Introduction: A brain-hole act about cultural appropriation and alternate history.
Last week, a group of games released their latest promotional videos, taking advantage of the popularity of the game of the year. One of the works, titled Showa Mi Kuni Monogatari (hereinafter referred to as "Shōmi Monogatari"), with the overhead setting of "a huge zombie disaster broke out in the Japanese colony of the United States, and the heroine came back from the dead and embarked on a road trip", shows that the United States was fully occupied by Japan and completely collapsed when the zombie tide struck, as if walking into a fantasy scene like ukiyo-e after the disaster of Western capitalism. When the United States really sees it, it will shed tears, and Japan will be silent when it sees it, and it is not Chinese not turning around.
The trailer of "The Tale of Shōmi" appears a large number of elements of American and Japanese culture that we are familiar with, and the ones that connect these fragmented visual information are six works including novels, music, movies and games, and then the author will talk about how these six works have a chemical reaction with "Shōmi Monogatari" according to their own understanding, combined with the game trailer and official settings, and carry out this troll carnival to the end.
1, perhaps this relationship should start from EA - "United States of Japan"
The contrarian historical worldview setting of "The Tale of Shōmi Monogatari" seemingly "Oriental Sons Colonizing Western Fathers" is easy to think of Philip F. Kennedy. K. Dick's steampunk-themed "The Stranger of the High Castle" describes the Western world in which the Allies lost World War II and the United States was divided by Nazi Germany and Japanese fascism. Although the light listening to the description is very exciting, but the actual story is more than daily, the dramatic conflict and setting the flashpoint are limited, and the player's familiar "anti-German hero" "Return to the German Headquarters" is to borrow the shell of "The Strange Man of the High Castle" and then stuff it with countless bullets and explosives.
The official homepage of Suzuku Games
Compared with the "New Wave Science Fiction" that is slightly distant from the present, the novel "United States of Japan" created by Chinese-American writer Xu Taizhe in 2016 is more like a reference text of "The Tale of Shōmi", which shows and imagines the wonders and imagination of crossover in modern Japanese and American popular culture, and has a high degree of compatibility with game performance.
The Japanese translation of The United States of Japan, which is very popular in Japan, may have made the Japanese feel the pleasure of reading riding on the head of "Daddy"
The author of the novel, Seo Tae-cheol, has a resume of visual effects technology at EA, and many people in the Suzuku game team have worked for EA, and there is reason to believe that the latter must have known and read the work "United States of Japan" and was inspired to some extent. The Chinese version of the book was introduced by the Nova Publishing House, I don't know if it is the popularity of the game that makes people who have a heart start to prepare to press Tu Suoji, the book is currently out of print, interested friends can wait to republish or read e-books.
Chinese translation by Nova Press
2, the drill is a man's romance - "Tianyuan Breakthrough"
One of the weapons used by the heroine of "The Tale of Shōmi" is a large drill that is seriously inconsistent with her body proportions, and we first see her slightly clumsy but powerfully waving this machine suspected of being removed from the excavator to the zombies, and then find the three words "Red Lotus" painted on the caravan, "evidence" indicates that this game must have taken a lot of things from the arsenal of the robot animation "Tianyuan Breakthrough Red Lotus Snail Rock".
The drill is the iconic weapon of "Tianyuan Breakthrough", once popular "breakthrough sky" and "drill is a man's romance" (which contains sexual innuendo, if you have seen the original, you will naturally understand the meaning of the drill), which comes from the famous line shouted by the protagonist of the animation when he uses various sizes of drills to launch attacks.
Huge drill bit in the game
The protagonist team of "Tianyuan Breakthrough" is named "Red Lotus Regiment", composed of a group of enthusiastic people with higher voices than attack power, and the game integrates this animation into it, personally believing that it is deliberately "Showa".
In the domestic Internet environment, there has always been a cartoon stereotype of "Showa boys" (many of the terriers in "The Tale of Shōmi" are born from stereotypes, looking lively, in fact, it is not advanced, the advantage is conducive to dissemination, the disadvantage is only conducive to dissemination), of course, there is also the ensuing concept of "Heisei waste", and in the game worldview, Pingcheng has not arrived, "waste" has become a zombie who pedals a bicycle to generate electricity, after all, the world is like that, who still cares about the emperor's era number.
The popularity of "Tianyuan Breakthrough" in that year pointed to the adult robot animation works led by "Lu Luxiu", destroyed the bloody Showa tradition since "Gaita Robot", became blindly charming, and even played the power card, "Tianyuan Breakthrough" is more like a "chaos rectification", bringing robot animation back to the world of single-cell straight men.
3. Hot Dry Noodle Zombie Road Movie - "Sukiyaki Western"
Sukiyaki Western is a Japanese Western film shot by Japanese director Takashi Miike. Like the famous Italian director Leone's famous "macaroni Western", the so-called "XXX (usually the director's country food) Western" is a product of self-innovation by directors outside the United States, which were once solidified in the westerns and had a single theme. And "The Tale of Shōmi" has both the long journey of Route 50, the apocalyptic atmosphere of zombies, and the samurai sword and submachine gun killing in all directions, and the Suzuku game from Wuhan seems to be to make a "hot dry noodle zombie road movie" posture.
