He Came With the Rain

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die"
"Blade Runner"

It's been a while since my last game review! Especially of a recent game...

A young man awakens in a room, having lost his memories about his own identity. However, based on his clothes and the documents he's carrying, he quickly realizes he is a Master Detective, member of the  World Detective Organization. As per the instructions on the letter he found, he quickly makes his way to the express train headed for Kanai Ward. Kanai Ward is a special city where it never stops raining that is governed by a private company: the Amaterasu Corporation. The Amaterasu Corporation is so powerful not even the Unified Government has any say in Kanai Ward, and the city is generally actually kept closed off, not allowing outsiders to enter, nor people from Kanai Ward to leave. The young man learns his name is Yuma Kokohead, and that the World Detective Organization has sent several Master Detectives into Kanai Ward to investigate the Ultimate Secret of Kanai Ward, which is likely connected to a major crime that has been taking place all over the world, though the leader of the WDO refuses to give the few detectives in Kanai Ward any more information about it to not color their views. The detectives are all assigned to the Yakou Detective Agency, the only detective agency in Kanai Ward, though the boss, Yakou, is quite reluctant to make too much waves in Kanai Ward, as he's having trouble staying in business anyway: the Security Division of the Amaterasu Corporation act as the de-facto police of Kanai Ward, and have been controlling he city with a rather cruel hand.  As the detectives dig into the secret of Kanai Ward however, they get involved in various murder cases they have to solve, something not particularly appreciated by the Security Division. However, Yuma has one card up his sleeve. While he may have lost his memories, it turns out he made a deal with the devil. No, to be precise, he made a deal with a death god. Shinigami-chan is a supernatural being who made a deal with Yuma before he lost his memories and she has granted him the power to enter the Mystery Labyrinth: a supernatural world which allows them to solve a mystery in the real world, if he manages to find the way out from the Mystery Labyrinth. Can Yuma with the help of Shinigami-chan figure out what the ultimate secret of Kanai Ward is in the 2023 Nintendo Switch game Choutantei Jikenbo Rain Code, released in the West as Master Detective Archives: Rain Code?

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is the latest game by the creators of the Danganronpa series, and quite literally so. While Danganronpa creator and writer Kodaka Kazutaka left Danganronpa developer/publisher Spike-Chunsoft to start his own company Too Kyo Games (creating games like Death Come True), Rain Code is co-developed by Spike-Chunsoft and Too Kyo Games, And you can really tell this was made by the Danganronpa creators, with art by Komatsuzaki Rui, but also lots of design choices and story telling beats that will be very familiar. Long story short: if you like Danganronpa, you're likely going to like Rain Code too, and if you didn't like Danganronpa, I doubt very much Rain Code will change your mind. The main set-up is very similar, with a multi-chapter story structure where you solve murder mysteries (often of an impossible nature), but also delve into an on-going mystery, which will get resolved in the final chapter. 

The at-times psychodelic pop art design we know from Danganronpa is also present, creating a very unique, but also very recognizable look for this game. When I first saw the game in a trailer, the world already looked very memorable, but having played the game, I can definitely say Kanai Ward, as a physical location, looks absolutely beautiful. It reminds a bit of Final Fantasy VII's Midgar, being a major city ruled by one big corporation, but the various city areas ranging with mostly office buildings to slums and a downtown area do look very memorable, especially with all the rain falling constantly, and the main area in particular has Blade Runner vibes going on. Art-wise, the game looks really cool.

Gameplay-wise, the main beats will not sound very surprising. At the start of each chapter, you control Yuma (in a third person view this time) walking across town, interacting with the various characters and sometimes even doing little sidequests to help the citizens of Kanai Ward. Once you had advanced, you'll get involved in a murder case, where your first priority becomes having to collect evidence. Sometimes, you'll have access to the crime scene, but often this will be a bit tricky because Yuma is actively locked out of an investigation by the local authorities. Enter the various Master Detectives who have joined the Yakou Detective Agency with Yuma: Master Detectives possess special, supernatural powers which they use in their investigations, ranging from being able to hear the slightest sounds in a certain radius, like even a heartbeat of a person hiding in a different room, to being able to use a kind of psychometry to visualize how a crime scene looked like when it was first discovered. Using these powers (often functioning as a kind of minigame), allows Yuma to collect the necessary evidence to solve the mystery, which is always done by having Shinigami-chan move Yuma (and often an ally) into the Mystery Labyrinth. I have to admit I wasn't really that impressed by the gameplay implementations of the various Master Detective powers in the investigation parts of the game. They provide for a bit of variety, but barely so, and while sometimes they did allow for unique mysteries, these moments were rare.

The Mystery Labyrinth is where the actual solving of a mystery takes place, being a supernatural realm that physically represents the mystery at hand. Abstract design representing the case makes these Mystery Labyrinths a sight to behold, but at the same time, I have to say I really, really think the Mystery Labyrinth is a failed attempt at a concept I think I can agree with in terms of ideas, but the execution in terms of gameplay is just not fun. Which is a bit of a shame, considering how good it feels to solve a mystery in well, a mystery game is pretty important. I think the basic idea behind the game is that they didn't want the player to ever get bored with the mechanics of solving a mystery, so they designed this part so there's always something happening. The main meat of these parts are the Reasoning Death Matches, where you have to "battle" with the mystery you're struggling with personified. This mystery-man will try to prove your deductions are wrong, but by using the correct evidence to prove they are wrong on the correct utterances, you can point out contradictions in their story, and thus "defeat" them. This is of course very similar to the Danganronpa games, in turn taken from the contradiction mechanic of the Ace Attorney games, so little surprises here. As in Danganronpa, there's an action element here, as timing and "evading" utterances is also important, as taking too much damage will kill you. But, this is not all, and that's the biggest problem I have with the Mystery Labyrinth. As said, they don't want to bore you, so basically everything is constantly presented with a different "mechanic" (often it's just the same mechanic of having to pick between three options, sometimes with a timer, or having to present a piece of evidence already in your possession). But because they want to make it look exciting, they present these questions in over the top manners in the Mystery Labyrinth, from having to pick the correct answers quickly while falling in the sky or fighting off a bad guy or riding a mine cart through a maze The Temple of Doom style. The questions themselves are perfectly fine, and I'll talk about that later, but every time the game switches to a different minigame, it has to load. And the load times are strangely long. Like, sometimes, you're waiting 20 seconds just for the next question to load, just because the presentation needs to be so over the top. It creates an incredibly bad flow for the game, as often you're physically forced to wait, even though answering the question correctly is rapidly leading you to the truth. After the first two chapters or so, I really got fed up with having to constantly wait for the extravagant presentation to load, even though the questions themselves are fairly simple.

Also: I have to admit I used the fast-forward button a lot on the banter and post-mini game discussions where you walk through the corridors of the Mystery Labyrinth after a while, because often, the game just needed to automatically go through all the banter before it allowed you to move on to the next gameplay segment... Each chapter also ends like in Danganronpa, where you have to do a short reconstruction of the timeline of the murder to show you really understand what had been happening. I still like them conceptually, as they will help people really order all the many events into a chronological story in their mind, but for some reason these parts (the voiceover of the reconstruction) can't be fast-forwarded....

