Warning: This blog post contains spoilers of the plot of River City Girls, as well as the game that inspired it, Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio Tachi No Banka. Such are necessary for speculating where things go from here. I'm writing this with the assumption that you have beaten River City Girls and seen both of the game's endings1, though I'll provide some other information on the rest of the series.
Beating a Dead Horse
The last time I talked here about River City Girls--or the Kunio Kun series in general--the game had not even released yet. Back then I was solely addressing the characterization of the demo and how it had me worried. Turns out, River City Girls and its titular protagonists were far more amiably written than the vaguely Ren & Stimpy-like dynamic2 of the demo implied, and I grew to love this game's take on most of the characters--up until the ending, on which subject I will join the chorus of voices declaring that they derailed their characters and made them look like jerks for the sake of a meta-joke that, upon closer examination, isn't even valid by its own declared logic.
If you want a good explanation of why, I refer you to Flodo McFloodiloo's posts (yes; all of them from that link onward) in this Reddit debate. While Wayforward at least attempted to address all of the complaints with a patch that let you see a happier ending if you smashed all of the Sabu statues to unlock a fight against Hasebe and Mami, this happier ending remains attached to the fourth-wall-breaking comments of those bosses, which remains the worst part of the game's writing. There is likely no repairing that moment of the plot that was wrecked by faulty application of real-world trivia, but as Flodo said, it might be alright if the sequel just pretends it never happened and moves on, giving the protagonists some motivations beyond besides their creepy stalker tendencies.3
Interestingly enough, it seems like that might be exactly what they are doing, as before the world is treated to River City Girls 2, it will be get the first ever (official) western release of Kunio Tachi no Banka, repackaged as River City Girls Zero with a few cutscenes added to explain how we got from there to here. It leaves me hopeful, but I'd be remiss if I didn't admit to understanding why many Kunio Kun fans also find the decision baffling. For those who don't know, it's time to dig into series history.
A Good History Lesson, the Likes of Which Don't Get You a Good Career
If you do a search for the Kunio Kun series online, you may discover documents stating that it is known as the "River City" series in English-speaking regions, or vice-versa. That's a fair statement, but only if we're talking about how it's been for a little over a decade, and this series is now 35 years old. Since its inception, it's been many weird places, nearly dead, owned by several different companies, and localized in so many different ways I'm not even going to count, but something pertinent to this blog is that when it was owned by Technos, the Kunio series essentially had two distinct branches. The first of these began in what was also the first Kunio game ever, entitled simply Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun. This may not be the most dark and serious game ever made, but it was still noteworthy compared to many games that came afterward and would become more famous, for its realistically proportioned characters, treatment of gang violence as a serious matter, and the presence of ice picks and a gun making it more serious still. The success of this game should not be understated; it not only launched a series but also set the standard for what beat-em-ups would become afterword; early uses of 3d and enemies who were, compared to some other genres, smarter and tougher.
What it did not set was the overall tone of the Kunio Kun series. The very next game in the series, Nekketsu High School Dodgeball Club, was...silly. The mere subject of dodgeball doesn't seem to carry as much gravity as gang violence, and although the characters can somehow kill each other with the balls, it's done in a cartoony manner of angels rising out of their bodies, and they can always come back, somehow. Furthermore, the characters in the game have more cartoonish proportions, with stocky bodies and disproportionately large heads. Interestingly enough, this was not originally conceived of as a Kunio game, but Kunio was stuck in because his first game was a hit. Odd origin aside, this game was a success too, and established what can be considered the other, goofier branch of the Kunio series. Despite not being the original, this branch, with its increasingly chibi4 characters and cartoony physics, mostly became the series norm. Then there was the issue with localization, which made things even more complicated.
Both of the games described above managed to get American releases, albeit localized. The first Kunio game was localized as Renegade, the second as Super Dodgeball, and the localizations cared little for retaining any indication that they were part of the same series. Kunio was renamed Mr. K in the Renegade, which also got its graphics altered in the western release to look less Japanese, while in Super Dodgeball his existence was essentially erased as the localization team re-centered what little plot it had around an American team. There's a Japanese team, but it doesn't have Kunio. Renegade would subsequently get a number of western-developed sequels, but none of the other Japanese Kunio games made in its style were released in the west; instead, when the west got Kunio games at all, they were from the more prolific, cartoonish branch of the series. By far, the biggest success among them was Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, localized as River City Ransom.
