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meiizumi · 5 years

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Castle of Shikigami: An informal rant nobody asked for about my most obscure obsession to date

STOP i spent like 2 days writing this post and im only posting it on tumblr because it’s the one website i’m a member of that can hold the most text. i wanted to infodump somewhere...... read this to learn something i guess (´･ω･`)

Bad voice acting is the Peak of comedy to me, and while I was looking for something to laugh at one day, I found this game called Castle Shikigami 2 for the PS2. The US version of the game's dialogue is rife with machine translated text that makes no sense, and awkward voice acting to boot. They even have voice actors saying the wrong lines, voice actors speaking implied commands, and a few voice lines are left in Japanese. Apparently, Roger Craig Smith (Sonic the Hedgehog's current voice actor) was in this game but I don't think he's even credited?! I think I know which character he voiced but I’m not exactly sure.

The history behind this game’s localization is REALLY weird. Castle of Shikigami/Shikigami no Shiro was originally an arcade bullet hell shoot em up game. The series was created by Alfa System and it was one of Alfa System’s main IPs. There are three main shmup installments and a text adventure game for the PS2, Nanayozuki Gensoukyoku. Nanayozuki was practically fanservice for whatever number of CoS fans there were back then. Each main game in the series was originally an arcade cabinet, but they were all ported to PC and home consoles. In CoS 2′s case, it came out on the PS2, Gamecube, and Dreamcast, but only the PS2 version got localized. The western publisher, XS Games specializes in publishing quality budget titles such as “Bass Pro Shops: The Strike” for the Wii. I theorize they didn’t care too much about the actual content of CoS 2 and were more focused on selling a game quickly for a low price, so they just machine translated it and adjusted a few things. If you’re wondering if Castle of Shikigami 1 was also translated this badly, the answer is No. XS Games instead removed all the dialogue from the western release of CoS 1, and released it with the title “Mobile Light Force 2″.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘Mobile Light Force TWO’ if Castle of Shikigami 1 is the first game in the series?” If you want to know what Mobile Light Force 1 was, it’s GUNBIRD; another shmup game, but by a completely different developer than Castle of Shikigami. I don’t know why they did that. What really kills me though is that both MLF 1 and 2 use the same boxart, which is COMPLETELY unrelated to the actual contents of either game. AFJQHJFOKLJFDS look at this

There’s more hilarity behind Mobile Light Force that isn’t hard to find so you can search that up if you’re interested. But thankfully, Castle of Shikigami 3's Wii edition got more of a proper localization by Aksys Games.

Now I would bluntly say something like “stan castle of shikigami” but:

1. This series’ lore is insanely convoluted. It’s an essential part of this expansive fictional universe referred to as “Mumei Sekaikan” (I don’t know what this translates to in English) where there’s like, 7 different parallel worlds. There’s more obscure ass games and manga that are tied to this universe, and I think there’s even a tabletop RPG made based off it. Have you heard of “Gunparade March”? Most likely you haven’t; it’s an obscure video game made by Alfa System that also got adapted into an anime, and I feel it can be described as Mechas x Persona. One of the characters in CoS 2 is just one of the GPM characters going undercover to find her senpai who traveled to the CoS world. Or something like that. The 7-world universe isn’t explicitly talked about in the game but they make so many references to it without defining anything that it’s like you Must know about it. There is NO documentation in English about the Mumei Sekaikan I could find on the internet, although there is a wiki in Japanese where I got a ton of knowledge from (GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS MY TRUSTED FRIEND) I feel like I might be THE person in the United States who has the most knowledge on the Mumei Sekaikan, and I could go on another tangent talking about what I know so far (and who this one specific dude Shibamura Yuuri is) but I won’t.

2. The writing isn’t excellent and can be pretty Unwoke ™; the first game came out in 2001 and the third game came out in 2005 if that gives you a sense on what era these writers were in. As far as the games dialogue goes, the characters appear kind of flat. CoS 1 and 2 Kotaro (i refuse to use the official “Kohtaro”) is stupid and driven by JUSTICE to a point where it’s annoying. I can’t tell if Hyuga is trying to be a Ladies Man in CoS 2 and 3. Kim, a religious tae kwon do instructor, spends CoS 2 thinking about how he should atone for his sins, then he turns himself into jail at the end. Sayo’s backstory is that she was a shrine maiden raised as a “human weapon” to have no emotions and her only goal in life was to kill god and then die, something like that. However, after CoS 1, she gets a crush on Kotaro because he actually treats her like a human and Of course that’s what you’d expect from the main teen girl and boy in the series. In CoS 3, Sayo's character is mostly played out to be a major tsundere for Kotaro even though surprisingly HIS character in this game changed a ton compared to 1 and 2 (he had to kill an illusion of his older brother, who he learned actually died earlier, and now he has to kill an illusion of his childhood sweetheart... damb that shit sucks :/). He’s still stupid though

