Impromptu Manga Review: Kenji

Some time ago, I chanced upon an unknown (to me) martial arts manga called Kenji. I didn't think I would like it at first, given that the main character was basically a little boy, and that it looked like it was going to be targeted at young readers. The protagonist, Kenji Goh is introduced as a third-grader living in Tokyo, which I believe makes him 8 or 9 years old. The introductory arc is simple enough: he defends weak classmates from bullies, learns kung-fu from his spry grandfather (Kyotaro Goh), gets into trouble with his parents for fighting, etc.

 My interest level perked up when his grandfather starts explaining certain stances and techniques. For example, after an altercation with some thugs, his grandfather uses a body check called tieshankao. I recognized this move from Akira Yuki, in the Virtua Fighter series! Later on, more techniques are dissected and actual notable people from the history of martial arts are discussed. As the story progresses, I can't help but marvel at how well-researched the narrative is. Of course this is probably due to the author's (Ryuichi Matsuda)  past as a practicing martial artist. Soon, the structure of the story is changed by several events: Kenji's grandfather ends his visit to Kenji's home and returns to his country home; Kenji meets a young girl from a Yakuza family(!); and lastly, Kenji goes to live with his grandfather during summer vacation and begins to learn kung-fu in earnest. Particularly, he begins to seriously learn Bajiquan. During his training, more martial arts styles are introduced or mentioned, like Shotokan and Goju-ryu karate, Kalaripayattu and Xing Yi Quan,  His classmate Taichi also ends up training with Kenji and his grandfather over the summer holiday. 

After the summer holiday, Kyotaro visits Kenji in Tokyo for a final time, and tells him that he is leaving for China, to fulfill an old promise from his past. In the short interval before his departure, Kyotaro teaches Kenji some final Bajiquan lessons, imparting some "secrets" of Bajiquan to Kenji. 

After his grandfather leaves, the story skips forward in time about 5 years, and rejoins 

Kenji as a young teenager around 13-14 years of age. He is now in junior high, and he encounters Akira Kazama again, the young daughter of a Yakuza family mentioned earlier. Through her, he becomes embroiled in some gang warfare and his experiences lead him to resolve to learn new methods of fighting. For example, he attempts to learn how to fight multiple opponents. Through his search for answers he encounters even more schools of martial arts. In particular, he learns about Daito-ryu Aikijujitsu, and Taijiquan. 

A little later, Kenji is at a new school, and again runs afoul of some local toughs, but later becomes accepted by his peers there. The focus shifts to boxing for a short while, and Kenji is drafted by the school boxing club to fight in an inter-high tournament. Of course, this means it's time for yet more martial arts history lessons, this time dealing with Jack Dempsey and Floyd Patterson, the latter of which used a jumping punch that Kenji instinctively used to win his bout. 

A short time later, Akira takes Kenji to visit Inoue, an old acquaintance from Akira's former gang, who now has given up on gang life and works at a Chinese restaurant in Yokohama. While there, Inoue introduces Kenji to his boss and "master", Zhang Ren Zhong. Coincidentally, Zhang is also a Bajiquan practitioner, who learned the art from the same school in China as Kenji's grandfather. Of course Kenji asks Zhang to teach him Bajiquan, as he has had no further instruction in the art since his grandfather left. Zhang muses on the great coincidence of their meeting, and says that he believes that their encounter was a "Wish from the Sky". In other words, a destined meeting. He asks Kenji a few questions as a test, and accepts Kenji as a disciple when Kenji answers correctly.  

Kenji spends the summer at Zhang's restaurant, learning Bajiquan, while he works in the restaurant kitchen and shares a room there with Inoue as well. The resumption of Kenji's training in Bajiquan begins an entirely new story arc, and sets the stage for his further growth as a martial artist. This is getting quite long, so I will take a short break. Next time I will finish the narrative review, and talk about several of the overall themes presented in Kenji.

Playing Abel: Another Approach.

I've started playing Abel seriously as an alternate to Ryu, I say alternate, but I've been playing him fairly exclusively this past week. He's a good change of pace from Ryu, and the approach is completely different. Where shotos excel at zoning you out and spacing for anti-airs, Abel's game involves up-close mixups, combined with command throws and a roll that bypasses most attacks. His anti-air game is pretty weak, though. He has a throw that catches jumping opponents, but the timing and angle that it comes out at causes it to miss most of the time. 

Abel is pretty challenging to use, as he has no basic "safe" strategy, unlike say Ryu who can throw fireballs, and shoryuken his opponent out of the air when he tries to jump. Ryu can win matches using almost nothing but cr.mk into fireball, and shoryuken. Abel doesn't really work that way. Instead his game is based on reacting to the opponents actions and punishing their mistakes. And at intermediate to higher levels you really need to get into your opponents head and condition him into playing in a way that Abel can punish him at will. Many players call this using mindgames. 

