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Here and Back Again
I've started to get used to this place. The trains aren't as
confusing anymore, and I'm getting a better idea of where places
are in relation to each other. This made getting there pretty
easy this time, and I took my time and enjoyed the nice weather,
much cooler than the usual deep frying I'm used to doing in
lovely Florida.
I arrived at the TGS at roughly 11:00am, but not before grabbing
a can of "Qoo", a drink with a one-eared blue cat-thing as its
mascot. I felt like I had to buy it, since one friend here in
the US mentioned it, but didn’t know what it was supposed to be
for. I’d feel bad if I didn't bring back the can just to prove
the foolishness.
1200 yen later, I walked into the convention, and it looked much
the same, but with some slight rearrangement. First thing I saw
was King of Fighters 2003, which seemed odd since last year was
KoF 2001, which gives hope to the possibility that they might
actually catch up with the rest of us next year.
To the left was information and a large area for people to
switch into their terribly well made costumes. In general,
Japanese cosplayers tend to look much better than their American
counterparts, mostly due to how Japanese girls are inherently
sexy, and while they're busy getting the details of their
costumes right, we're eating more pop tarts. Overall, though,
last year's set was superior.
"I’ll be the tall guy who looks like me"
As with last year, I was hoping to meet a friend here. I know
someone who’s stationed in Japan in the Navy, and we keep trying to
meet while I'm in the area. Not knowing if he could make it or not (no
reply email in the last day or so) I wandered around, always kinda
half-checking to see if he'd show up. As it turns out, however, he got
roped into something else that he couldn’t get out of. Apparently the
Navy doesn't let you have days off when you actually *want* them.
 The Booth is Square
Hiding
behind a larger, random anime stuffs booth was Square-Enix's merchant
booth. I got in line and spent the next hour shifting my
weight from one foot to the next… slowly. After walking by the same
set of display products three times, getting a better look each time,
I decided to get the new Advent Children posters, the Cloudy Wolf
phone strap, and a zesty Shin-Ra business card holder.
From there I wandered the first of the two giant rooms, somehow
missing the Wizards of the Coast booth, which apparently was hiding
somewhere else this year. I was rather amused to see that ATI and
nVidia had much larger booths this year. Bandai’s booth was filled
with hatred, its screen the size of a small house and the sound of a
collective city.
Fleeing from that room, I waded through the cosplayers' area and
searched the next room, quickly finding SE's presentation booth of
hugeness. The first thing I saw were four large doors leading into
display areas that only so many people could get into at a time. There
were line queues for most of them, though I wasn’t much interested in
waiting in line for over an hour to play a single unfinished game.
I inquired about the Advent Children trailer and how to get in and
found out that you had to show up fast to get tickets to see it, which
I found rather appalling. I was further angered when I saw the room
where it was being shown as a group was leaving it (they kept each
presentation area hidden by a curtain at their leisure) and found that
it was being shown on some kind of visor, obviously so no one could
see it.
The best I can figure is that someone involved in marketing for SE
decided "hey, it'd be great if we advertised for Advent Children, but
it’d be even better if we didn’t let anyone see that advertisement".
What's worse is the fact that someone else clearly must have followed
that thought with "brilliant!"
In any case, there were still shinier things to see, though I skipped
out on most of the things that didn't interest me. Here's how the list
breaks down:
Advent Children: There were several design sketches for areas,
as well as what appeared to be old sketches of bosses from Final
Fantasy VII. Other than that, it was hard to find much else about AC.
The 25 minute trailer was being shown to only a few hundred people,
and the 4 minute trailer was on a huge screen that I never seemed to
walk by at the same time. The trailer package they had setup was
incredibly long this year, as they have so many random games to
advertise now, and I could never seem to find my way into the crowd of
people who were allowed to stand still long enough to see it.
Before Crisis: They were looping the anime opening for BC
non-stop, which was zesty and good. There were also people being paid
to be dressed up as Turks and stand under the screens with fake guns
(it's really amazing how many people get paid to stand around in
Japan). The game play, to be honest, looks rather rigid. It's a
multiplayer cell phone game, though, so I guess it’s forgivable.
Dirge of Cerberus: One screen that was looping the BC trailer
also had a DC trailer, showing Vincent shooting people… and that's
about it. Not that it doesn't look wicked cool, though. There just
wasn't much more too it other than lots of shooting. After several
attempts I managed to get 2 seconds of video from it before getting
yelled at by a random employee (more on that in a moment).
