Chic Pixel Holiday Giveaway!

For a bit of a festive treat, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank both the regular frequenters of Chic Pixel and any newcomers for taking the time to read what I have to say by offering a little giveaway contest. I really appreciate any and all comments and just knowing a handful of you read all the way through my posts makes it worthwhile. 

So what am I giving away, you ask?

Since Chic Pixel really is all about my favorite hobbies (namely BL manga and all sorts of popular and lesser-known video games), I thought I'd do things a little differently by offering not one, but two prizes: 

First up is a copy of volume 1 of Crimson Spell, a BL manga by Ayano Yamane! (contains graphic sex, entrants must be over 18)

The second prize pack is for all the Japanese game enthusiasts out there: choose this option and you'll get a rare Arc Rise Fantasia pin set and an El Shaddai goodie pack, which includes a pin, illustration card, and a sticker! These were scored by my amazingly cool mom at E3 2010 and 2011, and I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find them for sale anywhere else.

Entry terms: 

• Leave a comment on this entry stating which prize pack you'd most like to win (entrants are only eligible to win one or the other). Remember to leave a way for me to contact you!
• For an additional entry, promote this contest and/or my blog via Twitter, Facebook, or however you'd like! Just leave a comment every time you tweet/post about it so I can keep track of your entries! (maximum of 5 additional entries)
• Contest is open to anyone in the world and closes promptly on Friday, December 9th at 9 pm EST 

Good luck! 

Japan Envy: CHiRAL MOBiLE

Anyone that has ever been to Japan, and probably a few who haven't, will tell you that Japanese cell phones are pretty much as awesome as they come. They're always at the forerunner of the latest and greatest technology, with high-quality cameras and music downloading sites that made listening to music on your phone easy and fun even before the iPhone was released. Nowadays, "cell phone novels," or keitai shousetsu are increasingly popular, and boys love/otome (for girls) titles are coming out left and right (ok, I admit my knowledge of how popular cell phone novels are is a bit dated, but I'm pretty sure their popularity hasn't gone down in the past couple of years, anyway).

Well, famed BL game company Nitro + CHiRAL (why they keep the "i" lower case I'll never know) is capitalizing on Japan's mobile phone culture with its new cell phone site, called "CHiRAL MOBiLE." You can click the link to view the PC site, which details the various downloads the site will offer, but the whole thing won't be up and running until December 16th. Or you could just stick around here and I'll detail all the cool stuff us non-Japanese residents are missing out on, since it only works on Japanese phones!

First of all, Nitro + CHiRAL announced, along with this service, an entirely new cell phone novel called World's end Nightmare that will launch the same day as CHiRAL MOBiLE, with new chapters coming out every week on Tuesday and Thursday for an estimated total of 30 chapters. There isn't much about the novel's story available yet save the tagline "––A poor soul that has never known love. Let's give him one more chance––" and a very short, vague description stating that the protagonist, Itto, was supposed to have died, but reawakens in an unfamiliar world. Below are the characters that have been revealed so far, from left to right: Itto, Faceless, Siegfried, Kai, and Baron. The story will feature at least some boys love elements, to be sure.

Nitro + CHiRAL will also be releasing a mobile version of their popular game Togainu no Chi, as well as a visual novel version of a boys love CD drama titled Itsuwari no Alkanet. 


But even these 3 new releases aren't what gets me really jealous of Japan today–it's all the downloadable goodies from Nitro + CHiRAL's three big boys love games that really make me wish I had a Japanese cell phone and lived in Japan. Check this out:

What you see before you is an array of "accessories" you can download at CHiRAL MOBiLE for Togainu no Chi and Lamento-BEYOND THE VOID-. The top left image is a wallpaper, while the top right is a menu screen, and then you have a text sending icon, signal bar, and battery display. So, if you're big on BL and live in Japan, you can have your entire phone decked out with your favorite game or series! I'm sure they have things like this for all sorts of other famous games and anime, as well.

