Wow, the short bit with the ghost on the telephone really gave me goosebumps. Creepy and sad and in a weird way kind of wholesome. To be able to say goodbye to a dead friend is a nice thought. Beautiful.
The repetitive final words reminded me of the death Miss Evangelista in the 'Silence in the Library' episode of Doctor Who, also reminded me of the 'Achtung.' and 'couldnt keep a promise' aspects of SIGNALIS
I was really engrossed in your overview of Twilight Syndrome, but after the Prank segment ended it feels as though I just whited out for 2 hours and came to with vague blurry memories of incest and Godzilla
I kept saying to myself "This is all non-canon and the 'Prank' was Suda using an established franchise to sell us his video game drugs!" And by the end, it looks like I was right. I remembered nothing besides love squares, substitutions, happy field, murder school, Mithra, Godzilla VS Ultraman VS Doraemon and *KILLING OFF THE MAIN TRIO WAS NON-CANON!*
There has been a few good TS/MS Syndrome vids from English speaking people the last year or two, but this one might take the cake for the whole thing. GG
Each Ultraman series usually has special defense teams whose task is to defend the Earth or their home planets from monsters and aliens. GUTS is a special defense team that appears in Ultraman Tiga.
Fun fact about the wrestling game: the original scenario had the protagonist killing himself only if he lost the final match, but there wasn’t enough space to do that so they just made that the canon ending
Was really excited for the third game going in seeing Suda have more narrative control but. It's kind of a bummer having a story about three girls get turned into being about some new guy and they all die. But the prank episode is so interesting when the white haired guy is initially like a fairy not a bastardized Persian god. Overall the series seems amazing though, would love to see a translation eventually, or more done with the IP.
Prank and the initially parts of Moonlight Syndrome had some interesting ideas about a deeper dive into the main trio, and how they would slowly drift apart as they were going through school. Then Suda dropped the ball and kills the trio off for the sake of his own story, and the 'Prank' being that its all non-canon!
Man, I already have trouble keeping track of people from just their name but hearing about the same person dying three times confused the crap out of me.
I know that all I did here was listen to someone else talk about them, but out of these 3 games the one that I enjoyed hearing about the least was Moonlight Syndrome. There's a charm to the more straightforward experience of the first two that's lost in the mess of the third, even though that third one has more meat on the bone.
Part of me is glad these never came over stateside. MS would have pissed me off to no end. >Take the agency of the player away (choices leading to different endings) >OC donut steal self insert that is only tangentially related to the previous game's MCs being the main survivor >a gary stu villain that can warp reality at a whim >Overly complex story that in the end doesn't tell anything compelling, while trying to explain itself, and has to fall back on "themes" Shame too as the first game seems pretty comfy for a spooky game night. Not everything has to be explained and some mysteries end up being nothing but mundane. Suda is in the same league as creators like George Lucas. They need a wrangler to keep them grounded.
Yeah MS felt like Suda had just gone on a David Lynch movie night bender and really needed an outlet for every single idea to come from it, regardless of the preexisting content of said outlet.
So, what I'm getting from this, as of almost exactly two hours in, is that Suda made the series that was about schoolgirls facing down rumors and such largely on their own into a story that was actually all about his own character, and killing off the three girls that the series started with?
Yeah I did not like the story of the second game. I really felt like it should have had nothing to do with the previous entries and left those poor girls alone.
As cool as the presentation and some of the story elements in Moonlight Syndrome are, i really wish someone at Human had talked to Suda and convinced him to tone down whatever it is he was trying to do with the game. Maybe have someone go through his ideas and tie them up a little bit better or help him filter them into something more cohesive. Like, imagine being a fan of Twilight Syndrome back in the day, loving the characters, enjoying the simple yet sincere spooky vibes they had, eating up all the references to traditional horror tales from japanese folklore. And then comes Moonlight Syndrome with all the characters barely resembling their previous incarnations, with a story that tries way too hard to be Lynch-like, and almost no attempt on making any goddamn sense. I would have been pissed lol
Suda's writing, in my opinion, works well when he doesnt have full creative control. Like for example, Fatal Frame 4, he's only one of three writers for that game, and that game has the best story in all of that series with a lot of elements reminiscing of his work in MS without compromising actually delivering a satisfying and intriguing story.
I feel the same about Nomura's writing for things like Kingdom Hearts - they both have some fantastic ideas, but they both desperately need people around them to respectfully tell them "no."
@@M0ssP1gletsame with hideo kojima, brilliant director if it comes to themes, story beats, interesting gameplay and cinematics. But especially after mgs 3, needs someone to make the story more cohesive and well structured like Tomokazu Fukushima did for mgs 1 to 3. Don't get me wrong, I love mgs 4, but all the other entrances after it became great for their unique or well crafted gameplay. I'm quite impressed about the overall themes, premises and broad story strokes. However, the actual plot points of said stories are laughable at best.
@@damienvandepol Look up Kojimas favourite films. Lost all respect for the man. No single person is responsible for MSG. I dont like how easily we mythologise creators.
@@accountname-tu2om true, he takes a lot of inspiration from a lot of media like: books, films and even other video games. However he either deconstructs said themes/ plot points or puts an interesting spin on the said media. It's just that he has great takes on said established characters and plot points. It's more like that there was nobody in general to not per se hold him back on those ideas for characters or plot points, but elaborate upon it.
The first time I learned about Twilight Syndrome was that segment in Danganronpa 2. It was pretty surreal. I didn't know that several Human Entertainment staff went to Spike too other than joining Grasshopper.
The video: "And you wouldn't believe who is behind everything" Me, having seen many videos about old Japanese games: "A zoroastrian deity." The video: "A zoroastrian deity" Japanese developers used zoroastrism as their crutch just as much as the old gods or greek gods.
@@1r0zzok, I'm trying to think of any games that tackle Christianity and the only I can think of is Gabriel Knight 3. Maybe Gat Put of Hell if youre generous. Any games that you were thinking of?
@@zpacula I’m not using christianity “literally”, but more from a moral/cultural point of view. A good example is DmC reboot, that from a gnostic based series, they added angels and literal Christianity. Or how many games treat their characters as “messianic” beings, or as paragons of justice (that can be temporal or moral) Gabriel Knight 3(great game) does not actually use, let’s say, common christianity as a base, more like apocryphal belief around the Graal and the (spoiler below) . . . Wandering Jew. . . Even modern “haha”attitude to the “conservative” morality, still is heavily slaved to the conservative view.
Moonlight Syndrome is incredibly interesting and I'm glad it got made and that I got to learn about it, but man if I was a fan of the Twilight Syndrome games I imagine it would have felt like a kick in the nuts. Your paranormal investigation story starring 3 high school friends gets turned into Suda trying to do Lynch. Except in Lynch movies all the pieces of the puzzle are there and you can basically understand what's happening with some thinking, whereas in Moonlight Syndrome even with the cut content in mind it's somewhat incoherent. The 3 girls you were with for the first games are in it, sure, but it turns out in the end some other guy was the main character of the story the whole time. I can totally understand why it got retconned. I still admire it though. The presentation is excellent and some of the scenes are very unnerving. I also always find it fascinating when a somewhat simple or straightforward series totally goes off the rails and take hard turns into a darker tone and subject matter. It's not something you see very often.
Yeah it's really feels like suda was creating a original game but corporate told him to use a brand to keep the rights, like prey 2016 originally being pychoshock but got told to use the name prey. That not what happened to the moonlight syndrome but it's what it feels like to me or writers ego.
Moonlight Syndrome takes place like...1 year after Twilight Syndrome right? The idea that the 3 leads having survived whatever they did, only to get killed of like that 1 year later is pretty depressing. That being said a story about "making a deal with the devil" from the background characters' perspective is a very interesting idea, and the story telling devices in this game like the moon phases are incredible.
So the first two games sound awesome and the third game sounds like a fuckin mess.I'm kind of glad Spike just made the third one not cannon and continued the series. Suda is such a strange enigma, sometimes the shit you get from him is great and other times you're just like wtf man this is some weird confusing bullshit.
Suda´s plots most of the time feel like it thinks it´s clever & abstract, but most often than not is a mess That whole Moonlight Synopsis sounded crazy for crazy´s sake, but is just shallow & mean spirited Killing the main trio to establish a new guy was sure to end up in failure
Between this and his FirePro story you can really see how his unique creative style took time to hammer out and form into something more consistent. He was always ambitious, unafraid of controversy, and interested in experimental/surreal storytelling; but for his first few projects it ended up manifesting in these uncharacteristically edgy storylines in series' which didn't really fit that tone. When he was able to start working on his own IPs he had a lot more room to grow and build universes which matched whatever unexpected or subversive twists he wanted to throw in because there was no pre-established brand to keep it in line with.
