fun2novel

There's also Utawarerumono, if you use the voice patch. It has gameplay too.

Thanks!

Most vns with voiced protagonists are action chuuni style but you gotta have a good level of Japanese. I guess you could try Himawari but this one can get sad and depressing from what I hear and it doesn't fit into your criteria. My suggestion is to be a bit more open with your request and just go for anything from Propller or Light, both companies have good action vns with voiced protags but are very difficult to read.

The images are slightly cropped in this video. It's in the widescreen aspect ratio. But otherwise it's mostly preserved. It's good they offer the option to play in 4:3.

The blog's views counter always shows zero for some reason.

The views counter doesn't work on blogs.

Don't concern yourself about it my friend.

My condolences. Sorry for your loss.

I get what you mean but I also think you're confusing what plot and writing really mean. Plot is a sequence of strung together events and scenes. Writing is, well, the actual text you see with your own eyes. In your case by Plot you actually mean a Story and by Writing you mean how the story is told. If I understood your correctly. My answer to your questions is very simple, it depends. Say I am reading something like Dies Irae, then of course I want a good plot. But what makes the plot good is not just THE plot but how it is written. Even a good plot will fail if the writing is bad. On the other hand if I am looking to read some thing more comedic then a plot is not that matters, the writing has to be good and funny to hold my interest. Both examples demand good writing but with a very different focus.

I assume you only want vns in the English language. Most in-depth: I/O Most epic: Umineko Emotional Hammer: Root Double Best in your opinion: not gonna answer that, to hard to decide....

Anything by Black Cyc is dark. Can't say much about the quality though.

Marie from Dies Irae. Raziel, Sorami, Lilith from Tokyo Babel. Tsugumi from Ever17. Yuuri, Yui, Mashiro from Root Double. Ibuki, Mikan from Danganronpa 2. Ril from Paradise Lost. Claudia from Dies irae ~Interview with Kaziklu Bey~.. Not everyone here is very memorable but I think those are good heroines non the less.

It's not that bad once you get the hang of it. But there is one part where you gotta be careful or you'll be set on a path to one of two endings.

Btw, Fred, "Going to the system menu in-game actually causes the game to shrink a little and the menu to appear on the left margin with a nice animation." Was already done in Chaos;Child and it did it first.

I haven't played them myself but a lot of Black Cyc games. You need some real clairvoyance powers to know what you're doing.

Guilty Crown

I think these are very intersting: Sanzen Sekai Yuugi Bocchi Musume Danzai no Maria

King of the Monsters Japanese monsters beating the hell out of each other in a fight to the death has been projected in the Japanese theaters all the way back in the early half of the 20th century. Being the 90’s kings of the arcade SNK decided to take their hand at the monster brawl formula and made King of the Monsters. King of the Monsters is a 2D fighting game but it’s not a true fighting game either, it’s more like a wrestling game with giant monsters punching and kicking each other to the death. There are three gameplay modes to choose from, a Player vs. the CPU, 2Players vs the CPU and Player vs. Player each is self explanatory and don’t need to be explained what they mean or how they play. As far as the monsters go there are 6 sci-fi movie monsters to choose from but except for one or two the rest are really unimaginative and uninteresting to play as. They are just too generic with no defined characteristic to define or make them unique. The player moves through 3 or 4 Japanese cities one by one and defeating a monster in that city before moving to the next city and fighting another monster. What makes the game fun is perhaps the destructible urban environments full of buildings of all shapes sizes and heights and some unique buildings as well like a football stadium and a destructible bridge. Destroying small buildings takes no effort at all, the monster can just stomp on it and It will explode but the bigger building require more effort and need to be punched several times before they are destroyed. SNK made exactly what an environment in a game like this should be and completely fills in your expectations. Eventually even military tanks, helicopters, jets, and even some advanced laser weaponry is mobilized by the army but of course their efforts are useless against the enormous devastating monsters. Once again the details SNK puts in their games also define this game as well with the monsters able to grab flying planes from the sky and thrown them at their opponent. It’s even possible to pick up a passing train right from the rails, an entire train with what can only imagined is full of people and throw that at the enemy. By the time the battle is over you could leave the entire city in a complete state of devastation, panic, fire, and utter destruction. Strangely there aren’t any people walking around the city although there are some, very few, cars driving around. King of the Monsters is just a glorified wrestling game and it really feels like nothing more and nothing less than what you’d expect from a wrestling game. You don’t have a lot of freedom of movement and the environments are blocked on both sides with some kind of electric field, probably because the military set these fields up to contain the damage but how then can the monster move from one city ot the next if it can’t get through the field. It’s not enough to drain the enemy monster’s life, nope. You have to attack it so it will fall on the ground but even then it’s not enough, now you have to jump on him and pin him down while waiting for the countdown to finish, once again, just like wrestling, and just like in wrestling the defeated monster can escape being pinned down and the fight will continue until you repeat the process. But there is also a time limit which if it down you lose the fight no matter if you have more life than the enemy. Some holds and throws will make the other monster drop power icons you can pick up. If you collect enough of those you’ll level up and become stronger. It’s a nice addition but ultimately doesn’t change much or makes things any more fun and you got to collect a lot of those power ups before you can level up. The graphics have some pretty nicely detailed environments but most of the game is drawn as if it’s an early 16-bit game and not something you’d expect from an SNK arcade game in the 90’s. The colors are just too bland and too overblown with brightness and have an ugly contrast values and it just doesn’t look pleasing to the eye at all. The monsters suffer from this the most and that’s too bad because that’s what you’ll be looking at most of the time anyway. The game has some good visuals but it also, in a way, just looks ugly to look at. The game has great ideas and utilizes everything pretty well however the sum parts of the execution leaves a lot to be desires. The game gets tiring very quickly, every environment is almost the same and looks indistigueshible from every other environement. The controls feel stiff and very slow at times which sometimes leaves the player wonder what he did wrong or what he did right. The lack of variety even the developers even force you to fight all the same monsters again once you already defeated them, retrace the same steps visiting the same cities and fighting the same monsters twice. It gets awquard to play eventually and stops being fun. King of the Monsters had great ideas and it utilizes everything it has pretty well, however the sum parts of the execution leaves a lot to be disered. The game gets tiring very quickly and gets boring pretty fast. Every environment is almost the same without much variety to make them different from any other environment and the lack of freedom of movement keeps you locked in without any shed of ability to explore and cause more destructive damage on the already panicking city. The controls feel very stiff and slow with every punch or kick takes a short delay before the results are shown on the screen. It’s understandable, these are giant monsters and it should take them a longer time to swing their punches or kicks or tails but this is a game and a game should also be fun to play. The lack of variety pervades into the even to the entire adventure as the developers had nothing else to offer, the game recycles the same 3 or 4 cities with different but same looking environments and when all the opponents are defeated the play has to defeat them again for no reason than just extending the game time. It stops being fun by the 3rd battle and just gets awkward to play. The ending is very somber which leaves things open but it’s pretty obvious that that there is nobody else to resists the winning monster it’s free to rampage the world leaving nothing but bloody destructions in its wake. The game does have a very somber ending which leaves things a bit open but it’s pretty obvious what happens next. Now that all the other monsters are defeated the surviving monster starts terrorizing the entire planet, or at least only Japan, leaving a trail of bloody destruction in its wake. King of the Monsters had a lot of potential but and in some way it delivers but it also lacks something that would make it memorable. King of the Monsters 2 It is the year 1999, 3 years after the events of the first game, only 3 monsters survived their brutal war. Geon, now called Super Geon, the dragon Godzilla style monster of the roster. Atomic Guy, the amphibian and the most human looking of the monsters possessing great speed. And Cyber Woo, a giant mechanical Triceratops, essentially a giant robot. The citizens of earth believes these monsters will rule the earth and there’s just no escaping their raw strength, the military is obviously no match for them, in the movies the military could never stop a single Godzilla but this time there are 3 scary monsters. However… Earth is invaded by aliens and send their own monsters around the world and now original monsters must defeat the invaders because if there’s anybody’s going to destroy the earth it’s going to be them and no one else. Welcome to King of the Monsters 2. First thing you notice are the graphics and what an improvement. They are lush and colorful with a much more detailed selection of color palate. There are fewer selectable monsters, only three, but each one is really detailed, has a great design, and has an overall a really good look to them. The alien monsters are all well designs and have their own fitting styles. The environments this time have a lot more details and even the really small buildings have their own personality, something that really lacked in the first game. You can still just walk over the small buildings and they will explode like in the first game but unlike that game this time you can actually pick up the big and tall buildings and throw them right at the enemy’s face. As the monster this time goes all over the world the environments have a lot more variety this time around as well and there are plenty of very cool and special structures you can destroy in the game like the shuttle, a football stadium, the golden bridge and so on. The levels include an American City. A French City. Grand Canyon with destructible mountain ridges and plenty of aliens to kill and a bridge and a train to destroy. A Desert with a lot of big quick sands and sand swimming “sharks”, soon into the level a tornado comes and swallows the monster only to spit it out very far into the air as the monster eventually lands in what seems to be Egypt. A Sea Bed level, literally an underwater level. There are even some bonus levels. Like in the previous game in King of the Monsters 2 there are plenty of other distractions, like flying military jest which can be grabbed and thrown, submarines, helicopters, even civilian airplanes. The insane destruction the monsters leave behind is even more powerful this time because of all the explosive and burning buildings, bridges, and vehicles possible to destroy. The environments are also a lot more open this time around and the player is free to move around, within the limits of the level or until he’s allowed to progress further, but at least there is no constriction inside this limited ring where it’s impossible to go beyond the electric force field. The player vs. monster mode is a lot more like an action adventure brawler in the style of Streets of Rage or Final Fight but each level has one main monster that needs to be defeated and the rest is just mindless fun to see how much destruction you can cause to the innocent city. You can also collect different icons that restore life or level up your monster. It’s similar how it was in the first game but this time you only need to get one power to level up. Leveling up is limited to 2 times at most so you cannot get beyond level 3. Each level up adds one more health bar, adds a new special attack, and changes the monster’s color. But players got to be careful because there is an icon that will lover a monster’s level back by one. With redesigned and polished graphics, retooled gameplay, plenty of variety even for a short game, SNK managed to take a mundane boring and forgettable game and turn it into the awesome arcade action brawler full of action and a lot of fun little details and creativity the company is known for. King of the Monsters 2 is every giant monster fan’s dream come true.

