Some notes to accompany the review. Basically just links, trivia and anything else that didn’t quite fit into the video.

• You probably already know this, but Votoms creator and director Ryousuke Takahashi is a big name in the mecha genre, responsible for several pioneering real-robot series in the early ’80s.  He’s also been involved in a lot of other interesting works over the years though (including working as an episode director on Moomin of all things) – check out his filmography over at ANN.
• Regan from the Anime 82 podcast did a pretty good run-through of the Votoms franchise as part of his Mecha-Madness special. Check it out here.
• Mecha Anime HQ entry for the Scopedog.
• Aside from Saving Private Ryan, war film buffs might note an interesting similarity to Sam Fueller’s intensely personal WW2 film, The Big Red One (1980). Both narratives follow a small squad with a curious knack for survival as they find themselves right at the front for every major theatre of war. If the Pailsen Files is borrowing from it, it’s a shame they couldn’t have aped the incidental anecdotes about each of the main soldiers – it would really have helped the characterisation.
• While definitely not the case across the whole Votoms franchise, The Pailsen Files is another series with a weird lack of female characters. Even in the background, I don’t remember a single woman in the series at all. It rather makes you miss Gal Force.
• If you like the Hollywood war movie vibe, you might also want to check out Battletech (1994), an animated adaptation of the Mechwarrior franchise. If you can ignore the jingoistic opening narration, this uniquely all-American mecha series is surprisingly well written for a ‘kids’ show.
• That opening sequence in full

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POWERRRR.

Policenauts, for anyone still unaware, is the 1996 follow up to Hideo Kojima’s cult menu-driven sci-fi adventure game Snatcher.  It isn’t a direct follow-up to Snatcher, but it plays in much the same way and also shares the same art style as its predecessor.

Set in the near future, the game follows Jonathan Ingram, one of the original ‘Policenauts’ sent to patrol the world’s first outer-space colony.  Unfortuantely, he has a bit of a mishap during a space walk and cast adrift in suspended animation.  Assumed dead after the accident, his pod is suddenly recovered 25 years later, by which time his wife has remarried and moved off-world, while Jonathan, unaffected by the passage of time but now suffering severe anxiety about going back into space, is left to eke out a meagre living as a private eye back on earth.

Due to the vast amount of Japanese text in the game, I’d never really looked much into Policenauts before now, so actually playing it is something of a revelation.  The action still takes place in a sort of window at the top of the screen, although this now occupies rather more of the available space that the ‘viewing window’ in Snatcher.  The familiar menus are largely gone as well – the control system now happening view a point-and-click system more akin to the adventure games we’re used to seeing on the pc.

The shooting sections have also returned, albeit now using the screen freely instead of the grid system that Snatcher used.  It’s difficult to say if this is an improvement or not as, while it makes things more interesting, it’s also fairly awkward to play with the pad.  You can use a PSX mouse (remember those?), but there’s no lightgun support, which is quite frustrating for the level of accuracy required throughout.

Although the art is very similar, compared to Snatcher, there is a staggering amount of animation in this game.  The overall effect, with the big viewing window and lack of menus, actually reminds me quite a lot of the ‘interactive movie’ type games that were so prevalent on the early cd-based consoles.  For some reason, it reminds me particularly of Road Avenger (Road Blasters FX if you’re being picky), although obviously the amount of interaction here is far higher.

Anyway, I’ll try and review the game properly once I’ve played through a bit more of it, but first impressions are extremely positive.  I cannot stress enough the momentous achievement on behalf of the translation team here – they really have gone above and beyond the call on this one.

Number of times I have mentioned Snatcher in a review not specifically about Snatcher: 8

Until next time, Good Snatcher. (9)

Why are you reading this when you could be downloading the patch?

Much of the volume is given over to the exploits of Captain Nemo’s daughter Janni, whose dark and gloomy tale is presented as a kind of mock-opera.  It’s a novel idea, but I didn’t really warm to any of the characters involved, so it just came over as a bit of a gimmick to me.

If you enjoyed the earlier volumes, it’s certainly still worth reading;  decadent immortal Orlando is an amusing addition to the line-up and a brief appearance from the time-travelling prisoner of London is a particular highlight.  Unfortunately, it’s just drifted too far from the ‘boy’s own adventure’ stylings of the first volume for my liking.  Century is the start of a sweeping epic for sure, but frankly I think I preferred it when The League was still just a ripping yarn.

It took me a while to warm to the art style, but once I got into it, I really rather enjoyed it.   In retrospect, the first volume probably sat a little better for me than the second one – I usually seem to enjoy having more short, self-contained stories than a few larger arcs – but both were very witty and well written.

As I’m still waiting for my copy of the Black Dossier to be delivered though, I thought I might try having a look at the film in the meantime as well.  Possibly not the best move as it was a bit pants really.

Certainly the League was never going to be the easiest film adaptation, but the 2004 attempt pretty much lets you know what you’re in for from the moment you see the title abbreviated to “LXG”.  Obviously fancied as a new 12-A superhero franchise, LXG retains most of the same setup, but strips the comic of everything that made it memorable.

It’s difficult to comment on how well the cast fit the bill, given that any hint of  a good performance is drowned out by the overwhelmingly bad writing.  Most obviously, Connery is sadly too old for Quatermain (note his lack of a love interest), although Tony Curran gives an amusing turn as Skinner the invisible cockney thief  and Naseeruddin Shah is quite capable, if overly benign as Captain Nemo.

What anyone familiar with the comics will probably pick up on straight away, however, is just how far the story has been toned down from the original.  The League of the comics were an angry, disperate bunch who barely functioned as a fighting force, but there’s hardly any hint of that here as all the characters seem to leap into action with the minimum of persuasion.  Worst affected by this is probably Quatermain as the replacement of his opium addiction with quiet retirement robs the character of any real depth.

The film still maintains a certain sense of spectacle, even if many of the steampunk technological designs seem a bit uninspired, but in the end, it’s sadly just another one of those films in which you can’t help wondering what might have been if only they’d been willing to take a bigger risk on it.

I don’t think it counts as a spoiler to say that the seemingly immortal Wesker is back again, but the return of A Certain Other Character struck me as a bit of a step too far.  In a way, I guess I’d mentally separated the Resi 4 continuity from the rest of the series and this addition to the cast did not sit well with me as a result.  The new design for the character is also fairly hideous, or so I thought.

The game does rather redeem itself in the multiplayer mode though.  The addition of a second human player makes everything far more entertaining.   This was especially true of the mercenaries mini-game; the two of us hurling profanities at the screen as we tried to brave the onslaught of everything the game can throw at you was tremendously good fun.  If they can offer some downloadable extra levels for the mercenaries mode, I’d say it would almost be worth buying the game for that alone.

Or I would say that if I actually owned a 360 and stopped just mooching off other peoples consoles…

Nevertheless, the damn thing keeps sliding around when I try to hit the buttons (I refuse to put bluetack on my DS, that can only lead to trouble) and I’ve got artifacts.  At first I thought it was just from the tape as the XM2 seems to be very tempermental about what tapes it’s willing to accept, but the fact that they’re all centred on the lower screen makes me think it’s probably the combination of low light in the room and the bright glare from the screen itself that’s doing it.  The end result better be worth it after all this.

In other winter season news, Maria+Holic is looking very promising as well.  It’s certainly a lot funnier than I would have expected.  It will no doubt offend some people, but considering it’s coming from the same people who animated Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei, that’s not particularly surprising.  And besides, maid guitar:

My little example:

Oh and Dead Set – great series, slightly limp ending.