Here's an example. Say Abel knocks down his opponent. As the opponent gets up he can:

1. Stay back a bit and sweep the opponent, as his sweep has deceptively long range

2. Use a Wheel Kick, which must be blocked high, alternate with sweep to mix it up

3. Dash in and use either regular Tornado Throw, which beats counter-throws, or EX TT, which beats most attacks

4. Roll behind the enemy, and attack from the back

5. Jump over the enemy and go for a crossup

6. Do nothing, block.

The thing is, this isn't even all his options in that scenario. He can use his step kick to dash in and start another mixup for example. The step kick itself leads to another half dozen options. Of course, not all those options are safe, and if the opponent guesses correctly he can knock Abel out of the mixup. Still, he's a real versatile character. And I think that's the key to his appeal for me. I really have to out-think and psyche out the opponent to win with Abel, so when I do win, it's very satisfying. The flipside is that when I can't get his offense rolling, it's very frustrating. "I should have done this, I should have done that" kind of frustrating. Still when you totally Yomi your oppenent's game, and make him feel that everything he's doing is getting countered or punished, there's no feeling that compares.

NOTE: "Yomi" is a japanese term that loosely translates as "knowing the mind of your opponent". And since Abel's gameplan is reliant on mixups and baiting, yomi is a big part of his game. For more about yomi, see here. 

The Final Stretch, and Live Event comments

Still at Rank 38, I've been a bit slow over the last couple days because of the Live Event. Completing the tasks is not as xp-efficient as straight-questing or playing scenarios, but the storyline is really interesting so far. Placing the bulk of the tasks to be completed in shared RvR areas is either brilliant or stupid depending on who you ask. Personally, I like that they did do this, as it forces players to /gasp- fight each other!.

Of course, there are downsides to this, especially when there are multiple groups from the other realm monopolizing the objectives, but now with the Event PQ, we ought to see a large number of players from both sides skirmishing, so hopefully you'll be able to complete tasks on the sidelines while the main battle is going on.

When I logged on this morning, I was hoping to have a half-hour to complete a task I missed yesterday, so I was planning to sneak out to Thunder Mountain real early, so that I would get there before Destro woke up. Surprisingly when I arrived, there was a large skirmish already going on at near the PQ site, with about a warband's worth of players on each side. I stayed away from the main fight, and concentrated on collecting crates near the gobbo mobs. I would join the fight briefly when a tank or mdps would break through to the backlines to help take them down.

I did get the trophy reward for completing the past two days worth of Live Event tasks, and I must say it looks quite spiffy on my Slayer. I have yet to figure out how to complete the rest of the tasks, but I'll be devoting the rest of my evening to that, and maybe I'll even hit rank 39. I gotta say though, the feel on my server has been one of optimism since the event started. I get the feeling that as the Land of the Dead draws nearer to release, players are getting hyped up with anticipation. On the internet, many players seem to be coming back and resubbing, and even previously critical bloggers are getting excited about WAR again. I hope the excitement can last. Again, now is a good time for WAR! 

Busy, Busy Weekend.

In a strange turn of events, I've been too busy actually playing to get much writing done! Over the weekend, I hit Rank 38, and participated in not one, but two City defenses. Destro was out in force this past weekend, and contested Altdorf at least twice. Collected 20 Officer tokens and one Invader token for my efforts. I'd have gotten two Invader Crests, but the second siege was pretty late, and I didn't have time to finish it off.

In other news, the Beyond the Sands event goes live today, and I'll be checking it out as soon as I get back from work. Oh, and I hit Renown Rank 33 this past weekend too. I now have 4/5 Annihilator equipped. Yay! Khazgar is looking more and more badass. Well, I'll hit you guys back up when I have a chance to digest all the latest events. See you guys in a bit.

What's In A Name? Apparently Quite A Lot

Along with Syp, I'm going to take these 10 questions from GirlIrl and put out my own take on this. 

1.  What is your current main character’s name (or names, if you play multiple games)?  Explain how you chose the name.

Right now, I'm playing my slayer, Khazgar, who I consider to be my current main. I wanted to have a typical "dwarfy" name, that sounded right lore-wise. The name is an homage to a character from the novel Oathbreaker, Azgar Grobkul. I added Khaz, which is my favorite dwarf name prefix. I actually went into a whole spiel about this very subject, which you can find here if you are interested. But basically, I wanted a guttural-sounding name, that kept the dwarf flavor while still rolling off the tongue.

