Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is a long title and a short game. However, the game is just the end chapter of a package fronted by a four-part collection of animations. Not realising the need to go to the Blu-Ray section of my PS3 to start with, I started out playing in the “wrong” order by delving into the game first. It is definitely worth starting at the beginning, with the animations.
• Game Developer: Crispy Inc in association with Grasshopper Manufacture
• Game Publisher: Bandai Namco Games
• Reviewed on: PS3
• Release Date: 18th April 2014
Possessions
This first segment tells the tale of a lone traveler seeking refuge from a storm, in an abandoned shrine, and the spirits that await him. Posessions was directed by Shuhei Morita and nominated in the Best Short Animation category at this year’s Academy Awards. The animation style is clean, crisp and helps bring to life this quaint, traditional-feeling Japanese story. Both this and the short animation during the opening credits of Short Piece — featuring a girl chasing an odd white rabbit — do a good job of invoking the same spirit of adventure and Japanese ghost stories that permeate many of the recently popular works of Studio Ghibli.
Combustible
Gambo
A Farewell To Weapons
A cutting edge animation style, directed by Hajime Katoki, a bit of a robotic design legend with work on the Gundam series and a host of other anime and gaming credits to his name. A Farewell to Weapons features a small military unit, in mechanized tactical survival suits, tasked with disarming warheads in the post-nuclear remains of Tokyo. The team also encounter and battle a large heavily armoured “autonomous tank” mech unit. It is a good thing the team bought plenty of firepower.
As this is more in line with my anime tastes, it is perhaps no surprise that this is my favourite of the collection. The animation is slick and the action and story play out well. The subtext and ending of the story are enough to leave you thinking.
Each of the animations end on a shot of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji is frequently referenced throughout Japanese art and literature, as well as being an historically dominating shape of the skylines outside Tokyo. It is the one constant throughout the four stories and is also referenced in the game.
Rinko Tsukigime’s Longest Day
Now we move on to the game portion of this package – by kicking off with an opening animation! Here we get introduced to Ranko, the young eye-patch wearing teenage girl, and her excitable karaoke keen friends. It turns out Ranko is also some sort of violin-weapon wielding cyber-assassin on a quest for revenge, for the death of her mother at the hands of her father. That old chestnut.
At times it feels like Sonic the Hedgehog in the Bayonetta universe. The early levels follow a similar pattern of running while a later level sees the running character replaced with a good bit of old-fashioned futuristic Akira-style motorbike action. Gameplay also takes a whistlestop detour through a number of classic Japanese favourites; there is a retro 8-bit portion, a side scrolling shooter section versus a girl that turns into a laser-breathing dragon, and some tough boss battle encounters.
The overall package of the Short Peace animations and the Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is a nice slice of Japanese Anime and gaming culture. At first it seems like a disparate collection of animations and a crazy game with cutscenes presenting in a wide variety of Japanese animation styles. What clued me in to the uniting factor of all of these elements was the ever present appearances of Mount Fuji, an endlessly referenced symbol of Japan. Whereas recently gaming and movie related anime collections such as Halo Legends and the Animatrix were created to flesh out universes, Short Piece was put together to as a vertical slice love letter to anime and gaming.
You can practically play otaku bingo with the checklist of the fun – and sometimes to Western tastes somewhat creepy – anime hallmarks such as teenage girl assassins, upskirt shots and men who can morph into robot ninjas by inserting their thumbs into their temples. While an obvious choice of any otaku, the quality is high enough that I would also recommend for those with just a passing interest in anime and the culture behind it. Although, with under an hour of animation and less than an hour of game, it is a tough recommendation at the current cost of a full price game. Half that price, or less, and it would be easier to recommend.
Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is the result of a group of talented Japanese story makers combining to stake the place of their medium in the history of Japanese art and literature. It does a more than adequate job in this regard and in being entertaining. It is just a shame the price of admission is so high.
