Quarantine Control #45: Voiced Trials of the Half-Demon

The COVID-19 pandemic situation hasn’t changed much from this time last week, with very slow improvements. More people are getting vaccinated, but not in a quick enough manner thanks to the lack of supply and some malfeasance from local governments. It’s also good that cases, deaths, and hospitalizations are down. But the numbers are still higher than they should be, and it will take a while before we emerge from the pandemic. We’ve been within the pandemic for so long that, as mentioned last week, even thinking of a potential conclusion feels naïve. We’ll probably get there, but there’s still a long way to go.

 

Geoffrey Barnes

Trials of Mana (2020)
Source: PlayStation 4
Episodes: One video game (a remake of the third installment in the Mana series)

I respected the idea behind the Trials of Mana remake before playing it, given the effort Square Enix put into it. The remake of predecessor Secret of Mana hewed close to the original Super Nintendo game thanks to how many fans worldwide have nostalgia for it, but it was criticized for precisely that reason. What’s the point of playing a nearly 1:1 remake when the original is readily available?

It’s partly why they didn’t continue with this strategy with the ToM remake, which received the full 3D treatment. The other part of this was because the west didn’t receive the original game until the Collection of Mana package released for Switch in 2019, 24 years after its original Japanese release, and there was little nostalgia for it among westerners outside those who played the fan translation. This was a brand-new game for most people. Now that I’ve largely finished it, they had the right idea.

Several changes have been made to Trials of Mana to ensure that it feels like a modern action RPG, all of which are appreciated. For instance, it drops the battle system from the original, in which a meter was required to recharge in order for basic attacks to be effective. This would have looked and felt awkward at best within a 3D plane. Instead, characters can attack all the time with light and heavy techniques, and mix it up with different combos. It’s a lot of fun, unlike the awkward old system used for the older games. (I will not apologize for thinking this.) ToM maintains a challenge by rebalancing the encounters for the new system, to ensure that even people who enjoyed the original system can find fun in this one.

Not all the features have been changed; those that made the original Trials of Mana a unique experience were kept. I was thrown for a loop with the character selection, in which three characters are selected for a party. It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d be stuck with all three of them for the game’s duration, instead of the other three characters meeting the party and joining them like other RPGs and action RPGs. I wasn’t dissatisfied with my choices of Duran, Angela, and Hawkeye, and the game fortunately is balanced so that you can’t make a bad party.

Playing through the remake showed me why and how Trails of Mana gained its prestige reputation as a great game the west missed out on. It involves a fun and robust journey around the game’s world, in which the Mana tree is dying and the party must find a way to prevent it from withering further and stop the villains accelerating its downfall. In being a remake of an older ARPG, it does its job in invoking nostalgia by keeping the progression of a mid-90s title, with a number of towns, fields, and dungeons to explore. These are included with new-school features to streamline the experience, like an improved map and icons that always show the objectives, merging the best of both worlds.

For as much as I enjoyed it, some unfortunate hitches slightly hinder its overall quality. The biggest is the partner AI, which can make later battles more of a pain than they should be. I didn’t expect the AI to be a substitute for a human partner, but it’s frustrating when they never stop standing in place when enemies or especially bosses prepare highly telegraphed attacks despite the game showing precisely where they’ll land. I often had to babysit the AI for battles later in the game, rarely switching from Duran thanks to his handy healing spell. This is, at least, not as big of an issue as it could have been thanks to how generous it is with healing items and them being cheap to purchase.

The voice acting is also something else, some of the worst I’ve heard since the PSOne days. But this isn’t as big of an issue as it could have been thanks to it trending towards being hilariously bad instead of torturous, especially in Chawotte’s Charlotte’s case. The circa 1990s outfits have been kept in all their glory, including tacky examples like Angela’s and Reisz’s. It was a bizarre idea for them to do this while significantly toning down Angela’s justification for it from the original game, which involved her being a flirty type who loved to flaunt her curves. The new outfits are also designed with those 1990s sensibilities.

The Trials of Mana remake released in the shadow of Final Fantasy VII Remake, both of which arrived weeks apart. But it’s well worth checking out for anyone who enjoys action RPGs, despite the flaws.

 

Angela Moseley

Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon (2020)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 18 (As of this writing)

When I first started Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon I was positive toward the show. I liked the new characters of Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha. I was excited about where the plot could go and finding out what happened to Inuyasha, Kagome, and Sesshomaru. That was seven episodes into the series. After 18 episodes watching the show has become more of a slog than genuine enjoyment every week. Sure I’m going to see this series to the end, but it has become an example of a good concept mauled by poor execution.

Towa and Setsuna have learned that the Dream Butterfly is responsible for eating Setsuna’s memories. The daughters of Sesshomaru have no idea where to start looking, so local corpse dealer Jyūbei suggests putting a bounty out for information on the creature. Since Towa has no money, she’ll have to earn some while working with Setsuna and Moroha (Inuyasha’s daughter) to take down demon bounties. Moroha also has overwhelming amount of debt she owes to Jyūbei and must work for him to pay it off. Meanwhile, Kirinmaru a demon ruler of the east has come to feudal Japan to spread his influence after the death of the Great Dog General, aka Inuyasha and Sesshomaru’s father. The only thing standing in his way is a prophecy that he might fall to beings that are neither fully human or demon. He dispatches his forces to take care of the threat which puts the half demon girls in his sights.

