This Week’s Topics:

• A gushing about Boku no Shotaiken (My First Time) by Yuzuki Hikaru
• Austria confirms: loot boxes are gambling
• Budokai Tenkaichi 4 announced
• Dragon Ball
• The JRPG Debate

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
TSF Showcase #2023-09
Boku no Shotaiken (My First Time) by Yuzuki Hikaru

Natalie.TF reader Chari continues to bring the goods with yet another fresh translation of a piece of TSF history. She has been on an absolute tear as of late, translating 1973’s Joka he… or To Joca/Joker by Ooshima Yumiko, and 1992’s Rintarou Panic! by Keiko Takemiya. But this past week, she shared with me the great grandma of all TSF manga. The first ‘gender bender’ manga found in every database, and a work that spans nearly 500 pages (490 if you want to be technical, but 500 sounds better). Boku no Shotaiken (My First Time) by Yuzuki Hikaru.

…But before I talk about that, I should probably talk about the second TSF manga (the first was debatably Metropolis by Osamu Tezuka in 1949). Because it was also written by Yuzuki Hikaru! 

1972’s Doron was… very much a product of its time. The core of the story centered around Daisuke, a horndog high schooler boy who writes a love letter for one of his classmates, only for the delivery to go wrong. Through misunderstandings and lies, Daisuke wraps several women into his love life, who wind up exacting revenge on him… by physically assaulting him. Bitter at this emasculating experience, Daisuke enacted his own using an ancient ninja drug that he just so happened to have in his house.

This medicine, predictably, transforms people’s sex, and using his new female identity, Daisuke ruins the lives of the women who humiliated him. He frames one as a lesbian in front of her boyfriend (remember, this was 1972). Tricks one to participate in a ‘Miss Ugly’ contest (again, 1972). And finally turns his female childhood friend into a man. After letting this final ‘goof’ play out, Daisuke’s childhood friend heads up to the roof of the school to commit suicide (there’s a reason those roofs have fences now). Daisuke goes up to prevent her from killing herself, she confesses her love for him, he gives her the sex change ninja drug, and after realizing what Daisuke did, she throws him off the roof, and he DIES!

…I felt the need to explain that, as Boku no Shotaiken feels like a reprisal of these ideas (in more ways than one).

The story follows Eitarou, a prudish romantic high school boy who wants nothing more than a devoted girlfriend, but constantly strikes out on the first date. Following his latest twentieth rejection, his first girlfriend, Michitu, pulls a prank on him. And by prank, I mean she gathered the entire student body for an assembly so they could mock him for being so bad at romance. After being made a laughingstock yet again, Eitarou decides that this world is too cruel to his gentle soul, and jumps off a cliff. 

He should have died, but instead his mind and body were saved by… Adolf Hitler? Well, no, the character’s name is actually Hitora Kyoji, but he looks just like Hitler, because… I don’t know. The 70’s were a wild time for Japanese cartooning, and you could find Hitler look-a-likes all over the place.

Anyway, Kyoji is a disgraced scientist who puts Eitarou’s brain in the body of his deceased wife, Haruna. Meaning that we are dealing with a classic case of brain switching, not straight TSF. Eitarou is naturally shocked to be in a woman’s body, while Kyoji wants him to perform the ‘wifely duties’ of Haruna. In a more modern hentai comic, this would result in Eitarou being sexually assaulted into submission and identity death. But Boku no Shotaiken is from The Halcyon Era, so it instead takes things in a less sexual direction, and hits what would become several familiar MtF TSF tropes.

• General discomfort with possessing female anatomy despite lusting after it
• Struggling to put on a bra for the first time (which is not unfounded)
• Avoiding the toilet out of concern over seeing a girl’s ‘front butt’
• Spreading legs while in public
• Running into a men’s room and reaching for his penis only to find ‘nothing’
• Presenting as a girl in order to enter an elusive female clique
• Losing one’s first kiss to a man
• Becoming an object of desire for a sexy man

I would go on describing the story in more detail, but I would honestly just recommend you read it for yourself. Boku no Shotaiken is a positively wild ride and, despite being nearly 50 years old, is definitely one of the best TSF comics I have ever read.