Both worked on all 3 Infinity games (both worked on a few other games before as well). There were a lot of problems with Remember11, main one is KID's financial troubles, they were in a rush to make some money and had release the game as soon as possible to make some money from sales. Because they had less than a year to finish the game, as the deadline was approaching the pressure rose and they couldn't come up with the ending (because they didn't have time to properly finish the story). Uchikoshi wanted to end it one way, Nakazawa a different way. Eventually the game was released in the state that it is. Considering they had less than a year of development it's pretty amazing what they were able to do in such a short time. The game is pretty if you ask me. Actually, when I was making the list I wanted to put Princess Waltz here as well. I debated on it for a long time but because this list only shows some of the better works by each writer and I wasn't sure just how much writing Higashide actually did himself I couldn't add this game to the list. But you are correct, Princess Waltz is a very interesting game and worthwhile to try. I haven't played it long enough to really know though. Yeah you are correct. However what I did is just to let people know about some of the most notable works by each writer, and out of those only what I think are the best works. If someone tries any of the vns I listed and likes it then they can go to VNDB and find out more works by this writer. Nakazawa worked on Memories Off but I don't think it's his best work. He also worked on Subete ga F ni Naru which is a very interesting vn but I don't know how good it is yet. I welcome all comments and feedback.

After reading Clephas’ recent blog update I decided to rip him off was inspired to do something similar. My own experience with visual novel is not as vast as his so go read his blog, his list is awesome and is way more interesting, so just give up reading this and go to his blog -__- Every work should be judged on its own no matter who the writer is but it’s impossible, in my opinion, not to rely on those writers that really speak to us, those that know how to push our buttons and inspire us, touch us deeply, bring us to tears, and blow our minds. When you find a writer that does all that for you then you’ll probably want to read more of his works if only because nobody else does that for you. Takumi Nakazawa – Best known for his work on the Infinity series, Nakazawa is one of the most incredible writers and story builders of our time. He writes Hard Science Fiction Mysteries and is completely crazy for plot details. Every single scene in his stories have a purpose to be there, every line can have multiple interpretations. Each story he writes explores many philosophical themes and scientific theories. His obsession with details what gives his stories so much depth. His characters is another part where he excels at as each one has a reason and an important part in the overall narrative. Nakazawa is not just a writer but a director and a producer but his plot structure and narrative mastery is in everyone of his major projects. Notable works: Never7 Ever17 Remember11 I/O Root Double. Uchikoshi Koutarou – Very famous among the western visual novel community and one of the very few writers recognized outside the community. Uchikoshi worked closely with Takumi Nakazawa on the Infinity series, that is where he found his passion for Science Fiction Mystery stories and what he kept writing since Never7. His ideas are incredible and just as much fascinating as Nakazawa’s ideas with a detailed narrative structure only matched by Nakazawa himself. It’s impossible to talk about either of those writers and not to compare between their individual works. Uchikoshi is an amazing writer but he doesn’t spend as much time into fleshing out his plots as much as Nakazawa does. But his stories are still amazing and highly entertaining. Notable works: Never7 Ever17 Remember11 12Riven 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma . Eve - New Generation - Masada Takashi – This guy is… the only words floating in my mind is insane and epic. His got the most chuuniest chuuni style of any writer out there. Until you read him you don’t know how good his narrative mastery truly is and just how much research he puts into his stories with everything from the bible to ancient mystical rituals to all kinds of mythologies and philosophies. The guy is a freaking poet and manages to turn a chuuni battle story into the most mind blowing FEELS kind of visual novels. What even more interesting about him is that he’s not just about the chuuni, his stories are very character centric and he is a master at making the reader sympathize with his characters and gives just as much attention to them as he does to everything else in his stories. His stories are like epic poems or German operas with extravagant imagery and presentation. He is the guy that put Light on the map and his Dies Irae built a lot of fan following for the company. Notable Works: Paradise Lost Dies Irae Kajiri Kamui Kagura Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Hachimyoujin Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Bansenjin Dies irae ~Interview with Kaziklu Bey~. Kurashiki Tatsuya & Takahama Ryou – Also known as the Light’s non Masada chuuni team. Masada has a very unique instantly recognizable style that is both incredible and difficult to replicate. Kurashiki Tatsuya & Takahama Ryou don't try to copy Masada and instead try different a lot more diverse styles compared to Masada and every visual novel they worked on is a completely fresh and unique work by its own merits with different presentation, visual, and writing style. Their stories are epic chuuni through and through with great prose and narrative structure. Sometimes they will bring another writer as they did with Mugi Ayumu when they worked on Zero Infinity, Electro Arms, and Silverio Vendetta or Monaka Koke for Silverio Trinity. Tatsuya also did some contractual work for Clock-Up on Maggot Baits and both of them worked together on Studio e.go!’s Izumo 4. Masada and this non Masada team defined what a chuuni visual novel should be like, they are the superstars of any chuuni visual novel reader. Notable Works: Vermilion -Bind of Blood- Zero Infinity -Devil of Maxwell- Electro Arms -Realize Digital Dimension Silverio Vendetta Maggot Baits Izumo 4 Silverio Trinity(coming soon). Higashide Yuuichirou – Another one of the best chuuni writers. His style is both varied and distinctly his own. One of the most noticeable things about him is how much he loves to create very unique settings and puts a lot of time into building his worlds. The settings in his stories are as much a character as the main characters themselves, pick any of his works and you’ll be pulled into a place so alive and imaginative you will believe it actually exists. When it comes to characters Yuuichirou is a master, at least when it comes to protagonists and the main cast and his characters really shine. Besides writing cool stylish epic battle scenes Yuuichirou is also the best comedy writer in the chuuni genre and his comedy can get absolutely hilarious. Sometimes he’s so good with characters and humor that you’ll not want those so called ‘slice of life’ scenes to end once the real plot kicks in. Unfortunately he left Propeller the company where he created his most famous works and went to work for Type-Moon. Notable Works: Ayakashibito Bullet Butlers Chrono Belt Evolimit Tokyo Babel. Ryuukishi07 – One of the most prolific visual novel writers of this decade. The guy is like a perpetual machine never running out of oil and never rusting. He is known mostly for Higurashi and Umineko two of the longest visual novels ever made and are well known for being some of the best mystery stories ever written. His prose style is long but never boring, slow, or full of filler. It’s quite amazing to see long works without being full of fillers but Ryuukishi07 somehow does it. His works are very diverse on the one hand and very recognizable as his own