My first experience with a Japanese videogame...[Higurashi Kizuna]

Before I get started, let me just go over something about translating Japanese writing. Japanese has three (main) scripts: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana and Katakana can be used to make any sound in the Japanese language; each one stands for a syllable. Kanji represent whole ideas, not just a syllable (there are usually several different readings), but depending on which katakana and hiragana they are placed with, the overall meaning of the sentence/Kanji is different. Therefore, even if I can read the katakana and hiragana in a Japanese sentence, if I can't read the kanji I am totally in the dark. In addition, the translation comes out as a romaji form of the Japanese, not the English, so after the first translation, you still have to translate the romaji back to English. Therefore, if I say I can 'read something,' it's usually not that I know the translation, it's that I know the romaji and could translate that to English later. I'm just learning Japanese, so translating, for me, is a very slow process.
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Note: I am assuming discussion of import games is okay because there are plenty of people who have imported Final Mix.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kizuna: Dai-Ichi-Kan - Tatari
First Impressions

I managed to look out the window today JUST in time to see both the UPS truck drive by my house and some other postage truck that I can't remember the company name for stuff mail into my mailbox. After waiting until he was down the street far enough so that he was barely out of sight, I zipped down my driveway to my mailbox and lo: My package had arrived!

About a week and a half ago, I placed an order on Play-Asia for the special edition of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kizuna. I had hoped that it would show up on Friday so I could spend the whole weekend playing (As it was guaranteed I wouldn't get too far; I would have to translate everything, and it can take hours on one screen depending on how much kanji is there), but no such luck. It didn't show up Saturday either, and Sunday and Monday were non-postal days, so I ended up doing nothing all weekend long.

Finally though, it came today, albeit unceremoniously in a tattered orange bubble-wrap envelope (I hadn't thought about how big of a box it was when I ordered it and clicked 'economy bubble' instead of 'economy box'). Despite the beaten-up bubble wrap, the game itself was in perfect condition, brand new and still in the shrink wrap. I spent about ten minutes squealing and jumping around the house (and scaring my dog in the process) before finally settling with a pair of scissors to get the plastic wrap off of it and take a look.

The game comes in a collector's box presumeably designed to hold all four Kizuna games once they come out (the second one comes out in November and this one came out in June). It has a thin cardboard covering with the adorable box art on it and a description of the game on the back. I found it kind of ironic that the 'D' rating was printed on two of the four sides of said box covering ('D' is the Japanese equivalent of the North American 'M' rating), but Higurashi has always had a way of making itself look a lot more innocent than it is, so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has insomuch as watched even a little bit of the anime series.

Once you take that covering off, you get the same, but obviously bigger, special edition box art on three sides of the box (one is open-ended and holds the game and another box...Oh joy?), lacking the 'D' on it as well. I guess I'll just describe the box now, it consists of Mion, Rena, Keiichi, Satoko, and Rika, all looking extremely...Happy. Yep. The top is white with the Higurashi Kizuna logo on it; the bottom is blank except for a funny picture of Rika in the bottom-right corner.

The game box art is considerably less inviting -- on it are Rena, Mion, and Satoko; Rena and Mion both look pretty pissed off, and Satoko looks flat-out depressed and is clutching herself like it's cold outside. The whole scene takes on a red hue and there is an ENORMOUS moon behind the three of them (the logo is in front of them, of course). The back of the game box is the same as the back of the thin cardboard slip covering. The other box within the box within the box is white and has grey silhouettes of the kids on the sides underneath the -- you guessed it! -- Kizuna logo. The front and back have a bunch of gray and black printing on them in Japanese, a lot of which I can read but none of which I'm willing to translate. From the looks of it, all it goes over is what's inside anyway.

The box within the box within the box was surprisingly hard to get open, but once I did, out popped a cute metal can (at least the whole thing with boxes is over) with Mion and some Japanese printed on the top. Around the metal can is a purple covering with a bunch more Japanese on it. Hooray?

Inside of the can is a bunch of...Really random stuff. And when I say random, I mean really, REALLY random. I don't know if I have to be Japanese to understand this stuff or something, but it's just really out of the blue.

Inside is a mini-calendar, which is made of a cardboard slip that has a calendar holder printed on it (supposedly the one inside Rika and Satoko's house, as around it are some dishes and theirs is located in the kitchen?). Inside of it are a bunch of cards that have the different months on them and a different piece of art from the game on each of them; I think the best part about this is that the first card, June 2008, actually says June 1983, when Higurashi takes place.

