So Honya finally started the sec­ond round to the anime fam­ily project. Yay! It also means it’s time for me to pub­lish this post that I started two months ago. About time. There’s been quite a few changes in my anime fam­ily, reflect­ing upon how my views have shifted over the two years since Honya’s first anime fam­ily project startup. But I think this time, a few more of the char­ac­ters have entered the frame to set­tle down permanently.

The bestest true end I wish for

The anime fam­ily project is, in a nut­shell, a selec­tion of char­ac­ters from anime, manga, vis­novs, et cetera, that are assigned to roles in your ideal fic­tional family.

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Netto first got me think­ing when he reported the eroge indus­try to be in a state of peril, but I’ve been put­ing it off until this past week­end, when I (finally) fin­ished Per­sona 4 and got started on my UK ver­sion of Agarest Wars. As one might guess, those two games are very much on the topic here.

Tears to Tiara Visual Novel on the PS3 (those graph­ics aren’t bad at all)

The bound­aries between JRPGs and Visual Nov­els has always been blurred. After all, IGN recently iden­ti­fied the JRPG “talk­ing card­board cutout” tra­di­tion in their Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs, and the most rec­og­niz­able image of Visual Nov­els has got to be that win­dowed screen­shot of bishoujo char­ac­ter CGs atop a class­room back­ground with dia­logue box beneath it. Not to men­tion, there are Vis­nov pro­duc­ers like Alice-soft (Rance) and that branch of Leaf/Aquaplus (Tears to Tiara, Utaware­ru­mono) who seems to spe­cial­ize in import­ing RPG ele­ments into their Vis­novs. But com­bin­ing JRPG and Vis­nov ele­ments goes far deeper than just the graph­ics corner-cutting of pre­sen­ta­tion or the addi­tion of a basic com­bat system.

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Since the start of the fall school semes­ter, my friends and I have made Tales of Ves­pe­ria as our group gam­ing project of the sea­son, played weekly Fri­day with some spe­cial event excep­tions. We finally beat it last night, as part of our anime club’s finale week­end. This game has def­i­nitely made my top favorites list (not to men­tion Rita, dear Rita), for my expe­ri­ences in it have been absolutely brilliant.

Score: 9/10

Pros (isn’t this like… almost every­thing?):

• Excel­lent cast of char­ac­ters — stereo­typ­i­cal to start, but charm­ing and well-developed
• Intrigu­ing and well-paced plot­line — a fetch quest evolves into a leg­end, full of rev­e­la­tions and grip­ping climaxes
• Smooth and excit­ing bat­tle sys­tem — sim­ple, easy to learn, yet with great cus­tomiza­tion and team-coordination ben­e­fits for the skilled player.
• Great visual pre­sen­ta­tion — Anime-style graph­ics that we know and love in its best.
• Good world con­cepts — lack­ing the usual duo-world, but I was just as amazed when the skies…

Cons (some to fol­low):

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