house and there were a flesh eating zombie in it. My mind is split between “This is just how people with no idea first see zombie in fiction like this” and “Why did they do a shot-for-shot recreation of first zombie appearing in original Resident Evil?” Greatest video game story? I think not.

Desolation Row

“Present day”, Boston. A kid walks towards the highly fortified Boston. The soldiers on watch takes them in, restrains them and starts to inspect them according to procedure printed and pulled up the wall. The kid tested positive of fungi infection, killed off the screen and dumped for the broke man of a lead Joel to burn as part of a labour he does for the city.

Ah, yes, no moving to zombie to kill, the post-apocalypse bit of this episode is all about “Men are the real walking dead”. FREDA is a fucked-up military government over Boston, Firefly is a revolutionary movement to overthrow it rather recklessly. If Bioshock Infinite can be criticized for its “both sides are bad” statement, then it’s truly baffling why the Last of Us get away with it.

At least the cast is good here.

Pedro Pascal as Joel is fine. Stoic is obviously a facade he put up. As far as player character in a game goes, he only commits three acts of violence here. First being done the first on-screen zombie’s head in 2003. Second being his first contact with Ellie actually. Well, she does charge at him with a knife, so it’s self-defense instead of abuse. The last being at the end of the episode, after having flashback about his daughter being gunned down by a solider, he just bashes another solider’s head in after said soldier points a rifle at him.

Bella Ramsey as Ellie is pitch perfect in every way. Voice and tune is as if Ashley Johnson herself did the dubbing. The timing of curse is better here, but that just might be a tv over game thing.

Anna Torfv as Tess is quite a surprise here, but I am heavily bias on this case since I like her performance on Fringe. Her laconic reference of famous men just made me put “coward” on my list of why Neil Drukmann is overrated. She calls Marlene “Che Guevara of Boston” some screen time after telling Joel not to go “Clint Eastwood”. Which Eastwood would be my question since there is the cowboy then there is Nazi killing machine in Where the Eagles Dare.

Verdict? I hope so

I dare say as a piece pf prestige tv, the Last of Us on HBO is a jack of all trades and master of none. As some review points out the pilot is more interested in aftermath of violence than the act of violence. So, if you want video game level body count, may I recommend you to look up Strike Back, probably watchable on HBO Max as well. All that dramatic bit just made yours truly think “Maybe I should go back to Station Eleven”. The whole endeavor just feels pointless in more than one way.

I don’t know if fan of the game would love this game, for A gamers are truly a unhinged bunch and B not to mention the weirdos not happy with casting. But as a devil advocate against the game, the pilot is not changing my mind one bit.

Book report on Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater by Satoshi Hase

The notes yours truly took for this piece were almost 4 years old by the time of writing. They were taken shortly after I played through Resident Evil 2 remake back in April, 2019. By the time this is written, the remake of Resident Evil 4, aka “Leon S Kennedy Chapter 2”, would be out shortly. Many on the internet complained that the still highly playable Gamecube/Playstation 2 game does not need a remake. Well, if there were people who want another still highly playable Playstation 2 game remade even when it was less than a decade old, I say why not let Capcom’s “teenager” alone.

Don’t judge a book by its cover

Metal Gear Solid novelization is somewhat of a maze. Nothing as convoluted as that Halo affairs but not exactly straight forward either. There are 2008’s Guns of the Patriots by the late Project Itoh and Metal Gear Solid by Raymond Benson, both can be seen as tie-in novels for the PS3 exclusive that summer. Then Konami Digital Entertainment played the same trick for Ground Zeroes in 2014, with Snake Eater by Satoshi Hase published in Japan that January and Peace Walker novelization being an Amazon Japan exclusive pre-order “reward” for the paid demo disc.

Yours truly had the fortune, or maybe misfortune, to read all 4 of those above. Peace Walker is certain in the bottom for reasons I do not want to repeat here. Guns of the Patriots reeks of “fan fic” given its late author’s blogging background and “Hideo Kojima fundamentalist” statement. Benson certainly took his chance of writing MGS novel to make up for the fact that he missed writing Goldeneye novelization by one installment.

Then there is Snake Eater, an almost 600 pages long epic that made yours truly into one of those “give us a MGS3 remake” weirdoes.

On the left is the paperback of this book in Japanese. On the right, a physical copy of Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D released in North America. I’m inclined to think that since that 3DS port was released in Japan with different cover, Konami thought that readers would not notice their “recycling”. I have to say that using this cover is bit of false advertisement for 2 reasons.

First the tranquilizer pistol does not appear in the book. Snake might knock someone out nonlethally in the book but he never puts someone to sleep from a distance.

Second the gun in the right hand and knife in the left hand close quarter combat statue is not in the book either. Snake hit people and throw down with his bare hand while occasionally pulls the knife out.

Rather than that, I say this is pretty good book and I am going to spoil the shit of it.

Conveniently constructed lie

Compared to other writers working on MGS series, Satoshi Haze is a novelist through and through. Snake Eater is written with detail jammed pack in to create an immersive experience. The book also took advantage of the fact that MGS’ alternative history is the same as real history on the big picture scale and gave us the following nuggets.