Why do I say this? Well, let’s start with the tone. Boku no Shotaiken is a comedy series before anything else, so there is a large focus on awkward situations, slapstick violence, and exaggerated reactions. Characters make bad and corny jokes, there is a running gag involving matchstick ‘puzzles’ of all things, and the art features such exaggerated cartooning that it goes against most modern manga conventions. 

Despite the comedy seeming a bit simple, or even childish, the manga remains genuinely funny throughout, and made me laugh out loud several times while reading it. It has an infectious energy, avoids feeling anywhere near as sexist or bitterly entitled as Doron, and unlike most comedy-centered TSF stories, there is a storyline that progresses.

Boku no Shotaiken is not content with just being a body swap story, and it keeps introducing new ideas and elements to make things more interesting. Such as when Eitarou’s body gets stolen by truck-kun and he needs to steal it from his grieving family. Or when other-truck-kun murders Michiru and she gets put in Eitarou’s original body. Or when Eitarou’s brain gets borked up by hormones and this prudish man becomes a slut.

It never runs out of steam, never gets boring *glares at every 30+ chapter slice of life TSF comic*, and it never stopped impressing me with just how much TSF stuff it tackled. And when it does tackle these things… it’s actually better than a lot of the more modern stuff I’ve read. 

The dichotomy of ‘cartoon funny animal horny’ and ‘phobically prudish’ is extremely refreshing compared to a more ‘realistic’ reaction to sexual content. I love how it reinforces how ‘girls make the best boys,’ as seen by how Michiru kills it in Eitarou’s body, becoming such a sex symbol that every girl in school wants to touch his penis. And its general creativity is something that I feel has been lost as works have tried to conform into bespoke genres. Here, you can go from a story of star-crossed lovers to a story about teenage knuckleheads trying to resurrect a man by exploding him, and at no point does it ever feel that something is ‘wrong’ or ‘off.’

Then there is the pregnancy plot point introduced in the later third, which just goes to show how RIGHT I was when I talked about how pregnancy is a natural avenue for TSF two weeks ago! And you know what? It is freaking nuanced compared to every other depiction of pregnancy I have ever seen in TSF. (Though I could probably find some better written content if I searched hard enough in the gulags)

I could do a chapter by chapter breakdown of this work’s triumphs if I wanted to, but I would be lying if I said it was perfect, and want to acknowledge its faults. There are some inconsistencies with how Michiru views masculinity. A few of the gags feel like they are beaten to death before being discarded, and the ending, while fine conceptually, is confined to a mere two pages.

Then there are more… antiquated elements. I already mentioned how Kyoji looks exactly like Hitler, but there is also a very… seventies attitude to a lot of things. Suicide is presented either mockingly or as a goof, horny is depicted as the natural state of men, bullying is seen as something simultaneously harmful yet permissible, and unwarranted sexual advances are plentiful. 

Then there is one character introduced near the end of the story who… I think might be a sort of mammy caricature. She is a giant woman who speaks in sentence fragments, cares for children and mothers about to give birth, and has giant lips. But she is also so exaggerated that I’m not sure if it is, or is meant to be, racist.

Now, aside from that? Well, I don’t like looking up to the past as a source of great art, but Boku no Shotaiken is wonderful! It is a bold and innovative comic that almost certainly sent a ripple effect throughout the genre of Japanese TSF, and I think it is still an impressive work by modern standards. I know that its more dated elements might not be to everyone’s cup of tea, but for everyone else… I’d say this is up there with Trans Venus as required reading for TSF enthusiasts. 

So please, if you are a fan of TSF, read this comic. It’s free, you can finish it in an afternoon, here’s the download link again. I normally hate it when people tell other people to read, watch, or play something, because they phrase their recommendation like an order. But I am not telling you to do anything, I am BEGGING! Because Boku no Shotaiken is that bloody good! And unless you read Japanese, I know you haven’t read it before. Because you COULDN’T!

…And when you’re done with that, check out Chari’s— or rather Charishal’s— translations onto MangaDex. The manga she translated can be a bit hit or miss, but they are all interesting at the very least.

