Hmm...I wonder if someone really will make that remix of reaction sounds.

Legion:
'Nani' means "What?" In Japanese, it's not quite a reaction noise.

He just means the dialog's a bit overburdened with interjections that don't really add to the conversation...

Imagine if, after every new sentence you spoke, I interrupted with, "Wait, WHAT???"

Yeah, that'd get old fast.

And unlike me, you can't slap Japanese media and tell it to stop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiJAHpYspjg
I built Yahtzee in Fortresscraft a minecraft clone on the Xbox live Indie market.

A1:

OtherSideofSky:
I've always found the best way to enjoy the plot of a Yakuza game is to have a friend with you and laugh together through all the cutscenes. It's absolutely mind-boggling how insane the stories can get without the writers ever seeming to notice.

Oh, and the whole "visual novel" thing makes much much more sense when you realize that they're supposed to be digital choose-your-own-adventure books rather than games. People who play them always insist to me that some of them have really good stories, but I remain skeptical.

I would recommend that you pick up Phantom of Inferno from Amazon.com if you ever decide to try out a Visual Novel, especially with the recent Anime adaptation of Phantom of Inferno. The translation of the Visual Novel is a just a little bit iffy (although still perfectly understandable) but the story is intriguing, interesting, engaging, and surprisingly realistic. The characters are also interesting and/or likable.

So there's my two cents for what they're worth. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Thanks, but my Japanese is good enough now that I don't need to bother with text translations. I'll definitely keep that title in mind if I ever feel like reading one, though.

inspired end comment 'rose coloured' jell beans lol tastic !

and yet yahtzee said NOTHING! when haiti was destroyed by an earthquake

sorry i just had to let that out of my chest, a lot of people are doing that nowadays

yeah i know he was karma compensating but still...

Gah! I was hoping I could be the cool guy who gets to suavely comment on the Pixies reference from this week's video, but I saw someone said something about it on page 4. I've got to start watching these things earlier. Now I have to share my sense of smugness with another.

Truly-A-Lie, you are the son of incestuous union.

Good as ever.

Man Yahtzee, I really dig the rodent teeth you used for illustrating japanese men.

It's truly such a shame that the British didn't colonize Japan, they could have introduced the only normal culture in the world (i.e. western) and the only proper language (i.e. English) to them.

Wouldn't have to listen to their annoying moonspeak articulations anymore and they could start selling commemorative chinaware with faces from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha like all normal people do.

Oh wait, those hypocrites are called "Windsors" now.

For extra punctuation you should do the list of things that bother you about Japanese culture.

KingofallCosmos:
Everyone wanting to try Yakuza can just start with 3, as it's a lot smoother than the first two. The story there is awesome, but not necessary to follow the events. Hell, part of the fun is half the time you don't know what's going on just look at those cute yakuza's acting all tough.. Ow and there's something immensely hysterical about clapping and yelling to bad kareoke songs.

Oh, I don't know. In all honesty I kind of like those karaoke songs. Although I'm not exactly sure why.

EDIT: Oops. Sorry, I forgot that I already responded to that post of yours. How silly of me.

raankh:

redbeta22:
Why are Japanese games full of weird reaction noises? Wah? Huh? I've always thought they were there because of the translation from Japanese to English, but if they're in the Japanese VO as well? Could somebody explain?

I think it's both a question of culture and language. In Japanese, you often leave out the subject of a sentence, in particular if you are the subject yourself. Japanese people are encouraged (or stimulated if you prefer a more technical term) to be reserved in public-- in Finland, really in all of northern Scandinavia, they have a very similar cultural stimuli. Northern dialects of Swedish and Finnish, and to some extent Norweigan, also have many empty interjections-- but together with subject omission it actually says alot more than you might think. Japanese is spoken in a very context-sensitive way, as are many dialects in northern Scandinavia. They have in common that they sometimes omit entire sentence structures for a few words, often ended by a single morpheme (a "noise").

However, many of the weird reaction noises are also a matter of style. The style in Japanese games, comics and the weird "live action anime" film genre have some pretty strong stereotypes-- all the empty interjections and incessant "boku wa~~" aren't how most adult Japanese people speak....

But, hey, do YOU speak like a video-game character?

This is just for the sake of being thorough.

But yes you are right. In Japanese one does often leave out the subject of a sentence particularly if the person speaking is the subject his/herself. The reason for this is the common assumption that it's obvious what the subject is and therefore making it unnecessary to explicitly point it out.

Although interestingly enough I can actually recall one particular instance in an Anime title where this was actually used for humorous effect when one character wasn't sure what another character was referring to.

Anyway, I think this is why the word "Boku" would often be omitted. As I'm sure you know "Boku" means "I" in Japanese and is generally reserved for use by males (with "wa" being a device for connecting words and/or parts of a sentence). Therefore if one were the subject it may not be necessary (and it often probably isn't) to use "Boku" or "Watashi" and the like ("Watashi" being a unisex word for "I").

A1:

KingofallCosmos:
Everyone wanting to try Yakuza can just start with 3, as it's a lot smoother than the first two. The story there is awesome, but not necessary to follow the events. Hell, part of the fun is half the time you don't know what's going on just look at those cute yakuza's acting all tough.. Ow and there's something immensely hysterical about clapping and yelling to bad kareoke songs.

Oh, I don't know. In all honesty I kind of like those karaoke songs. Although I'm not exactly sure why.