style on the other. He also did a lot of work for and with other people like Lucia’s route in Rewrite, Ookamikakushi for Konami, and Iwahime for DMM. He can write anything from horror, a style he is known for, to drama and mysteries. Currently he is working on Rewrite side stories and is writing one of the scenarios for the Kamaitachi no Yoru remake. Notable Works: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Umineko no Naku Koro ni Ookamikakushi Rose Guns Days Iwaihime Trianthology ~Sanmenkyou no Kuni no Alice~. Hideo Kojima – Aka the father of Metal Gear series. His Snatcher and Policenauts are a lot more like Japanese adventure games than straight out visual novels but these games are story driven and any visual novel gamer should not miss on either of those games. Kojima fills his stories with a very detailed setting, detailed and interesting characters, and a very detailed well crafted plots. This incredible detailed stories never feel like too much or too overwhelming because every single detail is explained in a clear and understandable manner and it’s a lot of fun to try out every item and every option just to see what new stuff you’ll learn about the world, characters, and plot. Both games are full of futuristic atypical detective stories and have what could only be said as the best moments in gaming history. Even back then Kojima was a master game designer and an excellent storyteller. Notable Works: Snatcher Policenauts. Takumi Shuu – The man behind the Gyakuten Saiban aka Ace Attorney series. Similar to Kojima games, these are more of the Japanese adventure genre rather than pure visual novels. Not much else can be said about the awesome Ace Attorney that hasn’t been said before. It’s got one of the most boring premises, you play as a lawyer Yeah, Sure. That sounds like fun. But Takumi Shuu took the idea and turned it on its head with of the wall over the top characters and a lot of very well crafted mystery cases to solve. In a way all the cases are episodic but Takumi is such a smart writer he always has some kind of surprise up his sleeves by changing the formula in some way and brings everything together by the end in clever unexpected ways. Most of his characters are, for lack of a better word, very annoying. But even then the stories are so interesting that even that won’t stop you from having a lot of fun with his games. His Ghost Trick is a very innovative puzzle style game and shouldn’t be missed either. Notable Works: The Entire Ace Attorney series Ghost Trick. Kodaka Kazutaka – Worked in the games industry for a long time now and was a secondary director on Clock Tower 3 Kotaka Kazutaka is more famous for a small little series which today has exploded into a huge franchise, the Danganronpa series. Once again, like the previous two writers his games are Japanese adventure games and not what the purest will call a visual novel but really who cares about these small details anyway, Danganronpa is here to tell a story and that’s what’s important. Referred as as the Psychopop genre by Kazutaka himself, who sees himself as the creator of his own genre, Danganronpa can very easily be compared to the Ace Attorney series because of the episodic style of mystery cases the characters must solve. But Danganronpa has an overarching plot and a plot that is very detailed and a cleverly crafted crowning achievement of mystery, horror, despair, dark and bright humor, and plenty of twists and turns. The closer you get to the end of each game the more your head will be spinning and twisting with your jaw dragging on the floor. His characters are really fun, interesting and very likeable, most of them at least and they go through a lot of extreme stuff. Kazutaka loves to leave gamers in complete despair. Notable Works: Danganronpa Super Danganronpa 2 Danganronpa Another Episode Danganronpa 3 (anime) the next game in the series New Danganronpa V3 Fujisaki Ryuuta – The Grisaia guy. An excellent writer putting a lot of care into his characters and brings them to life. Not everything he writes is gold but with each new story he gets better and better. With a clear and easy prose and a lot of character and hilarious comedy Ryuuta is master at writing fun character exploration scenes almost perfectly avoiding the long boring nothing happens so prevalent in other visual novels. Grisaia is his most famous work and while the first game in the series had some very slow scenes that feel like they shouldn’t have been there, most of the game is a lot of fun and entertaining as well as humorous enough it never gets tiring. However he’s also known for writing in other genres like in Draculius and Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yori both of which are great and highly entertaining. An interesting trivia, Grisaia is not the first work by Fujisaki Ryuuta to have an official English release, he was one of the scenario writers on Tea Society of a Witch released by Hirameki International. Notable Works: Draculius Grisaia no Kajitsu Grisaia no Meikyuu Grisaia no Rakuen Hatsuru Koto Naki Mirai Yor the upcoming Grisaia: Phantom Trigger. Hiei Murasaki – The Cyberpunk guy heading the Baldr series. But he also worked on a lot of other visual novels with very different genres. He has great with characters when needed and a big idea man when appropriate. The Baldr series is what he’s mostly known for because of the awesome ideas but he also worked on the mecha anime style and highly entertaining Dengeki Stryker visual novel. His prose is very easy to read except when he goes into info dumping in which case it’s doubtful even the Japanese readers can understand him completely. But Murasaki’s awesome and crazy entertaining stories earned a huge place in a lot of visual novel player’s hearts. Notable Works: Cho Dengeki Stryker Baldr Force Baldr Sky Baldr Heart. Watanabe Ryouichi – An almost sinfully unrecognized writer. Watanabe Ryouichi is a very diverse writer adapting different style depending on the needs of the company and projects he works on, ranging from sports stories to science fiction. His prose is simple and very easy but can be highly emotionally charged full of dramatic elements. He is also a big ideas man and his ideas are BIG. Ryouichi also likes to troll his readers by disguising epic science fiction stories with marvelous ideas and wrapping it all in what, at first, appears to be a boring nukige. Nevertheless he is the one writer that needs more recognition and his works need to be translated into English ASAP. Notable Works: Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm Harumade, Kururu Natsukumo Yururu the upcoming Akiyume Kukuru. Fushichou & Shimantogawa Seiryuu – Another pair of great chuuni writers. Fushichou and Seiryuu work for 3rdEye and wrote all four of their games so far. All chuuni, all have great beautiful and sleek presentation with great writing and good prose. Bloody Rondo was not their best work but with each subsequent game their stories got much better with a better focused plot and great narrative structure techniques. They are one of the best chuuni teams in the industry with a style all their own different from what Light, Propeller, or any other chuuni developers do in writing technique and presentation design. As chuuni stories go this pair’s games are full of action, packed with battles, fighting techniques and a fully developed magic system. Like every good chuuni writer Fushichou and Seiryuu also write great and lovable characters with their own dreams and motivations with personalities easy to care for. Fortunately their latest game Sorcery Jokers is officially coming in English, probably sometime next year. Notable Works: Shinigami no Testament ~menuet of epistula~ Gensou no Idea ~Oratorio Phantasm Historia~ Sorcery Jokers There are many more visual novel writers I wanted to talk about but I don’t have enough experience with their works yet to write about them in depth. Writers such as G.O., Sca-Ji, and some other interesting mystery, comedy, chuuni, science fiction, and drama writers. Maybe in a year or two I’ll expand the list. Thanks for reading.

