#ayumi tachibana

[coneg]

ayumi tachibana art to celebrate the famicom detective club series getting a new game :)

please buy emio the smiling man when it comes out folks she deserves it!

[purepari]

Ayumi my best friend Ayumiii

[favoritenintendocharacterbracket]

Favorite Nintendo Character 2: Losing Bracket Round 1

[hopeymchope]

Emio - The Smiling Man is a welcome return for FDC... but a disappointing one

As I mentioned once before, Famicom Detective Club is BACK. Not just the title, but also its central heroes: Assistant detectives Taro Ninten and Ayumi Tachibana have returned for a new first-person menu-driven adventure game with a new mystery.

This is a much bigger deal for Japanese fans, where this is the first new game in the series (and the first real new adventure for these characters) since 1997 — and that '97 game is pretty obscure/hard to come by (I'll get to that), so it's really the first full-fledged NEW release since 1989! But the rest of the world only had a fan translation of the second game's SNES remake since 2004, which meant it was really only experienced by hardcore adventure game enthusiasts. And we only got our first official release of the first two games in the form of the Switch remakes in 2021.

I liked those Switch remakes a lot. I especially liked how many detailed, fluid animations there were in nearly every setting, which really brought the adventures to life. For any newcomers, I still recommend both of those titles — and in fact, I think The Girl Who Stands Behind remains the best in the series even now. The Missing Heir is full of dated design roadblocks that will almost certainly send you rushing to find an online guide, but The GIrl Who Stands Behind is a pretty easy playthrough for anyone.

Time has left the third game in the series behind, rendering it to obscurity. It truly is The Past that Disappeared in the Snow.

Though I should clarify that I only mean that The Girl Who Stands Behind is, IMO, the best out of the three games we English-only fans can experience. Because Emio - The Smiling Man is actually the fourth game in the series... and the third one is extremely obscure. That game was only released via Nintendo's Satellaview service in Japan, which let you use download games over dial-up Internet back in the '90s. That third game, titled The Past that Disappeared in the Snow, was the only one (until now!) where you played as Ayumi Tachibana. When her mom was accused of a murder, Ayumi had to uncover a decades-long family feud between her own family and another... and we don't know much more than that, because although the ROM file certainly is out there, nobody has ever bothered to translate this game into English.

But... I digress. It's time I stopped meandering around the central topic and started talking about the newest release: Emio.

In terms of gameplay, this one skews much closer to The Girl Who Stands Behind than The Missing Heir. There's one late-game moment where you're likely to be stymied about what to do or where to go next, because advancement requires some outside-the-box thinking. But otherwise, most players will be able to step through the narrative without too much trouble.

One cool touch that I alluded two a couple paragraphs earlier is that you will actually swap between Taro and Ayumi's perspectives in this one. I quite like that angle, though Taro pretty consistently gets the more interesting parts of the story. Perhaps that's because he still dominates 70% of the perspective.

The game will grade your performance in each chapter at the very end of the story, so do your best on the reviews and other multiple-choice segments.

If you're just looking to have a new adventure with some compelling late reveals? Emio - The Smiling Man has you covered. The same general gameplay from The Girl Who Stands Behind is back, including the end-of-chapter reviews of information that will ultimately help determine your graded performance.

Unfortunately I also feel that, in some ways, this is the weakest of the stories we've been able to play in English. And I feel that way primarily for three reasons:

Prepare to spend a lot of time at Planet Coffee, receiving very little information.

The sad truth is that, for much of this game, it feels like you're treading water. You barely ever seem to make advancements in the story until the last few chapters—instead, it's just piecemeal drip-feeding of tiny details that don't actually seem to move the needle. The Missing Heir was dropping new murders and mysteries left and right. In comparison, The Girl Who Stands Behind was more similar to how Emio is structured... but TGWSB had a creepy overlaying atmosphere and sense of dread that helped propel it along. For me at least, Emio is comparatively... well, it's kind of boring. Not much happens for most of the game. The last two main chapters and the Epilogue are all powerfully compelling, but up until that point, it feels more like you experience almost 10 chapters where you learn random facts that don't actually link to one another, and almost no one ever seems to be in any danger?