Awww, that telephone scene made me real tear up. Something about being told of the news by the one that passed made my heart fell into pieces. I know that it is selfish of me, but thank you for remembering me after all this time. Thank you for having me in your mind even at the end. You don't have to apologize. I am sorry I couldn't be there for you. Thank you for telling me. Bye-bye
I feel like the decision to have the ghost from the beginning just be a digitised photo with the eyes blacked out whilst the rest of the characters are done with pixel art is a genuinely inspired creative choice. It's just so much more uncanny than it would have been otherwise. Having really enjoyed the original Clock Tower I'm really frustrated that they didn't make these games available for non Japanese audiences. They are just so much more in keeping with the style of that game than the official continuations and spin offs. If they just contrived a way for the game to end at a clock tower these would be excellent sequels.
Woke up unmotivated AF on this rainy-ass day, then I see Dungeon Daddy has blessed me with 2.5 hours of glorious, obscure Japanese content. Saturday salvaged.
Suda needs a handler(s) to make enjoyable works. People who can incorporate his out there ideas but are also interested in actually making a coherent and enjoyable product. His work is incredibly self-indulgent to the detriment of the audience.
The thing is, many of his games have co writers. The Silver Case, Flower Sun and Rain, 25th Ward, Travis Strikes Again, No More Heroes 3, and Fatal Frame 4 all have other writers working alongside Suda, its only Killer7 and the very first No More Heroes that forego cowriters.
@@UMADBRO64 Cool liking your own comment bro. Your argument is there is no such thing as a creative lead. So anyone can make a Kojima Productions game? His catalog is indistinguishable from a Ubisoft looter shooter whether or not Kojima was there? It's a coincidence that all of Suda's games have the same themes and storytelling devices and his "posse" follows him around from the start of his career to the present day and no one can take credit for anything? Anyway, long story short buzz off, pseud.
@@UMADBRO64 I used him as a well known example. I think his games are trash. I could have easily said Tetsuya Nomura and the point would be the same. Since you didn't address anything I said at all I will take your concession that your circular logic is idiotic. Thank you.
For sure. Also, how the progression of Hinamizawa from Twilight Syndrome -> Moonlight Syndrome -> The Silver Case -> The 25th Ward is mirrored by Santa Destroy, with No More Heroes -> No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle -> No More Heroes III. Both get increasingly more industrialized and lose their humanity.
Now I know why the game was so familiar. Chunsoft the creators of Danganrompa used assets from the game in the second Danganrompa for once of the cases in it.
Kind of awful of them to take the characters from a somewhat optimistic series about ghost hunting and put them into a really dark story that leaves off on a sad note before the franchise is abandoned.
@@clenshin97 at least Twilight Syndrome got some sequels. Capcom couldn't care less about any of their IPs other than Monster Hunter and Resident Evil.
Moonlight Syndrome, the video can´t do justice to what a mess it is, is canon to the "Suda-verse". The protagonist's death is shown at the start of The Silver Case and is extended in a short comic that is part of a limited edition in a remaster. The story kept ending even after it was over. Oh, the 90s.
I remember learning about Suda 51 from Two Best Friends Play. From what I remember from the Killer is Dead and No More Heroes playthrough, they theorized that Suda stays secluded in his house watching weird movies and anime and only looking out his window to look at the moon at night until he's told to make a new game by others.
He had little to do with Lollypop Chainsaw, Killer is Dead, Shadows of the Damned or even No More Heroes 2. Suda basically stopped directing for a decade so the games he got famous with in the west didn´t really represent him before we got NMH DS/3 and a bunch of 90s remasters.
These were two really interesting titles to deep dive into. But I thought that Moonlight Syndrome was going to delve further into the sacrificial practices conducted by the city - which would have tied in with the economic troubles Japan was facing at the time you mentioned.
1:34:01 If no one has commented about the mentioning of GUTS as part of Ultraman Tiga, I will add that GUTS was essentially the defense force that Daigo was on and often fought the kaiju threats that Ultraman Tiga would face in the show. Sometimes, conflicts would arise, where Daigo could not easily become Ultraman Tiga for fear of showing his identity off to his coworkers. At least, this is what I remember from the show.
Great video, I was glued to it from the start. I somewhat feel that the Moonlight was just a big departure from the first one and somehow I don't think it's a better game.
I love Suda and his games, but if i was someone who played the first two twilight syndrome games and then moonlight syndrome at the time, i would've been pissed. Completely different vibes. I respect what he tried to do tho. Thanks for the video bro, subbed.
@@CrowsofAcheron They won’t talk to me after I told them I am busy for the next 2 hours and 35 minutes for chill time when the Racing Lagoon vid dropped
Nice to see a video going through all of these games, and explaining what goes on in Moonlight Syndrome, thanks. Same for the Baroque video, since you made it's weird story make sense to me, more or less. ^^ There's a similar PS1 game to Twilight Syndrome, 'Yuuyami Doori Tankentai', that I hope you get to cover in the future.
The whole "You need to read the cut chapter included in the artbook to understand the story" reminds me of the "Jaco's Report" included in the Killer7 artbook, as it was also cut content that made the story easier to understand.
With Killer7, Suda had to cut like 2/3rds of the story because of time constraints. Like he says that Coyote is his favorite Smith because of stuff he planned to happen focusing on him but had to cut out of the final game.
Mithras was only the main God in a subsect of Zoroastrian religion(and the Mithraic mysteries) that only popped up in the Roman Empire, in the Middle East he was mostly relegated to a lesser role like an angel or something since it's a monotheistic(or dualistic if you count Ahriman/Angra Mainyu) religion under Ahura Mazda. Though, Japanese games were doing weird things like that a lot back then. Though the second game's ending was kind of randomly shoehorned in anyway. It feels like Suda was just trying to make things as off the wall as possible. (Glad it was retconned)
This game seems rad as hell. The Japanese supernatural is actually very very interesting and a core part of their folk culture. I'd love to see a new game with this setting. I played World of Horror and I was disappointed by the lack of a long-form narrative, but I found the aesthetic and theming so fascinating.
My biggest problem with WoH is that it's a superb video game adaptation of the Arkham Horror board game, but isn't marketed as one, instead selling it as a mystery to be cracked.
My prayers have been answered. For years ive wanted a high quality deep dive into the Syndrome series of games. These are some of the most interesting games that we never got over in the west.
I think this might be my favorite gaming channel now. You have a gift for analysis and writing. Your video on Baroque is the best I've seen, and single-handedly got me looking through the Saturn library in general. I know these have been covered to death, but I'd be fascinated to see your takes on stuff like the PlayStation Final Fantasy trilogy and other script-heavy games from Japan, whether they've been localized or not. The cultural and historical lens you're able to offer to us single-language luddites, in an entertaining package, is something unique to you, I think. Either way, thank you for what you do.
When you said, "I feel like going through every ending is a bit unnecessary and would make this video much longer than it already is." I was sure you were going to say, but I'm going to do it anyway.🤣
@@Holyduck777 Games with a mindfuck, borderline impossible to understand plots, containing controversial and/or incredibly culturally-tied themes... Yeah, I can see why they're not picked up for international releases.
It’s part of for the course of post-modern/deconstruction writers. Sometimes they will make absolute bangers that turn a typical story on its head like Killer7, No More Heroes and The Silver Case and then you have confusing, nihilistic and experimental shit that goes nowhere.
Whoa! Thanks a lot for the video, mate! I would never go through the trouble of playing those games and making sense of them, so you did me a real solid.
Moonlight Syndrome is probably one of the most interesting games I've seen in a while: it's covered in the hallmarks of a younger writer getting more power than he was used to and kinda going nuts. It's irreverent, messy, insanely political for the period *but* has a lot of interesting individual ideas that kinda get lost in the sauce of "fuck it, let's write it like this". The whole thing explains a lot about concepts, aesthetics and ideas used in future suda games, but also why the guy's so reluctant to make moves towards an international rerelease: in an interview, he mentioned being kind of "embarassed" by what he'd done back then - and yeah, no kidding! I *didn't* do this to the first game i got to write for with full creative control and I'm still kind of embarassed by how derivative some of my worldbuilding was back then.