Fatal Fury: King of Fighters The fighting and shmup games were the most popular genres among both the hardcore and the mainstream gamers in the 90’s. The fighting game genre can be traced way back to the 80’s but it is Capcom’s Street Fighter 2 where the storm really began. Street Fighter 2 was on a completely different scale and blew everything that came before it. Nobody thought a video game could reach this kind of amazing quality. Many companies where getting on the hype train and started to develop their next big fighter to crush the success of Capcom’s darling, many tried, very few came close. Unfortunately the genre’s popularity has dwindled to microscopic proportions mostly developed by hardcore fans for hardcore fans, it’s a small but a very loyal market and fills the void appropriately. Takashi Nishiyama was the man who created the very first Street Fighter when he was working at Capcom. The goal according to him was to make a game with really deep characters so they wrote a lot of detail for each character everything from what kind of foods they like to what family structure they belong to. None of that made into the game but Nishiyama wanted to make something cinematic and believed all that work helped to deepen the characters. At the time Capcom had three development studios with the head of the studio the sole visionary of the entire project. This didn’t sit well with Nishiyama who worked on concepts and ideas but wanted others to have the freedom to flesh out those ideas to give the work a much needed fresh and unique spin. This didn’t sit well with Capcom’s higher ups and soon after the release of Street Fighter Nishiyama’s disagreement with his supervisor led him to leave Capcom and become head of development at SNK where he had a complete freedom to work exactly how he wanted helping SNK to become Capcom’s biggest competitor. Very few made polished fighting games the way SNK did even though Capcom’s giant towering success was impossible to bring down. The first major project Nishiyama did was working on the Neo-Geo arcade system and was the first person to propose the idea for both the arcade and the home console systems. Arcade machines were very expensive at the time with no guarantee the arcade owners will make a return on their investment. Changing games was also a really painfully delicate process requiring the owners to tinker with the mother boards which could take a few hours of work. Piracy was also a difficult issue to handle and even led some companies to make self destructive machines if they detected something is wrong with the original game, like Capcom’s own CPS-3 machine. Neo-Geo tackled all these problems in a very efficient way. First it was more like a home console than a bulky arcade machine, it worked with cartridges and was as easy to change games as on an actual home console, some systems even had as many as four cartridge slots saving time on switching games. The Neo-Geo was a really powerful machine and with every year it seemed like it was getting more and more powerful, when Super Nintendo and Genesis games held 24 Megabits at most, the Neo-Geo games started at around 32 megabits and went all the way to the 700-800 megs. This was insanely huge and helped Neo-Geo be an exciting attraction with every year as each game looked, sounded, and played better than previous year enticing returning players to see what awesome new games they can try. The games cost only about $500 which is huge compared to the home consoles but are three times cheaper than most other arcade systems. The high quality of games and the cheap price helped to fight piracy and contributed to SNK’s success. There were two main versions of the system, the MVS which is the arcade system and the AES system and was a home console version. In the following years SNK released a few more consoles but none reached the incredible popularity as the AES system. Nishiyama’s desire to make a movie style martial arts fighting game with a story and deep characters led to the creation of some of the most interesting games in the genre. Nishiyama considers Fatal Fury as his Street Fighter 2 and had many ideas he couldn’t make work in the original Street Fighter including the character depth and a story driven game. And that is where things begin to roll in the first game in the series, a story that will span all through the entire series. Released in 1991, Fatal Fury: King of Fighters is known in Japan as Legend of the Hungry Wolf: The Battle of Destiny and will set SNK on a new path. In Southtown a city somewhere in America two men studied under the martial arts master Tung Fu Rue. The name of these two men were Jeff Bogard and Geese Howard. Geese had very brutal ambitions and intended to use the skills he learned to gain power over the city’s criminal business for his own gain. A rivalry start to grow between Geese and Jeff but their master continued to impart his knowledge to both. Things fell into disaster when the master chose Jeff to be his successor, jealousy and resentment ate at Geese’s mind. Shortly after he started to gain power he confronted Jeff and killed him. The incident had a witness, Jeff’s older son Terry Bogard also known as the Hungry Wolf. Tung Fu Rue took him in and started to train him the skills he once imparted on his two students just a few years before. Jeff had another son Andy Bogard who was sent to Japan to train under a different master. At the same time somewhere in Thailand a Japanese born young man, Joe Higashi, was training in the arts of Muay Thai. Now ten years later the three men heard about the fighting competition sponsored by Geese they decide to sign up in the hopes of defeating all his fighters and taking revenge. Story was very important to SNK and their early games followed strict narrative rules even if it means limiting what the player could do or which characters can be selected. In the first Art of Fighting a single player game had only one of two characters to choose otherwise the story just didn’t work. Same thing happened in first Fatal Fury, you can only select one out of three characters because story wise it wouldn’t make sense to select the other fighters. SNK pretty quickly stopped doing that with their later games and opened the entire roster of fighters to choose from even in the single player modes. As you begin the game you get to choose one of three fighters, Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard, and Joe Higashi and then select your first opponent to fight against. And things continue from there. The focus on the story prevails even during the game and between the matches you’re shown what Geese is saying about you as he gets more and more angry as you get closer to winning the tournament. Characters are one of the most important aspects of any fighting game. The game can be very fun to play but it is the characters and their visual aesthetics what attracts the gamers. SNK fighting games always had some of the most best character designs of any fighting game, unfortunately Fatal Fury is not one of them. Besides very few personas none of the characters are all that interesting to look at. Characters and animation is one of the most important aspects of a fighting game second only to gameplay and even if the gameplay is generic the characters and visual aesthetic is what gives the game its real identity and it is also the first thing that attracts gamers into putting more quarters into the arcade machine or run to the store and buy one of the console ports. Unfortunately most of the characters in this first Fatal Fury game in the series lack the visual eye pleasing attractive bright smooth clean-cut designs the kind that made Street Fighter 2 characters favorable among gamers. The three player characters, the final boss, and perhaps one more character had engaging likable designs while the rest felt like an afterthought almost as if they weren’t important enough and cast aside like worthless incompetent and completely pointless. With later games SNK will change their visual style and will push the limits of 2D graphics in games to the limit. However their games were also full of really unbelievable amount of details and unexpected surprises in their fighting games. Fatal Fury had a lot of these wondrous details in each character’s stages as the morning will turn to dusk and the dusk will turn to night after each round. This might not sound that neat but unlike today’s 3D games where you can just adjust the lighting and change from day to night just by changing the color a light and with today’s physically based shading changing the lighting is a snap, however in older 2D games the artists had to recolor each stage from scratch to fit each time of the day and since each stage has at least three different color schemes it means there are three different color renditions for every stage. In Tun Fu Rue’s stage the first round starts at an early evening with lightning flashing in the sky way in the distance and in the 2nd and 3rd rounds the characters will be fighting under a heavy rain. The Capoeira master’s Richard Myer stage has light railings on the ceiling where he can hang of and do his special rotating kicks which can be hard to avoid because of Richard’s long legs. In Hwa Jai’s stage when he has less than 75% of health one of the spectators will thrown him a bottle and he will leap up grabbing the bottle then drink it and become berserk, all in the middle of a fight. That spectator, it turns out, under Geese’s employ. Billy Kane fights with a red cane and if you brake it or if he throws it at you but fails to catch it back then after one of the spectators will throw him a new cane. Billy Kane’s stage also has this truck on either side of the stage and if he kicks you in that direction you’ll actually land on the truck and bounce