Yami no Bansosha

Despite seeming, on the face of it, to be a murder mystery, this drama series is partly a lover letter and partly heartfelt plea to the manga industry to sort itself and be special again.

It’s the sequel to Yami no Bansousha, a 2015 drama, and the story revolves around the mysterious death of an editor-in-chief of a regular manga comic. Maverick manga editor Daigo Shinji is brought in to continue his work and before long he meets up with his old-time partner in crime, Mizuno Yuki and the two of them work together to uncover the truth.

And it's a fairly twisty tale. If the first Yami No Bansosha was about solving crimes with the physical manga itself giving clues, the second one focused on the industry, the history and the black market for artwork.

But, weaved in between all of this, was a constant call for the manga industry to rediscover its past glories. It was kind of heart-breaking to watch as Daigo Shinji insisted that manga used to be important and it could be again, if only it could reconnect with its audience.

The mysterious death itself was a tangle of different crimes, none of which seemed to add up to much. In the end, it was thanks to a previously unknown witness to the crime that some kind of movement towards a solution became apparent.

While there's a lot to enjoy in this series: the directing, the chemistry between the two lead characters and the never-ending reveal of new clues, the overall feeling was a bit messy and lacked focus. The murder mystery often took second place to evangelizing about manga, with the victim being a sort of metaphor for the industry.

Plus, the inclusion of Kamishibai (old fashioned street story-tellers) in the mystery was clearly meant as an example of a form of entertainment that failed in the face of new technology and became obsolete: a fate that some think that manga is facing now.

Final Fantasy XV

I was a hopeless Final Fantasy fanboy since 1998, when I first played FF VII, right up until FF XII in 2007. After that I had a bit of a problem with the franchise: Final Fantasy XII was too good. I simply didn’t care about the next one (and the reviews backed me up) nor the one after.

Final Fantasy XV brought me back into the fold. And how. Since its release in 2016, I’ve played little else since then. And it’s not just the main game, but also the downloadable content which has kept a hold on me and lead me to the unlikely event of being in a Final Fantasy game.

One of the DLCs for FFXV is the online version called Final Fantasy: Comrades. In this, you create a new avatar (I made one that kind of resembled me) and then you have a number of missions to complete to level up so you can complete more missions, etc. In order to make this endless grinding more enjoyable, I started inventing a storyline around the AI characters who accompanied me. In particular, a romance between me and a NPC called Jenica.

Despite the AI for these characters outside battle letting them do little more than jump up and down or walk with a pronounced limp, the relationship between us quickly grew quite a convoluted storyline.

Here we are, at a camp, looking longingly into each others eyes.

After a battle, I'd run over to her side.

But then I spoke to Iris.

And the next time I saw Jenica, she seemed angry for some reason.

She did her best to ignore me at camp.

And after battle, as well.

Did she prefer Kenny Crow after all? Was I yesterday's news?

But soon after that, we were back to normal.

Back together, as it should be.

A nice example of how you can put a narrative on otherwise random events. It all makes Final Fantasy: Comrades less of a chore, certainly.

But recently, as I played the main game through to completion for the first time since an update, I found some new storylines in Chapter 14 that included some of the AI characters from FF:Comrades. And then, to my surprise and unashamed delight, I found myself in one of the quests.

Look at me with all the cool guys!

Anyway, a twenty-year-old dream fulfilled. Now all I want to do is find Jenica in the main game. I can't tell, but I hope this isn't her...

A sad ending...