Thank you SO much for this video! I'm a huge fan of Moonlight Syndrome but I hadn't heard of the extra materials, so I just played the game missing that whole chunk... As you said, the game is impossible to piece together logically, but vibes-wise you can feel it out. Unfortunate ramble on my part incoming... The biggest theme that stuck out to me when playing was that of adolescence, or rather, the violence an adolescent must experience when transitioning into adulthood. The game (at least I felt) portrays the characters as confused and lonely in their new, more adult-like bodies which are only engineered for apathy and violence. The characters of the game are moody and hostile. Every time you try to make a connection, they get pissed off. You're invited to clubs to drink and dance but everyone there is sort of wasting away or acting cruelly to each other like they don't know any other way to act. I was struck by how Mika's father talked in such a dismissive way and how all her friends kept getting so angry, and how the gross creep otaku in town was perving on her, like she was confronting the ugly side of the world because physically she was old enough. Because she had that adolescent body, she was deemed mature enough by the universe to experience those things... It felt like that. There's a palpable disgust for change and your own body. The children jumping off the roof to alleviate loneliness is obvious, as now they'll never need to grow up. Because growing up is experiencing pain. Ryo's opening chapter really lays it all out with how everyone he meets picks on him ("Hey, is that the otaku who wore an Ayanami shirt last time?" or Yayoi straight up asking if he's gay. I guess his wardrobe is cursed.) His talk with his sister in the mirror can go a number of ways but I feel like it betrays his subconscious urge for comfort, his reluctance at becoming a man who has to take responsibility. Like you said, people in this game shove off responsibility to others. Ryo's fixation on his sister is like a shameful wish to surrender all control. The game (and the powers that be) FORCE him to act--- but it's a trick in the end. Damn, that sounds really depressing. In a body that can only act through violence, how can you make anything truly beautiful in this world? It wasn't even enough to kill a god. But maybe for a moment, in that embrace, there was a bit of comfort. If only he hadn't made that promise, if only Mika never got into that accident. Their only choice was to...kill the past (and everybody clapped). Gosh, enough babbling. Your videos are always relaxing and have great insights within them. Thank you as always!
Well, you certainly weren't lying about Prank and later Moonlight syndrome being more obviously influenced by Suda51. Not sure if his way of storytelling is for me, but I certainly loved you covering these games and I look forward to seeing your take care of his other games. Especially the "Silver Case", what with how the story of Moonlight Syndrome ended. I'm also curious about the sequels made by Spike that you mentioned. But I'm sure you've got enough on your plate already. And a big thank you for all the work you've put into this, both with covering the games and the cut content as well. Keep up the good work as always, Dungeon.
26:15, I'm sure others have said it, but I believe that's a Ouija Board piece to communicate with the dead with. But I do agree it clashes with how they rendered it.
It's a little weird that they went from using dolls as sacrifices to using people. Usually cultural traditions like that move in the opposite direction. They decide that human sacrifice is bad actually and start using dolls as substitutes or similar.
Fun fact: that’s supposedly how Baozi was created. Instead of offering human heads to a river god, a guy made a facsimile out of meat and used that instead.
prolly cause it's a fiction and writer's only concern was to come up with le spoopy story and they didn't know or care much about how real life traditions develop. always have to manage your expectations with this type of media
I thought that myself when I saw the third game was going to be a side-scrolling adventure game; possibly what they were going for since that game took place in a highschool as well.
You really weren't lying when you said that this was going to be a Lynchian nightmare huh, the fact that the section covering the intro and first two games was done and the progress bar was barely a third of the way through should have clued me into the insanity ahead. Not sure if I'd consider it to be a well constructed story if the average player needs to do a decent amount of research just to piece together the intended themes, in my personal opinion the author can have a fragmented narrative that doesn't follow a conventional structure if they want but the core idea should be communicated by the piece alone, even if it takes some reflection after the fact. Although I can't deny the allure of a story where the presence of a literal god has screwed with cause and effect so heavily that time is no longer linear nor properly synchronized for the different characters, it would have been funny/ironic if Mithra had gotten himself stuck in this weird loop too and his death was quite literally the only way out for any of those involved.
Same. For example, the concept of the news of Kyoko's death arriving at different times and intensity based on how close the person was to her felt very cool, it somewhat "grounded" the crazy happenings by giving them a certain logic - a very dreamlike logic, but a logic nonetheless. And all the questions I asked myself while watching the video - is the resemblance between Kyoko and Mika purely accidental, or is there a deeper relation? What's up with Yayoi, what happened between her and Chisato? - turned out to not matter, because this was Ryo's story, apparently (despite his story being far less compelling than that of the original trio of girls), and everyone was just an accessory on his quest to... Do what, anyways?
@@davidepastore5600 yeah, with all the references to Lost Highway it's kinda impossible to not compare this game to that movie, but Lynch actually managed to make a fascinating film, it's surface level plot makes almost no sense whatsoever but the moment to moment story flows surprisingly well and the themes themselves are actually much easier to parse than the narrative. Moonlight Syndrome on the other hand is like that one bizarre arc of a show when the plot went off the rails and then they fired that writer and refuse to acknowledge what happened during that arc in later seasons.
@@axelprino I also think that Moonlight Syndrome really suffers from scope creep. Continuing the comparisons with Lost Highway (one of my favourite movies, btw), Lynch is very careful in keeping the story "contained": there's really only a handful of characters to keep track of and they're all connected to each other, even if the nature of those connections remains unclear and even unsolvable due to the surrealist nature of the movie. Moonlight Syndrome, instead, displays a large cast of characters to the players, their connections to each other vague and unsatisfactory. And, despite the claim that this is Ryo's story, half of the cast has zero connections to him, which, more than anything, makes Ryo feel like a completely out of context addition, and the same goes for Mithra once you learn he's apparently just a dickhead god. Together, those two only add more layers of obfuscation and complexity to an already complex story without really adding anything to it - I must insist that Ryo, to me, comes across as almost a non-chatacter, his only defining trait being that he was in love with his own sisters. Mika is a hundred times more interesting than him, even Arisa is. I feel like the game would work much better if it just cut out Ryo and even Mithra, and instead focused entirely on Mika and her friends, their difficulties with establishing their own identities.
@@davidepastore5600 the worst part probably is that one can almost feel the better story hiding behind, it just needed a few more passes during the planning stages. As you said Ryo is barely a character so making him the surprise protagonist doesn't really work, if he had at least been the point of view character or a narrator then maybe, but he's not even there half the time.
Throughout the video, different elements of the gameplay and story beats made me go, "Hmm, Death Mark must have gotten a lot of inspiration from these games." Then, for you to say in the end that they sold the rights to Spike (who made Death Mark), it just came full circle. As well as how many have pointed out that Twilight Syndrome is mentioned in Danganronpa, they're other game. I also feel like some of the weird philosophy from these games were inspiration for another series they made, that being the Zero Eacape series. But that's probably just me trying to connect all these together lol. Loved the video as always!
Damn, I love your videos. Always wondered about the Syndrome games. Halfway through the video now, but I'm so happy you made this. Feels amazing to finally get a real glimpse into some of Suda's hidden non-localized gems.
Seeing the sprites for these games just makes the fact that they changed to 3D models for the sequel to Clock Tower hurt (and Ghost Head, but the graphics were never the problem with that game. It is however absolutely hilarious that you can lose the game by not doing something within the prologue/tutorial level, causing a suit of samurai armour to crash through a skylight halfway through the game and land directly on your character, killing you instantly and forcing you to completely restart the game) all the more. I understand why they would prefer not to have to rotoscope the whole game after it being so difficult for these, but it could have looked incredible. They might have been able to go for a more impressionistic style akin to Another World or Flashback, but it may not have been received well after the original game went for realism and did an excellent job of it.
this was super cool to learn about the syndrome games, really wish we could play them in english! Thanks for covering and thanks for another great video (:
I can't thank you enough for bringing these games into your channel. For the longest time I wanted to dive into these stories about urban legends involving school exploration (very niche topic that I like), and I was hopeless to ever being able to understand them. All I can say is, the wait was worth it! Now, if we could also have the complete story of Yuuyami Doori Tankentai (same vibe as the first two Syndrome titles), that's the closest we'll ever get to achieving world peace.
Moonlight syndrome to me shows that monkey paw wish fulfillment stories don't really work if the characters doing the wishing aren't the main/pov characters
thank you for playing the syndrome games! i have only seen few people talk about and even fewer people playing it. there have been a precious few that translated vague parts of the story and love them very much for that but I wanted a more cohesive story recap
That was certainly an interesting watch - fascinating little window into the past. As someone who moved to Japan a couple of years back and is only starting to get confident enough at my Japanese to be dabbling into entirely JP based games, I was pleased with how much of the on-screen text I could parse, cruddy font and all. Not that I could make *sense* of it, but I suppose that's somewhat the point of the video. Thanks a bunch for the content, found your channel after being linked the Baroque video, and have since binged, well, all of it. EDIT: Also, not sure where in Japan you are, but hope that either the typhoon hasn't been that bad, or that it misses you, depending.
Ngl, the fact that all the girls got fridged just because suda wanted to insert a random god and give the hero role to a character with 30 min screentime on a multigame series is pretty annoying.