2.  What was the name of your very first character in an MMO?  Explain how you chose that name.

My "first" character was a Dwarf Hunter in WoW named Sudoh. The name is another reference to a character in a work of literature, this time Sudo from Masamune Shirow's manga Appleseed. However, he got deleted before he hit 30 because he was actually on a friends account who was letting me try out the game. I purchased my own account, and I started a new character to duo with my girlfriend, who is now my fiance. I started a Human Warrior named Zenbei who was the leveling partner of her Warlock. I consider him my first "real" character. Zenbei comes from Zenbe Harada, an obscure character from the manga Lone Wolf and Cub. He was in only one chapter, which was about him killing the corrupt leadership of a starving village, preventing a peasant revolt. After which he took full responsibility for his actions, sparing the village the wrath of the government. I loved the tragic story of this noble character, so I took the name in the hopes that my character would achieve similar heroics.

3.  Have you kept a specific name through various games, or do you tend to change your naming habits based on the individual game?

I used to try and keep the same name, but now since I try to think of my characters as real people, I try to come up with names that a real person in that setting might have. My Empire characters have Germanic-sounding names, like Ulbrecht or Richter. My undead rogue was named Geheimnis, which means "secret" in German. And of course, I try to incorporate the Dwarf language Khazalid when I name my Dwarfs. My Orc was named Kurok, which sounds nice and orc-y. And so on. I try to match the name to the race and class whenever possible. My Tauren Druid was named Wildhorne, for example. He was feral.

4.  Do you ever reserve names, planning to use them for characters that you might play later?  If so, what are they and why do you hold on them? 

I have done this, but it's rare. I normally don't have trouble getting the names I want, except on the most popular servers. I'm also pretty good at modifying names to still work for me, even if the original is taken. 

5.  Of the three common archetypes in MMOs — tank, healer, DPS — which is your current main character?

Khazgar is melee dps, but my first 40 in WAR was a tank.

6.  What archetype was your very first character in an MMO?  Why did you choose it?

My first toon was a Hunter in WoW, mainly because it was recommended to me as an easy class to learn, and the Dwarf hunter in the intro movie was damn cool. Once I learned more about the game, I rerolled as a Warrior, because I realized I wanted to smash faces in. And I wanted to be the knight-in-shining-armor for my girlfriend, who I was duo-ing with.

7.  Are you usually attracted to one archetype over another, or do you play them equally?  Why?

I almost always choose a melee class, a tank is usually my first choice. Then maybe a melee dps class. I've always loved the visceral feel of melee combat. I enjoy a ranged class from time to time, but I never play casters. I like wearing armor and a slinging a two-hander, or stealthy leathers and backstabbing daggers. If I do play a ranged class, it's usually a class that uses guns or bows, anything so long as it's not a spell-slinging career. I don't like healers much either, but I would like to level a Warrior Priest someday in WAR, if only because they are still melee combat based. Right now my Slayer is getting all my playtime, and while he doesn't wear much armor, I still love him. He hits like a truck and is a raging berserker. Besides, Slayers got me into Warhammer in the first place, no way I'm not playing one. I do have a Shadow Warrior in T3, but I'm still wavering as to whether or not I like him. 

8.  What is your favorite feature from an MMO you no longer play?

I'm a relative MMO newbie, so I don't have much prior experience aside from WoW. I did really like how in certain questlines, you were treated to a pretty awesome ingame event. Two examples would be in the Draenei starting zones, you capture a Blood Elf officer who taunts the Draenei present after being sent away by Velen. Upon hearing this, a Draenei officer charges the Blood Elf and kills him outright, /spitting on the corpse afterward. When I saw that, I was blown away, it really brought home the feeling that you were involved in something major. Later on in the same area, after you complete the last quest in the area, Velen, the racial leader, appears along with everyone you had helped up to that point in an impromptu reward ceremony for you. It's a great little event, and again, it really makes you feel like you are part of something. I really wish WAR would do more things like that.

9.  Is there an MMO that you would play if it was free?  Which and why?

Honestly, no. I simply do not have the time to devote to more than one MMO, and aside from WAR, no other MMO, free or not is as compelling to me right now. Maybe when the Bioware SW MMO comes out, ask me again.

10.  How do you measure the success of a character in an MMO (total kills, titles accumulated, wealth, rare items collected, level reached, etc.)?

I consider any character I get to max level a success, but I also take into account how much enjoyment I've derived from playing that character along the way. Gold and gear is a factor, as well as stuff like trophies and unlocks. However, a big part of considering the character a success is whether or not I feel that I can play him effectively and whether I feel like I'm making a difference at endgame. 

Why Does WAR Discourage Alts?