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Loot Box Debacles Continue
(Austrian Court Rules Loot Boxes Are Gambling)

It has been a while since I last talked about loot boxes extensively. I think the last time was in June 2021. When FIFA Ultimate Team was trying out some less morally dubious form of loot box that required players to refresh their results repeatedly. However, this topic is such a vital part of the gaming industry that it cannot be ignored, due to the continued success of gacha games and titles like Genshin Impact. Which are loot boxes, as waifus are, objectively, loot. Just like how people are property that can be bought, sold, and traded by corporations: the humans of the twentieth, twenty-first, and FINAL centuries.

…I really should cut out bizarro tangents like that, but they’re becoming an increasing part of my brand. 

Anyway, the legalization efforts against loot boxes have been going on in the background over the past few years, and recently an Austrian court ruled that loot boxes are gambling. This marks the third country in the European Union to classify loot boxes this way, after Belgium and The Netherlands a few years back. 

This is good news for people who recognize the harm of real money gambling mechanics, but the strange thing about this ruling is the remedy offered by the court. They are asking Sony to refund the purchases because they did not have a gambling license in Austria, making the purchase contract void. This is a curious conclusion that effectively states that ‘loot boxes are okay if they are legally recognized as gambling,’ which is a workaround that I have not really considered until now. 

While the gaming industry profits a lot from children and teenagers, I wonder if there is a sufficiently large audience of adults to support a sub-industry of games with gambling elements. As in, if EA released a version of FIFA with gambling elements, but only made it available to people who are eighteen or older, would that be more profitable than outright removing gambling mechanics?

I say this because I know the magnitudes of wealth generated from loot boxes, and I know that no game publisher wants to give that up for a ‘riskier’ business model. They will keep doing it until it proves to be mathematically less profitable than an alternative, or the practice becomes outright banned in a core market, like the United States (fat chance).

Hell, this truism applies not only to loot boxes, as most game publishers only care about generating profit, and they will do whatever they think makes the most money, to hell with anything else. It’s why so many games are propped up as live services, last a few years, and become lost to time. It’s why titles are abruptly delisted when licensing fees expire. It’s why games are continuously made worse through the introduction of easier to monetize mechanics, such as RPG-like systems and numbers-driven combat. Which, sadly, will continue to be a trend even if loot boxes go away. Because the real problem is excessive monetization, and that problem is one that… just will not go away. 

…Well, unless everything was nationalized and regulated to hell and back. But such a utopia is too sweet for one’s fickle imagination, and such fantasies can only give birth to despair… or maybe bloody revolution?

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Natalie Muses Loosely About Dragon Ball 3D Arena Fighters
(A New Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi Announced)

Sometimes I forget that there was a solid decade where Dragon Ball Z 3D arena fighting games were basically an annualized release: Budokai in 2002, Budokai 2 in 2003, Budokai 3 in 2004, Budokai Tenkaichi in 2005, Budokai Tenkaichi 2 in 2006, Budokai Tenkaichi 3 in 2007, Infinite World and Burst Limit in 2008, Raging Blast in 2009, Raging Blast 2 in 2010, and Ultimate Tenkaichi in 2011. 

It was honestly far too much for me to ever keep up with, especially because I did not have a PS2, so I only ever rented Budokai 1 and 2. However, I know that these games were pivotal experiences to a lot of Dragon Ball fans in the early 2000s, and it is a bit sad that these games are only available via dying hardware and emulation. I would ask why this trend did not continue, but the answer is obvious. Annualized releases like this often have diminishing returns in regards to sales and quality, while causing fatigue within the fanbase. 

So the folks at Bandai Namco decided to shift to a DLC supported multiplayer suite in the form of Dragon Ball Xenoverse in 2015. …Before realizing how costly it would be to continue supporting the Xbox 360 and PS3, leading to 2016’s Xenoverse 2. A title that has seen some of the strongest support of any title this generation, with new DLC packs coming out even 6 years later.

With development of games for PS5 and Xbox Series finally becoming reasonable, it seemed like a matter of time for a new Xenoverse title to be revealed… but that doesn’t seem to be the case. As part of a Dragon Ball FighterZ tournament, the fourth Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi game was announced.