The thing is, even though the Mystery Labyrinth can be so tedious because of the constant waiting, I do like the basic concept behind it. In games like Ace Attorney and Danganronpa, a lot of the story has to move forward via longer conversations and via contradictions, because that's the meat of the gameplay. Here, the idea is that the Mystery Labyrinth can just suddenly throw questions at you, which don't require as much of a natural set-up dialogue-wise, but which are still relevant to solving the mystery. I think this is related to the difference to a prose mystery story and a mystery story presented as a game: a mystery game will often have to be designed to have the mystery be able to be solved mainly through the core game mechanic, whereas a prose story, can provide starting points for solving the crime in a lot of different ways. In Rain Code, they basically have a magical explanation for why a certain question will pop up at this certain point, which might seem a bit artificial, but you don't really question it because of the supernatural background, and it allows the mystery solving process to be pretty streamlined. For example, Rain Code has a few stories where the mystery will be solved through an elimination method similar to Ellery Queen, where you have to identify the characteristics of the culprit and compare them to the suspects. That set-up works pretty good with the Mystery Labyrinth, because it can pose these questions that allow you to tick off those characteristics at the right time, without having to rely on the classic contradiction mechanics of Ace Attorney and Danganronpa, allowing for different kinds of mysteries, and different types of chains of reasoning to be presented in a game. I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that in a mystery game, so the idea of the Mystery Labyrinth really appealed to me, which in turn made it even more frustrating I had to wait for the game to load constantly for every single moment

The individual cases are pretty fun too, often slightly inspired by famous detective stories. The prologue for example, which introduces the player to the gameplay mechanics, takes place on a running express and is titled after Murder on the Orient Express, while the first proper case in Kanai Ward is about a horrible serial murderer with a title that reminds of Shunou Masayuki's Hasami Otoko ("Scissor Man"). There's even one set in a highly secured lab reminscent of Mori Hiroshi's stories. While I think in terms of complexity, the cases in Rain Code are nowhere near the more complex ones in the Danganronpa series like from the second or third game, I generally like most of them for their set-ups and the way they use the world of Kanai Ward, and the way the chains of reasoning are laid out for the player to solve these cases. You'll be solving quite a few impossible crimes (locked room murders) in this game, most of them with elements you'll recognize one way or another, but still presented in a fairly entertaining way. The Ultimate Secret of Kanai Ward on the other hand is not really a "conventional" mystery, and your mileage may very well vary on how much you like it. I kinda saw it coming, and I do think a few of the clues are quite clever, but it didn't come as shocking as it was probably intended, and the last chapter is quite bad in the sense it's basically one gigantic information dump on the player. The side-quests though are pretty boring, where you're not doing any real detective work and just doing errands across town (talk to A, then talk to B, return to A), which will feel very much as out-dated game design, similar to PlayStation 2 era Ryuu ga Gotoku/Yakuza games.

In the end though, I think that Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is a fairly interesting mystery game, even if it's hampered by atrocious loading times. It is basically what you'd expect from a game of the creators of Danganronpa and I assume many who read this blog will have played at least one of them, and thus have an idea of whether they'll like it or not. For those with no Danganronpa experience, I think it is a good game, but certainly not as comprehensive as the later entries of Danganronpa (which are cheapter at the moment), and some game design ideas do feel a bit dated. It's certainly not a epoch-making mystery game, though save for the loading times, it is a pretty solid designed game with interesting, even if not very complex mysteries for the player to solve. I had fun spending time in Kanai Ward at least, and if there's even a sequel, I'll definitely be very interested.

Original Japanese title(s): 『超探偵事件簿 レインコード』

Accuracy of Death

これは、映画なのか？ゲームなのか？

『Death Come True』

"Is this a film? Or a game?"

"Death Come True" tagline

We usually expect to find the name of the author on a novel, and the same holds for the screenplay writer in film credits, but it took a while before we got proper crediting in videogames. Up until the mid or late nineties, it was still pretty common to find aliases in videogame credits, as many videogame companies didn't want individual employees to be credited by name. Crediting could also be vague: you usually had segments like "Music" and "Programming" in videogame credits, but finding out who wrote the story or the actual text in a videogame could be a lot trickier, as this work was usually done by planners, but planners don't exclusively work on story, so you could never know who the writers were on a videogame. It's pretty hard to find proper writing credits for the majority of the Detective Conan videogames for example, as they have been around since the original GameBoy era. Things are different nowadays thankfully, allowing you to finally identify videogame writers you like.

Kodaka Kazutaka is an interesting case for myself, as I had played a few videogames written by him long before I became aware there was such a person. Kodaka became famous with the Danganronpa videogame series, a high-paced, quirky courtroom mystery game with psychodelic presentation and a script filled with pop culture references. I started with the series in 2012 with the first game, which is when the name Kodaka was first registered in my head, but later I heard he had also written some other videogames I enjoyed. While Danganronpa was Kodaka's own creative invention, he had previously worked as a freelance scenario writer for videogames, and it was during this period he wrote a lot for the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou franchise, writing both original stories for mobile phone releases as well as a few Tantei Jinguuji Saburou novels (Shinjuku no Bourei and Kagayakashii Mirai). The Six Sheets of Crime had always been one of my favorite entries in the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou mobile phone series, so I was quite surprised to learn that that was one of Kodaka's contributions. What was even more surprising was that Kodaka was the writer on the Detective Conan and Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo crossover game Meitantei Conan & Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo: Meguriau Futari no Meitantei ("Detective Conan and The Young Kindaichi Files: The Chance Meeting of the Two Great Detectives"), a Nintendo DS game which was a lot better than I ever dared hoped for.

As I had somehow managed to play all of Kodaka's mystery-related videogame output without ever planning for it and had indeed enjoyed most of them, it was only natural I'd keep an eye on him to see what he'd put out next. Death Come True (2020) is Kodaka's latest mystery videogame and was released this week. As you may have noticed from the screenshots though, Death Come True looks completely different from the previous games Kodaka worked on, as it makes use of Full Motion Video (FMV) filmed with actors, including Kuriyama Chiaki (Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill) and popular voice actor Kaji Yuki. I believe Kodaka studied something film-related in college (which is how he eventually rolled into the game industry), so in a way, him working on a game like this makes a lot of sense. The story does start with a familiar trope you see in a lot of Kodaka's other videogames: the protagonist waking up and having no idea what happened. The noise of a ringing phone wakes a young man lying on a hotel bed. At first, he's dazed and has no idea what happened to him, but a look in the mirror makes him realize he has no memories of who he is and why he's in this hotel room. But the television soon gives him some answers: the photograph of the serial killer Karaki Makoto shown in the news is the same face that looked back at him in the mirror. Confused, "Makoto" looks around his hotel room, only to find an unconscious woman tied up in the bathroom. This is followed by a loud knocking on the door by a police man who wants to take a look inside, a start sign for the evening of fright awaiting Makoto, where he needs to solve the mystery of who he really is and what he's doing in this hotel.