EDIT: Oops. Sorry, I forgot that I already responded to that post of yours. How silly of me.

That's alright. I guess I wasn't clear anyway. I meant to say it's very addicting and I'm not sure why. Just the combination of wierd jpop and tough guy kazuma clapping and shouting enthusiasticly.

BTW I bumped into a big guy in New York one time; it broke his reading glasses, which he (stupidly) held in his hand. Getting ready for some yakuza style asskicking, imagine my surprise when the guy gets all emotional cause he was studying and couldn't afford new ones. We agreed on each paying half (of fifteen bucks).

KingofallCosmos:

A1:

KingofallCosmos:
Everyone wanting to try Yakuza can just start with 3, as it's a lot smoother than the first two. The story there is awesome, but not necessary to follow the events. Hell, part of the fun is half the time you don't know what's going on just look at those cute yakuza's acting all tough.. Ow and there's something immensely hysterical about clapping and yelling to bad kareoke songs.

Oh, I don't know. In all honesty I kind of like those karaoke songs. Although I'm not exactly sure why.

EDIT: Oops. Sorry, I forgot that I already responded to that post of yours. How silly of me.

That's alright. I guess I wasn't clear anyway. I meant to say it's very addicting and I'm not sure why. Just the combination of wierd jpop and tough guy kazuma clapping and shouting enthusiasticly.

BTW I bumped into a big guy in New York one time; it broke his reading glasses, which he (stupidly) held in his hand. Getting ready for some yakuza style asskicking, imagine my surprise when the guy gets all emotional cause he was studying and couldn't afford new ones. We agreed on each paying half (of fifteen bucks).

I actually like jpop quite a bit myself. But I'm not sure if that explains why I find the karaoke mini game in the Yakuza games so appealing. I remember really getting into the music rhythm games "Bust a Groove" and "Bust a Groove 2" for the original Playstation. Perhaps there's also the monstrous (if somewhat fleeting) popularity of Guitar Hero and Rock Band to consider (although I didn't really get into either one of those myself). Perhaps it's just something about music rhythm interactivity in general that strikes a chord (no pun intended) with me and others.

Anyway, about your encounter in New York. I guess you were lucky that that guy wasn't some random punk. I actually heard a while ago (although I'm not sure if this is actually true) that nine out of every ten humans are at least halfway decent. Now as for the remaining ten percent I would imagine that they had better stay out of Japan or they're going to get beat up by Yakuza protagonists.

(That last sentence is a joke of course)

A Gray Phantom:

xscoot:
Actual Yakuza members have played Yakuza games. They say the gameplay is fun and makes sense (the commented on how different real world drinks in the game give effects that they would expect and the like), but say that no Yakuza would actually act like that before getting killed by his own group within a day for being so stupid and causing so much trouble.

Interesting. Could you site your sourc?

http://boingboing.net/2010/08/10/yakuza-3-review.html

Here it is. Only the names have been changed.

Loved the subtle Pixies reference there.

xscoot:

A Gray Phantom:

xscoot:
Actual Yakuza members have played Yakuza games. They say the gameplay is fun and makes sense (the commented on how different real world drinks in the game give effects that they would expect and the like), but say that no Yakuza would actually act like that before getting killed by his own group within a day for being so stupid and causing so much trouble.

Interesting. Could you site your sourc?

http://boingboing.net/2010/08/10/yakuza-3-review.html

Here it is. Only the names have been changed.

Thanks a lot! This looks like an interesting read :).

"We warn you once, NSYNC. Now we warn you again...WITH-A DEATH!"

...is what I started thinking about after watching this.

Wait, did he really start out by bitching about having to read subtitles.

That's just a horrible attitude man.

Host Clubs aren't really all that different from Strip Clubs. Either way you're not supposed to end up having sex with the girl, but usually can if you pay extra.

The difference is instead of throwing money at a girl for her to dance in systematically less clothing for you, you're paying her to sit next to you, laugh at your jokes, eat with you, and pretend to be interested in you as if you're having a relationship.

It makes sense really, instant gratification versus bitter loneliness. The same parallel can be drawn with pornographic games from there compared to Western cultures. In Western cultures sex games are about the sex, and only about the sex. In Japanese sex games there has to be a plot, a reason for just why the girl is getting sodomized by the jelly monster and the old man with panties on his head.

For being such a small, densely packed nation, the overwhelming theme seems to be complete and utter loneliness and desperation.

my friend and I spent a week going "NANI?!?!" at each other after he started playing Naruto Ninja Storm 2 or whatever
he switched to the Japanese voices with English subs (cuz the English voices were extra aggravating) and then I thought of this ZP review lol

What a piece of shit old man Ben Croshaw is, huh?

"The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan was an unqualified tragedy, and Yahtzee offers his deepest sympathies to a country and people that has long held his admiration and respect."

deepest sympathies my ass! if he had any respect he wouldn't have said anything about the tragedy in Crysis 2, like some Attention-Whore-hot-topic-South-Park-rip-off! And he would have never said the awful stuff he did in the start of this video.

I hope something really bad happens to Croshaw.

Nurb:
I don't see why you had to have a disclaimer when commenting on a culture's seemingly odd interests doesn't imply you want horrible things to happen to them.

Welcome to "politically correct" where saying you don't see the point in ten year olds getting raped by a bored Cthulhu means you want them to have an earthquake and turn into irradiated fish food.

'shrugs'

People take things far too seriously