Along with the calendar is a notepad in the shape of a person (don't ask me what that's got to do with anything, it's got some Kanji printed on it but I don't know what it says and I'm not keen on looking it up right now) and an eraser in the shape of...A bowl of curry and rice. Yes. It comes with its own CURRY ERASER. I have yet to take it out of its packaging but it would be even more amusing if it smelled like curry, too. Perhaps somebody poisons someone's curry in the extra story arc included in this game?

There is also a bracelet-looking thing with a plastic-and-felt square tied to the bottom (plastic on one side and felt on the other; it kind of resembles a couch pillow). The plastic has a picture printed on it, but I can't for the life of me make out what it is. It looks like a white piece of paper with a brown design in the middle and a white blob in the middle of that. Perhaps more curry? I suppose we'll never know, but other than that, there's just a black elastic band to put it around things.

Inside, too, is a white bag with black 'blood stains' and, once again, the Higurashi Kizuna logo on it (they really like to advertise). It came in a bubble-shrink wrap that was so tight I had to cut it off with scissors, and once I got it open I couldn't make it fit back into the can. It's got black drawstrings on the top to close it, so whatever the hell you decide to put in your complimentary Higurashi bag won't fall out.

Then there's what's probably the best part about the whole package: A set of Higurashi playing cards. At first I was excited to see this because I thought that perhaps they would be replicas of the tattered cards the kids use to play games, but what I got was better: Higurashi art is printed on the cards. There's a set of Japanese instructions inside, and each character stands for one suite (Rena is spades, Mion is hearts, Satoko is diamonds, and Rika is clubs), and the remaining characters are Aces, Jokers, Kings, Queens, etc. (i.e., Keiichi is the Ace of Spades and Oiishi is -- hilariously enough -- the QUEEN of Spades). Once again, I was not spared of an advertising oppertunity: They printed the Higurashi Kizuna logo on the side tabs of the box for the cards (Box within a can within a box within a box?).

Last but not least are a pair of amusing Rena 'warning stickers'. One of them has a silhouette of a giant Rena chasing a much smaller Keiichi with an enormous cleaver, a la Onikakushi-hen. The other sticker has a picture of when she tried to get in through his door before he crushed her fingers by slamming it on them, also from Onikakushi-hen, with a big red no-sign around it. Both of them have some Japanese print on the bottom; I can't read any of it off the top of my head except for the 'Rena' on the first one.

As for the game itself -- the menu is extremely creative, it opens up by displaying "07th Expansion," and then the logo and a 'touch screen' (in English!) on the touchscreen. When you touch the screen, a fingerprint appears where you touched it (it's bigger than my fingers so obviously it was pre-made, but still pretty cool that it appears where your finger touched it). You hear some of the series' signature evil laughter before you're brought to a menu with two glass panels; touch one with the stylus and the glass 'breaks' and you're brought to the menu to start. It starts off on the incredibly positive note of Keiichi beating his friends to death with a baseball bat, same as the original visual novels and the anime. What this game basically is is the original Higurashi games with better artwork, so there's not too much to tell about it. The artwork is very nicely done though (the original had backgrounds that were just photos of Shikarawa-Go (sp? DX), the village Hinamizawa is based off of, put through a posterizing filter, and the character art was a very unique style; almost ugly if you weren't used to it). This version has the same art as Higurashi Matsuri, so use that for reference if you want to know what it looks like.

Overall it's a pretty random package, even for such a spastic series; I have absolutely no idea why any of this stuff would be of any use to anybody, but hey. So I guess the question now is, was it worth the extra fifty bucks on Play-Asia? Um, no, but if you want Higurashi playing cards then go for it. I doubt I'm ever going to use very much of the stuff included in the special edition, other than the game itself and the playing cards (and possibly the bag?), but I'm still glad I purchased it. Importing videogames is not something I exactly do often so it just makes it that much more exciting for me. I recommend, though, to skip this one unless you're a Higurashi fanatic and/or can read Japanese fluently. I know this game is going to take a hundred gazillion times longer than it should for me, since I'm just learning, and as I said earlier, the stuff that comes with it is as random as things get.

 

Ha, that sounds awesome xD. I'll get to experience importing a game if I decide to get FFvsXIII when it comes out in Japan. I still hate that the US ps3 users have to wait because of the 360 version. Sounds like you got some pretty nice stuff. The cards seem especially awesome lol.

 

Wow, I got a reply XD; I was afraid I wouldn't because my post was an enormous wall of text, lol.

Ah, nice. I don't have a PS3 (yet? DX) so I won't get to import vsXIII, but it looks phenomenal. And I know, that's completely unfair. .___.
And yes, I'm very excited ^^; I've started translations on this game and it's definitely very good so far, too.