Aside from this being a new 3D arena battler with some variety of campaign and gameplay implicitly similar to Spike’s previous efforts on PS2, I don’t know what this will be. Personally, I have a feeling it is going to be this generation’s rendition of Xenoverse, without the same piddly stat customization. However, this is all guesswork, as games like this rely on theorycrafting as a form of community marketing. It’s strange, but giving less information at first can give way to more intrigue. It does not always work, but when it does, numbers go up!

…I don’t have anything more to add about this game, so I’m just going to talk about Dragon Ball instead.

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Natalie Rambles About Dragon Ball A Little
(Why Natalie Does Not Care About Modern Dragon Ball)

Dragon Ball is something I was deeply infatuated with as a child. I watched two episodes a day when it aired on TV after school. I went to all sorts of weird comic shops to buy Tomy and Jakks Pacific’s toys. I obsessively read through Pojo’s Unofficial Total Dragon Ball Z guide book. And I had the majority of Dragon Ball Z on VHS. …Most of which were copies of library VHS tapes made by my father. Which sounds like a poor thing to do, but my dad just bought blank VHS tapes by the crate. I have a plethora of good childhood memories surrounding the series, and I still hold up the original manga as an exceptional work of twentieth century literature. 

…Yes, I consider manga to be literature. Block Natalie.TF from your router if you disagree.

I have not gone a month without thinking about Dragon Ball for over 20 years, so I cannot help but feel a close, protective, and sensitive relationship to it. Despite this however, I do not really consider myself to be a true ‘fan’ of the series as it currently is. So many things involving the extended universe fly right over my head. I have never even attempted to watch Dragon Ball Super. And from what I do know, I am generally not fond of where the series has progressed since it ended in the 90s. 

Why is that? Well, I think a lot of the reason why is because, to me, Dragon Ball was a persistent barrage of creative ideas and fun concepts. To me, Dragon Ball is a story that is at its best when it has a sense of adventure and building a world. While the least interesting parts are the more prolonged fight scenes. 

This is pretty much the exact opposite for a lot of other DBZ fans, who enjoy the drama and passion of the characters, but are mostly there for the finely crafted battle sequences.

Much of the reason for this stems from how I got into Dragon Ball. By watching the Buu saga of DBZ… and the original Dragon Ball… simultaneously… as two different shows. They aired together after school on Toonami, and starting in September 2001, I was hooked! Now, I did not watch every episode, because I was a kid who didn’t know how to record something on a VCR, but I was deeply entranced by every detail I picked up on. No other work of fiction I encountered at this age, not even Pokémon or Digimon, presented me with a world this vast and full of possibility. 

Dragon Ball has aliens, super powers, creatures who can transform into whatever they want for five minutes, Hell, cyborgs, genetic freak bug monsters, and bubblegum demons! It is a world lush with ideas, with a history and lore beyond any traditional narrative that I was exposed to at that time. And even to this day, I adore so much about the ideas that were used throughout this series. Hell, say what you will about GT but it had a freaking vision!

From what I know about Dragon Ball Super, it does not seem to have these things. The creativity and vision that I find so enthralling about this series. Instead, it is more interested in recycling and building upon more familiar elements. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I always felt they recycle ideas for the wrong reasons. 

Frieza was brought back after he was made into a gosh darn joke in at least three other instances. Future Trunks returned, even though his story was finished with the death of Cell and the Androids. Goku Black was introduced as the latest version of an ‘evil Goku’ only for him to be revealed as merely someone using Goku’s form. …Which is so much less interesting. And the series ended on a 50 episode tournament arc because… Dragon Ball had a lot of tournament arcs, I guess.

Nothing I have heard about Super inspired confidence in its creativity, and despite involving the original creator, I view it as something… different from Dragon Ball. Which ultimately makes it hard for me to care about Dragon Ball as an ongoing thing, as it is not what I really want to see. 

This ordinarily would not be a problem, as the original 1984 to 1995 run will always be there. Unfortunately, the story of Dragon Ball— or rather, the story of Dragon Ball Z— has been told and retold so many times that I find it a bit… boring to think about. Because rather than be a story that can change with each retelling, every version of Dragon Ball Z must be the same, for the rights holders demand it work that way. Which… is the exact opposite of something new or interesting.

