Tag: onna bugeisha

Burgundy Shinobi VS Sakai Jin-dono

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戦国時代VS鎌倉幕府

At this point, I’m milking Red Ninja for every ryo it owes me which isn’t something I normally do. I occasionally bring around my love for God of War Greek era and Max Payne as well as my contempt for the concept of Chainsaw Man and Tatsuki Fujimoto, not because I want to bury something to propel the other, but because I want to bring awareness to a multitude of different things that travel in similar circles. Since this is meant to be the conclusion of the Red Ninja recount series, the final part of this impromptu investigation into how a neat concept hung itself on its own cord by accident is going to be Ghost of Tsushima:

Sony’s a d[clang]khead for abandoning PC ports of popular games, I may never get to play Ghost of Yotei ಠ_ಠ.

Like Sekiro Monogatari before it, Sakai Jin VS the Mongol Horde is also set in historical Japan but right around the time when my favorite era, the Kamakura Shogunate reigns supreme, when the Hojo clan can pull all the strings and tickle the bums of the emperor and the shogunate and leave progressively larger handprints until Go-Daigo took notice and said, “Those degenerates over there, Ashikaga-dono!” Sadly, the Ashikaga would turn on Go-Daigo because one doesn’t simply scorn a samurai. But they’re not important in this story, the Adachi and Sakai clans are.

So far I have three games about shinobi or shinobi-shaped things. Redeemer of Tsushima Island, One-Armed Wolf and the Rejuvenating Waters, and Hidden and Discreet Things in a Sexy Red Kimono. Two take place in the Sengoku-era, one was around the time of Hojo Tokimune. Two play extraordinarily well, especially when it comes to samurai or ninja, one plays like it walked off the set of M. Night Shyamalan’s Split and never recovered.

Jin Sakai and Kurenai both use weapons consistent with real and fictional samurai and shinobi respectively, but Sakai-dono, as a samurai, is expected to use all those weapons befitting his status. The katana, the wakizashi, perhaps a yari/naginata/nagamaki, etc. especially while on horse, a bow and arrow; the samurai warrior and especially the general is an expert in all samurai tactics and even embraces many new and innovative tactics. Am I right, Hojo Tokiyuki-dono?

Not that Kurenai is unskilled in anything, the best way to describe her is right where she needs to be skills-wise, but for the third time, the controls don’t reflect that. Slight taps vs full taps, hold a button vs hold the same button plus another one for alternate controls, a fixed camera from a distance like what God of War achieves vs a fixed camera up-close that keeps an enemy out of view and damn, you just got stabbed with a naginata by a nameless foot soldier who should’ve been dangling from a beam in a mine.

It’s also worth noting that while Kurenai’s shinobi profession may seem cowardly in the Kamakura period, stealthy or show-y, both serve or belong to an exalted clan in Japanese history, even if one is completely made up in a way that would earn it the Akira Kurosawa Seal of Approval. Meanwhile, even the director of the worst ninja film of all time would look at Red Ninja and not even bother using the defibrillator to shock it back to its feet, but I don’t wanna be too harsh on the game. I was intrigued by a ROM hosting site to check it out for myself, and it clearly had an impression on me because I wrote about the game four or five times to date.

If a game kicks my ass because it was sufficiently difficult, then so be it. It can laugh at me from the Recycle Bin. But if it kicks my ass due to difficulty stalagmites and loops that belong in the first Sonic game then it’s not f[match-click]ing fair.

I’m exaggerating, Dragon’s Lair functions. For evil!! ╰（‵□′）╯

Both do make a good showing for their respective settings, though both also keep to the mythological shorthand rather make public the complications of their respective settings, which may be for a good reason. The Mongol Army wasn’t homogenous, they through Jurchens, Chinese, and Korean troops at the Japanese, none of whom spoke the same language or dialects, so you know damn well it was a mess the first time around, as well as the second, myths about the divine winds notwithstanding.

Similarly, the myths surrounding the shinobi of old are largely perpetuated by western and Japanese properties due to mythic shorthand for easy access. Loads of games default to masked assassin moving stealthily in the dead of night rather than a straw hat wanderer embedding himself in feudal Shizuoka. Swords clashing makes for better entertainment, just ask the Brothers Uchiha or Gokenin Zankuro.