In addition to the mixing of elements, the image perception of "The Tale of Shōmi" and Takashi Miike's iconic Hundred Taboos Have some similarities, the two are also a mixture of styles, such as highways, zombies, overhead history, etc., are the subjects that B-grade film directors like to hear, except that "Sukiyaki Western" is a Japanese director who uses american genre film models to tell the story of the Japanese, while "Shakimi Story" is the shell of the American genre film used by the Chinese development team to tell the adventure of Japanese knives, guns, sticks, and machine gun trolls in the United States. The cultural buff is thicker and more lively, and it is bound to be less than four or six when the time comes.
The Japanese cowboy in "Sukiyaki Western" may seem to have a sense of intimacy with friends who went to Harajuku to buy it
4. Resurrection of the Valkyrie - "Kill Bill"
"The Tale of Akimi" arranges a story background for the heroine Chikusa Butterfly to "miraculously rise from the dead and embark on the road to revenge", plus the trailer in which Butterfly rides a motorcycle, wields Bushido, and duels with female villains with bobo heads, like director Quentin Tarantino's film "Kill Bill".
In addition to these visible parts, the heroine of "Kill Bill", that is, the bride played by Uma Thurman, has performed martial arts, crawled back to the yang from the coffin alive, and in order to avenge, came to China to learn kung fu, went to Japan to build Bushido, and finally returned to the United States Towest to have a final duel with her destined lover and the biggest enemy. A shot in the trailer explains the identity of Butterfly's original action film actor, so she should have no less skill than the revenge bride in "Kill Bill", but I don't know whether her lover is the reason for her "resurrection from the dead" or the end of her road to revenge?
The revenge story seems to be old-fashioned, but it is actually a test of the screenwriter's skill. Although quentin, who is also a screenwriter, is nicknamed "Leper", his pen and ink kung fu is really powerful, and he is a refined film encyclopedia himself, so the film not only has a large number of fans, but also hides deeply, but also has a stronger taste. The creative direction of "The Tale of Zhaomi" is obviously also to integrate a lot of stems through the high concept of the world view and create a stage drama scene, as to whether the script can be like Quentin's film, the story is surging towards the dark tide, and the logical motivation can withstand scrutiny, depending on the actual performance of the official version of the game.
5. Dawn Disapproval: "It's Important"
The brainwashing melody that runs through the trailer is titled "それが事", which literally translates as "The Most Important Thing", this song was originally released by the Japanese "Big Thing MAN Brothers" on August 25, 1991, and was included in the band's third album. The reason why domestic players will have a feeling of "DNA moving" after the song sounds is that they have been involved in music since childhood, and they have listened to this golden song that was once popular in Japan, or they have been influenced by the popular music of Hong Kong, China, and have heard the version covered by Li Keqin - "Red Sun".
Album cover of the year
Since the 1970s, the Hong Kong and Taiwan pop music scenes of Japanese songs have gradually become a creative stereotype, and before Li Keqin and Tam Wing Lin were created as the concept of "Four Heavenly Kings", the two most popular male singers in the music scene in Hong Kong, China, naturally could not avoid this trend. Many mainland music fans also listened to the popularity of Hong Kong and Taiwan for many years, and with the more and more external information they received, they followed Tu Suoji to understand the original source of the song.
Let's return to the game, now that domestic games have the ability of cultural output, "The Tale of Zhaomi" is undoubtedly a form of expression of this ability in today's environment. The game chose "それが事" as the background music for its debut, on the one hand, this song coincides with the colorful apocalypse style in the game, on the other hand, behind the recording industry of Li Keqin's cover of "Red Sun", the spread path of this "America-Japan-Hong Kong-Mainland China" pop music is not a video game from the initial new thing to today's domestic masterpieces, a period of absorption, digestion, creation of self-learning, self-evolution process?
6, in the end, we still have to return to the question of "fun" or not - "Zombie Siege"
At present, the high popularity of "Shōmi Story" is almost all manifested in the cultural hunting level of playing Terrier Arch Fire and Troll Output, on the contrary, the game itself, from the demonstration, there is nothing outstanding, especially it gives people a sense of "Zombie Siege", and this X360 period open world game has now been deeply hidden by Capcom, so it does not look like a good reference template.
In fact, if you only talk about playing in the work, "Zombie Siege" is also a good player, the game has added a lot of spoof elements about Capcom's classic game, and even the game itself, initially regarded by players as a youth version of Resident Evil that is neither terrifying nor has any earth-shattering conspiracies. "Use a rich weapon system to mow the zombies in a fancy way", the trailer of "Shōmi Story" gives people the impression of gameplay, "Zombie Siege" is difficult to continue after 4 generations, not "fancy" exhausted, but the player feels that the fancy harvest zombies do not have any motivation to continue playing.
Of course, our understanding of the content of "The Tale of Shōmi" is still very limited, the main purpose of the first promotional film is to convey the biggest explosive point of the world view setting, combined with the road trip in the game, the nonsensical battle performance when the boss debuts, and the various "strange behaviors" around the protagonist, as long as "Shōmi Story" can fill in enough things on this stage, so that players do not feel that there is nothing to do while appreciating cultural wonders, even if it is a big half of success.
Conclusion: "The Tale of Shōmi" has successfully aroused the curiosity of players in China, the United States and Japan, and the high attention is not only an advantage that is conducive to dissemination, but also a huge pressure that the finished game must face, I hope that the development team will retain more surprises, and then we can have an extraordinary overseas fantasy trip.