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Number three:
Sonic the Hedgehog, rolled up in a spin-dash-ready position, punctuated the sentences of my life this year. And he did not do this because of Sonic Pinball (not as good as Pokémon Pinball Ruby/Sapphire) or Sonic Battle (oh hell no) for Gameboy Advance. No, he did this because of things outside the game.
If you read my review of the Nobuo Uematsu Black Mages concert, you know that a girl named Jun-chan stopped by my house and stole my prized Sonic doll. You will be saddened to hear that, in two months, I never got that Sonic back. I don't know if I ever will. There were a few plans to get me a Sonic somewhere, and all of them fell flat. The ones they sell in the toy shops in Akihabara just look too dirty to actually be new, and the only other ones in existence also happen to be impossible to obtain.
Here's the deal. My Sonic was perfect. Well, since losing him, I've actually found a Sonic that is more perfect. This one happens to be based on the "Sonic X" anime Sonic the Hedgehog, and he's available for money-wasting in a giant crane machine outside the Sega GiGo Arcade in Ikebukuro, near Sunshine City. For 200 yen, you get a chance to maneuver a crane through a tank full of Sonic dolls the size of pre-toddlers -- the perfect size, really -- and you're also buying utter angry humiliation for that money. Chuck and I hung around in front of the GiGo for about a half an hour, shaking our heads as people failed and failed again to capture the damn-near-nailed-down Sonics. One guy in a big hip-hop coat was obsessed with getting one. He tried four times. The shiny metal crane, which closes after it's begun ascending from the surface of stuffed animals, managed to grab a Sonic head and squeeze tight under the Blue Bastard's chin. It then froze, like the second level of that Jak II demo did when I beat it.
The guy banged the machine a little bit. Then he pressed the button that says "press this if the crane gets stuck." A guy in a yellow reflective shirt buzzed out, apologized in one word to the disgruntled player, keyed open the machine, and undid the crane with his hands. There was the Sonic, sitting there. I pulled a thousand-yen-bill out of my pocket, and dangled it before the guy's face as he tooled with the machine's innards. He sniffed it away.
I could have reached inside and snatched up one of those Sonics oh damn it to hell
The guy then closed up the machine, hit a button, and presented the determined player a single free play, which of course failed. The guy walked away in a tizzy, venting to his tired friend. Chuck and I shook our heads at the machine: impossible, we deemed it.
Flash to Jump Festa, where, just a week and some change before the game's release, Sonic Heroes was set up, playable in its complete version, at several kiosks in the Sega booth. Chuck and I gratefully partook of some Sonic action (and we'll partake of some more, for I plan to review the game soon -- then again, we all know how plans go), and found the game to feature the best damned pinball stage ever in a videogame. When the event staff told us our ten minutes were up, we jumped back to the end of the line, waiting to get back in.
We were wondering, then, if the event staff members were just being hard on the gaijin, or something, because there was a forty-something woman playing the game at the kiosk on the far left side, and she'd definitely been playing there for at least twenty minutes.
"Maybe it's because her kids are with her," Chuck added.
He had a point -- three kids half the woman's height stood behind the woman as she stared dead-ahead at the television screen. She was a discerning Sonic aficionado -- she didn't dare touch the PlayStation2 version, with its (edit: 12312003 Famitsu-confirmed (GC/Xbox: 8888; PS2: 8887) shoddy graphics. Rather, she stuck to the Gamecube version, lips sealed except when they parted to whisper something, and arms --
OH HOLY HELL SHE HAS ONE OF THOSE IMPOSSIBLE SONICS
She was clutching that pre-toddler-sized Sonic doll with her purple-coated arms. She was certain to adjust the doll's position at every pause in the game, so that Sonic's head was properly facing the screen. We watched her play for a half an hour. The kids were watching her, too. She was pretty damned good. At one point, in the middle of a stage, she let go of the controller, and it crashed down to the side of the kiosk. She walked off, holding Sonic's left hand in her right hand, headed in the direction of the bathroom, all the way on the other side of the convention hall. The kids stepped forward to claim the console.
"Those aren't her kids after all."
Chuck and scratched our own heads and walked off. When we came back more than an hour later, the woman was at the game again, this time with a different kid and the same us standing behind her. It was then that I decided to take a picture of the woman, for the purpose of talking about her here.
Chuck and I reasoned that, on the release date of Sonic Heroes, this woman most likely was lined up outside AsoBitCity, even though current Japanese preordering practices make it totally unnecessary to do something like that. We figured this woman would go to that extreme because she had one of those Sonic dolls; I don't want to imagine how long it took her to get that doll. I'm sure it was a long, long, long, long time.
I wonder about her, even now. I imagine she still lives with her parents. She probably has a job at a restaurant turning noodles. She doesn't have a boyfriend. She probably buys Shonen Jump every week, and reads it cover to cover in the bedroom she's lived in since elementary school. For her, Sonic the Hedgehog is life. She will die younger than many other people die, and she will likely leave a room full of Sonic the Hedgehog merchandise behind for someone to claim -- probably the youngest child of her brother, who's probably more interested in, like, sports or school anyway.
All this I could see from this woman's eyes. As part of a research project I undertook (for professional purposes, in all seriousness) last year, I met four other women like her. As part of growing to age twenty-four, I went through a phase where I was like this woman, only for Final Fantasy. And I'm not just saying I wrote fanfiction or anything like that -- those people are, by all accounts, mostly mentally healthy, no matter how annoyed I get at their continuums sometimes -- I'm saying I was too deeply dependent on that game to provide me what I could have sought somewhere else.