off it as the truck shaking off and tries to straighten itself. It’s these cool details that set the game apart from the rest. Oh but the fun doesn’t stop here. If another player joins in then instead of interrupting the fight and having a player vs. player battle the 2nd player will actually join you in a 2 against 1 co-op battle. This evolutionary gameplay idea was unfortunately never used again and even never tried by anyone else. The tag team gameplay might have spawned of off Fatal Fury but with tag team you switch between characters on the fly while in Fatal Fury you two players controller their characters at the same time. It seems that not even Fatal Fury knew what to do with this because once you defeat the enemy the game forces the players to fight against each other and the whoever wins will sadly continue to progress through the game the game alone unless the 2nd player throws in another quarter into the machine. Perhaps that was the real intention. With only one button for punching, one button for kicking, and one button for grabbing and throwing your enemies, the gameplay appears to be deceptively simple but this three button setup provide for a lot of complexity and a great volume of attacks and special moves to execute. The characters can also fight on a different depth plane. One character might escape another’s attack by jumping into further back it to the background plane. This is something that was done only in Fatal Fury and if felt like there is a sense of depth to the environment while the characters hop from plane to plane dogging their opponents while at the same time trying to find the best opening to hit that one winning kick and end the round. There are also bonus stages like in Street Fighter 2, the first Street Fighter had bonus stages too, however in Fatal Fury it is disappointing to see the same stage repeating without any sort of variety. The bonus stages themselves are an arm wrestling game against an a digitized opponent the player just needs to mash the A button repeatedly and hope for the best. It’s fun the first time but some variety would have been good for the player to chill after a long series of fights. Fatal Fury: King of Fighters could not stand on equal grounds with Street Fighter 2’s visual fidelity, catchy upbeat music, great characters and gameplay, and it is not even one of SNK’s better games but it was a beginning, their first steps on the road to becoming the king of fighting games as each new game would get better on all aspects with polished graphics, sound, controls, gameplay with an unmatched comprehensive experience. Fatal Fury 2 Released only a year after the first game, Fatal Fury 2 started to show the direction SNK will be going for in production and design quality. The game is much bigger this time around with a bigger and more interesting character roster with improved and additional gameplay elements from the original released only a year before. This time around SNK dropped the story limiting character choices from the original and decided to have all the fighters available for the choosing right from the start. There are 8 characters to choose from instead of 3, and each one has an appropriate fighting style and a distinct personality. The new characters will turn up to be some of SNKs most popular characters like the Tae-Kwon-Do practitioner Kim Kaphwan and the fan favorite the kunoichi, a female ninja, Mai Shiranui. The gorgeous knock out red ninja, Mai Shiranui will become SNKs most memorable and most popular character of all time. Being SNKs first female fighter she was give a very special attention by the designers and made her a conspicuously eye catching seductive full of sex appeal and is one of the most well recognized fictional women in history. People who never even played the games know who Mai Shiranui is and can instantly pinpoint who she is. Her design is a combination of two previously completely different incomplete work in progress characters for Fatal Fury 2, one was a male ninja and the other a female Japanese pop idol. "the character wears a revealing outfit that accentuates her buttocks and displays large amounts of cleavage” Entertainment Software Rating Board. The inspiration for her great assets comes from two pop idols Fumie Hosokawa and Ai Iijima, one inspired the breasts the other the ass respectively. Her sexuality and jiggling is keeping true to the stories and legends of kunoichi, the female ninjas as they used their sexuality to accomplish dangerous life threatening missions. “One day, Mai's designer asked me if they could add some more animation for Mai's resting pose (aka 'neutral' pose, when the player is not taking any action). I thought we still had a little extra memory left (in fact, we did not) so I quickly said "Go ahead." When the designer came back with that 'swaying bosom', it was so amazing that it left us awestruck, jaws agape. By the way, we had to censor that animation for the overseas console release.” The King of Fighters '94 development staff interview, All About KOF'94. Dimmed too sexual for her own good she was also a character who will get the most flack and will be censored countless times for the international and some console releases. Nevertheless She remains a strong woman and the leader of an all female team from the King of Fighters crossover games. She one of SNKs most iconic mascots and she is truly one of a kind. Every fight in the first game took place in single location but in Fatal Fury 2 the player travels around the world to defeat his opponents. It’s a larger game in both scale and technicality as well as a more variant background graphics and cultural designs. The visuals now are more colorful and vibrant with really a much higher contrast between the lighter and the darker tones of the image. It still has the same art style as the first game but added color depth made the designs really pop up from the screen compared the darker and lacking style of the prequel. In addition to new characters there are also a lot of moves and actions for each fighter however animation has not improved from the prequel and the lack of frames makes everything look jerky. There is just too much stuff going on and not enough frames to do it. The time of day changes between the round are still kept but the backgrounds have a lot more detail so much in fact that they some of them even look as if they took precedence over characters. Many stages are fought on a moving platform with a scrolling background images in the back showing off the wonderful drawn detailed art SNKs artists are so well known for. Cheng Sinzan’s stage is in Hong Kong and is full of dazzling nightlights almost like an eastern looking Las Vegas. Mai Shiranui’s level is on a raft floating in a river with some old drowned city and a giant drowned ancient statue scrolls by. Jubei Yamada’s stage has wall screens between the game’s 2d fighting planes and if you jump from plane to plane while the screen is in the way then the screen will shatter in our path. If you get on the plane behind the screens then the characters will be obscured by them. It’s a pretty neat thing and really shows off the creativity SNK puts in their games as well as makes the environment appear like a real place where the characters are battling. Another fun little thing is when the first round begins Yamada takes of his footwear, kicking one backwards and another towards the screen. Once again, it’s a neat little trick to see as one of his shoes flies towards the screen and gets bigger. He will even take out an apple and eat it in a bite or two in the middle of a fight. In Terry bogard’s level the characters fight on a train with a detailed drawing of the Mt. Rushmore scrolling in the back. Andy Bogard’s stage is in Venice on a boat floating on a river as you see the entire city scrolls by with some buy on a bicycle watching the fight as he rides along. Kim Kaphwan has a someone riding a motorcycle between the two fighting planes and if one of the characters jumps between the planes the driver will fall and crash the bike. The bonus stages are more exciting but as disappointing as the first game. The first bonus stage has a stone pillar the player has to destroy, once a pillar is destroyed another one is dropped and this continues until the time runs out. The 2nd bonus stage is exactly the same only instead of pillars they drop a pack of stones but it’s exactly the same thing as the other bonus stage. The characters can now quickly step back of the back direction is quickly tapped twice. The can even crawl forward if the player holds diagonally forward and down, a feature never seen in a fighting game before. There are additional special evasion and desperation attack moves. Evasion moves just like they sound let you evade the other player’s attack if you time it correctly. Then the character’s lifebar is 25% or less it will start flashing red to indicate that a desperation attack can be executed, this is a very strong attack that can devastate the other fighter and drain a lot of his life and tip the balance of the fight. There are also a few unelectable boss characters some old like Billy Kane and some new like Axel Hawk, a boxer who looks like one of the characters from Punch Out. On his stage the fighters battle in a boxing ring surrounded by flashy electrified ring side ropes. Laurence is a Spanish bullfighter and the fight against him is in an arena with a lot of raging bulls funning from right to left as they leave dust under their feet. It gives the game a really bombastic design and showed off stuff you cannot do on any other console at the time. Finally there is epic fight against Wolfgang Krauser a tall giant German fighter with purple hair. His level is in a lobby of a giant castle with a live orchestra on both sides of the two spiraling staircases