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A History of TRPGs in Japan – Part 8 – Stranger Aeons (2013-Present)
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<blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 9169280" data-attributes="member: 6680772"><p>So, I’m not entirely sure this is the reason, but it just so happens that Lovecraft’s pre-1927 writings went into the Japanese public domain in 2008. In 2009, light novel writer <strong>Manta Aisora</strong> debuted a series called <em>Haiyore! Nyaruko-san</em> (lit. Crawl Up! Nyaruko-san, later given the official English title <em>Nyaruko: Crawling With Love</em>). It was in the venerable genre of “magical girl love-comedy,” in which a girl with special powers, often from another world or dimension, falls in love with a normal Japanese guy, moves in with him, and hijinks ensue. The key here is that the magical girl, Nyaruko, is a Lovecraftian alien (reminiscent of Nyarlathotep). Later more Lovecraftian magical girls appear, to cause more chaos in the main character’s life.</p><p></p><p>The light novel was a hit, and was soon made to into a series of Flash animations from 2009 to 2011. These were enough of a success that an anime was green-lit, which began broadcast on TV Tokyo and its affiliates in April 2012. But the significant thing for our purposes is that the director, <strong>Tsuyoshi Nagasawa</strong>, was a fan and player of the <em>Call of Cthulhu RPG</em>. And he started liberally peppering <em>CoC</em> easter eggs and references into the anime. Some of it is not subtle. The opening song of the anime begins by repeating “<em>SAN-chi pinchi</em>!” (SAN stat in trouble!) 15 times before the verses even begin.</p><p></p><p>These references caused a sharp spike in new interest in the TRPG. In the old days, this might have led to a brief wave of interest, but this was age of the Internet and video sites. In Japan’s case, this was <strong>Niconico</strong>, a video-sharing site like YouTube, but targeted to Japanese. And some of the early content on Niconico was TRPG replay videos, using video editing software with anime character art assets and a voice synthesizer. So when these intrigued Nyaruko fans searched for the Cthulhu Mythos TRPG, they would come across these videos that showed how to play.</p><p></p><p>This further contributed to a surge of new players. On a previous <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/rpgs-in-japan-one-stores-perspective.691402/post-8763986" target="_blank">post</a> here on ENWorld, I showed on gaming cafe’s stats on RPGs played there. One can see a distinct jump in 2012 and 2013, when the first two seasons of the anime aired. There was no season in 2014, and the numbers drop again, but then shoot up again in 2015. In 2015, the finale of the story was released as an anime movie.</p><p></p><p>Looking Google Trends for the Japanese title of <em>CoC RPG</em>, the peaks and valleys are distinct. Virtually no movement from 2004 to 2012, and then a big jump up in April, when the anime first airs. And after that a steady rise until it peaks in 2015. This created a virtuous cycle, the kind that put <em>D&D</em> on top of the Western market, and had propelled <em>Sword World</em> to such heights in 1989. As new players came in wanting to play <em>CoC</em>, more and more <em>CoC</em> games became available, until the point that if you want to find a game, more often than not you’re going to find a <em>CoC</em> one. But there were other factors as well. Since many of the new players came to the game through <em>Nyaruko</em>, or through the video replays, they didn’t at all feel bound to play in the 1920s United States. Rather the immediately began playing in a variety of settings, including Japanese high schools. Also, while fantasy role-playing required some familiarity with fantasy role-playing tropes, be that <em>Lord of the Rings</em>, or <em>Final Fantasy</em>, or what have you, the fact that <em>CoC</em> characters were just normal folks in the “real” world made it more approachable. The mystery-solving aspect was appealing. And the fact that it was horror meant that any number of failure states could be accepted and normalized. TRPG translator <strong>Masayuki Sakamoto</strong> put it, “Even if the players don’t do very well in the story, it can just be chalked up to the horror aspect. Whether it’s ‘Everyone died, but we stopped the resurgence of the evil gods,’ or even ‘The evil gods awoke and destroyed the world,’ it’s allowed as a story.”