But never mind the fact that it’s historically accurate for a samurai to use a gun (though this would be true during and after the Warring States period), the individual settings for each do well to communicate to me that this is a specific historical setting, as does Three-Legged Wolf Adventures and Watch Me Run from the Ashikaga. Actually that last one is in concert with Ghost of Tsushima but set 60+ years apart, while Sekiro and Red Ninja are contemporaries with unclear starting points due in large part to the semi-mythical origins of the concept of the ninja. Also because Sekiro has you up against creatures that exist in Junji Ito’s mind.

Maybe his antagonists have been outdone by Miyazaki’s in FromSoftware’s games

So between the gameplay and plot synopses of Wolf Amputee, The Patriotic Spartan, and Shinobi Before They Were Cool, the Tale of the Burgundy Spymaster of the Sengoku-jidai is one that I desperately want to see revisited. The concept itself should’ve been impossible to f[bone crunch]k up. And in my head it is! Countless fanarts of existing and original character kunoichi show that the concept is rich with potential. Even I did it, by way of AI image generation, based off an old drawing of mine.

Rare Tiberius artistry at work!?

Actually, this was largely based off artwork by the artist Gesogeso on sites like Instagram and Danbooru, but the fact remains that a sexy woman who can kill you with ninja skills isn’t an failure of a concept, it’s narrative gold. The developers behind Red Ninja put too much in a shallow kitchen sink and tried to pass it off as complete when it really comes close to the mess that was the Holy Roman Empire’s power division.

I might be asking for too much hoping an exceptional programmer can fix Red Ninja’s control scheme and remake it, but there’s much in the way of Kunoichi fiction. Just a matter of finding it. Hell, Googling kunoichi media yields obscure films that would make for great topics for me to discuss later this year while they’re still available on Tubi, but so far, kunoichi have historically been background set-dressing for male shinobi set-pieces.

This was the only one I could find on short notice that allegedly features kunoichi in the starring role. Whether it lives up to that promise remains to be seen while Tubi still has it. Whether I choose to talk about it after watching it also remains to be seen, but I watch a lot of things, so anything is possible. I brought up a buddy cop animanga series known as Taiho Shichauzo and much of that is readily available on YouTube itself. But a friend of mine (me) still encourages straw hat piracy. Just don’t pull a Zoro and get lost.

Ever got lost on a straight path? This man managed to achieve that. (T_T)

Vermilion Ninja VS Ghost of Sparta

TiberiusLeave a comment

Hacky, slash-y, chained weapon attack-y

Another week, another comparison between two games I’ve talked about at length on this blog before concerning warriors scorned by the powers that be and in a way that requires service to an opponent and/or taking the entirety of the Pantheon and unleashing the wrath of Timur the Lame onto it.

Maybe it was a coincidence, but Stalin never should’ve trusted Hitler for that long. Same with Mussolini, they already hated each other.

To summarize the plot of Red Ninja again, young Kurenai’s father is killed by the Black Lizard/Kurotokage clan, she is left for dead, and recruited by the enigmatic Mochizuki Chiyome, aligned with the Takeda clan and its leader, Takeda Shingen, to serve him and dismantle both the Kurotokage and Takeda’s enemies: the Oda clan. Her various methods of disposing of enemies consist of a weapon at the end of a chain used creatively, classic shinobi stealth and deceit, her own body as hinted by her suggestive outfit and the video game’s cover art, poison darts, and trademark shinobi tools like kunai and shuriken. There’s a blend of typical tropes and Japanese history, of which I approve as a Japanese history enjoyer.

God of War debuted in 2005 as an homage to claymation sword-and-sandals epic movies from the 1950s through the ’80s like Jason and the Argonauts, Hercules (likely the 1958 version), and Clash of the Titans. The central character is Kratos, a very brutally patriotic Spartan, whose skin is marked, first by the searing chains of the Blades of Chaos awarded to him by Ares, and then by the ashes of his family who was killed in a blinding rage as a means to sever his connection to mortality and commit him to lifetime service to Ares. Say what you will about Ascension and the PSP games, but they all do well to cement his position in a very Greek tragedy way.

Ascension is shortly after he realizes that serving Ares is a ruin. Leaving his service isn’t as easy with the Furies breathing down his neck to bind him to his oath. Chains of Olympus occurs five years into his redemptive service to the larger pantheon sans Ares where his main duty is to retrieve Helios from Hades and drive back Morpheus, the God of Dreams. God of War 2005 is five years after that, and a real chance at redemption arrives at the death of Ares by Kratos’ hand, but due to the nature of his brutality and prior service, the one thing he’s always wanted–a mental cleanse–is out of reach.