What makes it extra annoying imo is the sprinkle of misogyny on top. That classic "the suffering of the women was all for the sake of a man achieving his purpose" is so obnoxious, especially when done to a series that had so much care put into being realistic representation for girls at the time :/
I don’t think this is a Suda problem you guys are taking issue with, it’s a Japan problem. You guys are acting like classic Japan should adhere to sensibilities that not even modern Japan adheres to. You’re free to be annoyed by something, but asking the world to make art and media explicitly for you and your sensibilities is not only narcissistic but entirely unrealistic. You said yourself the females were handled well up to a point, great, that was for you then. The rest? It’s not. That’s fine.
@@Kerunou Assuming Japanese people are inherently wildly different to other humans and just misogynistic by default is wildly racist. Stop projecting your weirdo Reddit mindset onto an entire group of people, it's disrespectful af
The video is good. My thoughts are that i quite dislike the direction moonlight syndrome took. I think the story was badly constructed and just butchered the characters(literally). Its literally everyones dies at the end. Racing lagoon got me more invested in its story and characters.
Is it just me or does Moonlight syndrome share some similarities of Serial Experiments Lain in terms of narrative style and sound design? Btw awesome work Dungeon Chill you have my day a lot brighter
46:57 bro of course it was intentional: intentionally way cheaper and faster to produce, I'd wager art direction had nothing to do with it -it clearly was a compromise rather than a choice. That explains the better usage of budget for sound and music
Holy shit that Fire Pro Wrestler scenario hit very hard when you used to be a fan of Wrestling in the early 2000s and the favorite wrestler of your at the time best friend was He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.
Mmm, I'm not sure if it was the more detailed coverage of MS or "worse writing".. but TS seemed much better in every department. Even more mysterious and interesting. That or the fact that I've always found Mr. 51's creation to be somewhat hollow and "done for the sake of it". Which is sad, as it makes half this long video.. rather uninteresting.
While I agree with it all being done “for the sake of it,” I disagree about it being boring just because of how much WTF-ery was in it. Definitely doesn’t make it good, but I can’t say I was bored.
@animeotaku307 I think that, after a certain point, the constant twist and turns and piling on questions without clear answers *can*, paradoxically, become boring. Like Arisa's dream - it's so unhinged and illogical, it stops being interesting and just feels like word soup. Personally, I was intrigued by the strangeness of Moonlight Syndrome, but I can see how it can end up coming across as grating and annoying.
Lmaoooo every time I hear about Suda San and FirePro wrestling I can’t help but have a fit of laughter. The story he drew up for that particular one was so batshit insane, it’s legendary.
What's crazy too is in Japan the line between works in wrestling (scripted like WWE) and shoot (or Shooto, actual catch wrestling and MMA, like Pancrase, Pride or UFC) is blurred much more than in the West. It's a long history with a lot of nuance, but it makes "Pro Wrestling" a little different than how we think of it in the West some of the time, tho there's still plenty that is just like our pro wrestling. Tho quite popular and mixed with real matches.
Such a bummer these games have no official or fan translations, it seems like a really cool concept. Thankful for Dungeon Chill for letting me somewhat experience these games though
If I were a Twilight Syndrome fan back in the day, Moonlight Syndrome would make me absolutely livid lol. I get this type of fiction has its devotees but there should be some unspoken rule to not completely deviate in creative direction in the span of one series. This could've been its own stand alone title or spin off.
Maaaaaan. I'm also living in Japan, and I got both Twilight Syndrome games more or less on a whim to play, despite my... inadequate nihongo, but I had a really great time with them. Great stories and characterization, and just at the edge of understandable for my N3 ass (although I'm thankful Kyuumei-hen got rid of the autoscrolling text lmao). I tried playing Moonlight Syndrome after it multiple times, but I just can't grok it. The font is borderline incomprehensible, the dialogue is orders of magnitude more complex, and a LOT of the dialogue is voice-only with no subtitles.
Get back to it in a year or two, should be enough practice to understand 'most' of it; but the game itself is not very good IMO, so whether you want to do that is up to you. I think there's also a subbed playthrough up on YT now. Might be a better way to experience this than buying it.
Well huh? Moonlight Syndrome... uhm? the vibe I'm getting is almost of fanfic, the author wants to tell a story and uses an already existing franchise for it, but in the great scheme of things it absolutely doesn't fit the already stablished franchise, except for the used characters acting somewhat like is expected of them Or in other hand Suda wanted to tell another story but needed 3 meddling girls or 4 if you can't Arisa and here's this 3 girls of the previous game Or most likely counting how the videogames industry works about mandates, corporation and etc, probably Suda wanted to tell another story but was forced to put the girls in there for continuity or legacy or whatever and he decided to really mess with them In the end I'm kind of glad Moonlight is now consider a spin-off or a side story, because wow it's completely out of rails with the original, I mean why Mithra, why not Ahura Mazda or Angra Mainyu the gods associated with the spirit world, they would have fit better, even Angra Mainyu is supoose to bitter towards humans and manipulative
Just to point out, the heart meter in the second game is likely supposed to be a planchette, an item used to communicate with "the other side" or aid other psychic tasks. Think of the token from a Ouija board.
Wow, the short bit with the ghost on the telephone really gave me goosebumps.
Creepy and sad and in a weird way kind of wholesome. To be able to say goodbye to a dead friend is a nice thought.
Beautiful.
My favourite by far of the cases
The repetitive final words reminded me of the death Miss Evangelista in the 'Silence in the Library' episode of Doctor Who, also reminded me of the 'Achtung.' and 'couldnt keep a promise' aspects of SIGNALIS
I was really engrossed in your overview of Twilight Syndrome, but after the Prank segment ended it feels as though I just whited out for 2 hours and came to with vague blurry memories of incest and Godzilla
I kept saying to myself "This is all non-canon and the 'Prank' was Suda using an established franchise to sell us his video game drugs!" And by the end, it looks like I was right. I remembered nothing besides love squares, substitutions, happy field, murder school, Mithra, Godzilla VS Ultraman VS Doraemon and *KILLING OFF THE MAIN TRIO WAS NON-CANON!*
No one:
Absolutely no one:
Dungeon Chill: So here's 2h feature-length movie about a collection of PS1 games no one in the west played
There has been a few good TS/MS Syndrome vids from English speaking people the last year or two, but this one might take the cake for the whole thing. GG
Each Ultraman series usually has special defense teams whose task is to defend the Earth or their home planets from monsters and aliens.
GUTS is a special defense team that appears in Ultraman Tiga.
mm now i want some chicken tiga masala
Nah I’m pretty sure it’s the guy with the big sword
GUTS is also i think the most popular or at least the costumes or uniforms are, since i've seen them everywhere in south east asia even china.
Fun fact about the wrestling game: the original scenario had the protagonist killing himself only if he lost the final match, but there wasn’t enough space to do that so they just made that the canon ending
The games story mode was insane. The protag was not getting out without bad shit happening to him lmao
He realized the title he battled for was just a meaningless piece of metal and all his accomplishments would be forgotten when he was gone.
*BANG*
omg that makes it even funnier
@@RamonReyes-u6y Existential dread and Wrestling are great by themselves but do not really go well together.
So he took the bad ending, cuz it' more memorable. Dude's a genius.
>Takes pre existing series
>Adds incest
>Kills every character
>Refuses to elaborate
>Leaves
And claims he 'saw their bankruptcy coming' when he was probably one of the causes.
That sounds like Suda alright.
And says he saw the bankruptcy coming when his antics may have contributed to it with MS.
Based51
Ah Suda, never change
Was really excited for the third game going in seeing Suda have more narrative control but. It's kind of a bummer having a story about three girls get turned into being about some new guy and they all die. But the prank episode is so interesting when the white haired guy is initially like a fairy not a bastardized Persian god. Overall the series seems amazing though, would love to see a translation eventually, or more done with the IP.
The guy seems more like the Fey than fairy.
Prank and the initially parts of Moonlight Syndrome had some interesting ideas about a deeper dive into the main trio, and how they would slowly drift apart as they were going through school. Then Suda dropped the ball and kills the trio off for the sake of his own story, and the 'Prank' being that its all non-canon!
Man, I already have trouble keeping track of people from just their name but hearing about the same person dying three times confused the crap out of me.
I know that all I did here was listen to someone else talk about them, but out of these 3 games the one that I enjoyed hearing about the least was Moonlight Syndrome. There's a charm to the more straightforward experience of the first two that's lost in the mess of the third, even though that third one has more meat on the bone.
Part of me is glad these never came over stateside. MS would have pissed me off to no end.
>Take the agency of the player away (choices leading to different endings)
>OC donut steal self insert that is only tangentially related to the previous game's MCs being the main survivor
>a gary stu villain that can warp reality at a whim
>Overly complex story that in the end doesn't tell anything compelling, while trying to explain itself, and has to fall back on "themes"
Shame too as the first game seems pretty comfy for a spooky game night. Not everything has to be explained and some mysteries end up being nothing but mundane. Suda is in the same league as creators like George Lucas. They need a wrangler to keep them grounded.
