Missed Classic 139 - Toumei Ningen - Arawaru Arawaru (透明人間 あらわるあらわる): Introduction

Written by Morpheus Kitami

This appears to be a modified shot of a scene in this very entry, though the scientist girl seems much more concerned than she has reason to be.

Welcome back to the strange world of the development duo of Hirono Kenichi and Kanasugi Hajime, much like last time with Count Dracula, we'll be looking at another classic monster movie inspired title in The Invisible Man - Appear Appear. Yes, that is the title, and at first glance everything is going to be very weird. At first, we have a different developer compared to Dracula, Red-Zone vs Fairy Tale. It's the same publisher, but since the opening screen says Fairy Tale Red-Zone, I suspect the difference is minute.

Side note, this is not the first time that there was a Japanese title based off The Invisible Man. First, there was a Japanese tokusatsu film called The Invisible Man Appears. Which is Toumei Ningen Arawaru. Which I suspect is why there's two appears in the title. You appear more than once, that means it's better, right? Side points to the side note, I haven't seen that film, but the label tokusatu either means it has a focus on special effects or it's a Ultraman/Godzilla-type deal. Judging by the sequel titled The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly and its description, it's the former. That film, incidentally, was released before the original The Fly film, and even the short story that inspired it. Funnily enough, Vincent Price stars in both The Fly and one of the sequels to The Invisible Man, The Invisible Man Returns. None of this really matters, but it's probably the most informative this post is going to be.

To recap for those who have forgotten, Hirono and Kanasugi were both people who worked at Fairy Tale in the late '80s and early '90s, having made some five games together, including the incredibly cool-looking Count Dracula and Necronomicon. Which bookend our unwise journey through Japanese games of dubious quality, especially in the puzzle department. I am looking forward to this, even though it was only released on the PC-98.

The Invisible Man seems like a strange choice for the next game here, but I assure you it isn't. Since the classic horror movies are basically Universal's big line-up, that means we have Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man. Remember, in Dracula, we played as the villain and there was no sugar-coating it. We hear their thoughts, see what they do, and then try to do something with a melted clock or whatever it was I had to do during the last session of Dracula. Two of those are monsters who run on pure instincts, no internal monologue there. And even in Japan, there's only so much you can try to sell as transgressive before we start hearing "obscenity". Frankenstein...well, that one could work, but I suspect there are certain issues which might cause some discomfort back in corporate.

After writing this, I realized there's also The Mummy...which actually would work, but it would be Dracula, but Egyptian themed...which kind of was Dracula at times.

That makes The Invisible Man the most obvious choice, though this seems to share no real story with that beyond the general concept. In the H.G. Wells novel and the Universal movie, the title character is a villain through and through, who slowly goes nuts under the influence of the invisibility serum. In this case, our protagonist is a sickly science teacher who tries to invent a serum to improve his constitution, but instead invents an invisibility serum...and to complete his original idea...he needs fluids from uh...the ladies. One of these days a game from Japan is going to be classy, but today is not that day.

This game has a unique and not altogether bad artstyle. One which might be traced from real photos taken from...uh...magazines. I'm not sure if he's pulling a Greg Land or not, but either way, I appreciate the stylistic difference from generic anime girls whose face changes between pictures. It's lead artist Iijima Seiki's only game as a lead artist, but that doesn't mean anything to the quality of the game itself. Although that said, we're missing the absolutely amazing background art of Dracula, and I suspect this is partially why this game hasn't gotten the same cult following that Dracula and Necronomicon have gotten.

Starting the game up, we get a logo, and then a black screen with only "start" on it...oh, and my hand cursor is giving me the finger for some reason. Foreshadowing? I'm now given the option to select my sound system, one of which is a long string of Kanji "type" and the other one is "that other type". I've picked the series of Kanji and it sounded all right.

As per usual, I'm taking a video of the intro. There's one of the first fifteen minutes, but not of just the intro. I will note that going in, I looked at the screenshots and assumed that this would be bright and cheery all the time. The intro is going against that grain spectacularly, which is unfortunate, because I already know the game isn't cashing that check.

We begin in a strange lab. The narrator quickly mentions, in a somewhat pretentious way, that he's Tatsukichi Chikamatsu, a mere chemistry teacher. (This is not connected in any way I can tell to any of the names in previously mentioned works) Oh, yeah, our protagonist is still on that Dracula scale of being smart and using words that most people wouldn't use. He's one of the few men in the place, as this is an all girls school. He's not the kind of guy who's popular with them, in fact, they bully him. This is because of his weak constitution, caused by anemia, something he himself hates. He then laments that he's not popular with women.