It deserved the success. While the original Kunio game set many of the beat-em-up genre standards, River City Ransom blends that genre with the roleplaying game (RPG) genre, giving players a more open world to explore and letting them build up their characters' abilities by buying food and other items at malls, using money they earn from defeating enemies. As was standard for Kunio games, the localization changed the characters' appearances and names; such as Kunio being renamed Alex and Riki being renamed Ryan. Though this series had been ancestral to most subsequent beat-em-ups, River City Ransom had still found an identity apart from them, ensuring that it, along with its chibi sprites and silly tone, remained the series' standard.
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| The most famous of several memes the game spawned. |
Except when they weren't. From time to time the series' original creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto stepped back in to lead new Kunio projects, often with more realistically-proportioned characters and generally with more serious stories. This reached its peak on Super Famicom's Shin Nekketsu Kouha: Kunio Tachi no Banka, a gritty and mature game wherein Kunio is framed for a murder, and thus must break out of jail and clear his name with his friend Riki, his girlfriend Misako, and Riki's girlfriend Kyouko5. Contrary to popular belief, this is not the first game where Misako appeared (that was Nekketsu High School Dodgeball Club: Soccer Story), but it is the first game where she is playable, and it is Kyouko's first appearance...and also her last, for 19 years. The game's plot is not exactly deep, but it's very serious, containing a moment where the villain shoots the girls; traumatizing everyone and prompting Kunio and Riki to go forth and take him down and once and for all. Misako and Kyouko survive, but that is not revealed until the end. The game was never released in the west at the time, and as Technos would go bankrupt soon after, it remained relatively obscure until recently, as would the Kunio Kun series.
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| Talk about mood whiplash! |
Some time after Technos's closure, people who had worked on it regrouped and acquired the license. Production and release initially mirrored the direction they had taken in the Technos era; namely in that most games wouldn't get released outside Japan and those that did got localized in a variety of different ways. As it had already been localized before, Down Nekketsu Monogotari would be released stateside as River City Ransom EX, with the same localized names from the original American release despite graphics not being changed for this one. The next Kunio game to be released in the USA was Chō Nekketsu Kōkō Kunio kun Dojjibōru Bu, or as it became known in the western release, Super Dodgeball Brawlers. This is of note for actually keeping all of the Japanese names in the English version.6
Then in 2010, everything changed. Kunio-kun no Chou Nekketsu! Daiundoukai was released in the west as River City Super Sports Challenge, with the Japanese names intact, and this would be the standard for all Japanese-developed Kunio games since. Since then, River City has been the series' official western name, which means more than ever before, most people saw this series through the silly, cartoony, meme-filled lens of River City Ransom.
Thus the River City Girls Were Born!
Thus it was the case with me. I learned of this series by reading about the original NES RCR, then entered it with the GBA remake of that game and discovered the rest of the series online. That was also the case with Wayforward's Adam Tierney. He came to this series with a sense of levity, and as such. when he discovered Kunio Tachi no Banka, as he has recounted many times, his main takeaway from that overall dark game was his amusement at seeing rather diminutive girls taking down much larger opponents. He proposed to the current Kunio license holder, ARC System Works, that he would like to make a new game starring these girls, and they greenlit the project.
The resulting game, the first River City Girls, certainly deserves that name. It was probably inevitable that it would get a name starting with "River City", but while Adam Tierney was inspired to make it by playing Kunio Tachi no Banka,and it's the first Kunio game in a long time not to use a chibi art style, River City Girls mostly resembles River City Ransom in not only its humor, but also its RPG gameplay mechanics and more open-world structure. Though its plot is wrecked by the fourth wall humor in its secret ending and some of the things shown earlier aren't fully explained, it generally functions as a self-contained story with a consistent humorous tone. However, it's popularity has prompted Wayforward to push for both a sequel and a port of the game that inspired it, and this is going to highlight just how very, very different in tone they really are. In fact, they're not only different in tone, but as ShaggyTurtleStudios puts it, probably in different universes.
Though this is not outright stated, it seems rather necessary when what things can and can't happen in a game, and how they're regarded by people within that game, are so different. In Kunio Tachi no Banka, being shot by a handgun requires Misako and Kyouko to be hospitalized, and Kunio and Riki fear they will die, and regard death as permanent. Worth mentioning is that in that game, each character has his or her own separate life bar, but if anyone's life bar drains to zero, the game is over for everyone, so the player, too, has to treat death as a big deal. By contrast, in River City Girls, Misako and Kyouko fall off a tall building, rather nonchalantly plan on how to land gracefully, and after crashing through a roof, just remark that they'll be sore in the morning. If a protagonist in River City Girls is killed, represented by the Super Dodgeball ball angel rising out of his or her body, that character's ally can assist by stomping on his or her corpse to revive him or her, and even if that fails, simply entering a new room will also revive the ally. The plot of Kunio Tachi no Banka has Kunio thrown in jail because people believe he killed someone by running her over with a motorcycle. In River City Super Sports Challenge, Kunio can push an opponent into the path of a train as a way of beating that opponent in a foot race, and nobody cares! Though these games have the same characters and the same names between them, at least before localization, some of their worlds have quite different physical rules from one another and as such, their characters have different expectations.