Yeah MS felt like Suda had just gone on a David Lynch movie night bender and really needed an outlet for every single idea to come from it, regardless of the preexisting content of said outlet.
I like the fact that he takes a deep departure, he did the same Fire Pro Wrestling and it made it more interesting.
💯👍🏿
@@kloa4219okay.
So, what I'm getting from this, as of almost exactly two hours in, is that Suda made the series that was about schoolgirls facing down rumors and such largely on their own into a story that was actually all about his own character, and killing off the three girls that the series started with?
Yeah, I can see why fans declared MS to be non-canon. I’d be pissed, too.
Yeah I did not like the story of the second game. I really felt like it should have had nothing to do with the previous entries and left those poor girls alone.
@animeotaku307 I'm pissed off and this is the first time I've even heard of the series! Yeesh.
The way he hijacked the first game, and used them as set dressing for his own thing, while also killing them all felt disrespectful as hell.
いいですね
As cool as the presentation and some of the story elements in Moonlight Syndrome are, i really wish someone at Human had talked to Suda and convinced him to tone down whatever it is he was trying to do with the game. Maybe have someone go through his ideas and tie them up a little bit better or help him filter them into something more cohesive.
Like, imagine being a fan of Twilight Syndrome back in the day, loving the characters, enjoying the simple yet sincere spooky vibes they had, eating up all the references to traditional horror tales from japanese folklore. And then comes Moonlight Syndrome with all the characters barely resembling their previous incarnations, with a story that tries way too hard to be Lynch-like, and almost no attempt on making any goddamn sense.
I would have been pissed lol
Suda's writing, in my opinion, works well when he doesnt have full creative control.
Like for example, Fatal Frame 4, he's only one of three writers for that game, and that game has the best story in all of that series with a lot of elements reminiscing of his work in MS without compromising actually delivering a satisfying and intriguing story.
I feel the same about Nomura's writing for things like Kingdom Hearts - they both have some fantastic ideas, but they both desperately need people around them to respectfully tell them "no."
@@M0ssP1gletsame with hideo kojima, brilliant director if it comes to themes, story beats, interesting gameplay and cinematics. But especially after mgs 3, needs someone to make the story more cohesive and well structured like Tomokazu Fukushima did for mgs 1 to 3. Don't get me wrong, I love mgs 4, but all the other entrances after it became great for their unique or well crafted gameplay. I'm quite impressed about the overall themes, premises and broad story strokes. However, the actual plot points of said stories are laughable at best.
@@damienvandepol Look up Kojimas favourite films. Lost all respect for the man. No single person is responsible for MSG. I dont like how easily we mythologise creators.
@@accountname-tu2om true, he takes a lot of inspiration from a lot of media like: books, films and even other video games. However he either deconstructs said themes/ plot points or puts an interesting spin on the said media. It's just that he has great takes on said established characters and plot points. It's more like that there was nobody in general to not per se hold him back on those ideas for characters or plot points, but elaborate upon it.
Ngl Twilight syndrome stories sounded so much scarier than Moonlight syndrome's. I wish I can play Twilight syndrome games someday.
The first time I learned about Twilight Syndrome was that segment in Danganronpa 2. It was pretty surreal. I didn't know that several Human Entertainment staff went to Spike too other than joining Grasshopper.
Same!
The video: "And you wouldn't believe who is behind everything"
Me, having seen many videos about old Japanese games: "A zoroastrian deity."
The video: "A zoroastrian deity"
Japanese developers used zoroastrism as their crutch just as much as the old gods or greek gods.
Kabballah is everywhere too with the theme of the return to the soul of Adam.
Western games have only christianity, revenge stories or zombies…
@@1r0zztrue
@@1r0zzok, I'm trying to think of any games that tackle Christianity and the only I can think of is Gabriel Knight 3. Maybe Gat Put of Hell if youre generous. Any games that you were thinking of?
@@zpacula
I’m not using christianity “literally”, but more from a moral/cultural point of view.
A good example is DmC reboot, that from a gnostic based series, they added angels and literal Christianity.
Or how many games treat their characters as “messianic” beings, or as paragons of justice (that can be temporal or moral)
Gabriel Knight 3(great game) does not actually use, let’s say, common christianity as a base, more like apocryphal belief around the Graal and the (spoiler below)
.
.
.
Wandering Jew.
.
.
Even modern “haha”attitude to the “conservative” morality, still is heavily slaved to the conservative view.
The jumping of the building animation is fucking wild. Instant front flip.
Moonlight Syndrome's plot is making me feel like I took LSD. What in the hell?
Moonlight Syndrome is incredibly interesting and I'm glad it got made and that I got to learn about it, but man if I was a fan of the Twilight Syndrome games I imagine it would have felt like a kick in the nuts. Your paranormal investigation story starring 3 high school friends gets turned into Suda trying to do Lynch. Except in Lynch movies all the pieces of the puzzle are there and you can basically understand what's happening with some thinking, whereas in Moonlight Syndrome even with the cut content in mind it's somewhat incoherent. The 3 girls you were with for the first games are in it, sure, but it turns out in the end some other guy was the main character of the story the whole time. I can totally understand why it got retconned.
I still admire it though. The presentation is excellent and some of the scenes are very unnerving. I also always find it fascinating when a somewhat simple or straightforward series totally goes off the rails and take hard turns into a darker tone and subject matter. It's not something you see very often.
Yeah it's really feels like suda was creating a original game but corporate told him to use a brand to keep the rights, like prey 2016 originally being pychoshock but got told to use the name prey. That not what happened to the moonlight syndrome but it's what it feels like to me or writers ego.
Moonlight Syndrome takes place like...1 year after Twilight Syndrome right? The idea that the 3 leads having survived whatever they did, only to get killed of like that 1 year later is pretty depressing. That being said a story about "making a deal with the devil" from the background characters' perspective is a very interesting idea, and the story telling devices in this game like the moon phases are incredible.
So the first two games sound awesome and the third game sounds like a fuckin mess.I'm kind of glad Spike just made the third one not cannon and continued the series. Suda is such a strange enigma, sometimes the shit you get from him is great and other times you're just like wtf man this is some weird confusing bullshit.
To be fair, even Suda's good shit is ALSO weird and confusing most of the time. It always feels like he leaves out large parts of the backstory.
💯👍🏿
Suda´s plots most of the time feel like it thinks it´s clever & abstract, but most often than not is a mess
That whole Moonlight Synopsis sounded crazy for crazy´s sake, but is just shallow & mean spirited
Killing the main trio to establish a new guy was sure to end up in failure
GUTS stands for Global Unlimited Task Squad. They were the government guys who assisted Ultraman in Tiga.
Generally a fan of Suda, but throwing that hard of a wrench into a pre-existing franchise isn't terribly cricket of him. He's such a bizarre creator.
Between this and his FirePro story you can really see how his unique creative style took time to hammer out and form into something more consistent. He was always ambitious, unafraid of controversy, and interested in experimental/surreal storytelling; but for his first few projects it ended up manifesting in these uncharacteristically edgy storylines in series' which didn't really fit that tone. When he was able to start working on his own IPs he had a lot more room to grow and build universes which matched whatever unexpected or subversive twists he wanted to throw in because there was no pre-established brand to keep it in line with.
Awww, that telephone scene made me real tear up. Something about being told of the news by the one that passed made my heart fell into pieces. I know that it is selfish of me, but thank you for remembering me after all this time. Thank you for having me in your mind even at the end. You don't have to apologize. I am sorry I couldn't be there for you. Thank you for telling me. Bye-bye
I feel like the decision to have the ghost from the beginning just be a digitised photo with the eyes blacked out whilst the rest of the characters are done with pixel art is a genuinely inspired creative choice. It's just so much more uncanny than it would have been otherwise.
Having really enjoyed the original Clock Tower I'm really frustrated that they didn't make these games available for non Japanese audiences. They are just so much more in keeping with the style of that game than the official continuations and spin offs.
If they just contrived a way for the game to end at a clock tower these would be excellent sequels.
There is a plot in Danganronpa 2 that involves a video game and I swear I can remember that the whole thing is inspired by twilight syndrome
It is. I think one of the original writers from Twilight Syndrome worked on that scenario.
@@dungeonchillthat’s so cool!!
Yeah it’s literally called twilight syndrome and some of same devs
Woke up unmotivated AF on this rainy-ass day, then I see Dungeon Daddy has blessed me with 2.5 hours of glorious, obscure Japanese content. Saturday salvaged.
"dungeon daddy"? Dude get some help, talk to your family
This right here is me today.
I’ve heard the term dungeon daddy before . . . But not in this context . . .
