Cinema of the Abstract: Games of the Abstract: Muramasa

Sunday, 17 July 2022

Games of the Abstract: Muramasa - The Demon Blade (2009)

Developer: Vanillaware

Publisher: Marvelous Entertainment (For Nintendo Wii version)

One Player

Nintendo Wii

An ancient pond. A frog jumps in. The splash of water. Hmm...Not a bad haiku.

Beginning in 1997, with Princess Crown, a production for the Sega Saturn which was not a success financially but gained a cult following, video game developer George Kamitani would found Puragura in 2002, which would rename itself as Vanillaware in 2004. They are a development studio with a very distinct style, Kamitani, who started with the likes of Capcom projects from the eighties, a figurehead whose company he has had influence on still decades later, its emphasis on 2D.5 illustrated art their biggest trademark. By Muramasa: The Demon Blade, the project was to return to the beat-em-up premise that Princess Crown had, meant as both a Japanese ninja equivalent to that game's high Western fantasy aesthetic, but being nicknamed "Princess Crown 3" to emphasise the lineage between the former game and Odin Sphere (2007), a Playstation 2 game where the start of planning out Muramasa began¹. Made for the Nintendo Wii originally, this is a rare tangent for Vanillaware who have mainly worked with Sony, from the Playstation 2 to the PSP handheld and so forth into the present day.

Murmasa is explicitly set in the Genroku period of Japan, between the ninth month of 1688 to the third month of 1704, set around the real life reign of the shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. Sengo Muramasa, who gives the game its name, was a real sword smith whose craft, made between his life between the Muromachi period (14th to 16th centuries), lead to swords considered the best made as art. However over the centuries these swords also developed reputations, myths and supernatural lore, that they were cursed objects with living bloodlusts, something which explicit in Muramasa the game and its theme of cursed demonic blades with unnatural abilities. Two stories co-exist here, which will interconnect, all connected around demon blades, unnatural weapons (with some explicitly sculpted from tools and weapons welded by omi demons in Hell originally) that hunger for split blood and can repair themselves. With the power to cut through Gods in their potential, we follow Momohime, a young princess, and Kisuke, an amnesiac ninja. Personally, Kisuke's story is the least interesting as he is a generic figure at first. As a ninja mortally maimed, only for a master swordsman to sacrifice his immortal sword so his fighting style is inhereted by Kisuke, he is very generic as the renegade ninja with no memory fighting his own clan, only standing out when his arch introduces Torahime. Revealed as the slain sister of Momohime, she was temporarily resurrected with the thirst for revenge against those who killed her family, with an army of ghost samurai behind her, Kisuke falling for her romantically, despite her time on Earth being limited, which improves his narrative arch considerably by having an emotional arch as a result.

Far more interesting in general is Momohime's, which also requires talking about Jinkuro Izuna, a ronin and master swordsman's student who, having died, still lingered as a soul and wished to find a demon blade that could help him find a new body. Assisted by Kongiku, a shape-shifting female fox (a kitsune) who loves him, Jinkuro by accident but taking advantage of the situation possessed Momohime, with the caveat in this world that only one soul can occupy the body at once. Whilst the other has to float outside as a coloured cloud face, Momohime's narrative is through the ronin having to work around this, fight scenes played with Jinkuro in control, and moments where the souls clash, or even the horror for Momohime of feeling a hangover. Her story, whilst connecting to Kisuke's eventually, is more interesting inherently because of this, alongside the fact that, as a 2D sprawling hack n slash game, where you travel across the main island of the country of Japan, from provinces like Omi to Iso, Jinkuro's quest for a certain sword has a large scale to it. To find the sword that will help in him come back to life will literally lead him and Momohime to Hell itself, and knocking at the door of Heaven and meeting the Amitābha Buddha.

With exceptions, where areas require you to traverse platforms to reach certain routes, the jumping button for travelling spaces is mostly to track down power-ups or for the combat sequences, whilst you will be traversing with the help of a map (unless you wish to turn it off) to each stage and new challenge. The two leads have their own specific special areas on the map which have a long series of fights before bosses. The map is large, and there is a lot to do as you run, jump and float among the stages, with random encounter fights in your way. The combat is simple on the surface, with jumping and dodge mechanics, alongside the demon blades themselves. Even if you do not select Shura mode, which ups the ante for hardness, or even the third unlockable hardest difficulty, the normal Muso mode will still test you. The demon blades themselves, able to have up to three of your choice ready for fights, and found on regular and long blade forms, can counter and block projectile and melee attacks, but if you are not careful, the sword will break and, alongside being like poking an enemy with a toothpick, the damage you can take can dangerously cut through your health if you do not get out the way. With three swords at a time available after the prologues and initial levels, you can unsheathe swords, with its own damage power, but there is both the fact every sword has its own special attack with a reducing power bar, and that thankfully demon swords can be mended, either with special polishing stones you can buy or find, or after some mending time, even if that leaves a risk that if all three swords are busted, you are a sitting duck if you do not move. Shura mode does not allow auto blocking, and the hardest mode, whilst with auto blocking is a one hit death for you.

