My introduction to Hide and Seek went thusly: 70’s shoujo manga focusing on children who meet horrible ends. I heard “70’s” and “children who meet horrible ends” and immediately thought of Ringing Bell, which (cold take, I know, but) to this day is still my gold standard of old-timey animanga horror stories, rich in both its antiquity and unhinged ability to plunge into the darker side of children’s fables. Now, “happy to report” is far from the most appropriate response when it comes to reading such narratives. Perhaps chillfully delighted? Horribly amused? Twistedly joyful? Either way you want to look at it, the bottom line is that Hide and Seek provided a similar thrill I got out of Ringing Bell, and for that, I applaud it. This is a merciless story penned by a long-forgotten mangaka, resurrected to provide a chilling venture into shoujo manga’s past. Given that you have the heart and stomach for it all, of course.

Hide and Seek is the seventh volume of Smudge, an ongoing anthology of vintage horror manga collected and reprinted by the publishing company Living the Line. Naono Yoshiko’s manga serves as an anthology within an anthology; a trove of short stories she penned for various shoujo magazines in the early 70’s. And it stands as a calculated blend of traditional ghost stories and horrifying odes to the Kafkaesque. Stories involve everything from sibling rivalry gone horribly wrong, to a haunted house and a headless demon, to schoolyard gossip and diaries, and to a reimagining of the tale of Orochi.

Connecting all of them is the recurring theme of making a childhood mistake so severe and traumatic that it bars one from experiencing happiness ever again. Children who thought that the worst thing to happen to them was, say, embarrassment brought on by grandma’s overalls, or not being born into the right family, lead to drownings, beheadings, disappearances, and so on. Naturally, all of Yoshiko’s stories end on downer notes, made even darker by the sudden, dramatic last-second twists. Some are a bit too open-ended and quick of a rug pull—I still don’t know what to make of the endings of “Rainy Days,” or the eponymous “Hide and Seek.” Might just be me, though.

The ghost stories read like standard stuff. Not to discredit them (I still like them!), but if you’ve read even a single ghost story, then you already know that Yoshiko’s more or less on the note of “and they were never heard from again.” The story of the headless Lady Otsuta is the best instance of this; a tale of survival horror where two young girls have to defend themselves against an evil spirit who stalks them at night. It lacks the same twisted morality as a lot of other Hide and Seek‘s stories do, since our two leading lasses do not sin. It is, however, bleak and well-paced enough to remain interesting enough to keep our attention.

The Kafkaesque stories have more originality to them. Barred from anything supernatural means that the situations and the characters are handled with an everydayness that feels more real and hits harder as a result. Really, they almost feel like they could happen to you.

Here’s what I mean. My favorite story of the bunch (and massive spoilers, by the way) is titled “Our First Family Trip.” You can tell right away that the flowery title is done in jest; no family would actually want to keep this in the memory log. The story involves the young girl Sachiko, who is about to embark on a big vacation that her family can barely afford. Right as she’s leaving for the ferry to Kyushu, Sachiko goes through the very real fear any paranoiac will have: she forgot to turn everything off in the house. Specifically, her iron, which threatens to burn her house down. Sachiko can’t tell her parents what happened, otherwise they’d have to turn back home and cancel the trip. She is left with a look of wide-eyed terror that looks like Edvard Munch’s Scream for a panel (the manga wisely uses this image on the cover of the book). A seemingly wise old man tries to reassure her by saying that praying will solve Sachiko’s problems, since praying solves his. Sachiko is left relieved, thinking that God will protect her and the house. But unbeknownst to her, the old man doesn’t pray to God; he prays to the whiskey bottle he constantly sneaks sips of. The story ends with Sachiko’s house burned to the ground, juxtaposed with a panel of a relieved Sachiko enjoying her vacation with her family, completely oblivious to the scorched reality that awaits her. It begs the question of what is worse: immediately knowing your house might burn down, or delaying that revelation in exchange for short-term denial and fleeting joy? This story is even more impactful and horrifying when you have family on vacation. Which I did at the time of writing this review. No, really.

Yoshiko’s art here isn’t groundbreaking, but it is still very interesting. Characters’ mortified faces, bleak environments, and psychotically, spirally speed lines make for a horror show art style. In an afterword essay included at the end, Yoshiko writes that despite her early love of shoujo, she eventually became “turned off by the big starry eyes and saccharine stories.” Her manga’s art style, combined with some extra and more detailed (if not also violent, creepy, and sexual) illustrations included in her afterword essays, can be interpreted as a direct contrast to the flowery shoujo she read during her childhood. Is it no surprise that her first work, Experiment, was published in the same Garo magazine that housed the ultraviolent The Legend of Kamui?

