Other Stuff Monthly #25!

 So, Tekno Comix were a short-lived publisher in the nineties comics publisher boom that happened after Image started. Tekno had their own unique selling point, though: their comics would be created (but not actually written) by famous creators. Leonard Nimoy's Primortals was the series I used to always see copies of in back issue bargain boxes back in the day, but they also had titles created the likes of Isaac Asimov, Gene Rodenberry, and, most relevant to this post, Neil Gaiman. 

 

Relevant because the subject of the post is Wheel of Worlds, a diptych of issues released a year apart, and only slightly related to each other. The first, numbered issue zero, is like an introduction to all the Gaiman-created Tekno characters. The most interesting is the Teknophage, an immortal super-inteligent humanoid dinosaur who travels the multiverse cultivating oppressive civilisations so that they produce superpowered individuals whose souls he can consume to extend his lifespan. There's also Mr. Hero, a heroic and honourable steampunk robot made of brass who speaks with a cockney accent, and Lady Justice, who in this issue is a former slave/protoge of Teknophage who has the power to plant suggestions in people's heads, which she'd also used in the past to make a lucrative living as a findom to a bunch of rich guys on her horrible dystopian homeworld.

 

I really enjoyed this issue! Most of the page count is dedicated to a storytelling contest between Teknophage and Lady Justice, in which they both choose to tell their origin stories, along with a subplot about Mr. Hero looking for his missing hand. As evil and powerful as Teknophage is, in this story, he still feels like a fleshed out and believable character, and the rest of the cast come out of it pretty well, too. If you can get ahold of a reasonably-priced copy of Wheel of Worlds #0, I recommend you do so. Wheel of Worlds #1, however, is not a comic to which I can extend the same recommendation.

 

The main star of the show here is Lady Justice, though her origin from the previous issue seems to have been discarded, and she's now some kind of cosmic force of justice, empowering women to fight against evil. Well, in this issue, she empowers two women and a little girl. Problematically, the little girl gets temporarily aged up into an adult woman, and maybe even more problematically, one of the other women who is ugly and short, is temporarily made tall and beautiful. (It makes sense that you wouldn't send a child on a deadly mission, but what's stopping you sending a non-conventionally attractive adult?)

 

The three empowered women all get sent on seemingly unrelated quests that all converge later in the story. One women goes after her ex-husband who has a penchant for putting beautiful women in his sex/torture/molecular annihilation machine. Another goes after the scientist who apparently destroyed the man of the genius she loves, and the aged-up little girl goes after a gang of bad guys who stole her babysitter's soul so she'd take dirty photos of kidnapped underage runaways for them. 

 

The three stories converge as it turns out the evil ex-husband was sending the beautiful women's bodies to another dimension, where they'd be implanted with genius intellects stolen by the scientist, and perfect souls stolen by shock twist surprise vllain: the little girl's mother! These "perfect" women would then be sold to the highest bidder in the slave markets on a world ruled over by the Teknophage. Long story short, he eats the villains in a fit of rage, and the three heroines go back to their previous lives. The vengeful ex-wife goes back to enjoy a normal life, but Lady Justice shows her visions of the future showing her that the other two are both haunted by their experiences and end up living miserable, tragic lives.

 

So that's Neil Gaiman's Wheel of Worlds! Like I said earlier, issue zero is an entertaining, engaging story with interesting characters, and issue one is boring "dark age" nineties trash that's unpleasant seemingly just for the sake of it.

Kaikan Phrase - Datenshi Kourin (Playstation)

I've covered a lot of anime license games on here before, but this might be the game licensed from the most obscure anime so far. Released during the late nineties bishonen boom alongside the likes of Gravitation, Weiss Kreuz, and Yami no Matsuei, Kaikan Phrase is a show about a Visual Kei band made up of handsome young men. It's never had an official English release, and the only fansubs around as far as I can tell are rips of ancient VHS tapes!

 

Fitting with the theme of the show, the game is a rhythm game, in which you play the songs of the fictional band  Λucifer (which also became a real band, so singles and such could be released). There's only four stages in single player story mode, but each stage you pick one of two options. Though it's not a branching path, there are only two options for each stage no matter what, and the options only change the cutscenes that play before and after the stage. There's also only six songs in the game, and worst of all: they pad out the play time by making you grind to unlock them!

 

When you start a stage, you choose a song and a band member to play as. Since each member plays a different instrument, they each have different charts for each song, and naturally, different difficulty levels. To unlock more songs, you have to gain New Release points, which I think are scored 1:1 on the number of successful notes you play in a song. So picking a harder chart means more potential for points, but if you fail a stage, you get nothing. No matter what, though, when you start playing, you'll be hearing the first song at least three times before you unlock the second, and the gaps between unlocks only get longer and longer.

 

As for the game itself, it's incredibly simple: there's a bar on the lefthand side of the screen. Note markers appear on the bar, and a line travels down it. Although the markers appear in a number of different colours, you only ever have to press the X button when the line reaches them, and that's it! There's a meter next to the bar that fills up gradually as you hit notes, and if it's full at the end of the song, you pass the stage! As you progress through the four stages of a single player playthrough, that meter gets longer, but there's no other complications added.

 

Despite the grind problem, I still had a pretty good time playing this game. The songs are decent, and actually playing it is mindless and stress-free to the extent that it's a nice relaxing game to zone out to and play for 15 minutes or so. Obviously, it gets better as you unlock more songs, too.