Spotlight: GrimGrimoire

GrimGrimoire is technically Vanillaware’s second game made, but it was the first released in Japan, published by NIS in April 2007 for the PlayStation 2. Set in the backdrop of a magical school locked in a time loop, GrimGrimoire is a combination of 2D visual novel and real-time strategy game, a gameplay style shared only with the later 13 Sentinels. The game’s protagonist Lillet Blan acquires a growing set of the titular tomes while trying to solve the mysteries of the school’s residents, her consistent looping, and the attempted theft of the legendary Philosopher’s Stone.

While somewhat buried over time, GrimGrimoire definitely left its mark. The colorful characters and summons are as fun as they are memorable, and its writing still feels sharp. GrimGrimoire is more than worth a play even if it’s not quite as successful as it’s contemporary, Odin Sphere.

Our interest check is live until March 19th! If you're interested in applying to our zine or preordering it, click here to let us know!

EDIT: I'd confused the timeline between the Japan & America releases, GrimGrimoire was released first in Japan, but second in the US, coming out a month after Odin Sphere.

Skip Beat! has been doing well in the Oricon Charts in Japan. For the last three volumes released, Skip Beat! has been consistently listed in the top 5 mangas with most sales within 2-3 weeks of the release date. 

Spotlight: Odin Sphere (& Leifthrasir)

Odin Sphere, later remade as Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, is Vanillaware’s its first real development as well as its critical debut coming out for the PlayStation 2 in May 2007. The game is a 2d action-RPG beat ‘em up with a storybook framing device and fairytale influences. Notable for having 5 distinct protagonists with interweaving stories, a theme they’d revisit across multiple titles. The recent HD remake, Leifthrasir, added much more to the original source, reinvigorating the combat system as well as adding more mechanical & background elements to make the gameplay feel as epic as the story.

One of these is the addition of the portable chef Maury, an NPC who will make your character unique foods on the battlefield. Odin Sphere was the first game since Princess Crown to really pick up the mantle of cooking in Vanillaware games, originally having two distinct kitchens the player could bring ingredients to and have beautiful food brought back to them. Kamitani has mentioned before that this is because he believes eating makes people happy, and seemingly many people agree with him. Cooking and/or eating return in nearly all of Vanillaware’s subsequent games, and is widely considered a hallmark of their titles.

Spotlight: Oboro Muramasa (& Genroku Legends DLC)

Oboro Muramasa, or Muramasa: The Demon Blade is a fast-paced, side-scrolling beat-em-up centered in feudal Japan. In the base Wii game, players would pick one of the two protagonists: Momohime, a princess haunted by the soul of a great swordsman as she travels from east to west; and Kisuke, an amnesiac assassin following his previous employer from west to east. The Rebirth rerelease & retranslation on the PSVita also introduced the Genroku Legends DLC, providing 4 new characters with radically different playstyles to traverse the beautiful countrysides with.

While Odin Sphere was more of a critical darling, Muramasa was Vanillware’s first real brush with mainstream success as it released on one of Nintendo’s most popular consoles. In a lot of ways it mechanically delivered on Odin Sphere’s initial vision as well, observable in how, when working on the HD remake, the combat is much more fast-paced and combo-centered, which was Muramasa’s main draw. Unique to Muramasa however is that each character, including DLC, has different endings depending on certain requirements completed in game that help fill out the world and characters more. While this is slightly true for Odin Sphere as well, there’s a dubious canon-ness to Muramasa’s endings that feel more like a ‘pick your favorite telling’ rather than one being truer than another.

Spotlight: Vanillaware Beginnings

Hello! It’s March now, and applications will be opening next month! So we thought we’d put together a few posts highlighting the different games from Vanillaware, as wells its beginnings seeing as that’s what the zine is all about.

The story of early Vanillaware is in many ways the story of the company’s president and founder, George Kamitani. Kamitani got his start at Atlus with a game called Princess Crown— initially pitched as something similar to Gainax’s Princess Maker 2, Crown shifted to more of an action RPG over the course of development. While Vanillaware only has a couple of the same people from this earlier title, Princess Crown is important for how many conventions it pioneered and established in the broader Vanillaware canon. Obvious things like the staple, 2D-sidescrolling action nature of the game would be revisited in almost every game moving forward, as well as the bright colors and unique fantasy designs— but even more unique or specific things such as characters, enemies, and concepts would return in later games as well. For example, multi-character story with interweaving plotlines would return in Odin Sphere, Oboro Muramasa, as well as the more popular 13 Sentinels; and specifically certain characters such as Hindel the dragon & various enemies would return from Princess Crown in Odin Sphere.

While Princess Crown didn’t do well commercially, it became a critical and cult hit, leading to Kamitani’s next project with Enix (before its merger with Square): Fantasy Earth Zero, at that time subtitled Ring of Dominion. More things were solidified in this development, such as developing a working relationship with Hitoshi Sakimoto, the head composer on nearly every Vanillaware game, some key members like Shigatake and Kentaro Ohnishi joining at this time, and the forming of the company itself: a 10-person collective initially called Puraguru. Kamitani also was responsible for the game’s more traditional fantasy direction, as well as the story of the game evolving through competitive online play between factions— another idea revisited again in the later title Grand Knight’s History. Unfortunately, Kamitani and Enix split on bad terms when the Square-Enix merger placed Fantasy Earth Zero under Multiterm’s control.

While Kamitani considers this the most stressful development he’s ever had in the industry, it luckily wouldn’t deter him from continuing to make games. In 2004 the company moved to the Kansai area and renamed from Puraguru to Vanillaware, hoping to make games with as enduring a taste as the ever popular vanilla ice cream.

Spotlight: Kumatanchi

Kumatanchi is a sort of life-sim game, set in an anthropomorphized version of a zoo where you the player take care of a new entry, the titular Kuma-tan the bear. Based on the director Shigatake’s Habanero-tan & related comics, it's one of Vanillaware’s more passive titles, centered around taking care of the main character, giving her food, designing her room, teaching her tricks, and watching her interactions with other zoo residents unfold over the course of a couple weeks.

Despite never being localized, Kumatanchi is notable for a few reasons: it’s the beginning of Vanillware’s relationship with Nintendo as it came out on the 3Ds in Japan, and its a passion project headed by one of the older members of the company, Shigatake, rather than being headed by Kamitani. It was also developed alongside Muramasa, splitting the employees into two teams to see if it was feasible. After production wrapped on Kumatanchi, they decided that splitting wasn’t the best idea, and committed back to doing one game at a time under Kamitani’s direction.

[ENG] Volume 39 is the latest volume out through VizMedia!