Victims of childhood traumas have stories to tell that they would very much rather not. Hide and Seek doesn’t shy away from telling those dark stories. It goes to the very end with them. This is a manga so unabashed in its darkness, so shocking and dramatic in its presentation, that you can’t help but be in awe over the sense of fear and depression it leaves.

Welcome back, folks! Lots of photos floated around from this past weekend’s Anime Expo. Apparently, they really messed up Artist Alley (sad to hear). On the other hand, Shift-Up had a Goddess of Victory: Nikke stall, complete with a Doro mascot. All the love to whoever was in that thing; that must’ve been hard work. But we appreciate those who bring our tangerine-loving critter to life. It’s a good distraction from everything else going on regarding the smoldering craters where Microsoft‘s acquired studios used to be…

This is…

Eroge Explosion at Anime Expo

A lot of my online buddies went to Anime Expo, because a few of our favorite Vtubers were there (both for meetups and to gawk at the Love and Deepspace cosplayers—get ya mans!). So, of course, I kept up to date on some of the comings and goings. The official Doro mascot, the massive lines, the kerfuffle at the Midnight Mahjong gathering… I didn’t expect much game news to come out until I saw a tweet from Yara Naika on Saturday. And it was a real doozy! As it turns out, School Days is getting released in the United States!

School Days is pretty infamous for anime fans of a certain age. For starters, the entire visual novel is played out like an interactive anime, with fully voiced and animated sequences. Also, the story goes places: the game starts as a love triangle between Makoto and his two friends, Kotonoha and Sekai.Thing is, Makoto is a tremendous piece of shit of a human being, so while there are some happy(?) endings just involving throuples and teenage pregnancy, there are some rather infamous endings where Makoto’s philandering gets him killed. Violently, at that. The anime was released in the United States, and its original airing ran up against an actual murder, hence the NICE BOAT meme, which has been canonized by School Days developers, 0verflow. But the original game never really made it over. So JAST taking up the banner and bringing this out is one heck of a drop.

In addition to getting released in America, School Days is also getting a dub. JAST has shared the full cast and a trailer showcasing the performances from the new cast. P.M. Seymore is excited to take part as the dirtbag that is Makoto, Brittany Lauda will be performing as Sekai, and Katelyn Barr takes up Kotonoha’s role. The cast also features a massive surprise in the form of freaking Mint Fantôme as Kimi. As in, the VTuber Mint Fantôme. Vtubers getting cast in roles isn’t entirely unprecedented—suffice to say that anyone who watches CyYu or Ama Lee knows they have extensive voice acting roles to their names. Mint’s getting cast as, er, herself, as it were. I confess that I don’t know much about Mint at all, but her getting cast in School Days feels like both a massive shock and something extremely in-character for her.

I also want to take the time to shout out the director of School Days‘s dub, Yara Naika (yes, that’s their nom de plume). Yara’s been on the frontlines for adult OVAs and eroge for over a decade; they got their start doing a lot for Media Blasters, and they currently do a lot of directing for other anime, in addition to games like Projekt Melody’s A Nut Between Worlds. Yara did a lot of hard work communicating with fans and urging them to support official OVA releases in America; they’re extremely hard-working and passionate. Congratulations to them on getting tapped to direct School Days; the game and its cast are in damn good hands. If Bible Black ever gets re-released in the US, I hope they’re tapped to headline that project—be it the OVAs or the visual novel. Hell, at this rate, we might get both!

Speaking of visual novels, School Days‘ reveal wasn’t the only news from Anime Expo. Fakku‘s brought over a handful of games from ORCSOFT in the past, and has quietly kept up with handling a few other VNs. This past Anime Expo, they revealed that they’ll be expanding their efforts. Namely, they’ve managed to acquire Fairytale’s catalogue for the PC98!

This is a huge get. Many of Japan’s most influential games were PC-98 titles (just off the top of my head: the Brandish games). There’s a lot of love and nostalgia for that console and the particular pixelated, dithered aesthetic of its titles, hence why there was so much love for the heavily-PC-98-inspired VA-11 Hall-A in Japan. Unfortunately, a lot of the bigger PC-98 titles never came to America, outside of their other console ports. So many of these games are lost to all but the most dedicated of archivists. Fakku is not only working with Fairytale to bring a lot of their titles to America, but they’re also making sure they work on modern consoles and are shooting for Steam releases for them all. We’re eating good!

