Cho Aniki
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Cho Aniki (超兄貴 chō aniki?) is a Japanese video game series that debuted in 1992 for the Turbografx system. The game's sequels and spin-offs later appeared on the Super Nintendo, Wonderswan and PlayStation 2. A side-scrolling shooter in the vein of Gradius, Cho Aniki is best known for its wacky humor and vivid, surreal imagery. None of the games have ever been ported to the West, but the series title loosely translates to English as "Super Big Brothers."
Occasionally, the title is transliterated as "Choaniki", "Chou Aniki", or (erroneously) "Cho Eniki".
For various reasons, the popularity of the Cho Aniki games has endured since the series' debut. Depending on which specific title one looks at, highlights include in-game music, innovative control schemes or sheer kitsch value. In Japan, these games are examples of baka-ge, a type of kuso-ge. Baka-ge, literally, "idiot game" while kuso-ge, literally, "shit game". Baka-ge's appeal lies in its campness. Indisputably, the game's aesthetic sense — semi-nude men in suggestive homoerotic poses — is a unique one, certainly a quality that has given the series a cult popularity among Western gamers. Though the graphics are more risqué than pornographic, the series references homosexuality and gay sex more directly and more often than perhaps any other video game series in history.
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[edit] The games
[edit] Cho Aniki
Released by Japanese game developer Masaya for the PC engine, the first title in the Cho Aniki series is perhaps the least outrageous of the series. Players choose between controlling one of two characters: Idaten, a young man wearing a cape, and Benten, a beautiful blue-haired maiden. They fly about the screen and fire shots at approaching enemies. Idaten and Benten are assisted in their heroics by Samson and Adon, a pair of nearly identical musclebound men clad in Speedos. The two hover about the hero in a satellite-like manner, firing shots from the holes in their bald heads. The pair eventually became the series' mascots, so it's quite likely that Samson and Adon are the "brothers" mentioned in the title.
The game's plot, while minimal, involves the heroes moving through various locations — space, urban environments, elaborate ruins — and fighting alien invaders. Bo Emperor Bill (Botei-bilu, a pun of bodibil, a short of bodybuild in Japanese), the man who achieved ten consecutive victories in the Great Galaxy Bodybuilding contest, faced ever decreasing supply of protein resource. He unilaterally invaded neighboring star systems in order to establish protein factory to replenish the supply of protein. Feeling threatened, the heaven realm sent Edaten and Benten to vanquish Bo Emperor Bill. Thus the sweaty hot battle between the muscle brothers (aniki) and Builders Army begins.
[edit] Ai Cho Aniki
The sequel — Ai Cho Aniki which translates to "Love Big Brother" — was developed by Masaya and also released for the PC Engine. In this game, players controlled Samson and Adon directly. A key difference in the control scheme of Ai Cho Aniki is that instead of rapidly pressing buttons as a means of firing at enemies, players now had to input intricate button combinations, Street Fighter-style. By and large, Cho Aniki and Ai Cho Aniki play very similarly.
In the second game, Ai Cho Aniki, Bo Emperor Conshyasu (BoteiConshyasu, a pun of "body conscious") raise the Neo Builder Army to fight Idaten and Benten. However, the two fall in love and elope. This leaves Samson and Adon to fight the new threat, Su Emperor Roido (SuTeiLoido, pun of steroid).
[edit] Chō Aniki Bakuretsu Rantō Hen
A departure from the typical Cho Aniki formula has characters from previous games — heroes and villains alike — battling in one-on-one fights. Playable characters include the following.
- Idaten, a warrior with long spiked hair who uses a variety of attacks with his body
- Benten, who in this game is flanked by two cherubs who can transform into mini-hunks
- Samson/Adon, attacks by gyrating and flatulating.
- Sabu, a pagoda-shaped ship with an Elvis Presley-looking figurehead
- Mami 19, a strange amalgam of a cute girl and a battleship transporting three naked, frolicking men
- Adam, a naked man riding in half a moon. He is intended to resemble Adam from the The Creation of Adam portion of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.
- Botei, a berserker, likely to be Bo Emperor (Botei) Bill from the first series
- Uminin, an odd latex creature that resembles a condom
This game was the last of the series to be developed by Masaya. It was released in 1995.
[edit] Chō Aniki: Kyūkyoku Muteki Ginga Saikyō Otoko
Released for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn the same year as the previous two titles, this game features digital photography instead of the hand-drawn anime-style art from the other titles. The subtitle of this game loosely translates to "The Ultimate, Most Strongest Man in the Milky Way" or "The Ultimate, Invincible, Most Galactically Powerful Man." The game is based on the engine of the first Cho Aniki. As such, Idaten and Benten are again the main two characters. The game is often derided as having the worst play mechanics in the series. Even some of the most fervent fans of Cho Aniki claim that the campy fun is inhibited by poor control and impossible difficulty.
[edit] Chō Aniki: Otoko no Tamafuda
This twist on the Cho Aniki universe pits the heroes of the previous games on an RPG quest in which battles are fought with playing cards. According to an article on the game at the Hardcore Gaming 101 website, the title of the game is a pun. The title translates to "Man's Tamafuda," with tamafuda being a portmanteau of tamashii — Japanese for "soul" — and hanafuda — a Japanese card game. It is also likely that the pun extends to another meaning of tama, "balls".
The game was released for the portable Wonderswan system in 2000.
[edit] Chō Aniki Seinaru Protein Densetsu
The most recent of the Cho Aniki games was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2002. The game's subtitle translates to "Legend of the Holy Protein." With Masaya now defunct, the game was co-developed by X-Nauts and Psikyo. This team also developed Sengoku Blade, and this game plays much like it as a result.