Oh Man; Another Tangent?!
Think of it like Batman. Almost everyone can recognize Batman, even if they don't know him well. There are some standards, like Batman's costume having bat ears and him using gadgets. But Batman stories are also set in multiple different universes where things work very differently from one another. Very few people would suspect that these two videos are set in the same universe.
And in fact, they're not. DC Comics' policy officially recognizes that there are many different versions of their universe with different versions of the characters within them. The same is true of Marvel, a factor that has become well-enough known that it was used as the premise of the movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Characters from one universe can visit another, and it can be very entertaining, but it's important to their policy to emphasize their differences.
By contrast, Wayforward, in re-branding Kunio Tachi no Banka as River City Girls Zero, feels like it's acting like those differences don't exist between Kunio games7. This has the potential to put their writers in a bind, because having some clear rules that govern what happens in a fictional universe helps determine how characters ought to act and also the sort of stories one can tell in them.
Consider, for example, the necessary differences in how a cliff would be treated in a James Bond film vs a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon. In a Bond film, anyone who falls off the cliff will die, graphically in some, and thus if James Bond fights someone near a cliff, the fight is suspenseful; each time someone is pushed close to the cliff's edge, we know it could be the end of that person. By contrast, in a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon, a fall off a cliff will not kill a character. That character (usually Coyote) will certainly be hurt by the fall, and there may be a graphic depiction of sorts; maybe the character's body will be squashed into itself like an accordion, or maybe the character will make a hole in the ground shaped like his body, but they won't go the realistic route and kill the character in bloody explosion, which means that not only can a fall off a cliff be played for comedic effect, but it need not even be the end of the story. No matter how much pain we see Coyote (or any other of the many cartoon characters who fall off cliffs) in, the show can move on to another scene wherein the character is all healed and ready for another fight, much like the players you could murder with your super dodgeball in the Kunio dodgeball games. But such a cartoony approach to physics and biology isn't exactly a blank check to write whatever you want, as once you establish that such a fall is relatively inconsequential, if you even try to create suspense by making Roadrunner and Coyote have an epic battle at the edge of a cliff, you won't succeed. Audiences no longer have any reason to expect this to be a make-or-break moment for a character, so they won't8.
Back on Topic Again
With such a huge distinction in mind, as well as how River City Girls 2 is planned to be a sequel to two games, which each run on different sorts of logic, what sort of story does that facilitate them telling in River City Girls 2? Right now, it's not really clear, though Wayforward has given some information on the subject: "River City Girls 2’s story is a consequence of the events of River City Girls, and to a degree River City Girls Zero as well (even though that’s a much older game). We wanted the game to build on the story, characters, and world we established in the first game in a surprising and unexpected way. In some ways, the core of River City Girls 2 is darker than the first game, but I also think the lighter and goofier elements are even more so this time. At the end of the day, though, it’s really all about what Bannon, I, and the rest of the team think would be cool and fun, and that’s what drives most of the content decisions in the game."
There is cause for concern there, but above all, curiosity. It's probably fair to mention that I don't have a particular preference for a game being lighter or darker; the key question is how to juggle the two. Based on the statement there, it sounds like it may be a similar situation to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Avengers movies. In those, the world is under huge threats, and the heroes have arrived to stop them, but they still manage to bring the quips and do a lot of good-natured bonding in the process. Possibly reaffirming this theory is that Wayforward earlier announced that River City Girls 2 would feature "the return of an old foe". That is a plot formula I really like, but it's still prudent to consider what contributes well to such a story, and what detracts. There are, of course, multiple factors, but they all feed into one point that I think is of the utmost importance: I have to like the protagonists. Moreover, this admiration has to extend all the way through the story and I must feel rewarded for liking them. Fortunately, as I will explain, I think we're on the right track.