Worse is that sometimes, some things DO happen that the narrative just kind of... forgets about. One of the most compelling twists in the investigation is never explained in any way! At one point, we follow Ayumi as she follows a mysterious figure and then gets jumped by them... and then this is never discussed or addressed again! It's hard to believe a game with this many staff members involved could see this and shrug these dropped plot points off. Maybe they were all too scared to speak up to producer/writer Yoshio Sakamoto? But it's frustrating.

Ayumi gets jumped early in Chapter 7. When we next see her, she never mentions that this happened, nor is this ever explained or referenced again for the entire game.

You know how I mentioned after playing the previous two games that I was shipping Ayumi and Taro? Well, this game kind of killed that for me. For some reason, this is the only game in the series where Ayumi is treated as this gorgeous, irresistable being that every boy she encounters (while playing as her) simps for. And our playable hero, Taro, is just such a simp, too! Maybe it just felt overwhelming to me because it's every boy (and a couple girls) that she runs into, while in reality she doesn't talk to that many characters. But for me, it felt exhausting and kind of gross to see a couple of the male characters bicker over who knows her better, get possessively jealous when they have no right to, and basically act like total toolbags whenever Ayumi is involved. Taro, for his part, has gone from "implied to maybe kinda like her" to "acting weirdly possessive and overtly pining for her whenever they interact." Which I don't care for. For Ayumi's sake, I'm glad she seems to be somehow blissfully ignorant of her hypnotic effect. :P At least their boss, Utsugi, seems like he's not gunning for her... ?

So yeah, these are the three things that I think held the game back from being as good a story as the first two for me personally. Yet that's not to say the game is bad, either — I'm still quite happy to be unraveling mysteries with the Utsugi Detective Agency. There are still lots of fluid character touches in the animated scenes, the art is consistently great, the soundtrack is good, and things REALLY get gripping by the end.

If you're wondering why this game has an "M" rating while the previous two had "T" ratings, that's entirely due to the game's epilogue. After you beat the main story, many plot threads remain dangling. And as I stated up above, some will sadly stay that way. But most of them are filled in by the epilogue, which walks you through the incredibly dark, tragic, and disturbing tale of the culprit. The epilogue is more like a 20-minute visual novel followed by a 30-minute anime, because you don't actually PLAY it much; you really just read and then watch it. You are warned beforehand that this tale will be "gruesome," and though it's still far less so than most horror-based video games, it's definitely QUITE gruesome by Nintendo standards. But it's one of the most gripping parts of the whole story, honestly.

[ruinationz]

it's always "who is emio?" and never "who says 'shit' in emio"

[chibirisa20]

I missed them! ^w^

[mast3r-rainb0w]

[C] 'FDC Remake' Style: Summer Ayumi Tachibana by Mast3r-Rainb0w

A commission I made via DeviantArt, featuring Ayumi Tachibana in a summer-themed outfit, and I've drawn it in the artstyle of the "Famicom Detective Club" Nintendo Switch Remakes! Enjoy!

[devileaterjaek]

[super-smash-bracket]

Pollrunner's Pick

Just like last time, I have PRELIMINARY CONCEPTS for how they each work, and the winner is IMMEDIATELY put into the bracket! The ones who don't win can still be submitted anyways!

[wishuponroses]

Ayumi should wear more pink outfits in the next game. It really fits her character well, I think.

[third-energy]

What if Ayumi Tachibana was in Smash 64?

[lattedecoffee]

I have finished The Girl Who Stands Behind (the other Famicom Detective Club game), and I think I prefer The Missing Heir. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy TGWSB, it was still fun and interesting, but TMH made me cry and TGWSB did not.

Ayumi got to exist more this time which was nice, even though I don’t really care for the games wanting me to ship her with the protagonist. There were also a lot of great moments, funny and serious (that whole scene at the end involving the culprit was amazing, particularly a certain shot iykyk), but TMH’s ending felt more impactful imo. Maybe it’s because it’s more personal to the protagonist? Also TGWSB had all these last second reveals that didn’t really affect me much. Like yeah it’s an ok reveal and it makes sense I guess but why was this only told to me now…?! Why couldn’t some of this have come before the last 5 minutes of the game?