playing Dies Irae from Mozart’s Requiem – Sequentia. Perhaps this is the part that inspired Takashi Masada, or probably not. Fatal Fury Special Almost a year later SNK released Fatal Fury Special as an updated version to Fatal Fury 2. Fatal Fury Special is to Fatal Fury 2 what Street Fighter 2 Turbo is to Street Fighter 2 as the gameplay in Special is a little bit faster. All the characters from Fatal Fury 1 and 2 are available for selection right from the start including the bosses from both games. In Mai Shiranui’s stage has flag poles this time around. She had them in Fatal Fury 2 but this time the are between the fight planes and she can bounce of them and do an air attack. Duck King has a really cool stage. It begins with an epileptic flash of lights before it reveals that the characters are fighting on a rock concert stage with laser beams, a matrix of tvs playing in the background, smoke machines and dancing fans. It’s one of the most impressive stages in the game, these days it’s nothing amazing but it was really amazing to see back then. Geese returns from the first game with a vengeance with his own introduction before the player it pit against him. He’s pretty much the same as in the first game just a little more agile and faster but he is not the last boss, this honor is still left to Wolfgang Krauser and his stage is just as impressive as in Fatal Fury 2. Actually it is the same but there wasn’t any need to change it either. If the player fills a special condition the after defeating Krauser he will be challenged by Ryo Sakazaki, one of the protagonists from the Art of Fighting. It’s a cool little surprise but doesn’t add much to the game except maybe a nice looking background with splashing waves against a rock. The game feels bigger, more refined, and makes Fatal Fury 2 obsolete but it’s an otherwise the same game just with a bigger selection of fighters and some additional great looking backgrounds. Even the endings are the same as in Fatal Fury 2. There’s a lot of skill and fast paced strategy necessary to succeed and it’s still a very fun game to play today but other than a few neat quirks it doesn’t have much life span compared to other fighting games or even the sequels. Fatal Fury 3: Road to the Final Victory WARNING: It’s a fighting game so the story has nothing really awesome going for it but if you still prefer to be surprised by playing the game yourself then be aware that I spoil the ending. After Fatal Fury Special SNK was working hard on the next installment in the series with a longer development time than previous games so far with new gameplay innovation and visual upgrade, once again pushing the Neo-Geo and fighting games to the next generation. Fighting games are all about two characters beating the hell out of each other in a tournament style brawler till the last man standing. The fights in Fatal Fury 3 feel a lot more brutal than previous games as each punch flies and smashes into the opponent with a bone crushing sound effect as blood, sweat and spit burst into the air. Gameplay is fast and furious and when punches and kicks meet their opponent it opens even more opportunities to inflict even more and faster attacks. Using every move with speed and accuracy are a real key to success in this new game in the series. Coming back as a series staple is the ability to crawl slowly forward while trying to be careful not to be hit is very intense because you never know what the enemy might do and where the next kick is going to hit you if you aren’t quick on your wits and in a hurry to defend yourself. This time there is only one plane to fight on however the game a new oversway system which allows the characters to jump into the background or the foreground for a limited time and avoid an incoming attack or do a quick punch or kick dash towards the opponent. Jumping has also been refined a bit and it’s possible now to do wither a long or a short jump depending on how long the player holds the up direction, kind of like in most platform games where the longer you hold the jump button the higher you will jump. Ever since Mortal Kombat started filling the screens with buckets of digitized blood seeing a fighting game with blood is nothing new and in fact is much more appropriate than a lot of other genres. But unlike Mortal Kombat, SNK went a different way to create a more subtle and realistic depiction of blood spills with less focus on the blood and more on the actual gameplay. SNK already tried their hand at drawing blood in Samurai Showdown/Spirits but that game has razor sharp blades and swords, Fatal Fury 3 only has bare knuckles and when a punch makes the other opponent bleed it has a much brutal and shocking impact on the occurring explosive battle displaying on the screen. The game also ranks the player on how well he fights and gives a score at the end of each round. Fight fast and quick with no health lost and you might get a high ranking for the current match. Come alive out of a fight with barely any life left and no smart tactics and you might get a very low rank. High ranking is a great motive to try harder and learn to fight better and unlock a few additional surprises because the ranking system is closely tied to the game’s central plot. Like any other video game in the fighting genre defeating one opponent moves the player to the next and repeats until the final boss battle at the conclusion of which the game ends. However in Fatal Fury 3 SNK had a few surprises up its sleeve. As the player defeats his opponents and moving from one stage to the next to fight his next opponent standing in his way to victory the player can be interrupted and challenged to a one round duel by a new unknown character which is later revealed to be Yamazaki. As it turns out this is the final boss, the real final boss of the game and he keeps a close eye on the rankings you get for each round because he won’t show up unless you earn a high enough rank from your previous battles. But that’s not all, there are actually more surprises to come. You see, once you defeat Yamazaki the true villain appears, Jin Chonshu, some 2000 year old sorcerer who seeks a scroll that will grant him immortality he only appears if you get an even higher ranking. And if you thought that was the end then if your ranking is even higher the game finds another way to pull the rug right under you and another boss appears, Jin Chonshu’s older brother, Jin Chonrie. After seeing his brother defeated (perhaps even dead) Jin Chonrie gets absolutely enraged and looses his marbles and the real final battle begins after of which the player is treated to the true ending as the long and hard battle is finally over. The character roster is smaller this time around compared to Fatal Fury Special with only 10 characters to choose from. Some of them are returning characters such as the fan favorite Terry and Mai along with Joe, Andy, Blue Mary, and even Geese is a selectable character which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the new fighters. There are a few cool details here too like when the first round starts the game will have some kind of short presentation such as Franco Bash sitting in a chair waiting for the match to start with his trainer massaging his back and then tapping him notifying about the beginning of the round and as Franco stands up his trainer kicks the chair but hurts his own leg. Some of these animations depend if the fighter is the player or not because if Franco is the player then he will just drink something from a small bottle and thrown it away. Blue Mary will have her jacket on and as soon as the round starts takes it off and throws it while he dog catches it and runs away. The backgrounds are even more impressive than before with some of them having a lot if really detailed drawings. Joe’s stage looks like an Amazonian village (although it says National Park) with a lot of greens and exotic animals like a crocodile and a huge turtle as well as huts and statue heads and there are even some greenery in the foreground as well. Mai’s stage is in some kind of underwater park (it says East Side Park) with a huge glass wall in the background with some old structure and a lot of sea life swimming about with sharks, penguins, whales, and other types of fish. Hon Fu’s stage is very interesting and takes place on a rising platform with at first only some building can be seen but as the fight continues the platform goes higher and the entire city is revealed with some really cool details it makes one of the best stages in any fighting game thus far. When moving between the stages the player is shown moving on a map and the player’s graphic changes depending on which character he chose. If it’s Blue Mary you’ll see traveling on her bike, if it’s Geese you’ll see him driving his car and if it’s Franco then you’ll see him running from stage to stage. Character designs have been improved too and taken many level ahead with what can be done with 2D games. Animations are a lot more smooth and fluid compared to previous games with every move has all the necessary frames that removes some of the noticeable jerkiness from previous games. The details and the coloring on the characters has also gotten better by using much more lush and vibrant attractive color schemes creating a much more pretty look than how things were done in the older games in the series so far. Fatal Fury 3 changed the formula from how things previously played but it was a risk SNK felt was important to take to keep the series fresh but still familiar to older games alike. This was one of the games that pushed 2D visual aesthetics further but it’s not where things will stop and in a few years SNK will eventually take a few more steps into an even more impressive graphical fidelity but it will take several games to get there.