Fairytale is, surprisingly, still active and alive after all these years, albeit as F&C Co., Ltd. But they’ve been around since 1987 (they’re older than me!) and have produced a great number of beloved visual novels. Many of those games have even gotten OVA adaptations! Yeah, it’s all hentai, but in this day and age for the ero-OVA industry, I’d consider that a compliment. The licenses include a ton of fan favorites, like Dead of Brain, an ambitious text game where you brave a cyborg zombie invasion with a small party of survivors. Necronomicon, one of the few games to get an OVA, is set in the cosmic horror universe established by H.P. Lovecraft, wherein you brave a New England town and the many horrors lying within. Pia Carrot e Youkoso!! also got an OVA adaptation, and is a particular fan-favorite: a romance series involving the comings and goings at a fictional chain of restaurants named “Pia Carrot.” And there’s also Dengeki Nurse, a much more light-hearted affair where a team of goofy medical responders fights against a criminal organization. It’s a bit Project A-ko-esque, what with the constant zaniness and pop culture references. That last one even has a Steam page up and running, albeit without a scheduled release date. This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the titles we can expect from Fakku‘s work with Fairytale; there are other classics like Ballade for Maria, Marine Philt and Dosokai.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself; this alone is a tremendous victory for preservation and for retro enthusiasts. But it could also be the first step in something bigger. Again, plenty of other classic PC-98 titles are still in limbo; we lost Brandish pretty quickly last year (before I could buy a copy) due to some rights issues regarding its emulation. Who knows, this might open the door to people realizing that there’s a market for PC-98 titles, allowing folks easier access to Brandish. My most pie-in-the-sky goal? Someone licenses rescues Sogna‘s Viper games, their long-running animated eroge series. You might be familiar with one of its more famous entries, Viper GTS, which was later adapted into an OVA of the same name. The series is a great snapshot of the changing aesthetics in anime across the decades and also features a ton of phenomenal artwork by the late Takehiro Kimura. Sadly, this one is pie-in-the-sky for a reason, since Sogna went out of business back in 2000, so the rights for their titles might be lost to legal limbo. Still, costs nothing to dream!

Not to sound like an ingrate, but I do want to echo a sentiment I’ve seen from other retro-enthusiasts: it’d also be nice if this effort from Fakku also led to the license rescue of other older joseimuke games. As is the case with a lot of these matters, women’s media gets overlooked in these spaces. The same way a lot of older shojo or josei manga gets short thrift, older joseimuke titles are similarly stuck in limbo. And this doesn’t just include older otome games, although they would partially fall under that umbrella. Heck, I’ll always cheer for someone putting in the effort to get Angelique licensed in the U.S. Here’s hoping.

Switch Family of Consoles Gets 86ed in Europe, Soon To Be Replaced With Regulation-Compliant Models

Europe has a variety of regulations in place dictating that electronic devices have to be reparable. It’s part of the “Right to Repair” movement; in an attempt at cutting down on waste (among other reasons), people have to have a reasonable ability to repair their stuff. This runs contrary to a lot of companies, which build stuff for the dump. And Nintendo has run afoul of Europe’s regulations; hence, Nintendo announced a remodeled Switch 2 for the EU region. As per Nintendo’s press release on their EU website, Nintendo is spending this summer redesigning consoles and components for the region, all in advance of regulations that’ll go into effect in 2027. The downside is that the original Switch family (the Switch, the Switch Lite, and the Switch OLED) will be falling out of distribution for the region. The upside is that pretty much all accessories for the Switch family (Joy-Cons, Joy-Con Pro 2, Joy-Con 2s, Nintendo 64 controller, and Nintendo GameCube controller) will be getting redesigns that allow for their internal batteries to be replaced. This will coincide with a redesigned Switch 2 model releasing in Europe this Winter. According to Nintendo‘s website, the redesigned model’s notable differences are that the battery will be 1% smaller and about 14 grams heavier (just a hair under half an ounce).

Because Nintendo has a history of releasing model revisions later in their consoles’ lifespans, people are speculating that this model will be a top-to-bottom revised Switch 2. Folks are also speculating that this new model may have a different screen compared to the current Switch 2 model. The Switch 2’s screen is a bugbear for a lot of folks, given its ghosting issues. And… yeah, the ghosting is really visible, but considering I mostly play in docked mode, it’s no bones to me. Personally, I doubt the improved Switch 2 in Europe will change anything drastically about the console’s engineering. It might have some different internal connections, but it’s highly unlikely they’ll change something as major as a whole piece of the console. Nintendo was already cutting to the quick to keep the Switch 2’s price down; a better screen is something that would definitely jack up the price of a console. That doesn’t strike me as something reasonable, especially when this new console is meant to just comply with European standards regarding batteries. It always feels like Nintendo announces a new console once you buy one, but even when it came to the original Switch, it took two years for Nintendo to release the Switch Lite. So the screen is probably just wishful thinking from a lot of people getting ahead of themselves.