@@noxielefay9153
@@noxielefay9153
NGL hearing all those changes would piss me off if i was expecting something from a sequel like im just imagining how some fans would feel 😭
Suda needs a handler(s) to make enjoyable works. People who can incorporate his out there ideas but are also interested in actually making a coherent and enjoyable product. His work is incredibly self-indulgent to the detriment of the audience.
The thing is, many of his games have co writers. The Silver Case, Flower Sun and Rain, 25th Ward, Travis Strikes Again, No More Heroes 3, and Fatal Frame 4 all have other writers working alongside Suda, its only Killer7 and the very first No More Heroes that forego cowriters.
@@UMADBRO64 Cool liking your own comment bro. Your argument is there is no such thing as a creative lead. So anyone can make a Kojima Productions game? His catalog is indistinguishable from a Ubisoft looter shooter whether or not Kojima was there? It's a coincidence that all of Suda's games have the same themes and storytelling devices and his "posse" follows him around from the start of his career to the present day and no one can take credit for anything?
Anyway, long story short buzz off, pseud.
@@UMADBRO64 I used him as a well known example. I think his games are trash. I could have easily said Tetsuya Nomura and the point would be the same. Since you didn't address anything I said at all I will take your concession that your circular logic is idiotic. Thank you.
It's so crazy that every subsequent suda game has ties to Moonlight syndrome even up to no more heroes 3
For sure. Also, how the progression of Hinamizawa from Twilight Syndrome -> Moonlight Syndrome -> The Silver Case -> The 25th Ward is mirrored by Santa Destroy, with No More Heroes -> No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle -> No More Heroes III. Both get increasingly more industrialized and lose their humanity.
Now I know why the game was so familiar. Chunsoft the creators of Danganrompa used assets from the game in the second Danganrompa for once of the cases in it.
I remember going through that case and thinking "wow, they made a whole fake game for this" but it's cool to know it's actually a homage now.
Kind of awful of them to take the characters from a somewhat optimistic series about ghost hunting and put them into a really dark story that leaves off on a sad note before the franchise is abandoned.
Still better than how Capcom treats their IPs.
@@harrymason4300 i mean not really but ok
At the very least, there are more Twilight Syndrome games after it that ignored Moonlight Syndrome.
@@clenshin97 at least Twilight Syndrome got some sequels. Capcom couldn't care less about any of their IPs other than Monster Hunter and Resident Evil.
Moonlight Syndrome, the video can´t do justice to what a mess it is, is canon to the "Suda-verse". The protagonist's death is shown at the start of The Silver Case and is extended in a short comic that is part of a limited edition in a remaster. The story kept ending even after it was over. Oh, the 90s.
I hope one day you cover the other Twilight Syndrome games, cause I'm really interested to see what happens in them.
Man, suda really liked his oc mystery dudes
Not really, Ryo gets killed off within the first hour of his next game The Silver Case
I remember learning about Suda 51 from Two Best Friends Play. From what I remember from the Killer is Dead and No More Heroes playthrough, they theorized that Suda stays secluded in his house watching weird movies and anime and only looking out his window to look at the moon at night until he's told to make a new game by others.
Suda51 was an actual IRL undertaker before becoming a game dev, pretty wild but it explains a lot.
@@StudioRevoct yea that explains why he was so good in the wrestling game
He had little to do with Lollypop Chainsaw, Killer is Dead, Shadows of the Damned or even No More Heroes 2. Suda basically stopped directing for a decade so the games he got famous with in the west didn´t really represent him before we got NMH DS/3 and a bunch of 90s remasters.
These were two really interesting titles to deep dive into. But I thought that Moonlight Syndrome was going to delve further into the sacrificial practices conducted by the city - which would have tied in with the economic troubles Japan was facing at the time you mentioned.
You know who you are, reading this. I believe in the immense talent of Dungeon Chill's audience. WE NEED ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS FOR THESE GAMES
>The seven mysteries of Hinashira high school
Aw man just like Twilight Town from Kingdom Hearts 2!
Wait...
"I swear I know how to read japanese" Suda 51 be wild, thank you for trying to dissect this lol
1:34:01 If no one has commented about the mentioning of GUTS as part of Ultraman Tiga, I will add that GUTS was essentially the defense force that Daigo was on and often fought the kaiju threats that Ultraman Tiga would face in the show. Sometimes, conflicts would arise, where Daigo could not easily become Ultraman Tiga for fear of showing his identity off to his coworkers. At least, this is what I remember from the show.
Great video, I was glued to it from the start. I somewhat feel that the Moonlight was just a big departure from the first one and somehow I don't think it's a better game.
I love Suda and his games, but if i was someone who played the first two twilight syndrome games and then moonlight syndrome at the time, i would've been pissed. Completely different vibes. I respect what he tried to do tho.
Thanks for the video bro, subbed.
Someone tell my family that I am busy for the next 2 hours and 22 minutes. It’s chill time. Dungeon……chill time.
Tell them yourself
@@CrowsofAcheron They won’t talk to me after I told them I am busy for the next 2 hours and 35 minutes for chill time when the Racing Lagoon vid dropped
Nice to see a video going through all of these games, and explaining what goes on in Moonlight Syndrome, thanks. Same for the Baroque video, since you made it's weird story make sense to me, more or less. ^^
There's a similar PS1 game to Twilight Syndrome, 'Yuuyami Doori Tankentai', that I hope you get to cover in the future.
The whole "You need to read the cut chapter included in the artbook to understand the story" reminds me of the "Jaco's Report" included in the Killer7 artbook, as it was also cut content that made the story easier to understand.
With Killer7, Suda had to cut like 2/3rds of the story because of time constraints. Like he says that Coyote is his favorite Smith because of stuff he planned to happen focusing on him but had to cut out of the final game.
Mithras was only the main God in a subsect of Zoroastrian religion(and the Mithraic mysteries) that only popped up in the Roman Empire, in the Middle East he was mostly relegated to a lesser role like an angel or something since it's a monotheistic(or dualistic if you count Ahriman/Angra Mainyu) religion under Ahura Mazda. Though, Japanese games were doing weird things like that a lot back then. Though the second game's ending was kind of randomly shoehorned in anyway. It feels like Suda was just trying to make things as off the wall as possible. (Glad it was retconned)
This game seems rad as hell. The Japanese supernatural is actually very very interesting and a core part of their folk culture. I'd love to see a new game with this setting. I played World of Horror and I was disappointed by the lack of a long-form narrative, but I found the aesthetic and theming so fascinating.
check out Famicom Detective Club Part II if you havent already. similar vibe to this.
Yea, I also bought World of Horror and I'm interested in Twilight Syndrome despite being already spoilered.
My biggest problem with WoH is that it's a superb video game adaptation of the Arkham Horror board game, but isn't marketed as one, instead selling it as a mystery to be cracked.
My prayers have been answered.
For years ive wanted a high quality deep dive into the Syndrome series of games.
These are some of the most interesting games that we never got over in the west.
Wow another big one and a series I've been wanting to know more about for quite a while. Thank you as always.
What a ride.
Well damn the ghost girl calling on the phone hit me right in the feels 😢
That whole dream conversation is too real. "And Guts was there for some reason"
GUTS (Global Unlimited Task Squad) - another reference to Ultraman. This whole game is suda's wish fulfillment fantasy, lol.
@@mariusamber3237 you, sir, are correct
I just watched Grimbeard's painful trek through Silver Case. He went mad. I think doing a retrospective on Suda51 is an idea MADE for this channel.
Sikver Case is one of my all time favorite games, it does so much cool stuff.
Brih, that floating into heaven bit freaked me out. This is such a good video man. Keep up the good work
How does one comment before the vid comes out
@@kevindangelo1091 By becoming a member of the channel. There should be a "Join" button next to the "Subscribe" button.
@@kevindangelo1091 donation incentive
@@kevindangelo1091 Become a Patreon supporter to get access to his videos before the general public.
Thank you very much for keeping us in your thoughts. We shall be waiting with a smile at the front desk.
-"Babe, please make love to me!"
-"OK, but Dungeon Chill stays on"
This is cute. I turn off sex for Dungeon Chill.
@@tommyswain3762 what's sex?
I think this might be my favorite gaming channel now. You have a gift for analysis and writing. Your video on Baroque is the best I've seen, and single-handedly got me looking through the Saturn library in general.
I know these have been covered to death, but I'd be fascinated to see your takes on stuff like the PlayStation Final Fantasy trilogy and other script-heavy games from Japan, whether they've been localized or not. The cultural and historical lens you're able to offer to us single-language luddites, in an entertaining package, is something unique to you, I think.
Either way, thank you for what you do.
When you said, "I feel like going through every ending is a bit unnecessary and would make this video much longer than it already is." I was sure you were going to say, but I'm going to do it anyway.🤣
Every good game this dude puts out he puts out a game that is just awful. God bless him.
The enigma of Suda.