Or in other words, I guess what I’m saying is that I would rather see someone try to retell and do their own take on Dragon Ball. That is infinitely more preferable than seeing another retelling of a story that, to me, has been done since 1995. …Or 1996. …Or 1997. …Or even 2005 when GT finished airing in America. But I guess that’s something that one needs to look into fandom for… Which I’m not going to do.

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Natalie Spent All Week Reading Dragon Ball Fan Comics
(And She Hates Dragon Ball Super Even More)

Okay, so one of the worst things about platforms like YouTube is that while most of their recommendations suck, they do occasionally nail one’s hyperfixation down. For MONTHS, I have been seeing Dragon Ball alternate universe comic summaries with hundreds of thousands of views, mostly from some chap named Mondo Cool. But rather than watch any of his videos, I just went searching for some of the comic names in the title of his videos and came up with a list of comics. I got through three this past week and… let’s just say I was impressed. 

JUST KIDDING!!! 

Even I have my limits on self-destructive behavior!

Image comes from Dragon Ball Reboot by GineReboot.

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JRPG, WRPG, ConRPG, ComRPG, Action RPG: Genre Meanings All-Out Attack!
(Natalie Participates in the Discourse Surrounding The Term JRPG)

Video game genres are these terribly and arbitrarily named things that, every few years, come under criticism for not being a good or accurate description. I remember seeing an argument saying that ‘I should be able to know if I will like a game just from the genre’ and that little presumptuous nugget has never left my mind. Nor shall it. And I will similarly never forget how Hirameki effectively renamed Japanese Adventure games to ‘visual novels’ just by calling… five games visual novels.

This week however, there has been a load of discourse about the term JRPG after Final Fantasy XIV producer Naoki Yoshida talked about how that term was perceived in Japan during the late 2000s. Japanese RPG creators felt it was derogatory, mocking, and they did not want to feel like they were being compartmentalized and others. The discourse then did its thing, and people began asking if the term JRPG should even be used anymore.

Personally, I am all for shifting over to a new and better terminology— it’s why I use TSF over TG or gender bender or gender transformation. However, something that the gaming community has struggled with is coming up with new names. Even to this day, I still feel a twinge of disappointment whenever I see terms like soulslike, roguelike, looter shooter, or boomer shooter. Not because I have better alternatives— I don’t— but because I feel that there have to be better names for these things. Sadly, when people do try to rename things like ‘meroidvania,’ they wind up with crap like ‘search action’ and act like it’s even sorta better. I would suggest action exploration, but that sounds exactly like action adventure. Which, for the record, is the worst and least descriptive video game genre name.

Tangent aside, one of the most contentious examples of this has always been the term JRPG. A term that people have been squabbling about for over 15 years, and made negative progress doing so. 

Let’s start with the name. If you ask someone what a JRPG is, they will say it is a Japanese Role Playing Game. An RPG made in Japan. Which is… wrong. That is not what the term originally meant. The ‘Japanese’ in JRPG was not meant to refer to something that is native or was created in Japan. It refers to something that originated in Japan. 

To illustrate my point, let me ask you which of the following is a Japanese restaurant: A sushi place in New York City, or a KFC in Japan? I like to think that most people would say that the sushi place is a Japanese restaurant, because they serve Japanese food. And the KFC is an American restaurant, because they serve American food.

Or if that comparison did not work… JRPG never really meant to stand for Japanese RPG, but Japanese-style RPG. A term that references how the foundational elements of the genre were originally far more common in games produced in Japan than in other countries. Grand stories that involved traveling across a world, accumulating party members, and engaging in turn-based menu-driven combat. You know, Dragon-Quest-likes. But that crucial word— style— was lost through years of conversational telephone and simplified terminology. 

However, there was another term that either appeared before or around the same time as JPRG. Console RPG. A term referring to the types/styles of RPGs that were more common/popular on home consoles, compared to the types/styles of RPGs that were more common/popular on personal computers. This was a very western-centric term born from people who wished to distinguish games like Baldur’s Gate from Grandia. And while there were some instances when a ‘console’ RPG came to PC, like Final Fantasy VIII, or a ‘computer’ RPG came to console, like Ultima VII: The Black Gate, these were more general shorthand terms. 

