Author: Liana

Flora’s Red Gown from Professor Layton and the Curious Village

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I’ve been into Professor Layton and the Curious Village lately, playing it every chance I got – using my 15 minute breaks during work to ferry those miserable wolves and chickens across the river, and so on. You come across this dress early in the game, and I thought it was lovely, even if Flora is rather younger than Sylvia. I’m rather fond of Layton’s outfit, actually… who knew brown and orange worked together so well, or that a top hat can be pulled off in any way, shape or form. If I didn’t have so many other outfits I want, I’d so do a female version…

Incidentally, Flora in the Japanese version is named アロマ, or, rather literally romanized, “Aroma.” I can see it as being “Alma” if one slurs quickly over the vowel of the ‘ro’… or maybe it’s just meant to be Aroma. Who knows…

I’d like to do an Oscar dress this year, but I’m not really feeling any of them. Possibly the scaly mermaid one…

Urban Dead zombie couture

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I play a game called Urban Dead, a browser-based, text-based, player-versus-player zombie apocalypse game. If you play as a survivor, you spend your days hoarding ammo, freaking out about the barricades of your safehouse coming down and often getting killed in your sleep by another player anyways. Those of us who play zombies have much lower stress in our unlives: we have fun and dine on brains. (You can enjoy the benefits, too, if you already play as a survivor! Just stand outside and one of my zombie brethren will hook you up.)

I play one character and I think that before the outbreak, she was a leasing agent. (Having felt rather like a zombie at points during my time as a leasing agent, it’s funny to me.) She used to wear pastel suits and comfortable shoes, and her smile was as non-threatening as it could be. Now she’s overcome her problem of weak, splitting nails with a set of admirable claws, and she’s quite interested in high-density housing units and commercial properties. Her favorite green suit is, alas, a little worse for the wear.

I suppose that in real life, however one chooses to apply the term to a zombie apocalypse, the outfit would be more dirty and torn and less green. What can I say? My time drawing mermaids didn’t prepare me for this. Although… it was nice, for once, to not have to worry about accidentally smudging the red into another color.

Tamryn’s Outfit from Emerald Dragon

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This is from a game called Emerald Dragon, and is the outfit of the main female character, Tamryn, a mystical cleric sort. The game appeared on multiple platforms, but the SNES version was recently translated by Eien Ni Hen and released by Nightcrawler of TransCorp. So if you happen to have a fondness for fun, emotional SNES RPGs, download the patch and play it for a bit, it’s a very enjoyable game.

Tamryn herself is very much the RPG maiden archetype — mystical, gentle, indispensable caster of healing spells. (And is there some sort of mysterious, special background possibly involved? No fooling you, RPG fans) The horn at her waist is from her best friend Atrushan, who gave it to her so she could call him whenever she was in danger. The hat? No comment on the hat.

Nightcrawler also hacked Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori which I did the translation for, and it looks as if that might be the next project he gets to. I’m very excited about it, because it’s such an odd, sweet little game. Where Metal Max Returns attracted fans very easily (tanks! wastelands! tanks! dogs with guns! tanks! what’s not to like?) I think a game based on a love story and plot twists you can see coming a mile away might be a harder sell. But I love the game and can’t wait to see it released. There’s a long ways to go, though, independent of whatever work Nightcrawler still has to do — all the town, cutscene, shop dialogue is done, but there’s some things that didn’t get dumped: special cutscenes, chats with monsters, a ‘talk’ section where you talk with your group, weapon and item names, who knows what else. So even with the main translation done, this could be quite a job.

Madame Tutli-Putli’s Dress from the 2007 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

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Brian and I went the other day to see the 2007 Oscar nominated animated short films at the Michigan Theater. This outfit here is Madame Tutli-Putli, from the short named after her, alternately titled by Brian “the Silent Hill short” for its surreal, creepy atmosphere. The way the short was produced was stunning (and eerie, with those human eyes tracked on the puppets) but the content seemed to be trying too hard to be deep. Yes, she’s timid, yes she’s got all that “baggage,” yes, it’s depicting an acceptance of death, but the aliens removing livers was a little beyond me. (And no, I don’t think it was a literal account of an organ-harvesting ring, as I’ve read elsewhere…)

My favorite one was My Love, followed by Even Pigeons Go To Heaven.