If you have spent any time reading this blog, it is immediately obvious that I'm an incorrigible altaholic. So far, six months out, I've only managed to level a  single Rank 40. My Ironbreaker Stahlrek. In that same time frame, I have now have a 27 Slayer, 25 SW, 24 WH, 18 Engi, 32 Blorc, 23 Blackguard and more alts in the 8-15 range. I'm sure you see the problem. Recently, I've given some thought to rolling up a Swordmaster as well. So I rolled one up, got him to 8 or so, and now he's parked in Altdorf. Why? Because I don't know if I can commit to leveling him through T2 and T3 again. Having one tank at max rank has taught me that leveling up a tank can be an arduous process. Now I know that doing scenarios while questing is the fastest way to level. However, my server sc pops are busiest at night. So I play my Slayer at night, so I can maintain my RR. This means because I can't take advantage of scenarios for my SM, because my Slayer needs the renown as well. Which forces my alt SM to do mostly PvE, in the mornings when the server is pretty dead. And I gotta tell you, I've done T2 PvE over five times, I don't want to do it again. 

You know, I really wish WAR would allow me to "gift" some levels to my lowbie alts. Say, once you reach Rank 40, you can give one alt of yours a certain amount of ranks, depending on the tier. If the character is in Tier 2, you can give 5 ranks, Tier 3 you can give 3, etc. Each alt can only be gifted ranks once. WAR already has the Collar of Servitude/Rod of Service items that allow you to bring a lower ranked player up to within two ranks of your level. Why not allow players who already have a rank 40 to do the same? 

The thing is, WAR rewards the player who plays one character exclusively. Your most played character will have the best gear, highest RR, most unlocks, etc. Your alts, especially ones that you don't play often will be significantly less progressed than your main. In addition, the sheer amount of time needed to get to T3 or higher is pretty intense. If you have limited playtime like me, you often don't want to mess around on alts because you feel that the time is better spent leveling your "main" character. Also many careers don't quite come into their own until later levels, usually around 21-24. For example, my Shadow Warrior didn't quite click with me until I got to rank 18 and picked up the Split Arrows tactic, and later at 21 acquiring the Shadow Sting ability made a huge difference to my enjoyment of the class. There are some really interesting builds i want to try out with my SM, but I don't know if I have the time to level him up to an appropriate level. 

Now before you say that I'm looking for an easy way out, this is not the case. I just want to get to a point where I can really get a feel for the class. I'm not asking to be magically 40, just for a quicker way to get to 20-22. I've already leveled multiple characters through that level range, including another tank. It's not like Mythic doesn't already have the Bolster mechanic in place. I also don't really see a downside to providing this convenience. It's not as if it skews the population or anything like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware the leveling curve is nowhere near as grueling as it was after launch. Mythic did a great job making the grind to 40 less arduous, no doubt. 

I guess I'm just frustrated that there are so many classes I want to play, with not enough hours in the day. Mythic may not purposely try to discourage playing alts, but it certainly feels that way to me when I get excited about a class, roll one up to around 10 or so, then park them because I simply don't have the time to level an alt effectively alongside my main.

Busy Weekend.

Well, title about says it all. I had a pretty full weekend, unfortunately it was not busy playing WAR. We had a family member stay over and of course that's a black hole of time consumption, as many of you know. I did hit Rank 40 Friday night, so I'm stoked on that. Got my Sentinel belt equipped, and now the process starts of getting my pitiful renown rank up. At least, until the Slayer debuts. On Badlands, Altdorf got attacked, but it looks like it didn't progress past the contested stage. Some of my guildies have expressed frustration with the current City siege mechanic, but I'm still optimistic. I'm going to give Mythic a chance to get on the issues, they are always working on improving the game.

In other news, looks like the Night of Murder event is over. I personally didn't get all hyped up for this one, but I heard they implemented the influence curve better this time, as opposed to the grind-tastic Keg End. Although, word is that initially Keg End influence was too fast at first, Mythic heard about players blow through it in a short time, and over-nerfed the inf gain. Unfortunately right after that was a major holiday, and it seems no one made it back to fix the inf curve til after the holiday. Which resulted in a massively slow inf gain throughout the event. Well, now we can start getting hyped on the Bitter Rivals event that is just around the corner. 

I really need to amp up my sketching for this comic project I'm working on, I do have the first page or two planned out and I've finalized the Slayer design I'm using. Of course, details for the design will change when the Slayer goes live, as I plan to use the ingame hair and tattoo designs, which I won't know how they look exactly until launch. I still haven't figured out many of the mechanics for doing a webcomic, but I'm open to learning. I've been lurking artwork threads and if you have a link that has something like a step-by-step guide I'd appreciate it. Anyway, I'll see you guys in a couple days, hope you all had a great weekend!