However, this naming convention proved to be very short-lived, as ‘computer RPGs’ like Morrowind and Star Wars: KotOR started being ported to the Xbox, where they garnered widespread acclaim. So CRPG and… CRPG were traded for JRPG and WRPG. Or Japanese-style RPG and Western-style RPG. Because that seemed like the easiest way to distinguish the two at the time. But, again, this was not something decided by any sort of committee or qualified persons. It was decided by twenty-something White dudes who worked for gaming magazines and people who spent half of their free time on gaming forums.

This whole distinction also becomes far more muddled when you consider things like action RPGs. A term that has grown in popularity over the past decade, and can be applied to any game with real-time action combat and RPG systems, including leveling up, equipment, stat progression, etc. Which would include Ys, Dragalia Lost, Genshin Impact, Mass Effect, Two Worlds II, Fallout: New Vegas, The World Ends With You, and Dark Souls. 

Then there are tactical/strategy RPGs, most of which would also be called JRPGs, but when people show off JRPG gameplay, they never show off stuff like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, or Disgaea. I would say they are part of the discussion, but their name is fine.

Bah! I’m getting distracted! The point of all of this is that there is a good reason why the term JRPG came into existence. Because people identify it as a subset of the larger umbrella of what an RPG could be. And, from my reading of the situation, the problem is not the classification, but rather the name of it. There are some alternatives that have been thrown around, such as Turn-Based RPG, which forgets that tactical/strategy RPGs are a thing. Character RPG, which I don’t consider to be an immediately understandable term. And while it is derivative, I do think there is some merit in just calling them DQRPG (Dragon-Quest-like RPG). Because that is what the term JRPG generally means, and is the blueprint for the genre. I mean, it makes about as much sense as roguelike.

Point is, I don’t have a good answer, and most people don’t. If they did, this problem would have been solved literally a decade ago.

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End & Updates:
PBF EA is Ret-2-Go, PS 1985 TDA is Next

What did I do this week? Not much! It’s tax season, so I’m not only working a lot, but I’m also working inconsistent hours based on the energy levels of my chronically disorganized 65-year-old boss. Which is a problem, as that means the only routine I am given is one that is not geared around my strengths or preferences.

I am a genre of human who would rather work four 10 hour days and then get three hours off, and one of those people who are dramatically more productive when working alone. Unfortunately, my boss likes to use me to ‘motivate’ him to get through the days, while often not giving me much to do. This means that a lot of my time is spent watching him work while waiting for my next task, and I wind up working shorter hours, but six days a week.

If I am spending all day writing, then I can start right after breakfast and keep writing until I go to bed, while taking breaks for meals, snacks, dishes, and showering. But if I am working and ‘socializing’ with my boss for 6 hours, then I need to decompress, and take breaks every two-ish hours for dinner, dishes, and showering. This prevents me from getting into the ‘zone’ for long stretches of time, and unless I’m in the zone, my thoughts get sloppy and vague around midnight. Especially if I am forced to bop around 5 to 6 different clients in a day, only making marginal progress on each of their returns.

It sucks, and I wish that my boss could just throw a mountain of work at me for two days, and then dedicate an entire day to wrapping things up with me. That would be a far more efficient use of time, but that is not the job I’m working. Maybe that is what I can arrange when he finally sells the practice (and me) to another firm, but that is still years away.

ANYWAY!!!

Here’s what I did do this week:

• Wrapped up the production of Psycho Bullet Festival: The Odyssey of Abigale Quinlan – Episode Alternative, coming April 27, 2023. ePub still needs to be created.
• Began production on Psycho Shatter 1985: Black Vice Re;Birth – The Day After, coming May 18, 2023.

Why am I working on these projects so far in advance? Well, because after writing 63,000 words of outline for the first two acts of Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp, I just needed to write tangible and refresh my brain. Also, these two projects are due before VD 2.0. 

After The Day After is done, I will begin work on the following:

• Finish the outline for Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp.
• Begin production of Act I of Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp until Mice Tea’s final build is released in April.
• Review Mice Tea.