</p><p></p><p>The new generation of players have taken to playstyles not necessarily favored by the older participants of the hobby. Among them are <em>narikiri</em> (“become completely”) and <em>uchiyoso</em> (roughly translated as “you-and-me”). <em>Narikiri</em> refers to heavy in-character role-play, in particular the use of anime-style voices to create immersion. To the point that it behooves a would-be player to find out before joining a group whether it is <em>narikiri</em> or not. <em>Uchiyoso</em> is a style in which two players agree for some kind of strong relationship to exist between their characters. In essence, the two characters almost become one character unit, because what will happen to one will strongly affect the other.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, it pains me to say it, but <strong>Wizards of the Coast</strong> completely ceded the Japanese market in 2014. In June of that year, Hobby Japan released it’s final translation for 4e: <em>the Book of Vile Darkness</em>. They were eagerly awaiting the source materials and go-ahead to translate 5e, but then word came in July: Wizards was not allowing licensing of new edition translations. Not just for Japan, but in all foreign language markets. Wizards would not comment on when translations might be forthcoming. Hobby Japan milked the remains of their now defunct license for all that they were worth, releasing translations of the D&D Next playtest adventures <em>Murder in Baldur’s Gate</em> and <em>Legacy of the Crystal Shard</em>. And then, D&D as a supported RPG in Japan, was no more.</p><p></p><p>Then, in 2015, a very cool thing happened. Hobby Japan outsources its translations to translation companies, who either handle it in-house, or use freelancers. Through Adventurers League Japan Regional Coordinator <strong>Takeya Ukifune</strong>, the translators who had heretofore handled D&D got together to form a Translation Team and an Editing Team, and translated the 5e Basic Rules on their own time, for no compensation. Then they brought it to Hobby Japan and asked them to somehow get Wizards’ approval to host the translation on Hobby Japan’s website. Hobby Japan was able to get Wizards’ approval, and after two of their in-house editors took a final editing pass, they hosted it on the their website. Japanese D&D fans could finally enjoy 5e, if in a somewhat limited form.</p><p></p><p>This was the state of things until 2017, when Wizards contracted with Gale Force 9 to oversee overseas translation and distribution. Gale Force 9 naturally partnered with Hobby Japan for the new translations, and by November of that year, Hobby Japan released the Players Handbook. This went on for the next four years, with Hobby Japan quickly catching up with Wizards’ output, and then releasing Japanese versions of the books only slightly after their North American release.</p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, in October 2021, just before the translations of <em>Icewind Dale</em> and <em>Tasha’s</em> was to be released, Wizards made the decision to take foreign language edition production in-house. New releases were canceled, and new printings of existing books were stopped. Again, there was no information on what was to come in the next year. It turned out that Wizards relaunched 5e in December 2022, but for over a year, Japanese D&D players were again in limbo. When Wizards relaunched the line, only the core rulebooks, <em>Xanathar’s</em>, the <em>Essentials Kit</em>, and the new Starter Set (<em>Stormwreck Isle</em>) were available.</p><p></p><p>Interestingly, after losing the license (again!), Hobby Japan became what I believe to be the first Japanese publisher to use the OGL. They have a PDF for a game called <em>Fifth Edition RPG</em>, which is essentially a translation of the 5e SRD. Meanwhile, Wizards has now released Japanese versions of <em>Fizban's</em>, <em>Tasha's</em>, <em>Wild Beyond the Witchlight</em>, <em>Radiant Citadel</em>, and scheduled for a December 2023 release is <em>Dragonlance</em>. <em>D&D</em> remains relatively known among TRPG players, and has long had its own following, but I fear that following has been jerked around by Wizards ever since their purchase of <strong>TSR</strong> killed the <strong>Shinwa</strong> localizations. Between new editions and half-editions and editions not released, then released but paused, there just never seems to be any stability for D&D to really grow a significant fanbase. Wizard’s re-release in 2022 had an initial strong marketing push, but it seems to have slowed down, likely in preparation for the 2024 revision.