Interestingly, this game starts with a video message by the actor of Makoto, Hongou Kanata, asking the player not to spoil the story to others, kinda like the warning you get in the stageplay of Christie's The Mousetrap. The screenshots used in this article are just from the trailers, so I assume that's all safe.

Death Come True's promotion tagline was "Is this a movie? Or a game?" and that is definitely a fitting line. The game plays like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure: most of the time, you'll be watching a live-action drama, but once in a while this video will stop and you'll be prompted to choose how to proceed with the story next. For example, in the earliest part of the game, you can choose to open the door for the policeman knocking on the door, or to hide. These choices influence how the story will develop: a wrong choice usually ends up killing you one way or another, while the correct choice will of course progress the story. There are also moments where you are forced to experience a game over first, but that allows you to make new choices that weren't available the first time. The game thus revolves around finding the correct route (the correct sequence of choices) that will allow Makoto to figure out what is happening and why he's here. The game is not very long, and the first playthrough will probably take you about the time of a movie, which again invokes the tagline "Is this a movie? Or a game?"

But I think that ultimately many players will ask themselves: "Was it really necessary for this story to be told in the format of a videogame?" The limited scope of the game, the short play-time and the presentation don't really benefit the story that much to be honest. There are actually very few branching points in the story, and you only get to choose between two options of which one is almost always blatantly going to lead to a game over screen, so the whole experience is quite linear. Comparing Death Come True to other games that follow a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure approach (novel games) like 428 and Kamaitachi no Yoru is almost like night and day. Sure, Death Come True may have fully acted video sequences from start to finish, but because the game's so short, it's very simple to figure out what choices you should make. Whereas games like 428, Machi and Kamaitachi no Yoru have a looooooot more branching story paths and choices, which makes it a lot trickier to figure out what the correct route is. In those games, you really have to track your choices in a flowchart to see how the story changed at all the branching points, while in Death Come True, there's no flowchart function in the first place and each time you make a wrong turn, you're just returned to the previous branching point, allowing you to correct your mistake immediately. Because of that, you often feel like Death Come True might as well have been "just" a movie, as the branching points don't really add that much to the narrative and most players will experience the story in the exact same order anyway.

A game like Kamaitachi no Yoru makes pretty interesting use of the branching story structure to convey its mystery plot: even if you end up on a story route that'll get you killed, you usually can find small clues here and there that help you solve the overall mystery, and it's by combining the information you find across all branching routes that allow you find the correct route. The player is encouraged to try everything out to gain more information, and it also challenges the player to remember those small clues when making subsequent story-changing choices. However, due to the smaller scale, Death Come True often fails in really incorporating the player into this decision making. Most of the time, the story will more or less tell you what to do next, instead of relying on the player to figure out what the correct choice is. This is definitely partially because there are so few branching points in the first place. But nine out of ten times, it's like the story just gives up on being a game, and has the full motion video explain everything, without testing the player whether they actually paid attention or not. And in the remaining instances, you'll notice some kind of clue and expect the story to test you on that at some point in a clever way, only for the story to suddenly put a spotlight on that clue and to telegraph very clearly you should remember this and that this will be coming back in two minutes and that you should make your choice based on this clue. It tends to make the player a very passive part of the game. Of course, I understand that having to film more branching storylines/introducing more branching parts to bring out its potential as a videogame would've made this game more expansive and expensive, but as Death Come True is now, I don't think having it as a normal movie would've hurt the story in any way.

Taken as just a mystery story, Death Come True will definitely feel familiar to those who have played more videogames by Kodaka, especially Danganronpa. Story beats like the protagonist with amnesia, the closed circle situation and attempts at providing meta-criticism on the videogame medium are his bread and butter. I don't think the story is bad per se, but I feel there's a lot of untapped potential here. Had this been a game with a larger scope, there would've been more time to flesh out the characters (some of them don't even add anything to the overall plot now), more room to flesh out the clues and perhaps even allow the player to be more involved with the mystery solving process. The story of Death Come True feels a bit rushed as it is now and especially near the end, when the game finally tries to give the player a bit more agency in solving the mystery, it feels lacking as a lot of story elements just didn't have any time to really settle. One moment in the climax where the player *should* be feeling triumphant for pointing out a contradiction for example, feels disappointingly shallow as the game couldn't have gone more out of its way to tell you what that contradiction was, instead of letting the player solve it themselves and it doesn't help that this happened just moments earlier, so the clue never had any time to bury itself and remain hidden. Clues usually feel more rewarding if you do register them initally, but forget about them and only recall them at the necessary moment, but in Death Come True, everything you need to know is always told like one minute earlier.

And as a side note: all the Danganronpa games start with the respective protagonist waking up with amnesia, and the story is always about figuring out why they and the other members of the cast are locked up in a closed circle situation. So having amnesia is a fundamental part of the plot there. But Kodaka also likes the amnesia trope, or the 'knocked out and I can't remember exactly what happened' trope in the stories he wrote in his freelance days. Kodaka wrote four Tantei Jinguuji Saburou mobile phone games in total, and two of them use the same trope. In Search for the Dying Smoke! the player takes on the role of Jiinguuji's assistant Youko and his friend in the police Kumano, as Jinguuji himself suffers from amnesia. The Square Trap starts with Jinguuji being asked to transport a suitcase with money, but he's knocked out and wakes up in a room with a dead man lying next to him. And in the Detective Conan & Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo game, Hajime is knocked out early in the game only to wake up on a very mysterious island. Kodaka really loves this trope.

Death Come True did not redefine FMV games the way Her Story did and while I like the basic concept of the game and the story, as it's done now, I don't feel like the videogame medium adds something significant to the mystery plot. In fact, we have seen many of the story elements of Death Come True in movies before and while videogames excel in presenting branching narratives in a clear way, Death Come True doesn't feature nearly enough branching points to actually make full use of the videogame format. It's not a bad game per se, but I would've been willing to pay for a larger-scale game if that meant we'd see a more fleshed-out world and a story that made better use of the videogame format.

Monochrome Motion

たった一度だけでも抱いてしまった希望

君の手の中に踊るのは

未完成な音色

「未完成な音色」（Garnet Crow）

It was a hope I held on for only one single time

But what is dancing within your hands is

An imperfect sound

"An Imperfect Sound" (Garnet Crow)

Don't you just hate it when an anthology features one story you really want to read, but where most of the other contents are made up out of stories you already have in other publications? Or when a certain book is re-released, but includes some new content, for example a new story, or an updated chapter or something similar? That one story or that little bit of new content is certainly alluring, but does it justify basically double-dipping on certain stories or other books?