Here I must highlight what the first River City Girls did well, but also what it did not. The beginning of the game I once found so iffy (that is, the part of it up until the first boss), I no longer have as much issue with, and this is because I played the whole game and saw its full characterization of Misako and Kyouko so far. Contrary to what I expected, Misako is not just a shallow, violent grump, but rather a pragmatic adventurer who has long been willing to defend her friend, Kyouko against bullies. Kyouko might still be a bit too stupid at times, but in this case "too stupid" means "stupid enough in some scenes that it's hard to believe her more competent behavior in others, which is a problem in many cartoon comedies, and though I'd prefer her stupider moments weren't there, her better bits in the game are very lovable. Even Kunio gets a small but likable bit of characterization in a cutscene before fighting Yamada. However, then there's those endings, which as ShaggyTurtleStudios put it, make everyone seem like a bad person, even though we heard a lot of dialogue and saw manga cutscenes up until that point that made them seem like good ones--also, actually showed the girls being in a relationship with Kunio and Riki.
What was going on? Was it all just a hallucination? Wayforward hasn't really answered, so we were left with the unpleasant feeling of characters we loved--some we loved even before this game brought them all new levels of recognition--being ruined, at least as viable heroes. We got that now infamous real-world explanation of why Wayforward wrote in that twist ending, but in-universe, what all happened? How much does each character remember? From which games? How much of what they remember is even real? Was it all just a dream? We don't know. When asked about it, Adam Tierney has said it's best left up to player interpretation.
In terms of sequel potential, though, of course it can't be. It's hard to tell if at the time of writing their original game's story, they knew that it would become incredibly popular and warrant making a sequel, but it did, and they're making a sequel. While we still know very little about it, the most exciting thing about this, for many fans who weren't amused at the original's twist ending, is that it almost demands Wayforward explains just what was going on in the original, and also to salvage its four playable characters as likable people who have other motivations besides just shallow lust. It's nearly impossible to do the same twist ending twice, the game will have additional playable characters, and each of the characters will have unique dialogue, so this time around, Misako and Kyouko have to be motivated by something other than rescuing Kunio and Riki from a threat that didn't exist. This time, it's nearly certain that there's a real threat. That is good. Also, River City Girls being as popular as it is means that regardless of what mixed messages it actually sent, most players in most of the world will think of its protagonists as canon couples.
The above describe all of the factors entailed in simply making a sequel to River City Girls, but there are additional ones added by Wayforward's decision to localize Kunio Tachi no Banka as River City Girls Zero and tie the three games' plots together.
History is the Key to the Future (Though Not to a Good Job)
First, giving the game wider exposure to people outside Japan makes it harder to trivialize. ShaggyTurtleStudios and Flodo_McFloodiloo both accurately assessed the issue with how the events of that game are regarded in River City Girls, at least by seemingly everyone other than Misako and Kyouko. What should have been traumatic and emotionally bonding events were discounted because they took place in just one game that was obscure outside of Japan and 25 years old at the time River City Girls was released, and players who weren't really aware of that game might have had an easier time laughing at the implication that Misako and Kyouko were just delusional stalkers who couldn't move on. Likewise, they have no reason to be upset that Kunio and Riki act like jerks, at least in the game's "bad ending". The video from Roger Van Der Weide that I linked in my last River City Girls post also had some nice insight into dark comedy. It needs extra context to work, and a common way to make unjust scenarios look funny is by detachment; that is, removing the humanity of emotion of characters so they can only be the butt of jokes. "However, we only laugh when we're detached. We don't want to see the guy who comically fell on his face on YouTube to be actually dying in a hospital bed." Having no personal memory of the game with serious scenarios and these characters being genuinely heroic, assists in such detachment.
However, by re-releasing Kunio Tachi no Banka and declaring that it is the predecessor to River City Girls, they are effectively signaling that the actual events of that game do matter. It's no longer old, it's no longer all-but unknown in the USA, and when it's brought back specifically to be the backstory of the River City Girls series, characters in that series can't ignore its events any longer. If they do, they'll annoy many players who, thanks to now having that game fresh in their minds, can't ignore them either.
Second, as jarring as it is how different the two games are in tone, I feel reminding everyone of Kunio Tachi no Banka helps give these protagonists a sort of moral anchor. I brought up Batman above as a better-known example of a brand that can go all sorts of stories in all sorts of universes with all sorts of tones. It can be very serious, or it can be very silly. But there are some things one can only take so far. The reason many people can enjoy all of these Batman media is because they're willing to follow Batman himself through them. He's been established as a character people admire and relate to, and to make them like the ride, some things about Batman, such as his motives, have to stay intact. His behavior in the moment has to reflect those motives, or at least, not contradict them. The big constant of having witnessed his parents being murdered in an alley making Batman dedicate his life and resources to fighting crime must be intact and it must matter. If Batman falls short of how he should act based on that past, audiences expect him to right himself by the story's end.
