Other Stuff Monthly #22!

 Though it was unfortunately short-lived, in my opinion, Raijin Comics was the second-best of all the English-language manga magazines (the best was Pulp, obviously). It was a magazine of extremes: some of the series it printed were super-popular, some were obscure works by new creators; some of the series were incredibly violent and masculine, some were very soft slice of life or romance stories. Even shorter-lived though, was its companion magazine, Raijin Games and Anime: a slender bimonthly publication that covered the current otaku culture in Japan at the time.

 

Before either of them came out, though, there was this preview issue with a front cover at both ends. From one side, you saw a preview of the first few manga series that would be running in Raijin Comics, and from the other side, a preview of the kinds of articles that would be running in the aforementioned companion magazine, which was at this point called Fujin Magazine, which is a better name than Raijin Games and Anime, in my opinion. Raijin and Fujin, they always go together, right?

 

So, what kind of stuff's in here? As the cover suggests, there's quite a bit of Sakura Wars coverage, as well as an article about the 2002 Tokyo Toy Show, and a few pages of very expensive-looking action figures. And it wouldn't be an early 00s publication aimed at anime nerds if there wasn't a mention of those overpriced lego minifig knock-offs, Kubricks (and their even worse spin-off Be@rbricks). There's also a look at upcoming games, and anime TV shows and movies. Most of these even got released in the west, eventually!

 

The most interesting article is the one covering the Radio Kaikan building in Akihabara, detailing what kinds of items are sold on each floor. The building has since been demolished and rebuilt, but I'm told it's still full of shops selling nerd stuff. I wonder if it still keeps the same layout described here? Also on these pages are two cosplayers: eighteen-year-old Wakatsuki Sena, who is attending a voice actor school (a quick internet search for her name turns up an AV star, though I don't know if they're the same person), and nineteen-year-old Kikouden Misa, who is "a player of a New Japan catfight league", the meaning of which is a mystery, though again, searching her name brings up a JAV star whose date of birth would put her as being nineteen at the time of this publication.

 

I don't want to go into too much detail on the manga previewed in the other side of the magazine, except to point out that for a few of the lesser-known titles, the few chapters printed in Raijin Comics remain the only English translations they've ever received, without even any fan translations stepping in to finish the job. These include Bow Wow Wata, a charming slice of life/veteranarian story about a teenage boy who can talk to animals, Revenge of Mouflon, a gritty story about an anti-terrorist agent, and Encounter, a series about World Health Organisation agents investigating paranormal phenomena. Encounter was created by a duo working under the pseudonym Sakuya Konohana, one half of which was Nishino Tsugumi, creator of Hanamaru Angels!

 

I still don't have a scanner, so once again, I'll apologise for the low quality photos used in this article. But I hope it was interesting and informative for you. I don't recommend picking up this preview issue specifically, but I do definitely recommend picking up any issues of Raijin Comics that cross your path, and if you're interested in turn-of-the-century otaku culture, then you probably won't regret seeking out Rajin Games and Anime, either.

Crazy Construction (3DS)

 This was one of the first games I got on my original 3DS, and I'd actually completely forgotten about it until pretty recently (I replaced my original with a New 3DS a few years ago, lured in by the system's potential as an emulation device). You might think that any 3DS game would be too recent to feel nostalgia towards, but once I loaded up Crazy Construction (also known as Choukousou Kenzou Keikaku Buildinger) really made me feel something for those halcyon days of seven years ago.

 

It's a falling stuff puzzle game with the reverse goal compared to most: you have to pile items up until they go past a certain height, and maintain that height for three seconds. The challenge comes from the fact that the items are a wide range of objects with many irregular shapes: furniture, junk, vehicles, moai heads, and so on. You can also rotate them a full 360 degrees, rather than just through ninety degree increments. So you have to pile these items up high, balancing them on top of each other, trying to avoid them falling off of the platform on which they're being stacked.

 

Of course, there's also a score to chase, and this comes in the form of item weight. Every item has a weight, mostly around two-to-four, and you have to have a pile weighing at least forty to clear a stage, with better grades being awarded for going beyond that. As well as that, each set of stages has obstacles, like wind, thunderclouds, birds, as well as an enemy character, who will periodically appear to use their power and hinder your progress. The problem with all of these things is that basically do the same thing in slightly different ways: they take away your ability to control the falling items as well as you like. It's a boring way to add challenge, and I would have vastly preferred something like changing the goals for each set of stages, adding objects that are harder to balance, and so on. Just taking away the player's ability to control the game is just no fun at all.

 

Crazy Construction isn't a bad game, just a flawed one. Just kind of mindlessly stacking items on a handheld while you watch TV is pretty nice, it's just a shame the challenges they added tend towards the mean-spirited and player-unfriendly, rather than actually being challenging. Also, the plot is about a bynch of construction androids rebelling against the evil corporation who made them, and the corporation sending other androids to bring them back under the heel, which I'm pretty sure is a Kamen Rider parody. Which is nice.