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series 
1: The Shinjuku Central Park Murder Case (1987) [Nintendo Famicom Disk System]
5: The Unfinished Reportage (1996) [Sony PlayStation / SEGA Saturn] 
6: At the End of the Dream (1998) [Sony PlayStation / SEGA Saturn] 
7: Before the Light Fades (1999) [Sony PlaySation] 
8: Innocent Black (2002) [Sony PlayStation 2]  
9: Kind of Blue (2004) [Sony PlayStation 2]  
10: The White Phantom Girl (2005) [Nintendo GameBoy Advance] 
14: Ashes and Diamonds (2009) [Sony PlayStation Portable] 
15: The Red Butterfly (2010) [Nintendo DS] 
16: Rondo of Revenge (2012) [Nintendo 3DS]
17: Ghost of the Dusk (2017) [Nintendo 3DS] 
18: Prism of Eyes (2018) [Nintendo Switch/Sony PlayStation 4]

Novels
The Ghost of Shinjuku (2006)
A Bright Future (2007)

That is the question that sticks with me the most as I played the Switch/PlayStation 4 game Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - Prism of Eyes ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou - Prism of Eyes"), released in August 2018 as the eighteenth main series entry in what might possibly be the longest running mystery adventure game series. As always, the game revolves around the adventures of the ever-smoking private detective Jinguuji, his assistant Youko and the local police detective Kumano as they work on curious cases in Shinjuku, Tokyo. This latest game is basically a series anthology, complete with the usual complaint I have with anthologies: most of the content is already available in other forms. Prism of Eyes contains no less than thirteen different scenarios (stories), most of them about two to three hours long to read through (plus one bonus story). The problem is that only three of those scenarios (and the bonus story) are completely new, original content. The remaining ten stories, thus the bulk of the whole game, are high-definition remakes of select titles from the spin-off series which were originally not released on game consoles, but on mobile phones. While the original services offering the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou mobile phone applications have stopped long ago making them rare games in theory, all twenty-four mobile applications are quite easily available, as they were included (in batches) in previous main series titles. That means that if you have been following this game series since at least the DS titles,  you will already be familiar with about seventy-five percent of this game.

I have been a long-time fan of this series. In fact, I started playing these games just before I started learning Japanese, so to me, the experience of playing these games have always been also a way to measure my proficiency in the language, but that does mean that Prism of Eyes feels rather lacking in content to me, as so much is simply repackaging of old material I already know. The three brand-new scenarios (which are collectively titled Prism of Eyes) do try to do something interesting. Assistant Youko and police inspector Kumano have been playable characters in some of the previous titles, but that was usually in a shared role with Jinguuji, or with each other, with chapters alternating between these characters. Never before have Youko and Kumano, who have been in this series ever since the first title, carried their own story from start to finish. The three new Prism of Eyes scenarios however have Jinguuji, Youko and Kumano each star in their own story. In False Night, Jinguuji runs into Asakura, an old buddy from the university boxing club, who is apparently chased by some suspicious figures. Asakura disappears, but Jinguuji learns that Asakura has stolen a bag from a VIP room in a club run by a shady organization and now everyone is after Asakura and his bag. Detective assistant Youko stars in Gems For the Dead, where a college friend Yuiko, who is now a jewelry designer, asks Youko to model for her. She also wants Youko to investigate her boyfriend, who has been acting weird strangely, and Youko discovers a strange connection between Yuiko's boyfriend and a series of murders happening in Shinjuku, where a gem is left with each victim. In The Truth of the Cursed Mirror, police inspector Kumano is investigating the death of an assistant-professor in archeology in a dig-site discovered at a construction site. At first sight, it appears the man simply slipped and died because of his injuries, but there are some points that bother the experienced police detective, and there are also rumors the assistant-professor's death is connected to a curse enscribed in an ancient bronze mirror found at the site.

As per the current series tradition, these games don't really offer much in terms of interactivity, only allowing you to use a few simple commands like "Move" and "Look" to move between locations and ask witnesses specific questions, and it's impossible to get stuck or even get a game over screen. In return, these games can focus very much on story-telling, and while the core is still a mystery plot, the human drama angle this game series has adapted especially since the entries released on the DS, is very much noticable here. The three stories do play into the strengths of the three characters: Jinguuji's scenario has him dealing with underworld gangs and secret wars, Youko's story is far more focused on the characters, while Inspector Kumano's story has him dealing with red tape and pressure from within the police organization as he tries to solve his case. The three scenarios are rather passive experiences as mystery stories, focusing more on the slow unraveling of the case and events, rather than giving the player the tools to do it themselves, but they definitely work as captivating mystery stories. But, considering these three scenarios are each about two, three hours long each, Prism of Eyes does really feel lacking in content. The scale of these three stories is rather limited. And sure, taken together you might have about nine hours, but as a main series entry, I'd prefered a long, nine-hour story (like in the older games, like series pinnacles Yume no Owari ni and Tomoshibi ga Kienu Ma ni), rather than three shorter stories. Prism of Eyes is the first Tantei Jinguuji Saburou to be released on a home console, rather than a handheld device (DS, PSP and 3DS) since 2004's Kind of Blue, so I had hoped we'd be getting the scaled-up experience this time, with more robust gameplay mechanics like the zapping system, time system or even the train-your-assistant systems of earlier games, but no. The DS and 3DS original scenarios were arguably also rather small in scale, but that wasn't very surprising considering the hardware (Ashes and Diamonds on the PSP in comparison is pretty long), and the inclusion of the mobile phone application games back then was a worthwile addition, as that was the first time they were made available in a physical format, and you couldn't get them anymore on the cell phones.

There are also various minor signs that Prism of Eyes could've used some extra polish. Some of the in-game effects (like sliding assets) are incredibly ugly and the order of in-game commands (like "Look", "Item" and "Move") changes sometimes between the various scenarios. So most of the time, "Speak" follows the command "Look", while for example in False Night, it's I think "Item" that follows "Look" for no apparent reason. So on the whole, I think the new stories are okay, but the whole game does feel like unambitious, and the execution is at times even sloppy.

The ten other scenarios included in Prism of Eyes are as mentioned simply HD-remakes of scenarios originally released on mobile phones, and later made available on DS. To be honest, I don't really like the new HD graphics. While the character designs are done by the same person who did most of them orginally (JUNNY), I prefer the more unique designs of the original versions rather than the ones used for the HD remakes. I'm not going to write something on all of the stories, but to pick a few: The Six Sheets of Crime is a personal favorite, as it has one of the more traditional puzzle-oriented plots of the whole series, with a locked room of sorts and a pretty ingenious way that indicated the murderer. This story was written by Kodaka Kazutaka, who would later create the Danganronpa game series. Prism of Eyes features another scenario written by Kodaka. As Times Goes By... is a HD remake of a what itself was a fairly faithful remake of Toki ga Sugiyuku mama ni..., originally published on the Famicom in 1990. The original Famicom title was the first in the series to focus on human drama (and the first game in the series without a murder!) and was written by Nojima Kazushige, whom most people will know as the scenario writer of mega hits Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X. The mobile phone remake (on which this HD remake is based) smoothes the story out a bit. The Linked Curse is another HD remake included in Prism of Eyes which was originally written by Nojima (and a personal favorite too) and has Jinguuji investigating the death of a young man who claimed he was cursed. This is actually the one and only mobile phone application game I bought for my Japanese phone when I was studying in Fukuoka, and I have rather fond memories of it. Pretty weird to play this game now in high definition on my television, considered I first played it the screen of on a small clamshell phone!

