Cafe Latte Rhapsody: A Lot of Sugar and A Little Steam!

Is is sweet enough for you yet?

*The first official yaoi review is finally here!*

I’m a fan of cuteness. When I read yaoi, I often want different things…sometimes I need strong men with lots of angst, sometimes I want beautiful guys with classic shoujo style drama, and sometimes I’m interested in comical sweetness. Time and time again, however, I find myself coming back to the cuteness. While some yaoi makes me sad, or romantic, or a little giddy, cute yaoi always makes me smile! And let me tell you, Cafe Latte Rhapsody is as cute as they come!

Cafe Latte Rhapsody is about pretty bookstore clerk Serizawa-san, who is frightened to death one day by tall and scary looking Keito. Keito is a mix of Asian and European ethnicities and is simply imposing to many Japanese people, including Serizawa at first. But when Serizawa sees the soft side of Keito, he discovers an adorable teddy bear which he falls for instantly. There’s a little romance and some baggage from Serizawa who has used his girliness for unscrupulous things in the past, but as you’d expect, they become a sweet couple.

The plot of Cafe Latte Rhapsody is not intricate or deep, in fact it’s pretty slice of life in a way. If you’re looking for an intriguing story or angsty romance, you’re not going to find it here. Most of the plot seems to revolve around them drinking lattes together for some sentimental reasoning that I honestly can’t remember, or Keito protecting Serizawa from trashy jerks. It’s pretty basic, and honestly I could see an average person’s relationship casually playing out the way this one does.

Plot, however, is not at all what I’m trying to get out of Cafe Latte Rhapsody. The real reason to read this manga is the sheer mindmelting cuteness. Serizawa has to be the most adorable guy I’ve EVER seen in a manga, period! He’s drawn full size but often with chibi-esque facial expressions, and he wears his hair in a super girly way with pretty bangs. I’m not at all one of the “rabid fangirls” people always stereotype yaoi fans as, but my goodness, Serizawa makes me wanna glomp like nothing in this world! Keito is also really cute in a very shy, affable, teddy bear kind of way. He often looks strong or serious, but when he blushes and smiles, you can’t help but say “D’awww!” The art is just so what I want out of this manga that it could have been an artbook with no story at all, and I’d have still bought it.

On the steamy side, there is a bit of fighting that goes on between Keito and a stalker Serizawa deals with, giving us just a little conflict to need some release. While there is sex, it’s very softcore, and more cute and romantic than it is lustful. Personally, had the sex been at all graphic, it would have killed some of the overall mood of the manga for me, so I’m ok with it not being hardcore. Like the latte, it’s mostly sugar with only a little steam.

Cafe Latte Rhapsody is not the greatest yaoi manga ever made, and if you’re all about deep story or intense sex, you’re in the wrong place. It is, however, probably the cutest yaoi manga ever made, and if you’re like me, that’s a strong selling point. Go check it out if you’re at all into adorableness that makes you giggle, you will NOT be disappointed!

Kirby’s Adventure: 3D You Have To See!

COLORS EVERYWHERE!

Back in 2007 I picked up Kirby’s Adventure on the Wii Virtual Console. While I loved the Gameboy game, and had played a few others, this one had completely passed me by as  kid. I sat down, started playing it, got a few stages into it, and then for some unknown reason I just stopped. I don’t really know why, maybe I wasn’t into it at the time, or more likely I got distracted by a Castlevania game (Portrait of Ruin had released two months earlier). Because I owned the game already and had not finished it, I was slightly hesitant to buy it again on the 3DS…until I saw it played. The major question of this review is this: does a gimmick like 3D make this game worth buying all over again?

I struggled with that question for the better part of a month, occasionally switching back and forth between being poor and being interested. When I finally had money AND was interested at the same time (sometimes it takes a celestial alignment, I swear…) I took the plunge and downloaded it. I started it up, looked at the very first stage, and immediately saw a difference. The original version of this game was something of a technical marvel for the nearly outdated NES, but with 3D effects, this game really came to life. Nintendo/HAL took the sprites and backgrounds apart and layered them over top of each other using the 3D effects, making the already impressive parallax style visuals have a remarkably crisp, lively depth to them. While they could have shaped the 3D to be more rounded and fully dimensional, they chose (like other 3D Classics) to simply separate 2D images into their own depth layers. The end result makes me feel as if I’m playing a never released Paper Kirby. The other thing this effect did was force me to pay closer attention to the amount of detail and quality put into all the backgrounds, sprites, and animations, something I missed when playing it on the Wii. Every few levels I’d see an impressive visual or animation and I’d say to myself “Surely the original didn’t look THIS good?” and then I’d turn the 3D slider off and realize that, yes, it did. I got my NES when I was about 6 and played it well into the mid 90s, owning many of the best games and seeing the best visuals, and yet I’m still impressed today by this game. The NES was always an underpowered system in my mind, and yet when I look at the quality and detail put into this game, I view the system differently. Some people may complain that the 3D effect is too flat or too little change to make it worthwhile, but I believe that the style of 3D used fits perfectly with what is still a 2D world. The only complaint I have with this game visually is that there should have been an option to stretch or resize the image. Playing this game on the 3DS with such a large screen, and yet only seeing the game in a small window was a bit annoying, especially considering the amount of detail the graphics have just own their own. Full screen is the one and only reason to prefer the Wii VC release in my opinion.

Gameplay-wise, there is no question that this game is top notch. Many have argued that this is the best game in the entire series, and a case could certainly be made for it. Unlike the original Kirby, there’s a lot more to do here. We have a wide-range of powerups and abilities, unique stages, varied enemies, and COLOR EVERYWHERE! This game seriously stretches the limits of what could be done with the NES color palettes, and it really shows. Towards the end of the game I continued to be stunned by the range of color and effects that could be put into a game that was in monochrome just a year later. Oh, and they did THAT too, adding a monochrome stage which pays homage to a game that had only been released a year earlier. Only a year had passed, there’s already much more depth to the gameplay, as the first game was limited to flying, inhaling, shooting, and finding secret doors in the scenery. Now there’s loads of abilities, many new gameplay mechanics and fighting styles, puzzles, lots of hidden areas which require certain abilities to find, even a series of minigames. While these are all good, I do have a little complaint with some of these abilities. Unlike many of the later games in the series, some of the abilities were usable only in one specific place and are otherwise useless. Even the seemingly useful abilities often have weird ranges or awkward arcs that are more likely to get you killed than your enemies. It’s not terrible, but sometimes they get a little old, especially when you consider how long this game is. This is a LONG game when compared to platformers in the NES era and is massive compared to Kirby’s Dream Land. I kept playing, thinking I’d be close to the end, but the game kept going.  By the end, after what turned out to be a truly impressive final boss, I could definitely say I was done with the game. And yet my completion was still around 75%, because there’s just so much hidden stuff, and I frankly couldn’t be bothered finding it all.

So we’ve asked two important questions here: Does the 3D alone warrant a re-buy, and is this the best Kirby game in the series? The answer to both questions is no, but very close. The 3D, in my opinion, goes a long way to really open up the depth and intensity of the game’s already stunning visuals, but doesn’t really add anything to it. The gameplay, while great, is still dated and not as perfectly polished as it could be when compared to a few of the later games in the series. That said, if you’ve never played Kirby’s Adventure you owe it to yourself to give this game a go, as it is solid and has a lot to offer, despite it’s few shortcomings.