@@dungeonchill too damn true. I will never understand how these games never got an English translation. Another Enigma
It's okay as long as there are LPer chumps who plow through the uninspired garbage like silver case shelters and such so you can just skip it
@@Holyduck777 Games with a mindfuck, borderline impossible to understand plots, containing controversial and/or incredibly culturally-tied themes... Yeah, I can see why they're not picked up for international releases.
It’s part of for the course of post-modern/deconstruction writers. Sometimes they will make absolute bangers that turn a typical story on its head like Killer7, No More Heroes and The Silver Case and then you have confusing, nihilistic and experimental shit that goes nowhere.
Whoa! Thanks a lot for the video, mate! I would never go through the trouble of playing those games and making sense of them, so you did me a real solid.
Moonlight Syndrome is probably one of the most interesting games I've seen in a while: it's covered in the hallmarks of a younger writer getting more power than he was used to and kinda going nuts. It's irreverent, messy, insanely political for the period *but* has a lot of interesting individual ideas that kinda get lost in the sauce of "fuck it, let's write it like this".
The whole thing explains a lot about concepts, aesthetics and ideas used in future suda games, but also why the guy's so reluctant to make moves towards an international rerelease: in an interview, he mentioned being kind of "embarassed" by what he'd done back then - and yeah, no kidding! I *didn't* do this to the first game i got to write for with full creative control and I'm still kind of embarassed by how derivative some of my worldbuilding was back then.
Twilight Syndrome is Twin Peaks original run, and Moonlight Syndrome is Twin Peaks: The Return.
Thank you SO much for this video! I'm a huge fan of Moonlight Syndrome but I hadn't heard of the extra materials, so I just played the game missing that whole chunk... As you said, the game is impossible to piece together logically, but vibes-wise you can feel it out. Unfortunate ramble on my part incoming...
The biggest theme that stuck out to me when playing was that of adolescence, or rather, the violence an adolescent must experience when transitioning into adulthood. The game (at least I felt) portrays the characters as confused and lonely in their new, more adult-like bodies which are only engineered for apathy and violence. The characters of the game are moody and hostile. Every time you try to make a connection, they get pissed off. You're invited to clubs to drink and dance but everyone there is sort of wasting away or acting cruelly to each other like they don't know any other way to act. I was struck by how Mika's father talked in such a dismissive way and how all her friends kept getting so angry, and how the gross creep otaku in town was perving on her, like she was confronting the ugly side of the world because physically she was old enough. Because she had that adolescent body, she was deemed mature enough by the universe to experience those things... It felt like that. There's a palpable disgust for change and your own body. The children jumping off the roof to alleviate loneliness is obvious, as now they'll never need to grow up. Because growing up is experiencing pain. Ryo's opening chapter really lays it all out with how everyone he meets picks on him ("Hey, is that the otaku who wore an Ayanami shirt last time?" or Yayoi straight up asking if he's gay. I guess his wardrobe is cursed.) His talk with his sister in the mirror can go a number of ways but I feel like it betrays his subconscious urge for comfort, his reluctance at becoming a man who has to take responsibility. Like you said, people in this game shove off responsibility to others. Ryo's fixation on his sister is like a shameful wish to surrender all control. The game (and the powers that be) FORCE him to act--- but it's a trick in the end.
Damn, that sounds really depressing. In a body that can only act through violence, how can you make anything truly beautiful in this world? It wasn't even enough to kill a god. But maybe for a moment, in that embrace, there was a bit of comfort. If only he hadn't made that promise, if only Mika never got into that accident. Their only choice was to...kill the past (and everybody clapped).
Gosh, enough babbling. Your videos are always relaxing and have great insights within them. Thank you as always!
Well, you certainly weren't lying about Prank and later Moonlight syndrome being more obviously influenced by Suda51. Not sure if his way of storytelling is for me, but I certainly loved you covering these games and I look forward to seeing your take care of his other games. Especially the "Silver Case", what with how the story of Moonlight Syndrome ended.
I'm also curious about the sequels made by Spike that you mentioned. But I'm sure you've got enough on your plate already.
And a big thank you for all the work you've put into this, both with covering the games and the cut content as well. Keep up the good work as always, Dungeon.
1:33:53 Hey something I know! In this context, "GUTS" is refering to the army task force that Daigo, from Tiga is a part of
26:15, I'm sure others have said it, but I believe that's a Ouija Board piece to communicate with the dead with. But I do agree it clashes with how they rendered it.
It's a little weird that they went from using dolls as sacrifices to using people. Usually cultural traditions like that move in the opposite direction. They decide that human sacrifice is bad actually and start using dolls as substitutes or similar.
Fun fact: that’s supposedly how Baozi was created. Instead of offering human heads to a river god, a guy made a facsimile out of meat and used that instead.
@@animeotaku307 exactly. There are multiple historical examples of it working that way, but none of it going in reverse to my knowledge
I guess they figured the spirits weren't accepting the facsimile
prolly cause it's a fiction and writer's only concern was to come up with le spoopy story and they didn't know or care much about how real life traditions develop. always have to manage your expectations with this type of media
Absolutely love the super long review/video essays. This was clutch for a long boring shift on Labor Day in the states.
The storybeats of twilight syndrome remind me a LOT of the Death Mark games.
I thought that myself when I saw the third game was going to be a side-scrolling adventure game; possibly what they were going for since that game took place in a highschool as well.
You really weren't lying when you said that this was going to be a Lynchian nightmare huh, the fact that the section covering the intro and first two games was done and the progress bar was barely a third of the way through should have clued me into the insanity ahead. Not sure if I'd consider it to be a well constructed story if the average player needs to do a decent amount of research just to piece together the intended themes, in my personal opinion the author can have a fragmented narrative that doesn't follow a conventional structure if they want but the core idea should be communicated by the piece alone, even if it takes some reflection after the fact.
Although I can't deny the allure of a story where the presence of a literal god has screwed with cause and effect so heavily that time is no longer linear nor properly synchronized for the different characters, it would have been funny/ironic if Mithra had gotten himself stuck in this weird loop too and his death was quite literally the only way out for any of those involved.
Same. For example, the concept of the news of Kyoko's death arriving at different times and intensity based on how close the person was to her felt very cool, it somewhat "grounded" the crazy happenings by giving them a certain logic - a very dreamlike logic, but a logic nonetheless.
And all the questions I asked myself while watching the video - is the resemblance between Kyoko and Mika purely accidental, or is there a deeper relation? What's up with Yayoi, what happened between her and Chisato? - turned out to not matter, because this was Ryo's story, apparently (despite his story being far less compelling than that of the original trio of girls), and everyone was just an accessory on his quest to... Do what, anyways?
@@davidepastore5600 yeah, with all the references to Lost Highway it's kinda impossible to not compare this game to that movie, but Lynch actually managed to make a fascinating film, it's surface level plot makes almost no sense whatsoever but the moment to moment story flows surprisingly well and the themes themselves are actually much easier to parse than the narrative.
Moonlight Syndrome on the other hand is like that one bizarre arc of a show when the plot went off the rails and then they fired that writer and refuse to acknowledge what happened during that arc in later seasons.
@@axelprino I also think that Moonlight Syndrome really suffers from scope creep. Continuing the comparisons with Lost Highway (one of my favourite movies, btw), Lynch is very careful in keeping the story "contained": there's really only a handful of characters to keep track of and they're all connected to each other, even if the nature of those connections remains unclear and even unsolvable due to the surrealist nature of the movie.
Moonlight Syndrome, instead, displays a large cast of characters to the players, their connections to each other vague and unsatisfactory. And, despite the claim that this is Ryo's story, half of the cast has zero connections to him, which, more than anything, makes Ryo feel like a completely out of context addition, and the same goes for Mithra once you learn he's apparently just a dickhead god. Together, those two only add more layers of obfuscation and complexity to an already complex story without really adding anything to it - I must insist that Ryo, to me, comes across as almost a non-chatacter, his only defining trait being that he was in love with his own sisters. Mika is a hundred times more interesting than him, even Arisa is.
I feel like the game would work much better if it just cut out Ryo and even Mithra, and instead focused entirely on Mika and her friends, their difficulties with establishing their own identities.
@@davidepastore5600 the worst part probably is that one can almost feel the better story hiding behind, it just needed a few more passes during the planning stages. As you said Ryo is barely a character so making him the surprise protagonist doesn't really work, if he had at least been the point of view character or a narrator then maybe, but he's not even there half the time.
Throughout the video, different elements of the gameplay and story beats made me go, "Hmm, Death Mark must have gotten a lot of inspiration from these games."
Then, for you to say in the end that they sold the rights to Spike (who made Death Mark), it just came full circle. As well as how many have pointed out that Twilight Syndrome is mentioned in Danganronpa, they're other game.