Prism of Eyes includes a short demo of Daedalus - Awakening of Golden Jazz, an upcoming prequel spin-off game featuring a younger Jinguuji during his time in New York (set before the flashback events of Yume no Owari ni). The gameplay of this "Chapter 0" is quite different from the usual games, and also a bit clunky in this demo, but as the game'll be released later this year, I'll be sure to check it out.

One thing I can't complain about is the music of Prism of Eyes. Seriously, I don't know how, but the music of each and every entry in this series simply rocks. Or to be exact: jazzes. The jazzy soundtrack of this series is absolutely fantastic, and I'm sure to add the new Prism of Eyes tracks to the playlist I use when I'm writing (which is actually mostly made out of Tantei Jinguuji Saburou music, as they work perfectly as non-intrusive background music).

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - Prism of Eyes is in my eyes a somewhat disappointing game. After the steps taken in last year's Ghost in the Dusk, I was hoping for a grand scale Jinguuji Saburou game like we had in the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 days, but Prism of Eyes is unambitious, with only a few, short new scenarios. If you have never ever played a Jinguuji Saburou before, the thirteen scenarios found in this game (+ bonus story) will definitely offer a varied collection of mystery stories that also provide a good picture of what the series has to offer in terms of characters and storytelling, but for people who have been playing these games for a longer time, Prism of Eyes has far, far too little to offer in terms of original content.

Original Japanese title(s): 『探偵 神宮寺三郎 Prism of Eyes』

Lost Shadow

気楽なアプリが画面を埋め尽くして

視界まで遮る　愛しい人の姿あさえ

「2012Spark」（ポルノグラフィティ）

Screens are buried in handy apps

Blocking our sights, even the figures of our loved ones

"2012Spark" (Porno Graffiti)

I have visited Shinjuku in the past, and I know it's a very different place in real life, but I have to admit, I still love the romanticized version of it in fiction like the Ryuu ga Gotoku (Yakuza) games, City Hunter/Angel Heart and the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games.

In the two months since the first attack, at the start of summer, numerous people have been assaulted in the city of Shinjuku. While all victims managed to survive their attacks, the police still has no idea as to the identity of the assailant is. Because the attacker manages to disappear as fast as they appear, rumors that a ghost is behind these attacks start to spread across Shinjuku. One day, private detective Jinguuji Saburou is visited in his office by Itou Mizuho, a beautiful girl with a strange request: she wants Jinguuji to stop the Ghost of Shinjuku, to protect a friend of hers. Mizuho isn't ready to give Jinguuji all the details yet, and wants to take some time to think it over, but that same night she falls to her death from a building: she had been caught redhanded as the Ghost of Shinjuku herself, looking down at her latest victim, and had fled to the roof and fallen off it, but not before admitting to the police she was indeed the Ghost. Jinguuji however can not believe that Mizuho was really the attacker, and decides to take on her request anyway in Kodaka Kazutaka's Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Shinjuku no Bourei ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou: The Ghost of Shinjuku", 2006).

The Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series is a long-running video game series which celebrates its thirtieth birthday this year. The first game was one of the first adventure games for the Famicom (NES) to be made for an adult audience, with a hardboiled detective as the protagonist who had his home base in Shinjuku, home of the shadow side of society. I have reviewed most of the games on this blog, by the way. Shinjuku no Bourei is one of the novels based on the series and was written by Kodaka Kazutaka. He is now best known as the creator and writer of the Danganronpa game series, but he used to work as a freelance game scenario writer before he was hired by Spike-Chunsoft and has written the scenarios for several of the mobile phone games of Tantei Jinguuji Saburou. He also wrote two novels based on the games, the one discussed in this post, and 2007's Kagayakashii Mirai.

Shinjuku no Bourei is by far the longest of the original novels based on the games, and the extra length really pays off. I did enjoy Kagayakashii Mirai, but it was definitely a bit hasty, but Shinjuku no Bourei is about twice the length (it's two volumes long) and the result is a story that follows a structure very similar to the mobile phone games, with basically a four act set-up. The story revolves around Jinguuji's investigation in the true nature of Mizuho's request, as well as the identity of the Ghost of Shinjuku, but it doesn't take long for the detective to step on some toes he shouldn't have stepped on, and the case quickly escalates into something much bigger than he had expected. Like in the games, Jinguuji needs to make good use of his friends within both the proper authorities, as well as within the underworld to advance, and like a good old hardboiled detective, he sometimes also needs to use some violence to get himself out of trouble. This story in particular features some new characters (both friendly and less so) whom I'd loved to see in the games. There's not that much of a mystery for the reader, as I think that the plot becomes quite obvious fairly early in the story, but it's seeing how things develop, and how the truth comes out that is interesting here (and what's usually the case in the games).

I also loved that this novel featured more of the extended cast of the games. Kagayashii Mirai focused on Jinguuji, and to a lesser extent his assistant Youko, but we also see police inspector Kumano and yakuza gang leader Imaizumi in this novel, who have always been a major part of the series since early on. It helps make the novel feel like it's really part of the series, having these familiar faces pop up at the right time.
 
While the realistic, hardboiled setting of the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games is as far as you can get from the psycho-pop puzzle plot courtroom drama mystery that is Danganronpa, it's interesting to see some themes Kodaka used here seemed like a very early version of themes he'd also use in Danganronpa (as well as Detective Conan & Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, which he also wrote). It's not a rehash, but you could see how some themes used in this book eventually evolved into a (minor) element featured in the Danganronpa series. Funny thing is that I had already played Kodaka's Jinguuji Saburou games, Detective Conan & Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo and the Danganronpa series by the time I first heard that Kodaka was responsible for all these games. It's the same with TV productions: these are often produced by very large teams, so sometimes you don't notice the scenario writer.

Do I think non-fans of the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou series will also enjoy this book? Well, not really. It's not a bad novel by any means, but while I myself did enjoy the book, this novel doesn't succeed really at conveying the atmosphere of the series. By which I mean: a lot of the atmosphere from the games comes from the visual aspect, as well as the (fantastic) music. And when fans read this book, they'll have a good sense of the 'feeling' this book is going for, as their imagination will provide support. But without that knowledge, without knowing how the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou usually looks and sounds like, I'd say the writing of this novel is a bit too to-the-point to really leave an impression on its own merits. It's not bad, it's just that the prose is a bit too basic.