Nugget One

Snake and the Boss first met during the fiasco known as Korean War. Guess when Boss says he is too young to defect, she meant that the Cobra unit belongs to the Greatest Generation, aka those fought in World War Two, this lad just missed that.

Nugget Two

Dewitt Eisenhower was mentioned twice in the book. The Boss is of course described as one of his best agents during both WW2 and the Cold War. She being done dirty by US government during the so-called Red Panic (involved with a Russian and whatnot) is something General of the West regrated.

Nugget Three

Unlike how Itoh cut the whole Beauty and Beast shenanigans from his MGS4 novel (Guess he did not consider those as Hideo Kojima Fundamentalism.), the book by Hase extended the background of the Cobra Unit. Each member of this rogue gallery was given about 10 pages long back stories, seeing them as an international unit nicely separated as 3 from the Old World and 3 from the New World.

The Pain is the first from the Old World with a backstory taking up 8 pages. He came from a family of Jewish bee keepers, resided in Ottoman Empire then moved to Austria. The family served a secret society.

The Fear is the second from the Old World with a backstory taking up 10 pages. He came from a family of French hunters with unique physique. The fight against the Fear is also very different from the game. Instead of a one-on-one dual, Snake is hunted by the Fear and 10 other soldiers. It’s a bloody affair in which Snake knifed a lot of them included the Fear himself.

The End is ironically the first from the New World with a backstory taking up 9 pages. The old man is said to be born in the 1850s and participated in the U.S Civil War on the Confederate side. He taught the Boss when she was a teenager and was the co-founder of Cobra unit. The fight against the End in the book went straight to the Konami code solution. Snake asked the support team to pull all the resource to locate the ancient sniper and just shot him.

The Sorrow is the third from the Old World with a backstory taking up 9 pages. The backstory takes the place of the boss fight where Snake had to fake his death. As the only Russian on the team, he was born in 1919, orphaned by the post revolution Russian civil war. He met the Boss during the Spanish Civil War and of course those 2 later became lover. The Sorrow and Volgin were on opposite sides in Soviet internal struggle.

The Fury is the second from the New World since he is an African American who defected to Soviet Union for no one in USA would send his black ass to space. The Russian did and the landing complication was how he got disfigured. Explosive expert during World War Two.

The Boss is the third from the New World. Though the book insisted on her getting help from the Old World, since the British Major Zero did her a solid on two separate occasions. First to take care of her son Adam, late Ocelot, so she can keep do her commando shit during World War Two. Then in the post-war Red Panic, with President Eisenhower not covering her, Zero did.

Colonel Strangelove

Colonel Volgin is one of those archetypes Kojima included in those games just because the genre demands one. MGS3 is a pulpy Cold War action thriller, so a high-rank soviet military officer trying to possess a super weapon is just given. While Volgin is rather a nothing berg sadist in the game, the novel tries to make him into more of nuclear holocaust manifested.

The book opened with a flashforward to what happened to people on the ground after Volgin fired the nuke. It would give lots of horror fiction a run for their money. Volgin also had a team studying the bodies in the book.

In some ways, yours truly think Hase tried a bit too hard to justify the Metal Gear bit of this story where metal gear is only mentioned. Regarding why Volgin is electric, the book said that the red jump suit he wears is actually what made him shot lightning bolts. His scars were given by that suit as well. Also the suit is something on the way to Metal Gear…Satoshi Hase has the reputation of writing hard science fiction, he seemingly went bit too hard on that front here.

Time to talk about “Gameplay”

More than a thousand words in and I still have not talked about why the book make me want a MGS3 remake. Time to correct that oversight.

In many ways, the aspects of MGS3 do not hold up well are exactly where MGS2 does not keep up well. For one thing, as a covert operations goes, they sure talk a lot on the radio, don’t you say. Well, in the book at least a lot were talked about before Snake got on the plane, meet the team, get briefed and all that. Maybe the remake can learn from the 1998 original and make all those optional viewing rather than jamming them on top of the game like those lesser sequels did.

Another thing, Snake in the 1960s still had to kit out straight of packages in the game. MGS2 gave the acceptable bullshit that the late aughts tech locked guns to registered user while MGS3 was just programmed that way with no narrative justification. In the book, Snake jumped in with only a knife, guns are all picked up from knocked or bleed out enemies since PS2 game programming cannot limit the reality there.

It's not something totally new to MGS games either. Phantom Pains has missions branded Subsistence where a Diamond Dog commando dropped in a mission, well, naked. Still all the move sets are there, including use knife to question held up enemy. Yours truly tried all those shortly after they first read this novel and suddenly found remaking MGS3 with FOX Engine a good idea. Playing Resident Evil 2 remake factored in as well,

Final words

Still as a novelization to a not-that-well-written game (Yours truly just finished Pentiment as the time of writing, so they do think all that fondly about “Kojima writing”.), this book inherits all its faults, including how when characters talk recent events to them, the dialogue sounds more like awkwardly written history fiction instead of two cops shooting the shit (I mean Pentiment is mostly about people shooting the shit). EVA’s monologue practically close the book. But it’s all fault of Kojima and crew instead of the author Hase. He did his best to make this one an immersive ride and I would recommend it to anyone as a good thriller.