I also feel like some of the weird philosophy from these games were inspiration for another series they made, that being the Zero Eacape series. But that's probably just me trying to connect all these together lol.
Loved the video as always!
Damn, I love your videos. Always wondered about the Syndrome games. Halfway through the video now, but I'm so happy you made this. Feels amazing to finally get a real glimpse into some of Suda's hidden non-localized gems.
The first game with the investigations was cool.
The second was full schizophrenic storytelling.
We watch these dungeon chill videos for our own interests. but what dungeon chill doesnt know is we do it out of『R』
Seeing the sprites for these games just makes the fact that they changed to 3D models for the sequel to Clock Tower hurt (and Ghost Head, but the graphics were never the problem with that game. It is however absolutely hilarious that you can lose the game by not doing something within the prologue/tutorial level, causing a suit of samurai armour to crash through a skylight halfway through the game and land directly on your character, killing you instantly and forcing you to completely restart the game) all the more.
I understand why they would prefer not to have to rotoscope the whole game after it being so difficult for these, but it could have looked incredible. They might have been able to go for a more impressionistic style akin to Another World or Flashback, but it may not have been received well after the original game went for realism and did an excellent job of it.
The voice that says the titles like "Gossip" really reminds me of serial experiments lain and I love it.
this was super cool to learn about the syndrome games, really wish we could play them in english! Thanks for covering and thanks for another great video (:
there's a fantranslation of Moonlight Syndrome being worked on
I can't thank you enough for bringing these games into your channel. For the longest time I wanted to dive into these stories about urban legends involving school exploration (very niche topic that I like), and I was hopeless to ever being able to understand them. All I can say is, the wait was worth it!
Now, if we could also have the complete story of Yuuyami Doori Tankentai (same vibe as the first two Syndrome titles), that's the closest we'll ever get to achieving world peace.
Moonlight syndrome to me shows that monkey paw wish fulfillment stories don't really work if the characters doing the wishing aren't the main/pov characters
Thank you! I like hearing about content like this even though there's no English translation, official or fanmade.
There's a fantranslation of Moonlight being worked on
thank you for playing the syndrome games! i have only seen few people talk about and even fewer people playing it.
there have been a precious few that translated vague parts of the story and love them very much for that but I wanted a more cohesive story recap
That was certainly an interesting watch - fascinating little window into the past. As someone who moved to Japan a couple of years back and is only starting to get confident enough at my Japanese to be dabbling into entirely JP based games, I was pleased with how much of the on-screen text I could parse, cruddy font and all. Not that I could make *sense* of it, but I suppose that's somewhat the point of the video. Thanks a bunch for the content, found your channel after being linked the Baroque video, and have since binged, well, all of it.
EDIT: Also, not sure where in Japan you are, but hope that either the typhoon hasn't been that bad, or that it misses you, depending.
Ngl, the fact that all the girls got fridged just because suda wanted to insert a random god and give the hero role to a character with 30 min screentime on a multigame series is pretty annoying.
What makes it extra annoying imo is the sprinkle of misogyny on top. That classic "the suffering of the women was all for the sake of a man achieving his purpose" is so obnoxious, especially when done to a series that had so much care put into being realistic representation for girls at the time :/
I think you're lying a little bit.
I don’t think this is a Suda problem you guys are taking issue with, it’s a Japan problem.
You guys are acting like classic Japan should adhere to sensibilities that not even modern Japan adheres to. You’re free to be annoyed by something, but asking the world to make art and media explicitly for you and your sensibilities is not only narcissistic but entirely unrealistic.
You said yourself the females were handled well up to a point, great, that was for you then. The rest? It’s not. That’s fine.
@@Kerunou ye no, killing the girls and replacing them with his oc has the suda stink all over it
@@Kerunou Assuming Japanese people are inherently wildly different to other humans and just misogynistic by default is wildly racist. Stop projecting your weirdo Reddit mindset onto an entire group of people, it's disrespectful af
The video is good. My thoughts are that i quite dislike the direction moonlight syndrome took. I think the story was badly constructed and just butchered the characters(literally). Its literally everyones dies at the end. Racing lagoon got me more invested in its story and characters.
Is it just me or does Moonlight syndrome share some similarities of Serial Experiments Lain in terms of narrative style and sound design? Btw awesome work Dungeon Chill you have my day a lot brighter
It’s been years since I searched for any sort of deep dive into this series and it’s here! Thank you for your work
46:57 bro of course it was intentional: intentionally way cheaper and faster to produce, I'd wager art direction had nothing to do with it -it clearly was a compromise rather than a choice. That explains the better usage of budget for sound and music
Holy shit that Fire Pro Wrestler scenario hit very hard when you used to be a fan of Wrestling in the early 2000s and the favorite wrestler of your at the time best friend was He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.
He's running down Snake Way as we speak!
Benoit?
Moonlight Syndrome sounds like a fever dream someone had after binge playing the first 2 games while on mushrooms.
One of my fave youtube channels as of late. And prefect essay to watch in October~
Mmm, I'm not sure if it was the more detailed coverage of MS or "worse writing".. but TS seemed much better in every department. Even more mysterious and interesting.
That or the fact that I've always found Mr. 51's creation to be somewhat hollow and "done for the sake of it". Which is sad, as it makes half this long video.. rather uninteresting.
While I agree with it all being done “for the sake of it,” I disagree about it being boring just because of how much WTF-ery was in it.
Definitely doesn’t make it good, but I can’t say I was bored.
@animeotaku307 I think that, after a certain point, the constant twist and turns and piling on questions without clear answers *can*, paradoxically, become boring.
Like Arisa's dream - it's so unhinged and illogical, it stops being interesting and just feels like word soup.
Personally, I was intrigued by the strangeness of Moonlight Syndrome, but I can see how it can end up coming across as grating and annoying.
@@davidepastore5600Fair point
Lmaoooo every time I hear about Suda San and FirePro wrestling I can’t help but have a fit of laughter.
The story he drew up for that particular one was so batshit insane, it’s legendary.
What's crazy too is in Japan the line between works in wrestling (scripted like WWE) and shoot (or Shooto, actual catch wrestling and MMA, like Pancrase, Pride or UFC) is blurred much more than in the West. It's a long history with a lot of nuance, but it makes "Pro Wrestling" a little different than how we think of it in the West some of the time, tho there's still plenty that is just like our pro wrestling. Tho quite popular and mixed with real matches.
your accountt is super dope man. some of the best retrospective game stuff ive seen in ages.
Such a bummer these games have no official or fan translations, it seems like a really cool concept. Thankful for Dungeon Chill for letting me somewhat experience these games though
If I were a Twilight Syndrome fan back in the day, Moonlight Syndrome would make me absolutely livid lol. I get this type of fiction has its devotees but there should be some unspoken rule to not completely deviate in creative direction in the span of one series. This could've been its own stand alone title or spin off.
Genuinely think you're the best gaming youtuber around at the minute!
Maaaaaan. I'm also living in Japan, and I got both Twilight Syndrome games more or less on a whim to play, despite my... inadequate nihongo, but I had a really great time with them. Great stories and characterization, and just at the edge of understandable for my N3 ass (although I'm thankful Kyuumei-hen got rid of the autoscrolling text lmao).
I tried playing Moonlight Syndrome after it multiple times, but I just can't grok it. The font is borderline incomprehensible, the dialogue is orders of magnitude more complex, and a LOT of the dialogue is voice-only with no subtitles.
Get back to it in a year or two, should be enough practice to understand 'most' of it; but the game itself is not very good IMO, so whether you want to do that is up to you. I think there's also a subbed playthrough up on YT now. Might be a better way to experience this than buying it.
It made me so happy to see all the supporters you have at the end of the video, you deserve it!
Well huh? Moonlight Syndrome... uhm? the vibe I'm getting is almost of fanfic, the author wants to tell a story and uses an already existing franchise for it, but in the great scheme of things it absolutely doesn't fit the already stablished franchise, except for the used characters acting somewhat like is expected of them
Or in other hand Suda wanted to tell another story but needed 3 meddling girls or 4 if you can't Arisa and here's this 3 girls of the previous game
Or most likely counting how the videogames industry works about mandates, corporation and etc, probably Suda wanted to tell another story but was forced to put the girls in there for continuity or legacy or whatever and he decided to really mess with them
In the end I'm kind of glad Moonlight is now consider a spin-off or a side story, because wow it's completely out of rails with the original, I mean why Mithra, why not Ahura Mazda or Angra Mainyu the gods associated with the spirit world, they would have fit better, even Angra Mainyu is supoose to bitter towards humans and manipulative
amazing work I was waiting for the suda 51 games. Absolutely getting on your patreon for this one.
Just to point out, the heart meter in the second game is likely supposed to be a planchette, an item used to communicate with "the other side" or aid other psychic tasks. Think of the token from a Ouija board.