The service does cost a monthly fee of about $3, but for the amount of free downloads you get with the subscription, including World's end Nightmare, I'd say it's a pretty good deal! Too bad cell phones in America and Australia don't offer awesome services like these...

For those of you interested in World's end Nightmare, I'd be more than happy to do translations of the character descriptions posted on the CHiRAL MOBiLE website... Just let me know if you'd like to see them and I'll dedicate a post to it! I won't bother doing the work unless there's someone out there who will actually read them (or if I get a burst of idle creativity, but don't count on it).

Introduction to Boys' Love Games

I really wish that I didn't feel the need to put this disclaimer here, but I'm going to do it for the current readers I have who might not be comfortable reading me talk about how much I like male homosexual romance manga/anime/games/etc. You have been warned. This will be the first post of many to come, so if you're not comfortable with that or are gearing up to write me a nasty comment, I'm going to politely ask you to skip this post, or stop following my blog altogether if it bothers you that much. That is all. 

Phew, now that that's out of the way... On to the good stuff! I could spend a whole entry (or entries, even) explaining what boys' love, or BL, is, but for the purpose of keeping things short I'll provide a simple explanation: BL/yaoi/shonen-ai is a sub-genre of Japanese manga, written by women for women, that focuses on the romantic and often sexual relationships between men. The genre has expanded to games, and since I feel in the mood to talk about BL games (thanks to The Gay Gamer, who inspires many of my posts these days), that's what I'll be covering today. This is by no means a definitive guide or anything, I'm just getting things started.

Have you ever heard of the genre of games called "dating simulation"? If you haven't, it's because they are virtually non-existent in the west, due to presumed lack of interest, I would believe. They're very popular in Japan, though, with names like Love Plus for the DS garnering all sorts of international news coverage for spurring some men to do various amusing public proclamations of their love for the game such as marrying their virtual girlfriends.

Well, just as there are dating sims for heterosexual men, so are there dating sims for women (bet you didn't know that). Not only are there games for girls where you control a female avatar as you try to win over the love of the man of your choice, but there are also games where the main character is male. These are BL games.

Most BL characters could easily be mistaken for girls.

Most BL games are relatively explicit in nature, and are thus limited to PC-only releases due to the strict ratings system for game consoles. Nevertheless, there are a few tame BL games available for consoles, mostly the PS2 and PSP (yes, they still make plenty of PS2 games in Japan). 

Perhaps the most popular BL game developer is Nitro+chiral, with titles like Lamento and Togainu no Chi garnering tons of fans in Japan. You can find censored versions of Togainu no Chi on the PSP and PS2, but Lamento (see first image) is too explicit to port, so it remains PC-only.

But never fear! There are, well, two English BL games (I was convinced there were more but as of writing this I did a 30 minute Google search and couldn't find anything else). Absolute Obedience for the PC is one, and in my opinion, the better-looking of the two. JAST USA, the company behind the localization, is also behind the first BL game commercially available in English, Enzai. Sadly, though the company has since localized quite a number of male-oriented eroge ("erotic games"), these two titles remain the only BL they've released so far.

BL games are, on the whole, visual-novel style, meaning you'll mostly be reading through dialogue and textual descriptions, occasionally being prompted to make a choice, and then for all your efforts you'll be treated to a number of lovely CGs along the way. Characters are, on the whole, fully-voiced, and voice actors play a significant part in the popularity of the games themselves in Japan. Each game features numerous potential partners for you to choose from, some varying in difficulty as to how tough they'll be to "get."

In closing, I'll confess that I've never really played a BL game. Sure, I know a lot about them, and I own the PS2 version of Togainu no Chi, but I haven't played a significant amount of it. I have played the heterosexual, or otome, counterpart to BL games, where you play a female avatar who is out to find herself a male partner, simply because I quickly tire of visual novels. When I play a game, there is only so much reading I want to do! Otome games are much more interactive, for whatever reason, and offer various stat-maxing options and mini-games to keep you interested enough to play them through until the end. But I'll save that for another post! Here, have some Togainu no Chi! Let me know who you'd go for if you were to give it a play.

Who would you pick? (image courtesy of NCSX)