This is why All-Star Batman and Robin was so widely despised but The LEGO Batman Movie was generally well-received. Watching Batman do a lot of odd things can be very amusing, because many of those don't go against his origin as traumatized child, but if Batman ever starts tormenting children it's going to feel very wrong. Maybe not impossible to laugh at, but as Roger said, this sort of laughter would come at the expense of telling a proper story with Batman. There may be more debate on just how far Batman should become obsessed with a past-dictated moral code, but I think my point on this much is clear.
There's little doubt that these characters aren't like Batman, but if you play at least their fighting games that have a story beyond "there's a tournament", then it's still obvious that they're characters. In River City Girls Kunio and Riki barely function as characters because they're mostly just an objective, but inviting that games' players to play a game with those characters in a serious narrative sets them up to understand them as people. They're not deep; they're rough and hedonistic, but they're also dedicated friends who won't stand for the strong exploiting the meek. Misako and Kyouko, admittedly, didn't have as much personality in Kunio Tachi no Banka, beyond just being girlfriends, but that still puts them in a different context when they all have to save the day. There's something endearing about the concept of people you wouldn't normally think of as hero material being forced into a corner together and going up against a truly evil force, and once people have tasted that, they may well want to taste it again.
Conclusion (What Took You So Long?!)
Now, all of the above does not absolutely guarantee that Wayforward will stick this landing. They might still screw the plot of River City Girls 2 up. They might even make some changes to Kunio Tachi no Banka that ruin a lot of it, and if they do that, then the plot of River City Girls 2 may feel dead on arrival. However, it's not like the plot of the first River City Girls is a constant deluge of bad writing; it was, I probably wouldn't have kept playing it. So making a better plot doesn't really demand the writers get better at their job, so much as notice what bits were really odious in the original and not do anything like that here.
Oh, and as has been pointed out multiple times by multiple people, yes; Kunio Tachi no Banka is overall not about Misako and Kyouko, they don't make it through the whole plot, and if River City Girls Zero is as faithful as they say it will be, it'll still feel like a forced attempt at relevance, even to people who weren't aware of the game before. It's somewhat analogous to how the Indian movie Super K was repackaged in the US as Kiara the Brave with boxart featuring a very peripheral character, because she has red hair and they wanted to fool nearsighted audiences who were trying to buy Pixar's then-new movie, Brave. Really, you'd be surprised how often this happens with B-movies; just look up the company Film Ventures International.
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| Note: Don't watch that movie on the left, regardless of what it is currently titled. | |
However, at least Wayforward is being completely honest about what they're doing. And the game is more enjoyable than Super K.
So for now, I patiently await their attempts at establishing a good narrative. I hope I get one, but if I don't, at least I should be able to make one Hell of a blog post about it! It might even be longer than this one!
Notes:
1. The game always had two final bosses, one of which could only be fought using an item unlocked after beating the other, and the bosses had unique conversations, but initially the manga cutscenes that played after the bosses were exactly the same. A patch eventually was made that changed the cutscene to a happier ending if you choose to fight the secret boss.
2. In other words, the rather common dynamic of a cheerful but more naive character paired with a grouchy but more insightful character.
3. You may note that their relationship seeming built on little more than shallow lust was also a big issue I cited about the demo. While the ensuing game did give the heroines more positive traits and made them likable characters, that problem with them was quite revived in the game's endings.
4. "Chibi" is a common Japanese term for character designs that look "boxed in and have disproportionately large heads compared to their bodies; Hello Kitty being perhaps the best known example.
5. This is not an easy name to romanize. Some Japanese words have vowel-sounds prolonged and while Japanese spelling conventions are generally much more consistent than English ones, a rare exception is prolonged "o" sounds; they are spelled by adding a u after the o, but pronounced as simply an o held longer. Thus with this name, I spell it "Kyouko", which is also how the fan-translation of Kunio Tachi no Banka spelled it; however, River City Girls did not attempt to maintain the prolonged vowel so both spells and pronounce it "Kyoko".
6. However, this was not the first Kunio game ever to do so; that was the Neo-Geo Super Dodgeball game.
7. Notice how in the linked Silicon Era article, the upcoming titles are immediately referred to as "two new games in the River City Girls universe", though to be fair that may just be how that article's writer interprets it and not Wayforward's actual stance.
8. This, too, may remind you of the sentiments I expressed in that post I did based on this game's demo. As with character personalities, warping reality for the sake of delivering a joke can be very effective, but it makes it harder to tell meaningful stories that appeal to other emotions. I plan to return to this theme in a later post, wherein I do a SpongeBob Squarepants retrospective.