As a fan of the seris though, I really did enjoy Tantei Jinguuji Saburou: Shinjuku no Bourei. It really feels like a story you'd expect to see in one of the games, and that is usually the one thing novels based on games have to succeed in. The prose is a bit sparse, but the plot is entertaining, featuring some great characters that fit perfectly within the whole world of Tantei Jinguuji Saburou. Recommended material for those who want to see more of the veteran detective outside of the game medium. A new Tantei Jinguuji Saburou game will be released later this year for the Nintendo 3DS to celebrate the franchise's 30th anniversary by the way, and you can definitely expect a review of that game popping up in due time.

Original Japanese title(s):　小高和剛　『探偵神宮寺三郎　新宿の亡霊」（上下）

New Classmate of the Dead

「自分を信じるな！俺を信じろ！お前を信じる俺を信じろ！！」

 「グレンラガン」

"Don't believe in yourself! Believe in me! Believe in me who believes in you!!"

"Gurren Lagann"

I just realized this third entry in the Danganronpa series took ages to release. For people playing the English releases, the wait has not been that long, but for people who play the original Japanese releases, it's been a wait of almost 5 years since the last game...

Sixteen high school students awake to find themselves inside an abandoned school building. They have no recollection of how where they are, how they got there, why they're there, or even of each other. The only thing they remember that each of them is considered to be the "Ultimate" of their respective fields of interests, resulting in a diverse group consisting of people like the Ultimate Cosplayer, the Ultimate Inventor and the Ultimate Detective. Outside, they see that a gigantic dome surrounds the school ground, making it impossible for anyone to make their way to the outside world. A group of cute-looking, but highly dangerous robotic bears led by the black-and-white Monokuma explains to the group of sixteen that they are students at the Gifted Prisoners Academy and that the only way to escape from the school is to murder someone, and get away with it. A class trial is held after each murder, where the surviving students have to debate about the identity of the murderer. If the final majority vote on the identity of the murderer turns out to be correct, the murderer will be executed and the game goes on, but if the murderer manages to fool the rest of the students and lead them to a false conclusion, all the other students will be executed while the murderer will be granted freedom. While at first, none of the students show any intention of participating in such a mad game, it doesn't take long for Monokuma's hints about the outside world and the lost memories of the group to break their will and then the first murder occurs... Can the students of the Gifted Prisoners Academy survive these deadly class trials and find out why there are held captive in the PlayStation 4 / PlayStation Vita game New Danganronpa V3 - Minna no Koroshiai Shingakki (New Danganronpa V3 - A New Semester of Mutual Killings for All, 2017)?

New Danganronpa V3 is the third installment in the Danganronpa series developed by Spike-Chunsoft. The psychodelic presentation and the script filled with pop culture references of the original Danganronpa (2010) gave the quirky courtroom mystery game about a group of sixteen Ultimate high school students of Hope's Peak Academy forced to kill each other a unique vibe and it became a surprisingly big hit. Danganronpa was followed by Super Danganronpa 2 in 2012, where a new group of sixteen students were forced to participate in the mutal killing game, while the fictional universe was explored in spin-off games and novel series like Danganronpa/Zero and Danganronpa Kirigiri. The 2016 TV series Danganronpa 3 formed the end of the storyline that started with the first game.

The 2017 videogame New Danganronpa V3 on the other hand is, as the title suggests, a new start for the series, moving away from the previous storylines and introducing us to a brand new cast and setting. It's actually something only a game series can pull off, now I think about it. Even with a new cast and setting, the player will without a doubt recognize V3 as part of Danganronpa series, because the framework is still the same: it's still a mystery game, the game mechanics are mostly the same as previous games, the art and writing style is the same and there's even plenty of reused music. Only the contents (story) is different. It is nonetheless a different game, even it is also clearly Danganronpa. It's something you can't do effectively with a book for example, as there is no true iconic 'framework' in which to present a novel (save for book design/cover, but that can only convey the 'series' feeling in a limited manner, in my opinion).

Anyway, New Danganronpa V3 is supposed to be a sort of soft 'reset' of the Danganronpa franchise, but at the core nothing has changed. Once again the player is presented with a closed circle situation with sixteen students, with them having to solve the murders they commit among themselves in a courtroom setting, whilst also trying to figure out why they are being held captured at the school by Monokuma. Between the murders, you'll wander around the school (in a 3D map) to solve some simple puzzles, but also spend quite some time nurturing friendships with your fellow students. And yes, it really sucks when a student you befriended is killed in the next chapter, or turns out to be the murderer, though that is what makes Danganronpa what it is: you never know who might turn out to be the murderer, and the person who is always cheering you up might actually also be busy planning an elaborate murder plan to escape from the school. This closed circle atmosphere, where you never know who might get killed and who might kill, is something you can't really find in other (passive) mediums like novels and one of the things that make Danganronpa such an unique experience.

As always, the plot can be roughly split in two: the overall story, about why the sixteen students are being held at the Gifted Prisoners Academy, and the seperate murders that happen among the students (in essence a connected short story collection). The individual cases in New Danganronpa V3 were quite enjoyable. As always, they're all impossible crimes (usually a locked room mystery). While in terms of difficulty, I'd say they're just slightly more complex than the (too simple) ones from the first game, the murder plots in V3 were more innovative and original, and therefore fun, even if it was often easy to deduce what had happened even before the class trials started. Apparently mystery writer Kitayama Takekuni (who also writes the Danganronpa Kirigiri spinoff novels) cooperated on the mystery plots for this game. Kitayama is known as a master of impossible situations with a physical trick behind them and you and you can definitely sense his hand in some of the cases. Some of the cases also make fantastic use of the rules and tropes of Danganronpa's unique fictional universe and even the videogame medium itself. These murder cases are really only possible in this game and nowhere else, and thus offer some truly unique ideas. The fourth episode for example features an original setting for a murder plot, somewhat reminiscent of Komori Kentarou's Lowell-jou no Misshitsu. The seperate cases here show that a mystery plot does not need to be utterly complex to be amusing and rewarding. The overall storyline though has, as always, its share of problems. The overall idea behind the SURPRISE (it's never really a surprise) finale is okay (in a Kyomu he no Kumotsu manner), but the execution is longwinded, boring and simultaneously too ambitious and lazy. It's quite a disappointment in comparison with the smaller cases. The parts of V3 are better than the whole.

 

As always, the mystery solving gameplay is inspired by the Ace Attorney games, and has the player mainly pointing out contradictions in the utterances of fellow students with the help of evidence and testimony found during the class trial debates (though unlike the Ace Attorney games, there is an action-element involved in Danganronpa, where you need to act quick and have precise control). By pointing out contradictions, you come to new insights, which drives the plot and class trials forward. New in V3 is the ability to lie: occasionally the debate comes to a standstill, but you can lie to force a breakthrough in the debate. It's used only used sparingly though (but adds some replay value as there are some alternative debate routes you can explore through lying). There are also some other minigame-esque segments that also come in play during these mystery-solving debates, but to be honest: they were horrible. Most of them were 'reimagined' versions of game mechanics of the earlier two games, but for some reason all of them have made a turn for the worse. Seriously. I finished V3 and I still don't get how that one rhythm game works, even though I had no problems with its variations in the previous two games.