With that said, this is the kind of regulation we could use in the US. There’s a ton of discourse regarding people’s right to repair the devices they buy, and I’m firmly on the side of people fixing their stuff for it. It’s cheaper, it’s more environmentally conscientious, and it extends the lifespans of our tech. I wouldn’t be against Nintendo extending some of those repair-friendly Switch 2 consoles in the United States… but all things considered, the EU-friendly Switch 2s might have some kind of language lock akin to the Japanese Switch 2 models. I wouldn’t tell people to import European Switch 2 models, especially not if they’re worried about their budget. And honestly, if you already have a Switch 2, there’s not much point in replacing it for just the batteries in the console and Joy-Cons. But it’s a good hardware revision; I can see Nintendo keeping it in place for all of their Switch 2 revisions once they make a proper Switch 2 revision. And while I know people are convinced those will be announced any minute now, the current flustercluck with consumer-grade components means that we’ll be using vanilla Switch 2s for at least another year, maybe two.

Digimon Story: Time Stranger Comes to Nintendo Switch 2

We really enjoyed Digimon Story: Time Stranger around these parts. I not only got to preview it last year (and show off my Digital Monster Pendulum to the game’s producer), I also got a chance to review it. It’s got a few issues, especially as far as Digimon games go, but it’s also the best foot forward Bandai Namco has put regarding the Digimon games in a very long time. And Bandai hasn’t let up with regards to pushing the game; in advance of its July 10 release on the Nintendo Switch 2, Bandai Namco put out a nice little trailer for the game.

It’s not entirely obvious, and it’s something you’d miss amidst visuals like the cute Guilmon wiggling his ears, but all of the locales in this commercial are actual locations in Tokyo. In a very Shin Megami Tensei-esque choice, many of your excursions in-game take you to landmarks like the Shinjuku Niagara Falls at Shinjuku Central Park, or the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. I recall a moment during my preview period where one of my handlers pointed out smaller details, like the service entrance to the underground, being actual places near Shinjuku Park. That last one is particularly relevant to Digimon fans: fans of Digimon Tamers will recognize it as the place where Takato kept Guilmon!

This represents Bandai Namco’s continued efforts in pushing Digimon Story: Time Stranger. One of the bigger problems that previous Digimon games have had is not being well-marketed at all. While Bandai Namco can be criticized for letting down a lot of their franchises, they at the very least put their weight behind keeping Time Stranger in the public eye. We had countless trailers showcasing Digimon signature moves in the lead-up to the game’s original release last year, and even now, Bandai Namco of Europe has a cute series of videos listing Digimon of various flavors. Do you want “Kawaii” Digimon? Do you want “Genki” ones instead? Or do you want “Cool” Digimon? (Disappointingly, only the “Kawaii” trailer gets the cute ‘purikura’ style frames complete with the official sprites for each Digimon listed.)

I will say, I’m a bit disappointed and confused at how the release is being handled; the Switch version is getting a physical copy. Okay, sure, makes sense: plenty of folks still have Switches. But there’s no Switch 2 upgrade path, so both version have their own bespoke Digital Deluxe and Ultimate editions (also, the Ultimate edition retails for US$110, watch out for that). And the Switch 2 version doesn’t seem to have a physical copy. Double-bummer there. I don’t blame Bandai Namco for casting as wide a net as they did, but some kind of upgrade path on their behalf would’ve been nice.

Let’s wrap up with some quick tidbits:

That’ll do it for this week. While we haven’t really covered Microsoft‘s outrageous layoffs in this column (for a simple reason: there’s only so much to say about something that happens almost every week these days), rest assured: they suck, and we’re all hoping the Video Game Crash of the 2020s ends sooner rather than later. The loss of generational talent is one for the history books. We can only hope for better news in the future and for better times for everyone. In the meantime, be good to each other. I’ll see you in seven.

This Week In Games! is written from idyllic Portland by Jean-Karlo Lemus. When not collaborating with Anime News Network, Jean-Karlo can be found playing Japanese RPGs, eating popcorn, watching VTuber content, and watching tokusatsu. You can keep up with him at @ventcard.bsky.social.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Anime News Network, its employees, owners, or sponsors.