There are a hundred swords, and to be able to get the true endings for both Momohime and Kisuke, you will require the Oboro Muramasa, all within a game where the main campaigns are short burst of excitement, but there are many extras required to get the six endings altogether that exist. You will have many challenges. You will come to hate ninja, especially when they have a tendency to occupy platform areas throwing bombs and using smoke bombs to move locations, or the annoying flying kite riders who explode when defeated. You will face kappa and strange umbrella yōkai, to giant poisonous frogs, and once you encounter Omi demons, even next to the boss fights, you will find yourself in a challenge that was revenge at me gleefully knocking about their smaller omi siblings with ease. The game has many aspects, some on the RPG genre, too which once you invest in both help considerably but add a personality to the production itself.

The cooking feature is one such example. Food is another trademark of Vanillaware, since Odin Sphere, becoming one of the oddest yet inspired touches of Muramasa here whilst not a game for vegetarians and vegans in some of the meal choices, going as far having wild boar and pheasant which will attack you but bags your next meal when stopped. Not only do you get a video game embracing culture, with a variety of Japanese dishes available from nearby dining stores to purchasing cookbook recipes, but there is the advantage that these meals do not just heal you. They can increase the amount of soul power you can have that, alongside being acquired in the slaughtered bodies you pile up, are needed to forge demon swords. Alongside having some like rice balls and cooked fish which you can store as health power-ups for use mid-fight, some of the dishes you eat immediately in the cooking menu have special abilities to certain dishes which are temporary, such an all-vegetable and tofu dish so good it is able to resurrect you from the dead once.

Muramasa has so much personality in general, unable to be denied how gorgeous the game is in terms of presentation, recreating this period of Japan in aesthetic whilst adding its own personality. Fully invested in both Japanese mythology and Buddhist lore it spins itself into some great rewards, from the idiosyncratic enemies to the two kitsune in human form, not only Kongiku and her love for Jinku, which becomes a sad tale in most of the endings, but also Yuzuruha, another who is aiding Kisuke in his quest. Only sixteen people, over half the entire staff of Vanillaware, including Kamitani as the game's writer, were working on this production², which is surprising considering how lavish the game feels, and makes the production's virtues even more standout. With an art style similar to Japanese woodblock art, the production went as far as to also have precise accents for the cast suitable for the period, with the game's Western Wii release entirely in the original Japanese with subtitles, Muramasa feels distinct for a game for the Wii. The music by the company Basiscape and sound producer Hitoshi Sakimoto - in collaboration with sound director Masaaki Kaneko, and the music composed with Sakimoto himself, Yoshimi Kudo, Noriyuki Kamikura, Mitsuhiro Kaneda, Kimihiro Abe, Azusa Chiba and prolific video game composer Masaharu Iwata - is exceptional, more so as, realising this project was desiring a more faithful interpretation of this setting, Sakimoto changed the tone from what he originally intended to have³. Instead, this group created a soundtrack with Japanese instruments which were exquisite.

The world's vibrancy is matched by how much personality it has, both grim and pleasant. You will find young boys selling health power-up rice balls, wannabe poets, or wander through the red light district and coming across men who are waiting to spend time with sex workers, getting some cutting remarks from Jinkuro in Momohime's body when any try to flirt with her. You will also encounter ghosts of dead women weeping in lament of their loses, or find yourself in both stories dealing with government corruption, contrasting this colour with a more serious tone, all told in the various endings you can get as folktales by a narrator which, by the end of the game when you complete it all, teases as if this will be of many stories in this world.

The game also has an exaggerated art style which helps the tone. Characters are drawn with unconventional and cartoonish proportions that, with its almost painterly style, help Muramasa stand out as an incredible looking production. It has its idiosyncrasies, which connect to its director George Kamitani, such as characters like Momohime looking almost doll-like with her giant head, to some of the grotesque enemies you will encounter like giant one-eyed and blue skinned demon monks. One trait that will raise eyebrows, and is something which needs to be brought up with Kamitani's style, is that he does exaggerate his characters including female ones, such as the Yuki-onna enemies (snow maidens of Japanese folklore), in their curves. The extreme case here is Kongiku, who is comically busty.