“The gods of Olympus have abandoned me… now there is no hope.”

But Olympus won’t let him go. They award him Ares’ throne, which was never what he wanted, and in Ghost of Sparta (my personal favorite next to II), visions of his childhood and his brother Deimos come back to haunt him. Learning from his mother, who was cursed by Zeus, that Deimos had been held for ages in the Domain of Death, Kratos seeks to free him, and the gods try to stop him tacitly by having Athena talk him out of it and explaining why they thought Deimos was the personification of dread. In Greek mythology, the deity Deimos and his twin brother Phobos represented the concepts of dread and fear respectively. In typical tragic fashion, Ghost of Sparta shows him being kidnapped from Sparta by Ares and Athena themselves to eliminate threats, namely threats to Olympus. Thanatos, the literal black sheep of the pantheon and personification of death, keeps him locked up. Committing to these duties, Thanatos engages them in combat and kills Deimos.

His mother, brother, wife, and child all dead around Kratos and without any human attachments, Athena awards him godhood and the official seat as the god of war. A great boost of morality for Sparta, an asset for Olympus, and a Spartan kick in the teeth for Kratos whose humanity, which he wanted to cling on to, has been stripped away.

Channel: Parts From Movies

I could not resist.

God of War II is where Kratos is in full “f[roar]k this” mode and he personally guides his Spartans into battle with virtually zero resistance from them and all from Olympus who realize they replaced a beast with an even worse monster. A man who cared little for petty godly squabbles is now using his position to discredit their sense of order and elevate himself as a consequence. Now Sparta truly is known throughout the world. Zeus tricked him into stripping himself of his own godly powers and saw to it personally that he would never be able to resist him again… or so he thought until Gaia intervened personally. Kratos angered himself back to life and slaughtered his way to the Isle of Creation to seek counsel from the Sisters of Fate, the literal gatekeepers of time. Ignoring the inherent danger of messing with time to f[SPARTA]k Zeus back, Kratos returned to weaken Zeus, and with the help of the Titans who lost the Titanomachy, he storms Olympus and starts slashing gods one by one, plunging the world into chaos in the process. No gods to manage their domains, no more earth; even the Titans were using him.

Yeah, as epic as this is (and it fu[clash]ing was), there’s a couple of inconsistencies. How does Kratos become the God of War at the end of the 2005 game, but the death of his remaining family solidifies it further? If Kratos could go back in time, why not save his family or stop himself from becoming a servant of Ares to begin with? These kind of ignore what kind of man Kratos was and what the Greek games were. Mythology is never consistent, just look at who the first emperor of Japan is supposed to be compared to who historians believe the real first emperor of Japan was (Jimmu and Kinmei). As for why he didn’t bring Calliope and Lysandra back to life… I chalk it up to Kratos not being that kind of griever. He’s more this kind:

He’s like a Toyota, he only moves forward, even when he goes back.

And that’s all for the plot synopses of Vermillion Ninja and Ghost of Sparta. What do they do that can be compared here? Combat, of course. Each character gets gadgets and weapons to use against their enemies, but the default is a weapon at the end of a chain, or dual weapons in Kratos’ case of which he had several by III. Kurenai is able to use her kusarigama primarily offensively. Kratos’ blades, no matter what shape they take, are more than just offensive combat tools. Grappling, platforming, climbing, fighting from various distances; and a good look at Kratos’ primary weapons shows this:

They’re ugly, they cut terribly, they burn and sear, they char, they can wedge and burrow into solid rock, are resistant to scratching and the roughest forms of abuse (which defines Kratos’ fighting style); these blades, forged in the darkest pits of Hades, have raw divine power keeping them in their consistently rough and rugged shape.

They allowed Kratos to fight and platform with acrobatic prowess. They also helped greatly during the countless puzzle segments that defined the Greek era games. Compare that to Kurenai and Crimson Shinobi whose platforming is less jumping onto conveniently exposed platforms and solving puzzles while using her weapon system and more incorporation of trademark shinobi trope tactics. The design leans into some of the mechanics that made Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden staples over the years, but is again, held back by its hybrid implementation of multiple combat and platforming systems, some of which fight each other. For reference, this is a kusarigama:

Rather than a pair of chained weapons, Kurenai has one weapon at the end of one chain with the other end being a weight, so it kills and entraps. Which brings her closer to Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.

