凍京NECRO (Tokyo Necro): The Death and Life of the Great Japanese Cities [Repost]

play for the lesbians with chainsaws slaying zombies, stay to screencap pictures of food and nothing else

run cmd.exe

On September 5, 2015, the official Nitroplus YouTube channel released this banger of a PV titled "Assemble" by Substance-Concept. A song composed by the legendary Vocaloid producer kz-livetune and sung by Tange Sakura, the song is about Substance-Concept, a virtual idol of sorts who is searching and understanding concepts like emotion and names.

As she explores other worlds and ideas, the song starts building up and a more eloquent personality begins to emerge. She asks the listener what these feelings are as she takes in the spaces of multiple possibilities. The PV ends with a smartphone-like object and her in the middle of some ruins. "Assemble" is a well-built music video that deserves to be played a million times on one's YT playlist because you're too lazy to find new music.

But that was just the prelude of things to come: ten days later, 凍京NECRO (Tokyo Necro) was announced to the world as Nitroplus's 15th anniversary game.

Nemo ante mortem beatus

The city of Tokyo Necro isn't a friendly setting. For starters, it's less Cities: Skyline and more Frostpunk.

After pandemics and wars, the world froze up and entered in a new ice age. The era demanded a complete transformation of people's lives: those who survived are restricted to geothermal spots for warmth and energy, cities were full of pipes that transferred heat, and death became an everyday sight. Reflecting this change, the Japanese word for Tokyo was modified (from 東京 i.e. Eastern Capital to 凍京 i.e. Frozen Capital). This frozen Tokyo is now a place of nightmares where everyone depended on underground crime, corporations, and a highly exhausted but still powerful police force.

Alongside your usual street crime, necromancers especially those belonging to the Suicide Wannabes cult revived and cultivated an army of zombies. These zombies could be your typical Night of the Living Dead zombie mob or highly intelligent zombies who could imitate their old living selves. They roam about, munching on humans who can be revived for new zombies. One could say they're not exactly the friendliest bunch.

So, the task of whittling the Living Dead down is largely handed to freelance groups and contractors known as the Living Dead Stalkers. This is where our protagonists come in: Nagaoka So'un and Kibanohara Ethica. So'un is the emotionally repressed son of a legendary soldier and he wields dual guns called Re-Eliminators; meanwhile, Ethica is the rebellious lesbian daughter of the head of the police and prefers her trusty chainsaw who she lovingly called Rabbit Punch. They make a mighty duo as they mow down zombies for a living.

But one day, while they're searching for the disappearance of a governmental official, So'un finds a girl named Hougyou Iria inside the trunk of a car.

High school romance hijinks ensue: kyaa kyaa chuu chuu!!!!

Time to Nut Up or Shut Up

Okay, I kid: people left and right start dying instead. They might even get revived and start munching on you too -- as a little treat.

Tokyo Necro is primarily an action ADV visual novel, with plenty of fight scenes to write Discord servers about. But the real alchemy ingredient that makes it all work is how it's brimming with innovative takes on various science fiction ideas: it's got cyberpunk, transhumanism, and even a little bit of biopunk all lettered onto its RNA. Despite these disparate elements, the game is able to fuse them into this large-scaled story.

For example, the work enjoys flinging the reader to the far edges of the setting through its route structure. There are two main branches that split into two endings each, making a total of four different routes -- with a small yet satisfying true ending, to boot. Each main route is the consequence of 1) one faction overcoming other factions vying for total control of Tokyo and 2) the overall health of the dual protagonists. Unlike most heroine routes, Tokyo Necro's treats heroines as a secondary priority and instead fleshes out the implications of these two consequences. As a result, they're actually closer to speculative what-if scenarios than routes with sex scenes as an endgoal. In fact, there's one route that has no ero content at all.

This leads to some very interesting moments of storytelling that may not be possible in other multi-scenario visual novels. Due to the multi-route structure and the game's own interests in exploring the lush setting laid out by Fukami Makoto, each route may have circumstances that lead to deaths of characters who would be of major importance in other routes. Whoever dies and lives after the initial setup completely changes how the story will spiral out.

The story ends up being quite unpredictable because of this. While character details, backstories, and their locations are consistent throughout the different routes, they may not appear in full form or just outright silenced. A character may reveal a dark past in one route but will keep mum in the others. Actions and behaviors unexplained in other routes suddenly make sense in a small scene in this one route. Even when you reach the true ending, none of the characters has ever a full picture as we readers do.

This gives the worldbuilding and the characters a nice oomph. By the time you're finished with just one route, you'd have developed some prior expectations -- so imagine the surprise once you reach another route and see the story turn to a completely different direction. Watching these characters who I've been comfortable reading with for ages team up in unexpected ways was satisfying. The yuri route in particular (yes, there's a route where Ethica the female protagonist gets some pussy) left me in awe over how expansive the world was, especially when I started making sense of the overall setting and relationships. I could only go "Wow, this city setting feels so fucking huge." The game's dedication to pursuing wildly speculative scenarios based on this one setup is impressive: every time you get familiar with something, a new thing pops up and shatters your preconceptions.