There’s a gag in CoS 2 that I can’t clearly remember where it’s like, Niigi makes Sayo and Fumiko, who are both romantically interested in Kotaro, think that he’s only into little girls? Meanwhile, Fumiko’s magic goes wrong and her appearance turns to that of a child though in response she’s like “hee hee maybe Kotaro will like this”. basically more On-Brand early 2000′s anime unwokeness than average. Speaking of Fumiko, she’s a 400+ year old militaristic witch who constantly teases Kotaro (who’s like 16 or 17) and she wants to marry him for his magical potential since he’s like one of the candidates for becoming God??? From the official CoS 3 character descriptions, “Her hobby is to steal the men from other women. Her second hobby is trampling upon people.” She canonically stole her stepmother’s husband from her stepmother (the 3rd boss of CoS 3). I don’t get how that shit would have worked

3. The game itself is HARD af but to be fair I’m a scrub gamer. I can’t get past stage 3 on easy difficulty without continuing. Yes i bought CoS 1 on Steam, Yes it has a port on steam i feel like i should have mentioned this earlier

4. Besides CoS 1 having a port on Steam, CoS 2 and 3 might be hard to obtain legally. The poorly translated CoS 2 was apparently super cheap back then, but since it’s an old game, its value might’ve increased. When I tried looking up prices for English CoS 3, all the listings were like at least $40 and being broke I wouldn’t want to spend more than $29 for a Wii game in 2019... honestly I just emulated CoS 2. shout out to PCSX2

Last month I was desperate, bored enough, and deep enough in the Shikigami rabbit hole that I tried to find the manga based off of it online. The CoS manga only tells the events of the first two games so I still don’t really get anything about CoS 3, like who Mihee, Batu, and Emilio are supposed to be. However, the plot events also differ. For example, Roger Sasuke exists as a character in CoS 3 but in the manga he literally Dies. There’s 11 total volumes of this; 3 volumes dedicated to CoS 1 and the latter 8 (the “Twisted Castle arc”) dedicated to CoS 2. Only the very first 3 chapters were scanlated to English all the way in 2011. Fortunately, I did find the entire manga uploaded though............... in CHINESE. So you know what I did? I “read” the entire thing using my phone’s Google Translate OCR app to take pictures of each page and comprehend the translations. Of course I still don’t understand CRAP because of the Mumei Sekaikan jargon + machine translation but I understood enough to get emotionally attached to some of the characters. I wish I hadn’t. At least through the manga I learned that the characters DO have some depth and pre-established relationships. For instance, the reason why Roger Sasuke became a ninja is because when he first landed in Japan as a kid, he was getting bullied or something and he didn’t know Japanese then Kotaro saw this and told the bullies to stop. Then after Roy /sorry i mean Roger learned that he was set to home-stay with the Kugas in the first place, he decided to dedicate his life to Japan in order to protect Kotaro back. I think. DO U SEE HOW ABSURD THIS SHIT IS Anyway Nanayozuki takes place between the second and third games and sets things up for CoS 3. There’s a full playthrough of it uploaded to YouTube and I think it contains a lot of juicy lore, but it’s just too much to go over with Shitty Google Translate OCR. There’s also Shikigami no Shiro novels which apparently contain the most backstory, but I have a 0% chance of finding these online for free. Not to mention that these would ALSO be too much effort to Google Translate.

in conclusion: You don’t HAVE to play Castle of Shikigami. Like, I’m not gonna recommend it for the content, but if you love shmups and are looking for a shmup game you haven’t heard of then I will recommend it for the gameplay (old touhou mutuals assemble theres a POWER-UP-BY-GRAZE MECHANIC). I’ve counted like 4 total fans outside of Japan that like this series for the story, and I don’t think that number is going to increase because I doubt CoS 2 will ever get retranslated and ported. I just want you to know that this series exists and that there’s a ton of wacky shit behind it besides the bad Castle Shikigami 2 dub. also if someone knows enough japanese or chinese and has an INKLING of interest in this series umm talk to me and help me decipher stuff

I‘m kinda sad that the series is pretty much Dead though. This is the most recent piece of official Castle of Shikigami art I could find, and this was for the 2018 New Year. The next most recent piece of official CoS art I found was also drawn by the character designer Sonoda Miku all the way in January 2008, commemorating the end of the CoS manga serialization. Alfa System released a spiritual sequel to Castle of Shikigami on the Japanese Switch eShop called Sisters Royale, with character designs I think are still by Sonoda. By “spiritual sequel” I mean that it has some of the EXACT same shot types as CoS and the same mechanic where grazing bullets increases your power and score. This is the closest we’ll get to a Shikigami no Shiro 4. I wonder what the business decision behind that game was but it actually looks like fun and I want to play it so OK Go off i guess

#bees are good #castle of shikigami #shikigami no shiro #video games #i feel: DISEASED

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