The plot of this game centers on the Holy Protein, a deity-like glob of what may be semen. Samson and Adon hover around the glob, absorbing enemy fire as they did in previous games. Instead of series mainstays like Benten or Mami 19, this game features such enemies as a cross-dressing man in an Alice in Wonderland-type costume and a Mona Lisa painting that fires lasers from its eyes.
[edit] Homosexual references
Some of homosexual in-jokes are peculiar to the Japanese culture. In the west, Freudian influence spreads the idea that excessive homophobia is a sign of "repressed" latent homosexuality. In contrast, excessive "masculinity" is considered as a sign of latent homosexuality in Japan. Effeminate men (okama), being closer to transgender than gay, are not strictly considered as part of the "gay" culture. Therefore, bodybuilding, a sport of masculine aesthetics, is often considered as the pinnacle of gayness which is relentlessly parodied in Cho Aniki. For people unfamiliar with Japanese culture, these characters appear to be Japanese caricatures of gay men. However, for Japanese, the perception is the opposite. These characters are the Japanese caricatures of bodybuilders (and other excessively masculine men), latent homosexuals who bask in their own masculine narcissism. An example of an equivalent joke in the English speaking world is to assert that Top Gun is a gay film, a claim made by a character played by Quentin Tarantino in a comedy film Sleep With Me.
As far as the pretense goes, the game is still a bodybuilding themed shooting game without direct references to homosexuality. The relationship of Samson and Adon, the two central characters of the game, are always described in terms of friendship and mutual love for bodybuilding. The two have never been described as lovers. All suggestive poses taken by characters are supposed to be "posing routine" of bodybuilding competitions. However, there are numerous indirect but obvious reference to gay culture or homosexual innuendo. In Japanese, "ani" refer to elder brother and "aniki" is an informal calling name for elder brother. However, in Japanese gay culture, aniki refer to the one which takes more dominant (senior) role in relationship as in male equivalent of "butch", similar to how the word "daddy" (or sugar daddy) is sometimes used as a reference to older male lover. Usually, aniki (or butch in the West) is considered to be more musculine, hence the title, Super Aniki, i.e. Super Gay Brothers (or Super Butch Brothers). Most characters are thinly disguised references to Japanese gay culture. For example, "Samson" and "Adon" are both titles of gay magazines, Samson being the title of hardcore gay porno magazine specialised in fat old men while Adon is more of a gay culture magazine. The battle between Adam and Sabu is equivalent to a English pun of Adam and Steve, Sabu being the title name of another gay pornographic magazine specialising in S&M. The use of roses in the background is a reference to the first Japanese gay magazine Barazoku. Adam is riding on half moon which looks like a round on pots, pot (kama) being a Japanese slang for anus while okama, honorific reference to kama is a slang for male transgender. Also, in the Legend of Holy Protein, by "grinding" (i.e. rotating") the joystick, the player can accumulate "protein energy" which is shot as the men's beam. During accumulation, the character is defenseless as Samson and Adon twist their hip in suggestive poses. If the protein accumulation is 100%, the men's beam is shot as a powerful particle beam in a thinly disguised reference to orgasm [2] while weak accumulation results in weak shot, another inuendo to premature ejaculation. [3] Some screenplay between game stage also show Adon and Samson sweating profusely in very hot environment. While in English, someone being "hot" refers to said person's sexual attraction, being "hot" (熱い, atsui) in Japanese could refer to the exertion of sexual intercourse. Though it is possible to use "atsui" for both homosexual and hetorosexual sex, gay sex is stereotyped as very "atsui" especially if the coupling are between two very masculine men. Hence, something very "gay" can be referred to as being very "atsui" (hot and sweaty).
[edit] Cho Aniki in pop culture
[edit] Appearances in other games
Masaya also developed the Langrisser series, where Samson and company make a cameo. A hidden level takes the party to an area called the Muscle Shrine, where they must fight Samson. If victorious, the party can then use the Aniki summon, the most powerful in the game. The cameo exists in the Sega Mega Drive, Super NES and PlayStation ports of the game.
The Capcom video game, God Hand, pokes fun of Samson and Adon as powerless yet flamboyant drag queens who are the first boss of the game.
[edit] Samson and Adon
These series mascots are the personification of phallic imagery. They shoot white energy beams from the holes in their heads, for example. The pair are never specified as lovers or even necessarily homosexuals in the earlier series. However, in "The legend of Holy Protein", both Samson and Adon's preference are spelt out as "men". This type of character shows up elsewhere in such video games as Street Fighter II — the sexual orientation of series regular Zangief is a matter of some contention among fans — and Final Fantasy VII — with the character Mukki, the bodybuilder who hangs out in the bathhouse of the Honeybee Inn with his similarly fit friends.
[edit] Cult popularity
Few gamers outside Japan have played the Cho Aniki series, but many know of the game through articles written about it on such websites as I-Mockery, Encyclopedia Obscura, Hardcore gaming 101, Something Awful, and Seanbaby.com. The series is often mentioned in lists of outrageous, peculiar or sexual video games.
Also some claim that the music was more successfully sold than the main Cho Aniki series, the music was made by Koji Hayama
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ↑ Cho Aniki. Hardcore Gaming 101. Retrieved on October 29, 2005.
- ↑ Sexual Moments in Video Game History. I-Mockery.com. Retrieved on October 29, 2005.
- ↑ EGM's 10 Naughtiest Games of All Time. Seanbaby.com. Retrieved on October 29, 2005.
- The official site of PS2 version. [5]
- Encyclopedia Obscura [6]
- NFGgames [7]
- PCengine.com [8]
- hardcore gaming 101 [9]
- Seanbaby's "Cho Eniki" page