Don't you have something better to do with your time? It's not Star Wars and you are not Lucas. Just leave the series as it is and enjoy it for what it is. Not trying to defend the game but you're going way too far with this. Uchikoshi did what he could with what he had available. It's not perfect but he tried his best. At least we got a conclusion to the trilogy. It could have been done better but why bother with it now, if you love the games, cool. If you hate the game that's cool too. Move on with your life and find something better to do.

Ghost is the Shell 2 is not a complete continuation of the previous manga. Masamune Shirow planned it be a standalone work but still feel like a semi-sequel. The original story was pretty much complete and it’s welcoming to see a fresh story. It opens the way to explore some new but equality interesting ideas. Shirow even planned to change one of the title kanji to indicate a slight difference between this and the previous work. “I would also like to thank the people, who have waitd for 10 years. Thank you so much.” Masamune Shirow. Ghost in the Shell marked Shirows entry into the world of computer artistry and allowed him to experiment with different software, coloring, and composition techniques. Technology however did not make it easy on him with hard disc failures and gigs of lost data, hardware connectivity problems, application upgrades and other countless troubles he had to struggle through the long running production of this work. It is almost a real life meta narrative of technological deficiency and ineffectiveness to liberate human lives and instead forming more problems than solutions it supposedly attempts to provide. Once again Shirow goes into the most interesting minute details of technology, cyberpunk, human condition and political state of the world. There are corporations that accept specific genes from their customers and grow for them special donor pigs in case a customer needs an emergency organ transplant. The organs harvested from pigs are of no danger of being rejected by the human immune system. The genes are taken while the person is young in an attempt to preserve healthy cells and prevent a programmed cellular death problem which arises from older aged genes. Other methods of human organs manufacturing exist without human-pig gene splicing but they are not as efficient and commercially profitable. Presentation is even more overwhelming this time around than ever before with so much going on in each panel it is sometimes difficult to catch a breath from one panel to the next. Half the manga is filled with reality augmented holographic graphical user interface displays. The cyber world and the real world switch and blend at will with no clear way to identify which is which and who is who to a point that it leads to some really interesting thought provoking themes as even the reader struggles to see the reality where the action is taking place. There are layer matrix coated material display glasses that can disturb from the light to enter or exit the room. The glass has an internal micro vibration operation to prevent from a leaser beamed eavesdropping devices spying on the occupants of the said room. Even just a simple ride on a boat is the most cyberpunkies thing ever presented in any medium. The story this time around takes place around a much shorter timeframe and is much more condensed with information, even more than the first manga if that is even possible to do. But like the original Shirow fills the pages with some interesting and funny commentary between the panels and sides of the pages. These commentaries talk about a variety of things like, the reason a cyborg has bubbles underwater if it doesn’t breath air, or why would a remote controlled humanoid terminal wear underwear. It’s all fun and interesting to read and once again shows how much depth and research Shirow put into this work. The themes and concepts of duality from the original work return and are explored in this work as well. The duality of the mind and soul connected but also disconnected forms of world views as each influences and reacts to the other. Their paths cross at an asymmetrical constantly shifting and changing mirror of reality and non-reality. One cannot exist without the other, perhaps humans cannot exist without technology anymore or technology is unable to exist without humanity. Shirow drew his ideas from various people and even going so far as naming the work after the writings of Gilbert Ryle and Arthur Koestler. The text is dense, the dialogue is long, the writing is convoluted, the narrative suffers from too much stuff going on and yet at the same time it somehow works pulling the reader in and impossible to down.