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, like in America, the pandemic drove many TRPG players to online play. There are a number of Japanese VTTs. The most popular was <strong>Dodontof</strong>, but this relied on Flash Player, and so was closed after Flash Player was discontinued in 2020. Since then, a number of sites were developed imitating Dodontof’s functionality. I’m thinking of devoting a separate post to looking at these VTTs.</p><p></p><p>And this is where we are. TRPGs are still a minor subculture, but a thriving one, with a variety of foreign and domestic games being played. <strong>Group SNE</strong>, <strong>F.E.A.R.</strong>, and <strong>Adventure Planning Service</strong> are established as the primary creative organizations, but <strong>Arclight</strong> is the one with <em>Call of Cthulhu</em>, by far the most dominant game. <strong>Kadokawa</strong> dominates the publishing side of the industry, publishing Arclight’s <em>CoC</em>, Group SNE’s <em>Sword World</em>, and F.E.A.R.’s <em>Double Cross</em>, among many other games, but <strong>Shinkigensha</strong> is a significant presence, publishing <strong>Adventure Planning Service</strong>’s <em>Shinobigami</em> and <em>inSANe</em>, two of the other top-selling games. Also, in 2020, it wholly purchased Arclight as a subsidiary. The hobby is well-serviced by the magazines Gamer’s Field (F.E.A.R.), Role&Roll (produced by Arclight, published by Shinkigensha), and the new GM Warlock (produced by Group SNE, published by Shinkigensha). Hobby Japan is still involved in bringing overseas RPGs to Japan, their current biggest seller being <strong>R. Talsorian</strong>’s <em>Cyberpunk Red</em>. D&D has had a shaky road, but is big enough that games can be found in all the big cities.</p><p></p><p>What does the future hold? The above has been the status quo since the mid-2010s, so the TRPG hobby in Japan seems due for some kind of shake-up. We’ll have to wait and see!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Iosue, post: 9169280, member: 6680772"] So, I’m not entirely sure this is the reason, but it just so happens that Lovecraft’s pre-1927 writings went into the Japanese public domain in 2008. In 2009, light novel writer [B]Manta Aisora[/B] debuted a series called [I]Haiyore! Nyaruko-san[/I] (lit. Crawl Up! Nyaruko-san, later given the official English title [I]Nyaruko: Crawling With Love[/I]). It was in the venerable genre of “magical girl love-comedy,” in which a girl with special powers, often from another world or dimension, falls in love with a normal Japanese guy, moves in with him, and hijinks ensue. The key here is that the magical girl, Nyaruko, is a Lovecraftian alien (reminiscent of Nyarlathotep). Later more Lovecraftian magical girls appear, to cause more chaos in the main character’s life. The light novel was a hit, and was soon made to into a series of Flash animations from 2009 to 2011. These were enough of a success that an anime was green-lit, which began broadcast on TV Tokyo and its affiliates in April 2012. But the significant thing for our purposes is that the director, [B]Tsuyoshi Nagasawa[/B], was a fan and player of the [I]Call of Cthulhu RPG[/I]. And he started liberally peppering [I]CoC[/I] easter eggs and references into the anime. Some of it is not subtle. The opening song of the anime begins by repeating “[I]SAN-chi pinchi[/I]!” (SAN stat in trouble!) 