Both are still great story-wise and I know I’ll be thinking about them for a while. They’re are clunky gameplay wise but that’s to be expected given they’re from ‘88 and ‘89 respectively. If you love Ace Attorney, remember that these games were one of its inspirations and play them! I’d love to see more people playing these.

Also something I just realized: mirrors were integral to both games but in very different ways. Wanna know what I mean by that? Guess you’ll have to play 😈

[cswizzledizzle]

Random observations of the trophies in Super Smash Bros. Melee, because I thought they were interesting - Part 5

Last time, I ended off with some examples of the unique Japan Only trophies. But what about trophies based on things that aren't even out yet?

Before Animal Crossing had a stage or character in Smash, it had trophies under the label of "Future Release" for the states, with the game hitting shelves for us about a year later. While there are some changes between their appearance here and in the English release of the game, such as Tom Nook's apron or Mr. Resetti's outfit, the most interesting one of the group to me is K. K. Slider trophy, where he is called Totakeke, his Japanese name. He's named after Kazumi Totaka, a composer for Nintendo who voices Yoshi and many other characters for the company. One of those characters happen to be...

Captain Olimar of the Pikmin series, who happens to make an early bird cameo here before he joined the fray in Brawl.

Another Future Release trophy, Alpha originates from the video game Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest. But to my knowledge, this creature is not named Alpha in the game. However, my absolute favorite type of trophies are random oddities that don't belong to the more well known Nintendo series or games. I especially love seeing the developers creating these NES/Famicom characters in 3D, using their artwork as a frame of reference or just straight up reimagining some as if they got newer games. They're so damn cool to me, I want more trophies like these. Here are a couple that stand out to me.

Sorry Pit, you'll get your reimagining next game!

Ayumi Tachibana has always stuck out to me the most out of all of these, because she's just a typical Japanese school girl compared to all these strange, but colorful characters. She was also briefly considered to be a playable character, but according to the Smash series director, Masahiro Sakurai, in a NicoNico guest chat interview(?), she was dropped due to a lack of an overseas presence. Poor lass, if only her games came over to the west just before Melee. Perhaps then she would've stood a better chance, unlikely as it may be. I'd love to see how her moveset would've turned out, given she comes from a visual novel adventure game. To close off this post, here are two trophies I think are awesome.

A great lil' guy to give you more fun trivia for how Japan did their own add on that never made it to the west.

And a cute meta reference that makes me super disappointed that later games did not have a Wii, 3DS, or Wii U trophy for their own Smash games. Next time might be the last part of this mini-series. As per usual, to those that have gotten this far, thank you for giving this post the time out of your day/night to read more of my inane ramblings.

[favoritenintendocharacterbracket]

Favorite Nintendo Character 2: Round 1

[hopeymchope]

Famicom Detective Club: That Time Taro Got Shot Down by Ayumi for No Reason

I was a big fan of the Famicom Detective Club remakes we got in 2021, so I got pretty hyped for the all-new entry in the series that just came out — Emio: The Smiling Man.

I've been playing it every night since it released, and I believe I'm coming close to finishing it up. I'll offer more detailed thoughts on it after I'm done, but right now, I just have to discuss THIS bizarre exchange that happens really early in the game. You could even see it in the demo!

All I did to prompt the dialogue above was choose Travel > Police Station after Taro said that highlighted second line. Which apparently prompted Ayumi to... uhhh, wtf is she talking about?

I'm almost finished with the adventure, and somehow THIS is easily the most baffling line of dialogue I've experienced in the whole game.

What aren't we ready for yet, Ayumi? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Why does it sound like you just rejected Taro somehow???

Are we not ready for you to wish me luck?

Are we not ready for me to go to the poice station? (I went immediately after this anyway, so — fuck you, I guess?)

Did Ayumi somehow hear Taro's inner monologue saying "Let's," (is she an esper?) and is responding to the idea that they'd do this investigation together?

I feel like someone missed a line of dialogue in here OR the game glitched out at some point.

Ayumi got me feeling as lost and baffled Taro in this pic.

[ruinationz]

meme may be moderately dead but i forgot to post it here. ignore the various errors