Final Fantasy XI: The XI trailer was looping on random screens,
and was rather difficult to care about, as I'd already seen it running
in shops in Akihabara. I think they just had it on display for humor's
sake, as Chains of Promathia had already been released. There were
also a few people being paid to dress up as Mithra who, sadly, were
kinda upstaged by the cosplayer.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: They showed a lot more of
how the combat flows in this game, and even had a pile of demo units
you could play, provided you felt like standing in line for an hour.
The video trailer for it made it look far more fun that I was
expecting.
Kingdom Hearts II: KHII looks tasty. The demo (I didn't play,
but SE was gracious enough to actually let passersby watch this one)
had something to do with Auron being in your party, and he liked to
hit things. What's more important, however, was Ninja Sora. Anyone
who’s likely interested in KH has seen Sora’s new design, but
apparently you can switch to a red outfit and you get to use two key
blades, which the video I recorded happily displays Sora's newfound
ability to hack up everything in a twenty foot radius.
 Itadaki Street: It's Mario Party, but I'll probably buy it
anyway. It looks crazy goofy.
Full Metal Alchemist Stuffs: The big robot thing was there
again, sporting a lovely apron. Yeah, I never got into this, and
somehow I doubt I will. :P
There was some other RPG thing they were trying to hype up, but it
wasn't enough to get me interested. There was also some Front Mission
randomness and, oddly enough, Everquest II, which SE is apparently
going to be translating/publishing for Japan.
See No Evil
There was one thing about the SE booth that was different from
most every other booth, and I'm not talking about the games. SE was
rabid about making sure you didn't take pictures of the things they
were trying to advertise, which makes perfect sense. I mean, think
about it. If you let people take pictures of your stuff, people are
probably going to put those pictures on the Internet, and then
everyone's going to know about it! What kind of fool advertising is
that? Fear not, however, for it’s only the tall Caucasians who are
subject to such a rule. If you’re Japanese or under 5'5” then, by all
means, take all the pictures you like.
I’m freaking tall, and that made it much harder to be a ninja
cameraman. Each time I lifted my camera up remotely close to my face I
could see an employee readying themselves to shout at me from afar.
What got me was that apparently I wasn't allowed to take pictures of
anything at all, including the employees. The only pictures that I
wasn't prevented from taking at least once were the figures and the
Turks that were standing around.
Hear No Evil, Speak no Evil
There was a huge volume difference between this year's TGS and
last year's. In most places it was near impossible to even speak to
someone 6 inches from you. This year it was like half of the companies
decided "Hey, if we make everything really freaking loud, people will
pay far more attention to us!" I'm not much for that kind of game,
however, and if your booth is so loud that I can no longer hear my
inner monologue, I'm probably not going to buy anything you make. At
least not on purpose.
Eat No Evil
I was somewhat sad to see there was no KFC this time around, not
that I would eat there. I laughed out loud last year, but there was
still plenty to eat. A random Canadian girl (also a JET) I ran into in
the cosplay area and I had the takoyaki, which is like saying "fried
octopus with.. uhh.. stuff.. yeah". If you’re planning to come to
Japan, prepare your stomach to consume some of the most random crap
you can think of.
Sweat No Evil
There's something that being in a room with most of the population
of Japan will do to you, and that's make you sweat like crazy. The
Japanese seem to be immune to sweat, however, thus they can cram
themselves into herds of humanity and not care. I, however, grow tired
of swimming through people, and decided to take my leave after
stopping by the cosplayers one more time.
A Man and His Bench
By the time I got back to the hotel it was roughly 7:00. I took a
shower and headed down to the little bar on the first floor where they
had laptops you could use for 100 yen per 10 minutes. After checking
my email I noticed that the same man was sitting there as there was
the night before. I greeted him, to which he replied "We’ve got to
stop meeting like this". Turns out he was a former JET and is now
teacher English to airport employees, apparently spending the greater
majority of his time drinking outside of a convenience store and
talking to the random people who walk between to two major train
stations in the area.
After about 5 hours of babbling, I went back to the hotel to find that
my watch had died once again, now noticing that if I set it to the
correct time it would function properly for completely random
durations. Knowing that I'd probably get screwed by the thing in the
near future, I went to bed, hoping to get to the TGS’s 2nd day before
they let everyone else in.
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