This is especially so in the battle scenes, of which there are many. There's variation in the combat: you'll see characters slice, chainsaw, shoot, punch, etc. in different locales. Shimokura Vio's quick and minimalistic writing blends itself well to the action; he doesn't try to impress the reader with epic prose but rather provides context to the cool visual animations that play out. So'un, Ethica, and the other characters have their own fighting styles and philosophies, so none of this shit gets old. Likewise, the 2D visual novel scenes are reminiscent of boomer shooters like the original DOOM, Dusk, and Ultrakill: you get quick splashes of blood and very interesting camera movement in the engine. The fight scenes as a result are intensely readable without being overbearingly slow or too fast; you're watching a cinematic fight scene play out and the text is there to show the stakes of each action and thought.

The 3D animation that goes alongside these fights is also quite stunning too. The visuals remind me of those remastered PS2 games that have been appearing on PS4/5 and Steam lately; they also feature some unique choreography and visual effects that make me think of movies like Sin City and character action games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The mixture of gun-fu, brawling, and military tech -- especially in 3D -- makes me think I'm watching an old-school b-horror action movie at times. I'm very sure people who love cult horror movies like Evil Dead 2 would absolutely adore the action sequences in this game.

I would also be remiss to mention the cast, specially So'un. He may look like Nitroplus's take on a certain MMORPG dual-wielding chad, but he's extremely moe. I don't tend to care much about het relationships, but his interactions with Iria are quite cute: as he's closed himself from the world and therefore finds it difficult to express his emotions, watching him get close and protective of Iria is bringing out my inner fujoshi again. I also like the other dudes in general, definitely more so than the women -- even if they're also cool in their own ways. There's just something for everyone and I ended up being emotionally invested in the characters, though I must admit it took me a while to warm up to some of the characters.

Also, gotta shout out to the lesbian relationship between Ethica and Kiriri. They're pretty cute. If you're a yuri fan, you can probably play the game just for this alone lol.

Information Warfare

While there's much I do like that I could go on forever about (examples include Southeast Asian settings and cultures having a presence in the backstories and the setting being so thorough they considered how safe sex and contraceptives would work in this society), I do think the game requires some caveats. If you're not a fan of these kinds of punk and speculative fiction settings, I'm afraid to say there might be not much you could get from this game.

The game's greatest strength is its greatest weakness: it overindulges in its setting in spectacular ways and assumes you're 120% committed to the ride. It's obvious the staff has banked everything on the novelty of the setting and the production values, so if you're looking for something with thematic messages, you might be disappointed. In this sense, the title is closer to the Nitroplus genre fiction spirit led by writers like Urobuchi Gen (Kikokugai, Phantom) than something like Fullmetal Daemon Muramasa, which is more like a philosophical work of fiction exploring martial arts and violence. Fukami just loves his guns and lesbians after all. This shouldn't be an issue for fans of this kind of genre fiction (i.e. me), but even I was taken aback over how "straightforward" it is with its approach to genre tropes. Especially due to how long the scenario is, the twists and turns in the story and characterization may not be enough for people who want more out of their fiction.

Another major concern I have is the intense flashing lights littered throughout the game. While I expect most people to adore the game if they get the chance, I do hope the English translation will come with a comprehensive photo-sensitivity mode for better accessibility. The original Japanese game features flashing rainbow lights alongside flickering effects, which bother me a lot. For comparison, I wasn't too bothered with Muramasa, which did receive a photo-sensitivity mode some updates in English later. Tokyo Necro is way worse. I do trust the staff to take this seriously at least and I can imagine the English version being less annoying to play.

Well, I'm sure they won't be able to fix the long "false boot to a fake OS" intro. It takes forever to start up the game (way worse than Muramasa) and requires input. I actually ended up having the game open but minimized as I did other important stuff like, uh, WORK.

Assemble

All that said, I had a ton of fun playing through this visual novel. While certain worldbuilding tropes are familiar to me, it just felt refreshing to see them used in this necromancy-laden setting. Tokyo Necro is bursting with genres and ideas that somehow just works and I can see this being a hit with an international crowd, especially people who love yuri or/and rewatch Robocop and Terminator movies too much.

Indeed, I personally look forward to people comparing this to Ready Player One. Sorry, Moogy: that's definitely going to happen. The fact there's virtual reality arcade cabinets just means you're gonna see clickbait articles about how this is the Japanese RPO!!!

But what's gonna stick with me is how Substance-Concept -- the virtual idol I mentioned in the beginning -- is integrated into the story and especially its city setting. I won't spoil too much about her character and what she eventually becomes, but I will say that she is thematically very interesting.

She's a huge clue as to what makes cities interesting to live in and frolic around. You can shop for nice things and eat exotic foods from other places. However, the city is naive to the happenings within -- even dangerously negligent so. But even if there are "bad neighborhoods" or whatever, there's still beauty in this mess. Possibilities still exist as long as life remains thriving there. You might just have to wander around and search for that one happenstance that would make living all worth it.

At the end of the day, this game is a nice statement on cities and the beautiful cesspools they are. Many people depend it for their livelihoods, but the city can still be a wonderful place replete with unforeseen yet personally deep connections. There's just nothing like a city. Even the deadest of cities can still find a way to prosper. Folks with a love-hate relationship with cities will, in my opinion, get the most out of Tokyo Necro and what it has to say about living in an urban environment.

But seriously, man: Hatsune Miku variations are so moe.