When did my enthusiasm for Yashahime begin to sour? Probably as the weeks led on and the bigger plot was revealed. My questions of what happened to Sesshomaru were answered—he’s just being a shitty father. At the same time it took 15 episodes, but the mystery of Inuyasha and Kagome’s disappearance were also answered. I found myself disappointed for having to wait so long for such an underwhelming reveal. The reveal could have been placed ten episodes sooner and it wouldn’t have changed much story-wise.  I understand the importance of wanting to hook the viewer with a mystery, but the effort is pointless if the emotional payoff isn’t worth much. Instead of scratching my head and wondering why Inuyasha and Kagome were gone and no one seemed terribly bothered, those episodes could have kicked off the series and transitioned properly into introducing the next generation.

Unfortunately, Yashahime’s bigger problem as a series is the lack of emotional impact. Everything is both moving too slowly and too quickly plot wise. It is difficult to emotionally invest in any of the characters and their overall plights, especially when the characters themselves don’t seem to care. For example, one early driving force of the plot was a request from the Tree of Ages. It wanted the three girls to slay both Sesshomaru and Kirinmaru. Except Moroha wasn’t interested if there was no cash reward and Towa only wanted to restore Setsuna’s memories. Since then Towa has half-heartedly searched for the Dream Butterfly and Moroha has continued bounty hunting to pay off her debts.

Meanwhile, forces loyal to Kirinmaru have been trying to kill the girls, and the girls themselves have no desire to be proactive. It’s as if Towa and Setsuna are bored with the show themselves and only Moroha is taking her role as a bounty hunter seriously. Another example of the poorly paced plot is when we finally meet the woman who trained Moroha to fight. In a neat callback to lore she’s of the same wolf tribe as Koga, but it doesn’t matter. In one episode she’s introduced with no foreshadowing and by the end of the episode she’s dead. Her death hit with the emotional impact of forgetting to buy garlic while out shopping. Sure it is a loss, but at the end of the day it’s not something you feel like crying over. Perhaps if she was better integrated into Moroha’s backstory her death would have hit harder, but the writers just wanted her to teach Moroha a lesson then had her peace out forever.

The fight between the demon girls and Kirinmaru was probably the most anti-climactic showdown I’ve seen in some time. I wasn’t surprised when he whipped the girls’ asses, but when Sesshomaru shows up to save the day it should have been a high mark of the series. Instead he just fights Kirinmaru to a draw, says nothing to his daughters, and the girls just scratch their heads in mild confusion. It’s obvious the writers are trying to make Sesshomaru’s intentions out to be mysterious, but his actions just come off as needlessly obtuse.

There are six more episodes left in this season and I have no faith that everything will be wrapped up in a satisfying way. Add the unsatisfactory story progression to lackluster animation and Yashahime is just a mess.

 

Joseph Daniels

I’ve not said anything about it yet on the blog but yes, I am looking forward to Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker.

Cover My Ass (2019)
Source: Official Website
Episodes: 98 (100, minutes two missing episodes)

If you’ve heard book review podcasts in the past, this is everything and nothing like those.  Cover My Ass talks about books, but judges them entirely by the cover and makes up every single detail about them, just going by what the art says about the book.  If you’re familiar with the struggles some authors have with trying to get their covers to accurately reflect the novels they’ve written, then this is the podcast for you.  Unfortunately, once it reached a hundred episodes, podcasters Khaki and K decided to move on and try something else, but for those hundred episodes, this is a glorious journey through fantastic and terrible cover art, discussing stories that I might’ve actually enjoyed, if they existed.  And who knows?  Maybe you’ll find some books you actually do want to read.  Just don’t count on them being anything like the books that Khaki and K end up describing!

As of this writing, I have reached out and asked what happened to the two missing episodes, but I haven’t received a response.

If you’re disappointed this podcast is done, though, Khaki has another series you might like.  This one pertains to stories you actually can read if you wanted to.

The Voice of Dog (2020)
Source: Official Website
Episodes: Ongoing (currently 172, and updates very frequently)

If you wish short stories got the audiobook treatment, don’t fret, Khaki to the rescue!  Khaki reads out a couple stories a week for his podcast, The Voice of Dog, and although the large majority of them come from the furry fandom, the large majority of them are also appropriate for non-furries, too.  Episodes that do contain explicit material are marked with “18+” if you want to avoid those.

(Man, 45 weeks of this and I’m finally recommending something from the furry fandom.)

A fair warning, since this is a podcast largely pertaining to the furry fandom, not every author listed will have a “professional” name attached to their works.  One week you may get a story from Mary E. Lowd and the next you may get one from Mog Moogle or Blouie the Blue Heeler.  The use of fandom names as pen names definitely does not diminish one’s talent, a recent episode puts voice to a story by one of my favourite authors from the fandom, Vixyy Fox, and both Tempe O’Kun and Kyell Gold have had stories of theirs featured in the past.  If any of those authors are to your liking, let me know because I have a few recommendations I could give you.

 

Despite the world’s situation slowly improving in regards to the pandemic, we’re still in a bad situation. Unvaccinated people are still being infected at alarming rates even though the numbers have come down, while others are still losing their jobs. To add to the point above: Even saying things could get better feels naïve. But we just have to hope they will before we give in to despair.