Shadow at Water's Edge
So, after having played the demo, mini-game preview, and watched the trailers for this new game obsessively for the past couple months, I've made a few observations that I'd like to share!
To start with, I'm noticing a HUGE throwback to Ai Yazawa's popular manga, Paradise Kiss.
First off, there's this sweety right here:
Meet Yumi, oldest sister who stands to inherit the Ryokan from her grandmother, but she'd rather run her Bento stand called HAPPY BENTO and work on expanding her fashion empire, claiming that you can't find clothes like these ANYWHERE in Japan, and that she makes them herself.
Okay, we all know that's complete bullshit. I wouldn't be surprised if Her Interactive saw one of Angelic Pretty's disaster dresses (we all know they've had them) and decided to use it in Yumi's character design. Fashion inaccuracies aside, we can already see a striking similarity between Yumi, and Yazawa's character Miwako.
Both dress in lolita, both sew, both have puffy hair. The similarities don't stop at the outer level either. Remember Miwako's sister? She was the CEO and head designer of her own fashion line, called HAPPY BERRY.
Happy Berry? Happy Bento? Are we seeing it yet?
You can read more about Happy Berry and Yumi at her blog, here:
http://yumi-shimizu.blogspot.com/
Pretty cute of Her Interactive to do, if you ask me. xD
Now we're going to jump over to Yumi's younger sister.
Her name is Miwako.
I think that pretty much speaks for itself.
On to language!
From what I can tell, Miwako (SAW Miwako, that is) has good English, and a lovely Japanese accent. Whoever her voice actress is did a wonderful job! There's no SUPER DUPER OVER ACCENTUATION like you'd get from a bad WW2 movie. I wouldn't be surprised if they had actually hired a Japanese woman to provide Miwako's voice over.
Yumi on the other hand...she speaks perfect English with a perfect accent. In fact, she sounds like a white girl. Except when she pronounces L or R. It is truely awful. Miwako doesn't even pronounce them so atrociously, and her accent is much thicker than her sister's. It's absolutely laughable. Don't believe me? Try this crappy anime dress-up game featuring Yumi and hear for yourself!
http://www.herinteractive.com/games/saw/minigame/play-now.php
"You upROAD pictures to send to your computer..."
Uh huh. Obviously, Yumi's voice actress needs a little practice. Fortunately, as far as I can see, she's the only one with R-L Complex. The other voice actors have come across just fine. So far.
And of course, there's Nancy's botching of the Japanese language, as any good gaijin can be expected to do. So far, I haven't seen any glaring cultural errors, but there's still time. The game doesn't come out until October 19th. Until then, I'm playing the demo over and over again until I have the entire first ten minutes of the game memorized, click by click, and laughing over the hilariously awful dress-up game and Yumi's LR slurs.
The demo presents some fun minigames and puzzles, including nonograms (I love these things, and now I finally know the name for them!), caligraphy practice, navigating the subway (it's JUST as confusing as the real thing! xD), and of course, PANCHINKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
There's also a scruffy robotic cat.
Nuff said.
No, you don't get a cut. XD Go play the demo so you can become addicted to the series too. XD