Deep among the rocks, where nobody can find it, there is a palace. It is large and gaudy, all pillars and arches and sculptures, and seems like it could house an army, even though isn’t anybody there. There isn’t anybody for miles. Walk closer, enter its walls and see. Something…

(spoilers for Valkyrie Elysium) One night, when I was young and sitting in the living room of my childhood home, window reflecting a starless black, my dad told me a story. There was once a native American man, he said, who lived right where we did. He was kind and…

The world was once full of papurin. First appearing in Kojima Yoshinori’s Weekly Shounen Jump gag manga Toudai Icchokusen—about an fool mistakenly believing himself a genius--papurin is a portmanteau for “your brain is like pudding”; a jokey insult and catchy punchline that makes the speaker seem just as ridiculous; a…

warning: spoilers for Linda³ It is a commonly held belief that there are only a small number stories in the world which all others fall under. Journalist Christopher Brooker popularized the idea of there being seven: overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and…

For the first time in English: a story of sex, politics, and the video games that ruled arcades — CONTENT WARNING: This story contains animated nudity. The year was 1983, and Nihon Bussan was panicking. Beginning as a jukebox rental company in 1970 created by then 23 year old Sueharu Torii before pivoting five years later into the burgeoning video game arcade scene, the company had, in those years…

Harumi was the first to be shot. She didn’t really understand what the job was when she was signed up for it. None of them did. There was a lot of technological jargon thrown around in the pitch; visionary, utopian sounding buzzwords piled up on top of each other in…

My journey through the monstrous visual novel Wonderful Everyday continues and boy oh boy, if chapter one (or part one of chapter one?) gave me a lot to chew on, then chapter two is a full-course meal. …

Very recently I have started playing Wonderful Everyday: Discontinous Experience (or for the dweebos out there: Subarashiki Hibi ~Furenzoku Sonzai~), a highly regarded 2010 visual novel that is a regular face on Japanese “best visual novels/eroge” lists. And who would guess it, I’m kind of taken with the thing. …

On exorcisms, spirit photography, and an obscure game that birthed a legend — In 2002, at the height of a nonstop blitz leading up to their latest release, the president of Japanese game development company Media Entertainment called a meeting. It was already well into the evening, the sun having probably set long ago. Walking into the meeting room, everyone already knew what…