New Danganronpa V3 is a surprisingly difficult game to explain. At times, it feels like nothing but a somewhat uninspired remake of the first game, and with some game mechanics changed for the worse and (once again) a somewhat chaotic ending, it's easy to look at V3 as a very large step backwards compared to Super Danganronpa 2 or even the original game. Yet if you look at the seperate cases and the things they do there, I have to say I really enjoyed those cases. V3 really has some of the most interesting cases of the whole franchise (from a mystery-plot point of view). So yeah, I'm quite torn by this game. Perfect, it is certainly not and on the whole, it isn't a step forward for the series either. But there are some brilliant moments in here that do make this game worth the time if you're a fan of the series. The game will be released for English markets later in 2017 with the title Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony.

Original Japanese title(s): 『ニューダンガンロンパV3』

Goodbye Despair

「才能がなくても、希望がある」

『ダンガンロンパ3 -The End of 希望ヶ峰学園-』

"Even if I don't have any talents, I still have hope."

"Danganronpa 3 - The End of Hope's Peak Academy"

I read a lot of mystery series (in any medium), but usually, I don't have to explain that much about the actual series in a review, as most of the time, I only need to explain the general setting and how they pertain to the work at hand. Today's review is really unique in that sense as it needs a lot of explanation.

The Hope Peak's Academy was once a school especially intended for pupils who excelled in their (very) specific fields. From Ultimate Gamers to Ultimate Otaku, Ultimate Cooks and Ultimate Nurses, only the best of the best were accepted at the school. The school turned into a symbol of hope because of its collection of students with a bright future ahead. But through the machinations of a certain individual, the home of hope turned into a birthplace of despair: a worldwide infection of despair spread out like a meme and led to anarchy, chaos and mindless killing among people. In Danganronpa, the last surviving class of Hope Peak's Academy was imprisoned in the school and forced to kill each other through a sadistic murder game, as a display of despair to the rest of the world. However, a group of students kept their faith with hope and made it out alive, taking out the great mastermind. The fight against despair wasn't over, as there were still people around who wanted to spread the chaotic, masochistic beliefs of despair, and the survivors of the class killing, led by Naegi, vowed to bring back hope to the world.

After the events of Super Danganronpa 2, Naegi is brought to the Future Foundation, the main organization that poses the Remnants of Despair. Due to his actions during Super Danganronpa 2, Naegi is suspected of having fallen to the dark, Despair side too, but the high-level meeting on Naegi's fate is cut short when Monokuma, symbol of Despair, shows himself again, and manages to seal off the Future Foundation, Naegi and his friends from the outside world. A new "game" is started with these participants, using a set of bracelets that can limit cerain actions of the participants (a poison is injected if you do perform the NG action). A traitor is hiding among the participants, and this person is killing the others one by one. Can the participants find out who the traitor among them is and escape this game? Meanwhile, it is revealed that the events that are happening right now find their ultimate root some time in the past, in the period before Ultimate Despair broke out. Past and future storylines cross paths as Danganronpa 3: The End of Kibougamine Gakuen ("Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy", 2016) makes its way to the end of the road. Will it be hope or despair that is waiting there?

The Danganronpa franchise started in 2010 with the first game released on the PSP, as an eclectic mix of Ace Attorney style mystery-solving, minor action and character-focused dating simulation elements, with a distinct, psycho-pop atmosphere. Its wacky energy, fueled by pop culture references and a unique visual style led to an unexpected hit. The game was followed by 2012 with Super Danganronpa 2, and other spin-off materials like Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (2014; a Vita action/puzzle game set between the two main games), and novels like Danganronpa Zero (2011), that fleshed the world out. The anime TV series Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy (2016) forms the end of the storyline surrounding the students of Hope's Peak Academy, which started with the first game. The upcoming game New Danganronpa V3 (2017) in turn will feature a completely new cast and setting, seperate of the Hope's Peak Academy storyline.

And I am terribly sorry for all that exposition, but it is a necessary evil: by now I hope you will understand that Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy should only be watched by people who have already played the Danganronpa games. It is the proper finale to the series, and it won't stop to explain this or that to the viewer: it expects you to know all of that. While it is surprisig the ending of the Hope's Peak Academy storyline is not in the form of a video game (like Danganronpa and Siper Danganronpa 2) , the anime is still supervised by series creator Kodaka Kazutaka (who in his time as freelance writer also wrote the scenarios for several Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games and Detective Conan & Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo).

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy is split up in two distinct series: Side: Future (twelve episodes) and Side: Despair (eleven episodes). Future is the storyline about the new 'killing game' that is going on at the Future Foundation (set after Super Danganronpa 2), while Despair is set in the past, telling the story about how Ultimate Despair came to be in the first place, using the main cast of Super Danganronpa 2 as the main perspective. While one series is set in the future, and the other in the past, you do need to watch them in the broadcast order, which is Future 1 → Despair 1 →　Future 2 → Despair 2 → etc, because the series are written so the storylines intertwine, with either side offering more explanation about events on the other side (you'd be horribly spoiled if you'd watch either side completely first, and then the other side).

Future is where the main mystery is, as Naegi and the others look for a way to escape the killing game and find out who the last Remnant of Despair hiding among them is. As a mystery series, it's passable. The bracelets that limit the actions of the participants reminds of Battle Royale and are used in some interesting ways to control the participants, though the reason why they are used in the first place is a bit vague. The main problem is probably that the first half goes rather fast: Future features not only familiar faces from the earlier games, but also a sizable new cast, but you hardly get time to know them before they're killed off. Especially in a closed circle mystery, where part of the charm is that you want to be suspicious of everyone, it's important to give the viewer time to get to know everyone a bit, not to kill them off after one line of spoken dialogue. As for the mystery of who the Remnant of Despair is: I can sorta imagine people feeling unsatisfied by the motive behind everything, but the way the whole business is set-up is actually quite good for a visual mystery story. The hints that point to the how all make good use of the visual medium, and there's another thing that works really good in this series, which I will come back to later.

Around the midpoint, Future does become rather slow, with little side-stories here and there (and the series isn't long either: twelve episodes). This works partly, because the overall focus of the narrative of Danganronpa 3 switches over to the Despair side, but that does make the Future side drag a bit in comparison. I also think it was a shame that the Ultimate talents of each of the characters didn't really come into play anymore in this story: by now they're more like character traits, rather than part of the mystery, like early on in the franchise.

Despair is set in the past, and is not a mystery story, but something like a school comedy/drama gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong. It addresses points that have been mentioned only briefly in the games, making an encompassing narrative that explains the events that lead directly to the first and second game in detail. It also provides some extra background to the new characters featured in Future. This is also the most 'spoiler-dangerous' series, as most of the mystery in the whole franchise arises because the player/viewer and the player-characters are not aware of the events that happened in Despair. I think Despair is best described as a Greek Tragedy. Because of the events in the games, you already know the conclusion this story is working to (it is not a hopeful one) and it leaves you with a rather heavy feeling at the end. It can also be very a visceral experience, as you'll be seeing events in rather nasty detail, which had  only been vaguely mentioned in the games.