15 times before the verses even begin. These references caused a sharp spike in new interest in the TRPG. In the old days, this might have led to a brief wave of interest, but this was age of the Internet and video sites. In Japan’s case, this was [B]Niconico[/B], a video-sharing site like YouTube, but targeted to Japanese. And some of the early content on Niconico was TRPG replay videos, using video editing software with anime character art assets and a voice synthesizer. So when these intrigued Nyaruko fans searched for the Cthulhu Mythos TRPG, they would come across these videos that showed how to play. This further contributed to a surge of new players. On a previous [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/rpgs-in-japan-one-stores-perspective.691402/post-8763986']post[/URL] here on ENWorld, I showed on gaming cafe’s stats on RPGs played there. One can see a distinct jump in 2012 and 2013, when the first two seasons of the anime aired. There was no season in 2014, and the numbers drop again, but then shoot up again in 2015. In 2015, the finale of the story was released as an anime movie. Looking Google Trends for the Japanese title of [I]CoC RPG[/I], the peaks and valleys are distinct. Virtually no movement from 2004 to 2012, and then a big jump up in April, when the anime first airs. And after that a steady rise until it peaks in 2015. This created a virtuous cycle, the kind that put [I]D&D[/I] on top of the Western market, and had propelled [I]Sword World[/I] to such heights in 1989. As new players came in wanting to play [I]CoC[/I], more and more [I]CoC[/I] games became available, until the point that if you want to find a game, more often than not you’re going to find a [I]CoC[/I] one. But there were other factors as well. Since many of the new players came to the game through [I]Nyaruko[/I], or through the video replays, they didn’t at all feel bound to play in the 1920s United States. Rather the immediately began playing in a variety of settings, including Japanese high schools. Also, while fantasy role-playing required some familiarity with fantasy role-playing tropes, be that [I]Lord of the Rings[/I], or [I]Final Fantasy[/I], or what have you, the fact that [I]CoC[/I] characters were just normal folks in the “real” world made it more approachable. The mystery-solving aspect was appealing. And the fact that it was horror meant that any number of failure states could be accepted and normalized. TRPG translator [B]Masayuki Sakamoto[/B] put it, “Even if the players don’t do very well in the story, it can just be chalked up to the horror aspect. Whether it’s ‘Everyone died, but we stopped the resurgence of the evil gods,’ or even ‘The evil gods awoke and destroyed the world,’ it’s allowed as a story.” The new generation of players have taken to playstyles not necessarily favored by the older participants of the hobby. Among them are [I]narikiri[/I] (“become completely”) and [I]uchiyoso[/I] (roughly translated as “you-and-me”). [I]Narikiri[/I] refers to heavy in-character role-play, in particular the use of anime-style voices to create immersion. To the point that it behooves a would-be player to find out before joining a group whether it is [I]narikiri[/I] or not. [I]Uchiyoso[/I] is a style in which two players agree for some kind of strong relationship to exist between their characters. In essence, the two characters almost become one character unit, because what will happen to one will strongly affect the other. Meanwhile, it pains me to say it, but [B]Wizards of the Coast[/B] completely ceded the Japanese market in 2014. In June of that year, Hobby Japan released it’s final translation for 4e: [I]the Book of Vile Darkness[/I]. They were eagerly awaiting the source materials and go-ahead to translate 5e, but then word came in July: Wizards was not allowing licensing of new edition translations. Not just for Japan, but in all foreign language markets. Wizards would not comment on when translations might be forthcoming. Hobby Japan milked the remains of their now defunct license for all that they were worth, releasing translations of the D&D Next playtest adventures [I]Murder in Baldur’s Gate[/I] and [I]Legacy of the Crystal Shard[/I]. And then, D&D as a supported RPG in Japan, was no more. Then, in 2015, a very cool thing happened. Hobby Japan outsources its translations to translation companies, who either handle it in-house, or use freelancers. Through Adventurers League Japan Regional Coordinator [B]Takeya Ukifune[/B], the translators who had heretofore handled D&D got together to form a Translation Team and an Editing Team, and translated the 5e Basic Rules on their own time, for no compensation. Then they brought