That's why he's going to improve his constitution and get revenge on all the women who bullied him. Which is why he's done research every day until he lives up to the legacy of his grandfather the great inventor, who also left behind his materials. He was working on something to cure Tatsukichi's anemia. Something difficult to decipher, but something Tatsukichi was able to do. But some of the ingredients were difficult to find, like 12 ccs of a beautiful woman's body liquid. Have to stick that in somewhere. Apparently his grandfather was not precise in what it was he wanted, so he tested it with tears and mucus, to no success. His process also brought much mockery to him, except for one person, his research assistant Youko.

We move over to see Tatsukichi and Youko. I'm going to stop for a moment and remind you that at some point before the game started, Tatsukichi had a conversation with her about the kind of body liquid they needed from a woman. Not sure how that went, but something tells me this guy is not a master of tact and grace. Apparently he was thinking all this in real time, because Youko asks him if he's okay before going on about how the medicine is finished, they just need to test it.

Then Tatsukichi mentions that he used his bodily fluids instead of a girl's. Youko then asks if he's crazy, then he calls her a bitch and tells her to run away. She admonishes him and continues. I'm not sure what's going on with Tatsukichi, but I'm starting to suspect that he may be worse than I was expecting. Then they begin the experiment. Success seems assured.

And then it explodes. Fade to black, but still the narrator thinks. He slowly gathers himself, trying to grab Youko, but he can't. This causes him to realize that the change in ingredients has caused him to become invisible. He can use this power to get the liquid he needs from the most beautiful women in the country. Cue title drop.

That was a surprisingly well-done intro. If I may, actually more interesting than Dracula's intro, though that could be because I was confused by Dracula being married to his sister. I actually feel motivated to try this out now...even though I know that there's a reasonable chance that this is going to be relatively lame wandering around and obvious abuse of invisibility powers.

And game start, with this strange angle. You know what? I take back what I said about Seiki, he might be that good. Weird keyboard placement aside, even if he traced this, it shows serious talent in the framing and drawing of the scene. I haven't seen someone else do something like this in a pixel art game ever. Look at that framing, that metal shelving, the pipes. On the other hand, imitate the way Youko here is holding her arms and tell me how comfortable that is. Technically better than Dracula, but there's still some issues.

The GUI has four real buttons. Look, talk, etc, and map. Look and talk are point and click commands, but etc, so far, is like think from past Japanese adventure games. The Love and Life meters are probably connected entirely to story events. As Tatsukichi experiences love and life, so those meters grow. At the bottom, P pauses...which might be helpful at some point. The man and woman symbols do nothing, at least so far. 

Tatsukichi is thinking, and he's thinking about what he could possibly do now that he's invisible. How he'll be...uh...obtaining the materials he'll need. He yells at Youko, who was apparently in some kind of funk. With that, she asks how they're going to proceed. I now have control of the game...such as it is. Talking to Youko doesn't get me any new information, since she can't help out in obtaining the materials and then Tatsukichi insults her physical attractiveness. That's enough of this for now. 

The map. From here I can go places, like the men's and women's bathrooms, outside, and the nurse's office. Also, there's more stuff on my GUI which is just there for flavor. I check the outside first, where there's a lot of narration, but nothing of actual value, then to the nurse's office. Where Tatsukichi stumbles upon a woman putting on a sock. As it turns out, the invisibility potion doesn't stop people from hearing you approach. She asks who he is and Dr. Verbose spends two paragraphs telling her. He then gets angry with her for not telling him her name and she's very afraid of him...uh...I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm going to regret playing this.

Anyway, she says her name is Sayoko Saeki, and says it as if Tatsukichi should know the name. And then Tatsukichi just asks her what she's doing here, as if this is a perfectly normal conversation. She tells him to get lost. This really ticks off Tatsukichi. Right now happy music is playing and I feel like I've fired up a slasher movie. They argue for a bit, before she reveals she has anemia. Tatsukichi loses what little morality he has left and leers at the woman. She says she'll tell her father. At which point Tatsukichi decides he won't take this, but the situation just loops and I have to leave. We'll leave here as despite this game using a situational save system, I now have save states in my PC-98 emulator.

As you guess the rating for this this, consider that the last game got a 43. Graphically, I feel much the same about this as I did about Dracula, even if it lacks the cool stylization. Tatsukichi promises to be the kind of protagonist which makes Jack Griffith look like Mother Teresa, but I probably won't get stuck. Your guess is as good as mine for the rest of it.

Incidentally, I've been taking advantage of some translation websites ability to rip the text from images. Saves me the trouble of having to figure out what each Kanji are. Since I see the machine translations first, sometimes I get funny images, like this one. (Sometimes it sounds like someone going crazy) In actuality, what she's saying is horrifying for her, but we'll look past that. Oh, and Larry was not originally there, but I'm not about to post the image without his smiling face there.

This Session: 20 minutes