What makes Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy on the whole an interesting project as a mystery anime is the way the Future and Despair narratives are interlinked. The mystery genre has always been about making sense of the present (i.e. "a murder") through a reconstruction of the past (i.e. "the investigation). Danganronpa 3 shows this in multiple ways: events in Future are for example explained in better detail by showing the past in the corresponding Despair episode. It 'cleans' up the narrative of Future, because they don't have to do constant flashbacks to explain everything (like you often seen with mystery drama), while Despair never suffers, but often really shines by revealing these unexpected pasts in every character. There's also some really clever hinting going in: some scenes in Despair (past) are very neat hints ncessary to solve what is going on in Future, though you are unlikely to notice them until it's too late. So while Despair itself is not a mystery narrative, it is without a doubt a crucial element to making the mystery of Future work. It kinda reminds of bibliomysteries, where a reading of a body of text leads to the solving of a mystery. I have never seen such a neatly constructed mystery using two simultanously developing storylines before though (usually with bibliomysteries, you'll have the main text being 'interrupted' by a smaller body of text), and I wonder whether Kodaka had originally intended this to be a game with a zapping mechanism, like Machi or 428, where you jump between different POVs and put information gained through one POV to use in another POV.

The Future and Despair episodes are followed by one final Hope episode, which really forms the conclusion of the Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy and the Hope's Peak Academy storyline started back in 2010 with the first game. It's a bit predictable, but as the series has always been very open about following the grand tropes of many genres, it doesn't really bother me.

Overall, I did enjoy Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy. It had a lot to do as the ending of a long storyline across several media, but it does a fairly good job at it, by providing answers and details on the past, by providing an admittedly at times somewhat odd final mystery that does thematically fit the other games set in the present, and by ending on a hopeful note. Perfect, it is not, but I for one can't help but be quite pleased with the way they did the dual narrative. It's been a long ride for me too: I originally learned of the series when it was first published in Japan back in 2010, but didn't get a chance to play it until 2012 and I have enjoyed the series quite a lot since then, also delving into the greater Danganronpa franchise. But with this, it's really farewell to the Academy of Despair and Hope. 

Original Japanese title(s): 『ダンガンロンパ3 -The End of 希望ヶ峰学園-』

Lady in Waiting

星のかがやきよずっと僕らを照らして

失くしたくない少年の日の夢よ・・・

「星のかがやきよ」 （Zard）

Oh starlight, always shine upon us

On the childhood dreams I don't want to lose..

"Oh Starlight" (Zard)

Today a writer of whom I've read almost all his published works without me even realizing it.

A visit from the college student Aya means the end to the lack of clients for private detective Jinguuji Saburou. Aya is looking for her boyfriend who disappeared a couple of weeks ago. The only clue she has is a phone call she got after his disappearance, saying he was alright, but that he was being chased by some dangerous people. Fearing for her boyfriend's safety, but also wanting to protect his plea of not calling in the police, Aya decides to hire Jinguuji to find him. Jinguuji quickly discovers that the boyfriend was caught up in some kind of drugs racket, selling the stuff in secret as an extra to his part-time job in a club. The detective also finds out (the painful way) that a group of foreigners is also hunting for the boyfriend and realizes that he must work fast if he wants to bring the boyfriend back to Aya alive in Kodaka Kazutaka's Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - Kagayakashii Mirai ("Detective Jinguuji Saburou - A Bright Future", 2007).

Tantei Jinguuji Saburou is a long-running videogame series I've written about quite often on this blog. Since the first game in 1987, private detective Jinguuji Saburou has been solving cases mostly around Shinjuku, Tokyo on a myriad of game systems, always accompanied by a pack of cigarettes and jazz music. Kagayakashii Mirai is one of a handful of novels based on the series, originally published in 2007. Writer Kodaka Kazutaka is nowadays mostly known as the scenario writer for the Danganronpa game series, but he was also the scenario writer for the Detective Conan & The Young Kindaichi Case Files DS video game and several of the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou mobile phone games (some of the best, actually). Kayakashii Mirai is Kodaka's second attempt as a novel writer: he had written another Tantei Jinguuji Saburou novel one year earlier. Kodaka is mainly a video game scenario writer, which explains why all of his novels are based on video game series (two Tantei Jinguuji Saburou novels and Danganronpa/Zero).

As a detective novel, Kagayakashii Mirai is nothing special, but it also does nothing really wrong. It is really just what you'd expect from a Tantei Jinguuji Saburou story: a case that starts out simple but is soon revealed to be much more sinister. Like in many of the games, the case is linked with yakuza groups and the foreigners-in-Japan angle is also one occasionally seen in the games. I'd say that this is also what makes and breaks this novel: for the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou fan, it's quite fun to see the familiar settings and the familiar faces in this new and reasonably amusing Tantei Jinguuji Saburou adventure. It feels like a genuine Tantei Jinguuji Saburou story and I can easily imagine how this story would have been as a game. For readers who have not played any of the games and go in this novel without any kind of attachment to the series however, Kagayakashii Mirai is just an okay, maybe even boring mystery novel with little to offer. The original characters of the novel are passable, but little is shown about the recurring characters and that the reader might feel that they miss something. Kagayakashii Mirai does very little to attract new readers.

From a purely mystery plot angle, there is little remarkable about Kagayakashii Mirai. It's focused completely on the hunt for the missing boyfriend and I noticed a bit late that Jinguuji Saburou's presence in the plot is actually not that vital: he finally does something really important at the end, but for most of the investigation, he's actually not even needed as the plot would go the way it goes even without his interference! I was kinda disappointed that the plot was all about the search and there was little detecting or puzzle solving: the Tantei Jinguuji Saburou games that Kodaka wrote often featured puzzle plot mysteries and tropes like locked rooms and I had hoped that Kagayakashii Mirai would also be like that, but alas.

Something that bugged me was the third person narration. The games are always narrated in the first person. Occassionally you get to control someone different from Jinguuji, but it's always in the first person. Kayakashii Mirai however is written in the third person and it just feels wrong. The story also jumps between Jinguuji and the boyfriend, which also feels strange, for this never happens in the games (even if you get to control a different person, it's always someone on the investigating side). Of course, Kagayakashii Mirai is a novel so Kodaka can do differently from the presentation in the games, but still, I wish that he had at least wrote the novel in the first person, for that really adds to the whole Jinguuji Saburou atmosphere.

Overall, I think that Tantei Jinguuji Saburou - Kagayakashii Mirai is an okay Tantei Jinguuji Saburou novel, that for the most part manages to emulate the atmosphere of the games quite well, but I doubt it would really impress people who have never touched the games, nor will it convince them to try the games. But speaking as someone who has played basically all of the games, I can say I thought it was an amusing read.

Original Japanese title(s): 小高和剛　『探偵神宮寺三郎　輝かしいミライ』