Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright (Gyakuten Saiban) kicked off the Scotland Loves Anime Glasgow weekend at the Glasgow Film Theatre. An odd choice - a live action film pistol-starting an animation festival - a state of affairs not lost on the imitable Jonathan Clements who provided a brief introduction and set the context for the film.
I was reliably informed by the GFT's staff that the event had sold out, and with nary a spare seat in sight it was a difficult claim to dispute. When it came to the question of who had played the games, nearly everyone's hand in the auditorium shot skyward, myself excluded. A ten minute playtest of the Japanese DS version (which bizarrely had English subtitles) when it came out hardly constituted familiarity with the Phoenix's court-room pointing simulator.
The formula is all too familar: alien lands on earth, befriends local youth and romantic hijinks ensue. The opening episodes of Asobi ni iku yo! do nothing to tweak this formula beyond adding cat-ears and a tail to the buxom interplanetary interloper. The recent Ano Natsu de Materu at least kept things clean, here the feline Eris is disrobed and in the protagonist's bed within minutes. Seconds later and the domineering childhood friend arrives (how inconvenient!) and the quiet and traditional Japanese beauty follows shortly afterwards.
Those who, somewhat rightly, switch off after those episodes though would be missing what turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining romp through science fiction of old and a locale less travelled: Okinawa.
(Another was originally a book by Yukito Ayatsuji. With news of a translation yet to appear, I'm trying to reconstruct the novel from the first three episodes of the anime series)
I woke up in the hospital. It felt like I had been dreaming, but there was clichéd narration and an awful, terrible song playing. It was still 1998 so I was slightly disappointed I hadn't time travelled to a future where ALI Project had been outlawed.
Outside the sun was setting and the backwater town I had moved to seemed ready to sleep. My Grandma and Aunt were chilling with me on dialysis. At least I assume it was dialysis, I wasn't entirely sure what they were doing with tubes in my chest but they had said it was medically relevant. We chatted about my father and late mother, and where I was going to school. Some students came to visit me with all the cheer of a funeral procession. Must be depressants in the drinking water.