Neither of them uses their signature weapon acrobatically, at least not for Scorpion until Shaolin Monks where he’s a boss battle in the Netherrealm, and I think the budgetary hemorrhage from Midway in the 2000s, coupled with the game’s structure of being a 2D fighter, Shaolin Monks was the only way Ed Boon and the like could use that. Funny enough, all three of these games released across 2005 fighting with a bevy of releasing around the same time. Shaolin Monks was the latest to release (September 16, though sources differ on the precise release date), so while Red Ninja was probably buried by God of War, I wonder if the Midway guys were eyeing God of War and used the spear like that after seeing what Kratos could do. Probably not, but I like to think.

Red Ninja probably could’ve implemented something slightly similar or adjacent to Kratos’ level of platforming, not to mention a better camera, controls, and enemy AI. Actually, Japanese devs can, have, and do use this, typically in Ninja Gaiden. Ryu Hayabusa’s move set is compatible with a wide array of weapons within a ninja’s skillset and outside typical ninja characteristics consistent with the genre as we see it in pop culture. Kurenai is limited to the tools that emphasize stealth, but the game doesn’t behave consistently in a way that allows for that.

But in an age of remakes and remasters, as I said the first time I reviewed Red Ninja in full, a case can be made to apply that to some games that were buried, this one included.

The last game to put side-by-side with this one is a 2020 American homage to Kurosawa samurai epics. Yes indeed I do mean:

Ghost of Tsushima, also known as The Tale of Sakai Jin or Sakai Jin Monogatari or 境井仁物語. This game is more of an evolution from honorable samurai warrior to deceitful proto-shinobi as the shinobi wouldn’t be put to more use by the samurai and daimyo class until the Sengoku era, but both this and Red Ninja being set in Japan gives me a lot of leeway. Haven’t I written about Japanese historical series before?

We’re reclaiming Kamakura with this one!!

A PS2 Game About Shinobi Vengeance

Tiberius1 Comment

With dodgy mechanics

Months ago, I added Red Ninja: End of Honor to my list of topics to cover in the New Year and I had done so at a time when the game had frustrated me greatly. I briefly touched upon it in this post about what I found wrong with it, why I hadn’t advanced as far as I could, etc., etc. I was playing enough of it earlier to get a handle of it and return to form of sorts and this and the next series of posts are going to be subjective, but on reflection, I don’t think I was going to approach it as fairly as I had hoped.

Now Red Ninja is a game with flaws, but watching some video essays and reviews of the game, it has a cult following, so with that in mind, here’s the short version: it needed better controls and a better camera.

Which is something I don’t want to say about the game because it has a lot going for it. Stealth mechanics that make use of traditional stealth and historical context. I do need to clarify something I said in that post linked above. I mentioned that kunoichi didn’t exist. I retract that statement. They were real, but pop culture elevated their status a lot. This was due to sparse record-keeping, mythic statuses of actual female warriors, or onna-musha/bugeisha, and historian debate. There’s more records of onna-musha than of kunoichi. So you might happen upon a historical, if loose, retelling of Tomoe Gozen than of Mochizuki Chiyome. For that matter, The Elusive Samurai has one such onna-musha, the tomboyish Mochizuki Ayako as a retainer to that dastardly light-footed regent.

For all intents and purposes, Red Ninja takes from the kunoichi trope and while a history buff, from what I’ve seen so far in my gameplay, Crimson Kunoichi does use mythical status to elevate its protagonist Kurenai. It also mythologizes samurai and ninja clan politics of the Sengoku period. Before the Tokugawa clan won out for the next quarter-millennia, various samurai clans competed with one another, and this game centers around the rivalry between the Takeda and Oda clans.

The starting premise is that Kurenai’s father, Ryo, was killed by the Black Lizard clan (Kurotokage? 黒蜥蜴氏) and Kurenai and the rest of her family was slaughtered en masse until noblewoman Mochizuki Chizome found her near death, and recruited her into a body of kunoichi to serve the Takeda clan.

Don’t worry, she was a real person.

