Missed Classic 125: Urotsukidoji (うろつき童子) (1990) - Introduction

 Written by Morpheus Kitami

For the third annual TAG Halloween movie game, we have the first time the game might just be better than the movie! First we had one of the greatest films of all time, then a pretty good one, and then flawed, but mostly intriguing one. I am not optimistic about this one.

Urotsukidoji is the kind of anime that should need no introduction. It is the film that many parents across American got for their kids, because, hey, all cartoons are for children, then torn from the screens just as surely as the naked bodies on-screen are torn apart by demons. Then return it and loudly complain that the adults only video that clearly says adults only on it is in fact adults only. Turning Japan into the land of the pervert cartoons, because who cares about that one super serious lawyer anime?

Background, Urotsukidoji, better known as Legend of the Overfiend and some assorted thousand other titles, was a 1985 manga from prolific Japanese artist Toshio Maeda, who is basically the original author of any anime that got parents screaming in the '90s. One might as well call him the Ozamu Tezuka of adult manga. It was a modest success, enough to get an original video animation (basically direct to video), 3 episodes of some 30 minutes, which was edited into the film I'll be watching. As with the titles, there are a thousand different versions of this, so I'm just going to talk about the one I actually watched. It is clear that all adaptions miss something from the original manga.

I'm actually going to break from my usual format here and intersperse the game with what's happening at the same rough point in the movie. Sorry, I didn't have the time to watch nearly 2 hours of demons with tentacles who cause women to explode in-between just watching people getting horrifically murdered in one sitting. I'd prefer to get this game over with as soon as possible because the logic now and forever, for these kinds of games is the shorter it is, the better it is.

I'm very, very sad about it

It's a very bad film in terms of voice acting, animation, plot. The plot is somehow more confusing than it should be, the animation is sub-par, and the voice acting is hilariously bad. It's a great film to mock, because as awful as it is, it's still entertaining in how bad it is. Everything has a layer of incompetence to it. This somehow has scores of people who think it's some kind of high quality film. I don't mean like people like Plan 9 From Outer Space, I mean in general. I have to assume the undubbed version has background music done by someone competent, thus making the horror aspects actually worth it. This isn't even a new thing either, John Stanley, in his 1999 movie review book Creature Features, was quite generous to the film, and he's old enough to not be swayed by Japan and their devilish anime girls.

The popularity of this is apparently very limited in ol' Nihon, instead, it's international audiences that ate this stuff up. The series was barely funded at the time and later installments only happened because of the massive cash injection that foreigners brought in. Whether this is because of people like me, or people who think this is some kind of quality product, I don't know. It could also be said that I don't care.

Which brings us to Fairytale, the company behind this game. The confusing clusterbomb that is this company's history. First, we begin with JAST. In 1987 a company called Fairytale who would publish some of their games for reasons I'm sure made great sense. They then changed their name to Kirara, while the development team remained Fairytale, after a game. Then Kirara and JAST created another team together called Cocktail Soft, which Kirara would eventually take sole possession of. (JAST is the same JAST that would give us the famous VN company you may know of)

Then Kirara changes their name to IDES, and that goes fine for most of the '90s. Finally, they have a restructing and the entire company, IDES, Fairytale and Cocktail Soft, turn into F&C, or Fairytale and Cocktail Soft. To complicate matters, VNDB mentions a bunch of labels and then two other companies who were talent who presumably fled the company.

Fairytale came to my and presumably many other's attention thanks to their releases from the first half of the '90s. Dead of the Brain is now the most famous one thanks to a machine translation, but basically everything they made from 1990 to 1995 is some really neat-looking horror game. Who else to make a game based off the most infamous anime of all time than these guys? Oh, I say starting in 1990, but their first game of this darker nature seems to be 1987's Koroshi no Dress, or Murder's Dress, which sounds to me like the giallo game I always wanted.

So, a weird thing about this game that apparently is true. It was sold in a vending machine, specifically a Takeru. No idea if that's related to the more well-known game company, Takeru/Sur de Wave. Did it really happen? Well, if it was, it was a budget release, I've seen the box, it's a massive clamshell about the size of your typical big box game. I love it. I wish we had games released like that.

Urotsukidoji was distributed on between 4 and 2 floppies on the PC-88, PC-98, MSX and Sharp X68000. The difference here is exclusively in the sound, each version has that heavily dithered look to it you saw in some screenshots of Gram Cats. So, I played the Sharp version, because it has the nicest sound.

Starting with the movie. We get a introduction of some mysterious dude whining about how stupid mankind is over this background. There are three worlds, man's, that of the Makai or demons, and that of the Jujukai or beastmen. Every three thousand years a super god appears in the human world called the Chojin who can unite the three worlds together in peace and harmony. Let's see, 3000 years before 1985 is 1015 BC. Wikipedia mentions an Egyptian pharaoh named Siamun, but he doesn't seem to be that impressive of a figure. Solomon and David were around this time, but something tells me Maeda wasn't up on his Bible studies.