it to Hobby Japan and asked them to somehow get Wizards’ approval to host the translation on Hobby Japan’s website. Hobby Japan was able to get Wizards’ approval, and after two of their in-house editors took a final editing pass, they hosted it on the their website. Japanese D&D fans could finally enjoy 5e, if in a somewhat limited form. This was the state of things until 2017, when Wizards contracted with Gale Force 9 to oversee overseas translation and distribution. Gale Force 9 naturally partnered with Hobby Japan for the new translations, and by November of that year, Hobby Japan released the Players Handbook. This went on for the next four years, with Hobby Japan quickly catching up with Wizards’ output, and then releasing Japanese versions of the books only slightly after their North American release. Unfortunately, in October 2021, just before the translations of [I]Icewind Dale[/I] and [I]Tasha’s[/I] was to be released, Wizards made the decision to take foreign language edition production in-house. New releases were canceled, and new printings of existing books were stopped. Again, there was no information on what was to come in the next year. It turned out that Wizards relaunched 5e in December 2022, but for over a year, Japanese D&D players were again in limbo. When Wizards relaunched the line, only the core rulebooks, [I]Xanathar’s[/I], the [I]Essentials Kit[/I], and the new Starter Set ([I]Stormwreck Isle[/I]) were available. Interestingly, after losing the license (again!), Hobby Japan became what I believe to be the first Japanese publisher to use the OGL. They have a PDF for a game called [I]Fifth Edition RPG[/I], which is essentially a translation of the 5e SRD. Meanwhile, Wizards has now released Japanese versions of [I]Fizban's[/I], [I]Tasha's[/I], [I]Wild Beyond the Witchlight[/I], [I]Radiant Citadel[/I], and scheduled for a December 2023 release is [I]Dragonlance[/I]. [I]D&D[/I] remains relatively known among TRPG players, and has long had its own following, but I fear that following has been jerked around by Wizards ever since their purchase of [B]TSR[/B] killed the [B]Shinwa[/B] localizations. Between new editions and half-editions and editions not released, then released but paused, there just never seems to be any stability for D&D to really grow a significant fanbase. Wizard’s re-release in 2022 had an initial strong marketing push, but it seems to have slowed down, likely in preparation for the 2024 revision. Anyway, like in America, the pandemic drove many TRPG players to online play. There are a number of Japanese VTTs. The most popular was [B]Dodontof[/B], but this relied on Flash Player, and so was closed after Flash Player was discontinued in 2020. Since then, a number of sites were developed imitating Dodontof’s functionality. I’m thinking of devoting a separate post to looking at these VTTs. And this is where we are. TRPGs are still a minor subculture, but a thriving one, with a variety of foreign and domestic games being played. [B]Group SNE[/B], [B]F.E.A.R.[/B], and [B]Adventure Planning Service[/B] are established as the primary creative organizations, but [B]Arclight[/B] is the one with [I]Call of Cthulhu[/I], by far the most dominant game. [B]Kadokawa[/B] dominates the publishing side of the industry, publishing Arclight’s [I]CoC[/I], Group SNE’s [I]Sword World[/I], and F.E.A.R.’s [I]Double Cross[/I], among many other games, but [B]Shinkigensha[/B] is a significant presence, publishing [B]Adventure Planning Service[/B]’s [I]Shinobigami[/I] and [I]inSANe[/I], two of the other top-selling games. Also, in 2020, it wholly purchased Arclight as a subsidiary. The hobby is well-serviced by the magazines Gamer’s Field (F.E.A.R.), Role&Roll (produced by Arclight, published by Shinkigensha), and the new GM Warlock (produced by Group SNE, published by Shinkigensha). Hobby Japan is still involved in bringing overseas RPGs to Japan, their current biggest seller being [B]R. Talsorian[/B]’s [I]Cyberpunk Red[/I]. D&D has had a shaky road, but is big enough that games can be found in all the big cities. What does the future hold? The above has been the status quo since the mid-2010s, so the TRPG hobby in Japan seems due for some kind of shake-up. We’ll have to wait and see! [/QUOTE]
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