I slept with my Sonic the Hedgehog doll in those days, too. I might have once or twice thought about how great it would be to live in Sonic's world, where everything is bright. I would wonder, if I were a furry animal in a cartoon, what kind would I be? It was very sad, sometimes -- my room in my old parents' house was the coldest in the winter and the hottest in the summer, and I remember the winters the most, because at those times it was just me and Sonic, and I always felt cold.
I've seen the lines in Akihabara on a Friday night. I've seen people waiting for doors to open so tickets to "concerts" performed by voice-actors to go on sale, only to be sold out in five minutes. I've almost dined at the Cure Maid Café in Akihabara, where all the waitresses are in full cosplay, the drinks are six times what you'd expect, the table charge is the price of a drink, and the customers are all men in their forties, not a single one of them dressed even in business-casual.
I've seen otaku all over the place at these Japanese conventions, and much as I jeer in my videos, well -- know that those videos are all pretend, and I am a trained actor (I fucking played Iago, god damn it) -- I can't hate on them. I can't dislike them. I can't even feel sorry for them. To love something that much, and to roll with it for that long, and to not doubt yourself -- that's something that's worth something. To be able to find something you love that much is rare indeed.
Hanging out with .hack producer Daisuke Uchiyama at Tokyo Game Show revealed a new side to this otaku-interpreting coin. A fellow producer arrived back at the Bandai booth after swinging by the steamy outdoor cosplay promenade.
"Saw a couple .hack cosplayers," he told Uchiyama, who then made a face.
"Don't like people cosplaying your game?"
"It's not that I don't like it. I'm just . . . well, I'm just too honored."
We talked about this more two nights later, at the Jonathon's family restaurant near my apartment, which happens to be where he and several Bandai producers eat every night at around two in the morning. I'd run into him by accident, and we ended up having a few Coca-Colas together and talking about otaku.
I haven't seen Uchiyama in a couple of weeks. Last time, he told me he wasn't going to be able to make it to Jump Festa. When I'm back in Japan, I'm going to tell him about the Sonic Woman, and see what he says. Then I'm going to tell him about the big fat otaku guy waiting in line for the Gotcha Force game at the Capcom booth.
That story is simple, and it goes like this -- everyone who played Gotcha Force on the morning of day two got a ticket. You could redeem this ticket at one-thirty, following the Street Fighter II tournament finals. They had this lumbering cardboard-walled jumbo gotchapon (of "Maybe I Should Get Another" fame) toys with a giant cartoon handle. I had a ticket, and so did Chuck. As we found right at the beginning, one person carrying a hell of a lot of tickets was allowed to redeem them for as many prizes. The prizes were constantly on the refresh, you see -- two girls in purple polo shirts and Santa hats stood on a platform behind the top of the machine, tossing in new toys. The announcer girl -- who had proclaimed me winner of the Street Fighter II tournament just moments earlier -- laid out the rules: each ticket entitles you to one turn of the handle. Several lucky kids will even win a free copy of Gotcha Force!
So everyone stepped up, redeemed their tickets, and turned the wheel. Everyone with two tickets got two toys. Chuck even got two -- one of which was a travel toothbrush set and one of which was a yo-yo. Chuck gave me the yo-yo, because he doesn't like yo-yos. Can you believe that?
Anyway, standing in front of Chuck in line was a great fat Japanese otaku in a Chun-Li T-shirt. He was, most appropriately, a Capcom otaku. He was carrying two large shopping bags, probably full of merchandise. He had only one ticket in hand, probably because he already owned Gotcha Force, and had even unlocked all the robots available for the unlocking, so didn't feel overly wrong not playing it too much at the show. He presented his ticket to the announcer, who asked him a question. It was "How do you like the game?" The guy stuttered for thirty seconds, shaking like a cartoon character, absolutely psychologically impaired from speaking a single intelligible word in that situation. I was standing some fifty feet away from the whole scene. Chuck, waiting on the stairs, looked back for me, and I raised my hand to show him where I was. The woman then quickly told this otaku to go ahead and turn the wheel, and good luck getting that free copy of the game. He grabbed the wheel, and turned it.
Nothing came out.
"Oh! You got a dud!" the girl said. "Too bad!"
The guy was shaking again. He turned and, without a word, left the stage.
Chuck then stepped up, and received two prizes. When Chuck came around to meet me, I stood back, and watched to see if everyone else was receiving prizes. I wanted to see if any more "duds" popped up.
There wasn't a one.
I didn't for a second entertain the thought of giving that otaku my yoyo should I run into him, because that would have been unnecessary pity. All I did was think, as I do now -- why do they have to be so damned cheap about stuff like that?
And why won't they just sell that Sonic in a store?
And why can't they lower the prices on the crepes in Harajuku? I mean, really? Oh, because this is Japan, and Japan is expensive?
Well, riddle me this, big boy -- why do bakeries in Japan throw away all the bread at the end of the day?
Answer (and I know this from working experience): because the employees are not to partake of company bread.
Well, why don't they just lower the prices, so as to sell all that bread before closing? Answer: because there's no telling when they'd run out of bread!
. . .
This is the culture that breeds otaku, folks.
Now someone give me a Sonic before I cry.
[next: number two: the game of the year, 2003 -- and you thought i couldn't be conventional if i tried haHAH!]
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