The game, meanwhile, has some scrolling text while an occasion pair of drum beats hit off in the background. The story here is...exactly the same. A little less whining about humanity, a bit more bringing up the three worlds. Curiously, I don't think this brought up the three thousand years thing yet, I just see 500 years. Either it's going to get brought up in a moment or it's something that the translators of the anime added in. Anime translators making more of a hackjob of an anime than the villain in a horror movie? I am shocked an appalled by this behavior!

Title, the music here is very nice. Note, that triangle you see here is my cursor. It's always on-screen, which is mildly annoying. What is nice is how everything stays on-screen until I click with the mouse. Seemingly no ability to use the keyboard.

The dithering gives this some poor readability.

After the title we get some dialog with an elder. The music here is also very nice, feels like something out of Shadowcaster. Very mystical and fitting. This is a marked difference from the film, which goes straight into having the protagonist using the look action in a girl's locker room after having used the unzip action on himself. Nogumu or something, makes Leisure Suit Larry look like King Arthur.  The last time the Chojin came he was cut down, and now the biggest perversion has begun, a tale not seen since some 500 years ago...which means we're starting to diverge. Where, I don't know. He continues by talking about the development of the legend and seems to be taking the stance that while he doubts the existence of the Chojin, the hero should try to find him.

We get a picture of Genghis Khan and the Elder throws a nevertheless at me. Perversion still exists in humanity, they have the potential to become tyrannical and the means to end a life. Khan isn't mentioned here...I think, they're just using him for flavor. I don't even know if that is Genghis Khan and I'm not just wrongly assuming.

Napoleon. This is reminding me of Welcome House, a game I played earlier this month on my own blog. Napoleon and Genghis Khan showed up there too. That's a comparison that I've made and is accurate, though this game could bring up Alexander the Great, making this truly bizarre. What separates the man who can take almost an entire continent himself. Then we get some dialog where the writing starts getting broken up by emphasis on human and then Chojin. At first I thought it might be implying some kind of weird dialog device, but he's just emphasising human and Chojin. As could be expected, human's power exists, Chojin's power is impossible. (I guess meaning powerful rather than not possible) In the end exiled to an island, a career ending in misery.

The text, of course, says that Hitler acted entirely alone and had absolutely no help from anyone else, especially in Asia.

Hitler, you know, why did Genghis Khan have a face while Napoleon and Hitler lack them? Basically this is just talking about the same thing happening, his desire for power causes him to take over the entire western continent, and his great charisma is like that of the Chojin. He is just another cog in history, his severing destiny.

Back to the elder, saying that how many men's stories must be told, for the Chojin is no more than a legend...however you should still go to the human world to search for him. Be warned, he has the potential for great anger. I'm grossly over simplifying 6 pages of dialog, and it might not just be him who could get angry.

 This is a neat-looking screenshot, but it looks like it takes place in a field more than on a roof or in a school.

Now we're in the real world, our hero...perversion...? Wait, it's Amano Jaku. Oh. OH. OH! I'm not good with name Kanji yet. Then what the hell was that dialog about? Anyway, something that surprised me about this game is that unlike the last abomination against god and man, this isn't technically an adventure game, we get the option to actually look at individual things and objects in a scene. Like an actual adventure game. It's still done through a menu, but either way I'm happy...until the dungeons start calling. Or we get that awful dialog system. It's possible, I have heard. Also, I can save straight off, nice.

I get two options other than saving/loading or hearing. I can look, at quite a bit the school, the schoolyard, the sky or just around. I can also think, in which I just think about where the Chojin might be. He comes to broadly the same conclusions he does in the movie, he must have great charisma, can pull in all the chicks and has a smell. The exact same conclusions, apparently, he mentions the captain of the basketball team. He says to go to 3-C, that's where I should begin my search. I should continue to the head of the student council on 3-B. Finally someone on 3-A, I know he has a name, I just can't translate it. His smell is the strongest.

Remember, don't light a match and burn things.

Aha, a woman. Someone to talk to. Just talk, no interplay of talk and listen. Thank god, because I couldn't find a walkthrough of this bad boy and I have no confidence in the dialog systems of Japanese developers. I can even talk to her about different subjects. It's like a real game. The people I built up as possibly having competence at developing adventure games actually manage it. Huzzah! I can even talk to her about the Chojin like an idiot! Anyway, she tells me the person I'm looking for is in the classroom. Kanzawa? I don't remember that name. And Akemi, the girl the protagonist of the anime would like to use the unzip command on.

Akemi's dropping her pills while it looks like someone attached a boy's head to a man's body for Kanzawa.