This is an exaggeration that is clearly deliberately, where even the fact you have hot springs in this game, which recover all status bars, are not portrayed in a very lewd way in the slightest with the female casts. This did later on for Vanillaware come to bite them in the backside, more so with how Kamitani clearly misread the room in how to response, when their PS3 beat-em-up Dragon's Crown (2013), based on Western high fantasy tropes, got into trouble for the character designs for two of the playable leads, an Amazon and a Sorceress, figures who are exaggerated to an extreme, for the later "backbreaking" an apt term. It is specifically the review by Jason Schreier of Kotaku, who strongly criticized the designs in 2013 which even had Kamitani directly involved in communication and a satire back which backfired in interpretation, involving three buff dwarves bathing which Schreier initially viewed as a homophobic barb⁴. Gender politics and how female characters are depicted in video games is still a huge problem a decade after - as even Hideo Kojima with characters like Quiet in the Metal Gear Solid franchise got called out for this - but I will always be wary of taking a position because this is a subject for female video gamers to debate on. Kamitani's style as an artist is deliberately over-the-top. He does have a lot of eroticism which, in terms of a male gaze, is something which is going to put some people off, but there is also the question of how individual female video gamers take to these designs, those who do find these types of characters in their dress a negative, those who look to them positively, those who may even cosplay or draw fan art of these figures which, if any exist, does really undercut taking a codified stance on the subject as being inherently one side of the argument or the other.

Kamitani's style is also hyper-cartoonish, which is also one of the game's biggest positives to bring the subject back to the qualities of the game. He will depict male characters throughout his career as being comically over-muscled, seen here with the option to ride a palanquin to travel he map, until you finish the first ending and can warp from the save temple, which is carried by two men who are nude barring loincloths and have full elaborate musculature where the term "beefcake" is appropriate. There is an example here, whilst sexualised in some aspects, which does emphasis how his art style is deliberately unnatural, in that one of the boss fights is against a Shinto god, Raijin the thunder God. The game gender swaps the male god, who in most ancient art and fanart is usually shirtless and wearing little, be he almost demonic or buff hunk, and Raijin here is a hyper-muscled and big figured Goddess, one whose art style does not necessarily defend Kamitani's art style, but is one which distorts and exaggerates the human body. Even the more non-human enemies and bosses are the same, between giant bulbous ninja as a boss, omi demons which are horrifying tanks that take a while to put down, or giant centipede bosses which go beyond the screen. The bystanders, male and female, young and old, have cartoonish looks which vary between quaint or for comic effect. The Dragon's Crown controversy is worth bringing up as a tangent directly connected to this game as this is definitely a case of a game whose idiosyncrasies are an acquired taste, more so as unfortunately depictions of female characters is a problem in general for videogames still, especially in ones where there is no clear attempt as here in having an aesthetic which distorts and flourishes on characters intentionally as here.

Muramasa does have one aspect which is at least frustrating until you get the reward - that to get the proper endings, you have to complete the post-game extras and get the Oboro Muramasa. Swords won in boss battles open up the forge option to acquire new weapons, but on the first run too, there are those designed to cut down specific coloured barriers and entrances to "lairs", the later challenges with boss and enemy rushes of a variety of levels recommended to try them. The post game for both leads will require you to reach almost Level 99, as high as you can get, to weld the Oboro Muramasa, and with characters able to play the other's campaign special levels and white lairs, the most significantly challenging levels, does mean a lot of replay, and a lot of repeated content, is involved. The repetition is the real issue to be honest, but thankfully, there was a sense of accomplishment even if the endings vary for personal taste. [Major Plot Spoilers] The additional endings depend on the player for whether they are worth them - the first for both characters are pretty bleak, and the final ones for Momohime and Kisuke change the characters fates entirely, with the sword required even apparently able to cut through time itself let alone down gods. Admittedly, Momohime's final one is a bit disappointing as she becomes sidelined as a wife, if contrasted by the fact it is more of an ending for Jinkuro, learning from his mistakes and not putting Momohime through the story itself. Far more interesting as one of the two second endings for both characters, which involve specific swords and fighting each other as the final bosses to reach, is Momohime's where, with Jinkuro sacrificing his soul to meld with hers, she becomes an amnesiac with inhuman sword welding abilities, protecting an elderly couple who looked after her from an Omi demon. [Major Spoilers End] Even in mind to my preferences for which ending was better, the entire experience of beating the game for 100%, even on the easiest mode, was worthwhile.

Muramasa is one of the most expensive games for the Nintendo Wii in the time that has past, but not without thankfully gaining praise as a gem for the console. Sadly, at the time, it was an underselling game, but in an interesting turn of events, when Vanillaware fully committed to working with Sony, they re-released a new version of this game for their Playstation Vita handheld called Muramasa Rebirth. Alongside small gameplay touches, and a complete retranslation for the Western release, the game also had downloadable content, involving four new characters with their own stories. That is for another review however. Focused on Muramasa: The Demon Blade itself, the original Nintendo Wii release, this is a game that took a long while to complete, but fully submerged into its world, it became something special for me and a truly worthwhile experience I would recommend to everyone to try.