I think Dies Irae has excellent art. Though it doesn't fit into your story categories.

Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell manga is one of the most intriguing mind captivating compelling and thought provoking stories hiding under a clever camouflage of a humorous tongue in cheek presentation sometimes even subverting itself so as not to overwhelm the reader. However it is so thoroughly confounding how far and broad the profoundly deep ideas Ghost in the Shell comprises under its umbrella so far so that it is astounding why this manga never gets a mention on people’s top Cyberpunk and Hard Science Fiction lists. It is absolutely impossible to talk about any one theme or idea the series encompasses. There are questions of personal identity, what if your thoughts and memories are broken and erased will you still be the same person. There are immigrant hiring sweatshops with workers under a constant threat of their brains being wiped out or altogether fried. There are hackers who can hack your mind and implant false memories or even a completely different identity before you even notice that something is wrong. Shirow dedicates entire chapters into showing off the world and immense research he must have done into technology, biology, neuroscience, machinery, dermatology, prosthetics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, the internet, politics, Cyberbrains, Ghost Hacking, and pretty much every kind of topic on every scope he could shove into the story. In a world where everyone can copy their own mind through technology is there a place for an individual and what being individual means if there is no more a body or a single mind to speak of? Some of the themes this work is dealing with are very gut wrenching when you think about it as there is no real conclusive answer, only what you, the society, and time will make of it. Your heart and soul, your mind and body, even your thoughts and feelings, do they exist in you or outside you, how dependent connected are your body, mind, and soul? Ghost dubbing is a term of copying a ghost from one individual into another device and an act that leaves the original dead but is the copy becomes an original or the original’s unique thoughts feelings and sensations are left behind with its passing from this world and what happens to the copy if it’s only build of original’s eyes but not the body. The Section-9 investigative team uses AI equipped walking tanks, Fuchikomas and Tachikomas, as helpers during battles and infiltration assignments. These almost child like artificial minds of wonder learn about the world and completely are self aware. They are almost human and speak and even ask questions or even have requests of their users. This form of intelligence is no different from a real consciousness with an unlimited potential to expand and grow but the real question is do these machines posses a ghost even if no God breathed soul in to their life. The real protagonist of this story is Motoko Kusanagi, a Major at the Public Security Intelligence Section 9, or shortly Section 9, or just S-9. She is physically and willfully strong, smart and very intelligent, with high deductive and hacking skills. By the end of the story not a lot of revealed about her as the story itself is more interested in exploring ideas than developing its characters. However Motoko herself is a very compelling character as she struggles to keep her own humanity intact. When she was a little child she had an accident leaving parts of her brain and her entire body crippled with no chance of survival on her own. Therefore her brain was replaced by a cyberbrain and her body is completely prosthetic, she is true combination of human brain and machine, a cyborg of the 21th centry. Not even that past of hers is revealed to reader and requires some guess work. She is almost entirely made of cyborg parts, only her ghost is real, a small flicker of light that can easily be extinguished and snuffed out in a sea of technological homogeneity with no more rare uncommon separate individual identity to call her own. It’s an everyday struggle to keep her same self individuality separate from others as she hacks and infiltrates the web and might be lost forever in the cybernetic world comprised of nothing but AI and other same looking individuality lacking Ghosts. Sometimes Shirow will even sacrifice the narrative flow and halt the story entirely to explore something new and different from previous chapters. There is an overarching story but it is fragmented into smaller almost as if unrelated stand alone episodic stories with a main plot popping its head once in a while as a form of coherent check up. There are even chapters with almost no obvious connections to the plot only serve to further explore the mind numbing ideas or to expand on the world that the story inhabits. It seems as if showing off all the exhausting research Shirow did was the main objective all along while the characters and the plot are only secondary tools to fleshing out the broad scope of his ideas. In fact Shirow coldn’t even fit all this information into his own panels and had to fill the manga with side notes between the panels or the sides of the pages sometimes taking an entire 3 or more paragraphs of text. Sometimes the notes will describe something important in addition to what is already said in the panels other times it’s his amusing commentary contradicting what one of the characters just said, or commend about how a robot doesn’t smile and is only programmed with preconditioned reactionary states. Even the anime directors were pushed to their limits when trying to come up with ways to convert all this information into a visual medium without stopping every second just to give another interesting tidbit of Shirow’s musings. Too many stories are said to be Science Fiction just because they have a futuristic setting and tell a generic story with nothing to hold it in that particular setting so much so that if you were to lift it and set it down in some other setting nothing will change. Ghost in the Shell is a story wrapped up in a police drama narrative that just wouldn’t work in any other genre but Science Fiction.