I can go inside to the classroom to find Kanzawa and Akemi. This isn't what she looks like in the anime, she had more normal hair. At least it might be Akemi. I'm useless when it comes to these name Kanji. Look, speak and...sniff odor. Just the essential adventure game commands. I joke, but the game warned me. Akemi questions why I came back to the classroom, come to think of it, so did the other lady. Guess the game is leaving out some stuff, fair enough. Jaku says he's a tough man and has to do it. I think that was a joke.

Let's smell these people, Akemi apparently uses some kind of Japanese orange shampoo. Kanzawa smells like a crowd that had the Chojin, or something. I have to talk to each one at a time, so I start with Kanzawa. He says something has changed in the atmosphere recently, something foul. Jaku said he thought there was something, wondering if it might be related to the college admission test. Another joke. Finally, Jaku asks if he has a girlfriend, he says no, he has to be taught. (perhaps asking if Jaku needs to be taught, based on later context) Jaku is shocked.

Akemi says nothing, merely telling Jaku to talk to Kanzawa. Now I can ask about the Chojin. Kanzawa assumes I'm referring to something in a new religion getting proselytized among the students...and then he says it's no different from Charlie Brown believing in the Great Pumpkin. You know, I don't think I anticipated seeing a sentence like that in Japanese, or even in English. Especially since it's wrong and it was Linus van Pelt. It's such a bizarre thing to read in a game like this.

Jaku continues by telling Kanzawa that there are pretty girls in the courtyard below and Kanzawa rushes off. Now I can talk to Akemi. Or hear what she has to say? Did I miss a part where she had something to say to me? Is she a beastwoman?

Akemi: "A new world cut by god."

Jaku: "Everyone is the same no matter what they say. The new religion propagates."

Akemi: "So it does. The actual truth is over separated. Eh, Jaku? Now what did you hear?"

I get the feeling I'm missing something by not having the manual to this game. Such is life with Japanese games. Asking her about Kanzawa reveals that he's not fond of studying, guess he's not involved in the student council, guess he's some random pervert? Then I can ask her about...I'm gonna go with Kumiko, who has little time for her these days because her older sister longs to give people stuff. (not a metaphor?) Others she seems to just tell me where to go, Ozami, the basketball player, is in the gymnasium. I can also ask about a Saomoto, who is apparently a bad dude. That's it for now. Time to search other classrooms.

I'd just like to point out right now that the music track the game has for searching the school is nice, but it's not suited for discovering a mystery in a school, it's energetic, but not quite aggressive enough for a combat theme. More peppy, not mysterious. I also note that the game seems to keep bringing up "romantists", I'm guessing in the sense of those who romanticize things.

3-B has no one important, and 3-A is much the same way. There are people there, but if they're important, they're not important yet. Second floor, and uh-oh, the game seems to have glitched out and I can somehow access the classrooms on the first from here. I decide not to risk it and go to 2-C...and for a moment, I assume the game does glitch out. It has this nasty habit of taking away your ability to move, so you actually do stuff in that room. It doesn't seem like she's saying anything, just asking if Jaku's head is all right. I'd completely write it off, but I get confused by one of the Kanji she uses momentarily. Turns out the font is terrible and these people are asking why an upperclassman has found it worth his time to speak to a lowly, insignificant underclasswoman. De Vermis Mysteriis, it seems.

It goes much the same way through all the 2nd year rooms, and I go onto the 1st year rooms. (they actually were supposed to be on the second floor, weird) Here the people Jaku talks to speak like children. Actually, since I bring it up, Jaku speaks with some of the distinct speech patterns of the Kansai dialect/accent, stereotyped as simple, incomprehensibile and stupid. As it has been described to me over the years, imagine something of the incomprehensibility of an Appalachian or Glasgowian with a dash of the please god, kill me now of a New York or Estuary accent. Or just think of it as Texan or something.

That's it for the main building, we'll get to the rest of it next time. Before I finish, let me talk about the setup of this game. I have been leaving out considerable pictures. Not even fine art pictures, just regular pictures. You get faraway shots, up-close shots, just plain scenery shots. It's like a high quality first-person adventure game. This actually predates the usage of the same kind of nice animation in western games by some many years.

At this point, I see nothing to dislike. Granted, there was something interesting about the intro to Gram Cats, it took as long as this has and it was far worse. This has been smooth, outside of the highly aggressive dithering. I've enjoyed it as a game. I'm hopeful, but still cautious, since this game could still pull the rug out from under me.

This Session: 1 hour

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no CAPs will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. As this is an introductory post, it's an opportunity for readers to bet 10 CAPs (only if they already have them) that I won't be able to solve a puzzle without putting in an official Request for Assistance: remember to use ROT13 for betting. If you get it right, you will be rewarded with 50 CAPs in return. It's also your chance to predict what the final rating will be for the game. Voters can predict whatever score they want, regardless of whether someone else has already chosen it. All correct (or nearest) votes will go into a draw.