Records about Mochizuki survive or we wouldn’t know about her, but her historicity is of significant historian debate. As a Takeda clan noblewoman, she may have been hidden to protect her from assassination by Takeda clan enemies and subsequently mythologized, which is largely why historians struggle to frame her correctly in the framing of Sengoku era politicking. Not to mention, the two most famous ninja clans, Iga and Koga, may have only been two of several. Again, espionage has historically been light on records for pragmatic reasons.

Even if the Takeda clan did use ninja for espionage, the records are missing or were destroyed by them or their enemies. So the majority of the game is a revenge tale that I haven’t finished and might not finish this year. C’est la vie.

Wait, there’s a picture of Mochizuki Chiyome.

As she appears in the game. Pop media has given her different appearances, but this may be closer to who she was in real life.

So, Tiberius, what’s your issue with the game? The mechanics. The controls require a level of surgical precision that mean the difference between a successful heart surgery and a medical malpractice lawsuit. Slight analog stick movements work for games where the protagonist has a clear walking animation. When I do it in classic God of War or The Suffering, Kratos and Torque do walk. Here, it seems to be more than a little gimmicky and the reliance on specific pressure points makes the difference between a fumble and a successful assassination. Button presses aren’t the least responsive, but it can be difficult if you try to perform a certain move and it doesn’t register cleanly. Maybe it’s my controller acting up, but for f[sword clash]k’s sake, let me hang a motherf[AAAH!]ker from a beam!

Platforming again relies on precision and I would’ve preferred the God of War approach, not convenient ropes like in the first game, but using the Blades of Chaos/Athena/Exile/Spartan Rage to swing from specific points. Those blades are already ugly enough to leave grisly marks, so make them function as a grappling hook reinforces Kratos’ approach to traversal.

I started with God of War II, so I’m biased when I say that these were better.

Not for nothing, this game arouses me about Japanese history that few media properties do. Exemplified by my piece on Running from the Ashikaga among others, I don’t think pre-Sengoku Japan gets a lot of exposure in the west. On the one hand, this helps with keeping outside opportunists from mischaracterizing the era with their manure; but on the other hand, serious western historians and history buffs from seeing the era and viewing it with the contextual clarity that they deserve.

Is this a recommendation? A dissuasion? Well… it’s more like a collection of what I think could’ve helped the game mechanically. Kurenai’s main arsenal doesn’t hurt her. In fact, her story fits neatly into the myths that surround Mochizuki Chiyome and the Takeda clan, so countless other stories of kunoichi can work with this frame. Kurenai would be one of several.

Following up on that, the historical use of female spies is an interesting point. Say a female spy used her feminine charms on male guards to gain sensitive information and Kurenai does have this as her advantage, as did pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny when they appeared in Assassin’s Creed IV.

I knew something was off when “James Kidd” was noticeably more babyfaced than his hairier contemporaries.

Like the aforementioned pirates of the early 18th century, luring a horny man to his demise and stealing his secrets is a time-honored tradition. Though historically spies wouldn’t be inserted James Bond-style; that would be too much effort for very little payoff. Realistically, Kurenai or another kunoichi type would already be aligned with Takeda clan enemies by way of association. A plot would be to use them to get closer to the Oda clan leadership, steal as much information as they can and then use that against them. It may be goofy as hell as a Shonen series, but Femboy Shikken makes good use of stealth in the manga by way of known local miscreant Kazama Genba.

Kurenai and Kazama Genba are both portrayed as masters of stealth by way of the tactics they use. Kurenai is designed to wear a skimpy kimono that exposes her ass and threatens to unseat her tits, thereby weaponizing her feminine sex appeal to male guards. Kazama has a mask that can be molded to imitate the likeness of central figures. In one instance, he posed as Ogasawara Sadamune to help Tokiyuki take the imperial decree from his headquarters. And it worked! Until Ichikawa Sukefusa and his big ass Mickey Mouse ears heard them faffing about. Kurenai’s lure and attack method works when the game’s mechanics don’t trip over itself.

Overall, if it had a modern remake of some kind like what Max Payne is set to have this year, then I’ll play that from start to finish uninterrupted when I’m able to. If you have the patience, see your local emulator for more details.

My notes say the next topic of discussion is gonna be Lucky Star.

Then after that I’ll get back to Red Ninja mainly to put it alongside the likes of Sekiro and God of War 2005.